Originally Posted by
Eli85
This topic is very strange, and in my opinion, completed disconnected from raider mentality.
No raider cares about dead loot. Gear, in raiding, is a means to an end. As soon as raiders have sufficient gear to down the boss, they no longer care about loot drops. So no raider is going to go, "Hey, I got my four piece from the catalyst. I'm not going to raid anymore." If you're going to put up with the scheduling, time commitment, cat herding, and difficulty of raiding, you need a lot more incentive than just exclusivity of gear (and, hint hint, no one gives a flying frog what other people have). The incentive to raiding is the social element and the fun and excitement of pushing hard content. Not gear.
If the catalyst came in right away, or sooner, it would produce two things: 1) players at all skill levels would push past boss walls faster, and 2) players at all skill levels would clear the tier sooner. Whether or not either of those are problems are up to you, but if Blizzard was concerned with it, tuning can fix it.
It's just so weird to me that people are still clinging to this false narrative that the high item level exclusivity of raiding gear is the primary thing keeping it afloat, and the dominant incentive. That's just so false.