Maybe I don't understand something, because I'm not sure where you're getting 7 to 8 shards a week for 4 alts but only 3 to 4 for a single character. I was going off PvP only and was assuming you were only ever spending the 500UC on alts, but if you're saying for the same amount played, do you mean you're assuming they're spending the same UC budget each week? Because 4 alts only spending 500UC a week is 4 shards a week total. If you assume an equal budget (say 3500 since that's what it currently costs to outright buy 4 shards), then you get at least 5 shards a week (6 every other week) where as the single character just gets the 4. But then you are still limited by how often you can buy a piece on those characters. In which case it would be 12 weeks to gear one character for the alts (maybe 11 if I didn't do it optimally, or if you just did one PvE weekly), vs 14 weeks for a single character. So yeah in that case it's faster. If you insisted on only ever spending 500UC it'd be 16 weeks. But like I said maybe I'm misunderstanding because I don't know where you're getting 7-8 from if the single character is only getting 3-4 assuming we're talking about PvP only. If you're doing both PvE and 3500 UC budget then it'd be 9-10 shards a week for alts but 5 a week for single character but the time played wouldn't be the same (since for alts you have to run the weekly on each of them, single just once) but I thought you were talking about a PvP-only route. Although I don't have any complaint about gearing being faster with alts, in fact I think that should be the case. I just don't understand why they don't simplify it and make the shards BoL.

Uh, the claim was "For someone like you know who, who has dozens of alts, it will be much faster and synergistic (I assume I don't have to do the math, but briefly, 4 characters at 500 UCs a week vs. 1 character at 3000 or so -- pretty straightforward)." That's wrong. You still have to get 4 shards on a single character before you can move the gear piece around. 4 characters at 500 UCs a week is not faster than 1 character at 3500. The 4 characters at 500 UCs a week will get 4 pieces four weeks later. The 1 character at 3500 will have a piece that day. Assuming 14 slots to fill at 4 MWS each for simplification, 4 characters spending 500 UCs a week will be 16 weeks for full set vs. 14 weeks if you buy 4 shards every week for 3500 UCs. The alts make it cheaper, not faster. I'm just saying that the claim that it's faster is wrong. But you bring up a good point here: what is the reason for making MWS character-bound and the gear BoP if you can transfer the mods anyways? Why on earth wouldn't they just at least make the gear BoL?

1) First of all, at least personally I don't care that much about BiS in unranked. But it is very much needed in ranked and I feel like people keep ignoring this when they're telling PvPers to calm down. It's a completely different beast from 8v8 and burst damage and survivability are the most important things, and having a slight advantage in health and/or damage actually does pretty regularly make a difference. Secondly, you're right that there are plenty of people who are not in BiS currently in unranked. But now with bolster being a larger gap from BiS and it taking even longer than currently to get BiS, the gear gap will be even worse than now. There will be lots of people in 230 with a scattering of 236-248 pieces, and there will be people in 258 (after the patch has been out for awhile anyways). There will be no incentive to waste UCs and shards on gear less than 258 anymore because of the steep prices for 258. And even if bolster was higher, it still doesn't bolster everything. Usually it's enough to do solid damage, but your survivability isn't as good. 2) I don't really disagree with this, I just argue for PvP because that's what I personally care about. Although I will say we don't know what all of the rotational weekly missions will be yet. I worry they'll be more heavily weighed towards PvE (similar to the daily activity for GC). a) and b) MWS are per character, NOT per legacy (as of current PTS). If you have alts you can theoretically gear them all up at the same time if you want to. You cannot gear any single character up faster. Unless you only do the UC route, but you will have to pay the steeper cost to buy more than one a week. You cannot spend 500 on each character and then 'send' the MWS to one character. They are bound to that character when you purchase it.

I guess you're the Huttball god now. My best guess is right after you scored the first time, the slinger knocked you all the way to the bottom floor from inside the goal line and the game never saw you 'exit' the goal line, so it kept thinking you were there. Either that or something weird with propulsion round scoring. Or with the ball about to explode. Who knows.

Yeah it is a bit weird that we're going from "summer of PvP" to stealth nerfs to huttball carriers, unresolved problems with backfilling/queue dropping in ranked, encouraging mat farming with the insane costs of the new crafted gear (but at the same time trying to discourage with increased games when losing for weekly?), requiring grindy PvE for new BiS gear, and then making bolster worse. I mean at least they're bolstering the augments up to the good ones now I guess. Still a 10 ilvl difference though. I mean it'd be nice to hear what exactly the vision is supposed to be here other than "make PvPers do PvE if they want to play PvP on even ground" which just seems like such a backward step. At least put it up to 252 in my opinion. And while I know it might not be possible for this patch, in the future please either bring back PvP gear (which I would prefer) or rework bolster to make it reliably set everyone at a certain ilvl (I don't even care what ilvl) and people can just adjust their tertiary stats the way they want them or something.

I don't remember having long queues last time we had PvP gear. It's possible I'm misremembering though. Only queue times I've ever had a problem with are ranked. But since it's just gear for PvP it doesn't have to be a long grind for it, and as long as all you have to do is unranked PvP it wouldn't be difficult to get at all. It is tedious to have multiple sets of gear but I still think it's a better solution then this current method. Honestly I would have had no problem if they even just kept gear the way it is now on live, but just added a new tier to GC. Reduce the UC costs for 236-248 and then add 252 and 258 at a reasonable increased price + the 248 trade in. And then have 252 and 258 also drop from crates. Maybe make it a little easier to rank GC up too. I mean I know a lot of people hate GC but I think in its current form it's not TOO bad. At least it lets you choose what you want to do. Just give NiM raiders some cool cosmetic stuff to go after or something.

I did hardcore progression raiding in WoW for years before I played SWTOR. When I started played SWTOR I didn't care for the raiding as much but got really into the PvP, so I ended up staying for that and the story. I later went back with a smaller core group of people I used to raid with in WoW to do some mythic raids, but ended up just wanting to come back to SWTOR. I've done plenty of raiding. I don't want to do it anymore. Not because I'm not capable, but because it's a massive time and scheduling commitment. Also saying anyone can do NiM Ops is absolutely not true and it has nothing to do with whether or not they can hit buttons correctly. Lots of people have small kids they have to take care of or have on call jobs where they can't make the commitment to be on and fully paying attention for 3+ hours several times a week. They might have to leave at any moment. And every serious raid group I've been apart of, unless it's a close knit group of real life friends, won't be bringing that person to raids for long if they keep having to leave or go afk. Plus there are plenty of people who can only play at non-primetime hours which would make finding a raid group very difficult. In comparison a PvP match only requires your attention for 15-20 minutes and you can pretty much play whenever you want. The exception being sometimes you won't get ranked pops at certain times of the day. But ranked still requires BiS gear if you really want to be competitive.

Is there an actual hard cap on UCs per week? I thought it was just going to increase by 500 every time but currently the first one is 500, the second 1000, and the third 1000. I didn't have enough to see what happens if you keep buying at 1000. I thought it'd be steeper every single time but now I don't know.

As others have said, [Heroic] Expel the Darkness has the markers in the wrong spots. [Daily] Firestorm only gave me command and darkside points. No rep token. [Heroic] Hold the Line is way overtuned on the Geonosian part. I also managed to bug my way inside the building with Force Leap. Video: https://youtu.be/1uZfPd-PvJU. I had pulled them over to the side of the building to get them to group up, got knocked back, leaped back to one near the side of the building and then clipped through it. I was able to leap back out but that sent me all the way to that pillar thing for some reason. Then I die.

Here's what is currently on PTS: Each piece of gear costs 4 masterwork shards (MWS), except for helm, chest, and legs, which cost 5. MH and OH are NOT available for purchase on the 258 vendor. All gear requires Hero rep except bracers and belt, which require Newcomer. You can buy one MWS per week for 500 UCs. You can keep buying more but the cost is increased to 1000 UCs until the reset (not sure if this increases any further). You can get one MWS per week from the Ossus weekly that requires you to do 4 Heroic missions. You can get one MWS per week from the rotating Weekly mission. Only one I know of is complete 4 Master FPs. Presumably there will be some PvP related ones too. MWS are bound to character, not legacy. 51 MWS for everything on the vendor. Assuming you get 3 MWS a week, it would be about 4 months to get everything except MH/OH (not including the time it takes to grind rep). To gear by MWS, you HAVE to complete all current story (assuming the daily area requires you to have completed the Ossus story). The only other option would be transferring armorings/mods across legacy (is this possible?). Other options to get 258 gear: unassembled tokens which drop from NiM GotM (not sure about who drops what) or crafting which has insane CMT costs and likely expensive NiM GotM drops. Crafting would not require you to complete story. 258 MH/OH are currently available from crafting. Now here are my issues with this: I'm hoping this one is just a mistake on PTS, but MH and OH need to be on the 258 vendor. If the only way to get those is via super expensive crafting or NiM GotM, I will never be getting them. Please tell me this is not intentional as it is an incredibly bad idea. BiS gear should not be BoE (via crafting). If getting BiS gear is a grind, it should be a grind for everyone. Only extremely wealthy players or the rare snowflake that does both NiM GotM and lots of ranked PvP will be able to get the crafted gear. Why can they bypass the grind? It sets a bad precedent and will encourage some people with too much disposable income to buy credits or flip stuff on the GTN (which I can only imagine is your intention with this). You should not be required to be caught up on story to get BiS gear. You reach level 70 well before you get to current story arcs. Why should they be disadvantaged in doing harder group content just because they want to do the story at their own pace? I have a few characters that I do ranked PvP on who haven't gotten all the way through KotFE yet, but I do intend to get through it eventually. I don't want to skip it and have the game make choices for me. But now I have to rush through it so that I'll be able to get BiS gear again. MWS should be legacy-wide. What does it matter what character I do stuff on? I'm still doing it. I don't know why you have this great system for alts but don't use it. The grind is too long. Especially if you don't like doing PvE. If you only PvP, the UC cost is quite high, especially when the price goes up to 1000 per MWS. If this is how you plan on doing gear from now on please for the love of god bring back PvP gear. I don't mind having to do SOME grind, but I'd prefer to have the choice of WHAT to grind. Why include a new complicated gearing system on top of an already complicated gearing system? Isn't this just making 230-248 gear pointless to go after? No one should spend UCs on them anymore since they have to hoard them for 258. There will be a greater gear gap then ever now that you can essentially jump straight to 258. I mean what's even the point of the 252 gear? Why would anyone waste 2 shards on each piece of those?

What? I don't think bolster should be BiS. I wouldn't be mad if it was, but that's why I'm not happy with the new gear grind. Because I don't expect bolster to be BiS. I haven't been advocating for that at all. I was just saying that bolster being increased to, say, 252 (which is way more likely than 258+) isn't going to resolve any of my concerns with the gear because that doesn't help gearing for ranked PvP at all. Which is what I care about.

Bolster doesn't mean anything as far as gearing for ranked goes unless it's 258+ which would be surprising.

That could be. I would think they'd want to change the rep requirement for pieces a bit more than it is now. Currently it's Hero for everything except bracers and belt, which only require Newcomer. Hopefully they'll split them up a bit more and (please) add MH and OH as Legend or something.

The weapons exist. You can craft them: https://i.imgur.com/G32e5e5.png. You're catastrophizing as much as anyone, just over other people's posts instead of gear. I'm not saying I'm quitting over it because I'm fully aware it's still PTS and it can change. I'm just saying if it stays that way that's going to be the last straw for me. By the way in their list for what's being tested, gear wasn't included. So I'm gonna talk about what I see now instead of waiting for them to ask about it, which they may never do.

I think solo ranked weekly should just straight up be get something like 5-10 wins and losses don't count at all. And then maybe up the reward. I don't think they can really do that with grouped since it can always be the same teams that you might just never be able to beat. I don't really care whether it's 20 or 50 games but I don't see how it's going to stop that many mat farmers. Especially since CMT costs are probably going to go up because of the insane cost for crafting the new gear.

Legs, Helm, and Chest: https://i.imgur.com/YInmwHn.png Yes 258 main and off hand are NOT on the vendor. The 252 vendor has 252 main and off hand and the crafting recipes for 258 weapons are available to purchase.

The start of the traitor stuff on Iokath still doesn't make much sense to me. It sort of feels weird to me too like they had the traitor idea but were planning on going somewhere else with it, then suddenly veered to doing something different after Iokath. Like I still don't know what exactly was the plan there as far as the Order goes. Or the hand waving of "oh yeah the gemini droid could hear absolutely everything and there's no explanation for that sorry". Also I think the stuff between Jace and Theron wasn't handled particularly well what with their falling out happening in a codex. I wish you could actually talk to him about his relationship with his dad. In fact I wish you could have more personal conversations with companions in general.

So I got on PTS today to look at the new gear. They haven't asked for feedback about it yet, not sure if they ever will, so I'm still hoping maybe the costs aren't accurate but it's so absurd. The only thing from the Ossus dailies that gives a shard is the Weekly. And you only get one. You can also get one from the timed duration Weekly. The one currently up is to do 4 Master Mode FPs, again for one shard. By the way shards seem to be character specific. They go in your currency tab but are not shared between legacy. So if you want to buy the cheaper 500 UC shard you really can only buy one once a week per character and you can't transfer them. Also there were no main hands or off hands on the 258 vendor. Only 252 had them. I'm really hoping that won't stay that way. That would mean you either have to spend big money or raid to get them. Even the implants cost 24 CMTs to craft. The Ossus Assembly Component is relatively cheap though, for Biochem it was 3 refined isotopes, 4 blue crafting mat, 2 blue grafts, and 2 purple mats for 1. RE'ing 252 gear doesn't give you anything good at all. I haven't been able to get a piece yet to see how well the mods can be transferred but I fear the worst. Oh and by the way not all pieces are only 4 shards. Three were 5. So that's 51 total shards for everything MINUS main hand and off hand since they're not on the vendor and who knows if they will be. So about 20 weeks if I assume I get 3 shards every week so 4ish months for a character to not even get all gear pieces if I don't want to overspend UCs a lot. And I will likely never get main hand and off hand if they're really not on the vendor. I suppose I can run all alts at the same time though, except not all my alts are caught up on story yet and I really don't want to be forced to rush through it just to gear them up. I'm also not sure I have it in me to grind the same dailies on multiple characters for that long. I guess I can overspend UCs sometimes but this whole system is pretty bad to me. Especially If the mainhand and offhand aren't put on the vendor. That would be the last straw for me. I'm really hoping that's not intentional. Also on PTS the daily and weekly PvP ranked missions win requirement is increased. But wins now count as 5 so if you're winning it's the same amount as before, just more if you're losing. I suppose to try and combat people queuing but not trying to win but lol with the CMT requirements for crafting those prices will go up, you'll get more mat farmers, and they'll just be in queue longer now. Edit: I will say that the ossus weekly only requires you to do 4 particular missions at the moment. They are the heroic ones, so they're tougher, but I've been able to solo them (although I'm in full 248 with 240 augs and a 50 companion). So that's not too bad after you get the rep grind done.

[Heroic] Information Appropriation includes a cutscene with at least one major story spoiler just fyi. [Heroic] Supply Heist completed but didn't give me credit in the daily area weekly mission.

Won't they just be in queue for longer now? Instead of afking through 20 games they'll afk through 50. I don't see how this helps.

They're not complaining that they're not getting the top rewards. You don't have to play arena all day every day like some people to still be decent at them, although you probably won't climb a ton. "Prepare to take the heat" is a ridiculous excuse. Honestly my experience is that a lot of hardcore ranked players (not all, plenty are decent) just constantly try to out-meme each other and act like teens desperate to be the "cool kid". And I think by lashing out at other team mates they're trying to deflect from acknowledging their own shortcomings. Of course some people really do drag a team down and there are definitely people who probably shouldn't be queuing but as long as someone is using all their abilities, has the right gear, and is clearly trying I don't think you can put all the blame of a loss on them and looking for someone to yell at is pointless. If anything you'll just make them want to keep queuing to troll. If you have actual constructive criticism then by all means share that with them but just throwing a tantrum is stupid and way too common. I mean I've seen otherwise good players with decent rating get globalled before just because they were caught off guard and weren't expecting it. If it's something that happens to you constantly yeah it's something you need to change in your play style but let's not pretend that good players never make mistakes. They just make less of them. And making one mistake seems to be all it takes to trigger a "go kill yourself". There's really no excuse for it.

No one knows because they've been completely silent on the issue. It was certainly never on PTS or in the patch notes which would suggest bug but they also haven't acknowledged it being an issue at all so who knows. Why they would want to stealth change it I have no idea.

It matters for ranked a lot. I wouldn't say it's required for unranked at all, but it does help. Personally I'm going to completely stop playing ranked until I get 258. But honestly the grind looks so long I don't know if I'm going to bother. You will see people in PvP with the new gear though. Anyone desperate to climb in rating will be buying that as soon as possible to try and get an advantage over people still queuing in 248.

Don't tell me to lobby to get what you personally want. Bolster would be not terrible but I'd much rather have separate PvP and PvE gear again. Or to leave the current gearing system and just add the new tier to how it works now. I don't trust them to make bolster work correctly and not be exploitable. And I'm fully aware the system isn't finalized yet, which is why I'm complaining about it NOW when they might still do something about it. I said it might take a couple weeks. I'm not talking about immediately at the start of the patch. I'm talking when we are well into it, new level 70s can straight up buy BiS. You can keep saying how people don't need the gear, which is true. Literally no one NEEDS the gear. Nightmare raiders don't even need it. If that's what you really think then why aren't you arguing to not introduce a new tier at all? And do you honestly think there aren't people with more money than sense who won't buy the best gear ASAP? When have rich people ever been reasonable spenders? Of course they're going to buy the Ferrari they want but don't need.

So if you're not supposed to reach BiS gear within 4 weeks as a new player, you should be against this gearing system because new level 70s will be able to get BiS gear by buying credits and then purchasing the gear from crafters. It might take a couple weeks once 5.10 releases for all the components to be for sale but that will be a thing that happens once people are routinely killing NiM GotM.