I take a few trips a year, either TATL or TPAC, in business class on a partner airline using miles, purely for leisure travel. I don't exclusively use AA miles (I have some AS miles as well which I use if I want to fly a partner that is not also an AA partner or if I want a stopover), but the majority are with AA miles. Considering that business class round trip tickets are generally in the $3k to $5k range, I find that there is very good value getting a round trip for 115k or 120k miles to Europe or Asia.

I also use a lot of AA miles for domestic flights. I would rather spend 7k miles than $180 for a one way, and this comes up a lot.

So there is definitely value there if you take the time to find it and you are flexible enough to use it.

Having said that, I don't buy miles or points either. My balance is over 500k and since I earn 200k+ just from maintaining EXP status it's not really dropping. Add that to 500k+ AS miles, and another 700k or so in transferable CC points (Amex + Chase) and I'm good for a while. I wouldn't consider 2c/mile a particularly good deal either; that's right around my redemption value on a lot of domestic flights.