Some Thoughts from Testing Solo Gearing

[Crystal_Mind]

Aside from the Legendary Items thread, there's no actual gearing feedback thread. The other 7.0 gear thread seems more speculative than PTS-testing/feedback based, so I'm making my own.

 

Preface:

I am not a solo player. I enjoy my alts and the story just fine, but I personally prefer a mix of content inclusive of operations, flashpoints, and warzones. However, because the guild I am in supports a diversity of playstyles, I wanted to take some time on PTS to test the pacing of the solo-only gearing path as we prepare for the upcoming expansion.

 

The Solo(”Conquest”) gearing path on PTS revolves around the acquisition of gear fragments and Aquatic Resource Matrices (ARMs). Without engaging in groupfinder, the only source of gear fragments appears to come through the completion of 100k Personal Conquest (200 frags/conquest). ARMs can be acquired through the Daily Areas (currently 40/Weekly), Planetary Heroic Series (10/Heroic Weekly), and Personal Conquest (2/Conquest).

 

From this information, a clear path emerges. If prioritizing gearing, you will want to push several alts to conquest, without “wasting” conquest points on alts who have already completed their personal conquest for the week. My own path follows (spoilered for length):

 

 

Day 1 (Sorcerer)

Completed CZ-198 (Weekly, Mission Complete, Defeat Enemies 1&2, a few gathering/crew skill objectives)

Completed Ziost (Weekly, Mission Complete)

Started Yavin 4 Weekly, but hit conquest with Advancement: Reputation (+43,875) halfway through the first mission and abandoned everything in quest log rather than continuing

Time Spent: 30 Minutes

 

Day 2 (Merc)

This toon’s a healer, so I just went for the swoop event.

Advancement: Reputation

Dantooine: Mission Complete

Missions: Bonus Missions

Onderon: Mission Complete

Swoop Rally: Course Completion

Swoop Rally: Weekly Mission

Time Spent: 30 Minutes

 

Day 2-3 (Assassin)

This toon’s conquest was split across 2 days because I got bored.

Korriban: Heroic Missions

Korriban: Mission Complete

Alderaan: Heroic Missions

Alderaan: Defeat Enemies… which got me halfway to conquest, so I paused

Balmorra: Mission Complete

50k Personal Conquest Requisition (obtained from login rewards on PTS)

Total Time: 20 Minutes

 

Day 3 (Sniper)

Getting low on ARMs, so I ran the CZ-198 daily area and wrap up with a couple heroics.

Crew Skills: Rank Up

CZ-198: Defeat Enemies, Mission Complete, & Weekly Mission

Balmorra: Defeat Enemies

Missions: Heroic Pinnacle (partially complete from my assassin)

Total Time: 20-30 Minutes

 

Day 3 (Scoundrel)

Swoop objectives are daily repeatables, so I ran my scoundrel healer through the courses

Advancement: Reputation

Dantooine: Mission Complete

Missions: Bonus Missions

Onderon: Mission Complete

Swoop Rally: Course Completion

Swoop Rally: Weekly Mission

Total Time: 20 Minutes

 

At this point, the toon I’ve actually been building a gear set for is at iLevel 324. I spent the rest of my free time on live, but given another day I could have hit the stated launch cap for conquest gear.

 

 

Conclusion:

I said at the beginning of this post that I’m not a solo-player, so I didn't find this personally enjoyable, but it was informative. Gear remains attainable, though there are downsides to refusing to group in an MMO. Unlike players who engage in group content and can guarantee 3 weekly equipment drops through groupfinder, it appears that true solo-only players will need to grind up item rating for each character, or keep swapping the same set between their alts.

 

Caveats:

That said, there are things we don’t yet know about this new gearing process, and how it will interact with Combat Styles. It was implied earlier this year that gear was one of the things that could be saved to a character’s “loadouts.” If there is some kind of “legacy closet” component to this function, that would eliminate most of the gear-swapping needed on a regular basis. (A QoL improvement for all playstyles, frankly).

 

Another thing to consider is that we’re supposed to get a new daily area. Onderon and Ossus both provided gear crates attached to their weeklies. If the new daily area does the same, that provides the missing “guaranteed gear drop” for the solo-only experience (albeit still an initial* downgrade from the experience of a player who doesn’t mind grouping from time to time. Dev posts make it clear that gear quality for ALL paths will continue to increase as the expansion proceeds).

 

A final thought: I did run some flashpoints on one toon with a guildie last weekend, and the green 320 “Noble Decurion” bracers I picked up had identical stats to the Conquest-upgraded green 320 Decurion bracers. If it is intended that Decurion and Noble Decurion have identical stat distribution, there’s no real reason for them to be two sets with two upgrade paths. Just combine them.

[Toraak]

Good to know the 2 sets have the same stats on them. I haven't been able to test out the FP's personally, but my conclusion of the gear from a solo perspective was it looked fairly quick if Conquest is done on alts, and just running a few characters through Dailies each week would gear solo players up fairly quickly.

 

Just doing 1 character through conquest, and doing Ziost I was able to level up a 320 belt to 334 (tho BW did say Conquest would go up to only 326 at launch of 7.0)

[Pricia]

Ok so I'm going to be THAT person...

 

If you want to do an objective run, you can't use events (especially not the swoop one considering it's the fastest to get CQ done, but it only happens every 3 months), or CQ requisitions, and you have to remember that a lot of us will not get those reputation goals because we're already maxed. I'd add that the heroic pinnacle goal only happens once every 3 weeks or something too...

 

Out of curiosity, does the swoop event reward gear upgrade parts too?

 

Or maybe I misunderstood the whole thing, because from what I've read, the only things you did that would actually give you upgrade items would be the weeklies and the CQ reward. Did you get anything at all except credits from those random heroics?

 

Either way, it sounds like gear is pretty easy to upgrade at least.

 

Did anyone run story flashpoints to see what the rewards are?

Edited November 8, 2021 by Pricia

[Crystal_Mind]

Ok so I'm going to be THAT person...

 

If you want to do an objective run, you can't use events (especially not the swoop one considering it's the fastest to get CQ done, but it only happens every 3 months), or CQ requisitions, and you have to remember that a lot of us will not get those reputation goals because we're already maxed. I'd add that the heroic pinnacle goal only happens once every 3 weeks or something too...

 

Out of curiosity, does the swoop event reward gear upgrade parts too?

 

Or maybe I misunderstood the whole thing, because from what I've read, the only things you did that would actually give you upgrade items would be the weeklies and the CQ reward. Did you get anything at all except credits from those random heroics?

 

You know what, valid response. I'll explain my thought process. On live, I don't concern myself with conquest. It happens or it doesn't. I honestly don't care. So knowing I had limited time to test, I sat down and just went down the conquest list, sorting by points, and then picked a path. I didn't have a problem using the swoop event (or any event) because there's always good conquest attached to them and there's no reason not to take advantage of it. They've mentioned 'rotating weeklies.' I kind of assume the event weeklies will be active when the events are.

 

On the conquest requisition... yeah, that's a little cheesy. But I obtained it that day on PTS, so it seemed valid enough. Without it, I would have just picked another daily area, or maybe done more heroics. Yavin 4 is pretty fast, with it's secondary objectives, it may have been equivalent. I could have even done the Star Fortress Weekly (also good conquest). Same with rep,. though that's a 1/day/legacy objective, so it's not like I benefitted from it on every toon. I'm not maxed yet, and neither are a lot of the newer players in my guild, for whom I was doing this test run. Players with rep maxed for all factions will need to chart their daily repeatables more carefully than I did.

 

But mostly, you're right with the end of your post. My primary goal was feeling out how frag/arm acquisition worked out. The answer is: as currently on PTS, EVERYONE's primary source of frags is conquest. Daily areas do not award gear frags, they award ARMs. Heroics do not award gear frags. If you do the whole planetary series, you get a few ARMs. The swoop event awarded only event currency, credits, rep, & conquest. Looking at groupfinder, you get a scarce handful of gear frags from actually queuing--not enough on their own to do any upgrades. You'll need conquest.

 

Vet flashpoint gear (Noble Decurion) is a particularly raw deal. If the stats really are intended to be the same as solo-conquest gear, then they cost way too much currency (Frags, ARMs, and DI Stabilizers.) You're far better off saving the Decurion Isotope Stabilizers for MM Flashpoint gear, or trading them away. Just take your conquest gains and upgrade there instead.

 

EDIT: Also, the reason I posted the activity breakdown is exactly so people who are more conquest oriented than myself had context for my experience beyond my personal takeaway. I'm content to walk away with "conquest is achievable and gearing is straightforward," but I know that a startling portion of the playerbase is quite invested in the Conquest game and may have different opinions on the matter when looking at the same dataset. Your civil criticism and perspective are quite welcome.

Edited November 8, 2021 by Crystal_Mind
clarification 2

[gidder]

Thanks for the post. Just curious on what your thoughts might be on how this translates to more casual players and possible issues getting through the story? As conquest is going up, renown is going away and RNG will be a thing of the past, makes me wonder if this game will still be casual friendly. I know that right now on live you can easily out level an area but even with our overly generous gearing system you still become under geared. I'm wondering if this is going to be a bigger issue now or if you think the new system would work for them as well.

 

Thanks again

Edited November 8, 2021 by gidder

[Crystal_Mind]

Thanks for the post. Just curious on what your thoughts might be on how this translates to more casual players and possible issues getting through the story? As conquest is going up, renown is going away and RNG will be a thing of the past, makes me wonder if this game will still be casual friendly. I know that right now on live you can easily out level an area but even with our overly generous gearing system you still become under geared. I'm wondering if this is going to be a bigger issue now or if you think the new system would work for them as well.

 

Thanks again

 

Disclaimer: I'm probably not the best person to ask.

 

That said, the devs have made clear that the iLevel floor and ceiling will both raise for all content types as the expansion proceeds, but balancing will not change. This means you will outgear content as time goes on. I do not expect any "Spirit of Vengeance"-type issues to persist in the long-term.

 

Honestly (keeping disclaimer in mind), I think it will be fine. My personal experience with scaling on PTS was mostly-positive in older planetary areas (running both 306 and 318). The new story areas are not yet available for testing. I did not test any solo flashpoints.

Edited November 8, 2021 by Crystal_Mind
Additional thought

[Toraak]

Disclaimer: I'm probably not the best person to ask.

 

That said, the devs have made clear that the iLevel floor and ceiling will both raise for all content types as the expansion proceeds, but balancing will not change. This means you will outgear content as time goes on. I do not expect any "Spirit of Vengeance"-type issues to persist in the long-term.

 

Honestly (keeping disclaimer in mind), I think it will be fine. My personal experience with scaling on PTS was mostly-positive in older planetary areas (running both 306 and 318). The new story areas are not yet available for testing. I did not test any solo flashpoints.

 

I tested a solo FP in 306 gear, and Korriban incursions felt the same as it does on Live.

[Sir_Troll]

I had a similar experience as the OP. (Below copied from another thread I posted in)

 

I played quite a bit on the PTS over the weekend. By transferring 5 level 75 characters from live to PTS, boosting them to level 80, and running them each through the conquest weekly (150% SH bonus), I was able to obtain a set of the iLvl 326 conquest gear in around 4 hours playtime. This won't happen on live because each character would need to be leveled to 80 then run through the conquest weekly competing with other players. But I don't suspect too bad of a grind for solo players (if you have the 150% SH bonus).

 

From here I can try FPs and OPs to upgrade the greens from conquest to blues and perhaps gain additional Item levels. Might be quicker than grinding through FPs and OPs upgrading each piece from 318 > 320 > .... > 326.

 

Don't get rid of your augmented 306 gear. Because this is optimized for level 75 content it will still be useful

for down leveled content (at least it was this past weekend) until you can get the new gear.

 

Note: This all still could change before 7.0, this is how it worked this past weekend on PTS.