I think you do need this armour. I have Forager's weapon and max melds on my gatherers and I need food to hit the new nodes on MIN and BTN, the new weapons would stop that.

Also, unlike crafters, we don't just get a +3 on 1 stat for each armour piece. Seems to be a fairly substantial upgrade, although I think that is mostly aimed at FSH. If anything, DoL need the new armour much more than DoH do.