>I am very confident
>that if you gave me Humbert and geared me with x2 opal rings,
>x2 brass collars, shirt of shining silver chain, x2 charred
>bracers, dual lightforged swords etc I'd still get kills
>easily.

Humbert was a decent character for that, given the build. Especially since with white weapons you can pick on duergar/orcs, or with silver ones you have teo weapons with a decent prog. Catch someone who needs to enter commands to be effective in combat, bash bash bash flurry. It's not like that for all builds. You also know how to prep.

>If you are, say, a wrath-spamming paladin...

Yes, wrath spamming shield paladin can still (potentially) get kills with crap gear if someone is dumb enough to just stand there while he spams wrath on them. Or dumb enough to let themselves get summoned into a locked room and attacked.

>I'm saying that exploring and gear-whoring to
>the extent of neglecting cabal defence/raid is not only bad RP

Agreed here. Newbie or not, good gear or not, you need to own up to your cabal duties or get kicked out of the cabal.

>marginal gain versus the marginal cost of gathering a shinier
>piece of gear is not worthwhile.

Eh. For goodies, at least, some rare gear is relatively easy to gather. Request FTW.