Good points from OP and people actually engaging with the topic. Posting mostly so that this thread stays relevant as I hope it will be acknowledged by the devs.

The current system has been in place like this since Heavensward and Gordias if I'm not mistaken. There were 13 jobs at that time. While the system assumingly worked back then and still works somewhat currently, we have 19 combat jobs now and with 7.0 will probably be having 21.

The change of having gloves, head and feet only cost 4 books now is appreciated and definitely a step in the right direction, but surely not enough. As others have mentioned you get shoehorned into playing one role/job and cant really diversify yourself. If the party is not a min ilvl party why would I join with my healer wearing crafted if I could bring a BiS tank to the group, me wanting to play healer does not outweight the fact that I could contribute more to the party as a tank imo.

Honestly I'd be fine if the current savage tier would be unlocked with the following odd numbered major patch instead of 6 weeks before the new tier. Also cutting tome piece cost in half would be a good addition as well but doubling tome cap is not the way to go in my opinion, unless they double tome rewards also. With the additional 2 weeks they gave themselves per patch that'd mean that there's still ~4 months of what we have currently but 6.3 would be a true catchup patch, since it'd give everyone a decent amount of time to gear alts or just a different job for content like ultimate. People are still doing alliance raids for glamours, so even unlocking savage earlier would not invalidate alliance raids completely. Although with the addition of augmented crafted why not raise alliance gear to (savage itemlevel -5) so it longer stays relevant for casual players?