Here’s the issue with this:
Blizzard can literally tell people straight to their face “You don’t have to do this, just do what you find fun” and folks will ignore that. Over the years in multitudes of interviews they have said over and over again that they build the game so folks can play in the way that they want. But…! That doesn’t mean that the entire game is built to follow how individual players want to play the game.
This is the non-PR version of what Kaivax literally said:
It isn’t a throwaway season. If you want raid stuff, you gotta do a barebone amount of raiding to get it. Because raid gear is still supposed to be available from raids. M+ stuff is supposed to be available from M+. For the hell of it we can add Delves to this as well with Delves having their own stuff that is earnable from Delves.
All of this is PvE, so if you want to minmax, you gotta do more than one of these. If you don’t want to do that, you just do what you want to do and stick with what’s available from that avenue. Because that’s how gearing works when it comes from multiple different sources and it is in the middle of a non-throwaway season, meaning to get the stuff you still have to do the barebone amount of stuff to earn it.
This goes all ways. Not just raid loot, not just M+ loot, not just Delve loot - it goes all ways.
So if you want it, ya’ gotta participate. If you don’t, you can’t have it. It is as simple as that, which is why I keep going back to telling people that this is literally just about “playing the game.” It ain’t about anything other than that.
If folks find playing the game an abhorrent barrier too high to cross, I don’t care. You don’t want to play, then you don’t play and your stuff doesn’t matter. If you want stuff from one mode, you gotta participate in that mode.
The same thing applies to stuff like last season’s Ara-Kara Sacbrood. If you wanted it, ya’ had to do M+ to get it at any track higher than explorer, veteran, or champion.