Is There No Challenging PvE at 25?

[pattongb]

Or at all in this game?  Returning player from many years ago. I am enjoying all the new features and my beloved IA story line.   Despite all the new stuff in the game, and there is a TON, im not sure how long I will be around again.

The PvE is absolutely boring.  I get making it easier for solo players and making this a lvling friendly game, but really?  I did a solo Black Talon run, and not only did they assign a driod that never died to kill everything for me, they had healing stations by all the big fights? And not just one but multiple.  I would have had to have had the ability to target myself to even approach losing half a health bar.

When questing I try to pull 2 to 3 GROUPS of mobs just to have a fight last more than 20 seconds. Still never even get close to dying.

Is there anything I can do to challenge myself in PvE?

Edited May 26, 2023 by pattongb

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

30 minutes ago, pattongb said:

Is there anything I can do to challenge myself in PvE?

Raiding and possibly MM Flashpoints. You'd have till higher levels for raiding though.

Flashpoints and Heroics are also more challenging than story PVE, although they're still easy.

Also, the PVE Space Mission Heroics are hard as hell.

HM/NiM Operations (Raiding) and PVP is where the real challenging content is found.

There's some challenging (as in harder than Vanilla Story) in parts of later story content. Like The Eternal Empire Storyline (some of the boss fights, still quite doable though), Eternal Championship has challenging parts of it. Star Fortresses (mostly towards the last stages of them) are abit more challenging as well.

The vanilla story lines aren't about challenge, they're just about story, and a place for people new to the game to become a bit familiar with how the game works on a basic level. You won't find any challenge in the vanilla story lines.

Vanilla story lines are solo content. Even if you enabled someone else to enter a story phase with you, they wouldn't get credit for it and they'd have to be the same class as you to even be able to enter.

Edited May 26, 2023 by WayOfTheWarriorx

[ThanderSnB]

I think they made them easy so players get to endgame faster. That's when the f2p restrictions hit hardest, so that's when players are most likely to subscribe.

[Sanchpanza]

Black Talon is only meant for 2 people. If you're doing it on Story mode, which is where you get the bot, then it's meant to be just that.. Story Mode. Same with most of the solo missions. Some of the other story mode flashpoints are more challenging, but most of them are easy and don't even need the bot.

Most of the vanilla story is pretty easy now. Not sure how long you've been gone, but you don't get the challenge like you used to. Some of the newer flashpoints on Veteran mode can be a bit of a challenge, but you're really looking at MM FPs and Vet OPs for the same sort of challenge we used to get. Some MM FPs can still be a biznatch.

Once you get to KoTET/FE you can choose your story mode difficulty. Some of the non-vanilla heroics can be a bit nasty still, like a certain one in Black Hole. There's still a few Heroic 4's floating around as well.

 

[LD_Little_Dragon]

Are you running with a healer companion?  You have the option to change them to dps, to tank, or even put them on passive.

In solo flashpoints you can get rid of the combat droid by clicking off the droid buff.

You can also try doing heroics that are close to your current level for something a bit more challenging than story stuff.

Veteran flashpoints can be challenging, you can either try them solo (the heal stations won't work if you're not in a group), or try doing them in a group with other players that are close to or below your own level.  They're way too easy if you're grouped with a high level character.

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

2 hours ago, LD_Little_Dragon said:

Veteran flashpoints can be challenging, you can either try them solo (the heal stations won't work if you're not in a group), or try doing them in a group with other players that are close to or below your own level.  They're way too easy if you're grouped with a high level character.

As I mentioned in another string, I solo Flashpoints on veteran sometimes, and while they are quite doable when your geared well, there are some fights that can be a bit of challenge at times. I even die on occasion. (The Last boss(es) fight in The Nathema Conspiracy comes to mind.)  Some flashpoints offer more of a challenge than others soloing.

And without a healer companion, I'd be a dead man on My Carnage Marauder.

Edited May 27, 2023 by WayOfTheWarriorx

[SteveTheCynic]

17 hours ago, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

Vanilla story lines are solo content. Even if you enabled someone else to enter a story phase with you, they wouldn't get credit for it and they'd have to be the same class as you to even be able to enter.

It's actually the opposite of what you say in the bold italics (emphasis added).  If you don't check the option to allow others of the same class ("origin story") into your class story phase, only "strangers" can accompany you.  ("strangers" here meaning "people of different origins")

But if you turn the option on, the same-origin other must run the phase again as the phase owner (the one who goes in first is the phase owner) to get mission credit for it.

Other-origin accompaniers are *always* merely spectators in conversations, but can participate in fights.

[LD_Little_Dragon]

16 hours ago, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

As I mentioned in another string, I solo Flashpoints on veteran sometimes, and while they are quite doable when your geared well, there are some fights that can be a bit of challenge at times. I even die on occasion. (The Last boss(es) fight in The Nathema Conspiracy comes to mind.)  Some flashpoints offer more of a challenge than others soloing.

And without a healer companion, I'd be a dead man on My Carnage Marauder.

I usually use a healer comp for solo'ing vet flashpoints too.  With the channeled heal often turned off to speed things up a bit. 

The 'run with a dps companion' is mainly for story stuff or doing 2-man heroics.  It's mostly the story stuff that players tend to whine about how it's too easy and they can't die.  That's who should either stop using a heal comp or stop complaining.

[DWho]

Challenge in SWTOR is no different than any other MMO. When you massively over-level/overpower what you are fighting, it becomes extremely easy. Level Sync is largely ineffective on the first 2 or 3 planets because your abilities change so fast and it ends up being the abilities that are a major driver in how easy the content is at that level. Once you get past those first couple planets, level sync starts to "work" in that the fights become longer. The closer you keep your character to the level of what you are fighting the more "challenging" it becomes. You are not going to die often from the leveling content but you can end up taking lots of damage and with the increased repair costs, it can start to be a challenge to keep your gear repaired unless you are making major forays outside the basic leveling content to acquire credits (selling stuff on the GTN, running dailies and weeklies, and doing heroics). Even at launch, leveling content was not difficult, just tedious (and over-leveling was the way to solve difficult fights and even solo heroics, flashpoints, and world bosses).

1) Try keeping your level on par with the content (don't use xp boosts wherever possible and avoid rested xp). You could also use a f2p account which gets 20% less xp that a sub account or if you have one, use a White Acute Module, available from a Gree vendor on the Fleet during double xp events, it is legacy bound so you can move it freely between characters through the mail or a legacy bank

2) Only use the gear that drops from the class story or planetary story missions (heroic gear is very over-powered compared to the leveling content)

3) Create a special toolbar that only contains the abilities you would have available to you if you were the same level as the planetary maximum and only use those abilities in combat. Using high level abilities against low level foes (even as few as 5 levels higher) can seriously unbalance the encounter since the NPCs were not built with those abilities in mind.

4) Only level your companions (Influence from Presence stat) through the story missions (no gifts or boosts) and keep them set to the role they had in the original game instead of using them as heals all the time. If you use high influence companions, they will quickly overwhelm the lower level NPCs ability to do damage (or take damage in the case of DPS companions).

5) On low level planets, collected datacrons in your legacy can be the majority of your stats making your character very overpowered for the level since as long as you are below the planet level, stat reductions from level sync are not applied. Playing storylines on the European servers from the US (or vice versa) is not particularly impacted by lag so you could start a new legacy there with no datacrons or boosts if your main legacy is filled out.

There are some places where there is nothing you can do to make the fight any more challenging due to the way level sync works on NPCs. The Emperor fight for the JK and the Baras fight for the SW occur on a low level planet and with level sync are now very easy with a high level character. This is something Bioware should look at fixing. Placing Chapter bosses in instanced areas set to the level they are supposed to be would go a long way to making these fights more interesting.

KotFE and KotET are a different story in that they have multiple levels of difficulty available for leveling but in the "easy" mode some of the fights are very challenging for certain classes when played with KotFE/KotET gear and level.

 

[Ardrossan]

8 minutes ago, DWho said:

Challenge in SWTOR is no different than any other MMO. When you massively over-level/overpower what you are fighting, it becomes extremely easy. Level Sync is largely ineffective on the first 2 or 3 planets because your abilities change so fast and it ends up being the abilities that are a major driver in how easy the content is at that level. Once you get past those first couple planets, level sync starts to "work" in that the fights become longer. The closer you keep your character to the level of what you are fighting the more "challenging" it becomes. You are not going to die often from the leveling content but you can end up taking lots of damage and with the increased repair costs, it can start to be a challenge to keep your gear repaired unless you are making major forays outside the basic leveling content to acquire credits (selling stuff on the GTN, running dailies and weeklies, and doing heroics). Even at launch, leveling content was not difficult, just tedious (and over-leveling was the way to solve difficult fights and even solo heroics, flashpoints, and world bosses).

1) Try keeping your level on par with the content (don't use xp boosts wherever possible and avoid rested xp). You could also use a f2p account which gets 20% less xp that a sub account or if you have one, use a White Acute Module, available from a Gree vendor on the Fleet during double xp events, it is legacy bound so you can move it freely between characters through the mail or a legacy bank

2) Only use the gear that drops from the class story or planetary story missions (heroic gear is very over-powered compared to the leveling content)

3) Create a special toolbar that only contains the abilities you would have available to you if you were the same level as the planetary maximum and only use those abilities in combat. Using high level abilities against low level foes (even as few as 5 levels higher) can seriously unbalance the encounter since the NPCs were not built with those abilities in mind.

4) Only level your companions (Influence from Presence stat) through the story missions (no gifts or boosts) and keep them set to the role they had in the original game instead of using them as heals all the time. If you use high influence companions, they will quickly overwhelm the lower level NPCs ability to do damage (or take damage in the case of DPS companions).

5) On low level planets, collected datacrons in your legacy can be the majority of your stats making your character very overpowered for the level since as long as you are below the planet level, stat reductions from level sync are not applied. Playing storylines on the European servers from the US (or vice versa) is not particularly impacted by lag so you could start a new legacy there with no datacrons or boosts if your main legacy is filled out.

There are some places where there is nothing you can do to make the fight any more challenging due to the way level sync works on NPCs. The Emperor fight for the JK and the Baras fight for the SW occur on a low level planet and with level sync are now very easy with a high level character. This is something Bioware should look at fixing. Placing Chapter bosses in instanced areas set to the level they are supposed to be would go a long way to making these fights more interesting.

KotFE and KotET are a different story in that they have multiple levels of difficulty available for leveling but in the "easy" mode some of the fights are very challenging for certain classes when played with KotFE/KotET gear and level.

 

This is all great advice. Another thing I would add is to try to leave planets before level sync kicks in...this is easier to do with the WAM. Level sync comes into effect 1-2 levels after the planetary range maximum, which is why I use that (from the galaxy map) as my guide when to leave the planet. If you wait for level sync to go into effect, it will unbalance the combat. This is especially important on the earlier planets, it can get to the point where you might hit a planet (for me it's usually Taris/Balmorra) where you have to skip everything but the class mission to stay at the correct level (even with the WAM).

 

[Goreshaga]

15 minutes ago, DWho said:

The Emperor fight for the JK and the Baras fight for the SW occur on a low level planet and with level sync are now very easy with a high level character.

While this is true for the Wrath vs Baras fight, it is not fot the HoT vs Vitiate one. That part of the JK's story is in a different version of DK that happen in a lvl 50 instance.

Everything else is great advice.

I'll also add, that not upgrading the gear can make some fight pretty challenging, i once had a bit of challenge against some Tusken on Tatooine, before i realised i was actually "naked", so not wearing any gear outside of my weapon.

[DWho]

16 minutes ago, Goreshaga said:

While this is true for the Wrath vs Baras fight,

Yeah, that one went from nearly impossible on level at launch to nothing at all now. The Voice of the Emperor insta-kill takes a long time to charge up and with his reduced health in that low level instance, you can pretty safely ignore it. He'll be dead long before the channel completes. It's kind of like the insta-kill ability of the Golden Droid on Makeb, though the droid usually gets to use it before you can take it out so you need to get your positioning right.

[Ardrossan]

I died on Korriban recently with a new SI. I found out that it's almost impossible to kill the Teranterak at level if you don't have Khem in your party. 

[SteveTheCynic]

3 minutes ago, Ardrossan said:

I died on Korriban recently with a new SI. I found out that it's almost impossible to kill the Teranterak at level if you don't have Khem in your party. 

How did you not have Khem active at that point?

[Ardrossan]

10 minutes ago, SteveTheCynic said:

How did you not have Khem active at that point?

I dismissed him right after I got him. 

[xordevoreaux]

The OP's question cannot be answered in the absolute. What one finds challenging, the next may not.

[mCion]

If you want absolute pain, try doing the Chapters SOLO in Master mode. good luck! you're gonna need it!

[Diamaht]

On 5/26/2023 at 11:29 AM, pattongb said:

Or at all in this game?  Returning player from many years ago. I am enjoying all the new features and my beloved IA story line.   Despite all the new stuff in the game, and there is a TON, im not sure how long I will be around again.

The PvE is absolutely boring.  I get making it easier for solo players and making this a lvling friendly game, but really?  I did a solo Black Talon run, and not only did they assign a driod that never died to kill everything for me, they had healing stations by all the big fights? And not just one but multiple.  I would have had to have had the ability to target myself to even approach losing half a health bar.

When questing I try to pull 2 to 3 GROUPS of mobs just to have a fight last more than 20 seconds. Still never even get close to dying.

Is there anything I can do to challenge myself in PvE?

No there isn't.

Basicaly you need to, take off your gear, dismiss your companion, don't do most the content on the planets so you don't level to much.

It's pretty bad.

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

5 hours ago, DWho said:

Challenge in SWTOR is no different than any other MMO. When you massively over-level/overpower what you are fighting, it becomes extremely easy. Level Sync is largely ineffective on the first 2 or 3 planets because your abilities change so fast and it ends up being the abilities that are a major driver in how easy the content is at that level. Once you get past those first couple planets, level sync starts to "work" in that the fights become longer. The closer you keep your character to the level of what you are fighting the more "challenging" it becomes. You are not going to die often from the leveling content but you can end up taking lots of damage and with the increased repair costs, it can start to be a challenge to keep your gear repaired unless you are making major forays outside the basic leveling content to acquire credits (selling stuff on the GTN, running dailies and weeklies, and doing heroics). Even at launch, leveling content was not difficult, just tedious (and over-leveling was the way to solve difficult fights and even solo heroics, flashpoints, and world bosses).

1) Try keeping your level on par with the content (don't use xp boosts wherever possible and avoid rested xp). You could also use a f2p account which gets 20% less xp that a sub account or if you have one, use a White Acute Module, available from a Gree vendor on the Fleet during double xp events, it is legacy bound so you can move it freely between characters through the mail or a legacy bank

2) Only use the gear that drops from the class story or planetary story missions (heroic gear is very over-powered compared to the leveling content)

3) Create a special toolbar that only contains the abilities you would have available to you if you were the same level as the planetary maximum and only use those abilities in combat. Using high level abilities against low level foes (even as few as 5 levels higher) can seriously unbalance the encounter since the NPCs were not built with those abilities in mind.

4) Only level your companions (Influence from Presence stat) through the story missions (no gifts or boosts) and keep them set to the role they had in the original game instead of using them as heals all the time. If you use high influence companions, they will quickly overwhelm the lower level NPCs ability to do damage (or take damage in the case of DPS companions).

5) On low level planets, collected datacrons in your legacy can be the majority of your stats making your character very overpowered for the level since as long as you are below the planet level, stat reductions from level sync are not applied. Playing storylines on the European servers from the US (or vice versa) is not particularly impacted by lag so you could start a new legacy there with no datacrons or boosts if your main legacy is filled out.

There are some places where there is nothing you can do to make the fight any more challenging due to the way level sync works on NPCs. The Emperor fight for the JK and the Baras fight for the SW occur on a low level planet and with level sync are now very easy with a high level character. This is something Bioware should look at fixing. Placing Chapter bosses in instanced areas set to the level they are supposed to be would go a long way to making these fights more interesting.

KotFE and KotET are a different story in that they have multiple levels of difficulty available for leveling but in the "easy" mode some of the fights are very challenging for certain classes when played with KotFE/KotET gear and level.

 

All excellent advice DWHO. Even though I've been playing the game for 10 years, I learned a lot from your posts about the technical side of things and how things work.

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

10 hours ago, SteveTheCynic said:

It's actually the opposite of what you say in the bold italics (emphasis added).  If you don't check the option to allow others of the same class ("origin story") into your class story phase, only "strangers" can accompany you.  ("strangers" here meaning "people of different origins")

But if you turn the option on, the same-origin other must run the phase again as the phase owner (the one who goes in first is the phase owner) to get mission credit for it.

Other-origin accompaniers are *always* merely spectators in conversations, but can participate in fights.

So says the walking Encyclopedia of SWTOR. =]

Thanks for the correction.

I thought it was the other way around because a lot of times the phases say when you hover over them say  "This instance can only be entered by <insert class>" (I'm paraphrasing, not sure of the exact wording). So I didn't think anyone of any other classes could enter that phase.

[Ardrossan]

1 hour ago, Diamaht said:

No there isn't.

Basicaly you need to, take off your gear, dismiss your companion, don't do most the content on the planets so you don't level to much.

It's pretty bad.

It's pretty clear you've done none of the strategies that I or @DWho have suggested if that's what you're taking from it. It's easy to maintain the same opinion when you just don't bother reading anything that disagrees with your own, huh?

Let's play devil's advocate and assume that you're right and all these ideas aren't even worth trying, you can't do anything about it on your own. Okay, well you've made and contributed to these difficulty threads and bioware has your feedback. And now you just need to wait for them to fix everything, right? Could be waiting a long time. In the meanwhile, I'll be playing the game, using the WAM, keeping track of the planet range, using green mods, because I know from long experience that expecting any studio, let alone this one, to immediately fix the problem, is a pipe dream. So if it's too much to expect you to try to create your own difficulty, I guess you're just going to have to be permanently unhappy on this forum. It's not like you can just play a different game that's more challenging, right 

Edited May 27, 2023 by Ardrossan
devils advocate

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

7 minutes ago, Ardrossan said:

It's pretty clear you've done none of the strategies that I or @DWho have suggested if that's what you're taking from it. It's easy to maintain the same opinion when you just don't bother reading anything that disagrees with your own, huh?

Let's play devil's advocate and assume that you're right and all these ideas aren't even worth trying, you can't do anything about it on your own. Okay, well you've made and contributed to these difficulty threads and bioware has your feedback. And now you just need to wait for them to fix everything, right? Could be waiting a long time. In the meanwhile, I'll be playing the game, using the WAM, keeping track of the planet range, using green mods, because I know from long experience that expecting any studio, let alone this one, to immediately fix the problem, is a pipe dream. So if it's too much to expect you to try to create your own difficulty, I guess you're just going to have to be permanently unhappy on this forum. It's not like you can just play a different game that's more challenging, right 

Ya know Ardrossan, If I had to pick someone to mess with in a dark alley, it definitely wouldn't be you. =]

I love your spunk. 🤬

 

[Diamaht]

4 hours ago, Ardrossan said:

It's pretty clear you've done none of the strategies that I or @DWho have suggested if that's what you're taking from it. It's easy to maintain the same opinion when you just don't bother reading anything that disagrees with your own, huh?

Let's play devil's advocate and assume that you're right and all these ideas aren't even worth trying, you can't do anything about it on your own. Okay, well you've made and contributed to these difficulty threads and bioware has your feedback. And now you just need to wait for them to fix everything, right? Could be waiting a long time. In the meanwhile, I'll be playing the game, using the WAM, keeping track of the planet range, using green mods, because I know from long experience that expecting any studio, let alone this one, to immediately fix the problem, is a pipe dream. So if it's too much to expect you to try to create your own difficulty, I guess you're just going to have to be permanently unhappy on this forum. It's not like you can just play a different game that's more challenging, right 

What was inaccurate?

1 You have to slow down your leveling to prevent overleveling

2 You need to involve your companion a little as possible especially as a healer, and you need to limit the gifts to prevent too much presence.

3 You need to under gear compared to what the game gives you in conquest, weeklies and dailies since that will only serve to boost you.

Anything else?

 

Edit:  Said seasons, meant conquest.

 

Edited May 28, 2023 by Diamaht

[Shayddow]

Basically the reason why the first planet seems easy to you is: 

When I started you didn't HAVE a companion. You had to kill everything yourself until you GOT your companion. And because of how it was paced, you usually didn't get the first one until you were level 9 on Korriban, or Tython. On Ord Mantell you got the smuggler companion whereas as a trooper you had to wait until the end of Ord Mantell before you got Jorgan. IAs and BHs didn't get theirs until they had to raid F's palace on Hutta. Also, your companion had a defined role, you had to gear them up*, and you had to pay to learn new abilities. So advancement was much slower, even for a subscriber.

(An interesting footnote - I recently redid the HK-51 quest on a toon that already had it unlocked thru legacy unlock. Didn't get another HK unit, although I DID get as an "award" the HK armor - which was 118 droid armor. Amazed this stuff is still in the game when they eliminated droid armor in what was it, 3.0 or 4.0?). As the "new" existing mode of HK doesn't even have slots to put this in, I just vaulted it)

 

[Ardrossan]

7 hours ago, Shayddow said:

(An interesting footnote - I recently redid the HK-51 quest on a toon that already had it unlocked thru legacy unlock. Didn't get another HK unit, although I DID get as an "award" the HK armor - which was 118 droid armor. Amazed this stuff is still in the game when they eliminated droid armor in what was it, 3.0 or 4.0?). As the "new" existing mode of HK doesn't even have slots to put this in, I just vaulted it)

wow, I didn't know you didn't get an HK after redoing the quest. I tried it recently but I had to stop at Taris after getting nowhere with the search. 

The droid armor prize seems reminiscent of the droid armor upgrade you used to be able to get to upgrade T7 in the JK finale on DK, after doing the bonus. That was scrapped in 4.0 I think and now all that's left is droid junk to vendor.