Regarding the different weapons and armor to pick from, very very few of them are actually good for the raid. I just got done looking at them. Probably the best auto rifle comes from Crucible vendor, it's called For Your Eyes, I think. Not all the gear is appropriate either. For Hunters, Dead Orbit (the one I have leveled up) sells Disc+Str which means all the armor is worthless for the raid. FWC fares a lot better as they sell Int+Disc but the weapons found on them are ho-hum. You run into a similar situation with Crucible armor. Regarding mods, mods are nice to have, but ultimately the stats (Int/Disc/Str) are more important than the mods on the armor. That's because this is tied directly to the cooldown on your Ultimate, Grenade or Melee. Certain classes benefit from different combinations, but for Hunters I'm positive that it's Int/Disc. When you're talking raid gear, THAT'S when the mods become important but still it's primarily on your Helm and Gauntlets that contain the important mods. Final thing. You're making a big deal out of Vendor gear. Vendor gear is gear to help you get from point A to B (in this case, to facilitate going from 30 to 32). It helps you by getting you to 31 so that you can do more damage and survive longer in the raid, which in turn helps you complete the content to get gear and level to 32. Really, the only important gear you should be concerned about is raid gear. I'm not necessarily concerned with wearing individual pieces from 8 vendors to get the right look, right mods, right stats. The PVE vendor sells everything you need and I can play Crucible to get a weapon just for extra. (96/150 marks, over halfway to rank 3, so I'm close to that commendation).