I came across the same issue during that stage of my crafting career, and asking very similar questions. However, I acknowledged that I was doing things the uphill way because I wanted to experience the old grind as much as possible before going on into HW. With an additional expansion, typically you would just do some leves to get you a level or so and then upgrade to ezpz equipment that has similar if not better stats than the BiS gear you obtain in the previous expansion.

Most will tell you that grinding the old way is an unnecessary way to spend your time, but by actually trying to HQ stuff you really have no chance of doing without loading up on HQ mats and RNG help teaches you a lot about your rotations, improvisations, and crafting free-handed (not committing to online rotations). You learn the insides and outsides of crafting like this and makes you much more self sufficient so you don't have to hit up other crafters for rotations.