Item Level? I'm not clear

[Nezerius]

So, apparently, now White gear can have a higher item level, but lower stats and therefore not be as useful as "yellow" [is that what it is? Higher Quality? From quests?] gear. So item level 285 White gear from a vendor is CRAP compared to IL 279 gear from quests that has a yellow shading across the top. I don't mind that the 279 gear is better, only that it has a lower Item Level. Shouldn't it be IL 290? Why is it not IL 290?

Now? That's how white gear, which is nearly always crafted gear, has always worked. The shiny/gleaming thing in the item icon indicates that a piece of gear is High Quality. Crafters are able to HQ the gear that they craft, allowing players to get the most out of a piece of gear, stats-wise.
It doesn't change iLvl, because an iLvl increase would also increase the materia melding cap to be higher than intended.
Quests, as of Heavensward, have technically been rewarding players with HQ crafted gear.

Let's just have a future patch where we fix this so that higher item level means "Better" and the "Recommended" button agrees. How about we do that?

1. Is there some other religion around "Item Level" that I am not aware of that prevents this?
   
2. Is there some dependency around Item Level that would prevent this change from occurring?

RANT OFF

1. There isn't. Any crafted gear (which can be white, green or blue) simply has normal and high quality version. High quality has more stats.
2. Yes. The entire crafting system is built around getting enough quality to turn an item into its HQ version.