removing augments from bolster

[Cowpowqt]

To the folks chumping my post, this is where I am coming from:

 

I am half way through level 53 and I haven't replaced ONE SINGLE piece of my level 50 elite pvp gear. Nothing even close. And I am willing to bet that it won't change over the next level and a half either. This isn't like wow where halfway through the first level of the new xpac greens are dropping that are far and away better than the prior xpac epic gear.

 

I have read the multiple posts on bolster and as far as I can see, it stops at level 49. Or does it still? Too many contradicting arguments about it for me to get a feel for it.

 

So I see myself heading to the warzones to get the new level pvp gear in the best gear available to me, which is still LAST XPAC's pvp gear, and it not being pvp gear at all. And I am not looking forward to getting taunted while I am being two-shot over and over again because I have absolutely no expertise even though I spent months grinding it out.

 

Make the prior xpac's pvp gear obsolete by giving me better gear to acquire, not by nerfing it to being useless and then making me grind back up to basically the same gear I used to have.

 

And what the heck is point of this bolster change anyway? Was it so people in non-pvp gear have the same pvp stats as those in pvp gear? Way to spit in the face of your hard core pvpers that actually use your product to grind it out. Good job rewarding us with nothing. If that is the case then why even have gear at all? Let's just all play naked if were all going to have identical stats regardless.

 

edit: spelling

Edited May 14, 2013 by Cowpowqt

[Wainamoinen]

I have read the multiple posts on bolster and as far as I can see, it stops at level 49. Or does it still?

 

Really? You read multiple posts on Bolster? Did you check whether those posts referred to Bolster in 1.7 or 2.0? Or enter any warzones at all, either before or after the patch?

 

1.7 = Bolster levels 10-49 up to 49 to make warzones fairer. No bolster in level 50 warzones

 

2.0 = Bolster boosts levels, but also gear - slot by slot - so that people aren't destroyed just because they don't have top level gear, and now it also applies to level 55 warzones so people entering those for the first time aren't basically a squishy pink paste until they gear up.

 

N.B. This includes a generous chunk of expertise, so your war hero gear is still pretty hot in warzones until you get the new PvP gear, which is better than WH/EWH or PvE gear. Only now WH gear's PvE stats are better.

 

Lowbie warzones are also subdivided into 10-29 and 30-54 so that characters without many abilitites yet aren't horribly molested by those with nearly a full complement.

 

Any clearer now? Feel free to formulate more coherent complaints based on the actual system.

 

edit: I'm tired, been PvPing and a bit drunk, so please excuse a little light sarcasm.

Edited May 14, 2013 by Wainamoinen

[Cowpowqt]

Really? You read multiple posts on Bolster? Did you check whether those posts referred to Bolster in 1.7 or 2.0? Or enter any warzones at all, either before or after the patch?

 

1.7 = Bolster levels 10-49 up to 49 to make warzones fairer. No bolster in level 50 warzones

 

2.0 = Bolster boosts levels, but also gear - slot by slot - so that people aren't destroyed just because they don't have top level gear, and now it also applies to level 55 warzones so people entering those for the first time aren't basically a squishy pink paste until they gear up.

 

N.B. This includes a generous chunk of expertise, so your war hero gear is still pretty hot in warzones until you get the new PvP gear, which is better than WH/EWH or PvE gear. Only now WH gear's PvE stats are better.

 

Lowbie warzones are also subdivided into 10-29 and 30-54 so that characters without many abilitites yet aren't horribly molested by those with nearly a full complement.

 

Any clearer now? Feel free to formulate more coherent complaints based on the actual system.

 

edit: I'm tired, been PvPing and a bit drunk, so please excuse a little light sarcasm.

 

Here is my more coherent complaint based on the actual system:

 

PVP gear is worthless since non-PVP gear will give a player the same stats.

 

So why bother grinding?

 

There are two types of people in the world; those who want to work hard and be rewarded for their efforts, and those who want everything handed to them. Looks like this game is catering to the later.

 

And what about when I am out in WPVP and I get jumped? How "pretty hot" is my WH gear then? You know...the WH gear that I spent months grinding for?

 

I haven't been drinking, but forgive my light sarcasm. I am kind of a d-bag and everyone knows it.

[Groncho]

This post is so full of fail, that is worthless to even enlighten the bads that are contradicting themselves post after post

Stop crying for once, get ur PvP gear, use the augments u need, and enjoy

[Azarai]

Please bring your PvE gear into WZ's so my full Conq/Partisan augmented concealment operative can rip you apart. I've been trying to get that 8k Hidden Strike I believe people like you who think that PvP gear is worthless is just the fool I've been looking for.

[Aelaias]

Here is my more coherent complaint based on the actual system:

 

PVP gear is worthless since non-PVP gear will give a player the same stats.

 

So why bother grinding?

 

There are two types of people in the world; those who want to work hard and be rewarded for their efforts, and those who want everything handed to them. Looks like this game is catering to the later.

 

And what about when I am out in WPVP and I get jumped? How "pretty hot" is my WH gear then? You know...the WH gear that I spent months grinding for?

 

I haven't been drinking, but forgive my light sarcasm. I am kind of a d-bag and everyone knows it.

 

The ideal suit utilizes both pve and pvp elements. Feel free to find Tonydragonflame's post to get an idea on what to do. Beyond that, you are spouting nonsense. If you try to equal a min/maxed partisan/pve suit with a pure pve suit you will come up short.

 

PS. Just noticed you haven't made it to 55 or to put it differently, you don't know what you are talking about.

Edited May 15, 2013 by Aelaias

[Raansu]

And what the heck is point of this bolster change anyway? Was it so people in non-pvp gear have the same pvp stats as those in pvp gear? Way to spit in the face of your hard core pvpers that actually use your product to grind it out. Good job rewarding us with nothing. If that is the case then why even have gear at all? Let's just all play naked if were all going to have identical stats regardless.

 

edit: spelling

 

The point of bolster was to replace recruit gear since balancing entry level pvp gear such as recruit was difficult. They couldn't make it too strong else it would ruin entry level pve grind. Too weak and it would be useless, thus bolster was the answer. I will say this, at first I disliked bolster, but now that I'm full geared, even though pve geared players have a chance to fight back, they also die twice as fast. A pvp geared player our fights are pretty balanced. When I come across a pve geared player they just melt. I hit them twice as hard and kill them much faster.

 

Does it suck that they butchered WH gear? Yeah, sure, but hey, it's new content, new tiers, I'm fully partisan and a few pieces of conqueror and I definitely have an advantage over pve geared players.

[Kubernetic]

To be honest with you, I feel your pain. I just started to level up from 50, and I see that all my war hero gear, that I spent months grinding out, has absolutely no expertise on it (except the guns).

 

What level of stupidity does someone have to possess to completely remove expertise, the "pvp factor" of gear, completely out of.....pvp gear. Have these guys completely flipped their wigs?

 

I'm one of the few idiots left actually still paying for this game, and this is what I get for my money. Months of grinding pvp expertise gear, and when I hit 55 I get to go to the warzones to start the new level 55 grind with NO EXPERTISE.

 

I don't know what programming issues there were that lead to the "itemization issues" (whatever that means) that caused expertise to be removed completely from pvp gear, but whoever was in charge should not have let those clown shoes leave their desks until they resolved it without making a change that wiped out months of grinding done by their paying customers.

 

Going the way of SWG I see....

 

This was the last straw for me. I originally didn't PVP, and I only got into it to try and have some more defense against gankers in Black Hole as I ran dailies and faced Imps from time to time. So all of that grinding, all of that work, to outfit FOUR toons with full War Hero at least, and had two of them with half EWH / half WH, poof, gone.

 

I'm okay with them adding new armors that you have to work for, although that still sort of leaves a bad taste and suggests sloppy, lazy game design... but to take armor we already worked for (that was still at least functional in open world PVP) and strip it of the stupid gear stat you made us all deal with in the first place?

 

No way.

 

If they did it once, they'll do it again. Next time it will be Conqueror and Partisan that gets Expertise stripped out of it when the next 56-60 expansion comes through, AFTER they trick you into paying $10 or more for the privilege of them sucker punching you in the gut.

 

6 days left. I don't even feel like logging in anymore, and I won't be spending cartel coins on unlocks to make it easier to play F2P. I think I'm just out of this game for good until I hear something about the SSSP, or until I see some kind of solid guarantee that they're NEVER going to do this stupid crap again.

Edited May 15, 2013 by Kubernetic

[Draekos]

You do realize that max expertise EWH would get destroyed by a Partisan/Conqueror geared player in the open world right? 1300 vs 2000 isnt going to be competitive, not to mention the much lower stat budget on old PvP gears.

[Taxablemango]

For you folks complaining about Expertise being removed from War Hero and Elite War Hero, I am guessing you didn't read what BW said about the change.

 

The new Bolster treats PvP and PvE gear differently. PvP is considered anything with Expertise in it. With the level increase and new Bolster system in place, our WH / EWH was made obsolete. That is what happens when level caps are increased. This is partly due to the fact that they changed how the Stat Budgets on PvP gear work. Expertise isn't part of the Budget anymore.

 

Now, since PvP and PvE gear are bolstered differently, so that a FULL set of PvP gear is suppose to be better overall (Expertise is suppose to make up for that Main stat difference), War Hero and Elite War Hero presented a problem. As I said before, the gear became outdated. That is because of the stat budget, the level cap increase, and the new PvP brackets.

 

Short version, walking into a Warzone with our Full WH / EWH gimped us when compared to PvE gear because we were now in a Warzone bracket with lvl 30 characters that would not have access to Expertise. We would be "under bolstered" because our gear was outdated. So to compensate, BW took the Expertise off of War Hero / Elite War Hero and REPLACED IT with the equivalent level PvE stats. It was not nerfed overall, it was transformed into PvE gear. The Expertise was transferred to the other stats. War Hero is now equal to other level 61 PvE Mods. They buffed WH / EWH for PvE so that it would be bolstered correctly. No one should use Expertise gear in any form until level 55 when you are talking about Warzones. Unfortunately that is where 99% of the PvP happens so that is the only thing that matters for balance.

 

Would it have been better if they went back and updated the old gear? Maybe, but they probably considered it far too time consuming. Instead they converted our old PvP gear into PvE gear.

[Kubernetic]

You do realize that max expertise EWH would get destroyed by a Partisan/Conqueror geared player in the open world right? 1300 vs 2000 isnt going to be competitive, not to mention the much lower stat budget on old PvP gears.

 

Just proof that going from 1300 to 2000 was a stupid move. Why not 1500?

 

The amount is still irrelevant. At least I would have had SOME extra protection, and would have had the armor that I had played and worked for. The rest is rationalization.

[Kubernetic]

BW changed its approach to PvP gear and decided that there is no PvP gear available under lvl 55. Live with it. The comparison with buying a car is sort of artificial. Besides, I don't give a sh.it about cars.

 

 

 

You don't get anyone down anymore and now you want your carried-by-gear superiority back, huh? Make yourself a smasher, then you can rule again.

 

It isn't really a bad analogy. The only thing missing is a "Terms of Use" agreement when you buy the car and a Wi-Fi/3G enabled modem in the car's CPU system that lets the manufacturer retroactively downgrade your system when they come out with a new model.

 

With that simple change, as the new model car comes out, they can just slink into your CPU and change the speed limiter to make it so you can only go a maximum of 65 miles per hour. Want to go 75 or 80 like you used to be able to? Well, you'll have to upgrade.

 

You signed the Terms of Use / Tweaking Agreement! Deal with it!

[cashogy_reborn]

we still have people whining that level 50 gear is not good for level 55 pvp?

[Astarica]

I did fine in War Hero once I got rid of the stuff that still had expertise (crystals in MH/OH, relics). Wasn't as good as Partisan let alone Conqueror but no one should be surprised by that.

[Cretinus]

The whole WH/EWH gear discussion is irrelevant for toons lvl 1-49 and lvl 55. At levels 1-49 you can't use it and at level 55 there is far superior gear.

It is also irrelevant for lvl 50-54 toons who don't have WH/EWH, be it because they didn't get it before the expansion, or because they hit lvl 50 after the expansion. These people don't give a sh.it about WH/EWH because bolster allows them to be competitive in greens anyway.

 

This tells us that the WH/EWH discussion is actually only a QQ of people having toons somewhere between lvl 50-54 and who would like to transform this bracket into their secret "carried-by-my-old-PvP-gear" retreat where some people (themselves) are allowed to pop up in PvP gear that others are not even allowed to buy.

This is the more ridiculous since these five levels 50-54 last only for a short period of time. Soon the toons will inevitably be lvl 55 and the whole discussion will be pointless then.

Any statement denying this is not credible because WH/EWH in its current form is indeed competitive in PvP at level 50-54, since there is bolster. Hence, the only visible reason for QQing is that this gear no longer produces god-mode when fighting people who don't have it (and never will).

Edited May 15, 2013 by Cretinus

[Kubernetic]

The whole WH/EWH discussion is irrelevant for toons lvl 1-49 and lvl 55 because at levels < 50 you can't use it and at level 55 there is far superior gear.

It is also irrelevant for lvl 50-54 toons who don't have WH/EWH, be it because they didn't get it before the expansion, or because they hit lvl 50 after the expansion. These people don't give a sh.it about WH/EWH because bolster allows them to be competitive in greens.

 

This tells us that the WH/EWH discussion is actually only a QQ of people having toons somewhere between lvl 50 and 54 who would like to transform this bracket into their secret "carried-by-gear" retreat where some people (themselves) have PvP gear while other people are no longer allowed to have it.

Any statement denying this is not credible because WH/EWH in its current form is indeed competitive in PvP at level 50-54, since there is bolster. Hence, the only visible reason for QQing is that it no longer produces god-mode compared to people who don't have it (and never will).

 

No. What it tells us is, in addition to not being able to properly fix their game, and properly segment the warzones, i.e. a 50-55 bracket where we all had Expertise, they also failed to add a steady progression into the mix, making the switch from EWH to Conqueror almost as much of a gap as from no expertise to War Hero.

 

That is, everyone was forced back onto the conveyor belt to grind again, and you were going to get owned and stomped no matter what until you did. While I'm okay with adding new armors that enhance the Expertise, if we're forced to use this stupid stat in the first place, would it REALLY have been that bad to only have the next level of armor go up to maybe 1450-1500, and the next level after that to 1600 or so? Did they have to crank it all the way from 1300 to 2000? Really?

 

You can call it QQ if you want to. But it's just because you're either used to being treated like this by developers, have already ground up one of your toons to this new status, or don't understand what we're saying. If there's another option, let me know.

[Iriquois]

If they hadn't removed the expertise people would have complained that they weren't getting bolstered as much as pve players. (could you imagine the qqing then?) in fact! This very thing happened which is what led them to the wh decision!

 

Since they knew ow PvP wasn't widely played very much at all... And that pvpers are going to get the next tier anyway (within days in some cases)... Obvious choice is obvious.

 

The vocal minority here can moan all they want, but when it comes down to it, the

effect on the player base was minimized as much as possible.

 

MOVING On......

 

Removal of augments from the bolster equation was also the right approach considering the pressure we as a player base put on the team to fix the exploit...

 

Now that you all have had time to play,... What are your thoughts? (

[Raansu]

No. What it tells us is, in addition to not being able to properly fix their game, and properly segment the warzones, i.e. a 50-55 bracket where we all had Expertise, they also failed to add a steady progression into the mix, making the switch from EWH to Conqueror almost as much of a gap as from no expertise to War Hero.

 

That is, everyone was forced back onto the conveyor belt to grind again, and you were going to get owned and stomped no matter what until you did. While I'm okay with adding new armors that enhance the Expertise, if we're forced to use this stupid stat in the first place, would it REALLY have been that bad to only have the next level of armor go up to maybe 1450-1500, and the next level after that to 1600 or so? Did they have to crank it all the way from 1300 to 2000? Really?

 

You can call it QQ if you want to. But it's just because you're either used to being treated like this by developers, have already ground up one of your toons to this new status, or don't understand what we're saying. If there's another option, let me know.

 

Hell no...I'm glad they didn't do 50-55. That bracket would of been dead in a few days. It's been several weeks now, get your damn partisan gear and get over it already.

[Sziroten]

Not defending BW, they handled this terribly - but removing the expertise from the gear is beneficial to you with the way bolster works. If they left the expertise on there you would get destroyed at 55 as bolster wouldn't work correctly for you.

 

You are not defending Bioware but are saying that they couldn't program bolster in a way that you wouldn't need to throw your previous PvP gear somewhere under the carpet?

 

Apart from that.... nobody understands bolster which starts with the devs themselves. If I have less bang with artifact items on my level than another one with blue items.... then something is wrong wouldn't you agree? They can't even tell you what to do or not what to do... player have to figure it out FOR Bioware.... . I mean c'mon.... if someone who isn't paid like you , doesn't have the resources you have can tell you how the stuff you are doing works then you are clearly not qualified?!

Edited May 15, 2013 by Sziroten

[Kubernetic]

Hell no...I'm glad they didn't do 50-55. That bracket would of been dead in a few days. It's been several weeks now, get your damn partisan gear and get over it already.

 

Oh I did. I suffered through 50-55 with nothing but 140-rating gear, hit 55 with 12,000+ comms, bought a full set of Partisan, and then cancelled my subscription.

 

Sorry, it just isn't fun anymore. I want something more than a forced gear train fandango. If this is what these types of MMOs are, then I won't be participating much. You're welcome to do otherwise.

[Iriquois]

Oh I did. I suffered through 50-55 with nothing but 140-rating gear, hit 55 with 12,000+ comms, bought a full set of Partisan, and then cancelled my subscription.

 

Sorry, it just isn't fun anymore. I want something more than a forced gear train fandango. If this is what these types of MMOs are, then I won't be participating much. You're welcome to do otherwise.

 

I'm sure you suffered so badly, sitting at your computer desk clicking away into star wars infinity only to be oppressed by those tyrannical game developers. I really do hope you'll recover soon.

 

Yes, this is what MMOs are, goodbye.

[Cretinus]

Oh I did. I suffered through 50-55 with nothing but 140-rating gear, hit 55 with 12,000+ comms, bought a full set of Partisan, and then cancelled my subscription.

 

Sorry, it just isn't fun anymore. I want something more than a forced gear train fandango. If this is what these types of MMOs are, then I won't be participating much. You're welcome to do otherwise.

 

Would you care to elaborate what is the problem with partisan gear?

[Brunner_Venda]

Would you care to elaborate what is the problem with partisan gear?

 

He doesn't want to augment it, probably wants bolster to do it for free.

[Iriquois]

He doesn't want to augment it, probably wants bolster to do it for free.

 

Shouldn't have to augment it if they are removing the mods and placing them into gear that is already augmented.

[dannycarr]

I just want to know how you had 12,000+ coms when you hit 55, I thought there was a cap...... maybe I am wrong.......

 

And surly now that you have all your partisan gear, there isn't that much of an issue with a gear grind, as you all ready have it, all you need to do now is PvP which surly is the goal that your aiming for.