This is why I think FFXIV needs to adopt an exotic gear system.

Exotic armor pieces and accessories would be significantly more powerful than typical gear pieces -- strong enough to last much longer than a typical piece of gear. And they could also have unique bonuses on them to make them stronger in various situations.

The catch would be you could only equip one exotic at a time.

Likewise, there could also be lesser-tier gear pieces (legendary?) that would be similar, but not as strong. These could also drop more often, and players could possibly wear one legendary + one exotic piece (or maybe just one or the other). But the legendaries could drop much more frequently.

Imagine if the Diadem were a place to farm legendary and exotic gear? You could continue farming legendaries because each would contain different stats that would be useful in different situations. And they'd be relevant longer, so they wouldn't have quite the treadmill feeling as other types of gear.

And if Diadem were set up that way, then that wouldn't cancel out the importance of other kind of content like Void Ark or Raiding, becaues you'd only be able to wear one or two Diadem pieces at a time (and you could keep other content even more critical by making the exotic/legendary pieces be accessories, and keeping left-side pieces in Void Ark and raiding).

So there ARE ways to make itemization in this game more exciting without massive overhauls.

The development team just needs to do it.