A lot has changed since last time I updated this answer, with the addition of several equipment the overall price has been reduced considerably turning most of the options affordable, with that said the new list should go something like this:
Piece/tier | Basic/Cheap | Best Offensive | Best Defensive | Boss | Speed | Best In Slot |
Helmet | Lion Spangenhelm | Stoic Iks Casque | Stoic/lion | Stoic Casque | crest of deep seas/werewolf helmet | Falcon Coif |
Amulet | Enchanted Werewolf Amulet | Collar of Blue plasma | Pendulet | N/A | Beetle Necklace | Sleep shawl |
Armor | Ghost Chestplate
Embrace of nature | Unerring Dragon armor | Mutated Skin Armor | Unerring DSM | Prismatic Armor | Gnome Armor |
Crossbow | Xbow of destruction | Umbral Master Crossbow (it lacks sustain) | N/A | Cobra Crossbow | N/A | Naga Crossbow |
Bow | Living Vine Bow/Jungle Bow/Bow of cataclysm (situational) | Eldritch Bow | Lion Longbow | N/A | N/A | Falcon Bow |
Quiver | Regular Quiver | Jungle Quiver (longer hunts) | N/A | Eldritch Quiver | N/A | Naga Quiver |
Legs | Fabulous Legs | Fabulous Legs | Mutated Skin Legs | N/A | Alloy Legs | Falcon Greaves |
Ring | Butterfly Ring | Ring of Blue plasma | Prismatic Ring | Blue plasma/Ring of Souls | Time Ring | N/A |
Boots | Guardian Boots/ Prismatic Boots | Feverbloom Boots/Winged Boots | N/A | Stoic Iks Boots | Boots of Haste | N/A |
Legend:
Basic/Cheap: This is the budget option, it's the minimum you should have through lvl 300, the options here are considered worth in most of cases with few exceptions (embrace of nature/bows) where they are still cheaper than all the rest of options and excels in different categories but aren't comparable to their tiered counterparts,
BIS: Best in Slot means that most of the cases or at least in the cases where both equipment are compared against neutral enemies (dealing/receiving mostly physical damage) these weapons will have an overall better performance, with that said, BIS are only shown in 1 category since they will only be defeated when dealing with specific disadvantage (example pendulet is better than sleep shawl ionly in hunts where there's way higher energy damage than earth damage/physical damage) in any other regualr case the BIS items will outperform any other item by far.
Best Offensive: the EQ of this category is FOCUSED into dealing damage, it has the higher offensive stats at cost of defensive stats, mostly this means that it doesn't have physical resistance which turn it an item useful in hunts/places where you don't receive too much physical damage or where you don't require the extra resistance since the extra damage compensate.
Best Defensive: Simply the regular solo-hunting item, it perform better than any other when boxing and provides enough sustain/damage to be still a balanced item.
Boss: The items here are the most efficient when hunting bosses since they either have an specific bonus for target enemies or they are pretty useful in case of tanking monster/bosses for short time span providing surveillance and still a high offensive stat, most of those items are focused into Targeting rather than AoE and that's why bow are out of the list.
N/A: There's not an item in this specific category that outstand the rest, several different items can be used and perform pretty much the same.