One of my biggest (and only gameplay-related) gripes about this game is related to itemization. I never really feel any sort of reward or accomplishment when I get new gear, like I do in other games.

The reason for this is two-fold. First, most of the item sets and builds are based off nothing more than incremental increases to raw stats. I'll get an item set that boosts 200 spell damage here, 800 magicka there, and at the end of the day my skills are slightly stronger than they were before. Most of the item sets don't really offer any benefits that fundamentally change anything. In some other games, there are item sets that make a particular skill or set of skills significantly stronger, or focus on a certain style of gameplay, but here it's basically just stats.

The other reason is that completing challenging content in the game doesn't really seem to give much of anything, other than bragging rights if you top the leaderboard. Most of the gear I can craft in a few minutes is better than anything I can find through trials, dungeons, or PVP (with the obvious exception of the Undaunted gear, which I'm still battling the RNG on for some particular shoulders). If I got a maelstrom arena weapon, chances are I wouldn't even have a use for it in my current build, and even if I did I'd have to get lucky with the enchant for it to be worth it.

Does anyone else feel this way? Do you think that this is something that should be changed going forward, or kept the same?