Well if time=effort than we should be awarding Epic BG players with the best loot in game because they spend the longest time both in the organisation apsect and gameplay of completing an Epic BGs.
High end M+ dungeons require a lot more effort and knowledge then a heroic raid…but raids take more time. This game just has too many difficulties and too many levels of gear to ever get it right at this point.
They need to rework the whole Normal/Heroic/Mythic/Mythic + and LFR/Normal/Heroic/Mythic difficulties along with Normal BGs/RBGs(do people even play these anymore)/Arena and slim it down to maybe 3 levels of difficulty, with 3 levels of gear.
These changes are to try to make gear more meaningful but it’s not going to actually do that. Gear is still mostly stat sticks other than our trinkets where the best ones almost always come from the most current raid. They need to bring back gem slots, more enchants, better craftable gear that can actually be traded for every slot. Give Raids and PvP their set bonuses back that work within the instances of PvP and raid environments and provide a more even playing field for the open and more casual world.
I wouldn’t care if a Mythic Raider outgeared me for the first month of a tier and was roflstomping me in his fancy armor with all the cool particle effects if I could eventually build up and craft my own set of gear to be on par with him before the next raid tier. A gearing system like this might actually push people into other forms of content since we’d all be equal at the start of the next tier.