We need the option to disable cosmetics.

I wish this could happen cause I fucking hate transmog, but it ain't gonna happen.

I know for sure that seeing someone's gear helps in pvp. Now whether that icon can replace gear visibility well enough - that's up for debate and testing. Sure hope it can.

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Due to how gear sets worked in L2 you'd know a ton of info just by looking at your enemy. Pretty much all sets had their own silhouette and color. Robes/light/heavy armor all looked different too and looked different on different classes, so even within the same set you'd differentiate classes at a glance.

You see a party running up to your farming location? You immediately saw their support healer/buffers, you'd see their tank and which tank it was so you knew their skillset. You'd know their general resistances and you'd know their rough build. And of course they knew the same about you.

You'd know their rough power lvl because of how gear tiers worked (can only fully utilize a tier after you've reached a certain lvl) so you could at least assume what skills they might have just by looking at them. Though depending on the progress stage of the server you might've seen a dude who should've been wearing t4-5 wearing t3 just because t4 was still super rare, so on the early stages of the server there'd still be some mystery when it came to the strength of your opponent, but you still knew which class they were at a glance (give or take a few rare off-builds).

Here's a vid going through all sets up to t4 on just one character model.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-JX9yOtuS8

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In L2, your gear was the achievement. And when everyone reached the same lvl of gear tier, your name would be the achievement, if you were good enough in pvp. There was a pvp arena top 1# title and visual reward, but those could be somewhat exploited by guilds, so they didn't matter as much as your pure reputation did.