Getting Ready For 50

[eartharioch]

I've only been doing PvP for a couple of months, and my two highest toons are 46 and 49 now, so I want to make sure I'm preparing myself adequately for victory (or at least acceptable, rather than humiliating, losses), so I have a few questions:

 

1) Expertise Below 50 -- does it count? I noticed that a few PVP Vendor weapons sell below 50 weapons with a small amount, and I was able to purchase the below 50 (Level 30ish) + Expertise Black-Green cyrstal during the Rakghoul event. Will this affect my 10-49 bracket matches at all, and if so, is it worth not using "regular" statted crystals/weapons?

 

2) Minimum realistic starting gear so that I look like I'm dressed to play -- now that I found out about farming Recruit Gear in Outlaw's Den, (got my helmet in my first trip), I don't see anything stopping me from having full Recruit Gear at a minimum (even if my 49 hits 50 and has to buy some, I'm assuming my 46 has enough time to just farm it all).

 

3) Since I started "late", my 49 is in the 20s for valor, so not likely to hit 40 valor before level 50 and start converting WZ to RWZ comms, so I'm focusing on being as close to 2000 WZ comms as possible. Can I really start buying BM with those when I hit 50? My understanding is that I have to buy BM (for a given slot) before I can upgrade that slot to WH.

 

4) My 46 is already Valor 29, so I'm thinking I might have a chance to hit Valor 40 in time to start converting WZ to RWZ even if I don't end up hitting both caps (2000 WZ, 3000 RWZ). If I have a choice, is it better to max my RWZs out before my WZs?

 

5) Finally, assuming I haven't made too many errors in planning above, what's the "best" path to get into wearing Oranges with WH so I don't have to look like a freaky pos reject from a bad fantasy movie?

 

Sorry if this is long, I can break it up into separate posts if that's easier.

[criminalheretic]

I've only been doing PvP for a couple of months, and my two highest toons are 46 and 49 now, so I want to make sure I'm preparing myself adequately for victory (or at least acceptable, rather than humiliating, losses), so I have a few questions:

 

1) Expertise Below 50 -- does it count? I noticed that a few PVP Vendor weapons sell below 50 weapons with a small amount, and I was able to purchase the below 50 (Level 30ish) + Expertise Black-Green cyrstal during the Rakghoul event. Will this affect my 10-49 bracket matches at all, and if so, is it worth not using "regular" statted crystals/weapons?

 

2) Minimum realistic starting gear so that I look like I'm dressed to play -- now that I found out about farming Recruit Gear in Outlaw's Den, (got my helmet in my first trip), I don't see anything stopping me from having full Recruit Gear at a minimum (even if my 49 hits 50 and has to buy some, I'm assuming my 46 has enough time to just farm it all).

 

3) Since I started "late", my 49 is in the 20s for valor, so not likely to hit 40 valor before level 50 and start converting WZ to RWZ comms, so I'm focusing on being as close to 2000 WZ comms as possible. Can I really start buying BM with those when I hit 50? My understanding is that I have to buy BM (for a given slot) before I can upgrade that slot to WH.

 

4) My 46 is already Valor 29, so I'm thinking I might have a chance to hit Valor 40 in time to start converting WZ to RWZ even if I don't end up hitting both caps (2000 WZ, 3000 RWZ). If I have a choice, is it better to max my RWZs out before my WZs?

 

5) Finally, assuming I haven't made too many errors in planning above, what's the "best" path to get into wearing Oranges with WH so I don't have to look like a freaky pos reject from a bad fantasy movie?

 

Sorry if this is long, I can break it up into separate posts if that's easier.

 

1. Expertise is expertise, if you have 150 you will still have 150 in 50's WZs

 

2. If your valor ranks are considerably lower than your level, I am assuming you leveled almost exclusively through PVE, so you should have a lot of creds, buy ALL the recruit gear.

 

3. Yes you can buy a BM piece when you hit 50, but you kinda kneecapped yourself by not keeping at the valor cap. Someone all about PVP usually hits 50 with 2000 comms and 3000+ ranked comms. No worries though, if you PVP a lot, you are like a week behind, not months

 

4. 2000 comms should be like a day of solid PVP queing. Try to hit with 2000 comms, the rest ranked.

 

5. Guildies crafting things for you. If you're a solo player, you're gonna have to look like a freak and wait for the things you want to show up on the GTN. No "easy" path there. Plus keep in mind it costs like 44k just to pull a WH mod out of an item.

 

Hope that helps some. A subjective assesment, from your valor ranks and your own admission, it doesn't sound like you PVP much even over the last few months, at this point you might wanna consider entire days devoted to just PVP if your server pop makes that viable.

Edited May 20, 2012 by criminalheretic

[criminalheretic]

One more thing...

 

You are still gonna have humiliating losses regardless of your skill level. I know I said to buy all the Recruit gear, and I meant it, but don't expect much from it. Trust me, it gets better when you are mostly BM gear.

[Aetou]

All Recruit and 2xBM, which you can have when you hit 50, is enough to not get humiliated as long as you are a decent player. That should be your target. You can then quickly get to the stage where you have 4x set bonus plus weapon (2-4 hours play per piece, probably) and then while you won't win 1 on 1s you can still do enough to not be a liability. Use stims, they make a big difference (I suggest Hyper Fortitude to start as it will make you a bit less squishy and you'll also look less squishy and so be focused less.)

 

The quickest way to get your own look is a custom chest which you can put either WH mods into or, much more quickly, BM mods (if you keep the other four pieces for the set bonus.) Credits, you'll need quite a lot of them (500k-1m) so don't neglect stocking them up as well as WZ comms.

[ShadowOfVey]

As long as you don't freak out a lot the first few days you're in the 50s bracket, you'll be alright.

 

BM gear is pretty fast to get atm. If queues are popping, even losing for a few hours is enough to buy something.

[eartharioch]

Thanks for the advice.

 

Yeah, I know I got in "late", but to be honest PVE (Kotor 3) was the big draw for me, until my main so overleveled doing all the quests on each planet before moving on that I realized I was almost level 40 and still in Chapter 1. I still like the PVE, and have a few alts, but got sick of <stealth> walk around and solo everything, except maybe bosses for 5 XP and no real chance of dying [My level 49 is an OP]. Fortunately, I knew I'd end up in PvP once the content was done, so all but one of my chars is on a PvP server, it just came up faster than I expected. [And when server transfers come, that one is going to a PVP server.]

 

Anyway, I'm getting to play 2-3 chars for an hour or two each on most nights, so I'm just rotating:

o Pick up Daily and Queue

o Try to sell stuff at the GTN

o Go to Buccaneer's Den (sorry, played too much Ultima) and farm until I get at least 1 piece of Recruit gear

o Spend some time on Class quests

o Go back to Fleet after I get my 2 WZ points and pick up my "prize"

 

I usually do this at Prime Time, so I can *usually* get 3-4 WZ in a few hours (sad, but unfortunately not the worse story I've heard).

 

I'm bought as much Level 40 gear for companions as I could, now I'm buying the level 44 grab bag (120 comms -- bag has 60 comms worth of consumables, plus an item I can occasionally use for a companion or just sell for cash) to keep at 2000 WZ comms.

 

My 49 won't hit Valor 40 before level 50, so it looks like recruit gear + 1-2 pieces of BM gear.

My 46 has a good chance of valor 40, so I'm hoping to max out the 3000 RWZ comms as well.

My other 3 chars are low enough level that they should hit 40 at valor 40.

 

Thankfully, I like most of the oranges I have on my chars (since apparently the lower level, the less I look like a member of GWAR), so it looks like buy Augment Kits and switch out BM/WH mods when I get them.

 

Anyway, thanks again for the feedback.

[ShadowOfVey]

I wouldn't sweat the whole preparation thing regarding racking up ranked warzone comms before 50. If you missed the boat on that, don't worry about it.

 

It's nice being able to grab a WH item right when you hit 50 but it isn't going to be some remarkable difference.

 

Get your recruit gear at 50, grab a couple BM items with your 2000 comms, and jump on in.

Edited May 25, 2012 by ShadowOfVey

[Shakydvs]

Quick question. Which class are you going to be 50 with that you want to PvP with? Im sure folks here could give you some pointers on what to look out for and who/type of characters to avoid like the plague until you gear up more.

[eartharioch]

My main is a "hybrid" op -- http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#401bcf0zZuIMMddobMMZ0M.1

 

Just what I put together for fun during PVE, and it is pretty versatile for 10-49 PVP, but I've been trying to look up actual 50 builds. My main problem is that I want Kolto Probe (requires Medicine 11), so I can't get Acid Blade. I'd say I'm 90% stabby, but a decent % of the time there aren't many healers on my team, so I'll actually sit back and heal -- even with only 11 points, if there aren't any "full" healers around, I can often be more useful as support (and if it;s Hutball, I'll heal our ball carrier even if I die).

 

My big questions are, assuming I want to be stabby with a healing back up, am I close to doing it right, and should I go medic (higher Endurance than Cunning) or the other way for gear?

 

Thanks again for your time.

[xxdragonragexx]

Either go full concealment or full medic.

Easy to get medals with medic though.

Hybrids aren't really good for operatives. Not like other classes where you can takeaway useless or underpowered skills. Operatives really good talents are way up.

[johnyangelo]

Make biochem, makeyourself Adrenal, stim, medpack.

 

Also be sure to be capped on commendations (2000 wz comms, 3500 RWZ comms) > on lvl 50 you can buy 5 armor pieces for this ammount of commendations, almost 6.

 

While getting rest of the BM set, use rakata medpack, because you need every single WZ comms, then you can buy some green PVP stims.

 

Rest of the set shall be recruit; meanwhile.

[Veniras]

Don't get discouraged at 50. Sometimes you'll get stomped by premades in a way that will make you almost nerdrage and leave PVP. Hang in there and get the BM set (1-2 weeks), whereupon it gets a bit easier.