Just a random thought:
If you ask me, they seem a little overly obsessed with item level and savage raiding if they held the relic back for THAT long because of it.
Seriously how hard can it be to just bump up the item level of the savage raid loot by 5 on the fly?! Blizzard has done something like that in the Blackrock Foundry Tier to compensate for "balancing derp" w/o problems.