Black Hole Gear and Upcoming Expansion Question

[Disir]

I'm currently grinding black hole gear and the expansion comes out some time in the spring. I have a family and work full time so I'm lucky if I play 3 hours a week. I'm concerned I'll spend my precious time for black hole comms/gear then the expansion will come out and then my black hole gear will suck. This kept happening to me in WoW.

 

Should I be leveling an alt now?

[JakeAlmighty]

Black Hole gear is ALREADY not the top end gear so I'm slightly confused.

 

There will definitely be stronger gear coming out, and stronger content to go with it.

 

Such is MMO progression.

[Gereorth]

I'm concerned I'll spend my precious time for black hole comms/gear then the expansion will come out and then my black hole gear will suck. This kept happening to me in WoW.

 

Should I be leveling an alt now?

 

Welcome to the life of MMO's. If you enjoy doing Operatians, you will need decent gear. So you will have to "waste" your time and gather those commendations.

And it ALWAYS happens whenever an expansion comes out, your previous gear will get "worthless".

But I think you should ask yourself WHY you are gathering better gear. And from that answer you should know if you must keep going, or decide to level an "alt".

[Dandak]

I think it really depends on what your goals are in the game.

 

The new expansion, and possibly the new ops that the state of the game alluded to, will most likely make your Black Hole gear "suck".

 

Personally, I still want to do the current content as far as ops go.

 

I know that better gear will make the harder ops (and the hard modes) easier and more accesable.

 

So, I will be continuing to upgrade my gear with the best gear I can get .

 

I hope this helps.

Edited January 9, 2013 by Dandak

[Spiritinblack]

If you go through the posts from devs, forum mods.... it seems they are trying to make your gear from this tier NOT suck in this next adventure.

 

They said something on the lines of side grades.... ( whatever that might mean ).

 

Take what you will from their comments.... If you min/max then best gear always.... If they hold up to what they have said.... Your BH stuff might not be bad..... Not like in other games where the greens that drop are better then the Raid gear you have.

[AshlaBoga]

Black Hole gear is ALREADY not the top end gear so I'm slightly confused.

 

There will definitely be stronger gear coming out, and stronger content to go with it.

 

Such is MMO progression.

 

Well you can get Dread Guard relics and Hazmat Earpieces and Implants for comms (300 Daily for a relic, 350 for a Hazmat implant/earpiece). I'd avoid buying BH gear for your main since it's already obsolete. DG might not seem like a big upgrade from BH, but I've got 4/5 DG and I've got to tell you, it's been making a big difference.

[Washingtoon]

I ran around and killed stuff, couldnt pick up the missions though, as a lvl 46 in Black Hole. I think you'll be fine in BH gear. And if you're worried just buy the cheap stuff, have the mods re'ed and buy 63 mods for the money you bring in. Edited January 9, 2013 by Washingtoon

[Dawginole]

You should be RE'ing your BH and using the stabs to buy Dread Guard. It will take you the same amount of time. You should consider your work toward BH actually as work toward Dread Guard. Level cybertech and artifice (one on an alt obviously) and get a set of legacy gear to send your BH mats to the alt. If you research crafting, the full package of mats needed to go 1-400 in a craft will run you about 300k. You may also desire to buy the crit crafting item for your robot companion off a friends ship with a repair droid. That will be 200k. Adding the crit chance in legacy will be about 100k iirc. You will also want to have at least 3 companions at over 4,000 affection. You can do this cheaply by using greens to build up to the levels where they push over an affection tier and then use a purple right before they do. Read up on that. In all, plan for about 1mil credits. You should be able to easy make 1mil credits by doing all four daily areas 2 days (def no more than 3 days) in a row at a total of about 2.5-3 hours/day. BH > Ilum > Section X > Belsalvis. At this point you have 400 on two crafts. You now may need about 100k for at least 1 legacy item. Gloves are usually cheap legacy pieces and gloves are also the cheapest BH piece. Now your grind is over. In your available play time at your own leisure you can now run ops, fp's, etc to acquire BH comms. Use the comms to buy a BH glove. Pull the armor mod and enhancement. The armor and mod will go to the class with cybertech and the enhancement to the class with artifice. You will use the legacy glove to send the item to your alot. The reason you use the legacy glove is because you're buying the cheapest BH piece which is also a glove and glove armoring has to be transfered in a glove. It won't fit in a shoe for instance. Save up your stabilizers received from reverse engineering. You'll need about 42 for full mods/ehancements for all armor pieces and your weapon. Then use your BH comms to buy campaign armorings from the vendor so that you can keep your set bonus until you acquire actual dread guard armorings. You will need a few other purple mats to craft your dread guard gear. You should crit your RE's occassionally and get extra stabilizers (stabs). Sell these stabs for the money to get the other greens and purple mats you need. Get tip money together and send your mats to a lvl 27 crafter and get your dread guard gear made. I did all of this playing casually in 2 weeks. I went from Rakata to Dread Guard in 2 weeks. No one in this game has any excuses not to be best in slot with the bs "cheats" they have made available since 1.5/1.6.

To you this may seem like a lot of work. But like I said you need to be collecting BH in order to get to Dread Guard. The earliest this expansion launches is in April. You should easily be able to accomplish this and be in Dread Guard by April even playing super casually. And in 27's you will not be in bad gear even with the level increase. Best of luck.

[dacentabaal]

OR... he can just stay in BH.. Dread guard equipment isnt needed, heck from whats been said the normal end game columi/rak gear should be ok.. just people with the higher gear have it easier.. like the way it is in MMO games, i mean c'mon.. my dps jugg.. 22k hp mainly in columi with a few bits Rakata and some 61 mods (literally about 4 mods) and he does perfectly fine on HM ops inplants, ear wrists and belt is BH everything else other tan teh 61 mods is lesser

[Disir]

Thanks for all the feedback!

 

Everyone makes wondeful points. And yes I do understand that BH is not the best and I am trying to get the BH gear so I can hang in the Ops. I was wondering if it was going to be like WoW and the next green drop will be better than all the previous end game gear. Anyway, I guess I'll keep grindning the dailys to get better gear and hopefully get nice drops in the ops. I need to play the game more.

 

I did read the Devs comments on the expansion and it seemed kind of vague to me but you guys made me think and I guess that is the whole point of an expansion..."to expand the game" if all the new end game gear is not that much better then why chase the carrot? Don't get me wrong I like the story aspect but getting stronger is the whole point.

 

Whatevs...I like the game...thats what matters

[annabethchase]

As someone who's older as well, let me just recommend not joining a Hard Mode Ops team, ever. Have a little fun in story mode and move on. There's no reason to try to get in the hampster wheel with 3 hours a week of available playtime.

 

I'd recommend enjoying the game in other manners that won't use up all of your playtime in 1 sitting.

[annabethchase]

You should be RE'ing your BH and using the stabs to buy Dread Guard. It will take you the same amount of time. You should consider your work toward BH actually as work toward Dread Guard. Level cybertech and artifice (one on an alt obviously) and get a set of legacy gear to send your BH mats to the alt. If you research crafting, the full package of mats needed to go 1-400 in a craft will run you about 300k. You may also desire to buy the crit crafting item for your robot companion off a friends ship with a repair droid. That will be 200k. Adding the crit chance in legacy will be about 100k iirc. You will also want to have at least 3 companions at over 4,000 affection. You can do this cheaply by using greens to build up to the levels where they push over an affection tier and then use a purple right before they do. Read up on that. In all, plan for about 1mil credits. You should be able to easy make 1mil credits by doing all four daily areas 2 days (def no more than 3 days) in a row at a total of about 2.5-3 hours/day. BH > Ilum > Section X > Belsalvis. At this point you have 400 on two crafts. You now may need about 100k for at least 1 legacy item. Gloves are usually cheap legacy pieces and gloves are also the cheapest BH piece. Now your grind is over. In your available play time at your own leisure you can now run ops, fp's, etc to acquire BH comms. Use the comms to buy a BH glove. Pull the armor mod and enhancement. The armor and mod will go to the class with cybertech and the enhancement to the class with artifice. You will use the legacy glove to send the item to your alot. The reason you use the legacy glove is because you're buying the cheapest BH piece which is also a glove and glove armoring has to be transfered in a glove. It won't fit in a shoe for instance. Save up your stabilizers received from reverse engineering. You'll need about 42 for full mods/ehancements for all armor pieces and your weapon. Then use your BH comms to buy campaign armorings from the vendor so that you can keep your set bonus until you acquire actual dread guard armorings. You will need a few other purple mats to craft your dread guard gear. You should crit your RE's occassionally and get extra stabilizers (stabs). Sell these stabs for the money to get the other greens and purple mats you need. Get tip money together and send your mats to a lvl 27 crafter and get your dread guard gear made. I did all of this playing casually in 2 weeks. I went from Rakata to Dread Guard in 2 weeks. No one in this game has any excuses not to be best in slot with the bs "cheats" they have made available since 1.5/1.6.

To you this may seem like a lot of work. But like I said you need to be collecting BH in order to get to Dread Guard. The earliest this expansion launches is in April. You should easily be able to accomplish this and be in Dread Guard by April even playing super casually. And in 27's you will not be in bad gear even with the level increase. Best of luck.

 

If this is all so easy to accomplish for casuals, why are 95% of the population running around in lesser gear? Answer, is nobody who's an actual casual at 3 hours a week is ever going to accomplish this before the next tier hits. This is the same elitist fake help you see all the time where they want you to devote more hours a week to gearing up than you planned to spend in the game period.

[Dawginole]

The majority of time spent by most MMO'ers is waiting for the perfect scenario to do something, or chatting on fleet, or getting distracted doing this and that or playing around trying to get worthless cartel items out of a lottery box that are completely and utterly meaningless to game progression.

 

It actually takes some resolve to go out 2-3 days in a row and not be distracted by other people, friends, or events and grind out 4 daily areas.

 

No one does this. That's why few are rich. If few are rich, then few put the extra money into a craft that can RE 26's and put together mats for 27's.

 

In the end, I just gift wrapped anyone willing to read that gigantic post an easy way to be fully geared in dread guard. And your response was to complain and call me an elitist. Why? Because I didn't go out and do the work for you? Wouldn't I be an elitist for hiding the info rather than posting it to try to help someone? It makes me want to just erase it. Maybe I will.

 

BTW. I'm 32, have a gf, work 40hrs/week, and am in full time graduate school working toward a phd and I managed to do this in the time I posted. Maybe you're not good at MMO's? Try Xbox.

Edited January 11, 2013 by Dawginole

[Holinyx]

Devs already said that the end game gear now (BH/Campaign) will be perfectly fine to use at 55 OPS content. if you think about it, you are already in 55 gear. lvl 49 is grade 22 right? alot of people have what...grade 27? grade 27 is more or less level 55 gear.

[Arlbo_Nabbins]

Thanks for all the feedback!

 

Everyone makes wondeful points. And yes I do understand that BH is not the best and I am trying to get the BH gear so I can hang in the Ops. I was wondering if it was going to be like WoW and the next green drop will be better than all the previous end game gear. Anyway, I guess I'll keep grindning the dailys to get better gear and hopefully get nice drops in the ops. I need to play the game more.

 

Unless the Devs radically overhaul the gear system then the gear from the expansion will top out at level 55/56. That makes it the equivalent of Columi so Black Hole will still be better. What the expansion is likely to do is make it much easier to gear for the existing HM Ops as you won't need to run Ops for Columi gear just Rakata/Black Hole/Dread Guard.

[Llama-Eight]

Unless the Devs radically overhaul the gear system then the gear from the expansion will top out at level 55/56.

 

That would be the "horizontal gear progression" they talk about, rather than the vertical gear progression we have now. Quite how it will work out I've no idea & it concerns me somewhat as I quite like getting better gear & bigger numbers.

 

Dawginole's "guide" of how to get yourself into Dread Guard gear is a good one & can be done at your own pace, whether that's 3 hours a week or 3 hours a day, it'll just be quicker if you spend more time on it per day & as he said, it does take a fair bit of willpower to grind through the dailies every day for several days (or every few days for several weeks if that's the amount of time you have available for gaming).

 

Just because you can't devote as much time to SWTOR as some doesn't mean you should be relegated to consoles, nor does it mean that you have to "put up with" not being able to get hold of the current top tier gear, it'll just take you longer is all. I think that some people (on both sides of the argument) could do with chilling out & not being quite as insulting others.

Edited January 11, 2013 by Llama-Eight

[annabethchase]

It actually takes some resolve to go out 2-3 days in a row and not be distracted by other people, friends, or events and grind out 4 daily areas.

.

 

You told him to get BH comms to buy gloves and RE them. If he has 3 hours a week of playtime, the most he can acquire is 15 BH comms a week by doing the groupfinder 3 times. That also leaves 0 time to do dailies. None, count the time he has, not what you have.

 

I'm not saying a moderate to hardcore player with 10 hours a week can't follow your plan. But a casual absolutely cannot.

[Llama-Eight]

You told him to get BH comms to buy gloves and RE them. If he has 3 hours a week of playtime, the most he can acquire is 15 BH comms a week by doing the groupfinder 3 times. That also leaves 0 time to do dailies. None, count the time he has, not what you have.

 

I'm not saying a moderate to hardcore player with 10 hours a week can't follow your plan. But a casual absolutely cannot.

 

You can do the BH weekly for some BH comms plus whatever amount of group finder HMs the OP has the time for. You should be able to run through the BH weekly in ~30 mins or so.

 

Edit: Also you can (if you have a decent group) do HM runs fairly quickly too, certainly quicker than an hour, though it would probably depend on the group & how the OP's available time is broken up.

Edited January 11, 2013 by Llama-Eight