Balance Sage - Gearing up

[Sybaris_]

I have been playing the game on and off since the beginning, but always for the great Bioware story and never for anything pvp competitive or hardcore raiding.

 

As such, I am not as familiar with the nuances of getting gear, and, as I am not able to view the top players gear via his website, I come to you, the humble forum trolls, for assistance.

 

I am sitting at about 62k hp from just junk laying around or random pieces I pick up off the galactic market here and there. As a Balance Sage, what is a good HP range I should be shooting for? What stats do I want to stack?

 

Maybe there is a guide or youtube video you could point me to?

 

Anyway, thanks in advance

[Hichitsuki-hime]

To start with, a trying to gear up more for PvE or PvP ?

 

If PvE, then keep the following in mind:

 

1) As DPS, you need to have as close to 110% force accuracy as you can. (rating of 701 will give you 110.19% accuracy, so it is best to keep accuracy in the 690-701 range)

 

2) Since 4.0 crit has been redesigned as you've no doubt noticed. What used to be crit and surge is now one stat, as such you need a lot of it. It must be between 1200 and 1500 depending on the rating of your gear. Eventually aim for around 1400-1500.

 

3) And Alacrity. Most DPS specs benefit from it one way or another. As a Balance sage (or madness sorcerer) you want to have around 700-800 alacrity. how much exactly depends on your preferences really. Also, if you have a lot of server lag, you might benefit more from a more crit heavy build, in which case you will have a bit less alacrity.

 

4) You mentioned HP. Well.... the truth is that HP is your least priority. You always want armorings, mods and enhancements with more power. = unlettered mods etc. Since power allows you to do more damage and extra HP doesn't help at all. Still. a well geared sage is gonna end up having about 80k hp eventually (in full 224 gear mind you)

 

If you've got any other questions, you can poke me here, or check out the guide posted on the dulfy website =)

 

this here is a link to a nice balance rotation if you wanna take a look :

Edited February 24, 2016 by Hichitsuki-hime

[Sybaris_]

Great response, I didn't expect that much detail.

 

Yeah probably pve mostly for now. I guess the question becomes where do I get this 224 gear from?

[Hichitsuki-hime]

Great response, I didn't expect that much detail.

 

Yeah probably pve mostly for now. I guess the question becomes where do I get this 224 gear from?

 

haha.

 

well.... the PvE gear consists of the following:

 

1) commendation vendor gear: for end game these come from 3 vendors for each class - common , glowing and radiant (what used to be basic, elite and ultimate comms respectively). These vendors provide u with 208, 216 and 220 gear. Now for casual playing u can easily get enough glowing crystals from doing heroics for 216 gear , or do ops & flashpoint weeklies to slowly gather radiant crystals and get 220 gear. This gear is all mostly MK-4 gear. It has higher master & endurance. and extremely low amount of power.

 

2) operation tokens & MK-2 drops: drop from ops bosses. 216 in Story Mode, 220 in Hard Mode, 224 - in Hard Mode priority (in patch 4.3 Nightmare mode will finally have 100% drop rate of 224 tokens). Also ops bosses drop MK-2 gear.

In SM it's MK-2 216 stuff and 1 random piece of MK-2 220 on last boss. and the higher tiers drop MK-2 220 gear.

While the MK-2 gear still has ****** mods, u can easily use the enhancements. The other thing about ops gear - is the fact that tokens have a set bonus. U can trade in the token piece for the appropriate piece of gear. So, since you are a DPS sage, you will need to get a 6-piece Force Master set bonus =)

 

3) Crafting: getting gear crafted is a good way to get 220 (exarch) relics, implants and earpiece, though it is a pricey business. Each relic, implant or earpiece requires 3 Dark Matter Catalysts along with other mats >.<

 

Oh, and before i forget - don't forget to get augmented lol. These days as a DPS u want to use a mix of accuracy, critical and alacrity augments =) I personally prefer to get 2 accuracy enhancements and get rest of my accuracy from augments, but that's a matter of personal preference i believe lol.

[Sybaris_]

Wow, great information.

 

I am glad there are dedicated Star Wars enthusiasts like you to help casual players like me out!

[VortexMar]

Wow, I didn't realize accuracy was important anymore since they removed the "primary" stat from the classes. I need to keep an eye on that...

 

Thanks for the info! Is there any place that has the stats and what they are good for, perhaps even what each class benefits from them? I guess it would have to be updated since the last few patches.

[Hichitsuki-hime]

Wow, I didn't realize accuracy was important anymore since they removed the "primary" stat from the classes. I need to keep an eye on that...

 

Thanks for the info! Is there any place that has the stats and what they are good for, perhaps even what each class benefits from them? I guess it would have to be updated since the last few patches.

 

hi. you're welcome. i'll try to make a short summary for you lol, almost all this info can be found ingame by hovering over your stats in the character window lol. otherwise go to http://dulfy.net/category/swtor/4-0-class-guides/

 

the character stats as of right now are:

 

1) DPS & healing stats:

mastery - main stat - "increases your aptitude in combat", it influences such stats as: damage bonus (melee & force); critical chance (melee & force) and healing power (it used to be the thing to augment gear for power or main.stat before, but now with the changes to crit, if you have mastery or power augments, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG LOL);

power - increases DPS and healing bonuses added to abilities (just always pick out mods, armorings and enhancements that have more power and less endurance , BUT NO POWER AUGMENTS!!);

critical - increases the chance that your attack will deal additional damage as well as the amount of that extra "crit" damage; (this used to be 2 separate stats, but now it's all one stat, which is why DPS and healers need a LOT of it, like over 1200 generally.)

alacrity - increases the speed at which abilities are executed, as well some mana (force / ammo / energy) regeneration speed. (depending on your class and build you'll need more or less of it, but dulfy.net has very good class guides for almost all specs in the game lol.)

accuracy (DPS ONLY) - increases the chance that your attack will affect the target.

 

2) tank stats:

endurance - increases the amount of damage you can take before being killed;

defense - chance to avoid incoming attacks;

shield - chance that incoming energy or kinetic attacks will be reduced by your shield;

absorb - percentage of damage prevented when an attack is absorbed by your shield;