A case of chronic gear imbalance

[OoglieBooglie]

Your logic makes my brain hurt, Cordie.

Think of it like this: There's the skilled professional guy with a degree, and there's the cashier at the local walmart. The professional guy applies to the raider, cashier to the grinder of dungeons and nothing else. The professional guy, being able to tackle tougher jobs (in terms of skill/knowledge required) gets a higher base pay. The cashier, being a grunt of the retail workforce, does a job with basically no skill (push buttons, take money, withstand verbal abuse from a few unreasonable customers), and gets a lower base pay. Now naturally, given enough time, both people will accumulate the same amount of money, differing only in when they reach that amount (for the sake of argument, let's assume both have a positive cash flow). Obviously, the professional guy will reach that amount MUCH faster. The cashier, working over several more hours, eventually gets it. But what if the cashier wants to work more hours to reach that amount faster? Well, too bad, there's only so many hours in a week, you can't work 1000 hours in a week, so you still have to wait.

Now, let's look at it from the perspective of the game again. In order to balance it, they would have to make it take more time than it does for learning/clearing savage floors to get the 260 upgrade items. Keep in mind this does not take the time of the world first, it takes the time of the typical raider. It's not going to be 'run all 3 24 man raids of the expansion and voila 270 item' on day one of the raid patch. If they were to balance it, they would have to make you grind something for hours and hours and hours to make it equivalent in effort to wiping over and over and over in savage until you clear it and get your piece. Again, the loot is restricted from there as well, so assuming the loot is divided equally, you would win the equivalent of one EIGHTH of an upgrade piece. That's eight weeks of savage for a single i270 upgrade (and they would obviously have to balance it around the loot being divided equally). What are they going to give you to do for that upgrade item that isn't just tome grind? Why do you even need it? 10 ilvl difference won't make much difference for the typical casual player anyway, so SE has decided there's simply no need to add it until the catch-up patch (which is still ROFLFACEROLLLOL in terms of effort compared to the raiding effort to get it originally anyway).

[Cordie]

You seem to be implying: Raider = hardcore player, Grinder = casual.
Last time I checked, this was still an RPG. Now it's probably the only one where hardcore grinders do NOT get the top-tier equipment for their characters.
To relate it to your example, it is not the same amount of money, and time spent working matters not at all.

[...]If they were to balance it, they would have to make you grind something for hours and hours and hours[..]

And I would be happy to grind!

Why do you even need it? 10 ilvl difference won't make much difference for the typical casual player anyway[...]

Why I need it? Exactly the same reason raiders "need" it. I haven't even proposed the exact same items through raids and grinding, just the same ilevel.
And finally here we go with the big claim: Grinder = Casual player
May I ask since when?
(FYI, hardcore grinder here)

[Cordie]

[...]Again, the loot is restricted from there as well, [...]

Yes, that restriction you mention in savage is sickening: 1 i270 item weekly, vs 0.9 of an i260 item (including your "equal distribution").