That kind of gear advantage went away the moment Frontlines was introduced. Item level syncs were introduced, and largely so long as you were at the sync level (something people apparently struggled with, but that's a fault of their own), you were fine. There were subtleties, naturally. Min/maxing stats using older/easy to acquire PvE gear I was able to have roughly 10.5K HP (high for a DPS back then). This was perhaps obtained with one tank accessory (accuracy didn't matter for the most part), but it also guaranteed I could survive an 8K melee LB (or a double caster LB, which hit much harder then).

There was no grind to building my PvP gearset. By the end of the 3.x era, I was just using my old Lore gear, and some Gordias accessories I pulled off my retainer, and largely for the secondary stats. If anyone knows their job and their favored secondaries in PvE, you were already halfway there for PvP. I understand gear and stats were largely removed to facilitate leveling players, but gear advantages really weren't an issue at all. I did just fine even before I optimized my gearset.