Originally Posted by
NessaWyvern
They were more for the kinda end-game gearers, who wanted to min-max, as the stats on gear in diadem had different weights, often better than other gear of the same ilvl. Some had such high stats that it was ridiculous, my FC would call those ones the "God Tier".
IIRC the weapon that was brought out in diadem 2.0 had a higher ilvl than the relic at the time.
Also, back in the day, when pvp still had stat weights, diadem gear synced better (after they fixed it), than all other gear in the game. As a pvper, I got a lot of use out of that gear at the time. (Sync was 150 for pvp back then, so I could even use the lowest ilvl for min-maxing in pvp).
With the low ilvl gear, you could trade it in for spoils if you didn't need it to buy the mount and crafting items.
I made millions selling the Dryad Sap from there :P