"DL gear is enough for all content!", "Nothing prevents you from gearing all your jobs, just split the tomestones evenly!", "Why do you NEED to gear all your jobs in the best gear?" and all the responses along those lines are not getting it.

It's true. You can do just fine in mediocre gear. You can split your myth stones and spend 5 years gearing all your jobs. You do not need to put materia in your crafted gear, you don't need to upgrade out of your AF gear and level 30 jewelry before you queue for Garuda HM and you don't need to unlock your cross class skills. However, some people like to perfect their characters. Those people don't like it when they are held back from using their alt classes to their full potential. It's not about being handed stuff, it's about letting us do the grind again for another class if we want to - without having to roll a new character - because having it that way just makes the entire armory system moot.

Almost no other MMORPG prevents you from maintaining alts that are equally progressed to your main if you have a lot of free time to play (only EVEs one skill trained per account policy comes to mind, if it's still that way). The armory system is brilliant in many ways, but it just isn't working for people that are truly passionate about alts.