Please either remove the durability loss on death feature (preferred) or make it easier to get more T1 essence in the endgame. My gameplay keeps coming to a grinding halt because I died twice and suddenly all of my gear is broken, so I have to make backups or find a way to come up with the 500+ T1 essence it would cost to repair everything. It's not a fun mechanic to interact with and doesn't contribute to the gameplay in any meaningful way.
As an alternative, keep the durability loss, but add a repair bench or something similar that would allow you to use either essence or the item's components in order to repair it. Being forced to spend that much time either crafting and upgrading gear to a similar rarity/quality or farm a bunch of otherwise completely useless essence just does not feel good, nor is it engaging.
Update: I discovered that you can extract higher tier essence into T1. It's not as much of a problem as I thought it was. I'm still not a huge fan of the durability loss on death system, but knowing you can do that makes it much more manageable.