With upgrade and evolution materials being so limited I think avoiding is more in the sense of delaying investing in equipment until absolutely necessary.
Your first character equips the best in slot for what they find, but it’s unlikely to be the right colour or the desirable set piece. Knowing how limited some of the crafting and evolution materials are I know I consciously held back fully levelling pieces of gear that I could see were clearly not great for either this character or even any of the other (as yet unplayed) classes.
That may have been influenced by me starting in 0.35 when evolution was not possible for lack of relics, and by 0.36 I had either a Rare or Epic for each slot.