Gearing in Detail

Recent discussions have asked for a more detailed look at the gearing system in WOI, my obscure set up has raised many questions.
Because of the amount of detail in this section I may have to return over several days and tweak this depending on feedback regarding it's formatting and clarity

All gear types have 4 primary area's of focus to help you choose which is a perfect part for your play style,
the 4 blue stats are the most important when deciding which part is for you.
the blue stats can feature rare special attributes such as increased crit/lucky strike rate and massive amounts of damage to specific monster types depending on the part so understanding the limits of each part is important,
I will use the helm as my example of the differences from each set,

Gold Stat will always be
Physical Defense

White stats will always feature:
Physical Defense
Magic Defense

Yellow stats Will always feature:

Dex

Spirit

Mag Def

Max HP

Evasion

Blue stats can* feature:
Damage Vr's (animal/human/dragon/demon/undead)
Damage reduction Vr's (animal/human/dragon/demon/undead)
Increased % to (white/yellow/gems)
Crit block
Elemental attack
Elemental Resistance/Penetration
Physical/Magic attack bonus.

Where this confuses most players is choosing the best blue stats is a very individual choice, it may seam obvious that a set of.........
+13% white stat
Crit block 2%
Phy/Mag attack + 100
fire attack + 100
would be the most awesome helm ever dropped, but in reality these stats only really benefit a Pure DPS class, a champion for example is most likely already at the damage reduction limit so stacking more defense may not always be the best option, instead sticking with a yellow bonus would increase his HP/Mag Def which is much more important.
Sticking with the champion class, your not a DPS toon so
elemental resistances would be much more beneficial than the bonus attack stats also.


The most common way I've advised our members is that each class has 1 or 2 primary pieces of gear, those are essential to find the highest part with +% to white,

Quick list:
Champion: Pauldrons
Hera tic: Belt
Enchantress: Belt
Slayer: boots
Duelist: Chest/Greaves
Magus: Belt
Berzerker: Chest/Greaves


After sourcing your main white pieces, chose your least beneficial part, this will become your gem stack.
DPS character pick Gloves usually so they can embed powerful attack gems (only gloves and weapons can have offensive gems embedded) most other classes prefer Helm or Greaves.
For everything else we normally advise Yellow Bonus

My Hybrid set of gear does not reflect it's potential in terms of "Power" but I gave up worrying about what my power says when my golden set had me at 152k HP/1700 Def (6200 power) and my Soul Gear has me at 121k/1600 HP (7300 power) when a boss is hitting for 52k damage which set would u rather be wearing,....

Examples of unusual choices

It seams insanity that anyone would spend the money on a weapon featuring yellow stats by choice, especially with a legendary price tag, but consider the blue stats for a moment...
It's for a champion, adding 13% to both the champions primary stat (VIT) and main weakness (Mag Def) is much more important than 77 extra points of damage.

These Greaves were chosen for 2 reasons, the rare lucky strike attribute and also the Gem bonus.
Each character should have 1 gear piece with this stat, 
DPS toons tend to make this Gloves so any attack gems used can be increase as this is the only main gear part offensive gems can be socket-ed into.
I chose Greaves because I have an abundance of both the white stat and yellow stats already, 
This allows me to focus my most powerful defensive/Resistance gems here and gain an additional 8% for pre-polish.