max req 8 items and PvP

I am wondering,

why are there max req 8 items in the game??

Since these can also be used in PvP, doesnt this give a slight advantage to those who have collected up all the req 8s they can find? That is, they may have a chance at a few different builds because they can play with req 8 items. Is this what the top guilds do?

also for that matter, you can have "perf" req 5 items and such, that allow for some more play.

i would imagine guilds use these little things to their advantage... and that's why i notice a lot of the top guilds use PvE chars instead of PvP chars, especially for wars and monks.

req 8 doesn't matter at all, maybe for tactics shields and focii...but if you're a weapon user, you're not going to pack only 8 weapon mastery points....( possible exception: cripshot )

Req 8 items are for people who like collecting weapons. No serious monk or warrior would only be running 8 in a weapon-related stat. You could make an argument for req 7/8 shields, but the attribute points you save by doing that aren't that significant.

Top guilds use PvE characters because they're pretty and they used to need PvE characters for things like armor swapping, so a lot of PvP players have PvP-ready PvE characters sitting around.

I've kept my PvE monk PvP ready up to Nightfall. With the current itemcreator, its way easier to keep a pvp char. I now have a constant pvp monk char (currently has 2 skillpoints I believe ).

Any attributepoints you save are significant imho, so I disagree on this point with Savio. But its not really worth having the investment for a weapon or shield imho. The only monk that already will have some points in those lines, is a [skill]Shield Bash[/skill] monk. But I think they only use Tactics as a dump for remaining attributepoints.
I've yet to see a caster build that really warrants an investment of 7 or 8 in tactics or motivation.

Some Builds (Paragon e.g.) don't require use of the weapon excpept for building up adrenaline. Having a low req weapon would allow you to do slightly more damage without having to invest much in e.g. Spear Mastery. But maybe in that case using a no-req weapon (Winderday anyone) would be just as good.

As long as you use your weapong to actually do damage (typical Warrior) there's no need for low req though.

Yeah, paragons will have no need for high attributes in spear mastery unless he/she is an offensive paragon. Having enough points to meet your requirement is sufficient. Too bad req 8 weapons are rare in Nightfall, so req 9 is your best bet.