I would agree that the crafting rewards aren't particularly encouraging to pursue. Even as a player with pretty average stats I've already maximised the equipment possible through crafting for my hero. Creating better equipment for my army is a VERY slow process and it's much quicker to gain through PvE anyway.
I hate to mention another game, but Boom Beach has a good 'crafting' method. You make statues that give various boosts and there are three types (small, medium, large). You can reclaim the smaller ones to make bigger ones and find the materials to make them through PvE or PvP activity. This bigger statues ('Masterpieces') give a nice boost, but they take ages to make. Look at your artefacts and think similar. Make artefacts that give a (small) boost, make enough artefacts then you can recycle them for a unique material to make larger/better artefacts - and so on.
I get that equipment was intended as a way of reclaiming some of the imbalance in the game, but it's not really working. Maybe you could encourage more crafting if you made it worthwhile to do so