Old gear will all still be good, it will likely take longer than a year to replace all of the best pieces of gear in our kit given how many niche pieces we have collected. Tier 5 gear isn’t like 2x as good as your current gear, and it’s certainly not replacing your staples like Hezen Vengeance unless they just make even more ridiculous perks (which is unrelated to the new gear or tiering system and could’ve happened with the current system). This is also not mentioning the fact that you need to go through the entire level grind using gear that is Tier 1-3 it seems. If current gear is ~Tier 3, then you already have some of the highest tier gear for at least the first few weeks or months of the expansion. Not to mention Tier 5 gear seems to require you to actually do difficult content, which many players will not have the willpower or skill to complete and so many players will settle for Tier 3 or 4 gear, which is, again, comparable to current gear. Mainly my only concern is with the +15% damage and DR new gear gets from the artifact every season but they will likely reduce it or limit where it applies significantly either before launch or shortly after given the feedback people have about it. Even if they don’t, I am so certain they will tune this back eventually that I wouldn’t even consider just deleting all my current gear unless I get something that is strictly better perks wise. I think being encouraged to try new gear can be exciting, but this is a bit too pushy of a way to do it. If you want stuff that is in the game right now, get it. It will likely still be viable for a decent enough amount of time for it to be worth it. If you don’t want to grind right now, then don’t. There are always alternatives and new shinier things on the horizon: that’s been true for this entire game’s existence and the tiering system doesn’t really change that much at all.