Unless I misunderstood the principle, as Pointman is a Named item, should it not be in the Named Chest/Body Armor category, rather then in the Gila brand menu for Research ?

Can't upgrade anything even when at lvl 10 proficient. buttonm is greyed out and get a "insufficient expertise level" message

Expertise's current phase is one of the best examples how devs can make
a good idea valueless. After 10k SHD and 4500 playing hours, I hoped so-
me new thing which compensate the game lack of balancing in some areas.
I was wrong, again.

Let we see, how Expertise works currently:

Player need to use an item (weapon, gear, skill etc) to gain proficiency on it,
and get expertise point for each rank gained on an item. This can be speed
up by donating the same item or donating crafting materials. This is fine, a
long grind as expected, no one question this mechanic.

To upgrade an item to your current expertise level, you need to pay its price.
This is generic crafting materials for the first levels, and changes exotic com-
ponents, shd calibration and field recon data at ~halfway. The price is insane,
high, related to how much work and how hard (RNG) to aquire. If I suppose
player get 1 exotic component per hour (super lucky), it takes hundred hours
to collect one upgrade.

Here comes the biggest weakpoint which destroy the whole system:
The reward. The reward is cricitally low. Currently the max expertise system
max level is 23. On this level, player get 140k armor if level up to max all the
equipped gears. This is less than a blue core. Not affect the gameplay, player
won't be tougher, still 1-shot in full group. Simply not worth it to spend a single
second with the expertise. There are topic on the forum which says "you don't
need to upgrade all to max". In this case, you get 10-20-30k armor to your
660k original. Even more not worth it to spend a second with it. No one will
spend thousands of hours with grinding to get 140k armor who has some sign
of brain.

Weapons get ~10% final damage on max expertise level, which is a bit better.
Some skills got great choices of bonus, others got useless one, also the amount
is pretty low.

The final consequence is obvious: Expertise system destroyed before go live.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

And here is an idea which able to resurrect it:

At first, PvE and PvP expertise upgrades must be handled separatelly and
differently. While not fully separated and crosstalk between settings, one of
the mode will suffer from another. Division 2 would be a great PvE and a
great PvP game in one, if this single step inserted into the process. I never
play PvP, not my style, but agree the huge amount of armor reward kill the
PvP, but low amount of armor reward kill the expertise in PvE.


First part: the proficiency ranking and gaining expertise points. This really
on place, be long, be hard, be exhausing, the reward will sweeter. No need
more details, I would leave as is.

Second part: Upgrades and reward. I still strictly write about PvE rewards,
PvP rewards must be different.

First, I would adjust the expertise max level to 25. This is a nice number,
easier calculate with.

Weapons:
The 10% weapon bonus is fine, i would just give a small boost. Every upgrade
increase 0.5% BASE weapon damage (aka standalone multiplier). This results
12.5% damage output increment. This number is not so big, but in a well assemb-
led loadout counts much.
Because only the weapon damage boost not changes anything in gameplay, every
weapon class, named and exotic weapon would get an unique boost.
Some example:
Pestilence: +1 stack per upgrade, up to 75.
Bullet King: +0.5% weapon handling, up to 12.5%
Scorpio: +0.1s base status effect duration (because NPC got HPZ)
Regulus: +0.1m explosion radius

Skills:
Skill buffs would be multiplicative instead current method (just added after tier bonus),
also some would get better bonus:
Reviver hive: +1% armor repair on revive
Firestarter chem: +1% burn duration (not ignite damage, that's useless)
Assault turret/striker drone: +0.5% base damage
Shield: 1% damage reduction (NPC bullets deal less damage on shield)

Gears:
As I wrote, 140k armor is sounds like a bad joke. My personal opinion is an armor
which equals 3 blue core at max level of all 6 gears is much more acceptable.
This amount is based on groupscale (enemies have ~71% more damage output
in a full group compared to solo).
Each level gives 3k armor to a gear. This results 75k on lvl25, and total 450k armor.
This is still less than 3 blue core, but sensible in gameplay. With the original 660k
armor this is 1110k, with the 10% total armor from watch this is 1221k, 1.2M armor.
This amount is much more better.
Same as weapons, every brand, gearset, named and exotic would get an unique
bonus too, some example:
Negotiator's dilemma: 0.1% CHC per level, total 10% CHC on 4 piece.
Eclipse protocol: 0.15% status effect per level, total 15% on 4 pieces
Tardigrade: -1% cooldown per groupmate
Vile: +1% base tick damage
Forge: +1% shield health
Contractor: +0.4% weapon handling (10% total)
Airaldi: 0.2% headshot damage, total 15% on 3 pieces
Petrov: 0.2% rate of fire, total 15% on 3 pieces
These small amount of unique bonuses are mandatory, the armor improvement
alone not enought to make players stay, also the Expertise with plain weapon damage
and armor bonus is too simple and monotonous.