I craft my own gear. It's pretty nice, so long as I don't run out of materials. But at the same time, the items I create are often obsolete in a couple of hours of play, because I've outlevelled them. Yes, yes, improving an item's quality gives better stats than making a new one two levels above, but you do eventually outlevel that too and I don't have the amount of tempers required to get consecutive sets of armor/weapons past fine/green. Right now my plan is to hit max veteran rank before I even think about customising my armor with enchantments and traits specifically because I'll just burn straight past those sets soon enough anyway.

Which is why I'm suggesting that crafters be given the ability to reforge equipment to increase its level without affecting the quality, trait, enchantment, or item set, in a similar way to improving an item's quality using tempers. This would require nothing more than the appropriate crafting station and refined materials, with more materials used increasing the chance of success, again like tempering. However, you would not be able to improve an item past its material's level cap (that is to say, 14 for iron/maple/homespun, 24 for steel/linen etc).

This would give players greater incentive to improve the quality of their items, because they would not have to waste their limited tempers on a set that would just get thrown out in a few levels anyway. In addition, it would extend the usefulness of quest rewards and other unique items. I don't know how it would affect enchantments, because at the moment player-created enchantments are restricted to a lower and an upper level cap. I guess either the upper cap would be removed, or enchantments would be removed when the item gets past the enchantment's level cap.

TL, DR: I'm requesting that crafters be given the ability to improve the level of equipment while keeping traits and quality.