Searched for “casual gear” and this was the girst thread. Many more follow. Casuals absolutely care about gear and there’s usually a Taliesin storm that follows.
All it does it ensure that the content most casuals enjoy doing is very quickly not worth doing. LFR, Heroics, Unrated BG/Arenas for Conquest cap, Warfronts, even low level Mythic +'s, are very quickly worthless. A casual has to either move on to an alt, or try to push harder content when they may not have the time nor quality group members to do so (or just may not even want to).
I understand that Blizz probably thinks it helps casuals because they can more easily catch up and do harder conten…