It matters if you quest between pops & prepare for level 65 while levelling. A level 65 character is far better off stimed and augmented off the bat in my experience.

Not sure if we are saying different things. Gear matters at 65. I was able to quest, do heroics, finish my class story all in level 24 gear till then, meaning before level 65, all the way through level 64. My companions were the same as I left them somewhere between affection 1 & 10. With level sync and a healer companion, seemed easy peasy to me on multiple classes. The way I prepare is to save as much pvp comms as possible and spend as little credits as possible. Been able to put all my peeps in fully aug'd ranked gear when they hit 65 that way, and I started on JC just like a month ago. I did transfer over one character so that I would have all datacrons unlocked in my legacy, so there is that.

Cool, I did not know they relaxed the game to that degree.

I am thinking in terms of a preferred player for myself, so accumulation of goods > credits is what I have to do. Now that I think about it, at 5 zones per, 4 characters might be insufficient to get starting gear by the time they hit 65, unless they all are mirrors of the same class.