Anyone can fuck off and come in at any time and "catch up", so it pretty much defeats a lot of the efforts given towards maximizing unless you're worried about world first. Otherwise, why try so hard. You can half ass and be up to speed at any point if you have the time to invest. Even the AP curve is being truncated. If you're not a try hard, bleeding edge asshole, why bother putting in an inordinate amount of time and effort, just to get shit on when the next patch hits (or look at it as an easy way of coasting through, and keeping pace without having to play balls deep in order to keep up). Until mythic raiding is available, it definitely seems like a lot of wasted effort, burning your dick off just to have 1% better stats. I get it, go for it, but ultimately we're all chasing that same dragon. Some of us just have a bigger ego about it, aka don't have a life and can allocate time to do so, which hasn't changed, blame soaks, whatever, with enough lifeless faggots you'll always be able to poopsock the "challenge" eventually, or a critical player will quit and fuck your team.