Having played FFXIV continuously since A Realm Reborn, as much as I enjoy playing the game and the complexity increases in harder content, the gearing has become progressively more and more stale.

I want to start on a positive note and say the reliability of obtaining gear over time is a huge success. Regardless of the time frame in which this happens, the core system of guaranteed desired drops is well done. People will have varying opinions about the timeframe in which these should be achieved, but that number is more easily changed than the reward systems that currently exist (tomestones and raid tokens).
I believe it is important to maintain this structure while addressing some of the negatives that exist in the gearing systems going forward.

To name some of the current issues:

1. The rate of gear acquisition from tomestones is too slow considering the game is heavily advertised and enjoyed as a "one character can play all jobs" system.
Playing multiple roles, or even multiple jobs within the same role in some cases (looking at you caster) can result in simply taking far too long to acquire all the gear necessary to perform optimally on them. This makes gearing in patches before an Ultimate especially restrictive.
Even disregarding content which is designed around best-in-slot gear, there is a social expectation to bring the job with the highest gear. This is reinforced by ILVL restrictions on party finder increasing as the tier progresses.
This restrictive gearing timeline results in feeling like after spending a single tomestone on one job, I am locked into that job for the remainder on the progression cycle.
One of the greatest parts of the FFXIV job system is the ability to play all jobs on one character, but with the current gearing system I am limited to one role per patch, depending on what I play.

2. Substats are a problem for balance and creativity.
In the current landscape of FFXIV job design, there is an issue with damage variance from pull to pull. This is largely due to the design of both critical hit and direct hit stats, combined with the high burst damage profiles the game has trended towards.
My major gripe with substats as they currently exist is a lack of impact. There is only one job remaining in the game which has any interaction with the substats (monk).
Part of the appeal of RPG games is the character power growth, and the feel that has on gameplay. As it stands, the only feedback I get that I am more powerful as a black mage is my critical hit xenoglossy hitting for 61k instead of 60k.
Tenacity currently is completely undesired as a stat with the way incoming damage in FFXIV works. Spike damage profiles do not mesh with the low value of tenacity's defensive stats, when cooldowns are so powerful in comparison.
The final major point about substats is the lack of interaction with speed stats. Generally they are hugely undesired outside of low thresholds and then completely avoided. They create anti-synergy with the jobs abilities in many cases, and are sometimes out of the players control.

3. There is a lack of varied methods of acquiring max ILVL gear in the game.
Currently a best in slot character interacts with tomestones and the latest savage raid. Having only two sets of gear means acquiring best in slot is more restrictive than it should be. More available max item level gearsets would result in the ability to gear more jobs simultaneously, while also increasing the speed at which to obtain a total best in slot. A great example of a previous piece of content which added more gear was the Proto-Ultima sidequest in Dun Scaith.

4. This final point is much smaller, and more to do with the current savage release schedule and it's interaction with Criterion release. The Criterion dungeon's savage mode was targeted towards players who had cleared Abyssos savage early in the tier and acquired plenty of loot - unfortunately it released at the start of the 8th week meaning those wanting to go into the content immediately were not yet guaranteed certain items requiring 8 books.

I want to reiterate that the positives to the current gearing system are a huge benefit to existing and prospective players, and this post was made with the hopes that the gearing system can be even more appealing to a wider audience. Thank you for reading.