Quote Originally Posted by MidlaneGod View Post
Remember when they said t11 will be hard to beat with 110 gear during vegas fanfest?
And it was, because the devs hadn't taken into account the i110 crafted gear which was effectively i120+ in quality when fully melded. They admitted that they learned a lesson from that so I doubt it will be possible to skip gear progression using crafted gear in future.

I'd say it's fairly obvious that SE are adopting something akin to WoW's raiding philosophy. They want an easier version of the raid to ensure that everyone gets to experience the content whilst maintaining a harder version for those that want a challenge. As long as the easier mode still requires coordination and the hard mode isn't on savage difficulty I'm quite happy with the setup.