Guild Wars 2

Just started playing and tried some spvp yesterday, it was rather confusing ? could someone explain the system of weapons/amour to me.

I understand that when you enter the hearts of mist you get boosted to 80 and get a full set of armor and “pvp” versions of your equipped weapons. But when I leveled in “rank” I got a chest with some more weapons, what are they for? If I can get all different weapons/armor from the vendor guy, what’s the meaning with the extra weapon/armor from the chests? (The little bonus thingy you get from leveling).

And if you 80 with a full set of something, would you still be using the heart of mist armor or can you use your own?

Basically when you have bought yourself Spvp gear and got the runes, sigils etc you like all there is left is just PvP for fun. The gear you get are just skins, if you want to look different you can use those to change your gear’s skins. There is no difference in stats at all just like exotic lvl 80 gear has similar stats on all gear.