For someone that has just returned after years away, the whole m+ and rio stuff isnt clear at all 
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no, you can easilly start on 2’s-3’s even some 4’s should be fine to pug at your level, but beyond that you should be looking at getting score, that or do like Sinaaki said and join the community!
You just have to keep running dungeons. Higher keys give more score, and each dungeon gives a score.
So make sure that even if it’s just +2-5 try to time all of the dungeons.
Or just try and over gear the content, 199 is already pretty low with how far we are into the expansion now.
You don’t HAVE to start at any particular level, you start wherever you feel comfortable, whether that’s with YOUR key or somebody elses doesn’t matter.
And yes, you build up this “fake” ranking similar to arena rating or raid achievements to prove to others that you have a clue what you’re doing before they invite you to their keys, that’s standard practice for 10+ years at this point.
Yes well, that’s why we have seasonal achievements these days. Sure you can link your actual rating achievement, but most players are more interested in seeing your “Combatant/Challenger/Rival/Duelist/Gladiator achievements for MoP/WoD/Legion/BfA/Shadowlands” Feat of Strength achievement, to know when you last did it.
And yes, you clearing whatever raids 10 years ago or even 5 years ago has very little relevance TODAY, since you could be much worse or much better today than you were then. Nobody can know unless you show something relevant. That’s what RIO is for.
Its just how it is. My experience in m+ from bfa means nada in shadowlands. The dungeons are different, some of the affixes are new, the mechanics are new. We can hate rio all we want, but its the only tool there is to tell who has actual hands on experience with this dungeon. And when u want to time a key, u also want someone that is likely to know what they are doing.
To avoid having to rely on rio i recommend guild, community and friends. I joined community in bfa and havent pugged a single key. I built up my friendslist with ppl i enjoyed running keys with and ended up with my own group to do keys with 2 nights per week.
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Ita not really a fake score, just not visible by default in game.
Let’s use plaguefall as example.
You may do plaguefall in m0. This reaches you basic strat. That’s good.
Now plague 6 will have those strats, a timer and two additional affixes as well.
So no, it’s not enough to say “but I’ve done plaguefall” people wanna know “I’ve done plaguefall in time with at least two affixes” ie +4 minimum. I wouldn’t say thats unreasonable. After all if you mess up, their key is downranked. So they look to minimise risk
Not sure why previous achis and experience come into it. I led raids in wotlk and knew those raids like the back of my hand. This doesn’t mean I know anything about castle Nath at all. So yeah people want to know if recent experience.
Same as RL. If u apply for job as doctor ppl interested if you been doing so lately. Not so much if u say “oh yeah I was a good doctor 50 years ago” if that makes sense
There’s nothing fake about it. You can find the same information on your armory page. The only thing the raider.io does is aggregate it.
More importantly, the strategy and stress levels for bosses on higher levels changes drastically.
On a low level plaguefall you kill the first boss before adds spawn, on a higher level you MUST cc the adds properly or the boss spam heals until you wipe.
On second boss you kill him by the time he jumps to 2nd platform on a low key, on a higher key you need to do multiple jumps, kill multiple adds quickly, tank needs to have good positioning etc.
On 4th boss on low level you phase the boss before her infectious rain most of the time, whereas on higher keys you may deal with up to 2 infectious rains per phase, on top of having to deal with the deadly adds that spawn while you dodge tentacles for your life (they can two hit me on a +11 tyrannical right now as healer if they don’t die or get CC’d while we have to dodge the tentacles).
That’s also what people expect you to know and be comfortable with.
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Only idiots think that meta matters in a +6 key.
Maby you have several characters?
I did look a bit more into it and you have done mists 3 times, so that’s 5 in total.
M0 is not counted ofc,
And coincidentally those same “idiots” are the ones you will be grouping up with for your PUG keys where the court of public opinion seems to have a pretty big impact because a lot of them will follow the meta to make their runs easier.
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People look at streamers who play world first and m+ tournaments.
They hear them say “X spec is not viable for this +30 key”
And then they copy what the top top players say and do, except its in anything from m0 and normal raiding and above.
This is meta-slavery, and how it is created.
But meta dont matter in the content that 99% of the playerbase do. Any spec can be viable if it is played by someone with a keyboard, internet connection and a couple of braincells.
For example gearcap in m+ is at +14/15. For the first this is not high content. For the second any spec is viable there.
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Yes, also mechanics go from healer being able to comfortably catch u if u meas up, to risking your near immediate death if you do and healer cannot afford to throw healing to you at that time.
Several mechanics don’t build up good pressure in m0. First boss PF is good example. Same boss on tyrannical weeks on higher keys very different story altogether.
I think it is fair to expect ppl have timed keys at most 2 levels below one they looking for as a minimum assuming you don’t know the player.
Point being even if it’s not a fair expectation, players will do it. Why take the guy who says “trust me bro, I got this” when the next guy has proof they’ve done it? This is what DPS have to battle against due to oversaturation. There’s always another guy with experience higher in most cases so you need to look as viable as possible to avoid immediately being put into the no go pile. It’s just how it is.
I wasn’t even a riohead in BFA as I tanked so I got invites easily, but for DPS yeah I’d always take the ones with experience, why wouldn’t I?
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Im happy i run my keys with guildies and friends these days.
If Echos m+ competition team says that a certain spec is not viable for them pushing forward, it does not mean that it applies to something as low as a +6 key.
But people think it does, much because many players want to be like those Echo-guys so much.
Every spec in the game can perform in a +6, and in a +10 and in a very short time +15 aswell wich is gearcap.
Yep I agree, but it’s not about whether they CAN or not, it’s about whether pug groups willingly want to shoot themselves in the foot when they can choose not to.
Why willingly invite an arcane mage to your group for no reason when 10 seconds later you’ll have a sea of 210 hunters and mages signing up and would fist fight each other to get in?
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I bet that if I go Holy or Prot I wouldn’t even have had to post a thread on the Forums in the first place 
Bet nobody will even RIO me for a level 6 
Anyway, sounds like fun. Wish there was a similar system for PvP. So I could check for example what is the win rate of a certain Disc Priest player with previous Ret Pala comps he tried. Or see a player’s specific win rate against certain meta comps. Or see how many times this Healer died to an Arms or WW. Would be epic.
Probably not for +6, especially if you’re prot.
Nobody gonna think about
in this sitaution, huh?
Agree. It not even “scrubs adhering to meta”. In most cases the meta comes to them. They get to pick between arcane mage and fire mage easily, no waiting involved. So why would you go “you know what I’ll pick the spec that will do less in all probability because I know it’s not needed to pick the other”?
It’s still a case of picking something that is worse comparatively. That’s all that matters. As ppl listing keys are in it to upgrade the key, can we blame them? It’s all about risk assessment and picking higher performing specs with more experience just lessens risk.
It can still happen. A tank that has no idea about boss mechanics is a huge risk, but the chance is that some group would be too impatient and can invite you.