Yeah… This sucks…

Thanks for the heads up mgkkain​  and totally correct ccmoose​ 

For me, the incentive is to essentially pay more now for what ultimately translates to a lower value, easy to farm, resource (gear) at the expense of a much more valuable, hard to farm, resource (hero shards)

3 days ago, I was happy to spend money/crystals to 4 (generally 5) star a hero and then set about gearing said hero up over time, while waiting for the remaining shards to become free to farm.

Today, spending crystals to 4 (or 5) star hero offers little material benefit to the new game mode, and the process of farming materials and gearing heroes is taken away and replaced by a new (arbitrary) resource system.

So the general takeaway appears to be, don’t spend anything, because gear is much cheaper to farm than hero shards, and getting ahead on the hero shards holds no value in the here and now.