Reverse Bolstering - Possibility or Nonsense?

[Shardas]

Hello everyone!

 

Most of you probably know what bolstering does. For those of you who don't: Any character between level 10 and level 49 who enters a warzone will have his stats enhanced to match those of a level 49 character. Think sidekicking for those of you who played Champions Online.

 

Now while I originally started with PvP to see if it's a good source of credits some 3 or 4 weeks ago (don't know exactly, but it definitly was after 1.2), I came to like it quite a bit. It's fun. What I like most about it is, that I can simply queue, play, have fun. No need for special equipment, just my oranges with my self made upgrades is fine.

 

Unfortunately my character is about to face the inevitable: level 50. I'll no longer be able to queue for 10-49 warzones and I'll have to get myself equipment pieces with that PvP stat 'expertise' on them. Whether that's a good thing or not isn't the point.

 

Now here's what I came up with:

 

Since Bioware already has a working bolstering mechanism in place which scales people of lower levels to level 49 wouldn't that work the other way around as well? Couldn't my (soon to be) level 50 character be scaled down by one level and keep playing sub 50 warzones completely without expertise?

 

That way people who don't like the expertise stat and/or just like PvPing on a more casual basis could just play sub 50 PvP and those who do like expertise and are more of hardcore PvPers could keep playing in the 50s bracket. With less (underequiped) newbies to bother them.

 

Am I overlooking something here or is this a good idea?

 

Stupid nonsense or great possibility for SWTOR?

 

What do you think?

[Twor]

You are also overlooking:

 

-level 50 skills and abilities, nearly every class gets a very strong ability at 50

-level 50ish gear, bolstering does scale with gear

 

All in all it makes no sense. Being a level 49 in the lower bracket is worse than being a WH in a recruit WZ anyways. You will just have to bear with going from being the biggest fish to being the smallest, sorry.

[wtfnonamefree]

Well, if you look at your buffs/debuffs, you'll find that bolster is still listed at 50. Always wondered whether I really get downscaled to 49. It doesn't seem to be the case, but it's hard to say, really.

 

Thing is, that your gear (the expertise on it) is the factor that actually seperates you from the sub50s, so your idea won't work without changing the gear as well. This doesn't sound too practical tbh.

 

Edit: On another note - there has already been some Dev comment on a Mentor system they want to implement at one point in the future. It essentially means downscaling your char to your mate's level (this includes losing abilities), so you might see your wish come true in a slightly different way (they were talking about PvE iirc, so not sure whether they intend to make it work for PvP).

Edited May 10, 2012 by wtfnonamefree