Kaivax, This will be an exciting, interesting and refreshing new (old) world, that I for one am excited for. Targeted gearing always feels good in my opinion, and requires you to work hard to achieve it.
I have a slight issue with how this is worded, as I believe it to be misleading… The Great Vault adds additional weekly loot chances (read: extra chances on top of direct loot from Boss Drops). Non-raiders do not seem to be factored in here, and even the terminology here feels reductive (as it reads, from a direct Blizzard message, as “Raiders, then everyone else”). Semantics aside, Non-raiders, as you stated, don’t have that relationship with The Great Vault. It is not additive, it is simply the only realistic gearing path (that is now shared with Raiders that opt to casual out of m+ or pvp).
Everything that was outlined in your post, below this point, is contingent on this fact.
Please consider alternative ideas in the weeks ahead. Some of those could include the following
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Increase the power of dungeon-loot in a way that scales up beyond 15. To keep this from impacting Raid encounters, consider creative solutions (outlined below)
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An Ilvl modifier that only applies to M+ (applied to dungeon gear dropped above M+15, that is ineffective in raid encounters)
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Dungeon Sets (though, may be tricky to implement with time to release)
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To avoid massively quick gearing, apply Diminishing Returns to dungeon-drop loot chance for each run (also, potentially to each M+ level, if you want v high ilvl gear to be very difficult to attain). DR’s resetting weekly, essentially serving as “raid reset” but for the M+ community.
Thank you for engaging on this topic with the community!