lucis was easy to get, all you needed to do was craft 2000 or so green i55 items and trade for seals to get all the mats needed for every tool including gatherer,

I did it in 4 days or so, so yeah id say they were the easiest step even with all the crafting which in itself was easy just timely.

unless your 4* crafting lucis is not needed and even then not needed but it does help give you an edge on the crafts, so I doubt they will be needed in xpac but surely there will be some benefit to having them. maybe like relic to zodiac was... or then again maybe SE wants to level the playing field and so there will be no benefit.

basically if you don't want to chase the lucis tools, then don't.. but they are easy to get.