The problem with ilvl as we have it now is if people want to do a good job they must use Darklight post 50, then they must use mythic as they go through coil because these are the highest ilvl we have. In FFXI (I know I know) there were loads of possibilities, and all jobs looked very different, now we are the Darklight army, I don't personally mind ilvl, but with one or two sets as best for each job we all look just the same (even the different jobs darklight have huge similarities.)

What FFXI did right imo was the more situational gear, you would get the same jobs looking very different a lot of the time (except mages because they had decent af) because of the mass horizontal progression in addition to vertical progression.

Removing ilvl wouldn't stop elitists, they would crunch the numbers to say what gear everyone should wear, but SE could easily make more gear with very similar stats but looked different so you might hut for 1 damage every WS lower but that very small difference could make it the same ilvl so it would be accepted and people would just look different.

(I know this can be solved with vanity slots but it still feels wrong knowing we are all wearing the same gear.)