The main reason for gear in pvp is pve gear actually, it would feel akward if not outright wrong for ppl, to engage in one game activity and be rewarded with stat point increases and do another game activity and only be rewarded with bragging rights or 'gear looks'. Other reason for that is the dreaded high tier pve dps gear making for 1 or 2 skills killing people. On the point of why not 'just' use a bolster mechanism, especially in this game that offers a lot of customization options in items (enhancement with various secondary stats, 2 type of armorings one focusing on endurance, aguments etc. At least when it will be implemented properly.) is the fact that a person who customizes his gear to better suit his play style should get a reward in terms of stat points. (A min/maxing minigame inside the pvp game is a good thing at least imho)

this needs to be implimented fast.

Every dps spec should bring the same exact damage dealing capability to the table, including every dps spec from every class that can fill additional roles, the difference should be that they bring different utility into the table from crowd control to emergency tanking to emergency healing and group buffs and debuffs. I consider everything else unaccaptable in modern mmos like swtor mostly due to the fact that it would lead on optimal operation setups and some advanced classes and/or specs not making the cut for operation spots. For example why bring a dps pyrotech/vanguard when you can bring an aditional marauder/sentinel? Or why bring a sniper when you can bring a commando? Also the content is doable with every setup within logical bounds isnt an acceptable answer to a scenario where dps, raw healing and mitigation is different between classes. People will pick the easiest path and why wouldnt they? why waste time grouping with gimped ppl and risk to waste your time on wipes when you can just rush in with an optimal setup and beat the content easily? >>TL:DR All damage dealing specs from all advanved classes should do the same dps, period. On a pvp perspective things are very different because personal survivability does play a critical role as do a number of utility options and other tools (cc, stealth, range, burst, healing reduction etc) balancing pvp in a game where pve is balanced and competitive is art if not impossible.

This game was designed for PvE content, pve engame content uses gear as a ticket system to access more pve endgame content (the way you use columni to beat rakata content and so on and so on) so expertize is there to protect people from pve geared players, just imagine the dps capabilities of people in a couple years with 2-3 more tiers of gears released. Now allthough creating a system like a bolster buff/debuff to ban 'extra stats' from entering a warzone could create a no gear setting for pvp, most people would feel rather uneasy pvping for nothing while the pve activities rewarded them with stats for every encounter they defeated, thus you have a scenario of no reward play (except fun) versus a scenario of rewarding with shinny stats. This means that at this game there will always be stat boosts obtained by playing, to hope for smaller increases by tier is a good thing but to ask for all stat boosts to be removed that is something that simply wont happen in swtor.