Codex, you are absolutely correct about the numbers, full Cam/BH is way better than recruit gear as is fully aug'd rakata gear (but not that much)...the problem that comes with wearing pve gear that is better then recruit gear is two fold and player related...first, if I see someone in pvp who is not wearing pvp gear, they will be my secondary target (after healers) for the whole game...(yes I will ignore a tank in full camp gear with 26k HP)...I am not the only one who does this Next, a lot of healers tend to avoid healing players who they feel are not geared correctly...like you said, earlier...the high end pve gear is better than recruit, but there are a lot of 14 yo trolls playing this game who cant do math
The way I look it is cam/bh is fine for pvp, anything else and you should be in recruit gear for a couple of days til you start grinding into bm....it does go pretty quickly....show up in Tionese and/or fresh 50 leveling gear (116 rated) and I will harass you until you leave the group and then continue to harass you in fleet until you block me or follow me to the pvp vendor to get your free F@#$ing gear.