Great to see the sincere efforts from Bornak to understand different PoVs, so I want to share mine as a casual, mostly solo player, on the gear ilvl from solo activities. This isn’t about TF/WF, which is a completely separate issue. TLDR - solo gear levels at max lvl are 10-30 ilvls too high, especially after post-launch raid tier increases.
I mainly play solo and PUG group content. I’ve only really raided 2 tiers (ICC and Nighthold) with a consistent team, in normal, with some forays into heroic. My personal progression has been questing -> heroic dungeons -> mythic dungeons -> some mythic+ -> late tier normal raid PUGs. It feels rewarding to me to progress through that cadence. That is, until Antorus and BFA. Since Argus opened, I’ve noticed that by doing WQ, WBosses, emissaries and now warfronts, I have reached almost normal raid ilvl w/o ever stepping foot in a raid. Of course this happens over many weeks. However, my casual play would have it take this long doing dungeons, etc. anyway.
This has, for me, completely eliminated heroic dungeons as a rewarding progression activity and almost totally negated mythic 0 dungeons in terms of loot rewards. It even makes normal raiding less rewarding, as 4 or more item slots will already be above normal raid ilvl. And that was the pinnacle of my progression each tier (IF I have time).
I still enjoy the activities, it just feels like I am missing a big part of the journey - like flying from quest to quest instead of using ground mount. Thing is, I don’t want to miss that. I also don’t want to avoid WQ, warfronts, etc. to artificially keep my ilvl lower.
The catch up is too fast, and as a largely solo player, I don’t want it to be that fast. I think it is meant to solve a problem that was big in BC, only it isn’t as harming as it was in BC because there is so much more for people to do outside of racing to raid with friends.