Gear progression guide at level 50

[DarkenDragon]

im finding that a lot of people dont quite know how to gear up once at lvl 50 to prepare for hard modes, and some believe they can just walk right in and be fine with whatever they had with them while leveling. most of the time these are level 30 -50 greens or blues, this is not hard mode lvl 50 gear. but people are gonna say well I did it, no you were carried, and majority of the time most people are not capable or has to do heavy lifting to get this done with very under geared people.

 

theres a reason why these flash points are called hard modes, they're not meant to be a walk in the park, and they should be properly geared for. otherwise your just walking up an uphill battle

 

now for those who are interested in how to get geared up quickly. your first step should be obtaining customizable gear of any level. the easiest way to obtain this is by keeping any that you get while leveling, now it might be too late for that so the other way to obtain this gear is by getting commendations and spending them on the various commendation vendors of different planets. you should be able to obtain helmet, chest, pants, gloves, boots, main hand and off hands this way. belts and bracers are tougher to obtain since they are random mob drops in lower level planets but its not advised to spend the time to farm them.

 

the reason for this is because doing ilum and belsavis dailies will award you Q50 quality armoring, mods and enhancements from the heroic quests and you can buy Q51 quality barrels, hilts and armoring with the daily commendations. if you do these quests each day for 1 week, you'll have a full set of Q50 artifact quality gear ready for hardmodes.

 

you'll also be able to purchase Rakata level ears and implants as well, they cost 120 daily commendations. if you do each and every daily possible each day, you'll be able to obtain enough daily commendations to purchase an ear or implant each 5th day. these are the best ears/implants you can obtain easily and I would advise to get these.

 

once you've obtained all this gear your ready for hard modes and start collecting toniese/columni gear. all the hard mode instances are fairly the same difficulty so there is no real order so your free to go to any of them you wish. at this point your also geared for any normal operations as well. the way gear drops works in this game is every boss will drop a toniese crystal and you'll earn 1 toniese commendation at the end of the run. 2 of the major bosses will have a piece of toniese gear, and 1 bonus boss that must be unlocked with the bonuses quests that have multiple stages, this boss will drop either an ear/implant/relic of toniese level, with the exception of Kaon under seige which will award a toniese belt. since rakata level implants and ears are much better and easier to obtain, majority of the people will tend to skip these bonus bosses to make the run go faster. and the final boss will always drop a columni token that you can take to the vendors to trade in for your choice of gear, but there is only 1 token for each class.

 

also remember to pick up your daily and weekly quests from the daily terminal in the supplies quarter of the fleet since completing these will award additional columni and toniese commendations. if you find yourself unlucky with the rolls and drops in the hard modes, your able to trade in your commendations and crystals to obtain these items, though they are fairly expensive and will require multiple runs in order to get enough for 1 item.

 

after a good amount of runs, you'll start to notice your starting to be filled out in toniese gear and a few columni gear. thus making toniese commendation and crystals become obsolete. but you'll also notice the lack of defense/crit chance on most of the toniese and columni gear but you are able to exchange the mod and enhancements in these gears to fix this problem. for the toniese level, you can find that the leggings in any of the gear will have an accuracy/crit enhancements or accuracy/defense enhancement Q51 that you can take and put onto your other pieces of your gear to get you the desired crit/defense ratings. you can also farm HM Kaon to obtain the xenotech gloves which will have either crit/surge, power/surge, defense/accuracy, or defense/shield that you can also use to replace the power/accuracy enhancements/mods. also normal Kaon will also provide 2 other xenotech leggings you can farm since normal mode doesnt lock up to also fill out your gear as well.

 

if your able to get a group of at least 8 people, running normal KP will also provide xenotech gear as well as columni gear that will help you gear up for the HM versions.

 

now once your finally fitted with all your toniese gear to the desired stats, its time to work on converting your columni gear. for this you can obtain the head piece or gloves to obtain a crit/surge enhancement or mods to get your desired stats. these are found in HM Kaon under siege and Boarding Party respectively

 

also you'll notice that the weapons you obtain are different in each area. for main hands you'll find the toniese quality either at false emperor or Kaon under siege, but the one found in FE will have majority of the mods to be Q52 while the crystal will be Q48, but in Kaon under siege will have majority of the mods to be Q51 but have a Q56 crystal. what you would want to do is to get both weapons and rip out the Q56 crystal and place it with the Q52 weapon. this way you'll get the most stats possible.

 

also the columni weapons which are Q56 will also have Q48 crystals which you'll want to also replace with that Q56 crystal obtained from Kaon. and the same will be the same with off hands.

 

now at this point your fully decked out in columni gear with the desired stats and you have your weapons with Q56 crystals in them, now your at the point where you are either done or you must farm rakata gear in Hard mode Operations. and its just straight forward kill the boss and pray you win the roll . and unless your in a guild that is fully decked out in rakata gear, chance of obtaining multiple pieces will very slim to get desired stats. so this is pretty much the end gear you'll have until the next tier of gear will be introduced

 

this will show you what each boss in HMs will drop

http://dulfyforce.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/hmdropsempire3.jpg

 

this will show you what each boss in Operations will drop

http://i1252.photobucket.com/albums/hh561/dulfycleric/t1opslootdraft.jpg

 

hope this helps people give guidance as to what to do once you've reached the level cap

[Tihor]

Thanks a very useful guide.

[Cegenaus]

i run HMs in champ gear

[DarkenDragon]

running in champ gear is fine, though I find getting champ gear is pretty much all about luck, I've been doing both HM and pvp, and I can get a full columni set before I even get half of my champion set. so yea, if you can get it, then kudos to you

[unclekaula]

Merc forums are probably not the best spot for this

[DarkenDragon]

yea..... I realized that after I wrote it, if a moderator sees this, plz move it to the class section instead, i think this information works for any class really