Why only one way to upgrade gear?

[Sylvina]

If you want to upgrade your tome gear, you have to do savage.

This is a big deviation from the past, where raiders received gear & tokens from savage, and all players were able to get slightly inferior gear using tomestones and seals.

Now there's only one path available. It's a garbage system, shoe-horning players into content and limiting their options, especially since there's been more than one way to get gear in the past.

Agreed. The best way I've ever seen gear done in a game actually allowed anyone who did any difficulty of content to get any gear, but it took much longer if they didn't do the tougher difficulties. That IMO is the way to go. Don't punish players for their choice of playstyle.

I like raiding, but I wouldn't be so dense and selfish as to want special snowflake gear only raiders can ever get.