Gear and Progression changes coming with 7.2

[Dekibra]

10 hours ago, Xhuuyaa said:

the SWTOR solution to make just one or two sets and than transfer  those between alts is... playable. But I would prefer a game/system I simply can login and just play, instead of checking (and searching) gear everytime. 

exactly, that is the point.

having just one dd/heal/tank set and the left sides is inconvenient... when you log in, you have to check legacy storage what pieces you need, take them out, play, and then before logging out with that char, put the pieces back into legacy storage for the next char... = very inconvenient

hence, some players farm/need more gear than is technically necessary because they just want to log in and play...

so yes, I woudn't mind Hyde & Zeek having left sides as well... for my convenience

[JulianKintobor]

On 11/11/2022 at 5:13 AM, ThanderSnB said:

You won't have to farm a whole set, just get one blue accessory (earpiece, relic, etc.) and upgrade it to the new cap of 336. This will unlock blue 336 mods. Purple would require purple item from nim ops. You will lose the augment slots on accessories and legendary implants (if they are upgradable). Be sure to pull out your augments before upgrading to avoid losing them. You won't lose augments on weapons or armor if you use the same pieces and put the new mods in them.

If you don't already have one, you can prepare now by running some flashpoints on your 330 character until you get a blue relic. Save it in your bank until the update comes out. Then you only have to upgrade it from 330 -> 336. Or for purple mods, prepare by running nim ops until you get any 330 purple, save it in bank, etc.

Everything that was stated here is correct, I just wanted to add a tip for anyone who does not run Nightmare Operations (most people). 

You can go to Ossus and buy a relic(s) and/or earpiece(s) of 252 quality: "Ossan Relic of Devastating Destruction" or something like that, keep it in your inventory. 

Then, when the operations Eternity Vault or Karagga's Palace will be in rotation, pick the the Weekly Veteran quest for them, not the story missions, since the hard mode version of these operations are not very difficult, but it still helps to read up on the additional mechanics of the fights, especially the puzzle in Hard Mode Karagga's Palace. 

Make sure your overall item rating going into these two operations is at least 330 to be safe, however during the easier fights, equip the Ossan Relics or Earpieces you bought previously. Your item rating will drop from 330 to around 325, but you should be fine, I've completed the operations doing this many times. Upon defeating the bosses they will drop 320 Rakata Earpieces or Relics. 

Upon completing the operation, thus completing the Weekly Veteran mission for it, you will receive a crate you can open. Make sure you are wearing an Ossan Relic or Earpiece, and then open the crate. Most times you will receive a 330 Rakata Earpiece of Relic, otherwise you will receive another 320 Rakata Earpiece or Relic, which you will need to upgrade at the Operations Gear vendor in the Supplies section of the fleet like the other 320 Rakata pieces of gear you got from the operation.

 

Warning: I have encountered that wearing a specific relic or earpiece will not grant you that specific relic or earpiece as a Rakata gear drop, in fact most times it will drop 'the opposite'. I.e. Wearing a 252 Ossan Absorption Relic will make the boss drop a 320 Rakata Shield Relic etc., and especially for relics and earpieces for Healers and Dps, it is never certain that you will get the one you are looking for. 

However once all your gear is fully upgraded and you are at Item Rating 331, doing these 2 operations in Hard Mode difficulty guarantees a 330 Columni (blue) gear drop for everything other than relics and earpieces, and 330 Rakata (purple) gear drops for relics and earpieces, so maybe you can get the specific ones you want after fully gearing yourself.

 

 

Hope this post helps someone.

Edited November 14, 2022 by JulianKintobor

[xxSHOONYxx]

4 hours ago, Dekibra said:

exactly, that is the point.

having just one dd/heal/tank set and the left sides is inconvenient... when you log in, you have to check legacy storage what pieces you need, take them out, play, and then before logging out with that char, put the pieces back into legacy storage for the next char... = very inconvenient

hence, some players farm/need more gear than is technically necessary because they just want to log in and play...

so yes, I woudn't mind Hyde & Zeek having left sides as well... for my convenience

I wonder if people know how with lodouts all of that "work" is just one click and you are fully geared or take off your gear with one click and into legacy bay.
And if you actually want every alt to have their own set on them at alltimes, guess you will need to be ready to spent billions in augments, unless you just have very few alts. This gear system is as alt friendly as it can be

 

[Dekibra]

3 minutes ago, xxSHOONYxx said:

I wonder if people know how with lodouts all of that "work" is just one click and you are fully geared or take off your gear with one click and into legacy bay.

is it though? I thought that was broken with the recent patch? ... when they fixed that, then indeed that should make things simpler again

[xxSHOONYxx]

People will never be happy or i just don't understand them, operations where already heavily nerfed in 7.1 even after the class nerfs.
Some people complained abut their iRating being too low compared to the 340 of R-4 and now that is getting increased some don't like it. 
The new gear raiting outside of r-4 is really not needed as the balance of things are with lower gear in mind, the extra gear rating will just give a slight edge to the people that still have to learn more about the game and maybe clear something they have been trying and couldn't yet, if you don't want it you don't really need to get it. 
And then other people that did r4 and have 340 gear and don't want others that didn't do r4 to get slightly better gear because...? Those people will still have more iRating for doing the hardest new content. 
 

My only personal issue with increasing the gear is that is they keep at it it will get to a point that "NiM" ops will turn into 3.0 ops, everything dies and there is no actual difficulty to things

Edited November 14, 2022 by xxSHOONYxx

[xxSHOONYxx]

1 minute ago, Dekibra said:

is it though? I thought that was broken with the recent patch? ... when they fixed that, then indeed that should make things simpler again

yes, it works again

[DarthSpekulatius]

41 minutes ago, Dekibra said:

is it though? I thought that was broken with the recent patch? ... when they fixed that, then indeed that should make things simpler again

what doesn't work:

Items the Combat style can't wear will stick to your inventory. e.g.: my scoundrel/Merc
scoundrel can't wear offhand Pistol
Merc can't wear Shotgun

going from merc to scoundrel with a Loadout will drop the offhad Blaster into your Inventory. This can't be prevented. You will have to put that away manually.
Tacticals and Implants specific to a Class will also "stick", this can be prevented by first loading a Loadout of your current Combat style  (role doesn't matter) that uses general items anyone can use before loading the Combat style you want.

a Shadow can equip single Lightsabers, so a Guardian or Sage with Shadow off-style can move all items automatically if you go via a generalized Loadout.

What works:
Going from dps Scoundrel to healer Scoundrel (same combat style to same combat style) just works.

The Legacy Bank needs to be open while you switch Loadout, if it's not your inventory will fill with the Items you wore and you will be naked, if that happens load the previous Loudout, open the legacy bank and try again (same happens if the Bank doesn't have the Items you had saved).
Loudouts "autosave" all changes however Empty slots due to missing the Item that should go there will not be saved.

 

bonus tip: make an ugly Outfit or select show gear as Outfit for your "storage" Loadout to easily recognize who has gear during the loginscreen (the ones without gear will look ugly)

Edited November 14, 2022 by DarthSpekulatius
Edit: loginscreen not loadscreen & some details

[DeannaVoyager]

2 hours ago, DarthSpekulatius said:

what doesn't work:

Items the Combat style can't wear will stick to your inventory. e.g.: my scoundrel/Merc
scoundrel can't wear offhand Pistol
Merc can't wear Shotgun

going from merc to scoundrel with a Loadout will drop the offhad Blaster into your Inventory. This can't be prevented. You will have to put that away manually.
Tacticals and Implants specific to a Class will also "stick", this can be prevented by first loading a Loadout of your current Combat style  (role doesn't matter) that uses general items anyone can use before loading the Combat style you want.

a Shadow can equip single Lightsabers, so a Guardian or Sage with Shadow off-style can move all items automatically if you go via a generalized Loadout.

What works:
Going from dps Scoundrel to healer Scoundrel (same combat style to same combat style) just works.

The Legacy Bank needs to be open while you switch Loadout, if it's not your inventory will fill with the Items you wore and you will be naked, if that happens load the previous Loudout, open the legacy bank and try again (same happens if the Bank doesn't have the Items you had saved).
Loudouts "autosave" all changes however Empty slots due to missing the Item that should go there will not be saved.

 

bonus tip: make an ugly Outfit or select show gear as Outfit for your "storage" Loadout to easily recognize who has gear during the loginscreen (the ones without gear will look ugly)

 

There are a few more problems with the automated equipping. Let's say you have several characters who share gear. You upgrade a piece with one, put the gear back to legacy and log another character. The next character still remembers the old load out and it will pull the old armor pieces from the legacy. If you upgraded from Rakata to R-4 gear but didn't destroy the Rakata piece but stored it in the legacy cargo, surprise, your clone character now has an old piece of gear on them. If you have a group waiting, there really is no time to read through all the item names to make sure you have the best gear on.

 

Another problem: If you are in let's say tank spec but want to swap to dps. You open legacy cargo to auto-equip the gear, and next thing you notice the tank gear goes where the dps gear was in the legacy cargo... That's great for people who don't care where their gear is and who want to look for it every time they want to play. I have different tabs for different roles. If the tank gear gets into dps slots in the cargo, next time I want to play dps I will have tank gear with me because they were stored on wrong tab. 

 

And one more: if I have both tank and dps set with me (one equipped, one in the inventory) and I want to swap spec. The set I was wearing will be all over the place in my inventory. And it is even bigger mess if one of the pieces were not part of the loadout yet, because then it will keep the one tank item equipped, while replacing the rest of the pieces with dps stuff. Yes, good luck clearing up that mess again. 

 

We need a gear inventory that is legacy wide and functions like the outfitter where you just stamp your gear once and that's it. We need to be able to access it anywhere, anytime, without having to go to legacy bank and start sorting out the mess changing loadouts does.  We would just need to build a gear set once for each class and role we play, then stamp it on the loadouts where we want to use it. It would be a huge QoL improvement.

[ZUHFB]

20 hours ago, Xhuuyaa said:

the SWTOR solution to make just one or two sets and than transfer  those between alts is... playable. But I would prefer a game/system I simply can login and just play, instead of checking (and searching) gear everytime. 

use loadouts than you don't have to, but oh hey - what do I know, just keep gearing up alts instead of clicking one button

[Dekibra]

1 hour ago, ZUHFB said:

use loadouts than you don't have to, but oh hey - what do I know, just keep gearing up alts instead of clicking one button

Unfortunately it is clicking several buttons though now isn’t it 🤪

log into char… press C (1), Open Legacy Storage (2), go to loadout tab (3), choose desired loadout (4), activate desired loadout (5) (and that is not counting all open Windows that need to be closed after that one way or another), so 5+ clicks

Nah, I‘d rather farm more left sides… what else is there to do?! /s

[Xhuuyaa]

4 hours ago, ZUHFB said:

use loadouts than you don't have to, but oh hey - what do I know, just keep gearing up alts instead of clicking one button

 

Loadouts doesnt really work with the gearing process - if I change just one gear piece, or one augment etc. than I have to replace this item in every loadout from every toon and save it again.  

[Mycroft-Tarkin]

4 hours ago, Xhuuyaa said:

 

Loadouts doesnt really work with the gearing process - if I change just one gear piece, or one augment etc. than I have to replace this item in every loadout from every toon and save it again.  

...and doing that, except you also have to farm that one piece on every character now, is better?

[DarthSpekulatius]

14 hours ago, DeannaVoyager said:

 

There are a few more problems with the automated equipping. Let's say you have several characters who share gear. You upgrade a piece with one, put the gear back to legacy and log another character. The next character still remembers the old load out and it will pull the old armor pieces from the legacy. If you upgraded from Rakata to R-4 gear but didn't destroy the Rakata piece but stored it in the legacy cargo, surprise, your clone character now has an old piece of gear on them. If you have a group waiting, there really is no time to read through all the item names to make sure you have the best gear on.

don't stack the gear that is now Obsolete away into the Legacy Storage, that way the Slot will be Empty and the Item-type you need to find will be the thing in your Inventory, like Mycroft wrote you'd have to do that anyway.

(personally I'd like Legacy Loadouts (starting with GSF btw), that syncs up identical Combat Styles (and Ships) to behave the Way they did when I last played that Style (flew that Ship) basically instead of having 10 Loadouts / character I would have wanted 5 per Combat Style, however that will likely disrupt more then it would do good, just for example what about low level Characters? what about people who don't want to Legacy share Gear? the way it's now is likely very close to the best compromise available)

 

Quote

Another problem: If you are in let's say tank spec but want to swap to dps. You open legacy cargo to auto-equip the gear, and next thing you notice the tank gear goes where the dps gear was in the legacy cargo... That's great for people who don't care where their gear is and who want to look for it every time they want to play. I have different tabs for different roles. If the tank gear gets into dps slots in the cargo, next time I want to play dps I will have tank gear with me because they were stored on wrong tab. 

using the "storage" Loadout to first grab your Placeholder Gear back and then load the thing you want will prevent things getting mixed up.

it could be improved, yes, but the game has worse Issues with way more dumb and tedious Workarounds then that.

Quote

And one more: if I have both tank and dps set with me (one equipped, one in the inventory) and I want to swap spec. The set I was wearing will be all over the place in my inventory. And it is even bigger mess if one of the pieces were not part of the loadout yet, because then it will keep the one tank item equipped, while replacing the rest of the pieces with dps stuff. Yes, good luck clearing up that mess again. 

I'd strongly advice to not pull Gear into your Inventory for quicker gear-swaps, except for when you do Speedruns for NIM Achievements you should always have the Time to summon the Legacy Cargo.
(reason being you are then manually interfering with an automated Process, that's rarely a good Idea)

however what I underlined shouldn't happen, in my experience if you don't have the Item the Slot should be empty and the thing it held previously should be in your Inventory, so check what slot is empty and then look for that Item in particular.

whenever I had a Tank Piece in my DPS Gear, I put it there.

Quote

We need a gear inventory that is legacy wide and functions like the outfitter where you just stamp your gear once and that's it. We need to be able to access it anywhere, anytime, without having to go to legacy bank and start sorting out the mess changing loadouts does.  We would just need to build a gear set once for each class and role we play, then stamp it on the loadouts where we want to use it. It would be a huge QoL improvement.

wouldn't work perfectly for me. basically a Slot staying empty when I try to load Gear tells me I got an upgrade on another Character and need to update my Loadout, if it didn't stay empty I'd run around with old Gear most of the Time.

Combining it with "linked Loadouts" would work, basically once I've setup a Kinetic Loadout on my main Shadow if I need it on my alt I'd navigate to the Legacy window and link to my "Kinetic" Loadout on my main, then in the future if I change anything on the linked Loadouts it would change all the other linked ones as well.

 

I'd love to see Improvements to Loadouts but it's certainly an issue of we were offered a Hand and an Arm and are now asking for both Arms and both Legs, more realistically I just want the sticky Items fixed.
if they want to improve it further by changing how it works I think it is likely to get worse instead.

 

I'd much rather get better Inventory Management tools, like a means of Tagging items (basically overwriting the Rarity Color with a Color of our Choice), or a Search function, then flipping a coin if the "Improved Lodouts" will actually be an improvement.

Edited November 15, 2022 by DarthSpekulatius
typo

[DeannaVoyager]

25 minutes ago, DarthSpekulatius said:

don't stack the gear that is now Obsolete away into the Legacy Storage, that way the Slot will be Empty and the Item-type you need to find will be the thing in your Inventory, like Mycroft wrote you'd have to do that anyway.

 

They are not obsolete for me. Not yet anyhow. 

Quote

using the "storage" Loadout to first grab your Placeholder Gear back and then load the thing you want will prevent things getting mixed up.

 

And I don't have placeholder gear on most of my alts. The ones that do, have their inventories more messed up and full than the characters that don't have it and I rarely play them because of that. 

 

Quote

I'd strongly advice to not pull Gear into your Inventory for quicker gear-swaps, except for when you do Speedruns for NIM Achievements you should always have the Time to summon the Legacy Cargo.
(reason being you are then manually interfering with an automated Process, that's rarely a good Idea)

You greatly underestimate the speed people can pull trash while you are trying to summon a legacy cargo to get a new set of gear...   They'll even vacuum all the yellow trash mobs they can find, just to prevent me from using the legacy cargo... 🤪

 

Quote

however what I underlined shouldn't happen, in my experience if you don't have the Item the Slot should be empty and the thing it held previously should be in your Inventory, so check what slot is empty and then look for that Item in particular.

whenever I had a Tank Piece in my DPS Gear, I put it there.

wouldn't work perfectly for me. basically a Slot staying empty when I try to load Gear tells me I got an upgrade on another Character and need to update my Loadout, if it didn't stay empty I'd run around with old Gear most of the Time.

 

Either I'm not following you, or I explained my original problem wrong, but it's fine. If it would work perfectly, there would be no confusion where the gear is and where it goes when swapping loadouts. Right now it's not working that great. The mess  changing loadouts does in the inventory is probably the biggest culprit here. I need my stuff organized. 

 

Quote

Combining it with "linked Loadouts" would work, basically once I've setup a Kinetic Loadout on my main Shadow if I need it on my alt I'd navigate to the Legacy window and link to my "Kinetic" Loadout on my main, then in the future if I change anything on the linked Loadouts it would change all the other linked ones as well.

 

 

Yes, I would love that as well. Of course I'm speaking from an altoholic point of view: I have several clones mostly for raiding purposes. People who only have one of each class probably don't even know what we are talking about.

 

Quote

I'd love to see Improvements to Loadouts but it's certainly an issue of we were offered a Hand and an Arm and are now asking for both Arms and both Legs, more realistically I just want the sticky Items fixed.
if they want to improve it further by changing how it works I think it is likely to get worse instead.

Honestly, I don't think it's too much to ask. They had a great idea about the combat style change and loadouts. They just left it halfway done and released it as it is. 

[Katushe]

Loadouts are unusable for me. Any missclick means I have to do it all over again. I hate them with all my heart. So, I stopped using them after the first week.

As sorting out mods for main hands, secondary and augments for implants has to be done for every class, at least, and since upgrading them is nonsensically complicated, the result for me is that from 27 alts, I play a maximum of 3-4 a week. Usually the same: my main tank and 2 out of 4 DPS. Healer? ROTFL! I used to have 3 healers, the gearing in 6 even made me try to learn how to heal... that's a dead idea, now. My lack of skill and lack of power combined frustrates invariably both me and my teammates. 

With the mess that the last gearing system was, my guild was running 4-5 ops SM a week and even 1-2 HM. Now? Since the new gearing system dropped (excepting maybe the first 2 weeks), I have rarely seen more than 3 ppl online in my guid. And we are usually the same ones.

So, gearing is dead for me and also killed the activity that still was there in my guild.

As for the changes, if it's accessible to increase the tank and the 2 dps that I play, I'll probably do it. But that's it. Until the gearing changes drastically and becomes WAY, WAY less complicated, I won't even bother.

Edited November 16, 2022 by Katushe

[DarthSpekulatius]

24 minutes ago, Katushe said:

Loadouts are unusable for me. Any missclick means I have to do it all over again. I hate them with all my heart. So, I stopped using them after the first week.

you need two missclicks to Break things.

if you load a Loadout that doesn't have the gear you want just load the last one you had, find the character with the gear and put it in the Legacy Bank, then load the Loadout again and nothing will be broken and nothing will have to be done all over again.

[Katushe]

4 minutes ago, DarthSpekulatius said:

you need two missclicks to Break things.

if you load a Loadout that doesn't have the gear you want just load the last one you had, find the character with the gear and put it in the Legacy Bank, then load the Loadout again and nothing will be broken and nothing will have to be done all over again.

Try missclicking and click "save loadout" instead of load it. See how you repair that. No, thanks. Who invented that was too lazy to have an alt.

[DarthSpekulatius]

10 minutes ago, Katushe said:

Try missclicking and click "save loadout" instead of load it. See how you repair that. No, thanks. Who invented that was too lazy to have an alt.

"save loadout" doesn't exist, they autosave any change you make (but those changes happen one click at a time when you equip an Item / change a choice in the ability Tree thingie).

if you mean copy, there's a "are you sure" popup if you are missing that go to Options -> user Interface the "Loadout Copy Confirmation Warning" needs to be active.

[Katushe]

1 hour ago, DarthSpekulatius said:

"save loadout" doesn't exist, they autosave any change you make (but those changes happen one click at a time when you equip an Item / change a choice in the ability Tree thingie).

if you mean copy, there's a "are you sure" popup if you are missing that go to Options -> user Interface the "Loadout Copy Confirmation Warning" needs to be active.

At least, you probably believe me that I did not use them after the first week they were introduced. And no matter how many tweaks they bring to it, to me is still going to be easier to hit Esc, click logout and than click play.

And there is no need for the warning to exist if you don't use the crappy system.

But, to get back on topic: the gearing in 7.2 is still way to complicated, upgrading it forces you to do parts of the game that you might not enjoy, with the top gear reserved for arrogant toxic players. So, thanks, but I'll upgrade my gear in 8.0 (maybe!).

[DarthSpekulatius]

4 minutes ago, Katushe said:

At least, you probably believe me that I did not use them after the first week they were introduced. And no matter how many tweaks they bring to it, to me is still going to be easier to hit Esc, click logout and than click play.

Loadouts are a "power tool" they aren't officially explained anywhere (as far as I know) and handling them wrong is frustrating.

however if setup right it will save you ALL the trouble you have to deal with to get individual gear for each character. You aren't mentioning how much work goes into getting individual Gear and Augment it for each Character, Loadouts are easily worth it.

 

Loadouts take a little learning but then they are very easy to use.

individual gear / character takes a little grind but then it takes a bunch of credits but then it does save you 8 Seconds each time you would have had to summon your legacy Bank and 1 Second to Load the Loadout.

Easy != takes no effort.
things can be easy but take you some grind to set up, I don't like Grind wich is why I like Loadouts.

 

10 minutes ago, Katushe said:

And there is no need for the warning to exist if you don't use the crappy system.

unless you make a character for each spec and never change your Combat style, you will have to either use Loadouts or rebuild your Interface each time you switch, so nope that warning does need to exist.

What doesn't need to exist is the "don't show this Message again" option for the "copy" and the "Change combat style" warnings, because they should appear only a very very limited number of times for each character but the headaches it will cause if they are not there, like the one you described, are major.

43 minutes ago, Katushe said:

But, to get back on topic: the gearing in 7.2 is still way to complicated, upgrading it forces you to do parts of the game that you might not enjoy, with the top gear reserved for arrogant toxic players. So, thanks, but I'll upgrade my gear in 8.0 (maybe!).

I would agree that putting 10 iLVLs between the hardest to get gear and stuff that's available for everyone is bad (7.1 status), but 4 iLVLs difference to motivate people to work trough the High Difficulty is good (7.2 status). (simply because Operations don't reward you for losses like PVP for example, if you fail you get absolutely nothing except a Repair bill)

about the arrogance and Toxicity, you are simply hanging out with the wrong people. I know way, way more nice Raiders then those that aren't nice.

[akdonkey]

Thanks for rolling the Gearing system back 10 years. It's terrible and ran off many players simply because you want to slow the leveling down.

[ReveredDead]

On 11/10/2022 at 2:13 PM, Kaoticmijit said:

Why upgrade all the gear when the people who have been progging to get the best gear now have gear that isn’t much better than all the other gear that people with no skills or desire to do anything endgame related get to just waltz around in gear close to people who spend countless hours a week to get the gear? Seems like a waste to raise item levels if you’re going to coddle to people who don’t want to put the work in.

Wow you must be an absolutely pleasant and fun person to play with.

Don't give the peasants the good gear. How dare you Bioware! - Signed A Toxic Raider nobody cares about. 

[ReveredDead]

7.2 is going to be like: "How many times do we have to screw it up before we get it right?".

Just give us the gearing system that made 6.0 the best update this game ever had. Simple, fair to all players and not content locked. You could play anything and progress to max rating. That was 6.0 in a nutshell and it WORKED. 

[ZUHFB]

5 hours ago, ReveredDead said:

7.2 is going to be like: "How many times do we have to screw it up before we get it right?".

Just give us the gearing system that made 6.0 the best update this game ever had. Simple, fair to all players and not content locked. You could play anything and progress to max rating. That was 6.0 in a nutshell and it WORKED. 

And it made gear worthless

[DWho]

6 hours ago, ZUHFB said:

And it made gear worthless

How so. As I recall, there were several sets that were locked behind certain content. Everyone could get iRating 306 gear but it was not all equivalent. The most difficult raids still had exclusives (outside of an almost negligible chance of getting them from a random vendor one piece at a time) that performed better than the gear a typical "casual" player could obtain.

Just like in 7.0 people are fixated on the iRating. In 7.0 there are people complaining that raid gear iRating isn't far enough above what others can get but the purple gear they get (with the same iRating as the blue and green stuff) is far superior to the green gear (or even the blue gear) in performance. Green gear is heavily loaded with the worthless Endurance stat (which is effectively double synced with the stat being synced and the Health from it synced further making increasing Endurance pointless) while blue and purple gear moves those points into more useful abilities. With level sync working on a sliding scale system now instead of a hard cap (for most abilities anyway) having more points in non-Endurance abilities makes the gear perform better.