I definitely think you should try ultimates and criterion (not variant). It sounds like you need harder content that actually forces you to use more of your toolkit and more gcds.
I'd be impressed if you could do all of criterion or savage criterion without using gcds at all, it is very well tuned and basically wants you to use gcds. At the moment savage does not provide that for you because everyone is well over geared by 20 item levels above what the content was made for and you have echo. There is content that will use your toolkit and more that it seems you don't do based on some of your previous posts. I don't think it should be up to SE to raise the difficulty of every piece of content when there are many casuals that want to just do the story. If you cleared the current savage tier and want harder content/complexity then you are not a casual and you should be getting yourself prepared for ultimates because its there for you.

part 2