Is there a gear imbalance/crunch, similar to the previous credit crunch?

It is pretty close to impossible to stress just how bad things are with gear. The many posts here and on the subreddit detailing just how little used some of the most easily obtained pieces are versus how hard it is to obtain many of the most needed pieces are a great start though. Also, the many posts that detail the numbers of just how lopsided the distribution of gear per character is show that many, many, many characters use the same pieces and use them often meaning even when we do get what we need it really doesn't help us much.