How to undo the damage Escalation has done to the end game
In my opinion, Escalation, while having the intention to provide end game players with nothing left to grind for, a further chase, its implementation has basically provided a short cut for newer players to get the strongest gear available immediately after hitting 40.
This effectively cuts out the majority of the end game content that the devs have implemented over the years, for example, why run countdown for non proto gear when you could just wait for it to rotate in Escalation. Why bother levelling your expertise. At this point in time, why bother filling your library or collecting optimisation mats, because you cant reroll / optimise the strongest gear anyway.
Currently, it seems pretty unanimous that everyone wants to be able to Optimise/ Recalibrate proto gear. In my eyes, this creates an opportunity to undo some of the damage done to the variety of endgame content players now opt to play.
I think the solution would be to tie proto optimisation mats to the end-game modes outside of Escalation. It could be done in a similar fashion to Retaliation, where as certain mats are dropped by certain factions, but in this instance, Countdown is the source of one type of mat, Summit another, etc etc while also allowing conversion of mats. Just a thought.