Gear doesn't get damaged for dying, it gets damaged for using Return after you died. You can die all you want as long as there's someone to raise you, but it sucks totally when you're soloing some wack leves and keep on dying. My wife has experienced this problem several times, and has kind of sworn off leves for a while (they're not worth a crap before rank 30 anyways). Then again, she and I always try to do hard leves.

Luckily, she and I have used the repair NPC now that it's cheaper. I don't need my gear at 100% all the time, unless i'm going to sell it off. I can also get overnight repair in the Mender's Row if i want 100%. Doesn't bother me too much, but then again I spend time to actually make money, so it's really no sweat for me. I would imagine if you're the kind of player that doesn't take time to make gil, then it sucks even worse. Of course a player like that is probably going to have crap gear anyways, so why not just roll with broken gear?