I didn’t feel like I was trying to be condescending…?
I mailed Ash/Cinders. As far as Flux… I don’t really recall. I did do ZM dailies while waiting to get into keys with my Warrior, but once my Warrior was geared enough to get into groups quick I stopped doing it. So I maybe did ZM for like maybe a handful of hours in total? Killed some rares, did the world boss, that sort of thing.
This is the only point I agree is actually a grind. “Grinding gear” is just playing the game, and there’s almost no grind to grind leggos. You wear Rank 5 leggos on your alts initially which is ash/cinders only, the only thing you actually need to work towards is getting the memories which have a 100% drop-rate AFAIK at this point.
But as far as Renown, they’re raising renown catch-up to 60 in 9.2.5 so they’re aware that it sucks right now, and renown 60 on catch-up will instantly achieve the capper soul-binds which means any extra renown is fluff.