The Next PTS Patch and Future Changes

[Pirana]

Excellent changes. The team probably halted another mass exodus had the former gone live.

 

Kudos for listening this time around.

[RemenCreed]

You have to be trolling with this gear system. You haven't been listening. We DON'T want RNG. Edited September 7, 2019 by RemenCreed

[ProbablyNotGabe]

You have to be trolling with this gear system. You haven't been listening. We DON'T want RNG.

 

some rng isn't bad. "thrill of the hunt" is a meme (and rightfully so) but there's nothing wrong with some rng in looting.

[Alidore]

The problem is still the gear related set stats, I prefer the armourings system, but they need info on what classes they relate to and give bonuses to. Forget your hideous looking new gear designs.

How about a new gear slot that we can make any upgradeable armour into a set bonus item, that is transferable?

[Darev]

some rng isn't bad. "thrill of the hunt" is a meme (and rightfully so) but there's nothing wrong with some rng in looting.

 

this isn't JUST looting though.

 

This is, or rather was, 100% RNG.

Not a "little bit"

Not 50%

(it was) 100%

 

There was no other option for gearing.

 

Here's how, as it is with this current patch, the "new" way to gear with 6.0

 

Level up to 75 using world drops, whatever free suit they start you off at, or your 252/258 gear.

Get to 75 use your tech frags to buy as much 270 gear as you can.

Get back up to 3k Tech frags and buy the rest, maybe some 272.

Rinse/repeat. Maybe, if you have alts, you can level them up while you build up your tech frags.

Switch to main, but more gear.

Rinse/repeat for weeks working on ONE toon.

 

Then, when THAT toon is at 306, you can at least use the 306 gear and transfer it to an alt to get your second 306 suit w/o having to work your way up again.

 

There's still no "kill this boss on HM and get a 304 helmet"

There's still no "pay 300 tech frags and get your next level belt" (I'd limit that to purple personally)

There's still no "downgrade protection" for the Kai Zykken vendor.

 

 

***added***

 

Oh but wait...there's more good news:

Remember, you can only get 3k tech frags per week.

That's....11 pieces of gear, per week, from the vendor.

270/272/274/276/278/280/282/284/286/288/290/292/294/296/298/300/302/304/306

 

Using ONLY the random gear vendor...that probably about 25 weeks of grinding tech frags to use the vendor to gear up.

And then two weeks for each toon you leveled to 75 after that.

 

Isn't that fun!

Edited September 7, 2019 by Darev

[olagatonjedi]

this isn't JUST looting though.

 

This is, or rather was, 100% RNG.

Not a "little bit"

Not 50%

(it was) 100%

 

There was no other option for gearing.

 

Here's how, as it is with this current patch, the "new" way to gear with 6.0

 

Level up to 75 using world drops, whatever free suit they start you off at, or your 252/258 gear.

Get to 75 use your tech frags to buy as much 270 gear as you can.

Get back up to 3k Tech frags and buy the rest, maybe some 272.

Rinse/repeat. Maybe, if you have alts, you can level them up while you build up your tech frags.

Switch to main, but more gear.

Rinse/repeat for weeks working on ONE toon.

 

Then, when THAT toon is at 306, you can at least use the 306 gear and transfer it to an alt to get your second 306 suit w/o having to work your way up again.

 

There's still no "kill this boss on HM and get a 304 helmet"

There's still no "pay 300 tech frags and get your next level belt" (I'd limit that to purple personally)

There's still no "downgrade protection" for the Kai Zykken vendor.

Actually, you are incorrect, as someone else posted somewhere. You ONLY need to gear up 1 toon because once you upgrade a piece, you can transfer the lower item to an alt to immediately increase their item rating and bypass all the previous tiers. I.e., if you upgrade your full set of ilvl 318 to 320, you still have the full set of ilvl 318 to legacy bank to as many alts as you want and wont have to go thru the process of gearing them up grom 258.

[Darev]

this isn't JUST looting though.

 

This is, or rather was, 100% RNG.

Not a "little bit"

Not 50%

(it was) 100%

 

There was no other option for gearing.

 

Here's how, as it is with this current patch, the "new" way to gear with 6.0

 

Level up to 75 using world drops, whatever free suit they start you off at, or your 252/258 gear.

Get to 75 use your tech frags to buy as much 270 gear as you can.

Get back up to 3k Tech frags and buy the rest, maybe some 272.

Rinse/repeat. Maybe, if you have alts, you can level them up while you build up your tech frags.

Switch to main, but more gear.

Rinse/repeat for weeks working on ONE toon.

 

Then, when THAT toon is at 306, you can at least use the 306 gear and transfer it to an alt to get your second 306 suit w/o having to work your way up again.

 

There's still no "kill this boss on HM and get a 304 helmet"

There's still no "pay 300 tech frags and get your next level belt" (I'd limit that to purple personally)

There's still no "downgrade protection" for the Kai Zykken vendor.

 

 

***added***

 

Oh but wait...there's more good news:

Remember, you can only get 3k tech frags per week.

That's....11 pieces of gear, per week, from the vendor.

270/272/274/276/278/280/282/284/286/288/290/292/294/296/298/300/302/304/306

 

Using ONLY the random gear vendor...that probably about 25 weeks of grinding tech frags to use the vendor to gear up.

And then two weeks for each toon you leveled to 75 after that.

 

Isn't that fun!

 

 

 

Actually, you are incorrect, as someone else posted somewhere. You ONLY need to gear up 1 toon because once you upgrade a piece, you can transfer the lower item to an alt to immediately increase their item rating and bypass all the previous tiers. I.e., if you upgrade your full set of ilvl 318 to 320, you still have the full set of ilvl 318 to legacy bank to as many alts as you want and wont have to go thru the process of gearing them up grom 258.

 

Which is what I wrote....highlighted it for you.

[olagatonjedi]

Which is what I wrote....highlighted it for you.

Cool. Its worth bringing it up twice.

[Exly]

Actually, you are incorrect, as someone else posted somewhere. You ONLY need to gear up 1 toon because once you upgrade a piece, you can transfer the lower item to an alt to immediately increase their item rating and bypass all the previous tiers. I.e., if you upgrade your full set of ilvl 318 to 320, you still have the full set of ilvl 318 to legacy bank to as many alts as you want and wont have to go thru the process of gearing them up grom 258.

 

You're right, but you still face an rng grind for max level gear on alts to get the pieces that you need to balance your stats, to get the right set pieces, and to get the amplifiers that you want at the rating that you want. Sure, it will bell less of a grind than the initial one, but it will still involve a significant amount of rng.

[olagatonjedi]

You're right, but you still face an rng grind for max level gear on alts to get the pieces that you need to balance your stats, to get the right set pieces, and to get the amplifiers that you want at the rating that you want. Sure, it will bell less of a grind than the initial one, but it will still involve a significant amount of rng.

As it should be. If everyone got their gear in 1 week, nobody would run the new content. Ossus is proof of thst.

[Metthew]

Here's how, as it is with this current patch, the "new" way to gear with 6.0

 

Level up to 75 using world drops, whatever free suit they start you off at, or your 252/258 gear.

Get to 75 use your tech frags to buy as much 270 gear as you can.

Get back up to 3k Tech frags and buy the rest, maybe some 272.

Rinse/repeat. Maybe, if you have alts, you can level them up while you build up your tech frags.

Switch to main, but more gear.

Rinse/repeat for weeks working on ONE toon.

You get most of the gear through activities though, you only spend the tech fragments as protection from ultra-bad RNG.

[Loubibou]

Thank you so much for stepping into the right direction and actually listening to us about all the problems with RNG and such, it's not perfect but it's already a big step!

[Darev]

As it should be. If everyone got their gear in 1 week, nobody would run the new content. Ossus is proof of thst.

 

There's a difference between a grind, which isn't bad in and of itself, and a RNG heavy grind...which is bad.

[olagatonjedi]

There's a difference between a grind, which isn't bad in and of itself, and a RNG heavy grind...which is bad.

A lot of people on the forums cant seem to tell the difference.

[dracmor]

Did some testing after today's patch and the short story is that mixing modded gear and non-modded gear while churning through the 19 levels is just a bad idea and does not work. Most mods that are dropped are still for tanks, only one piece of modded gear drops vs four pieces when non-modded gear drops and apparently modded gear is considered an upgrade even if it's item level is the same as your item level. This means that one cannot equip a modded piece of gear and know that it can be upgraded by swapping out the mods within it; it is more likely that to keep the Item Rating wheel turning upwards the modded piece will have to be replaced by a non-modde piece - so there is no real point in trying to keep modded gear equipped.

 

Please choose one way or the other and sitck with it: either all gear is modded, or all gear below 307 is not modded (unless it is a set bonus piece - the mods may not be worth keeping, but the shell will be). As previously stated, due to wanting to use my Cartel Coin bought weapon, I would prefer all gear be modded.

 

Also, the RNG vendor is still broken. Bought a MH pistol on my Merc dps and got one with tank stats. Bought an offhand pistol and got one of the same value but was modded (but modded weird, like 280 barrel but 272 mod and 274 enhancement - why aren't they all the same Item Rating level?). Wanted to upgrade a 274 accuracy piece and - using the tech fragment exploit - bought 20 chest pieces and every single one of them was technically an upgrade - a 280 piece, but every single one was crit. And I needed an accuracy one. Bad RNG or bug - either way, the RNG vendor is more useless than useful. Maybe just add this to it: All personal loot will now look only at your Discipline.. But it needs further work.

 

Finally, please consider adding the new loot tables to more stuff in the next PTS patch. Running Hammer Station over an over and over is getting to be very old and usually there aren't enough players on PTS to do a KP OPs run.

 

Anyway, just my two cents but doesn't seem worth to test loot acquisition until there are more changes put into the system. Thanks for listening!

[IoNonSoEVero]

It makes me happy to see that the dev team appears to be listening and making positive changes in the right direction! I am wondering, though, if these two things will be addressed:

 

1. The issue of having to equip non-moddable weapons (instead of ripping out mods and putting them in an orange weapon) to move up. So many of us use weapons that we've purchased or earned and they are very important to our characters. It would be sad to lose the ability to use them because we need to keep the non-modded weapon equipped to move up.

 

2. The change of many orange shells to blue and non-moddable. Again, with weapons in particular this is problematic. My Inquisitor loves her Kallig lightsaber. Some of my characters have the DS/LS vendor weapons. There are some from the command and alliance crates that have been good. I want my characters to be able to keep using and modding them.

[newegg]

Let me correct something from my post. If it appears that you have an empty green shell in your stash, that is actually not a bug in of itself. The way that item works is when you pull it from your stash into your inventory it will then fill that item with mods for you based on your item rating and Discipline. Even though it looks like an empty green item, it is actually a great item to get.

 

The bug we need to address is that it looks like a very bad item in your stash and doesn't relay to you that you need to pull it to your inventory. We are working on a solution for that.

 

-eric

 

or why not just show us exactly what it has/will have to begin with while in the stash, like how it was. Instead now i have to pull it into my inventory just to see its nonsense gear that i don't need and/or have some nonsense mods with the new -AR forks that are super unnecessary. I also fail to see why the set bonuses were moved to the armor shell itself other than that you guys are looking for a tedious credit sink where now we get to armor every new piece we have 7 armor slots + 3 implant/earpiece, with 16 "great new" tiers, that may or may not have best in slot mods cus we needed more RNG

Edited September 7, 2019 by newegg

[teclado]

Again, as somebody who plays this game mostly for warzones, my focus is on getting set bonus, tacticals, and augments. Bolster is great and all, but bolster doesn't account for most of those. I'm pretty sure bolster handles augments somewhat, but augs are part of how one sets his stat distribution. I want to customize my stats to a certain extent. Non-modded gear, no augments, and no straightforward way to get the enhancements I want leaves me a little frustrated and unable to do that.

 

I really don't care too much about having the highest iRating gear. I know bolster helps a lot. I just care about being able to control my stat allocation. So if I can just get a set of moddable gear with set bonus that I can slowly upgrade with better mods over time, I'm happy. Unfortunately, that means that I'm going to be continually scrapping gear drops that are non-moddable - I can't control the stat allocation on those and I won't keep paying for augments over and over.

 

EDIT: So yeah, I'm getting better drops from Hammer station, but I don't want to use any of it. It's not moddable. Am I really going to have to just not use augments and have a FUBAR stat distribution for a long time while I am gearing? Or am I supposed to just keep the higher rated stuff and equip it when I go to the Takanna RNG vendor and roll the dice on mods?

 

EDIT2: Still getting tank stuff on my Deception Assassin. Final boss (Kreshan), Veteran Mode Hammer station dropped a tank enhancement, a tank barrel, and a tank double saber.

Edited September 7, 2019 by teclado

[limonensaft]

So now that we are all able to test on the PTS I and my guild have noticed some things that have to be done or improved by you! On the fleet, there is a dealer who makes his companion for a few mats and credits at level 50; there is also something for Level 75, that would be appropriate and really great! Crew abilities at 700 is ok but should not be higher or be adjusted by you. Whatever we would be interested in would be how high is the command rank now adapted; to 400 or 500 but not higher?

If you got the complete 306er Gear

until today no set bonus on it as well as the reinforcement, modification, improvement and appreciation do not you see there? Question: Why? Then at the Stimauswhl with the values that you should think again and revise because that does not fit so we all!

So far so good we still have a bit of time to get everything done.

 

So seid wir jetzt alle auf dem PTS testen können sind mir und meiner Gilde so einige Sachen aufgefallen die noch von euch gemacht oder verbessert werden müssen ! Auf der Flotte gibt es doch einen Händler der seinen Begleiter für ein paar Mats und Credits auf Level 50 macht ; kommt da auch was für Level 75 , das wäre schon angebracht und echt Klasse !!! Crew-Fähigkeiten auf 700 ist ok aber sollte nicht höher sein oder von euch angepasst werden .Was uns alle auch noch intressieren würde wäre wie hoch wird den jetzt der Kommandorang angepasst; auf 400 oder 500 aber bitte nicht höher ?

Wenn mann das komplette 306er Gear bekommen hat ist bis heute kein Setbonus drauf sowie die armierung,modifikation,verbesserung und aufwertung seht man da nicht ? Frage: Warum ? Dann bei der Stimauswhl mit den Werten das solltet ihr noch mal überdenken und überarbeiten weil das passt so garnicht das finden wir alle !

Soweit so gut wir haben ja noch bissle Zeit um alles hinzubekommen.

 

mfg

Obihörnchen

von der Gilde "The Black Legion" @ Tulak Hord

https://theblacklegion.enjin.com

[OdinJediCovenant]

So more random randomness, got it. So if I want an item that will give me crit or alacrity or accuracy, and I have to make the disintegrate or claim decision without knowing whether the piece in my stash has the stat that I am looking for, and I won't find out if I made the right decision until after I have made it. In what world does that make any sense?

 

He did say it was a bug that you couldnt see what it was

[NeoBlakkrstal]

This still does not address removal of the set bonus from already existing gear post lvl 75, which is utterly ridiculous. Can we get that completely removed please as having time to gain the new gear, while maintaining set bonus's already obtained is vital. Especially for toons that are already lvl 70, and, given the current leveling process, will hit lvl 75 6.0 drop day 1.

[NeoBlakkrstal]

In reading through these posts, I am once again getting that sinking feeling in my gut that I am going to be forced to actually wear the new armor pieces, meaning that each new piece obtained will have to be augmented, making all the time and money that I spent on legacy armor meaningless. I am back to having to make the decision if continuing to play this game is worth it. I can already feel my frustration level rising, and once the frustration level surpasses the fun level, it is time to stop playing the game. Please, fix these issues, put the set bonus back on the armorings, and leave the set bonus on the already existing armor. Edited September 7, 2019 by NeoBlakkrstal

[IoNonSoEVero]

I would second the request not to have the set bonus removed when a toon hits 75. There's really no incentive for my characters to level to 75 if it means the rug will be immediately pulled out from under them with their gear.

 

It also means that I'm less likely to play my L70 toons at all, and will skip bonus/side missions in any new content, because I'll be trying really hard to keep them under 75.

Edited September 7, 2019 by IoNonSoEVero

[CherryFlight]

Thank you so much for responding to our feedback! I tested out this patch with a DPS this time (Scrapper Scoundrel if that would’ve affected RNG weights), and noticed something odd: the game doesn’t appear to check MODS for relevance!

 

I understand that there’s some overlap - crit and alacrity are beneficial to both heals and DPS for example and a Scoundrel may be either - but a warding mod shouldn’t be dropping for either of those! I don’t mind, personally, since I do have a tank in the legacy who might be able to use it, but not everyone might, and it doesn’t seem to match your intent with this PTS patch, so I thought I’d point it out!

[DarthBryn]

The individual Armour, Mod and Enhancement side needs a look at. Rarely getting Enhacements drop, Armourings rarely and Mods seem ok. Further to this I appear to get about 50/50 Tank to Dps Mod drops and while playing an operative, can you apply the same rules to gear to the mod drops please. I dont want Tank mods unless im a tank.