It's time to give up on the idea of crafters simply making BiS equipment.

To combat the slew of people that are lvl50, create a specialization system where you need to choose 1 DoL and DoH. Crafters and gatherers need a reason to rely on each other again. For DoL, give them an action to obtain new Rare materials/crystals they can harvest only on their chosen profession. Make the new action require some sort of player interaction that could not be accomplished by a typical bot.
As for DoH, they could then take these new rare crystals/materials and enhance any current gear, crafted or dropped, but only in their specialized class. Give the equipment a generic stat boost, but make it temporary, like a fade on repair. This type of gear enhancement would be ideal for players who are stuck on certain content.
To help remove gil make a recharge npc, that would require a portion of the original mats plus a fee to recharge.