Just an idea, maybe make a way to upgrade vendor armor to the equivalent of raid gear, but it would require radiant materials, etc. for the upgrades. Like for example, you could go to dead orbit and with a piece of light level 30 gear, 2500 glimmer and 5 radiant shards you could upgrade it to light level 32 gear but you'd have to upgrade it again. I came up with this just as an idea to get more armor variants for high level end game content. They'd still require radiant shards for upgrading and the thing is they wouldn't have the buffs of raid gear as well. This is just an idea, don't hate. You can say a way to change it or improve this idea in any way to make yourself happy.
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Or you would need to get the same piece from the raid first. That way you can get different perks and stats