They surely do since they are balancing at least early in a tier for the guilds that are racing for HoF spots and even position once HoF is full.
But yet again this is a deflection from my point. Every tier can be defeated with only raid and crafted gear. Most specs get more power from raid items than M+ items at equal item levels; that’s the reason why obtaining the top 0.1% title in M+ is basically reserved for those who farmed the mythic raid enough weeks to get those BIS items out of raid. I’m sure there would naturally be an overlap in the players who are capable of reaching 0.1% in M+ and being able to clear mythic raid soon enough to farm for this to be not much of a concern for the majority of the field, but there definitely can be M+ers on the outside looking in.
You keep responding with things that don’t really address what I’m saying. Nowhere have I said it isn’t more efficient for raiders to gear with M+ than wait the extra months to gear from raid. Nowhere did I say Blizzard didn’t balance the raid such that most CE guilds who do farm M+ early on will finish prog by a certain week.
What I said is that the raid can be defeated by players who only gear from raid and the desire to go faster is player imposed. Blizzard choosing to make the raid difficult enough to ensure guilds that do farm M+ aren’t able to steamroll the raid doesn’t make the first statement untrue. The players are the ones who decided waiting until week 14 for CE compared to getting it week 4 is unacceptable.