Icon is like one thing to load in memory queue if you thing of it that way and text means it has many individual characters to load and display. I can see why they did it, they just need to some how make the icons more unique or some sort of border color system or number/letter/dot system kind of like they do with the dye dots.
Like for gear sets, a dot coloured with the class colour to let you know it is used. I would find this handy.