Originally Posted by
Kaurhz
I feel like people making this statement have only looked selectively at their evidence and then tried to apply that to the entire expansion when it doesn't work like that. Every single expansion in terms of assets has seen about the same amount of recycled assets. We saw that content shifted elsewhere, but I suppose they pulled Dalriada, Castrum Lacus, and the Normal/Savage encounters of the large scale Delubrum Reginae and Firmament appear out of thin air. Besides, they've already admitted that discontinuing Deep Dungeon was a mistake, so I suppose we'll see that reappear again.
No I am not inferring the starter sets, but yes I am referring to their Level 90 counterparts, between SB and EW they've needed to support more jobs, and to be quite frank as much effort goes into those AF gears as to what goes into the variety, a majority of caster/healer gear is alike, similarly as is the case between maiming/fending, and in other cases scouting/aiming/striking. They didn't exactly build all those ground up, many of them are just exactly the same asset barring the fact they're applied to a different role/class. See Warg/Sharlayan for example.
Even amongst the crafted variant of gear, the same amount has been reused:
Rainbow > Came from Pilgrim (L50)
Holy (53-56) > Tam-Tara/ Stone Vigil/Amdapor/Palace/Halatali (50)
Felt (Lv58) > Dusk Vigil (Lv51)
Adamantite/Felt (60) > Gear awarded in Lv50 MSQ/GC (Lorica/Gloam)
I160 Crafted > Unique
i180 > Boagatyr/Chivalric (50/160)
Sky Pirate > Unique
Eikon (220) > Unique
i250 > Unique
I can assure you every other expansion follows this rough trend. Want me to point those out too for you? I think you misremember or underestimate just how much was reused in the past.