Originally Posted by
LilimoLimomo
At first I agreed with others that this seemed like it is working as intended, but this line changed my mind and makes it seem like an oversight on the developers' part; to expect someone to have Heavensward gear when they are still in ARR is silly. It would be trivial for the game to check for this, and presumably it's a mistake that it currently works like this.
I would recommend reporting this as a bug; if it's happening to you, it's probably happening to others as well, and hopefully the devs can fix it!