Ever wanted to reroll your gears traits to match a different playstyle? “Yea… but then i would have to switch to every single character that i may (or may not have, just to be sure) equipped that item to, just to unequip it so that it populates the upgrade tab.” Yea, nobody wants to do that. Especially when the game soft-locks half
the time after switching heroes too fast.
TL;DR,
All items populated in the crafting menu regardless of equipped or not equipped status, OR,
mass item unequip function.