As someone who is not yet 50, I appreciate people's little guides and ideas to help me out with what the natural flow of progression will be once I do get to 50. I don't want to be that one person everyone else is having to carry. People can say what they want about gear never mattering at all, but I can tell you as a healer that when we have undergeared DPS and undergeared tanks I really struggle to keep up the tank or the fight draws on too long and I run out of MP and then we all just die, which could also be due to my own being undergeared, thus my heals not being as potent as they could be and my MP pool not being as large as it could.

The thing is, every group is a team, it's the sum of all of its parts. While one person in absolute crap gear can easily be carried if the rest of the group is geared, being that one geared person trying to carry a whole group of undergeared people becomes less viable. It's better to encourage people to work a little bit than it is to encourage them to do no preparation at all and just let their FC mates and random DF groups carry them.