It's dumb to be so demanding about gear in a game so heavily dependent on RGN. On my very first coil run we dropped the shield on t1 and i lost it by rolling 2 on a need roll. I go there every week and never saw that shield drop anymore. Actually, since I got my boots and belt I never again saw any tank drop. It doesn't make me a worse or better player. I downed Garuda EX on my first attempts as tank and we wipe because of the SMN killing the plume. I've seem allagan BLM dying for the first boss in haukke HM only to right after see a SMN without relic to make me wanna lvl my ARC to lvl 50. I went to coil with awesomely geared people who spent the entire run dying for convenient lag, who never interrupted or that could not attack the right mob.

Remove the RGN from the game and allow people to get gear based on performance, THEN you can claim that gear's equal to skill.