What should gearing an alt in World of Warcraft feel like?

I’m asking this because I just dusted off my level-120 Death Knight — the first character I leveled to 120 and promptly abandoned for my Warrior because I’m me — and, wow, was that painful. I admit, it’s my fault that the Death Knight was floating around ilevel 350. I’m the one who left her sitting since early patch 8.1. I absolutely am at fault. But still, having to go run the patch 8.2 content just to get geared enough to survive the patch 8.3 content? That does not feel great. It felt like I was wasting my time. World of Warcraft has always had a hard time figuring out how accessible alts should be — should it be easy to have several max level characters? Or should it be hard? How time consuming should it be to get them caught up?

I’m of the opinion that once you have your main leveled up and kitted out, alts shouldn’t have to repeat everything to catch up. I really feel like having to go do Nazjatar on my DK just so I could survive doing the Old God Assault was a bit much in terms of keeping old content relevant. Admittedly, some of that was also because I didn’t remember how to play the DK and had to relearn it. I consider that my own problem, not Blizzard’s. But after I ran the Battle for Darkshore Warfront for a piece of 400 gear (a big upgrade, as it turned out) I was up to speed on my rotation and it really felt like a simple matter of gear, not skill.

And since I was doing pretty well once I was at ilevel 390, hardly OP for Assaults, I honestly do believe it was a simple matter of gear here. So I’m going to ask you — do you play a lot of alts? How do you feel gearing them has been this expansion? Should it be easier, harder, more, or less complicated? Is it simply a case of my letting my DK sit too long? Let me know what you think in the comments.