The first thing that needs to be fixed is the gear progression. Not talking about how weird it looks, the rewards are too big. If the gear was not so much stuffed with stat points, the monsters would retain their threat level longer.

Basically the skill vs gear ratio should be moved sligthly more towards the skill. Instead of using weekly lockouts and exploiting the stat game to force players to play longer, it would be better if hard content in bad gear was harder... and not impossible like our beloved dps checks love to do.