You’re right in that the toon example was a bad point.
You’re wrong in that layering was solely for queue times.
If that were true, why did realms have queues when layering was available?
I would also point you to this wowhead article from around the late-spring early-summer info dump we got where it points out that layering is for reducing stress not for increasing caps. https://www.wowhead.com/news=291722/layering-in-classic-wow
I would also like to point out that most servers had two layers for a while shortly into September