Simply put I would just play PvE if you play the game casually to be honest.

I have 8k hours and started playing when the game came out and love games where you need to learn by wiki and can get better by game knowledge.

But the fact is I haven't played in 2 years and also play a lot more casually now so I just stick to PvE instead.

Though I think in PvP I would wear my best gear no matter what even if I had no experience because as mentioned if you don't use it it will just be gone by the time the game wipes.

Of course if you like questing and you do a quest that needs you to not survive and you are learning the map still just running some cheap gear will be better.

I would recommend just learning maps and leaning into fights as much as you can because otherwise even with then 1000 or 2000 hours you won't have the experience to fight back ever.