One of the real problems with RNG is learning where to apply it in a system and how to use it to stoke the reward centers in the player's brain. The token system in prior expansions has rewards disengaged from player interaction (you build up tokens through boss kills), which actually harmed reward anticipation (paradoxically). Blizzard is trying to create active and passive reward anticipation by using a second RNG system, but I feel by expanding it across so many reward paths they've actually harmed their original reward system (kill boss, get loot). This is very harmful because of the aforementioned disengagement where the reward has become separate from interaction, and because of the broad application of the secondary RNG to so many reward paths the player is left unsatisfied when a reward does not engage it (the Titanforging system). In a sense Blizzard are rewarding players with gear that are themselves tokens for the gear the player now has anticipation for. The reason this is especially problematic follows from the vast array of sources of these "gear as tokens" -- Mythic, Mythic+, raids, PVP... you are now seeing decision fatigue writ large, because the human brain is not designed to balance so many possibilities at once and instead tries to find an "easy" path to the goal. This creates gaps in participation which Blizzard sees in their metrics and tries to remedy but in doing so (via Warfronts, invasions, etc.) actually exacerbate the problem by creating more reward paths which a player must decide on. This fatigue is deadly to such a rewards-driven game as an RPG and by continuing to build more and more reward paths, Blizzard may think they are helping players but they are actually doing harm.
TLDR: Titanforging and the explosion of gearing opportunities is actually really harmful in a psychological sense to players.
