Quote Originally Posted by Nalien View Post
In what way is it useful? What content does item level actually help out with?
I gave two examples: solo duties when you're not good with your rotation and group duties when the other people are not performing well. And yes, most content do not need as much item level, which is why it's optional and not busy work and that's a good thing. People who want to do harder content will get appropriate item level and higher item level will always make contents easier unless the content is capped.

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While you might think item level is a non-reward for content that you've just beaten, there is a reason why savage and ultimate still give gear reward as their primary reward, with mount and title as secondary.

And the gearing option is what makes it good. Yes, you can grind out tomestone for a better weapon, but if you can farm trial and get a good enough weapon, that's 1000 tomestones you can use for other things. They're only redundant if you do every content, but not every player does every content, so there are gear options for a variety of content, including crafted gears. Again, that's a good thing.

And I do think Relic is good if it's useful (but still stick to the item level progression and not give additional abilities), but as you've said, it's been pushed back so long these days that it's mainly there for cosmetics.