The answer is good. Insanely good.
Base gears that do NOT change for either set in this test:
+12 Old Casket (Mettle 3)
Imperial Feather
Royal Guard Necklace
+14 Liberation Imperial Spear
+4 Imperial Guard
+9 FAW (EA4/3/3) of shooter
+7 Imperial Boots
Imperial Ring of Mad Berserker
Shadow Gear:
+9 Physical Shadow Weapon
+9 Physical Shadow Earring
+9 Physical Shadow Pendant
+9 Safeguard Shadow Shield
+9 Liberation Shadow Shoes
Test 1:
+11 Abusive str 2/2
Megingjard
Damage w/ VP: 183-191k
Test 2:
+13 Hero Plate
Hero Brooch of Mad Berserker
Damage w/ VP: 212-230k
Would strongly recommend anyone picking up a hero plate if you can during the event, insanely useful. The fact that it outperforms a meg by so much is pretty insane. Also tested damage vs +11 Abusive (dex2/2) but damage was even lower than str2/2.
P.S. If using KVM spear I would ALWAYS use hero plate. The damage difference is much, much higher than an abusive just because you don't get diminishing returns from the imperial spear / imperial ring combo (which already gives damage w/ vanishing point).