PvP gear you don’t need to upgrade at all, once you obtain it, it is good for PvP with no extra steps.
For PvE, it is a constant upward scale (faster for high M+/Raiders, lower but still present for people who only do solo content) that will constantly make things easier until you hit the cap for the content you do.
You can also get Whelpling/Drake quests from world content, so the only ones that will require Raiding or M+ to acquire would be Wyrms/Aspects.