pve is really hard, yes...
please put most skilled person in foc without resistance or high hp and see what happens
and this is only my opinion, its ok to have other opinion, atm for me oinas is god tempest, thats why i wanna see crafty since i have never experienced getting hit by him
and maybe that smallville dude was idk never played with him but dh even how bad he is at playing still kills -_-load
this game requires barely any skills and it has been covered many times, just because couple people are super fail even with good gears doesnt mean that skill>gears
never said gear had nothing to do with it. i just said your gear isnt everything
the s2 biskra staff will give you better heals than the s1 biskra staff for the sole reason that it has more magic damage
a tank with s1 gear and 10k+ hp will survive more easily in a raid than a tank with s2 gear and only 7k-ish hp
but you can give a crappy radiant a s2 biskra staff and it wont do any good if the rad thinks they need to fight instead of heal (which i have seen, and that raid was a disaster >_<)
and you can give a tank with NO experience and NO knowledge as to how to play their char, give them s1 gear and have them tank biskra and see how disastrous that is. this too i have also seen. the tank in question thought it would be ok to go afk right in the middle of the raid and blamed the healers when he was standing still in ds and died
and as for pvp, like you said, put the best players in game in battlefield, but give them gear with no resistance, they probably wouldnt do as well if they had gear with capped resistance
but you also need to have skill in pvp
people have pve builds and pvp builds
and you have tactics to help win the battles. like everyone knows you dont go after the prot (pre nerf speaking)
so, its gear, build AND knowing how to play the class you chose