This actually makes me upset. The stats on the items really should be the same, even on weapons. Fact of the matter is that spike damage reigns on ifrit, and exp, fights. The DPS on them may mathematically be equal, if you average the numbers over time, but I feel that the designers are running into an issue where their mathematical model does not accurately reflect how the game will react to them. When you need to move around a lot, or when enemies die quickly, heavy damage/high delay weapons reign supreme on DPS.

For Ifrit, you need to move around a lot. When you can do damage, you want to put on the damage as hard as possible. The DPS is a mash of spike damage, averaged out. DPS on ifrit cannot be obtained through consistent low damage hits over time...This is compounded by the fact that you often need to hold onto TP for an opportune time to land an attack. For exp fights, low burst, low delay type weapons are a waste of time because before enough time passes for decent DoT to result from a low delay/low damage weapon... the enemy is already dead from high damage high delay weapons.

As for crafting stats, I feel that I am at a disadvantage for no other reason than I chose LL over Ul'dah... under the impression that GC items would be relatively equal. This is a rather large difference in stats for that slot. Certainly, it is too large to be considered equivalent.