Recommended gear feature, recommending wrong gear?

[NosamKin]

You really have to watch the recommended gear feature, especially when you start melding. I don't remember the gear names, but my miner had ilvl 290 HQ gear, I acquired ivlv 340 NM gear, and it recommended I keep the 290 gear on?? what? Only after I removed the materia from the 290 gear did it recommend the 340 gear.
This has happened to me several times on different gear sets.

It would be nice to know how it decides what is "best".

[Niwashi]

Only after I removed the materia from the 290 gear did it recommend the 340 gear.

Thanks. That's good to know. It means the feature isn't just looking at a fixed list of items. It's actually analyzing their current stats, including stats that are added with materia.

Item Level gives a rough approximation of what's likely to be better, if all else is equal. But where the NQ version of an item, its HQ version, and either of them melded with appropriate materia may all have very different stats (but still the same ilvl for all of them), ilvl is far from reliable by itself.