Hey,
My guild (Dungeon Dwellers) enjoy running dungeons/trials/arena etc quite alot and we get the "rewards" for doing so often , some of the gear is actually really cool, but you are outleveled from it before you even have the ability to farm the dungeons.
My thought is this:
Create a system in crafting called "Combination"
Basically allowing you to take two of the same identical pieces and combine them for a chance of raising its level by 1.
So for every 10 pieces of set gear you get you have a 100% chance of raising that piece to a higher level.
so 10x Ebon VR10 = 1x Ebon VR11 et al.
so to get vr14 you would need 40x pieces of vr10 gear.
You can have more passives in crafting that bring that % of failure down or what have you.
Gives us a reason to run the dungeons, gives us the ability to stay relevant in gear that we get from the dungeons and also gives more time sink for players like myself and my guild.
Thoughts?
Tl;dr really weigh the fun you have in game vs the business practices you are supporting.