Level 55, not sure best way to gear up.

[ComputerWolf]

I've been level 55 for a while, but don't play constantly and don't have anyone else I play with. I want to gear up, but I'm not even sure what the best way to go about that is. I have spent way too much on the GTN and feel like I am getting nowhere. Whether it is PvP or PvE I feel weaker than I should be. What missions should I be doing and what gear should I go for? All the names of items are very confusing and I am not sure what is the best for me.

 

Here is my character: http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/72f87667-dba8-4e82-a77f-f9ae1dd5c405

[Bejarid]

For PvE, I'd first recommend you do the Oricon story missions for rating 162 gear for most basic gear slots, then do dailies on CZ-198 and Oricon for Basic Comms to buy more 162 gear. Do tacticals for comms and drops until you get 162 in most slots, then start hard mode flashpoints for Elite Comms. After that, operations are your only option - if you choose to push into that.

[Myriagonvaltorix]

If you've got friends to play with start with Oricon first.

 

If you don't have a group for some of the harder missions on Oricon you can always hit up the classic Operations like Karaggas Palace or Eternity Vault. Theres almost always a weekly going on with those and even some of the green Makeb stuff is good enough (just make sure to double check the rating on your gear before you go in.) Unless your a Tank you can do the aforementioned ops without too much pressure.

You won't get as good Gear as you would get with Oricon but the weekly will give you some Elites and Ultimate commendations that you'll use later on and you can make some headway on making some of the harder parts of Oricon solo-able.

 

Once you get the Oricon Gear the Ops become much easier- almost all of them have gear requirements under what Oricon gives you and for the most part DPS's and Heals are easily explained during first timers.

[Kaos_KidSWTOR]

Ok, in all seriousness. Dont gear that toon up, delete it, and start from scratch and make a Guardian, they have much better DPS overall, and are damn near invincible as Vigilance Spec, you can off-tank adds, and are a MUCH bigger group utility to a Raid as a Vigilance Guardian than any type of Sentnel, sure Sentnels have Inspiration and Transcendence, and Zen if your Watchman, but in fights like Brontes in DF, your gonna need an off Tank for the Kephess adds, or in Corrupter Zero the adds there, or Bestia in DP, or COUNTLESS other fights with adds, they all need an off tank, and Vigilance Guardian is one of the best off tanking classes that can output good DPS. the top 2.7 DPS logs shows that Vigilance Guardian is only one second faster at killing the 1mil HP dummy than the best Combat Sentnel parse, which means they are neck and neck for DPS, though the Combat Sent DID out Opening DPS the Vigilance Guardian, in the end they had about 3,878 DPS overall. Ill list all the group utility abilities that Vigi guard has VS Sentinels.

 

Vigi Guard: Guardian Leap, Taunt (Off-Tanking for adds) Armor Debuff (3 classes have this), Saber Reflect, Soresu Form (Off/Adds tanking) Enure (Off/Adds tanking) Focused Defense (Complete invincibility when combined with Enure).

 

Sentinel: Transcendence, Inspiration (5 minute CD) Zen (Spec dependent).

 

So, clearly the Vigi Guard has more raid utility, and overall utility without sacrificing Sustained DPS.

 

But if you really want to gear that toon up, Start with Makeb, then move to CZ-198 and get a decent amount of Blue 66 rating gear, and then move to getting Basic Comm gear by doing Makeb Dailies and Staged Weekly, and CZ-198, you can also do Section X for more Basic Comms. Then when you have some decent gear, atleast Blue 66 rating Gear, head to Oricon, and do the story there, that should get you full Purple 66 Gear, and get you ready for HM 55 Flashpoints, do several of those and you should get into some 69 and 72 gear, also for Relics, you should do PvP to get the Oboron relics at minimum, if you like to PvP though, you should think about getting the Brutalizer/Berserker relics they will hold you over till you get Underworld or Dread Forged relics. past that, it's about doing 3 HM 55s a week to get Ultimate comms, along with one Classic Ops a week, and any Ops you can get into, even TC will be useful for Ultimate Comm grinding. then, when your in full 78 from Vendors, you should work on getting the 72 SB gear or trying to get Dread Forged/Dread Infused gear from Nightmare DF or DP (when NiM DP comes out.)

[Ardarell_Solo]

Ok, in all seriousness. Dont gear that toon up, delete it, and start from scratch and make a Guardian, they have much better DPS overall, and are damn near invincible as Vigilance Spec, you can off-tank adds, and are a MUCH bigger group utility to a Raid as a Vigilance Guardian than any type of Sentnel, sure Sentnels have Inspiration and Transcendence, and Zen if your Watchman, but in fights like Brontes in DF, your gonna need an off Tank for the Kephess adds, or in Corrupter Zero the adds there, or Bestia in DP, or COUNTLESS other fights with adds, they all need an off tank, and Vigilance Guardian is one of the best off tanking classes that can output good DPS. the top 2.7 DPS logs shows that Vigilance Guardian is only one second faster at killing the 1mil HP dummy than the best Combat Sentnel parse, which means they are neck and neck for DPS, though the Combat Sent DID out Opening DPS the Vigilance Guardian, in the end they had about 3,878 DPS overall. Ill list all the group utility abilities that Vigi guard has VS Sentinels.

 

Vigi Guard: Guardian Leap, Taunt (Off-Tanking for adds) Armor Debuff (3 classes have this), Saber Reflect, Soresu Form (Off/Adds tanking) Enure (Off/Adds tanking) Focused Defense (Complete invincibility when combined with Enure).

 

Sentinel: Transcendence, Inspiration (5 minute CD) Zen (Spec dependent).

 

So, clearly the Vigi Guard has more raid utility, and overall utility without sacrificing Sustained DPS.

 

 

Offtanking is for the tank not tanking the boss in all fights except Brontes NiM - which is the first encounter ever to pretty much demand group compositions with a DPS that can taunt. But one boss is not a good reason for class choice.

 

Statements about DPS are just plain wrong. Though Guardians have been buffed and top parses have gotten closer to top Sent parses, they're not outperforming Sents in sustained DPS whatsoever.

 

As for utility: Look at the progress guilds' kill compositions in relevant encounters and see why the melee spot has a Sentinel in it in the majority of cases. Any good raidlead can explain.

 

TLDR: Though DPS Guardians are a better choice than they used to be, they're still not top choice for progression raiding. Play one for the fun of it, but don't feel obliged to.

[Kawabonga]

Ok, in all seriousness. Dont gear that toon up, delete it, and start from scratch and make a Guardian, they have much better DPS overall, and are damn near invincible as Vigilance Spec, you can off-tank adds, and are a MUCH bigger group utility to a Raid as a Vigilance Guardian than any type of Sentnel, sure Sentnels have Inspiration and Transcendence, and Zen if your Watchman, but in fights like Brontes in DF, your gonna need an off Tank for the Kephess adds, or in Corrupter Zero the adds there, or Bestia in DP, or COUNTLESS other fights with adds, they all need an off tank, and Vigilance Guardian is one of the best off tanking classes that can output good DPS. the top 2.7 DPS logs shows that Vigilance Guardian is only one second faster at killing the 1mil HP dummy than the best Combat Sentnel parse, which means they are neck and neck for DPS, though the Combat Sent DID out Opening DPS the Vigilance Guardian, in the end they had about 3,878 DPS overall. Ill list all the group utility abilities that Vigi guard has VS Sentinels.

 

Vigi Guard: Guardian Leap, Taunt (Off-Tanking for adds) Armor Debuff (3 classes have this), Saber Reflect, Soresu Form (Off/Adds tanking) Enure (Off/Adds tanking) Focused Defense (Complete invincibility when combined with Enure).

 

Sentinel: Transcendence, Inspiration (5 minute CD) Zen (Spec dependent).

 

So, clearly the Vigi Guard has more raid utility, and overall utility without sacrificing Sustained DPS.

 

No, no, no and hell no. Did i mention no?

 

A normal ops group is composed of 2 tanks 2 healers and 4 dps (or 2 tanks 4 healers and 10 dps). There is no fight that can't be done with 2 tanks and in some one is enough. Leave the tanking to the tanks. There is no such thing as Off-Tanking, especially in hard and nightmare modes, unless the player in question is very experienced, which obviously isn't the case. Not to mention that to do so, he would have to sacrifice his aggro drop which can be very dangerous if the tanks get unlucky with resists... The solution to that is take it slow on the opener, which is a dps loss, and waste 2 GCDs to swap to Soresu form (fairly useless without having a shield equipped) and back to Shien. This rules out basically everything you listed, although i don't understand why put the Guardian defensive cooldowns and not the Sentinels, which are just as good To take aggro of adds all you need to do is jump in first, there's no need for taunts.

Guardian leap isn't an utility ability, it is used mostly as an escape.

That being said, you greatly underestimate the value of the sentinel raid buffs. Sentinels bring by far the best utility into a group out of all the other classes. Watchmen can do more than 500 hps in certain fights. Transcendence is situational but can be just as useful as Scrambling field. Inspiration can be a life saver in groups where dps requirements are barely met.

 

As for the gearing up part of your comment the path to follow is correct.

To the OP, once you get to the point where you have commendations to spend you will want to buy the Foestopper or Pummeler items and if you win unassembled tokens with which to buy gear, you will want the Challenger or Weaponmaster set. A mix of the two would be ideal. The stats you should aim for are 100% melee accuracy, then stack only power and surge. Once you get to the high end levels of gear you should swap one or two mods with strength+power to strength+crit

 

 

On a side note

Offtanking is for the tank not tanking the boss in all fights except Brontes NiM - which is the first encounter ever to pretty much demand group compositions with a DPS that can taunt. But one boss is not a good reason for class choice.

 

Care to explain why I'm confused here

Edited April 22, 2014 by Kawabonga

[Ardarell_Solo]

Guadian Leap by a DPS can save another DPS that has pulled aggro when tanks have no taunt to spare and said DPS' aggro reduce is on Cooldown. So it IS utility. But only ever used if tanks and/or DPS haven't done their job properly. Whereas Sent utilities like Transcendence and Inspiration are used regularly in various fights.

 

About Brontes NiM: There are two relevant phases for DPS players who can taunt. The first one is optional, the second one is a must.

 

1. Kephess phase: Incoming Damage on tanks is reduced, if a dps taunts Kephess clones before they do the Nightmare Dread Bomb attack (red circle jump). There is a lot of damage done to the tanks in this phase so it might be better to let a DPS eat the additional Kephess damage. But it is doable with offtank taunting Kephess as well.

 

2. Final Phase: In Nim there are dread orbs in the final phase as well and tanks need to destroy them with slams of the tentacles in corner's of the room (the two tentacles that will spawn the shield that clears Brontes' damage debuff on the whole group) pretty much like in the first phase - deceisive difference being that Brontes is now active! That means the Boss in the middle of the room can not be taken care of by tanks and pretty much goes wild all over the place if he's not taunted by a DPS...

Edited April 22, 2014 by Ardarell_Solo

[Kawabonga]

Guadian Leap by a DPS can save another DPS that has pulled aggro when tanks have no taunt to spare and said DPS' aggro reduce is on Cooldown. So it IS utility. But only ever used if tanks and/or DPS haven't done their job properly. Whereas Sent utilities like Transcendence and Inspiration are used regularly in various fights.

 

About Brontes NiM: There are two relevant phases for DPS players who can taunt. The first one is optional, the second one is a must.

 

1. Kephess phase: Incoming Damage on tanks is reduced, if a dps taunts Kephess clones before they do the Nightmare Dread Bomb attack (red circle jump). There is a lot of damage done to the tanks in this phase so it might be better to let a DPS eat the additional Kephess damage. But it is doable with offtank taunting Kephess as well.

 

2. Final Phase: In Nim there are dread orbs in the final phase as well and tanks need to destroy them with slams of the tentacles in corner's of the room (the two tentacles that will spawn the shield that clears Brontes' damage debuff on the whole group) pretty much like in the first phase - deceisive difference being that Brontes is now active! That means the Boss in the middle of the room can not be taken care of by tanks and pretty much goes wild all over the place if he's not taunted by a DPS...

 

The utility of guardian leap is so very situational it's really hard to even consider...

As for the Brontes part... That sounds like a real bad idea actually. Kephess clone is no problem (i tank it usually). On the final phase, taunting her will guarantee you 2 fire and forgets, and that will completely wreck a dps. You can pull it off once or twice when saber reflect and ward are up It's much better to have someone call out which dps is being hit and have very fast healers ^_^

Edited April 22, 2014 by Kawabonga

[ComputerWolf]

Thanks everyone for the replies. It is helpful to see what I should do in what order and what progression of gear to strive for. Hopefully this will lead me down the proper path!

[Ardarell_Solo]

The utility of guardian leap is so very situational it's really hard to even consider...

As for the Brontes part... That sounds like a real bad idea actually. Kephess clone is no problem (i tank it usually). On the final phase, taunting her will guarantee you 2 fire and forgets, and that will completely wreck a dps. You can pull it off once or twice when saber reflect and ward are up It's much better to have someone call out which dps is being hit and have very fast healers ^_^

 

Alright, thanks for the advice, man! :-)

[Kaos_KidSWTOR]

The utility of guardian leap is so very situational it's really hard to even consider...

As for the Brontes part... That sounds like a real bad idea actually. Kephess clone is no problem (i tank it usually). On the final phase, taunting her will guarantee you 2 fire and forgets, and that will completely wreck a dps. You can pull it off once or twice when saber reflect and ward are up It's much better to have someone call out which dps is being hit and have very fast healers ^_^

 

Are you a moron? Guardian Leap has so much utility it's not even funny! It can be used to get an Unremitting off in the middle of a fight by Guard Leaping from Boss to Ally, then leaping back to boss, threat drop a healer or DPS on the fly after their threat dump doesnt work, easy target swapping from one boss to another in multi boss fights by leaping from boss A, to ally to Boss B, and if you have the PvP Set Bonus, it's a free self-heal! It's litteraly a jack of all trades ability, the only thing it doesnt do is A. Damage foes, and B. Bake me a cake!

 

As for the off tanking utility of a Vigi Guard, Vigi Guards are near invulerable with Enure up, and stacking it with Focused Defence, welp, your damn near a tank for 10 seconds or so.

 

As for me not listing the DCD's of a Sentnel, Force Camo is meh at best, Rebuke is ok, but cant beat Focused Defence OR Enure, Saber Ward is shared, and for the first second, it's better as a Guardian, and the self heals of a Watchman isnt as good as Focused Defence (I think, i dont have my Anni Mara anymore because i couldnt do anything with it because my raid group already had a Mara, and needed a Veng Jugg.)

[Ardarell_Solo]

Are you a moron? Guardian Leap has so much utility it's not even funny! It can be used to get an Unremitting off in the middle of a fight by Guard Leaping from Boss to Ally, then leaping back to boss, threat drop a healer or DPS on the fly after their threat dump doesnt work, easy target swapping from one boss to another in multi boss fights by leaping from boss A, to ally to Boss B, and if you have the PvP Set Bonus, it's a free self-heal! It's litteraly a jack of all trades ability, the only thing it doesnt do is A. Damage foes, and B. Bake me a cake!

 

As for the off tanking utility of a Vigi Guard, Vigi Guards are near invulerable with Enure up, and stacking it with Focused Defence, welp, your damn near a tank for 10 seconds or so.

 

As for me not listing the DCD's of a Sentnel, Force Camo is meh at best, Rebuke is ok, but cant beat Focused Defence OR Enure, Saber Ward is shared, and for the first second, it's better as a Guardian, and the self heals of a Watchman isnt as good as Focused Defence (I think, i dont have my Anni Mara anymore because i couldnt do anything with it because my raid group already had a Mara, and needed a Veng Jugg.)

 

What's not funny is calling other people names in topical threads. Makes it a little hard to take things you say seriously. Other posters pointed out you obviously are not very experienced in progression raiding. That being said Guardian Leap is good for your own movement and helpful in pug groups but its other utilites are obsolete in a group where everybody knows what they're doing.

 

You also clearly lack understanding of Sentinel specifics as you not even mention let alone analyze the spec that's used for progression raiding these days. Of course a Guardian is tankier than a Sent with heavy armor and his CDs but he lacks DPS in comparison. In progression let tanks do the tanking, healers do the healing and DPS do DPS. In terms of melee DPS that means Sent over Guardian period.

 

Case in point you did start listing Sent CDs and doing that forgot the most important one. Hint: GBTF still works on Brontes spheres in NiM, whereas Saber Reflect does not, so happy exploding ;-)

Edited April 22, 2014 by Ardarell_Solo

[Kawabonga]

Are you a moron? Guardian Leap has so much utility it's not even funny! It can be used to get an Unremitting off in the middle of a fight by Guard Leaping from Boss to Ally, then leaping back to boss, threat drop a healer or DPS on the fly after their threat dump doesnt work, easy target swapping from one boss to another in multi boss fights by leaping from boss A, to ally to Boss B, and if you have the PvP Set Bonus, it's a free self-heal! It's litteraly a jack of all trades ability, the only thing it doesnt do is A. Damage foes, and B. Bake me a cake!

 

As for the off tanking utility of a Vigi Guard, Vigi Guards are near invulerable with Enure up, and stacking it with Focused Defence, welp, your damn near a tank for 10 seconds or so.

 

As for me not listing the DCD's of a Sentnel, Force Camo is meh at best, Rebuke is ok, but cant beat Focused Defence OR Enure, Saber Ward is shared, and for the first second, it's better as a Guardian, and the self heals of a Watchman isnt as good as Focused Defence (I think, i dont have my Anni Mara anymore because i couldnt do anything with it because my raid group already had a Mara, and needed a Veng Jugg.)

 

 

Not a moron. I'm talking about RAID utility here.

There is no such thing as "threat dump doesn't work". It's either not used at the optimal time or the tank has trouble holding aggro and he's the one that has to do something about it, like, you know, taunt..

Yes, guardian leap is a great movement boost, that still has nothing to do with raid utility

Getting an extra unremitting does nothing to the raid, and why would you even do that? It's not like Vigilance has focus management problems, and the immunity to stuns and knockbacks comes in useful in about 0 fights in Dread Fortress and umm... 0 fights in Dread Palace. 0 in TFB, and 1 in S&V, maybe 2 if you get extremely lucky timings on Warlords. The 4 seconds of 20% damage reduction is good but marginal and not likely to make a difference, not worth wasting 2 GCDs on it.

 

Why would you ever get the pvp set bonus? DPS guardians should take either 4p Vindicator (good) or 2p Weaponmaster and 2p Vindicator (best).

 

Focused defense heals the guardian for an insane amount when taking multiple small hits and will do you no good if you're tanking a boss that hits you for 30k. Again, no raid wide utility. Zen(watchman) heals the whole raid, and collectively more than focused defense. Transcendence lasts longer than Unremitting, for a slightly worse but still raid wide defense boost, and Inspiration is simply the best thing that can happen to a raid group. And all are effectively on a less than 30s cooldown (about the time to build 30 centering) except for the 5m Inspiration.

 

As you said Saber ward is shared. You have to time it very well to make anything out of that 1s 100% defense chance on a guardian.

Rebuke is not ok, Rebuke is fantastic if used correctly. Baseline 20% DR, deals damage and every spec does something wonderful to it.

You forgot Guarded by the Force, which is effectively a 4 second immortality DCD (even though some specific abilities bypass it)

 

Enure does nothing to your defenses, it only increases your HP. Tanking wise, it's only useful to buy the healers more time. It definitely does not make a Guardian invincible. It's great, but nothing to get that excited about.

 

 

Case in point you did start listing Sent CDs and doing that forgot the most important one. Hint: GBTF still works on Brontes spheres in NiM, whereas Saber Reflect does not, so happy exploding ;-)

 

Umm... My Jugg cotank never mentioned having trouble with those are you sure about that?

Edited April 22, 2014 by Kawabonga

[Zhiroc]

I'm no expert, but looking at the OP's character in Mr Robot, I see a number of suspect areas.

 

For one, at endgame you need to have all of your gear moddable--you have an unmoddable helm and boots.

 

Second, you have PvP mods mixed in. If this is for PvE, dump those, with the possible exception of some PvP relics (I use PvP Focused Retribution and Serendipitous Assault because I don't raid enough to get the best PvE ones). You have 3 pieces of gear with PvP mods, and two PvP implants. Expertise does NOTHING for you outside of PvP. You also have two PvP relics, and like I said, I use a couple myself, but the ones you have are not the ones I would recommend.

 

Also, your accuracy stat seems very low--and I noticed you only spec'ed 1/3 in the accuracy talent. You might want to read Dulfy's guides as a starting point.

[Myriandore]

Am I the only one to think the OP never asked about guardians but wondered how best to gear up? And again, am I the only one to think the very first answer to his post was exactly to the point?

Past that very 1st answer, imho the rest is nothing but 2 pages filled with with hot air QQ. Pay no attention to it OP, happy gear grinding!

o/

[Cross_Fade]

This isn't a huge deal but...Change that blue crystal dude. It's got 9 critical rating.. You're level 55 buddy!

 

Since you're already level 55, I'd just start grinding away at every daily you can. You'll make credits, you can buy some temporary better gear if you want.

 

When I hit level 50 I used the Makeb Vendor, started doing dailies to buy level 53 mods(156 Rating), run some warzones to get 1400 WZ comms for two relics, save up all my other comms.

 

So my initial advice would be: Change that crystal, GET BETTER HILTS. Even if they are the level 53 ones. They are what changes the damage on your lightsabers man. Since you are DPS, that's a must.

Then armoring, Deft Mod, Enchantments. You want your accuracy around 100-110%.

[StormTerminus]

I've been level 55 for a while, but don't play constantly and don't have anyone else I play with. I want to gear up, but I'm not even sure what the best way to go about that is. I have spent way too much on the GTN and feel like I am getting nowhere. Whether it is PvP or PvE I feel weaker than I should be. What missions should I be doing and what gear should I go for? All the names of items are very confusing and I am not sure what is the best for me.

 

Here is my character: http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/72f87667-dba8-4e82-a77f-f9ae1dd5c405

You have some expertise gear mixed in there. Swap that out. You want power crystals in your MH and OH that are +41 Power.

 

Do the Oricon missions and you will get a good start on 156 gear. You will likely have to swap out mods later but this is an excellent start. It should be your priority when you level up. I am just about to do this on my Sentinel. After you do that then you can start queuing for 55 tacticals and 55 HM FPs. Take all the weeklys/dailies for those and you can build up Comms. When you first ding, Basics, Elite and Ultimate comms are all good to have.

 

Do your 5 tacticals a week. After that turn them off and queue for HM FPs only. When queuing for HMs do dailies. Oricon, Black Hole and Czerka Dailies are all reasonably quick. I tend to do mine with guildies in speed runs but they are easy enough to solo. Oricon Heroics are best done with a team though they are soloable it isn't something you want to do with your gear level atm.

 

SM OPs are also great to do. I don't have much experience pugging them since I tend to do them with my guild and we pug one member or another. But you can get a lot done if you are willing to pug it.

 

At the moment there are a lot of people doing dailies even on Ilum and Section X. This seems to be part of the casino side-effect. Lots of people need money. This means that you should be able to do any heroic on any of the planets with dailies.

 

If you are soloing stuff do not neglect your companions. Use Classics, Basics and eventually Elite comms to gear your companions.

[HemiHilliard]

This isn't a huge deal but...Change that blue crystal dude. It's got 9 critical rating.. You're level 55 buddy!

 

Since you're already level 55, I'd just start grinding away at every daily you can. You'll make credits, you can buy some temporary better gear if you want.

 

When I hit level 50 I used the Makeb Vendor, started doing dailies to buy level 53 mods(156 Rating), run some warzones to get 1400 WZ comms for two relics, save up all my other comms.

 

So my initial advice would be: Change that crystal, GET BETTER HILTS. Even if they are the level 53 ones. They are what changes the damage on your lightsabers man. Since you are DPS, that's a must.

Then armoring, Deft Mod, Enchantments. You want your accuracy around 100-110%.

 

 

What 2 Relics do you suggest getting from the PvP vendor?

[Bejarid]

What 2 Relics do you suggest getting from the PvP vendor?

 

Obroan Focused Retribution, Obroan Serendipitous Assault.