Personally, I hate what SE did for crafters in this patch... I've been builder of the realm a bit before 2.1 with all my gear melded for HQ 2 star item and I enjoyed crafting all those HQ mats to unlock the recipes, head gear and main tool. Up to that point I was happy as it seems like an acceptable grind to get my crafting to the next level.
And then, I saw the gear requirement for the 3 star item and I basically have to remeld a lot of my gear because they were not necessarily optimized and I only have 5th slots available to put lvl 3 materias...
I mean seriously, it was already hard work and a big gill investment to meld all my gear to above 347craft, 340 control and 345 cp but it's still not enough. You basically have no error margin to reach the new stat cap and all for what? gear that's mostly for glamour purpose!!!
Considering the effort required, things can only be afforded by the most hardcore crafters or people that can dedicate close to full time on this game.... for glamours !!!

The grind for unlocking the master recipe book, getting the new spectacles and main tool was good enough of a challenge, pushing the stats to the extreme limit for glamour is just too much (for me)... I got my armorer 3 star ready and will probably do BSM to make the mats required but I won't do more than that until they somehow nerf it (either by lowering the stats for 3 stars or introducing new ilvl 70 crafting gear...

Not to mention that the crafting materia market in completely dry now, there are just close to none available on my server anymore...