What's the point of always "changing" the tomestones?

[Skivvy]

It's called a rat race for a reason

But the race wouldn't change at all. You'd still be grinding out 3 sets of tomes, they'd just stop wasting their time renaming the tiers every 6 months.

I guess the transition phase might be a consideration, like if the new gear was going to use an existing tome you could buy 2K worth right from the start. So switching to a new tome makes everybody start at zero again for a new tier and they control your pacing a bit that way.

The transition would make sense, at least when viewing it from SE's eyes. I get that SE wants to keep everyone at the same progress level, but it really wouldn't hurt to come into a patch 2 weeks ahead of the game had you been stockpiling your tomes.

[InkstainedGwyn]

But the race wouldn't change at all. You'd still be grinding out 3 sets of tomes, they'd just stop wasting their time renaming the tiers every 6 months.

No, because as was already said, anyone saving up would be able to buy 2k worth of gear at 6am or whenever the servers go up. They already trickle our content to make sure we're being strung along, being able to save up 2k tomes skips ~5 weeks of grinding.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

The transition would make sense, at least when viewing it from SE's eyes. I get that SE wants to keep everyone at the same progress level, but it really wouldn't hurt to come into a patch 2 weeks ahead of the game had you been stockpiling your tomes.

It wouldn't be a two week head start, some jobs would have almost their full tome gear the day the patch dropped. For example, DRG bis requires Helm, Body and three accessories. That totals to a cost of 2,445 Mendacity. That's my entire tome set finished on week one unless I opt to grab the tome weapon and wait two weeks on accessories.