Mythic+ as a system is a fantastic boon to WoW and frankly it needs to be copied to other traditional MMORPGs. FFXIV could benefit greatly from it, as they too often have extremely limited dungeon content at any given time and too much entry level content vs higher end content in general.
That said, yes, the current implementation presents massive problems, even if the system itself is a good thing.
The fact that it has no lockout and no diminishing returns on rewards while scaling up to somewhere between Heroic and Mythic Raid ilvl is pure insanity. Literally nothing else above 415 ilvl functions without some form of lockout / time gate. NOTHING. Mythic+ drops highly competitive gear, rewards Mythic quality gear weekly, but comes with none of the restrictions similarly rewarding content has. I’d also argue that it’s significantly easier to be successful in vs similarly rewarding content, but I know that’s subjective and depends on who you’re playing with.
There is no reason to gear via any method but Mythic+. Well, short of a raid funneling their loot to you and stacking armor classes to do so, which is unrealistic for the vast vast vast majority of players.
Raid Progression used to be a 4ish month ordeal for me and my peers. We’d progress slowly, gain gear every week, overcome more bosses, until eventually we’d either win or the tier would end.
Now I just spam M+ for about 3 weeks of not-quite-casual-but-certainly-not-hardcore play, get near-BiS gear, then hop into a raid pug and get AotC in a night. That’s literally what I did this tier. Geared up. Queued for N’zoth groups with zero prior Heroic experience. Got invited because of my high ilvl. Killed it within a couple hours in the 2nd group I tried. Looks like I bought a carry because I still haven’t even bothered with half the bosses in the raid on Heroic.
I hate it.
Mythic+'s efficiency needs to be cut down drastically.
Alternative gearing paths are totally fine.
But the difficulties needs to match, and the gearing pace needs to match.
One path should not invalidate the other paths.
M+ currently does.