Alternate Everquest

The main point of my post was to suggest an idea for approaching the whole problem, not just individual items. You are welcome to disagree with me on whether delvea gear is too powerful but that's besides the point.

Don't get me wrong, I understand what you are saying. Some kind of guideline for items should be in place, if it is not already. Otherwise you get items dropping from a level 30 mob, that outshines stuff from lvl 50 dungeons.
My point on the Delvea gear is that some of the stats might feel strong on a zerk, but those same stats feel weak on my sk.. it is all about class roles. The gear in Delvea is not specialized to roles, sadly. A zerk gains more from all the stats, and gets a nice boost in ac/hp over what their gear might normally provide with a Delvea piece. While as a sk, those extra stat points are nice, but just don't mean as much to me as ac/hp/ def boosts that my tank only gear gives. I have kept some of my darkforge gear instead of getting Delvea pieces for just that reason, a few extra points of str/dex etc is nothing compared to +ac/hp/block/dodge etc.

What is needed is more role specific equipment, to minimize that issue. And any items that cross the roles need to have the stats "muddied" a bit to compensate the increased role. By muddied I mean the ac should be an average between the roles, and then the total stat points should average between the roles also. Then give them a usable focus effect to make it special enough to make members of both roles willing to sacrifice their main stats to actually use it. (Otherwise the item would likely just get ignored.)