How is CV measured?

I've been confused by this for some time now, and would like to get a better understanding of it.

CV is meant to stand for 'Combat Value', right? So why am I consistently being told lesser seeming equipment has a HIGHER CV rating than better equipment? Here's an example. I have these two shoulder armors... Plain Leather Flaps. Both are 'magic' items and both are level 20.

The one I'm wearing gives 117 armor, +86 armor and has one slot. It has a durability of 20. (This comes out to 203 armor).

The second one has 105 armor, +74 armor and +6.33 armor bonus. It has 2 slots, and a durability of 20. (This comes out to 190 total armor.)

Yet the piece that gives the higher armor is rated 239, while the one with the lower armor is rated at 337. ...how does that work? Is that +6.33% bonus for all the armor I'm wearing, and not just the single piece? Is it that the second piece has a second enchantment, and it's just looking at that rather than the overall effect of said enchantments?

Another good example is a pair of shot pellets I have. The one I'm using is Extraordinary Copper Shot. Level 16, +12 damage (+2, +5, +5 enchantments), one slot, with a CV of 146. The second is Magical Copper Shot. Level 21, 18.41 crit damage (9.6, 8.8 enchantments), one slot, with a CV of 221. Again, I don't see how the second one is ranked higher. I don't think a bonus to something that happens once in a while is better than consistent damage, nor do I think a few levels makes an item better than a higher ranking of item (magic vs Extraordinary). ...so why is it rated higher?

If I had taken things as they were being presented, that a higher CV is better, I'd be far weaker than I am now, and struggling to complete quests. That seems kind counter to what you'd want to put your players through when making a game. So what gives? I've seen even worse examples than this, but this is my problem. What exactly is the CV rating based on, and why does it seem so skewed and wrong?

 

There's a thread from a few months back (or maybe more) analyzing and unpacking the cv thing. You can do a search and look into it.

Tl:dr version: ignore cv.

 

Here is the two relavent threads on CV.

This one is is about the feel and design of the system.

This one is about the technical side of why it is useless for actually measuring character quality.

Like Novadude said, it is useless at end game and is worth than useless. It is downright misleading.

Here is a perfect example:

According to BP, the Untouchable's crap is five times better than the exo on the left, but there are tons of people who would rather have those speed gloves. BP's system is inherently flawed, but they continue to act like it somehow isn't broken.