Nate
FH is my second home
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2004
- Messages
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Found this on another forum Infrik kindly made.
Here's a post I made on my guild forums regarding content at 50. Warning: Most of this is my personal opinion based on experience, so please feel free to correct, criticize or contribute. I'll update this is there's enough interest.
EDIT: One thing I want to point out as well is that this was intended to be for someone hitting 50 and wanting to prepare for raiding/Operations. I don't talk about Ops as a gearing method at all, since this is prep for that.
PvE Gearing
This is self-explanatory, and unfortunately most of the crating recipes blow with the exception of Biochem. Feel free to look into why we're all whining about our craft skills elsewhere.
Conclusions
So as you can see, PvP is the quickest way to gear up in this game at the moment. It's slightly more reliable, and certainly gets your more gear per minute spent. The downside is that the gear is relatively tight on the stats it provides, and you get the Expertise stat on the gear (which is a PvP only stat that increases PvP Helaing, increases dmg/reduces dmg vs. Players). Do your Ilum Control point daily/weekly, and your PvP daily/weekly to max out gear gain here. Only bad thing is that it's random what's in the gear bag, so it's entirely possible to get nothing or an item you already have.
It's definitely worth doing your Ilum and Belsavis dailies for Tionese Crystals and for the Epic mods/enhancements/Armorings, etc to get yourself in somewhat of a raid-ready state.
Flashpoint Dailies/Weeklies seem to only be worth doing if you just do Black Talon. Sadly, you can only do this once per day. Hopefully, Bioware will retune/tweak the drops and mechanics for some of the buggier Flashpoints to make it worth doing more than just Black Talon.
Here's a post I made on my guild forums regarding content at 50. Warning: Most of this is my personal opinion based on experience, so please feel free to correct, criticize or contribute. I'll update this is there's enough interest.
EDIT: One thing I want to point out as well is that this was intended to be for someone hitting 50 and wanting to prepare for raiding/Operations. I don't talk about Ops as a gearing method at all, since this is prep for that.
PvE Gearing
- Ilum and Belsavis Dailies - This is probably the most significant source of pre-raid PvE gearing available right now. Well, at least the most consistent. Once you complete your story quest you'll be able to start the Ilum chain. I highly recommend doing this, as well as the Belsavis Bonus Series (at 50). Ilum has about 6 dailies (1 is heroic) and Belsavis has about 6 as well (2 heroics). Between the Daily Commendations you'll get from these, as well as the quest rewards, you should be able to buy an Epic Armoring/Hilt/Barrell, and you'll get an Epic Enhancement, Mod, and Companion Weapon from the quests. That means that doing your Belsavis and Ilum dailies basically gets you a piece of epic gear per day with the rewards. This is a must do for PvE gear. It also gets your companions pretty geared out because of the repeatable quest that gets them a moddable level 50 weapon.
- Hard Mode Flashpoints - The way these work is that the bosses up to the final boss will drop epic gear, and the final boss will drop a class token. All bosses will also drop Tionese Crystals, which are used in conjunction with other commendations to purchase epic PvE gear from the Tionese vendor on the Fleet. The Hard Mode Flashpoint Effort-to-Reward is kinda $#@!ed right now, but here's a quick suggestion:
- Black Talon - This is pretty easy, even for fresh 50s. It's basically as quick as doing @ 11.
- Boarding Party - Semi-long instance with challenging final boss. Poor reward for time invested.
- The Foundry - Last boss is bugged and starts 1-shotting tanks at 30%, not worth doing.
- Directive 7 - Haven't done on Hard Mode, some say this one is challenging and heal intensive.
- The Battle for Ilum - Haven't done on Hard Mode, but most people are saying it's not that bad. Boss drops an Offhand token.
- The False Emperor - An hour and a bit worth of trash and bosses for most. Some medium challenge level. Not worth time invested.
- Tokens/Commendations - Similar to the badge system in WoW (or Valor Points), go to your vendor to see what costs what. Tionese Commendations are the lowest (rating 126 gear) and are gotten from completing Hard Mode Flashpoints, and Normal Mode Operations (as well as doing your Daily Hard Mode Flashpoint and Weekly Hard Mode Flashpoint quests). Columi are a level up (for Rating 136 gear) and are from Hard Mode Ops and Nightmare Mode Ops. Use these in combination with Tionese Crystals to purchase set gear. WARNING - Your set bonuses do not show on your gear in the vendor window. Make sure you're picking the correct piece of gear for your spec (based on the name) so you get set bonuses that aren't worthless (e.g. A piece of gear that looks fine for a Sith Assassin DPS spec, actually would have Sith Sorcerer bonuses because it was intended for them...do some research before making the purchase).
- Flashpoint Dailies/Weeklies - These are straightforward and gotten from the Fleet. Complete 1/day and 3/week to get the max reward. Basically you'll just be doing Black Talon to complete this quest.
- Champion Gear Bags - There are a variety of ways to get these (described below). They will have Centurion Commendations, and randomly they will have a loot token for a specific slot of Champion PvP gear. By doing all of your dailies and weeklies, your potential earning of bags would be 20 per week. (7 for Ilum Daily, 7 for PvP Daily, 3 for Ilum Weekly, 3 for PvP Weekly). Additionally, any purchased bags are icing on the cake.
- Battlemaster Gear Bag - These are similar to Champion Gear Bags, though they have better stats (Rating 140). You can only get these if you're Valor Level 60[edit: thanks hooj] from PvP (you can see on your PvP queue screen what your progress is).
- Currency and Gear Purchase - Champion and Battlemaster bags are purchased with Commendations, like anything else, but they're a bit easier to obtain. The Champion Bag at 50 (Rating 136) is easily purchased with 200 Warzone Commendations and 200 Mercenary Commendations. Merc Comms are primarily gotten through a Warzone Comm conversion (3:1 conversion rate) at the PvP vendor, but can also be gotten on Ilum and Tattooine, by participating in World PvP and getting chests. Basically, for every 800 Warzone Commendations you get, you'll be able to get a chance at a piece of gear from a bag (by converting down some of those to Merc Comms).
- Battle for Ilum - On the fleet you will get a Daily and a Weekly to contribute to the War Effort on Ilum by taking control points on the western portion of the planet. This is pretty straightforward, but is a bit of a pain in the ass due to the requirement of Republic needing to be there to flip the node. Often times you will go to Ilum and all nodes will be Empire controlled. Best wait this out while you're queuing for your PvP daily/weekly. You need to get 5 control points for the daily and 15 for the weekly. The daily will get you 1 Champion Gear bag, and the weekly will get you 3. Pretty awesome rewards, though random.
- Daily and Weekly PvP Wins - These two quests are picked up on the Fleet. Win 3 matches a day, and 9 a week. Daily gets you 1 Champion Gear bag, and the weekly gets you 3.
This is self-explanatory, and unfortunately most of the crating recipes blow with the exception of Biochem. Feel free to look into why we're all whining about our craft skills elsewhere.
Conclusions
So as you can see, PvP is the quickest way to gear up in this game at the moment. It's slightly more reliable, and certainly gets your more gear per minute spent. The downside is that the gear is relatively tight on the stats it provides, and you get the Expertise stat on the gear (which is a PvP only stat that increases PvP Helaing, increases dmg/reduces dmg vs. Players). Do your Ilum Control point daily/weekly, and your PvP daily/weekly to max out gear gain here. Only bad thing is that it's random what's in the gear bag, so it's entirely possible to get nothing or an item you already have.
It's definitely worth doing your Ilum and Belsavis dailies for Tionese Crystals and for the Epic mods/enhancements/Armorings, etc to get yourself in somewhat of a raid-ready state.
Flashpoint Dailies/Weeklies seem to only be worth doing if you just do Black Talon. Sadly, you can only do this once per day. Hopefully, Bioware will retune/tweak the drops and mechanics for some of the buggier Flashpoints to make it worth doing more than just Black Talon.
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