What is the point of crafting

Basically the title. I've entered the part of the game where I'm just getting my best stuff for the gogmazios grind, but while looking through all my weapons it clicked in my head. All rarity 8 Artian dual blades are better than all rarity 8 monster weapons even before fighting Gog. They have better sharpness than ones with slightly higher attack and way better element than all of them. Jin Dahaad's dual blades as the sole exception.

The most clear example is with the Guardian Rathalos dual blades and a full attack fire Artian weapon. G. Rathalos has 210 attack, 15% affinity, and 150 element. Fire Artian has 205 attack, 5% affinity, and 270 element. That 5 attack and 10 affinity difference does not justify the fact that there is a 120 element difference which creates a more consistent damage.

It is like that for most of the rarity 8 dual blades, which makes farming for them just completely worthless or barely worth it outside of the layered equipment stuff.

It is also like that for talismans. Once you start picking up the randomized talismans, the crafted ones become a lot less important, so much so, that you don't need the base ones at all. A charm that has multiple skills on it and the ability to put decorations on it will almost always beat out a base charm that just has one skill on it. The only factor is luck, which can be mitigated via saving field surveys as investigations.

It feels like that once you reach high rank, the game shows and tells you about all these cool monsters, but you don't ever fight them for what the monster gives, but for what the investigation or field survey says they drop.