I’d rather have the content buffed to account for the power growth. 1.12 classes feel more complete and fun to play, although there are a few issues. Backpedaling to older design which was sometimes crude and clunky, doesn’t sound like a good idea to me.
Buffing some HP and damage values here and there for older content would suffice.
Talent and racial changes were there to tune and sometimes fix gameplay for the most part.
Gear is very straight forward. It is Wold of Warcraft, where getting better gear is an automatic and sometimes sizable power increase.
Talents influence mainly how the classes play out and I think the vast majority agree that 1.12 talents make the classes play out better than earlier talent trees.
Progressive itemization influence how the loot plays out during the Classic content timeline. Thus having Progressive itemization means that there are more loot to be had because the upgrades are timegated and thus cannot be effectively skipped.
This is at least to me the reason why I actually prefer 1.12 talents in the beginning because I get to play the talents I enjoy playing with.
And I like progressive itemization because it effectively gives me more stuff to get while playing.
While some disagree with this I do believe that the fact that there was a big outcry about itemization but very little about the talents means that the vast majority of classic enthusiasts feel the same way.