The vast horizontal progression from XI will never translate well into this game because the whole armoury system sucks. Crit, det, acc, speed - there's only so many combinations you can draw from this small pool before gear just because redundant glamour junk. Why would you have four of the max ilvl body pieces when a. you can't change gear in combat and b. the weight on WD/main stat is so high that outside of acc caps and speed thresholds, the benefits from secondary stats are miniscule? At the very least they account for minor fluctuations in DPS if all other elements remain constant, but they do not completely change the way you play your job like gear sets did in XI.

This is what people mean when they say that all gear in this game is functionally the same. It's all "stack this one stat". A dynamic approach would be to have say a WAR body piece that removed the pacification effect from Berserk, or doubled the amount of wrath stacks you gain. Or a WHM staff that made esuna AoE. Something along those lines.