I meant not items, but some other thing - in the current design philosophy, if you dont raid (current tier (hc (competitive))), you are a failure by definition. That wasn't true back in TBC times (i was much younger then though). Now blizzard literally forces everyone to raid by funneling people into LFR as the only means of any kind of PVE progression. Dungeons are dumbified and serve no purpose (compared to TBC and cata heroics), even gathering is obsolete with the warbringer bags providing you stuff faster and easier than flying around the Pandaria and gathering nodes.
.. Last time you could actually get good thing and be off with it for beyond your current tier was in WotLK, when Darkmoon Faire trinket was BiS up til ICC or heroic version of ToTC trinket. After that they actually have nerfed items for being "too good" when next tier is released and I call it bullshit design.
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Well, current 476 DMC trinket is probably better than Timeless trinkets (535) and probably on par with cleave trinkets of flex / normal SoO. It wasnt about that, it's just Blizzard didnt care about balance before Cataclysm, which allowed this wonderful mess and diversity of pretty unique classes and specs. Then they started balance things and by now they seem to have abandoned any hope of doing that while retaining complexity.. that reminds me of one obsidian nerd who preaches about the same