Hahaha xD I like this!

Ahhhhh yes that was the case. A War Hero crystal in a PVE weapon. And I wasn't accurate before. Wearing PVP earpiece, implants, and relics + PVE everything else = @1950 expertise rating. Wearing all PVP pieces except gloves and offhand = @1810 expertise rating. Something still seems a bit screwy with it. Maybe what you mentioned was the thing, the crystal in the wrong weapon. Will check into it later. Thanks for the heads up!

Gah! Purchased mine on August 7th >.<

I haven't swapped any mods out from the pieces, but I was using a War Hero's crystal from the cartel market packs. I'm going to take another look at this to be sure it wasn't just me seeing the wrong thing.

As a fairly new player here, I noticed something puzzling the other day. After realizing that, after hitting level 55, I was feeling super squishy all of a sudden; I decided that it was time to invest in expertise items. Now I have the earpiece, two implants, two relics, arms, head, chest, and lower robe from the regular Warzone Comms vendor. Puzzling thing is, after testing, it turns out that going in with my pve set actually nets me a higher experise rating, than going in with those pvp pieces. Obviously this has to do with the bolster mechanic, but like... is there a point where this stops being the case? Since my pve set has a significantly higher armor rating, it currently doesn't make any sense for me to wear the pvp pieces, aside from the small set bonus feature. Is this an illusion? Is having the pvp pieces equipped, even with a lower expertise rating, the better way to go? I feel pretty squishy (as a Sage Healer) either way, so its hard to tell just based on playing. Guess my question is the same as the OP's, just for a different reason xD