Hell no. It's the only secondary stat with an actual effect on gameplay and basically the only actual player customization (different rotations at different GCD thresholds) permitted in the entire game beyond job choice.
Just merge Skill Speed and Spell Speed together and call it a day.
You are correct. I read up until the last paragraph, but sadly, that was the first paragraph in which you moved on from simply bemoaning SkS/SpS.
I'd be fine with removing Skill/Spell Speed from gear so long as I can still reach extreme GCD thresholds without it. At present, that's not remotely possible.
If I wanted to play a 2.00s GCD SAM, for instance, the vast majority of my SkS would come from gear. To be able to get that from Materia alone, you'd have to more than double the weight of each secondary stat point of SkS.
However, as SkS isn't that badly scaling a stat even as is, you'd have to also buff all other secondary stats by (roughly) the same proportion as not to make it obligatory.
If we could somehow convince the devs to deal with that balancing obstacle of more than doubling the value of secondary stats, though, I'd be in agreement.
