without rent/decay there would be no way in hell for ppl to get gear after week 1 of the game.
ppl would load lim 1 gears and go into hibernation preventing that item from ever popping in game.
although we have become busier than we were in highschool, the gods have added legends, reincarnation, class sets, chaos gear(i'm always gonna call it chaos gear) so that we can become super elite easily and not be too gear dependent.