I've pretty much used the Griffin set since I could. The lack of a crossbow wasn't an issue for me since I don;t use it much.

However, I've just finished upgrading my full set to grandmaster. Now I see that the Ursine and Feline crossbows count towards their sets, so you can have Aerondight equipped and still get the level 6 bonuses for them. As Griffin doesn't have a crossbow, I have to choose between Aerondight and the level 6 bonus.

I'm pretty salty right now.

No need to be salty. The crossbows do not count towards the full-set bonus. When you select the crossbow it will tell you how many pieces of the given set you have equipped, but the crossbow itself does not count.

An actual reason for being salty is rather that the full set bonuses are not very good. At least it is not worthwhile to equip full sets because there are SO much better swords available.