I feel like raiding is pointless in this game

[Brannigan]

I'd rather have a chance to flex the raid gear in something *besides* a raid.

Yeah this is a big problem with the game. Since Heavensward, they've been making raid gear worthless. There's currently a weird problem in the game

-Raid gear drops
-Raid gear has materia slots
-Gearing up and adding materia to those slots doesn't actually help you beat anything new if you've cleared the raid because
-That raid gear gets thrown out when they add new crafted gear, which is for some reason higher item level than the previous raid (while of course being far easier to obtain)

So you do the raid and clear it. Now, what reason do you have to actually keep running it? The gear doesn't let you do anything besides speed run the content you got it from. You don't need to farm it to "get ready" for the next raid since, and this is a big one, farming the raid and adding materia to the gear that drops actually makes you LESS prepared for the following raid patch because it drains your consumables, gil, and time that could be better spent farming both.

In 2.x you could actually use First Coil gear to clear Second Coil. You could use Second Coil gear to clear Final Coil. That wasn't the case with HW because the crafted upgrades were extremely easy to obtain and had an ilvl advantage. At the very least, the next tier of crafted gear should only be the same ilvl as Genji gear and should be harder/more expensive to make.

[Syfurion]

-crafting shenanigans-

I would agree with this, I don't understand why crafted gear is equal to or better than current dropped gear. Even at equal Ilvl like it was before Creation gear dropped, it was better due to the speed you could obtain it, and the ability to penta-meld it, if you were willing. In my opinion, crafted gear should never be equal to, and certainly not better than, whatever is currently available from raids and/or tomestones. It should be useful to catch up if you've been away, gear up alt jobs, and fill gaps in your gearing til you get something better to drop.