Gear Score, in my ARR?

[Orophin]

I want gear to be situational ...

1) it gives more total pieces of gear to strive for far beyond one overarching set of pieces that you just throw away as you upgrade

I can't agree with this. While I don't want gear being cycled out as often as WoW does, I don't want an item being the best in slot for 6 years, then some patch comes along raising the level cap and renders everything nearly useless. Level caps need to come every 1.5 - 2 years and naturally gear will get replaced within that time frame.