How is ilvl an issue while leveling?

[RiyahArp]

um NQ whites are worse than shire gear, I think. NQ gear in general is very bad when leveling, it's worse than the gear you get for dungeons. Like if you get the shisui set, nq gear is a downgrade, only HQ gear is a boost from that. There's a reason why every quest reward is HQ gear now, and why no one buys 350 nq gear.

And it actually is hard to gear up from bardams on, for some reason they seem to drop gear much more slowly. Like you get the guaranteed one piece, but when I lvled all my jobs to 70 bardams and on were very hard to get. Bardams in particular doesn't give gear from chests till the first boss I think. you end up outleveling the dungeons well before you get a full set.

I mean, you shouldn't be wearing all shire, just doing dungeons while leveling gives some, and some hq pieces are very cheap due to being common quest rewards. But they do need to work on gearing some at mid levels.