Gearing Feedback PTS Thread

[JackieKo]

For those who may have missed the stream, here’s a breakdown of the changes coming to gearing. 

The power ceiling is being raised. Here are the new maximum Item Ratings for gear coming with 7.4.

• Noble Decurion - 340
• Supreme Decurion - 340
• Tionese - 340
• Columi - 340
• Rakata - 344
• Thyrsian - 336

Players who have acquired the Virulent armor from The R-4 Anomaly will be able to exchange their armor for Rakata armor at the R-4 Veteran Exchange vendor in the supplies section of the fleet using R-4 Veteran Gear Tokens, OP-1 Catalysts, and credits.

Implants will no longer drop from bosses or be given from upgrade crates above Item Rating 336. This will make it easier for players to focus on Legendary Implants. Any previously obtained Implants can still be upgraded on the Fleet.

Our dynamic smuggling duo, Hyde and Zeek, has upped their ante and gotten their hands on modifications at Item Rating 340. Speak to Hyde on the Fleet to begin a new mission to acquire and deconstruct gear at Item Rating 340 to unlock these new mods.

With 7.4 we’re going to begin expanding access to Artifact gear as well. OP-1 Catalysts are coming to your Master Mode Chapters. Players who take on these treacherous challenges will be rewarded with 8 OP-1 Catalysts per completion.

Those who watched the stream or the VOD saw a note that players can earn Rakata gear regardless of content that is played. There will be more on this point at a later time! So please keep an eye on the dev tracker for more details. 

For the interim, we would like to get your thoughts on the above, so please use this thread to offer your feedback. 
 

[Elvarania]

Thanks for this. Can you (or anyone) please clarify a few things?

Is there a stat threshold change, or are they the same? (2964 acc, 2054 alac etc)

If we enter MM Ops with 340 R-4 gear (blue and purple), will 340 Rakata gear start to drop immediately?

Does Rakata gear have an item rating cut off? Will it only be upgradable to 344 via Ops vendor, or will 344 gear drop from Ops? 

Do we need R-4 tokens (blue and purple) for anything in preparation for the launch of 7.4? I've heard we need some tokens to upgrade our Virulent gear to Rakata.

Presumably Rakata gear is still un-moddable, so are we reverting to gear where we have to mix and match based on different loot specs? (eg using several Pummeler, Demolisher, Force Lord etc pieces)

Gist of the questions: for gearing our 340 toons, can we just spam easy MM Ops to get 340+ Rakata gear immediately? 

[JakRoanin]

Dear @JackieKo and @BryantWood could you please explain why the team will not allow modding for Noble Decurion gear?

[Barnard]

1 hour ago, Elvarania said:

Thanks for this. Can you (or anyone) please clarify a few things?

Is there a stat threshold change, or are they the same? (2964 acc, 2054 alac etc)

If we enter MM Ops with 340 R-4 gear (blue and purple), will 340 Rakata gear start to drop immediately?

Does Rakata gear have an item rating cut off? Will it only be upgradable to 344 via Ops vendor, or will 344 gear drop from Ops? 

Do we need R-4 tokens (blue and purple) for anything in preparation for the launch of 7.4? I've heard we need some tokens to upgrade our Virulent gear to Rakata.

Presumably Rakata gear is still un-moddable, so are we reverting to gear where we have to mix and match based on different loot specs? (eg using several Pummeler, Demolisher, Force Lord etc pieces)

Gist of the questions: for gearing our 340 toons, can we just spam easy MM Ops to get 340+ Rakata gear immediately? 

You can answer most of those yourself if you logged into PTS.

Stat targets appear to be the same. They don't usually change unless there is a level increase. You gain a whopping +30 to tertiary stats per piece when going from 340 to 344.

I can confirm that 1 Blue token is currently needed to upgrade any one piece of Virulent (Purple Gear) to 342 from 340 with OP-1 catalysts.

Yes you will need to probably mix and match different pieces of Rakata gear for BiS.

Drops behave the same way the currently do. Pieces will drop and be the same level as your current slot. So if you had a blue 336 columi piece in a slot, you would potentially get a 336 purple Rakata piece if that slot dropped. This means that if you went got drop in Master Mode operations and your had 340 Virulent gear, you would have 340 Rakata pieces dropping.

Edited October 26, 2023 by Barnard

[Char_Ell]

15 minutes ago, JakRoanin said:

could you please explain why the team will not allow modding for Noble Decurion gear?

As a fellow player, I'm not sure I understand the question.  Noble Decurion gear design is not modifiable (excepting augments) so it's not a matter of the devs not allowing mods for Noble Decurion gear.  Are you essentially asking the dev team to make Noble Decurion gear modifiable for the new item rating levels 338 and 340 that will be added in patch 7.4?  In other words you want Noble Decurion pieces at 338 and 340 items ratings to drop with 2 or 3 mod slots with armoring/barrel/hilt, mod, and, if applicable, enhancement?

[JakRoanin]

I'm saying that our conquest gear should be moddable. Some of us want to min max our stats for story play.

[kekrot]

17 minutes ago, Barnard said:

Drops behave the same way the currently do. Pieces will drop and be the same level as your current slot. So if you had a blue 336 columi piece in a slot, you would potentially get a 336 purple Rakata piece if that slot dropped. This means that if you went got drop in Master Mode operations and your had 340 Virulent gear, you would have 340 Rakata pieces dropping.

This is not how it worked at the start of 7.0, when 330 was rakata from Nim ops only EXCEPT for relics, implants and earpieces which drops in HM ops as well. If you had 330 relics equipped in a HM ops, you would still loot a 326 relic, so HM ops were not only restricting gear tracks, it also restricted item ratings, so this needs to get tested or confirmed.

[Barnard]

12 minutes ago, kekrot said:

This is not how it worked at the start of 7.0, when 330 was rakata from Nim ops only EXCEPT for relics, implants and earpieces which drops in HM ops as well. If you had 330 relics equipped in a HM ops, you would still loot a 326 relic, so HM ops were not only restricting gear tracks, it also restricted item ratings, so this needs to get tested or confirmed.

The mode was said as Master which is NiM. Rakata gear (except relics, and ear) probably won't be dropping in Veteran (Hard) Mode.

[Exly]

Are the rules changing for item disintegration?  I tried disintegrating some 320 - 336 Nobel Decurion and Tionese gear but it was destroyed instead.  

[The-Kaitou-Kid]

37 minutes ago, JakRoanin said:

I'm saying that our conquest gear should be moddable. Some of us want to min max our stats for story play.

 

The conquest gear itself may not be moddable, but solo players do have access to mods currently. The current way to do it is to convert your Conquest commendations to FP-1 Stablizers, buy one piece of blue FP gear and upgrade it to 336 (or 340 now), and then deconstruct it to unlock blue mods of that irating from Hyde and Zeek. It's more complicated than it really needs to be, but it's certainly attainable for solo players.

[Barnard]

24 minutes ago, Exly said:

Are the rules changing for item disintegration?  I tried disintegrating some 320 - 336 Nobel Decurion and Tionese gear but it was destroyed instead.  

I noticed that on one of my characters but deconstruction worked correctly on another.

[JakRoanin]

24 minutes ago, The-Kaitou-Kid said:

 

The conquest gear itself may not be moddable, but solo players do have access to mods currently. The current way to do it is to convert your Conquest commendations to FP-1 Stablizers, buy one piece of blue FP gear and upgrade it to 336 (or 340 now), and then deconstruct it to unlock blue mods of that irating from Hyde and Zeek. It's more complicated than it really needs to be, but it's certainly attainable for solo players.

I know but you have to do it 1 PC at a time! UGH!

[Kendaric]

22 minutes ago, JakRoanin said:

I know but you have to do it 1 PC at a time! UGH!

No, you only have to do it once. The mods can be inserted into a piece of legacy-bound gear and therefore be put in your legacy storage.

And selecting "Show all" rather than your discipline let's you choose all mods (barrels, hilts, mods, enhancements).

[Barnard]

Hyde and Zeek do not offer a quest for 340 gear. I tested on a character who has previously done all the Hyde and Zeek quests. He simply states to check back later. I don't see 340 mods/enhancements on the vendor either.

[TrixxieTriss]

6 hours ago, JackieKo said:

OP-1 Catalysts are coming to your Master Mode Chapters. Players who take on these treacherous challenges will be rewarded with 8 OP-1 Catalysts per completion.

Question re: Master mode chapters.

If we run them as a group, will everyone in the group get 8 OP-1 Catalysts each? Or is only the lead player eligible for the reward? 

Edited October 26, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[Barnard]

42 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Question re: Master mode chapters.

If we run them as a group, will everyone in the group get 8 OP-1 Catalysts each? Or is only the lead player eligible for the reward? 

Doesn't work that way now. Only the one who started the chapter gets credit for the chapter. I don't imagine it has changed. I did check, the 8 OP-1 catalysts reward is tied to the chapter quest.

Edited October 27, 2023 by Barnard

[TrixxieTriss]

43 minutes ago, Barnard said:

Doesn't work that way now. Only the one who started the chapter gets credit for the chapter. I don't imagine it has changed. I did check, the 8 OP-1 catalysts reward is tied to the chapter quest.

I know that’s how chapters usually work. That is why I was asking. Because otherwise, what’s the point of spending resources to only add this to master mode chapters when probably less than 1% of the remaining players can do them solo these days. Most people will need to form groups to get through MM chapters. So why not allow everyone in the group access to the rewards or divide the 8 between the players in the group. Now would be a good time to finally encourage some group replay of the chapters.  

[Barnard]

Columi and Rakata boxes aren't behaving as expected like live. They are rewarding a random slot and not necessarily an upgrade. Sometimes you get an equivalent slot piece when you have lower level pieces that should be upgraded by the boxes. This happened on the previous version of PTS as well.

[Barnard]

12 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

I know that’s how chapters usually work. That is why I was asking. Because otherwise, what’s the point of spending resources to only add this to master mode chapters when probably less than 1% of the remaining players can do them solo these days. Most people will need to form groups to get through MM chapters. So why not allow everyone in the group access to the rewards or divide the 8 between the players in the group. Now would be a good time to finally encourage some group replay of the chapters.  

Chapters are solo content. Some of the chapters are fairly easy to solo even on master mode. If you want to have a group of people get OP-1 Catalysts, run a weekly HM operation. You current get 65 Catalysts from the weekly mission and another 7 from various boss drops.

[TrixxieTriss]

Just now, Barnard said:

Chapters are solo content. Some of the chapters are fairly easy to solo even on master mode. If you want to have a group of people get OP-1 Catalysts, run a weekly HM operation. You current get 65 Catalysts from the weekly mission and another 7 from various boss drops.

Look, I understand how they were setup. I don’t want to argue with you about them. I’m asking Jackie a question as this sort of group feature for chapters is something many of us would have liked when they originally added them. 

[Barnard]

Can we also get the caps on OP-1 catalyst raised? Since you can't bring any currency over, it leaves you the only option of deconstructing Operations gear to get OP-1 catalysts to test buying stuff with. The hard cap of 2000 is less than what is needed to buy more than a full set of gear for a legacy. I can't test tank gear until next week, because I hit the cap and spent all most all of it on DPS gear.

[raikme]

6 hours ago, JakRoanin said:

I know but you have to do it 1 PC at a time! UGH!

What do you mean?

Just complete the Hyde and Zeek 336 prototype quest and you can fully gear all your alts with 336 blues. 

You DO NOT have to do all Hyde and Zeek's quests.

[JakRoanin]

they must have changed it.

[TheRandomno]

4 hours ago, Barnard said:

Can we also get the caps on OP-1 catalyst raised? Since you can't bring any currency over, it leaves you the only option of deconstructing Operations gear to get OP-1 catalysts to test buying stuff with. The hard cap of 2000 is less than what is needed to buy more than a full set of gear for a legacy. I can't test tank gear until next week, because I hit the cap and spent all most all of it on DPS gear.

Buy bags of 200 tech fragments on live, and refund them on PTS for 200 OP-1s. Won't count towards the weekly cap. I got BiS already using this method.

[TheRandomno]

On 10/26/2023 at 5:37 PM, JackieKo said:

With 7.4 we’re going to begin expanding access to Artifact gear as well. OP-1 Catalysts are coming to your Master Mode Chapters. Players who take on these treacherous challenges will be rewarded with 8 OP-1 Catalysts per completion.

Those who watched the stream or the VOD saw a note that players can earn Rakata gear regardless of content that is played. There will be more on this point at a later time! So please keep an eye on the dev tracker for more details.

For the interim, we would like to get your thoughts on the above, so please use this thread to offer your feedback. 
 

A lot of this seems fairly set in stone, so I'm not sure what's worth feeding back on.

Overall, the gearing system is still convoluted and complicated. It seems like a weird mix of "play your way" and "the best gear comes from the hardest content".

Until the launch of 5.0 we had the latter system. Then Galactic Command came and while it had its flaws, it was a decent way of letting people gear how they wished. This later turned into Renown in 6.0.

Now with 7.0, even with the removal of the daily tokens there are still several currencies. If you're expanding access to Rakata gear, what's the point of all of them?

Also, it takes about 1600 OP-1 tokens to go from 340 to 344. That's 200 master mode chapters. I don't think farming KotFE chapter 2 on a stealther is "playing your way", if that's what the intention is with that.