Sometimes, it’s just easier to start with a new system than it is to fix an old one. Toss out the entire system and start with this premise.
Players who play nothing but m+, players who play nothing but raid, and players who do both should all acquire gear at the same rate based on the difficulty of the content they’re doing.
How do you meter that? Well, a capped currency would do wonders. But how do you preserve the excitement of getting a specific drop?
Cross pollination is good for the health of the game, but not if it feels forced. Having m+ gear and raid gear just builds a wall between the two that nobody crosses, as evidenced by pvp gear.
But obviously there should be some reward for doing both kinds of endgame at a high level?
So how about this. I’m call call this currency dragonbucks for clarity, don’t want anyone conflating it with a current or former system.
Every pve activity gives you dragonbucks. End game quests, dungeons, m+, and raids. You get more from group content, but solo players still get some too. This has a moving cap, like current conquest, that increases every week of the season. You use this currency to buy upgrade tokens from Alextrasza’s concubine (or whoever, someone dragon adjacent). That you can use to upgrade any gear from that season, from any source.
Then you have to ask the question: how high can you upgrade it? Well, if you’re a mythic raider, you should be able to upgrade it to mythic raid quality. If you’re a m+ boss like Ybarra, same thing. M+ is easy, you can base it on rating. Raiding, though, gets tricky. The first boss of mythic raids is usually a gimme, not as hard as the heroic end bosses. So “any mythic kill” is too low. However, raid and raid advancement are structured differently than anything else in the game. Having the raid on farm shouldn’t be a requirement for gearing up when clearing the raid at all is a seasonal goal.
I’ll take comments on this, but imho, I think clearing the heroic raid should let you upgrade to mythic quality. Now hear me out. Getting heroic on farm is obtainable by most mythic guilds. This builds the feedback loop or “get the gear, try the boss, fail, get the gear, try the boss again” instead of “try the boss, fail, extend, try again next week”.
So where does that leave us? Power gains are metered, but people who do more than one type of content get access to more mogs and more choices on what to upgrade. Jimmy Raider who hates m+ can be just as strong as Rick the Giga Chad who’s doing +20s 3 hours after raid every night.
All gear is essentially just a conduit to power, and that one awesome quest trinket that’s fun but too weak to use can now be used. Turn into a wolf or summon a swarm of chickens on a boss. It’d be great.
TL;DR: All drops are cosmetic, gear can all be upgraded. Everyone eats out of the same pond for power, but their own choice for flavor.