Gear isn't the end all be all from what I have seen at my local gym.
If you ain't got genetics then even large amounts of gear aren't gonna make you look freakish or even very muscular to alot of people.
There's a guy at my gym that trains his ass off! He also has taken as much as 1500mgs a week of test and deca on top of that and he has a hard, muscular and pretty impressive build, BUT he's not that big nor is he all that strong. As far as I know he's been hardcore into bodybuilding for +10 years and after almost a year of consistent training I am stronger and bigger albeit not as lean as him. I have done "1" 3 week cycle of 1-AD.
What's that tell you?
It tells me that his genetics for strength and size are only average or sub-average at best and through massive amounts of roids and training over time he has been able to build himself up to what I would consider a somewhat impressive natural look.
I love it when guys try to shit on guys who use steroids. It seems to me that they either think they are holier than thou, or have crappy genetics and won't use steroids to help improve their naturally crap genetics, or have resigned themselves to not using and instead crapping on people who use steroids that may or may not have better genetics than them.
It's genetics and hard work, but if you ain't got pretty good genetics then you probably won't get bigger or stronger even on large amounts of steroids than a natural guy that has better genetics and trains hard.