Just disable spiritbonding in ST. Seriously, this should've been obvious to SE by now.

I mean, theoretically speaking, what if I make a party finder for 'crafter gear ST! Come join for maximum carries!" We get 8 people. We all take a set of armor.

We get into ST. And we all switch to Craftsman's i50 gear. Not only are we below-cap, we are not even using something that gives us stats - we might as well be ilevel 10 at that point.