But I can also count the number of competitive heroes I've had in this game on like 2 fingers.

Doesn't mean I don't think that level of gear is what you need to be competitive at the top end of the game and obviously that's at least part of the attraction to playing. I don't roll up and invest a couple hundred hours into a character with the idea that I'm never going to have anything good.

I discounted it in saying that I don't feel templar's defenses are a particularly strong move in a fight against an assassin. I don't think that's an invalid statement either in the grand scheme of skills that exist in this game to fight assassin's with.

But if I was in a situation where I needed to fight a lich as a Maran then yeah I'd do everything in my power to get it because I'd need it and I don't really wanna lose it because I've got stuff going on for a few weeks. I don't ever expect, even with no limits, for people to be rolling around in all legendary gear because a lot of it is pretty difficult to get (for me at least) but saying that I'm going to play a hero and aim for mediocre unlimited gear is like...why would I bother?

And this is entirely my point, how many people look at the battlefields with all the auto-deleted heroes and think back on times where the anti-hording code took half their set and think to themselves "Why would I bother with this?" What's so great about that exactly? Let's not kid ourselves when you get hit with the anti-hording code it often takes every piece of limited equipment most of which isn't going to be Defiance quality gear.

Edited this about a thousand times adding more points but it's probably a waste. Everyone wants to defend archaic systems that keep players from playing so this game can have a playerbase that is smaller than the number of people who died from lightning this year in New Jersey.