Yeah when they double it, it goes much faster. There should be the augmented crafted path too for 10ilvls lower which is plenty to do the first few floors of savage even in pubs this late since most don't have stupid reqs like "BiS ilvl only", mix with tome gear where it's BiS and start learning/grinding the first 3 fights for a couple of weeks and then you're basically there anyway. Don't need to go full tome gear since half of it is usually the wrong stats and not BiS, although more pieces still help for progging fights.
As for when, based on last expansion, it was 5.55 > 1month later 5.57 which had the weekly tome cap increase as well as savage infinite loot > 1month later 5.58 with infinite blade drops from normal raid(for tome weapon, instead of 1 per week so 4weeks to make a weapon) and increase to Savage Echo to 15%. That'd put the first patch at mid february and the 2nd at mid march. Expansion release like june/july so plenty of time.