The Importance of Originality in Epic Fantasy

I often say that I worry that epic fantasy is not original enough, and this is seen as a fly in the face. We are writing in a genre or genres where originality is prized and valued. But I still think that we should be pushing our writers to be more original. So how do we reconcile this? Well, we often talk about the fact that the idea is not the hard part of actually writing it. Or you take the idea and you run with it harder. Go ahead and write that because you're passionate about writing it.