Lack of Gear progression

[Alahard]

1) Diadem 1.0 gear appeared in the odd patch following Gordias, where Gordias was already obsolete, but with it offering i210 items I do hear the complaint about it and that's probably why SE only used i265 gear for the second Diadem in 3.55 instead of BiS item level (even though they fucked up big time with the i280 coven weapons).

2) What I wrote never mentioned it to be BiS for savage competition, and in fact I'm pretty sure I mentioned that savage could disable all those perks anyway. This was strictly proposed within the confines of casual content. You even quoted the part where I specifically say "Savage loot could also have fixed, by design perks (not rng) that keep it better than even tome gear or anything casual", so I'm not sure how much clearer I can be.

3) By definition there is no BIS if substats are rng, except perhaps an absolute mathematical maximum that is unreachable anyway. Which is perfectly fine in casual content and improves shelf life dramatically.

Even when it's not BIS, this game has a really bad time dealing with specific substats.

Throwing around random skillspeed/spellspeed when classes like PLD exist is just a disaster.

But more importantly, it's not even useful if it's only applied at the lower level.

Lets only allow the casual players get frustrated over their loot while the hardcore gets a clear progression path? Oh god. Both sides would be up in arms. Again.

The better solution is adding alternative gearing to more engaging casual content, and adding an upgrade path through that into near savage loot.

For example -> lets say OC had a DLL equivalent. Having the +2 gear out of it ( and +3 on the FT we currently got) upgrade IL outside of instance along with inside would be an improvement.
Allowing dungeon gear to feed into the upgrade path by converting items into currency ( like silver) would also give some use for those items.

Now you have a clear path, you know what substats you are getting, and it's not nearly as bounded by the RNG gods.