I agree seems odd to be stingy with the loot at this point. Either make it faster spawns or 100% drop rate. Both BFA and legion events had much easier loot gain for catch up. Legion had the added bonus of making it a joke to get anything to max level while you did it.
I couldn't sit there all day staring at screen waiting for spawns. It is perfect though if you just do something else. Move to new spawn, go afk to work, watch movie, 2nd monitor etc, then check back in when 20 minutes is up, fight for a minute, then rinse repeat. Does rule out gearing up every alt you have at max though, its just too time consuming for that. Instead just do maybe 1.5 complete rotations and then buy the currency gear to replace your heirlooms, ignore slots you can't upgrade. You can get enough comms just from turning in the pitch black stones from doing about that many rares. It will still take a decent chunk of time(9 hours or so given the 20 minute respawn) but will take much longer to try and get every slot with the 110 stuff off rares.