Is gear useless now?

[Wubsie]

Gear still matters. The factor at which it matters is down-scaled a bit, but gaining gear still is intended to make you grow stronger in comparison to your surroundings. The change, according to Blizz, is only meant to slow down the rate at which your power level rises compared to the world over the course of the expansion:

The intent of our change in 7.2 was to smooth out that progression curve a bit, not flatten it out, and certainly never to invert it. If you get a great set of item upgrades that make you 5% stronger, maybe the world gets 1-2% tougher. Perhaps instead of getting 400% stronger over the course of the expansion relative to the outdoor world, you only get 250% stronger.

Now, arguably for us this is change is fairly irrelevant, since our strength does not come from being gear capped, but rather having multiple toons. I don't like the design of the system, as it's just a cheap way of trying to make trivial content take longer. Applying such a system, especially mid-expansion and not talk about it until players call them out on it, is not going to over well or look very good on their behalf. I don't however see this affecting my gameplay all that much.