Defense/Magic Defense: Much hHigher with lower level gear

Hello All

Me again, with a new question because I couldn't find a clear answer up to now.

I'm a level 55 summoner. For now, my body gear is a robe level 47 (woolen cowl HQ), that have 75 defense and 132 magic defense.
I'm looking for higher level body gear for now but encounter the following problem: Higher level gear body, like for example the Augmented Ironworks robe, has much lower Defense (-28) and Magic Defense (-48)! The delta is enormous.

So now I'm not sure what to do: do I keep my current level 47 robe for its high def/mag.def. or do I change for a higher level robe, meaning a crash down of my def./mag.def.?

Side note: I accidentally posted before it was complete. Sorry for that. Had to edit to complete.

The Woolen Cowl does not let you equip anything to the Head. This means it is a combination of Head Gear + Body Gear stats. In contrast, the Ironworks gear is just Body gear on its own. From level 50 and higher, they don't do Head+Body anymore - so that is going to be the last gear that does that on Summoner.

The only thing that matters is Item Level. The rest of your stats will grow accordingly with that. So higher Item Level = better.

One exception to that is crafted gear. This is generally gear that you can find on the Market Board or from a "Merchant". The crafted gear must have the High Quality icon, otherwise it is significantly worse than something else of the same item level. If it comes from a quest or the market board, it's usually High Quality, but from a Merchant NPC it's not.

The other exception is when you are wearing the max item level gear possible - which is all the way at level 100 in the distant future. Once you are in the max item level gear possible, you can then swap gear around for different substats. But there's no point worrying about substats unless you are actually at max item level.

To make sure you equip the best gear, you can open the Character window and click the "Recommended Gear" button. This is a picture of an adventurer with a star. It will automatically find and equip the best gear from your armory chest, so you don't have to spend hours comparing stats. And when buying gear, you can just focus on what is a higher item level!

Thank you so much. I failed to notice that the new one needed a hat from now on. I had also not seen the recommended gear in the char window.

Well, off to gear properly now.