How to get past 450 gearscore in division 2?

So recently I reached world tier 5 and got to 450 light, the problem now is that I have been grinding for the past 5 hours and i have yet to see a gear drop over 452. I played strongholds on challenging yet it does not seem to drop anything higher than that. Now I do not mind the grind but in the right direction since I feel im doing something wrong. I have read somewhere that recalibrating helps but Im not sure how it works especially with the new update. Any tips on what to do or an explanation since Im getting a little bit frustrating, thank you.

Solution 1:

The first thing to do is check out The Snitch. he's a guy that roams across the map and gives a bounty for one of the "deck of 52" bosses, but more importantly, he also marks a special merchant on your map that gives higher itemlevel gear.

Secondly, the gear that drops for you scales with your inventory gearscore, not your equipped gearscore, so keep any high gearscore items in your bag, even if you don't use them, so you can get better item drops that you might use.

Also, you should upgrade your crafting bench as soon as possible so it crafts items from the new tier.

In addition, the new raid drops the highest itemlevel rewards, although I heard that if you play on a console you might run into problems.

Finally, Ubisoft rebalanced the Dark Zone area so landmarks and bosses drop 515 gear, in order to encourage more people to go there. I know PvP is not for everyone, so just adding it in here.

And yes, definitely recalibrate for higher gearscore. The difference between the low end and high end of gearscore on an item can easily be thousands or damage or armor at these gearscore levels.