This thread is about some changes that can be made and probably will eventually need to be made.
They're just my take on how they could be done, but I don't think anybody will be complaining about these ideas.
Except maybe the guys who have to program it.

Sets

There is only one set in the game that offers a bonus for wearing it together.
But there's obviously going to be others.

However, there's no visual way to tell that Vog Cub actually has an effect and is part of a set, so here's my idea for how it could look on the items.

When you look at the item, instead of having nothing, there's the red kind of tooltip.
The icon is a red, vertical line inside a circle, like the ones you see next to a player in your party who is out of energy.
It indicates next to it that there is a bonus to be had, but also says that it's not activated as you don't have the set equipped.

If a set is bigger than two items, the pill would become blue. The icon would change to the diagonal version of the little icon next to a player in your party who has very low energy.
It indicated that the set bonus is active, but not at full potential.
If you only have a few of the set pieces equipped.
Sets like the Dragon Scale Set, that have three pieces, might make use of this kind of icon.

Then of course, when you have the full set, it becomes a gold pill, the icon is a horizontal line in a gold circle.

It doesn't interfere with any pre-existing systems, it doesn't take any new graphics or tooltip pills. And it perfectly indicates what level of bonus you're receiving from wearing the set.

Extended statistics

I said it earlier, but some things, like charge time, are just too hard to judge without actually using the item.

You gave shields a health statistic to reflect how much damage they can take, why not give weapons a charge statistic to reflect how long it takes for them to charge?
The icon could be a little white dot surrounded by yellow a yellow heat swirl.

Then, on top of this, also allow a way for people to see if their statistics are being improved and by how much.

A red bar on a weapon would mean that the statistic in question is being reduced by something, like if you're wearing a Plate Set and using a weapon, you would see on the weapons you looked at that the attack speed you would receive from using that item is lower than what it is without it.

A stat that's being improved would be gold.

People would know if they would gain a benefit from using or wearing something by seeing if a bar has reached it's end.
If it has, then wearing more items to increase the stat would ultimately be useless.

You can't really apply this to defensive statistics because they're represented by entirely unexplained and totally useless numbers. But since all weapons and shields show are bars, there should be some way to see if you're getting a bonus from anything you're actually using.

Direct Comparing

With comparing, I think it could stand to change a little.
Vendor comparing is fine, but it doesn't let you compare items you crafted already, or items from recipes.

It would be nice to have a compare function that allowed you to see the stat changes as well, instead of squinting at the monitor to see if there is a 2 pixel difference in power.

You could use the previous system as well.
An item more powerful than what you're comparing it to would have a gold bar, something less powerful would be red.

Comparing from your Arsenal, all you'd need to do is click on the item, go down to compare and then scroll over other items of the same type.
Clicking again would turn off the comparing.

Comparing recipes would be the same as you have now, you'd be able to see if a recipe is better than the item you currently have.
Obviously it would only be in bar statistics, and it would have to go by the maximum value rather than the minimum value for this, since programming it to go by prospective heat levels would be quite cumbersome and annoying.

That's it, I suppose.
Discuss time.