Board Thread:Wiki Discussion/@comment-4680574-20150312041242/@comment-4511886-20150312062912

Fashion Souls, baby.

The reason Fashion Souls is a thing is because a lot of the older players were given the idea that armor does next to nothing, and that rolling is far more viable, even though it's much harder to use at first.

With this in mind, players quickly adapted into wearing something that looks amazing, rather than something that actually is amazing.

For example, the only real defence I personally care to check is Fire and Magic defence, along with Poise. However, most armors with high Fire/Magic don't weigh a lot (Dingy, Painting Guardian, Gold-Hemmed, Tattered Cloth etc.) so they kind of still fall under the "rolling > defence" line of thought, although the armor's functionality is far more focused on.

Tanking works, but I did a tank run, and I've got to say that it gets really dull to just stand there in full Havel's while Orns is trying to poke you, to no avail.

TL;DR: Many "veteran" players don't min-max armor and stack endurance, because we were taught that rolling was the only way to success.