Sw:ToR Gearing up at 50

Jimbob 83

Just wondering if anyone can advise me on endgame gearing my Shield spec Powertech. (For PvE firstoff tanking)

I understand i need to save my commendations 11 per armorpiece/weapon but i have no idea where to get the armor from to use them on also same thing for my Mako who is currently in an orange 44ish modded set.

Thanks a bunch had abit of Insomnia and decided to ask the questions now and have some answers when i wake up in afew hours (Im sure other people were thinking along similar lines as the starwars site is fairly hard to find info in)

:pac:

Blowfish

It's pretty much up to you what route you want to take.

Mods wise, Crafters can train the level 50 mods from their trainer, so blue/purple versions of these can usually be found on the GTN for cheap enough. Same applies to crafting professions for off pieces etc.

Crafters which are running HM FP's can also craft purple level 51 gear if you have the cash.

If you do the Ilum and Belsavis bonus series quest line, you get access to the daily commendations which can be used to buy armoring/barrel level 51 purple mods. The quests also give enhancement and modification mods as rewards too. The daily commendation vendor also one or two decent blues which you can buy for cash, but I can't recall what slots they are for.

You can then pick up the flashpoint dailies/weeklies from the fleet and start on HM FP's. Difficulty wise, BT is easy. The only boss that ever causes anything resembling issues is the one that drops probes, though any dps/healers you run with that have half a brain will be fine and will kite/kill them as needed. Each boss has purple (level 50 or 51, I can't remember) stuff, with the last boss dropping a token for the columni level 56 bracers. The other flashpoints are apparently trickier, I haven't gotten around to doing any of them myself other than BP though as there's little incentive to.

Normal mode Eternity Vault is designed to be completable by most 50's and is designed to be puggable as the loot system will auto assign loot (level 51) to you. I haven't gone there myself yet though, so can't confirm difficultly level though.

PvP is your last option, with the WZ and Ilum dailies/weeklies giving you champion bags which either have 3 centurion commendations for saving up and purchasing centurion level 51 gear or if you are lucky the bag will have a champion token which can be swapped for a level 56 piece. If you pvp more than this, you can buy champion bags using 200 merc, 200 wz commendations. Naturally PvP gear isn't as good for PvE as the equivalent level PvE stuff, but it's more than enough to get you started, especially champion and above gear which if you have a full set of is good enough to start EV hard mode.

Venom

Op my advice is to run the Ilum and Belsavis daily missions for mod upgrades for weapons and then armor along with the tons of credits you make doing them as the top end crafted gear not only requires recipes and mats from the HM instances but will cost a fortune if you were to buy them on the AH.

I disagree with Blowfish about the PvP gear tho as from what Iv seen in game, on various forums and from guildies, the PvP armor is better in every way than the PvE armor from HM OPs which is a total joke. The PvP gear also looks far better than the PvE armor, which look like something Blizzard felt were of to poor quality to added to WoW, thrown out in the rubbish and later found in a dump by Bioware employees and used in ToR.

Bioware seriously need to sack the design team who worked on armor graphics for ToR as 90% are the worst Iv ever seen in any MMO.

Blowfish

Venom wrote: »

I disagree with Blowfish about the PvP gear tho as from what Iv seen in game, on various forums and from guildies, the PvP armor is better in every way than the PvE armor from HM OPs which is a total joke. The PvP gear also looks far better than the PvE armor, which look like something Blizzard felt were of to poor quality to added to WoW, thrown out in the rubbish and later found in a dump by Bioware employees and used in ToR.

Basically the way it works is that the different tiers have the same 'budget' for stats, regardless of gameplay type. In other words, Tier 1 pve has the same budget for stats as the pvp equivalent and the same applies for Tier 2 and 3.

Naturally, the pvp gear will always have to spend some of its 'budget' on expertise which is useless for pve. This means that the other 'core' stats on pvp gear is always going to be less than those on equivalent pve gear.

For example, I have pretty much full Champion (Tier 2) pvp gear. The chest is this, but the HM OP PvE equivalent is this which is clearly better for PvE.

Raphael

Do you know wherabouts crafted purples would come (from REing the trainer stuff, not from the Flashpoint BoP mats) would fall? Still only lvl41, but have 400 armormech, thinking about trying to grind up to purple gear to tide me over till I get something better.

Jimbob 83

Thanks for the tips, where do i get my first set of armor from i have just been modding orange stuff up till now, am i buying the armor with commendations before modding it or ?

/clueless

Blowfish

For Cybertech at least, the trainer RE'd purples are item level 50, which is very close, but not quite at Tier 1 level.

I'd imagine it's the same for Armormech, but couldn't be certain.

Venom

Raphael wrote: »

Do you know wherabouts crafted purples would come (from REing the trainer stuff, not from the Flashpoint BoP mats) would fall? Still only lvl41, but have 400 armormech, thinking about trying to grind up to purple gear to tide me over till I get something better.

At 400 skill, you can RE greens to blues to purples and make item level 22 purple mods. Saying that the rares needed for these items seem to be rather on the scarce side and Iv only gotten them from using level 340 missions from a slicer. There are said to be item level 23 recipes that drop in Hard Mode flashpoints and ops but so do the mats so I can't see a big market for them.

But and this is a major but, anyone can spend an hour or two running the level 50 daily misisons on Ilum and Belsavis making a ton of credits and get tokens to buy purple level 23 mods

Crafting in ToR is worthless imho and nothing more than a money sink as apart from biochem and cybertech, players can get better items with far less hassle from the level 50 dailies tokens, pvp tokens or raiding than can be crafted.

Blowfish

Venom wrote: »

Crafting in ToR is worthless imho and nothing more than a money sink as apart from biochem and cybertech, players can get better items with far less hassle from the level 50 dailies tokens, pvp tokens or raiding than can be crafted.

There are schematics available through raiding for producing BoE gear which is the equivalent of Tier 2 gear. That's where your market will eventually be.

Raphael

The exotech stuff, which is the T2 level crafted from armormech (seems to be statwise identical to columi), says it's BoP on torhead. Shame, would have loved to have been able to run HM flashpoints, get the mats and knock those out - would sell well to people who aren't arsed grinding content for kit.

And thanks on the armormech, may try and drum some of those out to have when I hit 50. Or at the very least I can gear my crew in them before dropping armormech for biochem, getting better than that for them seems like a waste of time (Hell, if the level 40 stuff they have at the moment looks better, might just keep it.

Edit: Looks like belt and bracers are BoE, actually, but the rest is BoP.

Blowfish

Raphael wrote: »

The exotech stuff, which is the T2 level crafted from armormech (seems to be statwise identical to columi), says it's BoP on torhead. Shame, would have loved to have been able to run HM flashpoints, get the mats and knock those out - would sell well to people who aren't arsed grinding content for kit.

Some of them aren't BoP, at first glance, the belts and bracers, though there may be more around.

Venom

Blowfish wrote: »

There are schematics available through raiding for producing BoE gear which is the equivalent of Tier 2 gear. That's where your market will eventually be.

True indeed but because raiding is a bit of a joke as Bioware has a hardon for mobs with enrage timers, you need the T2 gear to kill the mobs the schematics drop off so kinda makes them pointless :eek:

Blowfish

Venom wrote: »

True indeed but because raiding is a bit of a joke as Bioware has a hardon for mobs with enrage timers, you need the T2 gear to kill the mobs the schematics drop off so kinda makes them pointless :eek:

There is always a decent market for high end BoE items for alts etc. though.