I'm with you on that. I can't tell you how many times I got "replaced" in a party cuz i was in "incorrect" gear. You had ppl using sea com to say what gear they had. And if you had said gear, you got invited. If not, your SOL.
I couldn't get, when when I did get say okote I really saw no difference in my attacks. Amd I had both str and attack + stacked. Same thing bounding boots. I hunted then out of having to finally got them and really wasn't impressed. Don't get me started with ohat and scop harness.

These items barely did much and really didn't matter if I used them or not. My stuff was really not that different. I started just using gear I started to enjoy/ was cheap. And had fun. I tanked the avatar prime fights as a monk/dnc in unconventional gear ppl barely used. Never died.

I never used the elemental staves on my rdm and pretty much when I tried them with mjy scholor I really wasn't impressed. Only one I used was the dark staff and only for the rest hp%.