Vote reset on Steps would be good. I've had one or two groups that actually recovered from what I thought was a terrible start, but usually you just get progressively more overwhelmed and spend a lot of extra time while knowing you can't possibly win.

Mentioned by someone other than the OP -- a 'glamour book', while a lot more work than small patch would usually include, is becoming increasingly more necessary. We have far too many reasons to horde and collect gear. Removing vanity from the equation would help tremendously for both the devs and players (since it would effectively be +~100 retainer slots per character). I don't mind collecting gear I'll never use to desynth in the future, but holding on to everything that I sort of like the look of in case I might want to use it at some time (and it will be annoying to collect again specifically) is a problem that is easily solved (in theory at least -- I have faith the devs could also do it in practice).