With Haze Bombs being tier 2, it's official. NO ONE will use tier 1 items anymore, maybe someone out of every few hundred will wear a piece as a novelty item or something, but there's simply no reason to make or use tier 1 items as it is.
What I'd suggest would be to make many of the upgrade paths start at tier 1.
Here's a repost for you,
tl;dr version: Haze bombs were moved to 2* specifically to make sure no lines that go to 5* start at 1*, so that players will prefer the UV shop.
The purpose of moving haze bombs to 2* is so that there isn't a 1* item that goes all the way to 5*. It's a matter of OOO thinking that crafting UVs onto items should be an enjoyable rarity, but buying UV tickets should be a better use of your money than attempting to force one via crafting.
To put it simply:
A 2* item costs 50 energy + 400 crowns + mats to craft; right now this means it averages 3k to create one.
A UV ticket costs 15k for a 100% chance of adding a UV to an item.
The rate at which UVs are applied to items is believed to be roughly 10%, with some saying it was lowered in the patch adding the UV shop.
Using the former rate, that adds up to this: You can spend 18k to make an item and apply a UV to it with 100% success, or 30k attempting the 10% chance 10 times, which MAY work out in your favor, but actually needs an average of 1.66... UVs to do so.
The shift here is towards making it logical to use the UV shop if you don't succeed on crafting a UV - it also means the logical choice is to craft an item all the way to 5*, hoping for a UV each step of the way, and then if you don't get one/get a bad one, add a UV at the UV shop. This allows the player to spend the least effort and money attempting to get the UV they want - though somebody crafting to sell may just spam tickets on the base item, getting UVs for personal use is best done once the item's at 5*. As a positive benefit, it should help remove the glut of base items sold on the market as it becomes cheaper to use UV tickets until the item becomes sellable, so less are crafted, end result being that the value of equipment should eventually decrease.
The reason Haze Bomb is becoming a 2* item is because at the current rates, it's still cheaper to mass craft them to get UVs. Once the update is applied, it will always be preferable to use the UV shop if you want a UV (and if the item is for personal use, to wait til it hits 5* to add a UV to it, in case you get what you want from upgrading it)
Understanding what I believe is OOO's reason for the update, I cannot support adding any 1* gear that has the potential to upgrade through to 5*. Which leaves all the 1* equipment lines in the game as traps for newbies, but OOO would have to change prices somewhere along the lines to make a 1*-5* line viable for the game's design.
Personally, I think the majority of 1* items will be used as part of a costume or collection from now on, but they already had little benefit anyways.