A case of chronic gear imbalance

[Cordie]

Even-numbered patches[...]

Still, this doesn't restore the current imbalance. It only provides an excuse for the dev team to go full-time working on the savage raid, and leaving the other method of gearing up at a quick-and-dirty 15-min grind per day for casual players. Even the relic (should have been the best item in-game, based on rarity alone) is an i260 instead of i270/275.

You know the VIT stat [...]

Saw that -posted an erratum.

That sounds more like: "I see no way to progress if I exclude the thing that allows me to progress"
Maybe you should give raiding a try, after all? I mean it can't be all that difficult to you, right?

Unfortunately not everyone is happy with raiding. And this is consistently not being addressed in any other way than the lazy approach you describe in your 1st point. It's not even being addressed at all.. simply ignored for half of the dev/design time.