What I find ironic about this thread is here we have a player who clearly takes pride in his/her performance and wants to put his/her best foot forward when doing endgame content... and he/she is getting slammed for it. Take a moment to reflect on that. Shouldn't you people be encouraging this kind of pride instead of trying to stamp it out?

Seriously... if more players took the time to do their best to ensure they were properly geared, we all would probably be doing a lot better as a community. I myself feel the same way as the OP and am still working on farming CM for my Darklight set... for the exact same reason. I want to put my best foot forward and take great pride in my performance. I won't even attempt Ifrit until I get the full set, whether it's needed/required or not.

Don't listen to these asshats, OP. We need more people taking pride in their gear and performance and less people trying to skate by with the absolute minimum.