My first post since launch

[Utorian]

Apologies if its long - I have been playing since launch (for info) I both PVE and PVP

 

Right ; i have seen so many people on here cussing down PVPers for having the cheek to moan our gear got destroyed.

 

Firstly - have you people got ANY idea how long it took to get a fully OPTIMISED set of EWH , im not talking the set i'm talking FULLY optimised 63 mods.

 

Secondly - i'm an MMO verteran I KNOW full well that gear becomes redundant when an "expansion" comes out

 

The issue i and many other hardcore pvpers have is that PVE gear from faceroll "hard modes" is currently better to use in Warzone. This makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever and is a complete slap in the face to every PVPer in the game

 

I'm not elitist and i agree the gap between recruit (rubbish) and EWH was absolutely huge - i'm 100% all in favour of getting more people into PVP if they desire and i understand its a difficult issue but there can be no justification in my mind that PVE gear should be infinitely better than EWH or even Partisan.

 

And YES i do have a fulll set of PVE gear i can use but why should i after all the effort that went into my full EWH

 

We are not crying over gear - we all know it was going to have to be replaced - i'm not stupid enough to change and know i have to work hard if i want to get the best gear in the game.

 

Bolster at the level it is on PVE is completely ridiculous - I have no issues with Bolster on PVE as an idea but at the current level it is it almost makes PVP grinding and gearing pointless

 

Tell me whats the point in grinding Partisan gear when i can steamroll flashpoints all day and get 69 mods and just roll with PVE gear.

 

Not all PVPers like PVE - im in a hardcore PVP guild 90% of my guild have never done an OPs or a flashpoint and dont want to ... i like both so in that respect im lucky

 

Views?

[_Zhatan_]

agree

[gtangtan]

I am a veteran MMO player who fail to read patch notes beyond the first sentence. i don't understand why they buffed my gear for no reason or why conqueror set is still better for pvp than best pve gear with bolster. i'm just another troll who jumps to conclusions because i have ADD and don't have the ability to finish reading a short dev note. or spend 5 minutes in a wz comparing how the new gear works compared to how it used to work yesterday.

[Devlonir]

The issue i and many other hardcore pvpers have is that PVE gear from faceroll "hard modes" is currently better to use in Warzone.

Except it's not.

 

Only Operations gear is better than BiS PVP gear right now.

[Utorian]

Go and get some PVE mods from the new flashpoints and gear

 

Like i said in reply to your other reply

 

PVE mods give you massive buffs to your main stat , you get crit alacrity whatever and you trade off something miniscule like 50 expertise

 

150 + aim > 40 expertise i know what i would rather have

[UltimateKrucible]

Totally agree - I neither have the time nor inclination to constantly grind FPs and Ops for what's now the best gear for PvP.

 

Seems to me that BWEA have flipped a switch and turned PvP into a mini-game, for reasons best left to themselves.

 

And for all those PVE'rs rejoicing at the PvP community's downfall - Your turn will come, mark my words. Makes just as much sense from a player retention point of view to bring bolster into Ops and FPs.

[gtangtan]

Originally Posted by Alex Modny

Naked Bolster

The main change being made to Bolster is how it treats item slots with no items in them aka the naked bolster. If there is a slot without an item in it, that slot will only be bolstered a portion of what placing an appropriate item in the slot would. This will remove the naked bolster situation. Being Naked in a PvP area will now be much worse the further you go up the PvP progression.

In addition to these changes we fixed many underlying bugs in the Bolster system and tweaked some numbers to make Bolster give a little less stats than it does currently. We also corrected an issue where relic slots were being treated in our system as expected to give out more Main Stats than they were. This caused relic slots to be overly valued in adding to your DPS stats when mostly they add Endurance and a Proc. All of these changes should pretty much squash out Naked Bolster as being undeniably better than any set of gear. There might be cases where Naked is ever so slightly worse but that is usually a case of the equipped gear being not so great for PvP. If you see players in PvP playing Naked from now on you should expect them to be underperforming stat wise and over performing cojones wise.

 

Elite War Hero

War Hero and Elite War Hero (referred to as WH and EWH from here on out) gear is now better! It is no longer worse than Naked Bolster. The reasons why WH/EWH had less stats and were worse than old Bolster is because it is ‘old’ gear and this ‘old’ gear used a different stat budget where it got its stats from. This ‘old’ stat budget (which isn’t used in 2.0) accounts for Expertise into the budget (Partisan and Conqueror do not) meaning they were lower in Main, Secondary and Tertiary stats to account for the Expertise the items had. This will be removed and the stat budget the Expertise was taking be refactored into the Main, Secondary and Tertiary stats. The net result is WH/EWH will have no Expertise and increased stats, but Partisan will still be better than it. The ranking you will see in effectiveness is WH < EWH < Partisan < Conqueror.

However, we have an issue with this conversion, the Expertise crystal in the WH/EWH weapons. Because this crystal is used in Partisan and Conquer and the system is unable to edit based on condition which item the crystal in the WH and EWH weapons still have Expertise. It is recommended that you replace this Expertise crystal with PvE crystals. We apologize that we weren’t able to fully take all the Expertise off the WH/EWH and that some players will lose customization, which is very important to us and to you.

Older PvP Gear (Battlemaster, Champion, Centurion, Recruit, and Recruit Mk2) did not receive this free upgrade conversion. At this point in the SW:TOR item progression, these items are simply out of date with the current power level and are not recommended for use.

There is a very important note in regards to how the bolster system handles mixing expertise and non-expertise mods on a single item: The short answer is, you shouldn’t do it. The longer answer is, players are much better off than when they decide to make an item a PvP-focused item, they replace all of the mods inside it with expertise mods. The bolster system handles “PvP” items slightly differently than “PvE” items, and putting even a single expertise mod inside an item tells the bolster that the item is a “PvP” item. The result of this situation can be less than ideal for a player in either content channel, and certainly isn’t working as well as we intended. We continue to discuss fixes to this particular issue, but players can work around the problem by making sure they are either pure PvE items or pure PvP items. Note: This is only with mods on a per item basis, mixing different items on a full character is fine.

 

Gear vs. Skill

Pre-2.0 PvP was all about your items. Being ‘the best’ meant you had EWH with augments and no one could touch you. This situation was unfortunate because it made the PvP game too harsh on the ‘have nots’ and made the grind to EWH much more bitter because of getting your face pushed in the mud day after day. The gear gap was too big and some players became non-contributors quickly because of the gear gap. It wasn’t fun for the majority of players. In 2.0 we don’t want to totally get rid of PvP gear progression, we still want a gear gap but we want to tone down how overpowered the top tier gear is versus the lower PvP gear so that the moment to moment gameplay is more enjoyable. We want everyone you group with to be contributors from a gear standpoint (them not responding to “inc grass 3” calls or not throwing you the Huttball when they are immobilized is something we can’t help ). We have seen the argument of Skill vs. Gear throughout the existence of MMO PvP and we are of the opinion both are good for an RPG, falling on one side of the scale (gear has no purpose in PvP vs. gear is the only thing that matters in PvP) is not desirable. It is a balance act, sometimes it will slide too far on one side or the other and we will correct it but this methodology, the balance between skill vs. gear, will result in the most healthy PvP game and community possible for the long term.

P.S. Thanks DarthOvertone for making us laugh during this tribulation.

 

Someone read the dev notes...

[Devlonir]

Go and get some PVE mods from the new flashpoints and gear

 

Like i said in reply to your other reply

 

PVE mods give you massive buffs to your main stat , you get crit alacrity whatever and you trade off something miniscule like 50 expertise

 

150 + aim > 40 expertise i know what i would rather have

But the 69 ones aren't the ones easilly achieved, they arent the "faceroll" versions. And 69/72 is the gear that drops from Operations most commonly (hence me calling it Operations gear). PVP is as much "faceroll" as PVE is. I'd say even more. In PVP, you get warzone comms for just spending time in it, you don't have to actually achieve anything to get comms. Of course, winning gives you comms quicker, but you don't need to win.

In PvE, you need to at least succesfully complete a level 55 hardmode to have a chance at a ilvl 69 gear drop (of your class and spec) that you roll to win. So it's actually less faceroll than getting 66 gear for PVP.

 

But, case in point is, the intention of the changes were made very clear by Bioware: To bring everyone to Partisan level (unaugmented) regardless of gear, and give PVPers a chance to get an advantage and something to grind for through Conqueror gear.

So if there is now a situation where certain items, like 69 and 72 PVE items (which take more work to get than "facerolling"), means that intention is not being followed, I am sure this will be the next big thing to fix in a week's time.. like 50-54 PVP in WH/EWH gear was just today.

 

But guess what.. 50-54 PVP was a more direct problem because more of their playerbase was in that now. The ilvl 69/72 pvpers are a small minority right now. So fixing that had lower priority. But I doubt they won't do anything about it now they have both this WH/EWH fix as well as naked bolster fix, and can now go and get metrics on the ilvl 69/72 PVE gear problem.

 

I'd almost take a bet on it being solved, or at least a change coming to improve the situation, within the next 2 weeks. Almost.

Edited April 16, 2013 by Devlonir

[TUXs]

Fully agree OP!