Why is Armourmech useless

[Gankdalf_]

In WOW my Paladin was a Blacksmith and all through my levelling up I was able to wear a lot of what I made as it was better than basic quest items. I also had many requests from alts to craft good gear for them.

 

In SWTOR I am also a tank and also have Blacksmithing (Armourmech) I have yet to craft anything better than the basic quest rewards such as the orange gear you buy from a vendor. The other day a complete stranger traded a purple gun barrel with me, I just vendored it as it was useless compared to what I had.

 

Now without being rude I have to say that my son who is only 12 can work out that Crafting costs time and money and should = Reward. yet in SWTOR you may as well not bother as u can buy better from a vendor for a few thousand credits. Orange gear > than every colour because you can mod it, I can buy orange gear from a vendor. GG Bioware.

 

Orange gear should be craftable and blue gear should be vendor gear you utter idiots. And you wonder why people are leaving the game :S

[Illanair]

Orange gear should be craftable and blue gear should be vendor gear you utter idiots. And you wonder why people are leaving the game :S

 

Oh dear - you had to go and ruin a somewhat valid argument by going into "jerk mode".

 

To answer your question *****dalf, there are new recipes that give back some validity to the crew skills that have the roughest time being worthwhile once you hit 50.

[TheLastWolfman]

Hi OP,

 

Many people have found Armormech to be useful for a number of reasons. I'm sorry to hear you dislike it, however your post indicates you may lack some key knowledge on the crafting process.

 

Please read my guide (below), it may help you enjoy the crafting a little more.

 

Regards

Wolf

[Bullwrath]

In WOW my Paladin was a Blacksmith and all through my levelling up I was able to wear a lot of what I made as it was better than basic quest items. I also had many requests from alts to craft good gear for them.

 

I am calling bull***** right there. The use of blacksmithing in WoW was essentially 3-fold: 1) belt buckles 2) extra stat slots on gear that you used yourself 3) *really* rare patterns achieved from raiding.

 

There is *nothing* you could make while leveling that held a candle to gear that dropped in instances or (especially) BoA gear. If you use quest reward gear in WoW as the standard you measure by you are daft beyond belief. No one used quest reward gear because it was all crap (until cataclysm when it became relevant, but still not great).

 

Contrast that to SWTOR where the patterns you train can be Reverse Engineered and improved to the point where it is absolutely as good or better than anything you can find at level for your class through any means. The only draw back is that it is not as adaptable as mod-able orange gear, but at level it is still comparable if not better.

 

That doesn't mean the crew skills don't need a tweak to be useful at end game, but the basis of your argument, that armormech is not useful while leveling, is laughable, and your comparison to WoW armorsmithing makes your argument doubly laughable.

[Monoth]

I think the message the OP was trying to say was that Crafting is useless because you can get everything you need from Loot, Quest Rewards and Commendations.... Yes maybe you might RE a purple recipe but you level so fast it's pointless to waste money trying to get it, usually by the time you get it you have out leveled the item... Sure you could sell it on the GTN but then again the mats to make the item are usually more expensive then people are willing to pay for the item.

 

I've really come to the conclusion that crafting in SWTOR is just a novelty, a money time sink for bored people.

 

Because the truth is you can easily level to 50 without ever buying any crafted items... and once at 50 the gear you get from Operations are far superior to anything crafted.

 

So yeah crafting is meh....

Edited February 14, 2012 by Monoth

[Gphalen]

Like wow you can not craft top rated gear unless you collect BOP craft material from flashpoints "Dungeons/raids".

 

im maxed out in armsttech and can make orange but i choose to possess purps pvp.

 

I have complained about alot of the issues in game ALOT..

 

I complain because i want these issues resolved i love star wars and want nothing more to do with wow.

 

All 8 of my 85s with every profession a-z maxed out can sit mothballed!

 

 

I am very passionate about the things i love, I have been a huge sw geek since 1977

 

Yes i own a lightsaber MR not the plastic toys.

[leihn]

In WOW my Paladin was a Blacksmith and all through my levelling up I was able to wear a lot of what I made as it was better than basic quest items. I also had many requests from alts to craft good gear for them.

 

Items crafted via Armormech are generally better than most normal quest rewards, usually only falling behind well itemized Oranges that are rewarded for H2 and H4 level quests or the end of major story/class quests. Generally, Armormech craftables are better than Modification rewards since you need to acquire a relevant level Armoring, Mod, and Enhancement to make something with equivalent stat weights as a crafted item of the same quality (blue/purple etc)

 

In SWTOR I am also a tank and also have Blacksmithing (Armourmech) I have yet to craft anything better than the basic quest rewards such as the orange gear you buy from a vendor. The other day a complete stranger traded a purple gun barrel with me, I just vendored it as it was useless compared to what I had.

 

Vendor bought items aren't really quest rewards, it takes a significant number of commendations on a planet or hard credits to buy Orange gear that's fully modded (usually 12-14 commendations to buy a new piece, or 7 + 2 + 2 to upgrade an existing piece) and you are restricted to the levels that the planet offers things to you. Hard credit vendors are even fewer, you can often only buy one slot of blue gear per planet, sometimes 2 and they cost a significant credit investment to purchase, relative to gear you can craft via Armormech.

 

Now without being rude I have to say that my son who is only 12 can work out that Crafting costs time and money and should = Reward. yet in SWTOR you may as well not bother as u can buy better from a vendor for a few thousand credits. Orange gear > than every colour because you can mod it, I can buy orange gear from a vendor. GG Bioware.

 

Orange gear from credit vendors are spaced out in their levels meaning you would need to frequently update their mods to stay relevant (ie chest/hat on tattooine, gloves on taris, etc). Assuming you acquire mods from Commendations you would need 7 + 2 + 2 for each slot of modded armor (commonly Gloves, Hat, Boots, Chest, Pants), totalling 55 Commendations per Planet. Not sure about you, but unless you spend excess time grinding repeatable missions per planet you're not likely to get close to half that amount on most planets.

 

Orange gear should be craftable and blue gear should be vendor gear you utter idiots. And you wonder why people are leaving the game :S

 

You don't seem to understand the value of Armormech, nor how the gearing system works in general.

 

For minimal investment, you can keep pretty much every slot of your gear relevant in a 2-3 level range at blue quality or better and save your commendations for weapon upgrades.

 

It also helps you gear out your companions for little cost.

[Battilea]

Silly post. And utterly wrong on many levels.

 

If there's one thing orange gear tends not to do well it is provide gear for tanking. Most commendation vendors do not have tanking mods, so you're basically left to resort to getting new pieces that come with mods, in which case they might as well be blue. Cybertechs get hosed on the mods they can make. But armormech stuff can get tanking gear, at least with lots of defense, plus an augment slot. Tacking shielding on, unfortunately means you need to go purple. The same holds true even for non-tanking stuff, really. You get bonuses like crit and power which you don't as much of with the orange stuff you are updating, unless you buy enhancements from an artificer.

 

Orange gear is already craftable. It is not, however, an item that sells well or is even super handy to be able to craft. People only need each slot once. Beyond that, it is cosmetic. My armormech makes orange stuff. I sell a small amount of it and it makes me a little profit. On the other hand, I sell a lot of purple stuff and that's where my money comes from.

 

And as to WoW comparisons, I wouldn't say Smithing was more useful in WoW. Only a few items were useful while leveling, most of it wasn't worth bothering with. My main sales item, quantitywise, was starter tank gear, and it wasn't exactly huge profit. Beyond that, a couple of purples and belt buckles for the gem slot, which wasn't exactly big money.

[Gankdalf_]

Sorry but you are all wrong.

 

By handing in commendation tokens which are very easy to get I am able to purchase gear that is MUCH better than blue gear once I add the mods which are readily available on the ah and very cheap. You can also buy better gear from vendors for cash.

 

In wow blacksmithing was a great profession far better than the quest gear that you picked up. I never said dungeon gear, someone else said that, they need to read my op again instead of making stuff up that I never said.

 

Allowing everyone to buy better gear from a vendor than can be crafted is a joke, it never happened in wow simply because Blizzard knew how to implement crafting into an MMO.

[Gankdalf_]

Also my lvl 33 alt is kitted out in orange head, chest, legs and boots, all from vendors. Only bracers and belt are actually made by myself.

 

The orange gear can be purchased for 8 tokens on some planets but usually 12 which is very easy to get considering I usually end up with 14 surpless after each planet. I also get orange gear from heroics on all planets which again is better than my crafted garbage.

 

Money in this game is easy to get, I have hundreds of thousands just by looting mobs, I have not sold a thing on the ah. So buying vendor gear at 14k a piece is no problem at all.

 

The conclusion is that crafting gear is an utter waste of time and effort. I will now be selling mats rather than wasting them on crap gear that no one needs.

 

Orange vendor gear FTW

Edited February 14, 2012 by Gankdalf_

[leihn]

Sorry but you are all wrong.

 

By handing in commendation tokens which are very easy to get I am able to purchase gear that is MUCH better than blue gear once I add the mods which are readily available on the ah and very cheap. You can also buy better gear from vendors for cash.

 

It's almost like you disregarded everything everyone else wrote and decided that you were right before ever entering this topic.

 

If you think spending 55 commendations per planet to keep your gear up to date is easier than using Armormech to craft the blue level pieces then more power to you.

 

In wow blacksmithing was a great profession far better than the quest gear that you picked up. I never said dungeon gear, someone else said that, they need to read my op again instead of making stuff up that I never said.

 

Tell me which WoW smithing piece is better than your heirloom gear in every slot.

 

Allowing everyone to buy better gear from a vendor than can be crafted is a joke, it never happened in wow simply because Blizzard knew how to implement crafting into an MMO.

 

WoW does this exactly, the best gear you can get has always been from vendors, rewarded for tokens.

[Stratasaurus]

Blacksmith was worthless in Wow up until they added the blacksmith only things. Thing about SWTOR is upgrading to new gear is pretty much pointless so armortech is pretty much pointless(at least for leveling). All you need to do is find one piece of orange gear you think looks cool or can live with and then buy new mods with either commendations or on the marketplace(mods are not very expensive). Since Armortech doesn't give you recipes for any type of mods it is pretty much useless in my view. Armstech, cybertech, and Artifice all give you ability to create mods which really is what gear in this game is based around. What SWTOR needs to do is give synthweaving and armortech and prolly armstech as well a special slot that they only they can use with a low but still worthwhile mod. That is what would make it not worthless. Just my opinion though.

[Matty-Wan]

i am finding the 6 million credits I have already made useful.

[Ucsimplyme]

Sorry but you are all wrong.

 

By handing in commendation tokens which are very easy to get I am able to purchase gear that is MUCH better than blue gear once I add the mods which are readily available on the ah and very cheap. You can also buy better gear from vendors for cash.

 

In wow blacksmithing was a great profession far better than the quest gear that you picked up. I never said dungeon gear, someone else said that, they need to read my op again instead of making stuff up that I never said.

 

Allowing everyone to buy better gear from a vendor than can be crafted is a joke, it never happened in wow simply because Blizzard knew how to implement crafting into an MMO.

 

 

Unfortunately, it is you who are wrong.

 

Commendations will only ever get you blue quality gear. Armormech can produce purple quality gear (better stats) and have an augment slot, something that orange gear can never get.

 

Yes, commendations can keep your gear more consistently blue (with grinding pve content for commendations ever 2 levels) because Armormech's gear levels are more spread out.

 

That said, armormech is anything but useless. I make hundreds of thousands of credits each day on this worthless skill. You're right, it is so terrible.

[Dezeit]

Lets seperate the "you can make loads of money" from the, "is ArmorMech useful as you level".

 

If you invest a significant amount of credits and time, then you will be able to learn purples and recoup your investment. Purples (of the right type and if you crit) can go for a really nice price. No-one is not saying you can't make money.

 

Now if you expect to have a crafting prefession that you can use what you make and is better than what you can find/buy/rewarded for then thats a different story.

 

BW has said its not working as intended so best thing to do is wait and see. Hopefully the wait won't be too long. Personally its too late for my toon as she just hit 50. I got fed up with the constant grind of making blues with virtually no purple crits and if I did get one it had the wrong stats. I spent a lot of time and money collecting resources in world and from missions, so while not hardcore I did put a lot of work into armormech.

 

Also remember that as you level armormech not all slots are available for all levels, so the analogy with what you can buy with comendations still stands. They dont have items for slots at all levels and neither does armormech.

 

I just decided to roll a new toon and do what eveyone else does which is biochem.

[pokota]

Orange gear from credit vendors are spaced out in their levels meaning you would need to frequently update their mods to stay relevant (ie chest/hat on tattooine, gloves on taris, etc). Assuming you acquire mods from Commendations you would need 7 + 2 + 2 for each slot of modded armor (commonly Gloves, Hat, Boots, Chest, Pants), totalling 55 Commendations per Planet. Not sure about you, but unless you spend excess time grinding repeatable missions per planet you're not likely to get close to half that amount on most planets.

 

 

You don't seem to understand the value of Armormech, nor how the gearing system works in general.

 

For minimal investment, you can keep pretty much every slot of your gear relevant in a 2-3 level range at blue quality or better and save your commendations for weapon upgrades.

 

It also helps you gear out your companions for little cost.

 

I'm wondering what you mean by relevant. This is not a hard game to level up in. You do not need to keep all your gear at the same level as your character. That simply is not necessary. I had 400 Cybertech before I was level 28, and I almost never made my own armoring or mods. I just didn't find it worth the effort and expense when I was leveling up easily without having to RE for blue schematics.

 

You also fail to mention the mods and pieces of gear you get from drops and as quest rewards, which reduces the total commendation cost.

 

I've never really understood the idea that being able to make minor upgrades to your gear while leveling is much of a draw. I mean, it's fine, but it's nothing special. You can easily go with three gathering or mission skills, keep your armor up to date via the GTN, and hit level 50 with millions of credits in the bank.

 

There is also the "X crafting skill is good because I've made credits with it" defense. Again, that means very little in a game where you can go without any crew skills at all and still be wealthy.

[zrmojo]

I make a ton of money on Darth Bandon as an armormech. I made 1.6 million in 2 days from sales. Collect your own mats or buy them cheap and then sell the armors at a reasonable price.

[Fyurii]

I think the message the OP was trying to say was that Crafting is useless because you can get everything you need from Loot, Quest Rewards and Commendations.... Yes maybe you might RE a purple recipe but you level so fast it's pointless to waste money trying to get it, usually by the time you get it you have out leveled the item... Sure you could sell it on the GTN but then again the mats to make the item are usually more expensive then people are willing to pay for the item.

 

I've really come to the conclusion that crafting in SWTOR is just a novelty, a money time sink for bored people.

 

Because the truth is you can easily level to 50 without ever buying any crafted items... and once at 50 the gear you get from Operations are far superior to anything crafted.

 

So yeah crafting is meh....

 

To be honest, Armourmech has been my favourite so far.

It's allowed me to gear out two alts so they don't have to change gear so often, and have a nice consistent look to them whilst maximising the potential profit from selling loot to vendors, or RE'ing it when possible for free materials.

 

I've even made sure to select pieces that I feel I can best utilise, then craft & RE to purple so I can use the purple, which lasts longer during levelling, and helps my Trooper to not look like a Rainbow Trooper.

RE'ing some items to purple hasn't worked on a few schematics, to the point that I just move on to the next available one that helps me increase Armourmech skill. Best of all, it helps to achieve a balance between levelling and crafting, especially with more companions.

 

To be honest though, any crafting skill that utilises Scavenger is easier to level up.

It gets a nice boost as soon as you set foot in the Esseles FP, and pretty much any flashpoint and heroic with veteran/elite/champion droids in it, without having to invest as much money into it early on.

 

I honestly enjoy the crafting system in TOR, as its dependancy on companions and their affection helps influence time taken and success of crafting and gathering missions, makes it stand out more (in my eyes at least) from other crafting systems in MMOs. It blends together crafting and investing in your companions to boost your crafting capability.

It may not have the complexity of SWG crafting, but it has its own unique way of doing it.

[hamsterboom]

WoW does this exactly, the best gear you can get has always been from vendors, rewarded for tokens.

 

yes it does but unlike swtor you actually have to make effort to get them.

 

commendations and such you can basicly get with one hand.. no wait just by drooling on the keyboard.. they are that easy to get, this there as lays the problem.

 

crafters should make better than quest loot, this should be the drive for crafting yet as we see it crafting is a tool for boredom when you have companions sitting round doing nothing.

 

i would love to built my own stuff while questing with it not costing me a couple of k just to make that weapon to have it outdated by the time i craft it.

 

the whole system needs a rework imo, designs that don;t look every other piece of loot out there, better stats, a couple of crafted sets would be nice aswell

 

 

people say this game is still in baby stages but would be nice for devs to give a bit of insight on if their actually watching what the problems are and if their gonna change it (( don;t need a timeframe just wanna know if .))

[Obbu]

farming 3 modifications per item slot takes substantially longer than farming a bunch of credits and buying entry-level epics off the AH.

 

And - you can actually do a mix of both, and get gear even faster.

[Kerplode]

You think Armormech is useless?

Go Armstech

[MidichIorian]

i am finding the 6 million credits I have already made useful.

 

Same here. I havent made 6 million (yet) but atleast far more than on any of the other crafting skills I've tried .

 

The keys to success seem to be:

 

* To look at the class ratio on the server. I was on a server where basically every rep played as a commando and commandos are always in need of heavy armor.

 

*To scout the market. What could people be looking for? I quickly came to the conclusion that it would be tough to compete in thee high level span so I focused on lvl 25-30 gear. The profit per item is significantly lower but I sold a bunch of stuff instead.

 

*Once you get a schematic that proves to be successful on the GTN, make sure that it is exclusive. So yeah, I bought schematics just to make sure that no one would produce the same things.

 

*Armormech items require very little in terms of ingredients so it's easy to level in it and massproduce. It's not like biochem where you send a companion on a sample mission just for it to come back with two different samples....but never the sample you needed. Sending companions on missions that turn out to be pointless costs money and time.

[Sky_walkerPL]

You think Armormech is useless?

Go Armstech

 

This.

Propably the worst crafting profession in game.

Armormech is actually well done and feels nearly compleded (excluding lvl50). Other professions on the other hand thend to be very messed up or incomplete or both (cybertech, artifice being other two big examples of fail for various reasons, even if both of them have some bright sides unlike armstech)

[Darth_Gao_Gao]

the only reason armstech and armormech, along with other crew skills, are "bad", is due to their lack of end-game use when compared to the epic drops you get from operations and hardmodes. even then, you can get rare schematics which only benefit your profession and wallet. however, before that, it is very viable to make loads of credits, as others have mentioned. due to the sad fact that both the OP and his son couldn't see this reality, i feel that he'll be making this thread again probably next week.

 

the reality is everyone thinks the noted skills are bad, which is why you can make an insane profit from them if you aren't a total herder of nerfs.

[VelnikSP]

I hate to say this, but the 'blue gear' that I have found for purchase on planets is generally considerably below my level. Not to mention extraordinarily expensive in terms of credits. (7000 cr for level 17 chestpiece on Taris?)

 

just for self-gearing, I can easily RE to a purple piece of armor close to my level, make it exceptional, and slot in an augment with ease. This creates a piece of armor cheaper than the vendors, better than even the best orange slotted item, and usually much closer to my particular level range.

 

Oranges are cool, I will not deny it, but even with all purple enhancements they generally don't quite meet the standards of a good purple item that has what _I_ want on it. Good luck finding a way to slot oranges that allows your gloves to give you +18 crit at level 21.

 

Yes, armormech is a money sink, but it is scarcely the kind of money sink that buying all new world vendor blues every couple of levels is. Plus, i get to save my commendations for buying much cooler stuff, like weapon upgrades.

 

 

 

My only wish is that they would merge synthweaving with armormech, as well as armstech with artificing. Sure, keeping them separate is logical according to the story, but it is impractical from a game balance point of view.