gear progression moan

I think the new endgame 5mans are great, they are not easy at all, but its a shame the gear is so weak, just 615 for normals and 630 for hc.
The apexis crystal gear 'starts' at 630 and is just an easy daily and if you get an epic upgrade to a quest reward its pretty much heroic level gear at 628. World rares drop 620.
It just seems that the 5man gear is forever relegated to a minor stepping stone amongst all the other no-brainer starter gear before the raiding grind.

I wish they had progressively harder 5man content. Of course 25man raid gear should always be 'better' as its harder to obtain, but im sure they could attempt to make the 5man stuff at least semi-relevant and give people(boxers who cant afford 25accounts lol) who like 5mans something to aim for.

My money's on blizzard trying to give themselves room to grow. Remember, they just put a lot of effort on this stat squish - it seems natural for them to also do an ilevel squish. They may have not wanted to do that retroactively since it would probably upset people to change the ilevel on their gear in late MOP, but with WoD they have a clean slate to start with.

I am impressed with the gear's stat design in WoD so far. While leveling, it felt more proper than in previous expansions - my MoP heroic-raid geared team didn't immediately start collecting gear that was many ilevels above from the first quests in the new expansion. I got to feel very powerful for the first 5 levels or so, which makes sense because of their high gear level. I also like how I'm still wearing my epic cape and heroic garrosh weapons in WoD normals - I think it's fitting for a few iconic pieces of gear to remain relevant for the first tier of dungeons in the new xpac.