Rep vendors got destroyed a long, long time ago.
When you have to grind out something to exalted, the gear reward should be better than anything you can get in the zone.
We always get something that is so sub par, it’s useless LONG before you get near it.
Another Blizz FAIL.
It’s always been that way, though. Get to Exalted with one of the rep vendors in Wrath and you get, at best, a single item below dungeon loot quality.
They didn’t even have paragon boxes back then, Blizzard’s been adding more and more solo stuff to the game and all people do is complain. 
Never understood that design practice. Rep vendor gear that takes 2 months to get is worse than a drop from a dungeon that takes 20 minutes to complete. Why even put that on the vendor. Who the heck is wearing this gear?
Not always, my furry friend, in classic some of the stuff on rep vendors was BIS until you were deep into the raids.
Raiders cried foul, and you get what we have now.
Ah yes, back when Blessed Sunfruit was the BIS snack item. 
Dear OP,
Please ignore those who are violating the social contract I am sure that Blizzard will deal with them 
I find this new “pillar” thing kind of funny. I wonder how corporate speak ended up being the new WoW lingo. It’s probably because the developers went to some corporate meeting and picked it up. 
That in which you speak can be found in that Critically Acclaimed MMORPG that allows you to play for free up to level 60. There, no matter what end game activities you do, you receive currency for the latest gear available from the vendor. It’s really kind of nice because in that game, nothing in endgame is mandatory, but everything is encouraged (wonder where I heard that before 
).
It would do Blizzard good to adopt such a philosophy for all of the people who play their game would have fun, not just those who play the 3 pillars (oops, corporate speak again).
I highly doubt Blizzard would adopt this though, they seem intent on catering to a subset of players and moving away from the MMORPG genre and more into the challenge mode genre.
The only thing you said I disagreed with was “always” , had you said “usually” or “normally” I would have agreed.
It’s because raiders complained they didn’t want to be “forced” to grind out rep for BIS.
( I can’t blame them, I wouldn’t want to either if I was a raid logger)
But then again, Blizzard also FAILED everyone on this, raiders AND open world types.
They could have left the BIS stuff on rep vendors if they hadn’t gutted reputation xp in raids as hard as they did.
Blizzard’s design philosophy is to remove, to prune, to reduce.
When raiders rightfully complained about rep grinding for BIS, Blizz could have just upped the rep gains by alot in raids so the raiders didn’t have to farm it.
But like I said, they remove, prune, reduce.
You want a pillar? That sounds very freudian…
Preferring solo play is fine.
Demanding equal gear to mythic raiding from solo play is not fine.
This is where both sides fight.
Here is the blunt truth. If they were to make a solo progression system award mythic level ilvl 90% of you would never complete it anyways and this is where the disconnect is.
Except that in most RPGs, that breaks down about half-way through the leveling process. Take a look at virtually every JRPG. Things are hard-won at first, but by mid-level, shiny new rewards are commonplace and by end-game, legendary equipment is raining from the sky.
It may have been a cornerstone of RPG design, but I have maximum fun when challenges aren’t a part of my gaming experience.
If I almost die while questing, I’ll change zones. I’m not here to struggle. I can struggle all by myself without paying monthly to do it.
I would love it so much if dungeons just scaled to whatever number of participants or composition entered. I mean, I think that’s kind of what happens in Torghast, but without the gear rewards.
My partner and I both play, and lately we’re mostly doing PvP, simply because 2v2 allows us to play together without having to coordinate with other people. I’d love to be able to do current dungeons, just the two of us… and still be eligible for gear or vault rewards.
I think a good solo pillar might be to add an account-wide XP buff for each character you have at max-level, say like 1 or 2% more XP per toon at max level. To help encourage alts and make leveling faster to try out new classes, concepts, or just get past early roadblocks.
its broken /10 char
This is true.
But there is this stigma that if you don’t do group content you don’t deserve the gear because you are bad.
It’s false but it is a thing.
I can’t even count how many times I’ve seen groups who can’t kill Stargorger but they are M+ geared.
I solo it on my new, fresh “baby” rogue everytime it’s up.
So I don’t deserve better gear, but they do even though a GROUP of them can’t seem to do a simple interrupt?
Nay I say good sir, NAY.
Keep your mythic underwear, I don’t care. I want a recolor of whatever mount drops off your raid boss so I can have one, too, but a different color so you can’t whine about me looking like you.
Idea of the Century. Me and my 5 accounts agree with this 150%.
No, that’s not it. Rather, the issue is that good rewards should come from overcoming appropriately difficult challenges. And every time they’ve put even slightly difficult solo challenges in the game, they get flooded with complaints that it’s too hard. “Solo” and “even remotely challenging” are not ideas that go well together with WoW’s playerbase.
There’s no question that M+ is vastly over-rewarding considering how laughably easy it is. That’s a frequent discussion around here.
Hmmm ok, I see your point.
My counterpoint is,
if you die and your group downs the encounter you should get no drops, nothing, zip, zero, nadda.
You didn’t overcome anything, you layed on the floor dead, you failed the challenge, you get nothing.