you are misunderstanding, you are getting the mods and enhancements from buying WH gloves/boots not BM ones. so the expertise is the same as WH because the armorings in BM have 50 expertise just like the WH armorings. the only stats you are gimping are 33-154 armor, 15 endurance, and 15 main stat.

yes, eventually if you want the WH armoring then you will need to later buy the expensive piece. but for my alts i'm not worried about it with the difference being so minimal. the difference for both my mara and op is only 118 armor , 15 endurance, and 15 strength/cunning. so really it's not worth me putting the extra time in. i might do it eventually when all 3 are geared out and RWZ coms are stacking up without much to do with them. and i'm sure you will need the shells to be able to upgrade to the next tier when it comes out. which will not matter too much depending on if i like the looks or not. if they are smart the next tier of gear will just be empty shells. so to not further the gear gap of fresh 50's. as far as your question about belt/bracers. there are no armorings with expertise on them that are not tied to slot. what some people are doing is using the PVE armorings with BM or WH mod in them to give them a stat boost while retaining some expertise(50-60 expertise depending on which mods you use). some people swear by it and some think it's not worth the expertise hit. i haven't done any of the number crunching myself to be able to tell you for sure which is the best way to go.

yes, that's stated in step 1

updated a couple things

ok added armor differences to the post..

ahh.. that is one thing i forgot to put in there.. i'll have to look at the armor values, but i believe for my mara it was around 50 per piece. i'll look at it and edit the original post.

glad i could help

glad i could help.

this depends. i'll give you 2 scenarios. 1: they like the look of BM gear over WH so they are using BM shell instead. 2: they are using the cheap easy way of gearing out.. for that i'll referr you to my other post instead of typing it all out. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=499289 hope this answers your question.

yes, you might lose a small amount of end and main stat. that depends on the class and gear set. but generally what i find is the gloves and boots have the mods with higher main stats and small amount of power/crit. whereas, the chest/legs generally has the mods with the lower main stat and higher power/crit. i believe the enhancements are prettymuch the same but swapping acc/alacrity for surge.

I have 3 50s. and here's my post on how i'm gearing my 2 alts quickly. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=4801278#post4801278

no, if you were to ask any hardcore pvp player they will be taking those same mods and enhancements from gloves/boots to remod their WH gear to optimize it. what you are doing is getting rid of useless stats like accuracy/alacrity and replacing them with power/surge or crit/surge to min/max your gear. we have been doing this since back pre 1.2. for empire everyone used to have to buy champion IA enforcer gloves to pull out power/surge enhancements to remod our BM gear.

lol, this is true, i saved all my BM gear from my sorc to do this with my sage.. since i had to buy all new BM pieces to get the optimal WH pieces after 1.2. but the only reason i didn't put that in is because i'm mainly tanking to people with their 1st 50 or people re-rolling a new class not a retred of their current class.

thank you

ok.. i've posted this as a reply in a couple of gear threads and figured i'd post it as it's own thread. hopefully some people will get something out of it. the gear grind is there and it's not going anywhere. but you do have a rather quick option to gearing out. i'm currently using this option with my two alt 50's. I went the long way with my sorc main to get full WH. max out RWZ coms and WZ coms between 10-50. then at 50 buy WH main-hand weapon. if you are mara/merc or sent/gunslinger be sure to pull the BM mods out and put in orange off-hand before buying the WH one. this way you have WH main-hand and BM off-hand. get recruit gear and suffer for a week or less until you are full BM. augment your full BM gearset. at this point you are completely viable in pvp, not optimal but viable. remod your BM gearset with WH mods and enhancements that give power/surge or crit/surge depending on your needs and how close you are to the crit cap. this is done by either getting WH boots or gloves depending on your class. these pieces are the cheapest at 2000 rwz coms. if you are gearing an alt and have a main that is fully geared and doing ranked, then you can use your spare RWZ coms to do this and transfer them to your alt with legacy gear. replace your BM with WH ear, implants, belt, bracers. then augment them. in the end you will have BM gear with WH mods and enhancements. this means the difference between your gear and a fully remodded WH set will be 15 endurance and 15 main stat. that difference is very slight and will not make a difference at all in battle. and you will be able to obtain this set a lot faster then grinding the whole WH set. thank you handsolod for reminding me about the differences in armor value. here they are for the different classes. jug/gaurdian - 154 armor mara/sent - 118 armor IA/smuggler - 118 armor SI/JC - 81 armor BH/trooper - 33 armor again for me, not a game breaking difference. hopefully this helps some people.

ok, i'm going to weigh in on this subject a little. the gear grind is there and it's not going anywhere. but you do have a rather quick option to gearing out. i'm currently using this option with my two alt 50's. step 1: max out RWZ coms and WZ coms between 10-50. then at 50 buy WH main hand weapon. if you are mara/merc or sent/gunslinger be sure to pull the BM mods out and put in orange offhand. this way you have WH main-hand and BM off-hand. step 2: get recruit gear and suffer for a week or less until you are full BM step 3: augment your full BM gearset. step 4: remod your BM gearset with WH mods and enhancements that give power/surge or crit/surge. this is done by either getting boots or gloves depending on your class. these pieces are the cheapest at 2000 rwz coms. step 5: replace your BM with WH ear, implants, belt, bracers. then augment them. in the end you will have BM gear with WH mods and enhancements. this means the difference between your gear and a fully remodded WH set will be 15 endurance and 15 main stat. that difference is very slight and will not make a difference at all in battle. and you will be able to obtain this set a lot faster then grinding the whole WH set. hopefully this helps some people.

did some testing with my mara and i'm now sure that was the case... thanx for a info

i did not know that... that could be he is anni.. gonna have to try to pick up a carnage spec mara and see how we fair.. this is why i didn't call out hacking.. little things like this i didn't know...

we are playing ranked wz and are encountering the inability to beat some opposing teams to objectives. i'll give you a couple examples. in a game a NC we had pred from mara and a sorc and sin using force run, but the opposite team had 4-5 players inside the south hut capping before we could get there. in huttball against the same team and a one or two other teams. we are using mara pred and a sin force run to try and get the ball, but the other team is getting there by the time our sin can barely get to the acid pit. are there speed boosts that we are missing? i don't want to falsely call people out for speed hacking, but i don't know of any other way to get more speed then mara pred + sin/sorc force run.

but has yet to work well in an mmo. the mmo crowd is a little different then the fps crowd. the mmo crowd generally wants that uber gear to show they are good and put their time into it.

Prophecy of 5 is the only one i've seen get queue times to log in.. then there's fatman

re-read the last part of the sentence before the one you quoted... i list the specific classes that benefit from it... lol

If you pvp alot while leveling then you should be valor lvl 40 at chr lvl 40.. so you can start trading in for ranked coms at lvl 40. by 50 you should be maxed in both.. 3.5k ranked 2k wz with that you can either buy a couple small WH pieces or just your WH main-hand. i suggest the main-hand, especially if you are mara/sent or merc/gunslinger. this is because you buy the BM main-hand and rip the mods out before trading in for WH version. then plop those mods into an orange off-hand. now you have WH main-hand, BM off-hand, and the rest recruit gear at fresh 50. by doing this it gives you a decent start. As far as the in recruit gear, don't worry it doesn't last long.. My op healer was in recruit gear for all of 3 days. by the 4th he was full BM. he just hit 50 a week ago.. and now i've gotten 2 more WH pieces since..lol

Your problem is fatman it's self. You have a server that's bursting at it's seams. You are going to have A LOT of bad players on your server. This is one of the many reasons i chose to stay on my server when most of the decent players went to fatman so they could get fast queue times. I'd rather wait 30 min and do crewskills between matches then play nothing but bads all day. When that happens you get an inflated ego, and think you are better then you are.Then once you run into a good team that rolls you, it's like a slap in the face. I'd very much rather play pug matches on a dead server then lose my edge. Those matches force me to play harder then I normally would have to. Therefor, keeping my skills sharp.

my suggestion is to find a pvp guild willing to work accept your play schedule and have you on a team until the x-server/solo ques are implimented