[Autumn]

While the spreadsheet is an eyesore it does indicate that you don't get nearly as much effective stat value from the DK set as you do from just hodge podging together other more meta equipment. Which makes sense. Each piece has a very static value of 5% and 3 extra points onto your soft cap. Which is why it seems to be that each piece is roughly worth 3 strength with those investments after scaling. Which is okay, but it's not good or really meta in an environment where you're never going to want to go hard over strength cap due to the current build requirements.

I agree with that, you get more raw value from Terrasque Shell except in cases where Armor matters in mitigating a ton of damage, as for Akmedis, that torso is honestly just overpowered, it gets roughly the same armor value, an innate DR, and a lot of things would have to be bumped up to it's level if we started balancing things around it.

I've always thought of Dragon King Armor pieces as being quite balanced, I agree with your point earlier in hammering down on it's focus, let it be good at stacking STR, as long as the scaled amounts aren't changing.