Well lets see.
To create one piece of the top tier set required 7 tiers of crafting (now 8). You crafted a low level piece (t1) and upgraded it gradually. Tiers 1 - 3 were guaranteed upgrades. Tier 4, 5 and 6 onwards had a 25% chance each to give you the correct piece that allowed you to progress. And Tier 7 had a 14.28% chance (1/7) to give you the type of weapon you wanted. Maybe you wanted AGI on a Bow. Too bad, fuck you, you got STR.
To sum it up, for 1 piece in your grand list of things, you had a 1/112 chance to get the correct piece for your SET. Incorrect pieces means sorry, no set bonus.
Lets couple this with the fact that one of the key components and also the most demanded component had a pathetically low drop rate relative to how many you needed to even ATTEMPT to craft 1 piece of gear tiers 4 and up. Farm for a few hours, maybe you'll get a shot at trying to craft tier 4 in hopes of getting tier 5.
What was the best way to get this component? They came from cash shop boxes as well. Gee, isn't that convenient.
Okay so you finally finished your full Delphinad set including weapons, both melee and your ranged one as well as your trinkets.
Time to regrade your weapon. This should adequately demonstrate regrading. There are 12 grades. That video was a pretty rich player using expensive regrade scrolls trying to go from tier 5 to tier 8. After tier 8, your shit has an increasing likelihood of completely being destroyed on a regrade. Here's your god damn table for chances of regrade http://i.imgur.com/UOau1EW.png) which by the way assumes that you DO use charms which only come from the cash shop.
You want to know the difference between a Tier 8 and Tier 12 weapon?
Celestial (T8) Delphinad Bow - 337.3 DPS
Mythic (T12) Delphinad Bow - 499.8 DPS
48.18% DPS Increase.
All of this you will never get as a free player. Ever.
Here's Kooncoon showing you what a player who has credit card can do against someone without: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7fsJ5Fnpiw
Here's another one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIlxr7tmI2g
I forgot to mention that for trinkets, its 1/50625 to get to T7 per trinket before regrading them.
I think this should be enough maths for you?
