I don’t disagree that Blizzard could have handled the catchup better and maybe have helped the playerbase with some guidance since there is a lot to catchup with for SLs.
Personally I spent a week in ZM, I got the 226 baseline gear for anima, I got to 233(ish) and started doing m0 dungeons with some buddies. I did SL ones even though I knew they couldn’t be upgraded with valor (they also don’t count toward the vault) because their ilvl is baseline 262 either way. Which is way better then the 233 gear I had.
If you are going to go down a PvP path, I would only farm Epic BGs and fill in the holes I know would be hard to fill. So mainly weapon prio.
End of the week I’ve reached 250(ish) now, so not too bad.
All of this was really due to me asking questions though and if folks don’t’ have a good network to ask how to catchup, I think they’re going to struggle.