Bioware patched that the starting weapons are not the most powerful weapons anymore.
And introduced a bug that causes you in many cases to be more powerful without support items than with them because empty slots are not counted as 0 for calculating your item level but ignored. That means equipping support items often lowers your average item level which affects your damage output more that the support items.
And introduced a bug that causes you in many cases to be more powerful without support items than with them because empty slots are not counted as 0 for calculating your item level but ignored. That means equipping support items often lowers your average item level which affects your damage output more that the support items.