I find this very disheartening to be honest.
Here's why I twink : I love to play BGs. When I finally can log in wow, I just want to relax, queue some fun BG. And that little bit of time is precious, adult life and all of that.
I have enough of max level "regrind everything" on a new patch, grind the new version of artifact power again, do lots of pve, and what have you.
So, twinking seems like a good solution. I can invest some time in a few toons, and they'll be up to snuff for a whole expansion, more or less. Once they're reasonably geared, then it's all fun and BGs. I can actually play, and stand a decent chance against most players.
Except for stuff like this necklace. It creates gear disparities that i'll never be able to overcome. I've already seen what ilvl49 artifacts can do, now on top of that there are ilvl44 necklaces. And the window to get that was less than a day?
It's one thing to have disparities because somebody grinded hard and has a fully sockected/ultra rare weapons/topnotch anything. That's fine, those venues are opened to everybody, we all can eventually get there.
I can see a similar argument for things that were available for a decent amount of time. Not sure how long the artifact ilvl49 was available, but that would probably fall into such categories. Some of us missed out, too bad, but that's life. As long as we all have a decent shot at it.
But less than a day for a very very powerful piece of gear? And now, those of us who dont have it are doomed to be cannon fodder for the whole expansion?
Sorry for the rant, I try to avoid those, but this really sucks.