Well to be fair, raiding absolutely BLOWS *** for trying to get gear. At least with m+ you arent locked out (unlike raid) and thus can spam dungeons for loot (which again, abysmal drop rates + inflated loot tables means a large time sink).
Honestly though? People are paying for carries + loot in raids (via wow tokens) to get the bis drops. Or relying on vault. But for normal people playing the game as intended content does not reward your time at all. (despite paying for the service)
WoW gives you the illusion of choice. You can
Raid once per difficulty per week
Run all the M+ your heart desires
outside of this the gear isnt really good in terms of ilvl (until more catchup gear is added again)
Except BIS weapons, trinkets, and fastest access to tier bonuses comes from raiding.
M+ provides loot faster on a weekly basis IF you are willing to grind it out. Raiding provides BIS gear and has for a while.
Normal and heroic are easily clearable without ever touching M+ in an organized group. The only real issue is M+ is generally more favorable for getting geared for Mythic raiding, but that is primarily due to difficulty and many Mythic guilds locking out after 2-3 weeks.
I have to depend on M+ mainly because my guild locked out after 2 weeks to chase rank. If we were clearing Mythic every week, Iâd have more slots filled with raid gear. Normal/heroic guilds donât face this issue since they arenât locking out every week.
As long as tier and raid trinkets exist, at no point will M+ ever make raiding pointless (if your goal is to make number go up.)
The ilvl alone doesnât make the item valuable, there are numerous raid items that are superior to what you can obtain from mythic+.
I mean that can be argued as a problem, but itâs irrelevant to this conversation. Multiple raid tiers just leads to power creep over the expansion. Remove normal and LFR and the M+ gear acquisition situation still exists.
That would just mean that a mythic raid team wouldnât bother with heroic the moment it launched, but would still ultimately use M+ to fill in gear gaps. The problem would still likely exist, especially for groups not clearing Mythic raid very quickly.
Now maybe it wouldnât be as noticeable because all their time is spent on Mythic prog rather than the initial heroic clearing into some mythic prog while still doing some heroic kills, but the core issue still exists.
I mean thereâs definitely trade-off with both avenues. The fact is that with M+ as a viable option you have more gearing options, but thatâs ultimately resulted in a different way the game is played these days, especially in regards to raiding.
The fact is the old days of Mythic raiding your BiS was your BiS, even if it was terribly itemized. My own personal preference is I enjoyed knowing where the gearing train ended, and it ended with clearing the raid. Clear as fast/best as possible, and then come back each week until reaching BiS, and then repeat next raid tier.
Bring back bonus rolls IMO.
Acquisition of raid gear is so incredibly slow that M+ is a welcome additional source of loot for a lot of people.
Letâs not pretend that BIS weapons and trinkets never come from M+.
And if you bonus roll, you get a guaranteed item usable by your class (preferably one that did not already drop previously).
Even when mog farming it was incredibly annoying to bonus roll and only get useless currency. 
Shhh.
Mythic+ has never had a BiS trinket or weapon ever.
Balefire doesnât exist this season, or genesaur blood for my healer, or the Fall staff.
And tier is a nothingburger everyone in the game gets guaranteed, with virtually anyone having 489 tier instead of 476 tier getting it from mythic+
I think the problem with M+ vs Raiding is mainly you can keep farming out a M+ dungeon to your hearts content in hopes for the item youâre trying to get. Plus the fact you can now obtain tier either from vault or catalyst (which I donât have a problem with.)
Versus raiding you only have one shot per boss (and thatâs even if the boss drops something youâre aiming for) plus your vault.
I think one way they can âfixâ the issue with obtaining gear in raids is have it similar to FF14. Youâre only locked out of a particular bossâs loot table if you got an item from said boss.
I donât mind the iLvs and what not, but itâs weird that you can get a 5-man team and just runs keys all day to gear, versus running a raid twice a week and just come out empty handed. That design made sense back when raiding was the end all, it doesnât now with how much gear is thrown at you, especially from M+.
If it was mpt for M+ you might find a lot less people raiding. Why go into a raid with 20 people and walk out with 4 items only per boss, once a week. Even if you clear the whole raid, thatâs still only 36 items per 20 players, again, once a week.
And with the current loot setup, that could mean a bow drops for a group who has no hunters, meaning you wonât always get 36 items for 20 players.
All in all, if a piece does drop that everyone can use, thatâs 1.8 items on average per play and raiding can take anywhere from 1 hour upwards for a full clear, with some guilds running 3-4 days without even clearing. So you might raid for a week and get one item, do you really still want that?
I think the implied assumption is that were M+ not seen as a gear pipeline for raiding by Bliz then raids would drop more items as they have in the past when Mythic+ didnât exist.
Watching Paragonâs world first Rag 25 Heroic you see at the end 9 pieces of loot not including the mount, 3 of which are tier pieces between 25 players. Thatâs almost double current rates.
Oh, you mean like how MC used to drop 2-3 pieces of gear for 40 people?
Either some players here where not around when it was REAL bad, or forgot, or just donât want to be reminded just how much easier everything is now.
I gave an example of a time when raid drops were significantly better in the lines directly after what you quoted, talk about selectiveâŠ
And things are still better now even if the raid drops half as much as it used to during only one specific expansion. We have the vault with up to 9 choices, so even if all you did was raid you would still have 3 choices to take a piece to supplement your gear, we have the catalyst in the event you never see your tier piece drop, we have crafted gear where you can very, very easily get a 486 piece of gear once per 2 weeks.
9 pieces of gear per 25 players for Firelands is only 2.52 pieces per on average, thatâs not really much more than the current 1.8 on average per player we get now and back then you had ZERO supplementary gear options outside of the rare crafted gear that was almost as good as raid gear.
Doing ICC on classic now, most bosses drop 3 items for 25.
Tier bosses itâs 1 item, 2 marks.
The vault is about as good as bonus rolls were. And bonus rolls were more specific than the vault as you could choose on which boss you did. Bonus rolls could also be saved week to week which let you skip weeks more easily when youâre doing stuff like extending or let you start a raid with a decent amount of them which supercharged early loot.
âHad a chance to drop a piece of loot that you may or may not needâ, there, fixed it for you.
Any choice is better than RNG by a country mile.
The vault is more rng than bonus rolls were.
Being able to choose a specific loot table while the vault roll all the raid loot.
Yeah I mean Blizz got it wrong more than they got it right, not arguing there. Just saying there is precedent for raid loot drops being significantly better, which means were M+ to no longer be part of the gear pipepline for raiding then increased loot drops wouldnât be out of the question.
None of this is saying itâs a good idea, just that the assumption raiding would / should stay the same in the event of something happening to Mythic+ is a little short sighted.