Yeah TBC classic will do a good job of getting people back to the natural gear progression of Normals to heroics and raiding with PvP gear having a single set with PvP stats and in later seasons an honor set which is just the previous ones rated set.
Much better than the 22 levels of progression listed by OP.
I have it already. I regularly time 14s and 15s and easily pushed 1800 RBGs. The difference between me and you is that I’m cool with casual players having a progression path to the same ilvls of gear over the course of a tier. Adding valor back is a good start but they could easily let anyone upgrade to max ilvl for a higher currency cost. Make WQs a source of valor with a weekly cap and the difference between the elites and casuals can just be how fast one is able to achieve max lvl gear in all slots.
My tank is just under 204. I think most of my guild is sitting around 198-210 (just 1 or 2 players that high). I’d say 200 is above ‘average’ considering how awful gearing is right now.
Also worth noting that legendaries do a good amount to skew players higher than they actually are right now.
Herioc raid equals to wrath normal. Mythic raid equal to herioc wrath raid. I dont get why we need 4 version of same raid, in beginning there is only 1 version. LFR is literally story mode, the gear inside is basically trash now