That's a fair way to improve difficulty, getting in to the action exemp'd - as for dropping incarnates and epics (or the other options from TFs and Trials), I put so much effort in to getting my build slotted with all the fixings, Tier 4'ing all the incarnates, and +5 every IO (well all the ones that should be +5) and I can't bare not using all that.
I got to a point with one of my widow build slots where I couldn't output enough DPS to kill a +4 AV. So I spent my time researching, testing, and finally building the perfect DPS build (using the many helpful threads on this sub forum) to get it the DPS high enough. Well I did it, solo'ed the AV at +4, but then I got to the top of the proverbial hill and saw there was nothing left to climb.