Well you don’t start with bloat. It builds up over time.
Empty sinks take time to fill up. But if you keep adding water to it they eventually fill up and need to be drained.
And I’m not saying expansion specific systems are the only way to do things. Just saying that if you keep adding water to the sink it will eventually fill up. So you need a way to drain it or you need to not add water.
I’m happy either way if it’s fun to play.
No it did not. Ap grind was a joke and even more so if you played more than 1 spec for your class.
Ya, honestly the only thing that I liked was the ‘new’ ness of the abilities in said weapon-artifact and the actual fantasy feel of having said lore-weapon [IMO of course. I liked wielding doomhammer as an enh shaman] 
The rest was pretty bad not gonna lie.
Everything about our characters is borrowed power. From talents/gear/abilities/tier that can all change from patch to patch or xpac to xpac.
Why have you played a game that has had borrowed power for nearly 2 decades if you don’t like it?
Did some streamer utter “borrowed power” or something?
Bye.
If you want to see what an MMO that progresses that doesn’t use borrowed power looks like, try playing FF XIV. Then you can have fun playing through every release’s storyline (or boosting through to level 50), and if you want to play a different class, you have to grind it out - and that grind is way slower than WoW is, by a long shot.
Borrowed power is what lets new and returning players, as well as alts, play the current game along with everyone else, without having to play through every single expansion to this point. It really is the ultimate catch-up mechanic.
You heard it here first folks. The players no longer want tier.
So no gear set bonuses?
If this is what the future of tier looks like, I’d prefer to not have tier either. It’s the worst of borrowed power combined with the worst of time-gated RNG-gated BS. And people keep defending it as if that’s the way it has always worked when no, no this is not the way it worked in Classic era.
You’re right. It worked even worse.
You would do raids for months before you would get even one tier piece because only like 6 pieces of gear dropped for 40 people.
Meanwhile, the current system let’s you have a personal chance per boss of loot, an extra up to 9 chances a week in the vault, and starting next week, you can upgrade pieces into tier.
But sure, it worked totally better in vanilla.
And it didn’t matter because “Your Block value is increased by 30” didn’t really impact your playstyle. You didn’t need the tier gear (the only exception being Naxx T3 for Warrior, which was eventually baked into the class by default).
Do you even know what tier bonuses were? They’ve always been a decent increase.
I literally quoted the exact set bonus to you and you’re linking me the wowhead page?
The following are additional bonuses granted based on how many pieces you have equipped:
3-piece: Increases the block value of your shield by 30.
No, no no no… you are the one who needs to read what you linked and understand that I’m right.
Imagine an expansion called dragonflight not having flight from the get go (it probably wont, tbh)
Their path doesn’t make sense . They give us 1 to 2 abilities for each new expansion and in a lot of cases they go away .Some have been integrated like Hati for BM hunters and there are probably others but most specs don’t keep them . Most of the button bloat avoiding has been via no new talent rows since WoD and if you honestly look at the systems they are actually passive talent trees .
What do passive talent trees have to do with controlling Button ( active use abilities) bloat ?
For the tier part simple answer . Yes but they are a borrowed power that enhances a players game play and for the most part are needed only for high end ,end game content . Tier is pretty much icing on the cake . It adds a little extra flavor .
Now for Conduits.
Conduits are part of a build over time passive talent tree system , that like Artfact weapons/netherlight crucible , azerite gear/ essences and conduits own companion soulbinds are needed for their expansions when they are current for any form of game play especially at max level. Try playing SL without picking a covenant at 60 or period for threads of fate and see how things go.
Where as tier (especially in the past ) is more bonus (ie icing on the cake ) conduits along with soulbinds are actually a good portion of the ingredients that make up the cake with our talents and spell books being the remainder of the ingredients.
I agree with the first statement but think you vastly overstate the second.
I’ve more or less ignored conduits and have used whatever soulbind gets me extra bags of loot for every Covenant this whole expansion and done just fine. The only people who cared about conduits are the min/maxers - they do not make drastic changes to gameplay.
FOr casuals maybe not so much but they do affect it as part of the passive talent trees but like you said for getting extra loot any is fine but if raiding beyond say LfR or doing mythic keys or rated pvp they are a good part of the ingredients needed to complete classes/specs .
Even if you are not min/maxed.
I GUARANTEE you that if we look at this guy’s mount collection in like six months, he will have bought the heroic edition mount of dragonflight regardless if there is BP or not.
Yeah you are. 
comparing tier to the systems we have gotten since legion is an apple and oranges comparison . One (tier ) is only a bonus to our toons and the other (the legion on systems) complete our toons by giving us back passive abilities they took from our spell book to give us the illusion of progression after reaching max level .
All these systems do is get us back to where we were at the end of the last expansion by the time we completely open these passive systems up and the real power progression is actually the leveling and getting better gear.