Have you ever played this game without PvE skills?
Being handed everything on a silver plate isn't fun...
Yes. When I started playing there were no things like PvE skills.
At those "good hard need skill times where only pros did stuff" there was no AoE scatter, there was armor stacking, there was a useful skill called watch yourself, there were very very few monster-only skills and environmental effects, and we could keep going on.
Regarding the second part of the post, what you and others are interested is in telling how other people should play.
You have the option to not bring PvE-only skills or consumables, to make the game more "fun" for you. That is what I do.
I choose to have fun in this game and I don't care if other people get 500k in half an hour power trading while I do 5k vanquishing something. But that is me. And I'm not a sheep that needs adulation by waving some " rare skin" that most likely is ugly as hell (gogo elemental swords that were all the rage and "oh so beauuuutiful" but now that drop like flies no one wants).
But other people like you it seems (and pardon me if I'm wrong) can't have fun with PvE only skills cause it is too easy, but then cannot stop using them because they would be slower than the other kids that use them and would have less "pretties" to wave around and so need a reward to be choose the fun over the boredom.