Marriott is reducing the number of categories. The highest category will be cat 8 . You may want to familiarize yourself with the new chart here.

https://members.marriott.com/redeem/

There are far fewer categories now than before (they've eliminated the 3 Ritz Carlton tiers). Also Marriott has announced that there are more properties going down in points than going up. (Some of that may be due to SPG properties going from 12k SPG pts/night to 35K Marriott pts/night which is basically a wash but technically, they have gone down in price.) There was a great award chart showing points required for each property before Aug 18 and after Aug 18, but Marriott has deleted it now that the merger has happened. Perhaps you can still find it on the blogs.

So I think someone has been giving you bad info on devaluations.

If anything, there are some tremendous values right now because future cat 8 hotels are bookable at cat 7 pricing. There's a large thread on that.

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/marr...nd-2018-a.html

More research is required before jumping ship.