I get it, the gear lock exists to prevent stealthers from tactical swapping. However, literally nobody is swapping tacticals in 8v8 respawn modes. It's literally more useful as a sin to keep your two cloaks on and charge it up for the next time you need it. In addition, the gear lock makes it so you often backfill with no tactical/wrong tactical, load into a voidstar and can't swap tactical even before the match (yep, it's bugged), can't switch tactical when you see the enemy team stacking for aoe... it's literally just a pain in the *** no one asked for. Keep the gear lock in arenas, but at the very least allow us to change gear while we're inside the spawn area.

There is no need for a gear lock before a match starts. I can understand once the match starts, but not before.