All modifiable weapons will be shelved for months on end due to new gearing system

[Banthabreeder]

A thought just came to mind that with this new gearing system, if you have a special weapon you like to use, for example: Defiant Vented Lightsaber, you will have to shelve it for quite some time.

 

If you currently have a 258 modifiable mainhand weapon at the start of Onslaught, and you get a 270 green one, if you don't equip it, you will never get a 271, 272, 274+ one. None of these green, blue, purple (unconfirmed) weapons have removable mods. At what point do weapons start to drop that do have removable mods? As well, there are no mod vendors to purchase higher level hilts, barrels, enhancements.

 

Until then, you will have to just store your modifiable weapons in your inventory. It could sit there for months on end. Is this gonna sit well with the player base? Is this what you guys at Bioware wanted or intend? Perhaps this reason alone is enough to add weapons to Outfit Designer sooner than originally planned?

Edited September 1, 2019 by Banthabreeder

[Rolodome]

Wow, that sounds like a pretty big oversight. They'd be shooting their own CM weapon market in the foot.

[DreadtechSavant]

This may be an issue for hilts and barrel's, but Mods, Enhancements will drop. be in solo form or within something else like a helmet . Nothing stopping you just removing these to upgrade your weapon. As mods can drop solo from bosses in hammer station I assume so can hilts and barrels. Ok I admit I am assuming but still not much of a stretch is it?

[IoNonSoEVero]

I do hope this isn't the case. My characters use their own moddable weapons from the time they are apprentices heading to the fleet for the first time. It's part of their story and their identity. They're going to tell me that my level 10 can do that but my level 75 has to use some garbage green thing instead of their own weapon, if they ever want it upgraded?

 

As Lando might say, this deal with the gearing is getting worse all the time.

[milctoast]

A thought just came to mind that with this new gearing system, if you have a special weapon you like to use, for example: Defiant Vented Lightsaber, you will have to shelve it for quite some time.

 

If you currently have a 258 modifiable mainhand weapon at the start of Onslaught, and you get a 270 green one, if you don't equip it, you will never get a 271, 272, 274+ one. None of these green, blue, purple (unconfirmed) weapons have removable mods. At what point do weapons start to drop that do have removable mods? As well, there are no mod vendors to purchase higher level hilts, barrels, enhancements.

 

Until then, you will have to just store your modifiable weapons in your inventory. It could sit there for months on end. Is this gonna sit well with the player base? Is this what you guys at Bioware wanted or intend? Perhaps this reason alone is enough to add weapons to Outfit Designer sooner than originally planned?

 

I have no idea when weapons start to drop with removable mods but hilts do drop. I've had 3-4 drop so far and I have a 276 one in my inventory right now.

Edited September 2, 2019 by milctoast

[TerraStomper]

I agree with the OP.

 

I think Bioware intends for us to find or craft mods, enhancements, hilts, barrels and armorings for the main hand, and off hand shells we love. Or rip them from the crappy weapons and armor that drop with mod slots prefilled, whenever that happens.

 

For the crafted route, they're all locked behind too high mat requirements to even make the most basic of greens, like the green Lethal Mod 77. Its rank 274. Its one of the first grade 11 things a Cybertech can make besides assembly components.

 

To make one mod requires 20 of the new tier 3 isotopes which are obtained from ops and master mode FPs, and 20 of the new tier 3 matrices, which are locked behind winning conquest. If the cybertech gathers the mats solo, that's about a week of ops and FP runs, winning the rolls, and 4 weeks of the guild goal and personal goal being met before that lethal mod can be made.

 

And then comes trying to get the plans for the blue version. That requires reverse engineering. After crafting and reverse engineering 24 of of the greens the chance of having learned the plan is up to a 99% probability. It would take 80 weeks to gather the mats solo for those 24 greens reaching the guild and personal goals each week. Of course, learning the blue could happen sooner. There is a 20% chance with each attempt after all, and it does reach 95% probability after 14 attempts. One in 20 players should fail after 14 attempts, One in a 100 should fail after 24 attempts. I've been that hundredth frustrated player crafting in past expansions of SWTOR.

 

Learning the purple is even worse. The chance of reversing a blue to learn its purple plans drops from 20% to 10%. It wouldn't be bad if they were easy, cheap or quick to make. But they aren't easy, cheap, or quick.

 

I have no idea what the blue or purple version of the mod is like, but based on how crafting materials multiply in biochem as the quality goes up, i suspect Bioware did the same for cybertech, artifice, armstech, sythweaving, and armormech craftables. The crafter would need several YEARS to gather the necessary mats solo just to learn the plans.

 

Of course, the cybertech could just buy them off the GTN. But then the mats will become expensive and in demand due to their rarity.

 

More likely, players will simply find loose mods, etc. in drops and Renown crates way before the mats could even be gathered or rip them. Just today I got a loose 282 blue Versatile barrel in a Renown crate. Of course, it can't be reverse engineered to learn its plans.

Edited September 2, 2019 by TerraStomper

[speedphlux]

They should just make a Level 75 mods vendor that sells green 270 mods IMHO. That would fix a lot of issues ! Specially the way the gearing is setup on the PTS, which makes little to no sense IMO.

Wasted over 350k Tech Fragments on my PT last night, just on my main hand weapon. Guess up to what IR I was able to get it to ?

 

278 ! (Borat voice) Great Success ! (/Borat voice)

 

[Banthabreeder]

They should just make a Level 75 mods vendor that sells green 270 mods IMHO. That would fix a lot of issues ! Specially the way the gearing is setup on the PTS, which makes little to no sense IMO.

Wasted over 350k Tech Fragments on my PT last night, just on my main hand weapon. Guess up to what IR I was able to get it to ?

 

278 ! (Borat voice) Great Success ! (/Borat voice)

 

Hmmm... wonder how many Tech Fragments it will take you to get to 306? Do calculators even count that high?

[Medullah]

This may be an issue for hilts and barrel's, but Mods, Enhancements will drop. be in solo form or within something else like a helmet . Nothing stopping you just removing these to upgrade your weapon. As mods can drop solo from bosses in hammer station I assume so can hilts and barrels. Ok I admit I am assuming but still not much of a stretch is it?

 

I've done a lot of Hammer Stations (both VM and MM) testing, and I have seen almost no modifiable gear.

 

I'm in agreement that they absolutely need to make all weapons modifiable since they can't get them in Outfit Designer.

[ZionHalcyon]

Here's a suggestion.

 

What if, by deconstructing that unmoddable gear, you get whatever mods would have come in it to make up the total stats and item rating it gives?

 

Case in point:

 

You are running Hammer Station Veteran. During the Flashpoint, you loot 3 green pieces of gear, and all have the arrow indicating it would be an upgrade to what you have now. The Gear is an Earpiece, a bracer, and a pistol. All are item level 270.

 

You use the ear piece, and deconstruct the pistol and bracer. In return, you get tech fragments from both, and 270-rated barrel, mod and enhancement from the pistol equaling the stats of the original, unmoddable pistol, and 270-rated armoring and mod from the bracer, also equaling the original stats.

 

Also, included, is a random chance during deconstruction for one of the pieces to be a blue mod piece.

 

Thoughts?

 

Do it like that, and make it so that the crafted versions of the mods are 2 item levels up from the looted.

[TerraStomper]

Hmmm... wonder how many Tech Fragments it will take you to get to 306? Do calculators even count that high?

 

It would depend on which side of the RNG distribution curve you fall. The lucky side or the unlucky side, or lumped in the middle. It is calculable if your luck is exactly average or if you get the BiS 306 gear piece for every slot in one try. Otherwise, its somewhere between those two and infinity.

[Flying-Brian]

Hmmm... wonder how many Tech Fragments it will take you to get to 306? Do calculators even count that high?

 

On average, it took me about 10 or so random boxes per gear piece to get an upgraded item level for that slot, so close to 3k tech fragments per slot x 14 spots x 19 gear levels So right around 800k or so. I was not trying to get usable gear for my class/spec, just any item upgrade to increase my overall item level, to be able to move up to the next level. For all that, I think I got about 6 set bonus pieces that dropped, and all of them were for the wrong classes. No general sets. When I got to full 306 gear and tried to get the correct stat left side items, I was averaging 30+ tries per slot to get the right piece. Weapons were the hardest for me, with over 50+ tries to get a moddable version, and then even more to get the correct barrel in it.

 

Getting the correct stat mods for set bonus gear was even more tedious, with the cost of 1500 TF and 1 mil credits per mod. As all the armoring/mods/enhancements on the set bonus gear are RNG so I kept buying/returning/rebuying an items until I could pull 1 usable mod from the gear, then repeat.

Edited September 4, 2019 by Flying-Brian