I'm actually considering completely ignoring visible armor from SoD and keep my full set of Crystallos raid gear. The armor design is too complex imo and even thought I can get all essences easily and the upgrades are not minor, I'm still pondering if it is worth it.
complex item design is not content for a MMO. for each class in this expansion, we have 7 sets of armor, half of them being a waste of developers time (both because devs take time to make items and after release spend a bunch of time fixing the flaws of the system). 6 months after release of this expansions, items are still not finished, this says alot of the way SoE is managing the work of its employees.
I wish we could come back to a much simpler and smarter armor system in next expansion like we had in DoD, PoR or TSS. Once again, complex design is not game content.