[Armormech needs to make armor mods]

So what do you suggest Cybertech gets to replace armoring? Honestly Armoring is the ONLY reason to go cybertech.

 

Droid parts = useless, you can buy/get moddable ones from vendors/commendations/even quest rewards and since they don't change the look of the droid there's no reason not to get them

 

Ship stuff = pretty useless, most people don't do ship missions.

 

Grenades = might be useful for a few people but not marketable.

 

Mods = I've heard artificer can also make mod slot modifications at higher levels.

 

Cybertech basically has earpieces if they don't have armoring.

 

I wouldn't take the ability away from Cybertech. They'd keep it. I would just ALSO give the ability to Armormech and Synthweaving. No need for any one crew skill to have a monopoly over anything. I'd also give Cybertech back Barrels (although Armstech would get to keep them too).

 

If absolutely necessary, they could divide them up so that Armormech only gets the Aim/Cunning Armorings and Synth only gets the Str/Will Armorings, while Cyber gets all four types, but basically the balance would be that the Armor skills would offer the hulls and the armor mods, but NOT the weapon mods, and Arms would offer the hulls and weapon mods, but NOT the armor mods, while Cybertech would offer mods for BOTH types, but hulls for neither. It's the middle path, best at neither but capable of doing both at once. And of course it has the unique "flavor" items that neither of the others get, much like WoW's Engineering skill.

[Armormech, Totally worthles? (Mod'able armor Rant)]

Are they BoP? I would assume you could at least GTN them for cash. The marketplace really does need more people selling T2+ materials though.

[Mission Discoveries? how do they work?]

Yup. Like for example I got one for Slicing that returned instead of a standard lockbox, both a Modulator AND a high quality lockbox.

[is slicing worth taking over arch or underworld?]

I'm currently running Armor/Scavage/Slicing. At level 24 I have 109k credits in the bank, and will likely have 120+ by level 25. You won't be able to craft blue+ gear, at all, because nobody is currently selling T2+ Underworld materials on the GTN, but you don't need it because there's plenty of good gear out there and you'll have tons of money to buy it with. You'll make enough money to buy the very best gear for your level in half the time it would take to grind out a purple item. Even if your eventual goal is to be craft-king of the server, you're probably better off going with Slicing until you hit cap and build a nestegg, and then switching to Underworld Trading and power-leveling it from there.

[Armormech and Synthweaving are pointless]

One positive aspect of the armor making professions is being able to upgrade companions as you advance. The quest rewards you get for them are green for the first 30 levels and unless you equip them with decent updrades they just tend to die a lot .

 

Yeah, but you can give them orange gear too, especially if they can wear your hand-me-downs (troopers rock for this), and then if you have Cyber you can keep their mods fresh. You can also hand-me-down mods to them if they have the same core stat you do and have orange gear.

 

I am new to this game, so I am not claiming to be any sort of expert, but I can say that none of my armor is orange, 90% is made by me and it I upgrade any of the orange drops I have had so far they don't have the stats my armor does, Esp.

 

When you first get an orange piece it probably isn't worth much, but if you put the best mods you can find for them in they will likely outshine crafted gear at any level. It gives you some place to put all those dozens of commendations that you can't convert upwards anymore.

[Learn from my mistake! DON'T waste time with Synthweaving or Armorcraft!]

We make moddable armor too (synth here), but you have to find or buy the dropped recipes.

 

That isn't the problem, Armorers can make modable armor, sure, but they can't make the mods that go IN them. It's like selling flashlights instead of selling batteries, which is where the real money is. If you already have an orange armor then you don't need another, but you will need fresh mods every few levels. My armoring skill helps fill in a few gaps in my leveling process, but by the time I'm halfway through a world I have plenty of commendations to afford the mods that will convert my moddable gear into superior gear to the crafted stuff that I'm able to equip based on my level.

[Best money making skill???]

Dear sweet baby Jeebus, in only about an hour or two of play this morning, at level 23-24 on Nar, I went from 69K credits to over 109K credits, almost entirely from Slicing. I was both having Jorgan and the droid running missions while I cleared the Red Light district and collected nodes there. Every ten or twenty minutes I'd clear out my inventory and rack in several thousand creds. I found it best not to overshoot, to have them running missions of slightly bellow the best available, especially the droid who's a bit of a ####-up.

 

When I started the day the best I could do was 24-30something missions, so I'd send the Droid on green missions in the 17-24 tier, the lowest ones that were still green, and then send Jorgan on the ones that were orange. I unlocked the next tier up, but haven't sent anyone after them yet. I might be wrong, but I think you actually get more credits out of the green ones than you do the orange, perhaps because they are trivial you're more likely to "crit" them or something.

[Best money making skill???]

I think some of you are doing it wrong. You don't want a side character for slicing, you want a side character for Underworld or Investigation or whatever. You want Slicing on your main character, because you can not only keep missions running on the side, but also loot Slicing nodes in the field, something your level 10 mule can't do.

[Armormech and Synthweaving are pointless]

Nobody is saying one way is better than the other. The fantastic thing about Bioware's decision to go with this sort of gear system is that it allows the player to decide his path to the greatest levels of gear.

 

I am saying exactly that, I'm saying that Cybertech is definitely and measurably superior to both Armormech and Synthweaving.

 

I'm not sure I understand your argument. If you only need 6 purple mods, that means you're only gearing two pieces of equipment. Which means 2 different purple armor recipes for an equivalent level of gear.

 

Ok, fair enough, I didn't make my point clearly. What I had intended to say was that it would be easier to use Cybertech to learn to make two different types of purple mods and then crank out six of each to outfit orange gear (as I understand it Enhancement mods need to come from elsewhere), than it would be to independently learn to craft six different types of armor to purple level and then make one of each. The latter path would require on average three times more failed REing to learn all the appropriate schematics, and each attempt would tend to cost more in resources than each attempt in the former path.

 

Can anyone run the numbers on that one? Assuming a fairly generous average of only five attempts to successfully arrive at a next-tier schematic, and setting aside for the moment that in many cases the first schematic you draw isn't going to have the stats you're looking for, what would be the total material costs of constructing:

 

All level 30-ish gear:

5 Green Armoring mods -> 5 blue Armoring mods -> 6 Purple Armoring mods (to finally equip)

5 Green Mod mods -> 5 blue Mod mods -> 6 Purple Mod mods (to finally equip)

Total: 10 Green's worth, 10 blue's worth, 12 purple's worth

 

vs.

 

5 Green Chests -> 5 Blue Chests -> 1 Purple Chest

5 Green Legs -> 5 Blue Legs -> 1 Purple Legs

5 Green Gloves -> 5 Blue Gloves -> 1 Purple Gloves

5 Green Bracers -> 5 Blue Bracers -> 1 Purple Bracers

5 Green Boots -> 5 Blue Boots -> 1 Purple Boots

5 Green Belt -> 5 Blue Belt -> 1 Purple Belt

Total: 30 greens' worth, 30 blues's worth, six purple's worth

 

Which has higher material costs in total? Also, would those gear be of equivalent value at that point, or would one be stronger than the other?

[Problems killing elite story bosses]

I only just hit 23 with my Gunny, but Dorne definitely makes me feel more competitive than Aric did, I don't kill things quite as fast, but I have a lot more health while I work, and I kill things fast enough as it is.

[Alacrity vs Accuracy]

TBH I'm seeing Alacrity as more of a detriment to us. I know it sounds quite useful, getting your abilities off much faster, but on the flip side you also burn your ammo a lot faster than normal. I haven't tested this yet but that's just my initial thinking. Personally I would go for the accuracy.

 

Well, that means that you need some more personal responsibility. I mean, it's a good thing because it makes you less vulnerable to push back and interrupts, more likely to do your full damage on the attack, and able to get the whole thing off before a charging enemy can reach you, but you will have to play slightly differently, adding in an extra Hammer Shot or two into the rotation to avoid burning all your ammo as fast as possible.

[Send a crew member after Fibrous Nylite Solution?]

Yeah, it's nice that they offer it, because if you don't feel like running back to town it gives you an alternative, but it is a waste of money and they should make more of an effort to balance it out, so that the cost of using it is only slightly more than the value of the materials you get. Keep in mind, it's not as much of a rip as it seems, since you're at least skilling up that crew skill. I seem to remember when they first added these missions they only rewarded 1-2 of them, which was much worse of a ripoff.

[Armormech and Synthweaving are pointless]

If your goal is to have the best armor for your level it is far easier with armormech. You say that you have to replace your armor but you have to do the same with mods and getting them from commendations is going to keep you behind 3-4 levels.

 

Replacing my mods doesn't change my appearance, and while I may not be on the absolute cutting edge at all times, I will at least be within the competitive range. If I were Cybertech I could craft mods to stay much closer to the ideal curve.

 

The ONLY reason to not like armormech is if you want a certain look. If you want to use orange armor then armormech has nothing to offer you.

 

Exactly. Case Closed.

 

Have you tried to find 6 purple mods for you orange legs/ chest? Its much easier and much cheaper to just buy purple legs and chest. You have to upgrade your mods just as often as I have to craft a new set of armor. The difference is I can be self sufficient.

 

It would be easier to learn and make six purple mods using Cyber than it would be to learn and make six different purple Armor recipes.

[Best money making skill???]

Yeah, slicing used to give more money (mainly in the form of high quality items you could GTN for a sizable amount), but it still gives a lot of money. I'm not sure that T1 slicing missions are profitable, but by the T2 and T3 ones they're really pumping out a solid profit margin, and there are plenty of harvesting nodes around. I imagine most mission skills can be profitable though, but only if you GTN what you get rather than using them yourself. For example any T2 Underworld Trading materials you get can sell for thousands of credits each.

[Armormech and Synthweaving are pointless]

Take a piece of orange armor, put the best mods you can find in it, and an armortech can make a piece just as good that requires no mods.

 

True-ish. Except for two things. One, the orange armor you can choose a look you like, and continue to use it indefinitely, while with a non-orange piece, it's only useful for a fixed level range, any earlier and you can't equip it, any later and it's obsolete. Two, while the Armormeched piece of gear might be equal to or better than your orange piece at its specific level range, given a few levels it will become obsolete, and will need to be replaced completely for a higher cost than the mods needed to upgrade an orange armor, and you can also upgrade the orange armor in "installments", a piece at a time as you have the funds and levels required to do so, rather than needing to do it all at once. Orange is forever.

 

Also, it's easy to keep orange armor upgraded with blue Commendation mods, while blue crafted armor is ridiculously expensive to make.

 

Not really. By the time you have the commendations you've outleveled the mods on the vendors.

 

It's usually still a significant improvement over what I'm capable of crafting.

 

I'm at 222 Armor / 197 underworld / 234 salvaging. After all that, $50k sounds low. Wouldn't surprise me if my cost is closer to twice that. Every time I level, the first thing I do is go estimate the training costs for my next level, otherwise I'd end up spending every credit I have on crew missions.

 

Crafting skills aren't about making money; they're about having gear. In general, about half the armor I wear is stuff I crafted.

 

And yet I just got to Nar Shaddaa, have pretty solid gear for my level, including several pieces of orange gear (fully upgraded using Taris commendation mods, but ready to take Nar mods soon) I've got from mission rewards and commendations (and a pair of purple pants I looted on Taris), and have $70K in the bank at level 23, likely twice that by 30, even after buying a speeder or two. And I have around 120 or more in Armormech, whatever it is that can craft level appropriate Chanlon gear, I just only tend to craft the minimum needed to fill out my own gear and then craft the simplest stuff repeatedly to rank it up, belts and gloves and such.

 

If I wanted to spend as much money as you guys are talking about on my gear, it'd probably be much cheaper to just buy the fancy stuff off the rip-off "Specialty" vendors.

[Armormech, Totally worthles? (Mod'able armor Rant)]

Non modded armor is most likely easier to keep up to date than modded with only having to replace the one piece rather than the 3 mods in it.

 

No, it's far easier to keep custom gear upgraded than the static gear. Like I tend to upgrade using commendations and quest rewards, if you keep up on your quest chains they tend to produce as many useful mods per level chain as you need, and then commendation mods can be purchased for less than the cost of the full components. It does tend to be a better deal to mod/upgrade orange chests and pants than it does to upgrade the other bits though, since Armoring mods cost the same no matter the piece, even though the bigger pieces translate that into more armor points than the smaller do.

 

Really that would be the one major limitation to the modding system, I'd almost like to see them make "small armoring" mods that are like Armoring ones but can only be slotted into the more accessory bits, and since they offer lower armor value they'd have slightly lower costs, like about 75% or so.

 

One other thing that long-time beta players might miss (and I also forget sometimes) is that you can remove mods now, so basically you can "trickle down" mods to a point, like if you blow your first cache of Nar Shaddah commendations on a new Barrel for your gun, you can remove the Taris barrel and slap it on your companion's gun. When you get enough for a new Armoring, you can take the one out of your chest and put it in your legs, then the one out of your legs and put it into a glove or boot or something, which helps you keep the smaller bits upgraded without significant extra expense.

 

You're only doing half of the crafting then. You need to RE all of the gear your replacing, and it would be just as easy to RE gear that you like the look of in order to get the better versions of it.

 

Any RE'd blue gear I can make requires Multine, and Multine isn't available on the GTN, and if I ever do see it around, it's for outrageous prices, well more than the items I could make with it would possibly be worth. It'd be way more cost effective to just buy from the highway robber "specialty" vendors. I imagine that situation will level out eventually, as more characters are able to farm more vendor materials than they know what to do with themselves and flood the marketplace with them, but for now it's a mess.

 

Unfortunately, I know for certain these complaints are going to continue. For every person who becomes informed, 10 more will crop up and complain without understanding.

 

And along with those ten, there will also be five more that DO understand and still don't like it. But they will be ignored by the 1 who is "Informed*."

 

*which I understand from this context to mean "infallible."

 

I just hope they don't respond to these complaints with a nerf. The system isn't broken, and a nerf to orange gear would be bad for everyone. (And yes, a buff to crafted standard armor to make it better than oranges counts as a nerf to orange gear.)

 

I can't imagine them nerfing orange gear, what would be the point? The only reason I could see them nerfing oranges is if they add a better appearance modification mechanism, in which case it would be better for overall game balance for the completely free-form armor type to have less peak potential than the more "fixed" armor type, but so long as orange are the ONLY way to control your own appearance they can't get away with making them provide substandard performance.

 

a friend of mine made purple pants for me, it came with a purple mod and a purple armouring.... just fyi

 

So what you're saying is that if an armormech wants an armoring mod for his orange gear, he needs to make level appropriate green armors, RE them until he gets a blue schematic, make a bunch of those and RE them until he gets a purple schematic, make one of those (for well above the cost of a Cybertech making an Armoring mod), and then extract those mods from the purple armor? Sounds simple enough, compared ot just hitting "craft" on the Cybertech.

[Armormech needs to make armor mods]

I can take pride in crafting the piece of gear that looks the best on me.

 

If you say so, but there's really no justification to be more proud of that than just buying it for cash, no actual skill went into the process. You can take justifiable pride in the "fashion coordination" of picking and choosing the best pieces for your desired look, but the act of manufacturing the components is meaningless. Right at the moment there's a "wild west" element to the crafting market, but give it six months, likely less, and you'll be able to choose your favorite outfit from pics on a database site and then buy them all off the rack from the GTN, likely for less costs that it would take to learn to do it yourself (since once a crafter does figure it out, he can sell dozens of copies of that hull to offset his own learning costs).

 

There is no skill involved, there never is in crafting, even the most unskilled person can follow a crafting guide, but I can still take pride in it because thx to that my avatar will look the way I want and I will have to bother no one to achieve that.

 

That's true of this current system but certainly doesn't have to be true. You can make guides to how combat works in this game but player skill still separated good and bad players. Likewise a game can include a crafting mechanism that involves some level of actual human interaction and potential failure based on a lack of skill rather than a bad roll. Even with that off the table, better color and pattern control could allow for some element of player design credit, if instead of choosing a pre-fab armor and throwing it on, you instead have some options for swapping in shoulder-plates and accents, changing the color patterns, color pallet, and insignia options, things like that, that would be an actual creative activity. I have several characters in DCUO and consider each to be a work of art, in this game I feel like what results I've achieved have just been the best I could do with a 64 box of crayons that was missing 53 of them, including most of the primaries.

 

I was thinking of dropping Cybertech for Armormech because I cant find any orange armor sets I like, none on the market and nothing from missions thats nice looking. I'm looking forward to seeing exactly what an Armormech can make.

 

I still can't craft a single orange piece yet, if you can't find orange gear on the marketplace don't expect to have much better luck making it yourself right now. The player economy will slowly start to filter in.

 

b. Yes, armortechs cannot make armor mods. Its not going to change because you want it to. Take that away from Artifice and then someone will complain that they cannot make x type of mod for their gear and demand the same change be made for them.

 

I'm not suggesting taking anything away from anyone. Currently Cybertechs are the only ones that can make Armoring mods. I would suggest that both Armormech and Synthweaving should ALSO be able to make them, but Cybertech can continue to do so (and pick up Barrels again as well). There's no hard rules that each potentially craftable item can ONLY come from a single source, redundancies are good.

 

Unbalancing the crafting professions. Simply put they have to keep things balanced or make every item craftable by every character.

 

The fact that Armormech cannot make Armorings IS the imbalance, since Armstech and Artificing CAN make their "core" mods. The other imbalance is that an Armstech crafter only needs to train up a single schematic to peak at any level, for example a Gunslinger only needs to pick one pistol with the stats he likes, RE that to blue, RE that to green, until he gets the purple of his dreams. Likewise, a Cybertech only needs to raise the two mods types to peak and apply them to a dozen armor pieces at once.

 

Within that same level range, an Armormech would need to do the same process for not one, not two different schema-trees, but rather for up to seven individual item types. If any player can successfully craft a full set of level appropriate level 30 purples, he's not spending enough time questing.

 

d. The devs have stated several times that an appearance tab is not going to happen,

 

And also that it's one of their major priorities for after launch, so. . .

[Armormech needs to make armor mods]

You say armortech is of limited value, what value has cybertech ? Your best mods/armorings will be bested by PvE drops. While as armortech you at least end up with gear you crafted yourself, as cybertech you end up with nothing once you progress through end game far enough. Oh, sry ... you got speeder.

 

If their gear offerings are un-competitive at cap then they need to do something about that, but all along the way you'll be swapping mods constantly, while once you have a single piece of orange gear that suits you, you're pretty much set.

 

And it's not even like anyone can take any pride in crafting armor as if it were a skill of some sort, it's just hitting "craft craft craft" for your bulter-droid over and over, and then hitting "RE RE RE" until you randomly get the one you want, and then "craft craft craft" again, and so on. Once you figure out how it works (and there are guides for that) there's absolutely no personal skill investment, the only difference between a poor crafter and a "master" crafter is how much time and credits one spends clicking the crafting button.

 

If there were some level of "craft" involved, like personal choices that could alter the chance of success on an individual basis, or that could make products made by me look different than products made by you, like color or pattern controls perhaps, then sure, that'd be different, but for the time being, the only value crafting has is in the products it produces, and Armormech's products become instantly obsolete as players acquire orange gear options.

[Armormech needs to make armor mods]

The point of Armorsmech is to create the orange armors you are so fond of.

 

/Facepalm.

 

Seriously, that's what you come up with? We've already discussed that, yes, Armorsmech can make some of the orange armors, but they're available through other means, and once you find one you like, you never need another one. And that's the problem, the things the Armorsmech makes are not useless, but they're of limited value, far less than the other crew skills, a bit like a hairdresser in other games, rather than a practical "equipper". If they could make both orange hulls AND Armoring mods to put in them, and maybe a gimmick or two in addition to just the armor, then they would be far more practical.

[Armormech needs to make armor mods]

There is no good comparison to anything else but in truth you dont have to make orange gear at all as an armormech, the non orange gear is the same as orange gear with full mods.

 

If this game had appearance tabs or some equivalent system then you would be right, but it does not. In this game, orange gear is the ONLY way to control your character's appearance, otherwise you're left at the whims of what the developers decided you should be wearing at this level range, and often the best options available involve mixing crafted gear with prime reward or dropped gear on various tiers. This makes anything not orange a bit obsolete to most players who do care to not look like a clown.

 

Purple gear is moderately upgradable, but you cannot raise it's armoring level, so every few levels you'll need to make a new purple armor, which tends to take extraordinary amounts of materials to unlock, especially if you have a particular stat balance in mind. It's just not practical for even the smallest pieces of armor unless you intend to be a full time shop-keep crafter. It was much easier to keep a purple upgrade in Armstech, since you only need one type of weapon to raise to artifact level, but in Armormech you need to put forth that same effort FIVE times to get a full set of artifact armor, more once helmets become available. If you haven't already outleveled the armor by the time you can craft it then you haven't been leveling fast enough.

 

Augment slots are ok, but they aren't anything to get overly worked up about, I'd rather have a good looking set of orange armor that doesn't have an augment than be at the whims of the armor progression chart with one.

[FULL AUTO AND MORTAR VOLLEY: Blatantly Broken]

Its mirror classes. Who cares if its still a good ability. The point is the game has mirror classes and the BHs abilitys are better while the commando's is broken.

 

Or the Troopers are balanced and the BH are too over-powered, don't expect that they'll resolve this with a buff.

[Trouble Solo'ing Taris 2+]

So, wait, you were what level, and the Rakghoul was what level? I'm level 19 and just starting on Taris, so I haven't tried one of those yet, but in the space station mission I took on a few of those champion droids and did just fine.

 

Some random things you might not be doing would include: activating the damage absorption ability, letting Catman attack first to soak some early damage (and make sure all his abilities are turned on), are you well equipped? I think those are the biggies, but it could be any number of things.

[FULL AUTO AND MORTAR VOLLEY: Blatantly Broken]

The following video demonstrates these imbalances:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNE8SuPhGto

 

Wow, that guy really needs to chill out. And lose the weird pseudo European accent. He might be right, but he completely loses the audience with bull####.

 

The reason is obvious... the Trooper's abilities are not functioning correctly, such as when Mortar Volley launches a shell after the channeling time has already expired.

 

There's nothing wrong with that, the channel is the time you're actively "doing," the final shot is the tail end of that channel, once you're done "doing." Basically it's like a charged move, the channel bar is finished, the attack isn't.

 

I suspect part of the problem with this "imbalance" is that the animations are different. The BH's Rocket Punch and DfA are much more active, so it gives the impression that they work faster because they start moving instantly, but the damage seems to be applied at the same time (for example in DfA you take off instantly, but don't start firing until you reach apogee, while with Mortar you aren't going anywhere, so the time it takes for a BH to reach apogee is just spent standing around).

 

Unfortunately, as the Trooper's abilities are totally sufficient (if kind of annoying), I imagine that if there is any time-difference issue, the solution wouldn't be to remove any lag from the Trooper, but rather to add in some lag to the BH.

 

These classes have mirrored abilities but they don't work the same. That is why Sorcerers are OVERPOWERED.

 

Sorc works the same, btw, their Lightning animates before Project does, but they both do damage at the same time and finish at the same time so mechanically they're identical.

[Need Jaxo as Companion]

More Jaxo!

[Trooper Captain Title]

Yes, I must get my Lt Nerfherd up to Commander at some point!