Epic (purple) gear atm seem pretty weird, especially since i’ve had countless experiences of getting an “epic” level gear that is actually worse than it’s corresponding uncommon (green) counterpart, but still costing MORE shards to activate it.
I wish I had saved the example now, but the epic gear was roughly 1% worse on both stats than my uncommon gear and 100 shards more expensive.
All the gear is really weird IMO. A lot of them do only minor boots (+4% attack speed?) and then some have negatives but some don’t. Someone told me the ones with negatives are cheaper but I looked at my gear last night and they’re not that much cheaper, not enough to justify the negative effect usually, not in my opinion.
Granted, I’m not terribly upset about the boosts being minor as it keeps the gear from breaking the game; imagine a melee character with +50% or higher attack speed boost, it’d be nuts and you’d get shredded, I’ve just really been struggling with the loadouts and figuring out what is best to put on, what isn’t, and whether it’s worth bothering with some of the negative effect pieces. Also the rarities are definitely odd as you mention. There’s not always much daylight between a purple, blue, or green gear. White gear, I’m not sure why it’s in the game other than as selling fodder. Then someone will probably jump on these forums and tell me how useful it is or something. 
Apart from the ones that are free 
It’s a bit stupid that epic gear costs so much to activate in general. I know you don’t want level 99s who live in Mum’s basement steam rolling the n00bs too badly, but come on!
Legendary gear is generally overpriced, but most epics I’ve had seem to be a decent if not good option. Check the stats that are affected closely. Alot of times epic gear has stat increases that aren’t normally on that gear type (a helmet with hp regen) and/or have no strings attached (a watch with a boost to cooldowns and health that requires nothing beyond activation cost).
As to negative effects, look carefully at what they are and some characters won’t even care. Negative shield stat on miko is nothing, Montana could care less about reload speed, etc.
I think the small boosts should stay, the CTT had bigger boosts and it lead to steam rolling much more often.
I checked closely and the stats that were being boosted were identical, just the green gear trumped the purple for both as well as on shard price.
Personally I find common and legendary to be the best items for PvP. One cheap (or free) common for early game advantage and then legendaries for mid and endgame. I just love the legendary stats. Most people would think that two legendaries is daunting but it’s only about 1k more shards than three decent rares/epics. Easy as
Yea I load out my Shayne with all legendary gear, i go for mid late game though because I am usually the only one collecting shards on my team.
I’m loving the character specific gear and hoping that there is more to come. The whole idea that you acquired this awesome gear for your favorite character is a wonderful concept I think. However, having to balance that against Uncommon or Rare gear that does the same thing for cheaper or even better is a little confusing. Shouldn’t the character specific Orange gear be optimal?
I would love to see a small crafting component go into character specifics. Such as doing X amount of Story and PvP maps/challenges to acquire a piece or blueprint or even doing story modes on various difficulties for drops. Yes this is a PvP heavy game, but the story has a nice raid component that could be utilized well.
I haven’t run into one of those yet but yes, I think that alone would justify the negative effect. All the ones I own are not significantly cheaper than the positive effect only gear so I don’t bother with them.
Focus a character and you’ll eventually get one for them at a certain rank, I think.
Overall after about 30 hours of GP haven’t really had any overly GODLY gear. Would definitely like to see better gear in the future