I think we should be able to select our loadouts after we see the team we are playing against. If i’m going against a team with a bunch of cc, i would like to select one of my loadouts that has reduced cc time. Otherwise, i might want to go with my cooldown build, etc…
Thoughts?
I think both your idea and the status quo have their benefits.
If you think about it, choosing gear AFTER seeing the enemy team allows for strategic and specialized gear loadouts, which allows to solve specific problems, as you described.
However, selecting gear BEFORE this point encourages more generalistic loadouts, that match your general playstyle, regardless of enemy or situation.
As gear is already a choice between buffing your character’s strengths or adressing some of it’s weak spots, I’m not sure if we need to abstract this another level.
To that end, I’ll have to admit that I don’t know whether most people favor Offensive or Defensive Gear Loadouts - especially in PvP.
In Story Missions, I mostly went with defensive loadouts, maybe one offensive Gear Piece.
A dead BB does no damage 
I usually wore gear that increased shard gain so I could build tons of turrets lol.
Exactly. They both have their pros and cons.
Personally, I like it the way it is. That way no one can try to counter anyone with their gear.
My Ambra Gear Loadout for Story Missions turned out to be Shard of Jennar, that Firmware Upgrade from Geoff Arachnis und a Shard Collector. Active Gear guaranteed by reaching the middle of a mission.
Was actually pretty nice in combination with her Radiant Halberd Mutation, but I guess nothing one could pull off in PvP.
/Edit: Shard Collectors are awesome gear in my experience, but one needs to find a good balance between Activation Cost and Shard Gain to actually make it work efficiently.
I used an Uncommon Shard Collector with +1,99 Shards/s, which - if memory serves me right - had ~540 Shards activation Cost due to a reload speed reduction affix.
Once the game is out, I’ll collect same more data and maybe make a decent spreadsheet about Shard Collectors.