I don't even get your last point,
My point was that it was never futile in the past but extremely relevant to character progression, not like it is now or has been since DS/MOP. Especially for the casual player, once you get your 880 welfare from Nethershards everything becomes obsolete/trivial (You don't do mythic schedules as a casual 99/100 people) - that's the problem with gearing I was originally talking about 2-3 replies ago. Nothing your saying about first tier EN, dungeons and all this other stuff has anything to do with countering my point - that was my point exactly, how Blizzard sucks at rewarding their players to keep retention.