Commando Battlemaster Gear

[BorrowedTune]

Well, I finally hit valor 60 a few days ago and it's time to get serious about my gear. Hopefully this thread will be a guide of sorts for some and open a discussion on a few key issues as well.

 

We have 4 sets available: Combat Medic, Eliminator, Combat Tech and Supercommando. The one set we don't need to discuss any further here is the Supercommando set as it is clearly for Vanguard tanks.

 

The first consideration regarding picking up gear sets is the set bonus:

 

• Combat Medic: (2) Reduces cooldown of Reactive Shield by 3 sec. (4) Reduces cooldown of Advanced Medical Probe by 1.5 sec and Bacta Infusion by 3 sec.
  
• Combat Tech: (2) Increases duration of Neural Surge by 0.5 sec and reduces cooldown of Tenacity by 15 sec. (4) Increases crit chance of Stockstrike by 15%.
  
• Eliminator: (2) Reduces cooldown of Concussion Charge by 5 sec. (4) Increases crit chance of High Impact Bolt by 15%.
  

 

Combat Tech's set bonus is pretty much for Vanguards since Commandos do not have Neural Surge and tend not to use melee attacks very often. So, if you decide to pick up Combat Tech gear for your commando, the set bonus will not be the reason. Clearly, the 4 piece bonus on the Eliminator set is quite nice for DPS Commandos and both bonuses on the Medic set are useful for healers. As far as mixing sets to get two different 2-piece set bonuses (and forgoing the 4-piece bonus), I don't see much viability here for Commandos. Even in some hybrid build that mixes healing and DPS, the alternate 2-piece bonuses are either useless (Tech) or not so great (Eliminator).

 

Now for stats. I'm not going to crunch alot of numbers here... you can whip out the calculator and do that yourself. What I will do is give you the bottom line observations on the different sets because it becomes quite clear what the main differences are once you compare.

 

• All 3 sets give you the same amount of Aim (our primary stat) and Expertise.
  
• Eliminator and Medic sets give you the same amount of Endurance. Tech sacrifices some endurance (-32) for some added Power (+34).
  
• Combat Medic gives you Alacrity over Accuracy.
  
• All sets give the same amount of Surge (this comes from off-hand and implants).
  

 

Now, here is where things get interesting and you have to make a choice. That choice is whether you want to stack Crit or Power. The items in question are the Main Hand Weapon, the Off-hand Weapon and the 2 Implants. Choosing the Combat Medic gear will give you +247 Crit. Eliminator items will give you the same bonus but in Power. The nice thing about these items is that they do not affect your set bonus. Also, remember that you can add +34 Power from the Combat Tech gloves/helm if you don't care about the 4-piece set bonus.

 

Of course, what you decide to do here, Crit vs. Power, will affect other choices, like what adrenal or relic(s) you use.

 

Lastly, let me make note of one more point. You've PvP'ed like a madman and assembled your full Battlemaster set... but guess what? You still don't have the best PvP set in the game. Not even close. The best possible PvP set is made from swapping item mods stripped off of PvE Rakata gear and replacing those sub-par PvP mods for better stats. You have access to 2 item mods per piece that can be switched (the 3rd, which has the Expertise, is not available to be customized). So, get cracking on those Hard Mode Operations.

Edited February 2, 2012 by BorrowedTune

[BorrowedTune]

So, what do you guys think? Crit or Power? What builds would benefit the most from more Crit or Power? Or do you think it would be better to split the two more evenly?

 

My initial thought is that Medics and AS would benefit the most from added Crit and Gunnery from Power.

 

I also wonder how a DPS Gunnery build would do with the Combat Medic set (with all that Alacrity). I imagine you could dish out some pretty serious damage spamming super fast Grav Rounds but, on the downside, you'd probably run out of ammo way too fast and be constantly at the lowest regen rate.

[HileyQuiggley]

I really could be used in any way using Gunnery spec. For Assault I would want Crit for sure. Gunnery myself I think I would try and go for Alacrity, Since I open with FA and use my Grav's to unlock it for extra dmg. I would want that as soon as possible. Just me though, you could go any way using Gunnery. Assault for sure Crit though.

[Fight]

I really appreciate your in-depth approach, it does however seem that the best way to go is still 4 piece eliminator at least, that 15% crit on a pretty much always on CD ability seems the only viable bonus.

 

The real question is, if you have a set of rakata (doubtful that you will get two in the near future with guildies gearing up and so on) and are not willing/able or cannot afford swapping mods frequently, is it better to just use that instead of battlemaster? Is there much of a loss using your PVP gear in PVE with the rakata mods in it?

[BorrowedTune]

I haven't had any problems doing HMs in my standard champion gear. A PvP set with Rakata mods would be very nice for just about any activity with an edge, obviously, towards PvP. Only the snobbiest of the PvE snobs would give you a hard time about showing up in your BM/Rakata mod set.

 

But yes, there are some dedicated min/max PvP'ers who use builds that benefit from maybe 1 or 2 pieces of PvE gear for the added stats. A couple PvE pieces in the mix aren't going to affect your Expertise too much.

 

Or... if you are a Jedi Sentinel and don't want to wear that lolhat.

Edited February 5, 2012 by BorrowedTune

[Red-Patriot]

For gunnery I've been using a 2 piece columi eliminator bonus (15% crit on grave round) with a 3 peice pvp eliminator set. You lose about 90 expertise but it's worth it. Then your crit on grav round sits at about 50% and you can benefit from the surge rating from the battlemaster medic implants

[Kokkos]

Well.. Lots of things to point on here.

 

I have only played gunnery so that is what i will base this on. You will want crit and lots of it, there is however a diminishing returns on that (and every other stat) so stacking to much isnt good either. Beacuse of ammo regen and burst dmg you will want to keep a healthy amount of crit (and ofc surge since you are critting a lot).

Alac is usually a stat you want to avoid, it dont reduce the global cd so even if you fire a shot faster, you cant do more skills in a given time anyway. I can see the point in stacking it so your casted shots get finished faster so you can start moving faster, but to give up other stats over that very small advantage is REALLY not worth it.

 

As gunnery you should use 2 tier pieces of pve gear. Columi and Rakata gear gives 15% crit to Grav round, and is a bonus you just cant give up.

The best bonus on the eliminator set is the 2 set bonus and you still get that while using 2 pieces of PVE gear, 5 sec less cd on aoe knockback (bringing this down to 15sec talented is extremly nice)

With the pve bonus i am sitting on 55% crit on grav round when i have the smuggler buff, around 82% surge. This will probably get lowered a bit when i get more BM pieces. Given me a possibility to change some of my items for surge/power items in stead.

 

Also, You dont "need" more then 105% hit to not miss with tech attacks on people that arent stacking defense (which is nobody)

[R-TrAiN]

really they can get DR right on that but not on stuns? SWTOR is pretty much garbage for pvp atm