PvP and PvE Gearing in Eternal Throne

[IanArgent]

And you conveniently overlook the fact that the gear dropping based on discipline instead of advanced class happened BECAUSE of people talking about it here on the forums

 

 

That's why I keep banging on about a "stop loss" mechanic.

[Pabbloss]

Hey folks,

 

As we talked about a bit on the stream, there are some gearing changes happening with Knights of the Eternal Throne. For starters, I recommend you read this thread where I have provided more detail on the changes. The purpose of this thread is to go over how these changes will impact PvE and PvP gearing. Here are some more of those details:

• Expertise is being removed from the game.
  
• Any color crystals which have Expertise on them will be converted to a new type of color crystal – Mastery.
  
• There is no longer an Expertise requirement to get into Ranked Warzones, this will be replaced with a Valor requirement.
  
• PvE and PvP will share the same gear in Eternal Throne.
  
• Crystals and Warzone Commendations will also be phased out in Eternal Throne, we will have more details on our conversion plans in the coming weeks.
  

That covers an overview of how the changes will impact PvP and PvE gear in Eternal Throne. Please let me know of any questions you may have and I will work with the team to get you answers.

 

-eric

 

"Warzone Commendations will also be phased out in Eternal Throne!" What will happen with wz commendation in patch 5 in KOTET? I have a lot of them and will be pity to lost all! So, I collected since 2 and half years and more for my alts.I doing only pvp and have a bad feeling about future for the pvp players!

Pabbloss

[Neoforcer]

Will this mean that any War Hero color crystals unlocked in collections will be converted into these new Mastery crystals?

 

 

Correct.

 

the problem with this is not all of us want mastery i might want crit now or power depending on spec. So it would be better to give a token and allow me to choose power crit or mastery in the color of the original crystal. Because my rank crystal is now useless Eric. Thanks Bioware for that i have a black white color crystal i never use again.... Thanks a lot for that one

Edited October 23, 2016 by Neoforcer

[JainiaDral]

Question for Eric: After level 70, will exploration quests on the original planets or planetary arc quests a player hasn't picked up on leveling grant CXP?

[TX_Angel]

the problem with this is not all of us want mastery i might want crit now or power depending on spec. So it would be better to give a token and allow me to choose power crit or mastery in the color of the original crystal. Because my rank crystal is now useless Eric. Thanks Bioware for that i have a black white color crystal i never use again.... Thanks a lot for that one

 

So the +41 of mastery vs +41 of crit is going to "ruin" your build?

 

Do you have any idea about stat inflation? The +41 no longer matters much and it will matter even less in 5.0 with another level of gear. +41 of anything is going to be a very trivial number...

[IanArgent]

So the +41 of mastery vs +41 of crit is going to "ruin" your build?

 

Do you have any idea about stat inflation? The +41 no longer matters much and it will matter even less in 5.0 with another level of gear. +41 of anything is going to be a very trivial number...

 

The only reason I like the stat inflation is that it trivializes the crystal bonuses.

[mramazingness]

Okay im getting mixed answers and replies here.

-Since the removal of expertise will now be active in 5.0, whats the difference between pvp and pve gear?

-can we not perform well in both pve and pvp due to this change?

- Since both types of gear drops from crates and crates only, whats the difference between them?

-how will this affect on more of a more competitive stand point? ranked pvp/ hardmode ops?

thanks in advance!

 

P.S. im not mad about the changes at all, just havnt found info on the topics above that made sense

[Luneward]

Okay im getting mixed answers and replies here.

-Since the removal of expertise will now be active in 5.0, whats the difference between pvp and pve gear?

 

Only two differences.

 

Jack. All.

 

PvP and PvE gear are the same thing now. I imagine there is still going to be expertise-like effects in PvP instances and warzones that modifies the damage and healing, but now only your discipline determines what stats you get from gear crates. Expertise was already kind of a needless stat with bolster, so maybe it will simply be a baked in thing. It means even if you prefer doing things other than PvP, you'll still stay up to date on your gear.

[Jerba]

Okay im getting mixed answers and replies here.

-Since the removal of expertise will now be active in 5.0, whats the difference between pvp and pve gear?

-can we not perform well in both pve and pvp due to this change?

- Since both types of gear drops from crates and crates only, whats the difference between them?

-how will this affect on more of a more competitive stand point? ranked pvp/ hardmode ops?

thanks in advance!

 

P.S. im not mad about the changes at all, just havnt found info on the topics above that made sense

If you care about the optimal stats, there are some differences. Eg. in PvE you need 10% accuracy, in PvP you need 0-5%. You will still be able to perform somewhat okay if you use the same gear in PvE and PvP but not perfect. For healers, the gear is more or less identical but tanks also gear differently (more endurance in PvP, more def stats in PvE).

 

It's the same gear, there's no difference. But you can decide for yourself how you want to mix & match the enhancements to create the best stats.

 

The main issue is that now, the top PvE players will be able to compete with top PvP players in PvP. Expertise had the advantage that the top PvE players could not use their gear to dominate in PvP, they were forced to get PvP gear.

This also has historic reasons. Back then, there were multiple gear tiers per expansion, e.g. every time a new operation launched, it had a new level of gear while the PvP gear could stay the same, which meant the devs had less work.

The other way around, it also meant the best PvP players could not dominate in PvE. Because it used to be that you had to farm the hardest bosses for gear, and you could spend months doing that. If a PvP player could use their gear for PvE, it would invalidate the reason to run operations.

But all of that is history now because SWTOR decided to hand out gear without effort. The only real impact you will see now is that players who spent much time in nightmare operations will have an advantage in PvP because the PvP players will take longer to get gear. How big this impact is, we don't know yet, it depends on the PvP bolster.

[mmmbuddah]

Hey folks,

 

As we talked about a bit on the stream, there are some gearing changes happening with Knights of the Eternal Throne. For starters, I recommend you read this thread where I have provided more detail on the changes. The purpose of this thread is to go over how these changes will impact PvE and PvP gearing. Here are some more of those details:

• Expertise is being removed from the game.
  
• Any color crystals which have Expertise on them will be converted to a new type of color crystal – Mastery.
  
• There is no longer an Expertise requirement to get into Ranked Warzones, this will be replaced with a Valor requirement.
  
• PvE and PvP will share the same gear in Eternal Throne.
  
• Crystals and Warzone Commendations will also be phased out in Eternal Throne, we will have more details on our conversion plans in the coming weeks.
  

That covers an overview of how the changes will impact PvP and PvE gear in Eternal Throne. Please let me know of any questions you may have and I will work with the team to get you answers.

 

-eric

 

Pvp and pve share the same gear. Well great, now I get to have a ton of accuracy gear which is compltely useless in pvp, and deal with the god awful stat set ups that you guys create.....

[Wayshuba]

I just want to make one slight clarification a lot of people are throwing around. This RNG is not nearly as bad as the battlemaster bags at launch. For those who actually remember, you had a 25% chance of getting a battlemaster commendation from the battlemaster bag, of which you needed multiple commendations for one piece of battlemaster gear. Otherwise, you'd get random champion gear from the battlemaster bag.

 

The reason this system was BAD is because you had a 25% chance of getting a battlemaster comm (meaning you could open a bag and likely get nothing) and then you'd be stuck waiting for the weekly to reset so you could test your luck again. What BioWare is doing in 5.0 is having random RNG to get a particular piece of gear. Yeah, there's the high chance you'll get duplicates. But, it's not even close to being as bad as the old RNG with battlemaster bags.

 

There also doesn't appear to be a limit to how many galactic command levels you can earn, so you won't have to wait a week just to see if you might get a gear piece you actually need. Also, if you get a duplicate you can just "disintegrate" that piece and accumulate more galactic command points as a result.

 

I'm not saying this system is by any means ideal or justified. However, I have to debunk this ridiculous notion that this is just as bad as battlemaster bags were. No, this is nowhere close. Will this be annoying? Yes. Am I at least guaranteed to get a piece of gear instead of getting nothing? Absolutely.

 

This is coming from someone who was the third person on my server (Shien) to become a battlemaster and it took me months to get one full set whereas a friend, who got battlemaster much later, had better luck with RNG and got multiple sets.

 

Be thankful we aren't getting that horrible system again.

 

No, this system is worse than the BM bags. Eric opened four crates, he got one piece of 232 gear, the rest was utter garbage. So, that is 25% chance. At least with BM bags, you still could get the piece you needed once you had enough commendations... with this new system, even that is guaranteed.

 

So to sum up, first you have a slim chance of even getting set gear and then it gets even slimmer of actually getting the set gear you need. Oh, and you will have to do this 5 times with the current system to get the top end gear. (Tier 1-228, Tier 2-232, Tier 3-236, Tier 4-240 and Tier 5-244).

 

You watch, after a couple of weeks these forums are going to light up once peeps realize how truly awful this system they are implementing is.

[Morrolan]

But all of that is history now because SWTOR decided to hand out gear without effort. The only real impact you will see now is that players who spent much time in nightmare operations will have an advantage in PvP because the PvP players will take longer to get gear. How big this impact is, we don't know yet, it depends on the PvP bolster.

 

There is not going to be bolster with level 70 pvp

[Sindorin]

And good riddance!

 

Why? So hardcore raiders can raid scripted bosses that they can smash their faces against their keyboards and beat, then take that gear and make more premades? No thanks. I preferred having gear that set PvP players apart from PvE hardcore players.

[RagnarAugustus]

Skill > Gear. I've never bothered to get 208 gear for PvP and can roflstomp people in min/max'd 208 gear.

 

When they don't have two OP skilled sages on their team keeping everyone invincible...

 

That being said, the serious issue here is going to be the differences in set bonuses, and now PvP vs. PvE balancing is gonna get even worse.

 

Not to mention the highly probably chance you won't be able to get a full set of BiS gear from the new command system.

 

IMHO, these are not good changes, at all. Removing Expertise is controversial at best, removing loot drops from bosses is going to be a nightmare. Especially considering the number of raiders who hate the storymode content, heroics, etc. that they'll be forced to do to get BiS gear.

 

~ Eudoxia

 

Amen. When people had to run raids to get raid gear you at least knew that the guy had been through some raids - even if carried- so it wasn't a complete gamble before accepting him into your group if you had to PUG a random. But now that people can get raid quality gear for doing everything but raids it will allow more people to join and wipe raids when they have no concept of to do in a raid. I see nothing but negatives for the raiding community with this new gearing system.

[dalton_sillvant]

What if we want to be op in pve

[Sphillipe]

Expertise was meant to accomplish a few things:

 

1. Have unique gear that balanced PvP and PvE.

2. Prevented PvE gear from being used in PvP.

3. Forced players to actually PvP in order to gain PvP gear.

 

How exactly does removing expertise and streamlining all gear resolve the issues SWTOR tried to prevent at launch? If anything, I see class balancing being even worse now and I see warzone quality dropping even lower since anyone can just queue regardless of gear.

 

Well to be honest, 80%+ of the people queing for non-ranked PvP pre-5.0 were already in full PvP sets. Going up against someone with full PvP gear, while yourself in a full set, just canceled the benefits out really, if you think about it. Even then I remember doing some tests in 4.0 PvPing with a PvE set and a PvP set and really didn't see much difference thanks to the borked bolster system.

 

The removal of expertise isn't really a noticeable change when you break it all down as far as PvP effectiveness is concerned. The only time you really "felt" the PvP sets difference was going up against someone without a set or vice versa if you were trying to get geared. But there again, the bolster system kinda already killed the "need" for a PvP set to be effective to begin with.

 

As far as people not queing, don't kidd yourself. PvP grants upwards 800(?) CXP every 10-15 mins, more with boosts etc. The fact people can que without "pvp gear" means more will be apt to do so, given the CXP gains. All the ques were instant for me thus far when quing for PvP in 5.0. PvP and Veteran Fractured (Uprising) are the two BEST ways to obtain CXP in the shortest amount of time atm. I don't think quality will drop per say, PvP is widely a niche community to begin with in MMO's. The ones that PvP for the thrill of the hunt and enjoy fighting REAL dynamic players vs scripted AI fights will continue to que and the ones that don't like PvP or think they can't will still NOT que. Quality imo will stay largely unchanged.

Edited December 28, 2016 by Sphillipe

[ALaggyGrunt]

Well to be honest, 80%+ of the people queing for non-ranked PvP pre-5.0 were already in full PvP sets. Going up against someone with full PvP gear, while yourself in a full set, just canceled the benefits out really, if you think about it. Even then I remember doing some tests in 4.0 PvPing with a PvE set and a PvP set and really didn't see much difference thanks to the borked bolster system.

 

The removal of expertise isn't really a noticeable change when you break it all down as far as PvP effectiveness is concerned. The only time you really "felt" the PvP sets difference was going up against someone without a set or vice versa if you were trying to get geared. But there again, the bolster system kinda already killed the "need" for a PvP set to be effective to begin with.

 

As far as people not queing, don't kidd yourself. PvP grants upwards 800(?) CXP every 10-15 mins, more with boosts etc. The fact people can que without "pvp gear" means more will be apt to do so, given the CXP gains. All the ques were instant for me thus far when quing for PvP in 5.0. PvP and Veteran Fractured (Uprising) are the two BEST ways to obtain CXP in the shortest amount of time atm. I don't think quality will drop per say, PvP is widely a niche community to begin with in MMO's. The ones that PvP for the thrill of the hunt and enjoy fighting REAL dynamic players vs scripted AI fights will continue to que and the ones that don't like PvP or think they can't will still NOT que. Quality imo will stay largely unchanged.

 

Two weeks of playing casually (finishing the dailies and weeklies in both weeks) would erase the gear advantage last season. Comms would get the set pieces, and credits would get most of the augments.

 

If I use last season's gear against someone with a lot of 242, I'm going to have an uphill fight at best. Eliminating the gap will take 4+ weeks of no-lifing. We're talking about my sent vs. a sorc healer with a lot of BiS losing to attrition because my sent fails the DPS check, and my sorc healer vs. a sent with a lot of BiS finishing the fight in 3 burst cycles if I get surprised away from a phase walk.

[IanArgent]

PvP should be bolstered to nearly no difference between Tier 1 and Tier 3 gear; just as the expertise bolster gave a very modest advantage to PvP gear.

 

I doubt it will be, though.