Coil ruined the craft.

[Dervy]

. They intended for dungeon gear to be better than crafted gear

True, but when you then get items like the Wolfram Mask for the Dragoon, if melded correctly, is in fact better than both of the i110 Helms. People underestimate crafting too much. Proper and correct i90 penta-melds are far superior to some i110 items. Crafting items aren't useless, not one bit. People just don't know how to optimise them.

Name           STR     DET	CRT	SS	ACC	VIT	 Weight
High Allagan	24	0	18	0	25	28	 27.672
Astrum Helm	24	0	0	25	18	28	 28.45
Wolfram Mask	18	12	21	21	18	20	 29.922

Wolfram mask, being an i90 craft comes out on top.

A WAR, correctly melded in Wolfram can reach a surplus of 590 Skill Speed, meet accuracy caps AND have high Parry Rates. The increased SS is beneficial for WARs as they can get inner beast stacks out quicker, especially when Selene is out. 590 ss = 2.26 GDC. And with Selene: 590 * 1.3 = 767 SS = 2.09 GDC. So, a normal WAR with Selene will have 501 SS = 2.35 SS. It takes this WAR 14.1 seconds to get 5 Infuriate Stacks. The penta-melded WAR, will do it in 12.54 seconds, or 6.75 abilities in the same time.

So in 30s, WAR 1 would of pulled off 2.1 inner beasts, but WAR 2 will have 2.39 inner beasts. This value adds up a lot in longer fights.

Those are two examples of where Crafting gear can out perform normal coil gear. No one theorycrafts item melds, that's why. Thus, the community just sees the lower numbers and devalues everything.