Make relics have the same iLVL as the Raid weapons and released at the same time

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Wanting the grind to be like Heavensward =/= wanting it to be exactly like Heavensward. You completely missed the point

And you continuously miss mine. If they add relic armor, thus increasing the total amount of relic components per job to six, they will either have to substantially reduce the grind on each individual piece or it's rendered pointless. If it takes several months per piece, almost none will have any relevance whatsoever. Your entire comparison here simply doesn't work. Therefore, the weapon won't take fourteen weeks. It will follower a progression curve similar to Anemos, albeit not quite as fast. So no, the grind may very well not be longer than five weeks. The only way to make relics useful in this scenario is speeding up their acquisition. If relic armor released at i380 but each piece took say, a month each. You wouldn't have more than four pieces, including the weapon, before the next patch. Making it... just glamour.

Raiders already have a faster alternative to get better gear, so they're not even the target audience of relic weapons/armor to begin with. Casuals (taking the definition of players who don't play much), shouldn't be the target audience either. It should be for the players that enjoy grinding for a useful reward (which it would be, if they can obtain one job's relics around the halfway point of a patch cycle).

You missed my point again. I'll rephase. The vast majority of people, spanning all skill and playtime levels despised the Unidentifiable step due to its sheer length. The devs openly acknowledged this backlash hence why they moved away from it ever since. At least until Pagos... and received even more vitriol. Granted, more due to how utterly boring Pagos is. Nevertheless, you may fancy a 3-4 month grind, however, you are a distinct minority. Like I said, they more or less abandoned the enormous grind alternative because people hated it. I guarantee you will never see this again. At best, you will see it compete with the tome weapon and never anything else.