How to gear an alt?

[LynxAudia]

I have one of my 55s with mostly elite gear. Currently, i'm working on gearing my scoundrel but all my elite comms are on my shadow. Can I mail the gear? or do i have to grind the comms again? Also i apologize if this thread is in the wrong place. I don't come here too often XD

[Roughneck]

Buy Legacy Gear and place your mods in those armor pieces those you can tranfers between your alts.

 

Earpieces, Relics and Implants doesn't work that way.

[DogeDandolo]

You are likely to already have two sets of legacy armour -- the pilot / starfighter sets. You can get others from Reputation vendors around the galaxy (Oricon has a nice set at Champion reputation), Ranked PvP rewards, etc. They usually have either a star (for reputation) or a shield (normal legacy) in the upper right corner of their icon. The way it works is that you rip the mods you want out of their shells, put them in the Legacy armour, and mail those to your alts / put them in your legacy storage. The alt can then remove the mods and put them in their own gear, or just smack on the Legacy set. The Rakghoul event also has Legacy-bound mainhand weapons which you can use to transfer mainhand hilts and barrels, and the Gree event has mainhands and offhands.

 

Do be aware that all endgame armorings / hilts / barrels bind to a specific slot. I.e., you can remove a 162 Arkanian armouring from a chestpiece and put it in another chestpiece, but not, say, greaves or offhand generators.

 

That said, I found the best way to gear alts is by running Oricon on the new alt for the free 156 set, doing some crafting / GTN shopping to fill the gaps and fix some glaring issues with the stat allocation (alacrity on tank gear ...), then join a PUG or guild run of any lvl 55 ops. Those drop gear tokens for Arkanian gear, which are 162 like the Basic Comms vendor sells, but also come with the absolutely vital set-bonuses* and are often better-itemised. A few ops runs and you should have mostly 162 gear and a few 180 and 168 pieces from your looted commendations. In addition, the final two bosses of Dread Fortress and Dread Palace drop both the normal Arkanian tokens and random 168 Underworld tokens, which have Elite vendor stats but with set-bonuses.

 

* Which set-bonus is optimal for you depends on your advanced class and role. For example, a DPS Shadow should go for the 4-piece Stalker's set (Sabre Strike restores 1 Force in addition to normal regeneration / Increases critical chance of Double Strike / Clairvoyant Strike by 15%), while a tank Shadow wants the 4-piece Survivor's set (Increases Shield Chance during Kinetic Ward by another 5% / Increases damage reduction by 2%). A healer Scoundrel wants at least the 2-piece Field Medic's set bonus (Increases healing done by Kolto Bomb (?) by 15%) and a DPS Scoundrel wants the 2-piece Enforcer set bonus (Increases critical chance of Blaster Whip by 15%). Those are huge bonuses to your mitigation / HpS / DpS, meaning it is better to have 162 armorings with set-bonus than 180 armorings without. Exceptions: the 4-piece set bonuses for scoundrels aren't generally worth the loss of Cunning from using Arkanian or Underworld over Oriconian, and the Oriconian DPS shadow armorings are better than the Arkanian armorings (though inferior to Underworld).

Edited November 29, 2014 by DogeDandolo

[Dragondog]

If you have pre-ordered Shadow of Revan, the level cap is moving from 55 to 60 and there will be new gear you can wear. So those elite commendations, that will be turned into twice as many basic commendations on Tuesday, may buy better gear next week than it does today.

[JediQuaker]

Buy Legacy Gear and place your mods in those armor pieces those you can tranfers between your alts.

Keep in mind that this will cost credits. It cost around 10k per mod (i.e. 30k per piece) to strip the mods off the elite gear, and then another 30k to strip them off of the Legacy gear to put them on your Smuggler (unless you simply wear the Legacy piece). That's still a lot cheaper than buying the mods off the GTN.