Lets address the black sheep BW is ignoring.

[Brebre]

I don't think that biochem should be nerfed, they are entitled to their perks for putting the time and effort into their crafting profession. BW needs to come up with a way of providing the other professions with end game perks as well in order to get rid of the unbalance. Right now Biochem is the ONLY profession that provides a perk that is useful for raiders and is why so many are switching over to it. Providing an end game perk to all professions will at least make it seem worth the while. I am currently armstech and its horrible lol.

[Monoth]

The only thing I could think up that might be equal to unlimited stims is if Sythweavers and Armormech crafters could make a item that applied to their gear only be it PvP gear or Operation Gear that would make it's condition 100/100 forever, so no more repair bills....

 

Armstech could make an item applied to only their weapon be it a pvp weapon or operation weapon that would boost its damage by say 5%

 

Cybertech make their gernades crazy OP like a nuke gernade but give it a 10 min CD making it a one shot deal in warfronts...

 

 

Thats all I could come up with

Edited February 13, 2012 by Monoth

[ikinai]

The only thing I could think up that might be equal to unlimited stims is if Sythweavers and Armormech crafters could make a item that applied to their gear only be it PvP gear or Operation Gear that would make it's condition 100/100 forever, so no more repair bills....

 

Armstech could make an item applied to only their weapon be it a pvp weapon or operation weapon that would boost its damage by say 5%

 

Cybertech make their gernades crazy OP but give it a 10 min CD making it a one shot deal in warfronts...

 

 

Thats all I could come up with

 

 

Why not just to the users gear? Why would it have to be operations or pvp only? Why not crafted gear or how about just say for bound gear, that way it's whatever the person wants to wear without some silly restrictions.

Edited February 13, 2012 by ikinai

[Csdabest]

Its does suck. Its like the only crew skill that is worth having and gets its own little perk. Iwish Syth weavimh you could wear any robe despite heavy armor setting

[Monoth]

Why not just to the users gear? Why would it have to be operations or pvp only? Why not crafted gear or how about just say for bound gear, that way it's whatever the person wants to wear without some silly restrictions.

 

Thats what I meant, just wanted to emphasize end game gear so it would be valuable once you stop wearing crafted and loot gear.....

[Vovatoro]

I think that biochem is fine the way it is ( or actually was). The problem lies with other professions being useless. In wow alchemists had exact same advantages as in swtor (prior to stupid biochem nerf) the difference being is that other professions provided more benefits. I think that other professions deserve a buff instead of nerfing the viable profs right now.

 

Example: Synthweaving make recipes more available that actually get you gear you can use and if it uses some crafting material that drops of bosses (especial raid bosses) crit chance needs to be A LOT higher. I think augment slot is a great bonus for synthweavers but the problems with it need to be fixed. Armortech same thing. Armstech and Artifice I'm just at a loss how you can fix those. Remove from game and add to synthweaving and armortech?

[dipstik]

dont synth and armor both get to make rakata gear?

[rigormortua]

I think part of the problem lies in the availibility of resources for all other classes except bio. find them is next ot near impossible. you are constantly send your comps on missions just gather basic materials. material supplies are in short supply and heaven forbid someone try to harvest the item and cannot. that item is locked right there no oneelse can harvest it. How about the intial character be able to select one started gathering ability and more evenly distrbute availibilty of those materials. It's just a thought..

[vulup]

allow everyone to use reusables and no one will keep Biochem

 

I supose the implants are their "perk" but dailies allow us to get the rekata ones sooo

 

 

Give Biochems rakata implants they can crit with an augmentation slot to make them bis if everyone can use reusable consumables

Edited February 13, 2012 by vulup

[joeypesci]

Lets just lay this out on the table. The real reason Biochem is such a "must have" crew skill, and for what ever reason BW refuses to address. Reusable Adrenals Yes any other non-biochem player can use blue adrenals for the same effect. But at a 15second duration, it is not economically feasible for me to buy and use blue adrenals. Yet if I don't use adrenals at all, then I am putting myself at a definite disadvantage compared to those that do.

 

On my server a stack of 10 adrenals sells for 110k (may be a bit over-inflated, depending on each servers economy). So if i wasn't biochem we are talking about me spending 400-600k a night to pvp or raid. I would really enjoy doing a different crew skill, but until this is addressed there is no way I would ever drop biochem for another crew skill.

 

My only real suggestions to fix this would be,

1. Make all reusable items tradeable and useable by anyone (yes this would mildly hurt profits of biochem as they wouldn't be able to price gouge on blues. But no other crew skill can do the same anyhow)
   
2. remove all reusable adrenals from the game.
   

 

nothing beyond these two would ever make me switch from biochem.

 

They already had the reusables as tradeable and it didn't work. It ruined the Bio economy because once you buy one, you don't need to buy another how is that going to make things better. Limiting the reusables is a good idea. The consumables makes for more business.

[settix]

Why is it ok for biochem to be the only craft that sells finite use items usable by everyone in the game? I just don't understand why players think it would be economy breaking to let everyone use the reusable items. It's as though the players here think that biochem carry's the entire economy, which sadly may be the case atm, but isn't how it should be.

 

As I said earlier. If this train of thought is kosher, then allow synthweavers the ability to make Rakata raid quality gear. But it only lasts a day and then deteriorates.

 

Trying to balance crafts that all have unique items usable by only those with the craft will be a nightmare. How do you balance a set of armor with crit augment slots that requires syth/armor to use, thus you would get those stat bonuses 100% of the time; against a reusable adrenal/medpack that is only up some of the time, and situational.

 

You could eventually balance them all out somehow. But it would be like balancing a plate on top of a knife. It's much easier to:

 

• Make all crafted items tradeable and usable by anyone
  
• Bump up all of the crafted items to be viable and desired end game
  

 

This will allow my armstech guild mates to help out my armormech guild mates. Biochem's will buy mods from cybertech's and those cybertech's will buy the reusable items from biochem.

 

People will argue that this will make the market stale as there are no consumables to keep the market fresh. But new characters are constantly being leveled. Crafters can sell lower level items to these new characters as well as end game items once they reach the end game.

[angrydurf]

the whole point of having a certain profession is you get a PERK,

 

but keep up the whining people, BW will nerf the hell out of biochem so that no one bothers to take it at all because lets face it who wants a skill that has no perks, while all you lazy people want the same benefits of biochem without actually having to take biochem..

 

and did it occur to you, if EVERYONE has the same stims/adrenals/re-useables, everyone gets the same boost, so basically Bw might aswell just give all of us a permanent buff on our chars equal to the stims, and scrap biochem all together, mebbe then peeps be happy

 

and if you want other professions so badly you complain biochem takes up space because you HAVE to have it,, make some alts with your gathering skills and use your main for 3 skill professions instead,

 

The issue is no other profession does get a perk at all commensurate with what biochem gets. Biochem gets better sales due to selling consumables, every other profession if they can sell anything will sell a given Item once to a given character, Biochem gets to sell them over and over and over. Biochem also gets their own reusable Stims/Adrenals so they don't have to buy them or the mats and Stims/Adrenals are usefull at all levels of content. No other crew skill offers that.

 

Why have gear? why not just have everything scale off level? It's the same strawman argument as if reusable stims are available it's just like a flat stat buff. This is not to say that there shouldn't be uniqueness crew skills but they need to either be perks for sale and trade or perks for the character. No one else gets perks commensurate to reusable Stims/Adrenals.

 

Uhm you can only have one crafting crew skill. You can't stack them like that.

 

I get the idea that some people think crew skills should have tangible perks and not just be means to make and sell items to others. That's fine, I even agree to a degree. The point is however that the other crew skills do not have such perks and due to the structure of the skills it would be difficult to add them as they primarily create gear not buffs and gear is replaced at higher levels of play buffs are not.

[Elrenia]

actually to say biochemists get to make more sales and money than any other craft because they can sell stims etc.. is completely wrong.. on my server the materials you need to make a stim, which is alot, you make more money from selling the materials than you do from any stim.. and im talking FAR more, so in actual fact the skill that makes the money (on my server at least) is bioanalysis, not biochem Edited February 13, 2012 by Elrenia

[Hydrolix]

I find the entire concept of nerfing to be odd. So in this case everyone wants to be bio because it is giving a benefit that is so much better than the benefits gained by going with a different crafting skill.

 

So why is the initial urge to nerf bio? Why aren't we talking about making the other crafting skills something that people also want to have?

 

Wouldn't it be more beneficial if every craft skill had some device like this that balanced everything out? Maybe artificers have a crystal that is +50 but you have to be 400 art to use it, something similar with the other professions.

 

Making it so that everyone wants to be a profession that benefits their play style seems a lot more appropriate than hey this one prof is awesome and all the other suck, so let's make it suck too.

[angrydurf]

actually to say biochemists get to make more sales and money than any other craft because they can sell stims etc.. is completely wrong.. on my server the materials you need to make a stim, which is alot, you make more money from selling the materials than you do from any stim.. and im talking FAR more, so in actual fact the skill that makes the money (on my server at least) is bioanalysis, not biochem

 

Inflated materials prices is a problem all crafting crew skills face though. People just grinding out professions with purchased materials definitely do drive up mat costs. Though it doesn't change the fact that a Biochem has a far larger market of potential sales than any other profession.

[FriarChuggs]

Adrenals and Medpacks are the two OP parts of Biochem, because it isn't economically feasible for other crafts to purchase them, and they provide a very significant benefit. There are three good solutions to this problem, I will list them in my order of preference:

 

1) Best solution is have Adrenals produce stacks of 5-10, and medpacks produce in stacks of 3-5. Boom. Done. It's now economically feasible to keep up with a biochem if you are something else, but biochems still get the perk of saving loads of credits on buying adrenals/meds/stims.

 

2) Make Biochem a universal skill, so all toons can have it and still have their three other crew skills.

 

3) Make reusables BOE. This makes Biochem really boring, and leads to an immediate sharp spike in demand for reusables, followed by a complete collapse of the biomat/biochem markets and almost no one being biochem anymore.

[havok_bloodcraft]

atl level 50 I can make 280k from dailies only every day. so quit whining about having to buy something because you can get all the "free" money you want. Also pvp enthusiasts pay no repair bills for their gear. And finally if they take away my reusables I will farm all the bio mats all day and never sell the stims/adrenals because I will need them or just be mad enough to make sure you don't have them. because making reusable available to everyone ruined beta because one time sale and taking them away is just gonna make you have to be biochem to have any at all.

 

P.S. Good luck with your vendor sold stims after they nerf bio again.

Edited February 13, 2012 by havok_bloodcraft

[havok_bloodcraft]

Why is it ok for biochem to be the only craft that sells finite use items usable by everyone in the game? I just don't understand why players think it would be economy breaking to let everyone use the reusable items. It's as though the players here think that biochem carry's the entire economy, which sadly may be the case atm, but isn't how it should be.

 

As I said earlier. If this train of thought is kosher, then allow synthweavers the ability to make Rakata raid quality gear. But it only lasts a day and then deteriorates.

 

Trying to balance crafts that all have unique items usable by only those with the craft will be a nightmare. How do you balance a set of armor with crit augment slots that requires syth/armor to use, thus you would get those stat bonuses 100% of the time; against a reusable adrenal/medpack that is only up some of the time, and situational.

 

You could eventually balance them all out somehow. But it would be like balancing a plate on top of a knife. It's much easier to:

 

• Make all crafted items tradeable and usable by anyone
  
• Bump up all of the crafted items to be viable and desired end game
  

 

This will allow my armstech guild mates to help out my armormech guild mates. Biochem's will buy mods from cybertech's and those cybertech's will buy the reusable items from biochem.

 

People will argue that this will make the market stale as there are no consumables to keep the market fresh. But new characters are constantly being leveled. Crafters can sell lower level items to these new characters as well as end game items once they reach the end game.

 

the reusables can be passed around meaning you only ever need 1 per faction on each server eg if you have 8 lv 50's on empre and the reusables did not require biochem you could just keep mailing them to whichever character you are on. so not just one time sale per character but it could easily be as bad as one time sale per account.

[Shatteredstar]

I find some of these posts absolutely insane.

 

Someone earlier said it best, Bioware probably will take the lazy route and just nerf it into oblivion, likely because most of the playerbase is OBVIOUSLY too lazy to come up with anything besides nerfing.

 

So many posts here are just that "NERF THIS IT IS OP! NERF THAT THERE IS NO WAY TO COMPARE! NERF THEM THEY CAN SELL STUFF!"

 

Here, since it seems like there is a lack of creativity and use of thought.

 

How to Address the "OP" calls.

 

 

1) Biochem keeps their reusables, usable ONLY with biochem skill.

 

2) Adrenals/Stims can produce a RE discovered schematic that produces 5 of the green item for each craft, these are special named and via RE can produce the blue version that gives 5 per craft. (this addresses the issue of material costs to stim/adrenal production and availability, this also LOWERS THE IMPACT THE REUSABLE HAS VS OTHER CRAFTS since it is easier to procure them for everyone.)

 

3) Synth, Armor, Arms. All can produce an orange piece (or pieces, like a chest/pants or bracers/boots or whatever) of armor/weapon that BASE (without any mods) has stats base without any mods. Something respectable but not game breaking (i don't know like 50 tech power and maybe like +XX to the primary stat and some endurance) just something that would set the armor piece above and beyond anything you'd be finding and would ALWAYS be better, and you could even remod as you get drops from Ops and such perhaps. Obviously they would REQUIRE the skill to wear. Maybe have several types too, different level tiers or styles for looks purposes (and make some that have diff looks but no special stat boosts just open modable for people to vary their appearance even more, looks matter to people in MMO and would open up a market for these skills even more.)

 

4) Cybertech: Grenade expansion maybe. Lower cooldown and perhaps have them apply various debuffs or effects that could be beneficial and stack with others. Like say a 5% damage reduction effect, or boost to fire, or bleeds, or other things. Give them some VARIETY and make the cybertech grenades a boon to people who have a cybertech along. (possibly also make them RE into a schematic that is usable by others too, but lower effect OR the cybertech can get reusable as well, but others can use similar versions, see #2 of Biochem for similarities that are possible.)

 

5) Artificer give them some unique color crystals (a more variety, comon bioware work that art department!) and give them an arti only augment that is a hop skip and jump better then anything outside Ops (maybe even have a schematic in Ops that is arti only and once again better then any Ops drops too). Or a lightsaber build perhaps that follows the same idea as the #3 ideas, where the basic stats before any mods have bonuses and such that are always going to make THAT item better then any other modded or found item (with the level/content equivalent mods in the crafted of course).

 

6) Cybertech and Artificer get a slight boost to the stats of all their augments/enhancements/armoring/etc. Not massive but like 1-2 stat points added to each tier's stuff, with higher tiers getting 4-5 and maybe like a +10 or 15 area at the highest. Sets it apart from what you find from commendations.

 

7) Back to Synth, Armor, Arms. Give them like the #6 or something for even the BOE gear, nothing huge on them, just the 1-3 area and such, but again. Opens the market for their goods GREATLY. Quest gear doesn't disappear but everyone who wants to full on minmax will flock to crafters. Doesn't mean you can do just as well with the quested stuff and drops for equiv level but the crafter has the edge (maybe only for Superior quality on this stuff)

 

Those are just ideas but compared to some of the 'Omg nerf the OP thing" people it is a hell of alot more constructive in trying to deal with the issues then trying to just tear down a crew skill and instead I'm (and a few others) are looking to build the others up a bit more too.

 

The ideas I'm throwing out may not work but they are a step to try to address, come up with ideas to bolster the other skills, not just rip down one you see as better. Crew skills should be solid for ANY of them, not just junk across the board.

 

Also those ideas would give Cybertech more of a market and definately energize the market a bit more on the mods side too since more modable gear that people would be crafting for themselves. And with #6 it would encourage people to buy the crafted stuff, while for your quick fix commendations would still be there till you find a crafter to make the better stuff.

 

Would also energize the materials markets more to produce and sell more of the stuff with increased crafter demand (which would benefit 2 gathering/slicing users).

 

We're the community, lets brainstorm and work to come up with ways to make things more enjoyable for all of us, not just dump on a skill and grumble that they are all worthless afterwards.

Edited February 13, 2012 by Shatteredstar

[Anomini]

I'm actually pretty much fine with all the crafting professions, including biochem and the way it's set up, and don't see why they'd need to make any huge changes. However I'd rather that the reusable med packs were BOA, to be honest. Otherwise, it's just been a huge money and time sink, just like the rest of the crafting is. I've found it's easier to go 100% mat gathering when I experiment with crafting toons selling consumables/gear vs gathering toons, because you can make tons of credits to buy stuff off the marketplace, and not blow it all trying to level crafting up. There's those dailies at 50, too, that people mention rake in big bucks. Anyhoo, in my experiment, it was a difference of 100k (for full stacks of mats sold) to less than 50k (making + selling consumables or gear pieces), with gathering/selling the winner. Might've just been my server, but the mid-to-high biochem stuff wasn't moving/selling that well.

 

I'm giving it yet another go, though. It's not been fun, to say the least. I've been trying for two hours (going on three) now, just to get the purple items to MAKE a single reusable item, after finally reverse engineering enough to get the schematic for it. The two hours is not part of the reverse engineering, but I'm stubborn and insist that I will get this done, even if I'm tabbed out like a stubborn dork for this long, surfing the net until the game decides to give me my freakin' purples. So many credits, gone, and so much time waiting for mission to get done so crew member comes back. *sighs* I'll get 'er done eventually, though. Dagnabbit.

Edited February 13, 2012 by Anomini

[seekerofpower]

If re-usable items were tradeable, once everyone had them, then Biochem would be useless.

[Lodril]

Honestly, I don't think the re-usable items make sense in any context. Fictionally they're reusing needles and various medical supplies. That's just gross.

 

In game though... why even bother with such an oddity? Why not just make the third tier biotech stuff better at what it does? The adrenals can gain a few seconds, the stims a point or two, the medpacks could have shorter cooldowns... something simple. Or maybe the purple ones just produce more of the blue guys. Someone with metrics can figure out a solution.

 

They wouldn't even need to get rid of the ones out there now, just stop awarding the schematic for reusable stuff, let them become rare and potent devices occasionally floated in the market.

 

 

That said... the other crafts could definitely use some love. I don't have the metrics, but whenever I pass crew skills trainers, there are many more people around the biochem guy, and usually no one near any of the others.

[havok_bloodcraft]

I find some of these posts absolutely insane.

 

Someone earlier said it best, Bioware probably will take the lazy route and just nerf it into oblivion, likely because most of the playerbase is OBVIOUSLY too lazy to come up with anything besides nerfing.

 

So many posts here are just that "NERF THIS IT IS OP! NERF THAT THERE IS NO WAY TO COMPARE! NERF THEM THEY CAN SELL STUFF!"

 

Here, since it seems like there is a lack of creativity and use of thought.

 

How to Address the "OP" calls.

 

 

1) Biochem keeps their reusables, usable ONLY with biochem skill.

 

2) Adrenals/Stims can produce a RE discovered schematic that produces 5 of the green item for each craft, these are special named and via RE can produce the blue version that gives 5 per craft. (this addresses the issue of material costs to stim/adrenal production and availability, this also LOWERS THE IMPACT THE REUSABLE HAS VS OTHER CRAFTS since it is easier to procure them for everyone.)

 

3) Synth, Armor, Arms. All can produce an orange piece (or pieces, like a chest/pants or bracers/boots or whatever) of armor/weapon that BASE (without any mods) has stats base without any mods. Something respectable but not game breaking (i don't know like 50 tech power and maybe like +XX to the primary stat and some endurance) just something that would set the armor piece above and beyond anything you'd be finding and would ALWAYS be better, and you could even remod as you get drops from Ops and such perhaps. Obviously they would REQUIRE the skill to wear. Maybe have several types too, different level tiers or styles for looks purposes (and make some that have diff looks but no special stat boosts just open modable for people to vary their appearance even more, looks matter to people in MMO and would open up a market for these skills even more.)

 

4) Cybertech: Grenade expansion maybe. Lower cooldown and perhaps have them apply various debuffs or effects that could be beneficial and stack with others. Like say a 5% damage reduction effect, or boost to fire, or bleeds, or other things. Give them some VARIETY and make the cybertech grenades a boon to people who have a cybertech along. (possibly also make them RE into a schematic that is usable by others too, but lower effect OR the cybertech can get reusable as well, but others can use similar versions, see #2 of Biochem for similarities that are possible.)

 

5) Artificer give them some unique color crystals (a more variety, comon bioware work that art department!) and give them an arti only augment that is a hop skip and jump better then anything outside Ops (maybe even have a schematic in Ops that is arti only and once again better then any Ops drops too). Or a lightsaber build perhaps that follows the same idea as the #3 ideas, where the basic stats before any mods have bonuses and such that are always going to make THAT item better then any other modded or found item (with the level/content equivalent mods in the crafted of course).

 

6) Cybertech and Artificer get a slight boost to the stats of all their augments/enhancements/armoring/etc. Not massive but like 1-2 stat points added to each tier's stuff, with higher tiers getting 4-5 and maybe like a +10 or 15 area at the highest. Sets it apart from what you find from commendations.

 

7) Back to Synth, Armor, Arms. Give them like the #6 or something for even the BOE gear, nothing huge on them, just the 1-3 area and such, but again. Opens the market for their goods GREATLY. Quest gear doesn't disappear but everyone who wants to full on minmax will flock to crafters. Doesn't mean you can do just as well with the quested stuff and drops for equiv level but the crafter has the edge (maybe only for Superior quality on this stuff)

 

Those are just ideas but compared to some of the 'Omg nerf the OP thing" people it is a hell of alot more constructive in trying to deal with the issues then trying to just tear down a crew skill and instead I'm (and a few others) are looking to build the others up a bit more too.

 

The ideas I'm throwing out may not work but they are a step to try to address, come up with ideas to bolster the other skills, not just rip down one you see as better. Crew skills should be solid for ANY of them, not just junk across the board.

 

Also those ideas would give Cybertech more of a market and definately energize the market a bit more on the mods side too since more modable gear that people would be crafting for themselves. And with #6 it would encourage people to buy the crafted stuff, while for your quick fix commendations would still be there till you find a crafter to make the better stuff.

 

Would also energize the materials markets more to produce and sell more of the stuff with increased crafter demand (which would benefit 2 gathering/slicing users).

 

We're the community, lets brainstorm and work to come up with ways to make things more enjoyable for all of us, not just dump on a skill and grumble that they are all worthless afterwards.

 

^this

[StrykerOne]

I'd suggest changing it to:

 

Green adrenals = 10 charges, same strength as the reusables

 

Blue adrenals = 10 charges, stronger than greens or purples

 

Purple adrenals = unlimited charges, same strength as greens

 

(and the same for stims, except only one charge since they last so long)

 

and make sure that all tiers of adrenal, stim, and medpack have green and blue versions, including Rakata.

 

That way biochems get to save money but everyone can get adrenals at a reasonable price (1/10th the current cost per charge) and the absolute best adrenals (blues) are consumable for everyone. I might also support making the purples have a large number of charges (say, 20 for medpacks or stims and 200 for adrenals) so that they aren't truly permanent, just long lasting. But the real way to balance Biochem is to actually give other professions a point in endgame... epic craftable mods need to be better than mods from Battlemaster or Rakata gear. Epic crafted armor needs to be better than Battlemaster or Rakata. Epic crafted weapons need to be better than any other weapons. Sure these top crafted items should require raid drops and take a lot of work, but players who put in that work should have the ability to make the best gear in the game. Otherwise why would anyone not go Biochem for the cheap adrenals, stims, and medkits since they'd still have the best armor and weapons available to them?

[Shatteredstar]

I'd suggest changing it to:

 

Green adrenals = 10 charges, same strength as the reusables

 

Blue adrenals = 10 charges, stronger than greens or purples

 

Purple adrenals = unlimited charges, same strength as greens

 

(and the same for stims, except only one charge since they last so long)

 

and make sure that all tiers of adrenal, stim, and medpack have green and blue versions, including Rakata.

 

That way biochems get to save money but everyone can get adrenals at a reasonable price (1/10th the current cost per charge) and the absolute best adrenals (blues) are consumable for everyone. I might also support making the purples have a large number of charges (say, 20 for medpacks or stims and 200 for adrenals) so that they aren't truly permanent, just long lasting. But the real way to balance Biochem is to actually give other professions a point in endgame... epic craftable mods need to be better than mods from Battlemaster or Rakata gear. Epic crafted armor needs to be better than Battlemaster or Rakata. Epic crafted weapons need to be better than any other weapons. Sure these top crafted items should require raid drops and take a lot of work, but players who put in that work should have the ability to make the best gear in the game. Otherwise why would anyone not go Biochem for the cheap adrenals, stims, and medkits since they'd still have the best armor and weapons available to them?

 

The number of charges bi might work pretty well really, although that is almost similar to just making more overall. I still disagree with giving infinite reusable to everyone however.

 

As for the epic mods/armor I'm somewhere between, the problem with epic armor and weapons is they HAVE to be replaceable with Operations level stuff, be they crafted or not. This means that you may well be on par with someone else who didn't spend forever to craft it, and it is a reality in the MMO world where the gear treadmill will always be there. It is also where the anger about the reusable adrenals is coming from. That being a non-gear thing means it benefits the person above and beyond the gear for their crafting, as opposed to the armor or weapon eventually being replaced.

 

I suggested modable stuff with base boosts for that reason in my rant, since then it could be modded to always remain current/better then what everyone else from say a given Op has if you have the similarly item level mods in it. That way yes a biochem has their infinite stim/adrenal/whatever but you have higher stats on your gear permanently, which helps bring the issues a bit more in line with the different aspect of gear and buffs comparatively.