Recruit gear - not worth getting.

[Maxkardinal]

I don't know why some people are so obsessed that every newly dinged 50 should get recruit gear.

 

Yesterday i was bored and decided to "feel the difference". I swapped augmented WH gear on my operative to Recruit (every slot) and made few warzones. And then bought 47-50 blues without expertise, and did the same.

 

My impression - recruit gear don't worth 320k. It worth nothing at all.

 

Absolutely for sure its better that under 50 lvl blues, but it doesn't matter when you are facing WH or WH/BM geared players. It doesn't mtter. Recruit set will not provide you with minimum power to compete.

 

In blues you got murdured in 3 hits.

 

In recruit gear you will be murdured in 4-5 hits. (3-4 against maras and PT) And Snipers will trash you in 2-3 gcds. And im not exaggerating.

 

You will not do any meaningful damage nor in blues nor in Recruit gear. You will be a lamb in a sloughterhouse untill you get BM set.

 

I will better take 320k with my alt and suffer my way throug period of obtaining BM, rather than not taking 320k and suffering my way through period of changing Recruit on BM.

 

Thats... wrong

Edited July 13, 2012 by Maxkardinal

[Aetou]

The difference between dying in 3 hits and dying in 5 hits is massive. It gives me a chance to save you. It also makes my heals 15% more effective. Do Recruits kinda suck? Yep. Are they useless? No. I've seen Sentinels in 90% Recruit put out 300k damage. I've seen tanks in 90% Recruit put out 150k damage and 200k protection. I've seen healers in Recruit put out 250k healing. Not awesome, but also far from useless especially if the player is playing the objectives.

[Kajuana]

I think Bioware did a good job on stats balance by individual stats,

but they kind of messed up when they factored in a bunch of other stats.

 

On paper, if you're a DPS, then....

In full recruit gear you are around 13K HP? (add augs -> 15K)

In full BM gear you are around 15K HP? (add augs -> 17K)

In full WH gear you are around 17K HP? (add augs -> 19K)

 

It's not much of a difference from this perspective.

But then factor in expertise crits + crit multiplier + bonus dmg, you can do an obscene amount of damage against a recruit geared player. I've seen some players hit recruits for 6000-7000 HP, i.e. 3 shot you.

 

It doesn't get better at BM unfortunately. A 15K geared BM against a fully augmented 19K WH will get creamed despite the 4K HP difference.

 

By making the tier difference so great, new independent players will have difficulty catching up. They will subscribe and quit game at lvl 50. Only hardcore players will get a chance to get pulled by its guildies.

So yes, as you suggested, recruit gear doesn't make a difference.

(unless you are a PT / Marauder yar!)

 

A better way to do this was to have "tiered" war zones, and give different rates at which you gain commendations.

Unfortunately, that will require alot of players, something this game desperately needs.

[Nolenthar]

Recruit gear is free, and recruit gear makes you survive longer. Period.

 

Will recruit gear make you a WZ monster ? no.

 

Will a good player in recruit gear be able to beat an average player in BM ? yes

 

I still think that Bioware shouldn't cap WZ commendations below level 50. Or, at the very least, cap it at 7000 Ranked, 6000 comms.

 

If you level through PvP only, you should be rewarded for it.

 

Yes you can tell me "but you don't get Rakata gear once you hit 50 to do OPS".

 

Where I would agree, I'm not forced to do Denova HM in level 49 mods to get some gear.

 

And it's where the problem is. In PvE the progression will be linear. I get crap gear I do easy instances I get better gear I do harder instances.

 

In PvP, once you hit 50, you're forced to play against a random opposition, which may be 8 players in recruit gear or 2x4 premades in WH. And it's the only way to gear yourself up.

 

Allowing player to stack more WZ comms below 50 won't solve all problems, but at least those who PvPed a lot below 50 will be allowed to be quite decently geared once hitting 50. At the moment it's barely the case. Only thing you can really do is capping your ranked to 3500, your non ranked to 2000, and grab a piece of WH gear once hitting 50 (as WH gear requires BM piece).

 

That would solve many problems.

Edited July 13, 2012 by Nolenthar

[LenrocNewDawn]

Your post suffers from lack of logic. First off all 3 vs 5 hits TTK it's a 66,6% improvement in survivability (I'm working with your affirmations). Damage output is probably also enhanced by the expertise for a good percent. You can't compare between what you have and the best there is , you have to compare between what you have and the best you can get at the moment of your comparison. Learning how to maximize your effectiveness even when you are not the best player (gear wise I mean ) it's something every new 50 should do.

And on a final note it's not only you that suffers when you wearing fresh 50s PvE gear. You are also handicapping your team even further by not being at your maxim potential. Also not being willing to be at your best when you ding 50 validates veterans quitting WZ's and leaving you to fend for yourself. Or even if they don't leave (my case), they will still be very upset by your crass lack of consideration for your team mates.

 

Adapt and overcome, BM's gear is easy to get for anyone that has a drop of ambition and a backbone.

Edited July 13, 2012 by LenrocNewDawn

[Veniras]

If you are wearing PVE gear and I know you know about recruit gear and choose not to wear it, I will leave you to fight your own Warzones.

[durhame]

What you are missing OP is how to play as a new 50 in recruit gear. You never charge in. You find a guy who is geared and while he is taking someone down, you help. If you wander on your on, your dead. If you try to one on one, your dead. If you do anything but trail behind a better player, your dead. you will live longer if you scoot and shoot with someone else.

[dronepilot]

what ever to this, I have been 3 shot killed in a mix a BM/War Hero gear fully Augmented too. 5 shots really, would love to even see that.

[Graziell]

I don't know why some people are so obsessed that every newly dinged 50 should get recruit gear.

 

Yesterday i was bored and decided to "feel the difference". I swapped augmented WH gear on my operative to Recruit (every slot) and made few warzones. And then bought 47-50 blues without expertise, and did the same.

 

My impression - recruit gear don't worth 320k. It worth nothing at all.

 

Absolutely for sure its better that under 50 lvl blues, but it doesn't matter when you are facing WH or WH/BM geared players. It doesn't mtter. Recruit set will not provide you with minimum power to compete.

 

In blues you got murdured in 3 hits.

 

In recruit gear you will be murdured in 4-5 hits. (3-4 against maras and PT) And Snipers will trash you in 2-3 gcds. And im not exaggerating.

 

You will not do any meaningful damage nor in blues nor in Recruit gear. You will be a lamb in a sloughterhouse untill you get BM set.

 

I will better take 320k with my alt and suffer my way throug period of obtaining BM, rather than not taking 320k and suffering my way through period of changing Recruit on BM.

 

Thats... wrong

 

While I agree with you that recruit barely increases TTK it can certainly boost your damage output. But as a supposedly concealmeant ops you certainly can't fill any damage role properly in recruit.

I highly doubt that other classes, especially ranged classes, cant do quit a bit of meaningful damage.

 

Anyhow might want to share your stats with non-expertise blues? Maybe even as a askmrrobot link?

[Maxkardinal]

What you are missing OP is how to play as a new 50 in recruit gear. You never charge in. You find a guy who is geared and while he is taking someone down, you help. If you wander on your on, your dead. If you try to one on one, your dead. If you do anything but trail behind a better player, your dead. you will live longer if you scoot and shoot with someone else.

 

Exacly what i was talking about. You can do the same naked. You can do the same in blue junk.

 

Recruit gear is so bad that its not allouding you to execute your team role.

 

It should at least provide you with same amount of health and expertise as BM set. Or even abit higher.

Edited July 13, 2012 by Maxkardinal

[Aetou]

Exacly what i was talking about. You can do the same naked. You can do the same in blue junk.

 

Recruit gear is so bad that its not allouding you to execute your team role.

 

It should at least provide you with same amount of health and expertise as BM set. Or even abit higher.

 

Actually I'd say the opposite: Recruit gear forces you to play your team role. If you are in good gear, especially against Pugs, you can just go and Rambo it - chasing after kills by yourself and not really bothering to work with the rest of your team to nuke people down. A Recruit Tank needs to stick to their healer and if they do they will stay alive and make a valuable contribution. A Recruit DPS needs to support the other DPS on their team instead of charging in alone and killing whoever they fancy. A Recruit Healer needs to hang back, use LOS and rely on their team for protection. Recruit gear forces you to play well to compete, WH gear gives you a sufficient edge that you can neglect your team role in favor of glory hunting.

[Razot]

[Maxkardinal]

Actually I'd say the opposite: Recruit gear forces you to play your team role.

 

Just do it for yourself. If you have full augmented WH, change it to recruit and paly. In you will feel that recruit set is not the first step in PvP its pile of steaming **** that you can easly skip. Your playstile won't be different until you get BM.

[laiboch]

My real issue with the massive difference in gear is that it removes a large amount of the skill factor from victory in PVP. Really changing it from PVP into Player VS Gear. I really don't care who the player is. If you take a player in full recruit gear and put them against a player in BM/WH gear they will get destroyed.

 

Honestly this is EXACTLY the same issue seen in Rift, and the solution they had to put in place was to put high ranked players in their own bracket to save the PVP population from quitting on them. Rank 7-8 players (basically the same as WH geared players in ToR) had to be moved because a new player in lower rank gear would get vaporized by them regardless of skill. The same thing is happening in ToR.

 

The more you use a stat as the real determining factor in PVP the more worthless the competition becomes. Is Expertise needed... No. Its a sloppy way to divide PVP and PVE gear, and shows a lack of real experience in the Dev staff. Simply because WoW did it does not mean its the best solution.

 

Can the Expertise system work? Yes, But the discrepancy between gear and skill created by it has to be decreased. The Increased damage vs the Decreased damage really needs to be leveled out. You should not have a player dealing 25% more damage and reducing damage received by 18%, and additionally the way Expertise works is simply broken among other things in PVP.

 

The amount of stuns and other CC is simply out of control. With no DR and a broken (I would go as far as saying an epic fail) resolve system combined with some of the best burst classes being able to root, stun, knock back a target almost endlessly is simply poor design and again shows either a lack of understanding by the Dev team or more likely and far worse they simply do not care.

 

I can see the problem they have though and that is how do you balance Heals VS damage... Well that is already a mechanic with the bolster system, but when you add massive amounts of Expertise that creates healing classes that can run around with 2-3 players on them with little to no fear of death.

 

The real solution is to make Resolve damage bonus and reduction the same or close to the same and use the bolster buff to balance out healing. This would take a bit of time to balance, but the end result would be a much better pvp system where players could incorporate more skill into competition.

[Xiahoufig]

As someone mentioned already, since you can get a full set of recruit gear for free the moment you hit 50, there's not really any reason to not have it. But by all means, feel free to come in wearing PvE gear.

 

Oh that sound you heard? It was nothing and that's not a vibroknife sticking out of your back, it's a handle to make it easier to carry you.

[LenrocNewDawn]

Exacly what i was talking about. You can do the same naked. You can do the same in blue junk.

 

Recruit gear is so bad that its not allouding you to execute your team role.

 

It should at least provide you with same amount of health and expertise as BM set. Or even abit higher.

 

No, you are saying that you want to be as effective in your free starter set as someone that has a higher set that he earned. I have no problem with equalizing all the sets for the instanced PvP arenas. Even wrote a thread about it some way back http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=347154. But to twist this in a ,recruit gear is worthless, argument is a mistake. Those 2 more GCD you can survive when wearing recruit will allow you to stop a cap or a plant and delay until reinforcements arrive, make healers job easier or do more DPS to burn a target down.

Your argumentation is invalidated by the fact that you are starting from a invalid premise within the game rules as they are now.

 

Edit: To those complaining about the skill vs gear problem. Common, get a grip and wait until you are at least BMs gear before you complain. What are you? God's gift for the PvP community that is blocked by BW system to reach your full potential? How much skill can you have if you are wearing a free set?

Bah, that's all I have to say about this matter.

Edited July 13, 2012 by LenrocNewDawn

[Raice]

I play a Scrapper/Scoundrel.

 

I never noticed a difference. My DPS sucks both ways, and I die just as easily. I'm a little over halfway into my BM gear now (Only need Chest, Head, and Gloves)... I am almost at 14k HP. I can see an increase in my DPS (at least I can kill stuff sort of) but I still die like there is no tomorrow. I blame both of those issues on the fact that Bioware made my class useless, though...

 

Now that I think about it... my experience with Scrapper probably isn't the best standard for gauging gear effectiveness...

[Twor]

So now that the recruit set is free there are still people complaining about it.

 

Yes, makes sense... also see the post regarding increase in % of 3 hits to 5 hits. It makes a difference, espescially when you have a healer.

If you can't adjust your playstyle after being the big fish in the 49 bracket to now being the smallest one than its surely your problem.

[jamescloutier]

I still think that Bioware shouldn't cap WZ commendations below level 50. Or, at the very least, cap it at 7000 Ranked, 6000 comms.

 

This is one of the better thought I've seen on this issue. I'm currently leveling an alt through PvP as a way to mix things up. It's my 5th toon so I've done all the story lines and planets enough. I'm having to constantly buy pvp medpacks and stims because I keep crushing the 2k comms cap and since I'm not valor level 40 yet (only level 34 right now and keep crushing against the valor cap). If they upped the caps on both and lowered the restriction on when I could start changing regular comms into ranked comms then people who level though PvP could bridge the gap faster and this would create an illusion of tiers in PvP. Sub 50 as easier content (less gear dependence) and 50 (more gear dependence).

[Belly]

Recruit gear is free, and recruit gear makes you survive longer. Period.

 

What more can you ask? Sure it's not great, but it's a start. And it really is an ego buster to get plastered by war heroes, but you guys gotta stick it out. It does get better, promise

[Aetou]

Just do it for yourself. If you have full augmented WH, change it to recruit and paly. In you will feel that recruit set is not the first step in PvP its pile of steaming **** that you can easly skip. Your playstile won't be different until you get BM.

 

No real need, I have alts who have been through or are going from the Recruit gear situation and also frequently group with guildies in that situation. I've personally done 200k damage and 200k protection as a Shieldtech in recruit. We have a guy with a Sentinel in the guild who regularly breaks 300k damage despite just having the BM you can get when you hit 50. I've also healed dozens of different players in Recruit gear and dozens of others in PVE gear - enough to know that the Recruits I can keep alive while the PVEers I can't.

 

Is Recruit bad compared to WH? Yes. Is it utterly useless? No - but it will hurt your ego if you are used to doing big numbers due to good gear instead of good play. That said, I'd have no issue with them putting an extra 10 Endurance and 5 Expertise on each piece of Recruit gear to boost the survivability a lot.

 

Oh, one more point - if you are in Recruit gear PLEASE use Fortitude stims. That extra 1100 health is often the difference between me being able to drop a big heal on you and not being able to.

[mangarrage]

I don't know why some people are so obsessed that every newly dinged 50 should get recruit gear.

 

Yesterday i was bored and decided to "feel the difference". I swapped augmented WH gear on my operative to Recruit (every slot) and made few warzones. And then bought 47-50 blues without expertise, and did the same.

 

My impression - recruit gear don't worth 320k. It worth nothing at all.

 

Absolutely for sure its better that under 50 lvl blues, but it doesn't matter when you are facing WH or WH/BM geared players. It doesn't mtter. Recruit set will not provide you with minimum power to compete.

 

In blues you got murdured in 3 hits.

 

In recruit gear you will be murdured in 4-5 hits. (3-4 against maras and PT) And Snipers will trash you in 2-3 gcds. And im not exaggerating.

 

You will not do any meaningful damage nor in blues nor in Recruit gear. You will be a lamb in a sloughterhouse untill you get BM set.

 

I will better take 320k with my alt and suffer my way throug period of obtaining BM, rather than not taking 320k and suffering my way through period of changing Recruit on BM.

 

Thats... wrong

 

Sad that your sttitude although completely and totally incorrect runs rampant.

 

WH sniper 2 or 3 gcds? As soon as you said this I knew the whole post was invalid

[SajPl]

The difference between dying in 3 hits and dying in 5 hits is massive. It gives me a chance to save you. It also makes my heals 15% more effective. Do Recruits kinda suck? Yep. Are they useless? No. I've seen Sentinels in 90% Recruit put out 300k damage. I've seen tanks in 90% Recruit put out 150k damage and 200k protection. I've seen healers in Recruit put out 250k healing. Not awesome, but also far from useless especially if the player is playing the objectives.

 

I did 507k on my full recruit gear helaer.I don't think people were complaining about my gear.

[Aaroneus]

I have a tip for any readers who are unsure about what they should do for PvP when they hit 50.

When you hit valor level 40, you can start collecting ranked comm's. So when you hit 40, start PvP'ing and top out both your ranked and regular wz comms. When you hit 50, use your 2k WZ comm's to buy a BM piece(s). Then convert 2000 of your ranked comms into 2000 regular comms (the exchange rate is 10 ranked for 10 regular) and buy another piece(s) Convert your remaining 1500 ranked comms into regular comms and buy another piece(s). I'd recommend making armor pieces a priority if you're wondering what to buy because they are more expensive and offer the 2- and 4-piece set bonuses. And since you're getting most of the more expensive pieces out of the way right off the bat, the remainder of your BM "grind" will but far quicker and far less painful.

 

The catch to this though is that you have to PvP a lot in your 40's. A lot. Some people enjoy doing this, like me. Others don't and would rather quest, which is totally fine. Questing is fun too. So it really comes down to preference and what you're willing to put up with.

Edited July 13, 2012 by Aaroneus

[Astarica]

Recruit gear is not worth it if you plan to lose your way to WH or you play so much thatyou'll have BM in under a week.

 

Believe it or not, winning decreases the time it takes to grind out all gear and having Recruit gear will indeed make it more likely your team will win compared to whatever random greens you currently have when you hit level 50.