The most major change I feel should be made, from the perspective of somebody who is watching fools (myself included) spend like 2 hours in a 30 minutes zone solo is that rings should NOT discourage social activity like they are, set the limit to 2 at least before ring starts taking 50% of the rank it would give you.
Perhaps just set the ring rank per mob to half and allow twice as many people at a time to obtain it? That way people will work on their rings for longer, and or still be helpful to other players while helping themselves.