Crafting : Crafted mods or crafted armour?

[SlickMK]

Ive been playing for well over a year, got 3 alts to lvl 55 and got another to lvl 38.. every day so I know the game but one thing I dont understand is the Mods.

 

So far Ive gone with orange armour, and lvled it up with Atrtice and cybertech, but I just get tons of green or blue or purple armour from quests which is usually useless as its usally at a lvl below what the quest was for and what im at and ends up being just sold to a vendor,.

 

So my question is: am I missing something by just moding my orange armour with armour, mods and enhancements rather than with non orange armour?

Seems theres tons of stuff Im missing? Is there any point to synthweaving or armourmech? Apart from the augments? Im lvling a armstech and apart from barrels I never craft anything else..

 

Is a syncthweaved.armourmeching blue armour better than blue armour, mods and enhancements?

[JacksonMo]

There is one advantage that crafted armor has over modable sets. If you are leveling a tank, for example, defensive stats don't start appearing on enhancements until mid to late 30's. But you can reverse-engineer items to learn a blue or purple version that have tanking stats on them.

Most of your quests also offer planetary commendations as a reward. You should almost always opt for the comms over gear for exactly the reason you stated.

Originally, every planet had it's own commendation and you had to make do with the last planets gear when you started out on a new planet. Or you could grind heroics on a higher level alt and buy mods of appropriate level. Either option made the whole process tedious.

Now all planets share Planetary Commendations so if you don't get around to leaving Tatooine till level 32 you aren't stuck buying lvl 25 rubbish gear to start out on Alderaan. You can pop over to the Alderaan vendor on fleet and purchase mods that match your level.

Edited July 20, 2014 by JacksonMo

[Merouk]

The major source of orange shells is the Cartel Market, which wasn't present when they first released the game. When first released, there were a lot fewer orange shells available, and so everyone was using quest or crafted blue or green gear.

 

They released all that armor on the Cartel Market and that's made Cybertech a major skill to have, to provide the mods, but EA/Bioware did not revise the other craft skills to keep them relevant.

 

So, no you're not missing anything. Blue and green gear is viable if you're playing your first character and don't have enough credits to buy a million mods every 4 levels, nor to level crafting skills. And not a lot of RL cash to spend on cartel coins. Some people play like that.

 

Of course, by the time you're on your 5th alt, you probably have a few million in your wallet and a few crafting skills trained, so cartel armor + crafted mods becomes the way to go. It's not cheapest, but you go through the leveling process faster than trying to do all the quests to get all the green rewards you otherwise would need.

[Luneward]

They released all that armor on the Cartel Market and that's made Cybertech a major skill to have, to provide the mods, but EA/Bioware did not revise the other craft skills to keep them relevant.

 

Quite frankly I found Cybertech and Artifice/Armstech more useful before they combined all the planetary currencies. Even though you had less moddable gear, you could keep it up to date easily with crafted blue mods. After the currency squish, it just became quicker and easier to purchase a few comm mods and move on. It works really well so long as you don't try to maintain a full set of moddable armor while leveling - that's overkill and unnecessary before level 50.

 

Aside from augments, these days the only worth I find for armormech/synth is catching up neglected companions on their equipment. So there's that, at least.

[Nythain]

Depending on the class and what you're trying to achieve, some crafting skills can have a use. My first "main" toon was a Trooper. Since planetary coms weren't unified back then, and almost all of his companions were heavy/aim armor, I took Armormech. I feel this saved me quite a bit of hassle compared to trying to keep up with oranges. I would just top off my weapons with coms or use the coms to buy new weapons, etc. The Trooper has gone on to gear up alts and their companions effortlessly for me too. My Agent who has Kaliyo out a lot both benefited greatly. My Consular who had Qyzen out a lot in the beginning benefited slightly. There's other examples but you get the point.

 

With unified planetary coms, crafting got a bit "meh" outside of end game mods and augments. Now it's just like "gather gather gather, sell sell sell" with the occasional biochem thrown in.

[Kulyok]

Hey!

 

- you're doing absolutely great by using orange armor with blue mods, that's how it's done, and that's the best way while levelling. Level 50 introduces Makeb mods, though, which are purple, and level 55 introduces 156 Oricon

mods, but you probably know that.

 

- green armor is pretty much useless. It's still okay on lower levels, but past the capital world it will be harder and harder to play. The flashpoints and heroics especially. By Voss, you'll either despair or grind your teeth, but it won't be pretty, from my experience.

 

- blue armor is okay for a few levels(~4), then it gets thrown out. Basically, blue armor is the equivalent of the orange armor with blue mods, only you can replace the mods, but the blue armor is only temporary.

 

- armormech and synth are pretty much only useful for the augments, yes.