Gear level, the final nail in the games coffin.

[Rymia]

When you get to a boss like Titan HM you need to have enough DPS to kill the heart before he kills you(just like baby mode).
People with a trash weapon, full AF and trash rings will not be able to output the damage required to do this no matter how skilled there is a limit to what numbers you can push out.

Titan has some unavoidable AoE damage that you simply have to heal through If you get a scrub in full AF with a white weapon and level 30 rings/neck etc they will be sitting on 2500 odd HP when the rest of the group in near/full Darklight has 3500 odd no matter how skilled you are if you do not have enough base health to survive during tumult then you are a cancer on your group. You will die every single time and there is nothing you "skill" can do it is a simple case of numbers. A tank in full AF with a white weapon and crap low level rings will get gibbed by table flip, under geared healers won't be able to keep up with Tumult or healing up after the transition my own heals hit for a few hundred more and i have about 1000 more MP now in Darklight then i had in AF+49 rings.

A skilled player will be the one in a full set of gear for the encounter because a skilled player is not selfish/lazy/stupid enough to wander into a hard mode fight in leveling gear(which is what AF gear is) a skilled player will not get carried through garuda in trash gear because a skilled player understands the game well enough to know he has to gear up in earlier dungeons first.matter how skilled there is a limit to what numbers you can push out.

There is nothing elitist about wanting people to be at the minimum level of gear required by the encounter the fight is impossible if half the groups in full AF with trash weapons.