Why are the best crafted items are so weak?

Cool. Really. How does this affect someone on level 56(?) Illum with 216 gear vs. 220 gear fighting a mob? It takes the same 1-2 GCD. Bear in mind that not the PVP gear was in question, but the PVE, craft able gear. So it's safe to say that for solo questing, story missions, thing like this, doesn't matter what gear you wear. PVP is a different beast.

The only things capped off are Power, Mastery, and Endurance. All other stats remain at their "natural" levels. So you get the benefit of your Alacrity, Crit, Defense/Absorb, etc.

Crafting is only good when you RE-ing 220 stuff, so you can make "left side" for your alts like relics and implants. Otherwise there is no point making other gear. Maybe only for lvling purposes.

Ian. Please pay attention what I wrote. On a capped planet/personal story instance does it matter that you have 216 or 220 gear? No. The difference between the tertiary stats don't come out during a fight in a said planet/instance. You'll global everything.

It really isn't the situation where someone can't kill a mob in 216 but can kill it in 220. Or in any tier of gear.

The only difference on planets is whether it's set-bonus or not; if you're glossing over secondary/tertiary stats - and there's no effective difference between the 180 (or so) stuff you get on a start-at-60 and 224 Ops gear, in open-world solo play

Exactly what I'm talking about, thank you. Hence my point for solo playing, there is no need for 224 stuff, craftable gear will do just fine, basically any rating.

I am minorly annoyed by the "set bonuses" on Ops gear. Character skills are balanced to include the set bonuses, as far as interlocking cooldown and other cycles go. I don't care about the stat bonuses being bigger, but the non-ops gear basically breaking the endgame skillset, that chafes me.

Then run some OPs.

Would if I could; but my schedule doesn't fit that of the raiders in my guild, and I;ve gotten into exactly 2 pugs, and gotten no tokens out of either. Last time I complained about this, I was told I wasn't "serious" enough if I didn't waste my playtime plotzing around on Fleet hoping someone would pick me out of the flood of LFGs; instead of being out in the world doing fun things until a queue popped. And I don't give a toasted womp rat's hairy teeth about the stats on the Ops gear, as noted, above around 180 or so it really doesn't matter; that just changes the Time To Kill. But the cooldown manipulations and the resource manipulations change the way the classes play, sometimes quite significantly, and the various autocrits interacting with powers have some major effects as well. IT changes your rotational pacing. Which does matter in certain solo boss fights.

Balancing every class's core mechanics around the gear availability of an activity that a minority of players actually participate in is a Bad Idea. If lack of set bonuses only affected your Ops play, the way lack of Expertise affects only PvP, that'd be one thing. But class powers are balanced assuming you have the 6-piece bonus handy. REmove that, and things get clunky.