Required rank on all gear

[Viridiana]

If you're going to wear high ranked gear 15 ranks or more below the optimal, hell... could even say 8-10 ranks below, you might as well just be naked. You are the noob who worries more about looking awesome than about full stat benefits.

That's wrong in so many different ways. Go start a new character as any DoW class. I guarantee you that all of their weapons will have almost identical stats at rank 1. The same is true of armor, I'm certain. The fact is, the way it's set up now, rank 50 gear is as good or better than actual optimal rank gear in a number of cases, and that doesn't even take into account the stats on the higher rank gear such as +STR and +DEX.

Should it be that way? No, but there are, I feel, better solutions.