There are several problems with raiding at the moment; let's examine the ones I feel can be resolved with a simple adjustment to itemization.
1) Competitive guilds feel compelled to split-raid heroic lockouts for new content.
2) These guilds are then going in with much higher ilvl than is necessary to clear, resulting in further trivialization of content.
3) Even Normal Archimonde dropped some items which were better than BRF Mythic. Since there are several tiers beyond Normal, the ilvl expansion got out of hand and contributed to why we now have people doing several times as much damage as previously possible.
These problems can be resolved by only offering a minor ilvl increase on the same difficulty between tiers. For example, since BRF Heroic dropped 685 gear, HFC Heroic should have dropped around 700ilvl gear at its peak, similar to BRF Mythic. HFC Mythic should have dropped around 720 ilvl gear instead of up to 735. The net result is still a linear increase within the same difficulty; the difference is, there is no real benefit if you are a mythic raider to farm the easier difficulties. If you were only a heroic BRF raider you would still see substantial upgrades from your new heroic HFC gear.
Competitive guilds would no longer feel forced to run split-raid lockouts. The top-end would no longer be running content with higher ilvl than intended, which means bosses would take much longer to die if they are appropriately tuned. Finally, since the ilvl inflation is suppressed further, there is less need for a stat squish every few expansions.
There are many other issues which cannot be addressed via itemization: many raid mechanics being negated with immunities, the valor conundrum which results in extra guilds clearing mythic and promoting lazy mentalities, the fact that all raid mechanics are public and thus removing the concept of figuring out mechanics for yourself. Those would be best discussed in another thread, but I would like to hear what you guys think about my proposition. Specifically, if you feel it wouldn't work, I would like to know why.