Quote Originally Posted by Radacci View Post
crafted gear is purposely lower ilv than end-game, to make end-game stuff, desirable.
There's plenty of ways to do that other than to deliberately keep all crafting useless.

They could make end-game raid equivalent gear that's craftable but untradeable, so crafters can gear themselves in the best the game has to offer, but anyone else has to raid for equivalents.

They could make the BiS items for a few slots only available by raiding (with crafting providing a close second-place), and at the same time have the BiS items for other slots only available by crafting (with raiding providing a close second-place). Along with these include a grinding path (Relics) that gives the BiS gear for another slot (with both raiding and crafting taking a more distant second place). That's a pattern that keeps everything relevant and important, (while also allowing people to limit themselves to only a favorite portion of the game if they're willing to use lower-tier gear).

Instead SE has decided to take the approach that they'll pretend to offer a variety of things in the game, but in fact, raiding is the only one of them that actually counts.