Quote Originally Posted by wereotter View Post
No, it's not required. It's helpful, but the actual impact it makes on your damage is minimal.
It's quite bigger than that to be friendly.

For example:

I cleared 1st week Eden Promise fully crafted gear max melds.

When we trial some new healers without the crafted gear in a min ilvl settings which cuts off our melds, we couldn't even properly push the DPS check despite we were 5-7% behind our 1st week. Don't underestimate Crit/Direct rng, it's a right game changer.