Augments now in 4.0...

[Larsenex]

So I know there is a great deal of talk about BIS gear. I however want to talk about the average guy (me) who will NEVER likely see full Ultimate Raid gear.

 

I am good healer. I like and have learned my class. I will likely be in full elite with about 1/3rd in com ultimate gear as I play socially and not hard core.

 

Hell I am not even 65 yet! But.. I do have 80 ultimates, 430 elites and 800 basics waiting when I do. My real question was about what to augment (KNOWING i WILL NEVER EVER BE IN BIS GEAR).

 

I was gearing in full power augments and doing well. Now I am not so sure.

 

So those of you who are NOT hard core raiders and will wear average gear (at least elite), what are you going to augment with?

 

Thanks!

Edited October 29, 2015 by Larsenex

[TACeMossie]

So I know there is a great deal of talk about BIS gear. I however want to talk about the average guy (me) who will NEVER likely see full Ultimate Raid gear.

 

I am good healer. I like and have learned my class. I will likely be in full elite with about 1/3rd in com ultimate gear as I play socially and not hard core.

 

Hell I am not even 65 yet! But.. I do have 80 ultimates, 430 elites and 800 basics waiting when I do. My real question was about what to augment (KNOWING i WILL NEVER EVER BE IN BIS GEAR).

 

I was gearing in full power augments and doing well. Now I am not so sure.

 

So those of you who are NOT hard core raiders and will wear average gear (at least elite), what are you going to augment with?

 

Thanks!

 

Well as a theorycrafter I can tell you right now that if you don't use any token gear, mastery augs will be best. But if you do end up moving to Defiant MK-1 gear (216 tokens from storymode), Crit/Alacrity augments will be better.

 

Also 216 gear from tokens > 220 gear from ultimates

[imissleeches]

I'm wondering about that too. I've been looking for updated guides (preferably written by people who can be trusted), but it looks like only PvP guides are coming out for Medicine spec right now. For that reason I'm a bit afraid to make any serious investment in purple augments, but since the new blues are still better than what I've been using since Revan I guess it would be safe to experiment with those before committing.

 

So until someone more competent than me writes a guide, theory time:

 

Right now the only thing I know for sure is that Mainstat/Power augments which have been our bread and butter for some time are falling out of favour and are being replaced by Crit and Alacrity. Which makes sense given that Crit now encompassed both Damage and Chance so you now get more out of less.

 

And Alacrity is something I always wanted to have but never could justify investing into. But now augments have high enough numbers that you don't have to augment absolutely everything with them to see any difference. So again, more for less. And as HoT based healers we want our HoTs to proc as fast as possible, our GCDs to not get in the way thus allowing to utilise more APM, cooldowns to tick down faster and energy to not run out when we need it. And Stim Boost is now even more of a panic button to respond to burst so yay.

 

As for the new "Versatile Augments", well they've always been a safe option and I don't think it's changed. But seeing how high Mastery can go from gear alone, I don't think raising it any further makes much of a difference. Assuming that you have somewhere in the neighbourhood of ~5k Mastery (I'm assuming everyone is using anodyne stimulants at this point and has collected some datacrons), and keeping in mind that Mastery's effects are still additive, 73 Mastery per augment is a relatively tiny increase.

 

That said, all of this is just me trying to understand the new meta as it evolves, I didn't do any math of my own. I wouldn't assume anything is set stone yet but I'm 90% confident that Alacrity and Crit augments are going to become the new hotness. The only thing I've seen a lot of different opinions on is just how many of each we should be slotting. Some say 8/6 in favour of Crit, some propose the reverse and I've seen people on the fleet decked out in all Crit augments but I really don't think they thought it through XD I haven't seen anyone using all Alacrity yet.

 

Either way it's a good idea to have a Synthweaver on hand.

 

 

The math I'm using for theorycrafting is from here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=844210

 

And here some more: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=847112

 

And how it relates to Operatives specifically is explained very well here: http://dulfy.net/2015/10/27/swtor-4-0-operative-pvp-healing-guide-by-hottie/

Edited October 31, 2015 by imissleeches

[JaredLoch]

I'm wondering about that too. I've been looking for updated guides (preferably written by people who can be trusted), but it looks like only PvP guides are coming out for Medicine spec right now. For that reason I'm a bit afraid to make any serious investment in purple augments, but since the new blues are still better than what I've been using since Revan I guess it would be safe to experiment with those before committing.

 

So until someone more competent than me writes a guide, theory time:

 

Right now the only thing I know for sure is that Mainstat/Power augments which have been our bread and butter for some time are falling out of favour and are being replaced by Crit and Alacrity. Which makes sense given that Crit now encompassed both Damage and Chance so you now get more out of less.

 

And Alacrity is something I always wanted to have but never could justify investing into. But now augments have high enough numbers that you don't have to augment absolutely everything with them to see any difference. So again, more for less. And as HoT based healers we want our HoTs to proc as fast as possible, our GCDs to not get in the way thus allowing to utilise more APM, cooldowns to tick down faster and energy to not run out when we need it. And Stim Boost is now even more of a panic button to respond to burst so yay.

 

As for the new "Versatile Augments", well they've always been a safe option and I don't think it's changed. But seeing how high Mastery can go from gear alone, I don't think raising it any further makes much of a difference. Assuming that you have somewhere in the neighbourhood of ~5k Mastery (I'm assuming everyone is using anodyne stimulants at this point and has collected some datacrons), and keeping in mind that Mastery's effects are still additive, 73 Mastery per augment is a relatively tiny increase.

 

That said, all of this is just me trying to understand the new meta as it evolves, I didn't do any math of my own. I wouldn't assume anything is set stone yet but I'm 90% confident that Alacrity and Crit augments are going to become the new hotness. The only thing I've seen a lot of different opinions on is just how many of each we should be slotting. Some say 8/6 in favour of Crit, some propose the reverse and I've seen people on the fleet decked out in all Crit augments but I really don't think they thought it through XD I haven't seen anyone using all Alacrity yet.

 

Either way it's a good idea to have a Synthweaver on hand.

 

 

The math I'm using for theorycrafting is from here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=844210

 

And here some more: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=847112

 

And how it relates to Operatives specifically is explained very well here: http://dulfy.net/2015/10/27/swtor-4-0-operative-pvp-healing-guide-by-hottie/

 

Luckily for me I do have a synth weaver fully 500 maxed out. However before I realized that Crit and alacrity were a thing, I still spent 3 million credits on mastery augments...the next day I switched to power over mastery and then I managed to achieve 3.5 mil damage with 4700 dps as a Vig Spec Guard with 8 Crit augs and 6 alacrity augs. Been messing with it ever since. I've done full mastery now, full Crit, full alacrity (yes ~13.5%) and even different numbers of accuracy ranging from 101% (0) and 103% (137) and 105% (274). Honestly I've been at the top of mostly every leader board since 4.0 launched with all combinations of gear so I can't say for certain (since I don't have math behind it) what is actually the best set up. But I can say that after playing plenty of matches, full Crit and full alacrity wouldn't be the way to go. I could suggest going 7/7 Crit/Alacrity but I think 8/6 might yield just a tiny more dmg without a large sacrifice to alacrity. Also, I can say that mastery is NOT the way to go. As far as full power, or a combo of power and Crit I can't say for certain yet. As much as I love alacrity ATM I'm not sure it's contributed greatly to my dmg or not or if I'm just playing scrubs. So I'm still undecided atm.

 

Conclusion: what I do know is 1) that mastery sucks in PvP. 2) full Crit OR full alacrity is NOT the way to go for SUSTAINED dps. 3) a mixture of Crit/alacrity is the best. What I DO NOT know is: 1) exactly how much alacrity to have if any and how or why it's contributed to so much dps 2) how much if any accuracy to use and 3) is power viable after hitting a specific amount of Crit/alacrity?

[imissleeches]

I wouldn't know anything about PvP and even less about DPS classes ^^ But for healer Operative in PvE specifically, I think Alacrity and Crit make a lot of sense. We rely on crits a lot, specifically Kolto Injection which receives a 20% critical healing bonus, allowing it to crit for nearly twice as much as it normally heals otherwise. With set bonus, it's guaranteed to crit every 30 seconds, but outside of that, using it is either a blessing from the skies or a total waste of time depending on how much RNGesus hates us that day XD So the less it fails, the better. Add to that Diagnostic Scan which restores our energy on crit, and 12 million HoTs that tick constantly in the background and you can see our kit is pretty much built around crit chance and surge.

 

So knowing that, I think you can see how Alacrity synergises with it. Given that majority of our healing comes from HoTs and Alacrity increases the frequency of periodic damage and healing ticks, it means that with high alacrity, we heal faster, allowing us to stay ahead of incoming damage, crit more often, passively generate more Tactical Advantages which are essential to triage, and last but not least, Alacrity also reduces GCD which improves the flow and responsiveness of our probe refresh.

Edited November 4, 2015 by imissleeches