I would go out on a limb and say the itemization is hurting player skill instead.

In ffxi you could literally go out and kill higher level mobs and even notorious monsters in average gear because stats on your gear did not determine what you were capable of. Instead they just enhanced or augmented your performance. You could easily find very skilled players using what they had available to them to fight hard bosses.

I remember when the cap was 75 and people were downing big bosses in their artifact armor which had meager stat bonuses at best.

In my opinion gear plays too much a role in your stats in this game. Leveling up should have played a much larger role. Ilvl disparity would have been alot less of a problem. You would not see someone at ilvl 230 while only being lvl 60 for example but even if that was still the case... If the level determined 70% of your stats and gear 30%... an ilvl 200 person would not be so drastically different from an ilvl230 in terms of capability towards a boss.