Quote Originally Posted by Seryl199 View Post
This is purely anecdotal, but in my experience, ever since I fell out of raiding, there has been no pressure to keep my gear ahead of the curve. The predictability of progression reduces my motivation for getting upgrades in the first place, knowing that a superior version can be obtained for less effort in a future patch. This essentially put me in a backslide to the lower end of the gear spectrum where I benefit more from the numerous catch up options that are available.

Once I unlock the current tier of EX dungeons (I know, I'm pretty far behind), I'd have 4 sources to easily upgrade my 3.0 gear, with a very straightforward, intuitive sense of progression: new dungeon drops (185), Alex NM (190), Eso's (200), and Void ark (200-210). This is in pretty stark contrast to players that have kept up with the curve, who have played out Alex NM for 190 drops and geared out in Eso's by the time 3.1 landed. Their gear has already obsolesced the i185 dungeon drops and most of Void Ark. It confuses me that there is a nice, clean ladder of progression, but it's only there every other patch, and it's possible to outgear that progression before it even hits.
3.0 had a similar natural endgame gear progression prior to the introduction of the Eso/Savage gear in 3.05. You start at i145/i148/i150, ran the level 60 dungeons for Valarian (i160) and Law (i170), did hunts to upgrade the Law gear (i180) and then did Ravana/Alex Normal for i190 gear. The introduction of the Eso gear messed things up as the best way to get the tomestones was to rerun the dungeons tuned for characters in gear 40 ilevels less than what you currently had.

I suspect the biggest cause of your confusion is that SE is gearing up 3 distinct player groups using mostly the same content but consume that content at differing rates. They were planning for casual players to be at around i180 at the start of 3.1 and end up around i200 to i210 before 3.2. Midcore players were around i200 when 3.1 started and are intended to hit i210 by the end of the patch. Hardcore players were expected to hit i205 before 3.1 landed and then gain those last 5 ilevels during 3.1.