Gear swaps are a sad excuse for a way to extend the use of gear. They can get much more creative than having people carry 2x the gear and repeatedly change pants during a battle. If we're gonna play a game with so much focus on lore and live events- one that fancies immersing you in an apocalyptic event, I'd rather not have the BRDs in 2.0 sing about how a few brave adventurers overcame it by swapping their drawers mid-battle.

I understand some of you may feel nostalgic with it having existed in XI, or apparently any other MMo you've played in the past, but it is still lazy design.

I suggest they get creative with their gear, giving them more unique and versatile stats/effects. Releasing multiple sets with greatly varying difficulty in obtaining the clearly better ones. There is nothing wrong with a heirarchy in gear rendering lower ones obsolete, so long as it is balanced with the difficulty and/or rarity of the gear so that players desire one piece until they get the next, so on and so forth.