The gear that goes into the characters directly affect their end stats. So take a second look at some of those 'weak' characters. That snowtrooper hits HARD. Cad Bane has the highest offense of the game. The Jawas you mentioned are also powerful, especially the basic Jawa.
Have you ever noticed that tanky type characters require a lot of Mk 3 Carbanti Arrays (GK, Kylo, Baze, etc) or the Mk 5 stun cuffs that also require Mk 3 Carbanti arrays. Mk 3 Carbanti affectly direct health. Characters with those gear will have a lot of health at the end of your path.
Same goes for Stun Cuffs and Mk 5 furnaces. Those provide extra offense, so it's not surprising that "attacking" characters require a lot of them, such as Snowtrooper, Cad Bane, Darth Maul, etc.
I would venture to say that the gear problem is that it is too difficult to get pieces of gear that you're looking for. I'd much rather the raid rewards provide some kind of gear ticketing system that you could get X tickets for your raid rewards and turn those in for your selection of gear. They almost did us a favor by putting gear in the fleet shop, but then they also put the much needed zeta in the fleet shop as well, so I might as well forget about the gear.
