A case of chronic gear imbalance

[Cordie]

You have no idea what you're talking about. You don't "choose" what you get to drop unless you've done 4-8 weeks of clears thanks to the manifestos. Anything else is just dumb luck.
Even with twines and coats from raids, you need 8 weeks of clears to give one to each in your group from drops alone, most a full patch cycle. It's not as if upgrades are handed out to raiders like candy.

You can choose, as long as you try with different groups. That's exactly what I did to get my earrings in A1s.
And it is precisely having equipment handed out like candy.. see my simplified comparison above: 1 i270 piece per week vs 0.89 of an i260 piece per week.

The suggestion by the dev team is basically "You don't need 270 gear to clear non-raid content, so if you do want it, try out some raids."

Yet again, 4th time I see the same flawed argument "you only need i270 for creator savage".