I can relate to what you mean. I think the problem is not the gear, but more the difficulty.
I mean look at tal/ik or nat set, they are all extremely good and fairly easy to get.
There is really not much high end gear I use for Inferno or Dreamland. My druid who can solo inf pretty easily for instance uses IK set, gulli helm and switching some mediocre set pieces (angelic, raven) or absorb gear. Well my smite uses exile (which you can farm base and runes in cows already easily) and yea Odium. But nothing else high end. Even for Odium there is a cheap alternative like Dures/Leviathan/Coh.
All I can say is the more you play the better stuff you get and that's fair for me, cause it would be not fair if all new players can instantly compete with you.
The thing that should be changed, that's the point I agree with you, should be to allow new players to quicker explore new content successfully, without getting killed dozens of times.
So better gear will help you optimize and kill stuff better and faster, but the mediocre stuff already helps you through quite solidly.
Just my opinion, you can add better and easier to find gear as well, as Game said above, to solve the problem, but shouldn't be too easy. Patches should not be beatable in 1-2 days and be boring cause so easy, but more like being interesting for weeks.
Finding a balance between demanding gameplay and attracting new player is a very hard task, it will never be to everybody's satisfaction. Let's see what the new patch brings...