Most people tend to missuse the words "Soft cap and Hard cap" nowadays..
There is no soft cap or hard cap to "most" stats aside from acc. being that endgame bosses are 110% acc. (This is also being tested to possibly only be 8% fyi.) Its very hard to determine which atm without combat logs as it takes a very, very long time and amount of hits on the same mob to confirm.
Stats such as Crit and Surge have "DIMINISHING RETURNS" as well as I do "think" alacrity and expertise does as well, although I do not look into those 2 stats much currently so dont quote me on those two.
Soft cap=After certain level of something the benefit drops to a point where you only slightly benefit from the stat. which usually leads to other stats being focused on.
Hard cap=After certain level of something the benefit completely halts and you no longer receive any benefit from it.
Diminishing returns= After multiple levels of a stat the benefit keeps "diminishing" the more you receive of that stat. usually resulting in switching focus to another stat that has more "weight" to it or value till they balance out.
When people are mentioning the 30-35% crit range, and 80-85% surge range they usually say soft cap, when really its not. This just the range where it becomes more beneficial to start stacking a different stat vs the same one. When you balance out one stat the others start to become abit more valuable again. People are currently working on accurate calculations and bugs in a spreadsheet to help with this. Meaning don't just stack crit and surge to that mark and never look at it again. Its best to keep reading info on stat weights and such till everyone figures out more information.
Power on the other hand doesn't cap or have diminishing returns on it as it seems currently. Now does this mean you should only stack power? No.. Arsenal especially leans a lot on criting to vent heat etc.
Sithwarrior.com is a good reference site to look thru for information and calculations if you would like proof of all this. Also, if you wish to see on your own its quite easy to take all your gear off, write down your crit/surge and use a relic and write down %. Then put only like 50-100 crit surge worth of gear on and use the same relic and note the difference the relic gave you before and after.
Hope that helps someone..
p.s. Just remembered I wanted to add something else about acc... Everything other then your Rapid shots (the non-heat, lvl 1 ability you get) is a "Special attack" This means that YES unload and Rail shot are NOT based on tech accuracy, but on Special attack accuracy and both are subject to the mobs defense. (Note that both special attack acc. % and tech attack accuracy are the same atm though) Now tech. attacks are subject to the mobs resistance.
to answer the OP's question as well.. You want at least 4 pieces of the "Eliminator" set for the set bonus for sure. Then whatever gives you the better stats. I have tons of pieces of gear that I use only for the Mods in them which is a very good idea endgame. Personally, I would get all 5 pieces and then swap any mods that you do not need or are not very good for whatever you want. A tip is to look @ champion PVP gear for mods as they are easy to obtain.
