Armormech, Totally worthles? (Mod'able armor Rant)

[Sagerk]

a friend of mine made purple pants for me, it came with a purple mod and a purple armouring.... just fyi

[MootPinks]

Depends on whether you can craft orange gear with augments or not ... if you can armortech is totally worth it. If you can't it is a bit lacking.

 

I agree. Have any armormechs managed to crit on an orange schematic and produce a piece with augment slot?

[Slothrop]

OP assumes that everyone will run around with orange gear and will not want to use non moddable gear.

 

But the orange gear is actually slightly WORSE than the crafted green gear (in either armor rating or damage range, depending). I don't understand...

[HexCaliber]

I agree. Have any armormechs managed to crit on an orange schematic and produce a piece with augment slot?

 

Read my reply; mods have augment slots not gear, that's a total of three slots for augments if you hunt the mods down or craft them yourself.

[HexCaliber]

But the orange gear is actually slightly WORSE than the crafted green gear (in either armor rating or damage range, depending). I don't understand...

Not once you start slapping in epic level mods its not, the stats are only slightly less when green (standard) mods are used, it improves with blue and takes a giant leap with purple. Then throw in the aforementioned augments in each mod and Orange gear rocks, and allows you to tailor your stats to avoid soft caps, or diminishing returns.

[Slothrop]

Not once you start slapping in epic level mods its not, the stats are only slightly less when green (standard) mods are used, it improves with blue and takes a giant leap with purple. Then throw in the aforementioned augments in each mod and Orange gear rocks, and allows you to tailor your stats to avoid soft caps, or diminishing returns.

 

Ok, that makes sense. Thanks for clarifying! I could see that investment being worth it for end-game gear (not while leveling up though).

 

How does what you said translate over to weapons that rely on damage range?

[Buffman]

Read my reply; mods have augment slots not gear, that's a total of three slots for augments if you hunt the mods down or craft them yourself.

 

This is blatantly incorrect. A critical when crafting a piece of gear will cause the gear to pick up an additional augment mod slot. Augments come from Slicing.

[illgot]

This is blatantly incorrect. A critical when crafting a piece of gear will cause the gear to pick up an additional augment mod slot. Augments come from Slicing.

 

Correct, I have seen some of these on the broker.

 

It seems armor and weapons can have additional stats (have not seen any on orange armor) as well as mods.

Edited December 21, 2011 by illgot

[Ohoni]

Non modded armor is most likely easier to keep up to date than modded with only having to replace the one piece rather than the 3 mods in it.

 

No, it's far easier to keep custom gear upgraded than the static gear. Like I tend to upgrade using commendations and quest rewards, if you keep up on your quest chains they tend to produce as many useful mods per level chain as you need, and then commendation mods can be purchased for less than the cost of the full components. It does tend to be a better deal to mod/upgrade orange chests and pants than it does to upgrade the other bits though, since Armoring mods cost the same no matter the piece, even though the bigger pieces translate that into more armor points than the smaller do.

 

Really that would be the one major limitation to the modding system, I'd almost like to see them make "small armoring" mods that are like Armoring ones but can only be slotted into the more accessory bits, and since they offer lower armor value they'd have slightly lower costs, like about 75% or so.

 

One other thing that long-time beta players might miss (and I also forget sometimes) is that you can remove mods now, so basically you can "trickle down" mods to a point, like if you blow your first cache of Nar Shaddah commendations on a new Barrel for your gun, you can remove the Taris barrel and slap it on your companion's gun. When you get enough for a new Armoring, you can take the one out of your chest and put it in your legs, then the one out of your legs and put it into a glove or boot or something, which helps you keep the smaller bits upgraded without significant extra expense.

 

You're only doing half of the crafting then. You need to RE all of the gear your replacing, and it would be just as easy to RE gear that you like the look of in order to get the better versions of it.

 

Any RE'd blue gear I can make requires Multine, and Multine isn't available on the GTN, and if I ever do see it around, it's for outrageous prices, well more than the items I could make with it would possibly be worth. It'd be way more cost effective to just buy from the highway robber "specialty" vendors. I imagine that situation will level out eventually, as more characters are able to farm more vendor materials than they know what to do with themselves and flood the marketplace with them, but for now it's a mess.

 

Unfortunately, I know for certain these complaints are going to continue. For every person who becomes informed, 10 more will crop up and complain without understanding.

 

And along with those ten, there will also be five more that DO understand and still don't like it. But they will be ignored by the 1 who is "Informed*."

 

*which I understand from this context to mean "infallible."

 

I just hope they don't respond to these complaints with a nerf. The system isn't broken, and a nerf to orange gear would be bad for everyone. (And yes, a buff to crafted standard armor to make it better than oranges counts as a nerf to orange gear.)

 

I can't imagine them nerfing orange gear, what would be the point? The only reason I could see them nerfing oranges is if they add a better appearance modification mechanism, in which case it would be better for overall game balance for the completely free-form armor type to have less peak potential than the more "fixed" armor type, but so long as orange are the ONLY way to control your own appearance they can't get away with making them provide substandard performance.

 

a friend of mine made purple pants for me, it came with a purple mod and a purple armouring.... just fyi

 

So what you're saying is that if an armormech wants an armoring mod for his orange gear, he needs to make level appropriate green armors, RE them until he gets a blue schematic, make a bunch of those and RE them until he gets a purple schematic, make one of those (for well above the cost of a Cybertech making an Armoring mod), and then extract those mods from the purple armor? Sounds simple enough, compared ot just hitting "craft" on the Cybertech.

[Sticksabbi]

The last poster did a real good job explaining why orange makes armormech pointless I think. I just thought I'd give an example that happened to me last night.

 

So at this point I have orange equipment in every slot except belt and bracers. In those slots I DO have crafted gear. But I digress, So I do a quest and get a nice armor mod as a reward. So I open up my chest and see it's better than the mod in it. So I extract that mod and replace it with the new mod. I open up my helmet and see that the mod from my chest is better than the mod there so I extract that mod and put it in my headpiece. I compare that mod to the rest of my armor and see that it's better than the one in my boots. So I replace the mod in my boots with the one from my helm.

 

So story in short with just 1 quest reward I upgraded 3 armor pieces. All the craftable gear for my level is at best only a minor... temporary upgrade to my orange piece(s). Also, my orange armor looks awesome. Makes me look like a seasoned, tough as nails, bounty hunter.

 

Btw, all the orange armor pieces I'm wearing. They were all obtained via quest reward and/or commendation vendors. Not a single piece of it was crafted. So the question still stands. What's the point of armormech/synthweaving? Is it really only good for crafting bracers and belts? Are there orange belts/bracers out there?

Edited December 21, 2011 by Sticksabbi

[grahad]

My bet is they will add a hilt like item to all orange / modifiable gear that determines its base armor and stats. There just is no other way.

[Sticksabbi]

My bet is they will add a hilt like item to all orange / modifiable gear that determines its base armor and stats. There just is no other way.

 

Not sure I follow, this would differ from the armor plating slot how? I would like to see them give armormechs the ability to add a augment slot to an orange armor piece. I think this would go a long way to make me feel better about wasting the last 20 levels leveling up armormech.

 

As a side note to everyone saying "oh you can craft an orange with a augment slot" last I checked this is an undocumented rumor. I have yet to see any orange armors with an augment slot.

[rotfish]

so im almost 100 armormech should i drop it? Seems it would be a waste of time being comm gear will be better end game.

[JediMoose]

As a 372 Armormech, I am banking on the fact that they will improve the crafting system further down the road so that I don't have to hope for a crit on orange gear for the 4th slot. I understand the crit process, but as of right now I have 7 lvl39 Orange Heavy Armor chests that cannot be reversed engineered.

 

Oranges need to able to be reverse engineered for mats at least, esp with the way crits currently work

[Ohoni]

Are they BoP? I would assume you could at least GTN them for cash. The marketplace really does need more people selling T2+ materials though.

[Kryptorchid]

As a 372 Armormech, I am banking on the fact that they will improve the crafting system further down the road so that I don't have to hope for a crit on orange gear for the 4th slot. I understand the crit process, but as of right now I have 7 lvl39 Orange Heavy Armor chests that cannot be reversed engineered.

 

Oranges need to able to be reverse engineered for mats at least, esp with the way crits currently work

 

Honestly, I would rather see a better mechanic for REing Oranges (well, all REing really). I say it would A) give the materials back, and B) increases the chance of critting on that item by x% (stays with you indefinitely for that item, does not ever go away). The crafting system is setup for "Goods" Crafters (Armormech, Synthweaving, Armstech) to live and die by crits. There needs to be a better way for dedicated crafters to yield more desirable gear.

Edited December 21, 2011 by Kryptorchid

[Racheakt]

As a 372 Armormech, I am banking on the fact that they will improve the crafting system further down the road so that I don't have to hope for a crit on orange gear for the 4th slot. I understand the crit process, but as of right now I have 7 lvl39 Orange Heavy Armor chests that cannot be reversed engineered.

 

Oranges need to able to be reverse engineered for mats at least, esp with the way crits currently work

 

 

So is it possible to get a master-craft orange item with a 4th slot?

 

If so I think that may be something that people will pay through the nose for one.

 

It is my understanding that Raid set gear is purple and has native stats and two slots instead of the armor/barrel/hilt mod slot.

 

I think armortech and synthweave big money is in crafting orange items.

[Sticksabbi]

so im almost 100 armormech should i drop it? Seems it would be a waste of time being comm gear will be better end game.

 

if I had it to do all over again, I would have dropped armortech for cybertech. right now the way the system is Armortech/synthweaving imho really isn't worth the investment. I don't think armormech/synthweaving is completely worthless, but for what you get from other craft skills it's BY FAR the weakest. I mean seriously, let's look at this... We make armor that's about as good as orange armor. Armor that, unlike orange armor, has to be replaced every few levels.

[Sticksabbi]

So is it possible to get a master-craft orange item with a 4th slot?

 

If so I think that may be something that people will pay through the nose for one.

 

It is my understanding that Raid set gear is purple and has native stats and two slots instead of the armor/barrel/hilt mod slot.

 

I think armortech and synthweave big money is in crafting orange items.

 

I'll have to check again to see if someone's confirmed this, but last I checked this was an undocumented rumor.

[Kaffis]

if I had it to do all over again, I would have dropped armortech for cybertech. right now the way the system is Armortech/synthweaving imho really isn't worth the investment. I don't think armormech/synthweaving is completely worthless, but for what you get from other craft skills it's BY FAR the weakest. I mean seriously, let's look at this... We make armor that's about as good as orange armor. Armor that, unlike orange armor, has to be replaced every few levels.

With orange armor, you're replacing the mods every few levels anyways, though, so it's really no better. Sure, the mods are individually cheaper, but guess what -- you need more of them, so it's not really any "easier."

 

In fact, with orange armor, you can't even replace all the mods yourself; you need a cybertech AND an artificer to get max stats per level out of it.

 

Also, don't fool yourself. Cybertechs aren't making money hand over foot, either, because non-cybertechs just use commendations to cheaply mod out their armor.

 

The crafting market is, at its core, a vanity market. Once you entrench yourself as a crafter, and collect a variety of orange schematics, you become about delivering the LOOK people want. They can and will get the stats they want for free via quests throughout the levelling process.

[DarthTolis]

/signed

[Zeborah]

Sorry for the newbish question, but do the armor values scale with you as you level up, or

does the armor value remain fixed on these orange pieces of armor?

[ekiander]

Sorry for the newbish question, but do the armor values scale with you as you level up, or

does the armor value remain fixed on these orange pieces of armor?

 

One of the mod slots is an armor mod. So the armor does not increase with your level but it will increase if you place a better armor mod into it.

 

Personally I went Cybertech on my main. Coming from WoW the enchanting and jewelcrafting skills were always in higher demand. I look at synthweaving on my alt as just a way to fill in holes that I otherwise cant get via drops or other means.

[OSUNightfall]

Armormech and Synthweaving make the bulk of the orange gear in the game. You find the schematics via Underworld Trading. Current reports are that orange gear can be Critically crafted to gain an Augment slot, meaning crafters are the only source of the best orange gear. It is cheaper to upgrade standard gear for each slot than it is to upgrade 3-4 mods for each slot.

 

If you plan on using orange gear in every slot (Which will get extremely expensive compared to just crafting gear, when you need to upgrade) then the armor professions may not be as useful in the short term. In the long term, you will be the premier source of orange armor, and necessary to anyone wanting the best orange options. Armor crafting is also the best and most efficient way to keep your companions well equipped.

 

This is a common perception and complaint, but I feel it's not a problem with the system, but rather peoples (lack of) understanding of it. Yes, you CAN get orange items and keep them updated and never need standard armor, but it's difficult and expensive.

 

I also believe most people with this complaint do not understand the depth of options the reverse engineering system gives them as far as making armor with the stats they want. You are not limited to the stats granted by the initial item. As you reverse engineer you will learn variations with different stats. Every trainable, equipable piece of armor you can make has 19 variations you can discover. See my guide, linked in my sig below, to learn how to get the most out of crafting via Reverse Engineering.

 

Unfortunately, I know for certain these complaints are going to continue. For every person who becomes informed, 10 more will crop up and complain without understanding. Also, some people don't really care about the positives of the professions if it doesn't function the way they think it should.

 

Perhaps Bioware will throw these people a bone and allow armor makers to craft some mods or something. I wouldn't mind that so much, if it makes people happy, although it seems like a rip-off to Cybertech. I just hope they don't respond to these complaints with a nerf. The system isn't broken, and a nerf to orange gear would be bad for everyone. (And yes, a buff to crafted standard armor to make it better than oranges counts as a nerf to orange gear.)

 

Signed,

A Satisfied Synthweaver

 

So, this guy shows why 90% of this thread is made up of people that don't understand the crafting system, and everyone ignores him. Look! Up above! It's why Armormech and Synth are BETTER than the oranges you get from drops! Can you get a critically crafted drop? No? End of thread.

[Vexxem]

IMO there are issues with many of the professions I've seen due to certain aspects of the system. Why craft gear or loot gear or even bother with blues and purples if the orange moddable gear can be upgraded while you level or with a couple thousand creds?

 

Basically the orange gear system they have makes any other gear choice strictly appearance-driven, at least up to my current level which is 33 and I don't see this changing for at least the next few.

 

They need to institute mod caps for orange gear or develop innate stats. For mod caps, you can only insert a mod up to level X on a certain piece of gear. For innate stats, you'd at least be looking for gear upgrades with better innate stats then modding them and then when you outlevel the mods, continuing the process.

 

I'm artificer and it's annoying that mods can be reused so cheaply, crafted gear and quested gear comes with mods fully installed and we get mods as gear rewards and commendations rewards that is very expensive or difficult for me to RE. I've heard other crafting professions with similar problems.

 

I just don't know if crafting is worth it in this game. It seems like the interactions with crafted and dropped/quested gear aren't well-thought-out. Maybe this will change at the endgame, don't know. But as it stands, it's pretty disappointing.