There is so much to do in this game that...

[Jojoya]

Considering ive been told countless times that gear past the crafted ilvl is optional and not necessary, yes its completely optional. You dont need the relic even when it becomes 665 at the very end. The relic has never been required in any form of content and still isnt. You can progress in eureka/bozja without doing the relic.

I can agree that it's optional. It's the "in a vacuum" part that I'm more interested in. The relics may not be necessary to do other content but they also aren't in a vacuum where they have no other use.

Back to the relics, the grind is still there for those who want it. How would players have felt if they had been told they must clear Aglaia 15 times instead of being told to purchase items that cost a total of 1500 tomestones (which they would get by clearing Aglaia 15 times)?

What makes something a grind is subjective and in our heads. Asked to do something we don't like and we'll probably see it as a grind even if only asked to do it once. If it's something we enjoy doing, we'll either look forward to it happily (even if told we must do it a dozen times) or find ourselves suddenly hating that content because we're being "forced" to do it.

Take the Awoken stage of the Anima relic chain as an example. Players were required to complete 10 specific dungeons one time each. Completing all those dungeons would have rewarded about 900 Poetics (or whatever the tomestone of the time was, amount varied by dungeon). How would they have reacted if instead of doing those 10 specific dungeons, they were told they need buy 3 Anima Vessels for 300 Poetics each?

Was getting 1500 Astronomy this patch really that much less challenging than being asked to do those 10 dungeons back in Heavensward?

If someone really needs a long grind to make the weapon feel meaningful, SE has left the door open to the player to choose the content they use for it (as long as that content rewards the relevant tomestone). So they could do 5 EW hunt trains (320 each if all 16 Rank As are killed) or 15 Leveling Roulettes (100 each) or 75 clears of Endsinger's Aria (20 each), or some combination of them.

It's their problem if they decide to go the Aria route while someone else chooses the hunt trains. It's rather silly to judge the worth of what you have by what someone else chooses to do to get it instead of by what you choose to do.

I hard grinded out the Pteranodon back in Shadowbringers, having to manually complete each Expert craft (and sometimes failing because RNG was bad or I simply screwed up). Now players can macro their way through all the Expert crafts with guaranteed success of at least the minimum needed rating. Do I feel like my effort has been devalued? No, I don't. I knew I could have waiting and done the grind this expansion when it would be easier but I wanted to get it done in Shadowbringers.

As a semi-related thought, I half wonder if what is really making some players angry is that using tomestones as the grind currency is taking away the double dip in rewards that the other relic grinds offered. Where before they would grind whatever was required to get the dropped tokens/complete the quest objectives, they would also still have the usual currency rewards from the content to use as they please. Now they're required to use the currency for the relic, they lose that additional reward for doing the content.