Since The Edge of Fate, every new drop carries a gear tier from 1 to 5. The tier is a second quality axis on top of the roll itself: a god-roll Tier 1 and a mediocre Tier 5 are both worse than a god-roll Tier 5.
Higher tiers improve a weapon's bonus stats and unlock extra capabilities; at Tier 5 weapons gain access to enhanced versions of their trait perks — measurably stronger than the base versions. Tiers show on the item as T1 through T5 and drop from harder content at higher rates.
Crafted weapons and raid adepts can be reshaped to Tier 5, which makes them the most reliable path to enhanced perks on a specific roll you want. For everything else the tier is fixed at drop time — a great roll on a low tier is still a great roll, just without the top-end stats.
Gear from before The Edge of Fate carries no tier at all. That does not make it obsolete: wishlist verdicts are what decide keep-or-shard, and the community still maintains recommendations for legacy weapons. When ranking duplicates, Shard or Keep uses verdict first, tier second, power last.
The power cap has been 550 since update 9.7.0, and legacy items sit at a fixed floor. Power is now the least interesting number on a drop — it breaks ties between otherwise identical copies, nothing more.
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