Well, the devs keep making the mistake of assuming that everyone has friends that are willing to craft the HQ items for them or that people would help in making the items for random players. Maybe this is true in Japanese servers, but you and I know it's not the case outside of that. I also had read in one of the dev replies months back that the reason the 210 step is so long was because Gorias savage was screwed up by being overtuned and they didn't want to make the 210 step be easier or shorter than the steps need to get a raid weapon/upgraded tomestone weapon, so the relic 210 step was artificially lengthened to compensate.

That step will get nerfed in due time I am sure, but that leaves us wondering how the next step is going to be.