I think they need to re-evaluate gear sources, namely dungeon loot and NM raid gear, as well as AR gear.

- Crafted gear should be the baseline ilvl0 for each tier for people to get started.
- Dungeon gear should be at least identical ilvl with additional perks (more on this below), but shouldn't out-compete crafted since it can be farmed without restrictions.
- NM raid gear should be ilvl+10, same as baseline tome gear. NM raid gear is capped per week much like tome gear and has no business being starting ilvl like crafted. NM raid gear should also drop weapons with time caveats, much like tome.
- AR gear should be ilvl+20, same as augmented tome gear. No reason not to, else it's useless in its current state and doesn't offer any alternatives to tome BiS. Odd patches are where savage tiers are already old and casuals start to compete with savage loot when they finally can augment their tome gear anyway, so what's AR gear more? More options = better

Making gear more than just +1 or +2 on the main numbers:

- Dungeon loot could have semi rng perks (bring back pink gear from Diadem!), and perhaps those could be upgraded with various casual tokens obtained over time so that it can keep up with NM and tome gear. Go wild, bring fun random perks players can be proud of beyond +10 to the main stat or whatever. This would be disabled in savage content for safety (or not idc).
- Savage loot could also have fixed, by design perks (not rng) that keep it better than even tome gear or anything casual, specifically in hard content where any wild perk is disabled.

But what do I know... I just think the only thing Diadem 1.0 did right was the gear, funnily enough. It was fun going in to get better and weirder gear in there.