Anyone else always losing their "good" loadouts every time you try taking it out?

Whenever I take anything other than a Looter mark 1 and level 1 shield and a normal weapon I basically die in PvP every time. Sometimes its ganks, sometimes its people pretending to be friendly and then they shoot you in the back, sometimes it's fair fights.

I'm not finding stuff often enough to be able to replace them so I resort back to either free kits or generic level 1 white guns again. I guess I don't know good areas to loot because I haven't found anything amazing yet and I'm level 17. The one blueprint I found is for a tier 3 weapon that needs gunsmith 3.

It's at the point where I don't even want to try taking out anything decent anymore because I ALWAYS lose it lol. It's like the game knows you equipped a few good items, and by good I mean level 2 shield and like an anvil 3/4 and a renegade I happened to find in a gun case heh.