Note that I had said “post BWL”, AQ40 and Naxx were giant leaps in difficulty over MC which is incredibly simple in terms of mechanics, and overall boss difficulty.
With that said, most of classic is about knowledge more than crutching on gear. (As quite often modern WoW raids need to)
Even with more modern talents, having the knowledge we have now to prepare far better than we ever have. As well we know optimal gearing strategies over what we had 15 years ago.
Would it be great if we could roll back talent trees, and gear to how it was? Sure, but we got what we got, which was 1.12 numbers, which is the best Blizzard could offer. Even on private servers, they normally have DM open to them day 1, which throws itemization up into high gear with healers able to have DM book trinkets, and mindtap talismans, as well as a number of other gear pieces, which won’t be available to us until later phases.
As said, the game isn’t overly difficulty, knowledge carries more weight than gear does. As proven by Apes when they downed rag in absolutely terrible gear, with immense knowledge on how to put it to work, as well as optimal strategies.