TL;DR Summary , as requested.
For fuller discussion of the below, see the more discursive original post in the thread. (Slight improvements in suggestions made below as compared to OP.)
@Jeto maybe this will prove more useful to you? 
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I) GOALS
- Implement gear-quality-improving mechanic, integrated into 3.0 gear and follower system
- Make this mechanic optional – players may advance this way or strictly through gacha style
- Thus make the game appeal to a wider customer base
- Some quality-improving mechanic must be available immediately to new players (to attract those customers)
- Mechanic must retain appeal even to end-game customers, which will help with …
- Mechanic must give more opportunities and motivation for microtransactions.
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II) IMPLEMENTATION
A) New Honing Stage
- Add a new, final stage of honing for rare / epic / legendary equipment.
- This stage would cost aether to improve the item to an unhoned version of next quality
- This would be the version of quality-improving immediately available to new players
- This would make aether have more value to players
- To consider: should honing materials be consumed when this is done?
- … Pro: would increase demand for those resources, and thus microtransactions
- … Con: This would make such honing prohibitively expensive, worse than before 3.0, dissuading player engagement, especially new players.
- … NB: There is a lot of gear to improve. No need to further inflate demand.
- … SUGGESTION: Refund relics and runes, not gold/ore/aether.
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B) Follower Crafting
- This should provide an alternate route, more attractive to mid- and end-game players, to encourage buying follower crystals
- This should not be the only way to improve quality, as it needs to be available to new players (see above)
- Follower-crafting to interest gacha players should be retained too.
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B1) Rework existing crafting to fit 3.0
- Should have options (at increasing follower level) to make increasingly specific gear, all the way up to fully specified.
- These would be unhoned versions. Honing would then add the relic/rune/etc costs
- Gear up to legendary should be created this way. Not mythic … provided there is another follower-based avenue to produce mythic. (See B3 below)
- Rarity of gear thus crafted should depend upon the follower’s level: Level 50 follower produces legendary version, whether it be crafting ‘random’ or crafting ‘fully specified’
- If it’s a range of rarities produced (randomly), there should be a substantive probability of getting top option. Don’t further discourage your customer base!
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B2) Adjust making random item for aether
- Reduce the follower level for “make random item for aether” options
- This appeals only to the “gacha” players, but it gives them something do do with aether.
- Top tier for this - make random mythic - would remain at follower level 50
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B3) Add Follower-based Improve Item Rarity option
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This would add new functionality that honing doesn’t offer, designed especially to appeal to end-game players, as follows:
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In this crafter version of quality-updating, aether is spent, but the ‘honing’ costs of at item are not returned.
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However, even an unhoned or not-fully-honed item may have its rarity improved this way.
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The base quality of the new-rarity-version produced will be based on the quality of the upgraded item at the time it’s improved
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Thus, e.g., a fully honed epic item will produce the corresponding unhoned legendary item with a higher base quality value than would an unhoned epic item that was improved
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To improve a legendary item to unhoned mythic this way (the final stage) a follower crystal is required, in addition to aether. Only at this stage.
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By fully honing and then follower-improving an item from rare up to mythic, a very high-base-quality mythic would be produced. It would also be very expensive (as honing mats at each level are consumed).
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This will create abundant new demand by very-committed (and thus likely to spend $) players for all sorts of materials, as they work to get the best possible versions of their gear through crafting (should they so choose). And they will have a lot of gear to pursue.
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This is designed as an optional, high-end possibility for end-gamers with lots of resources who want to invest significant materials to get a guaranteed top-quality mythic by crafting rather than gacha luck.