WOOT! I made it, only took me a year.... (I'm married and have a young son).

Anyway, I have most of my Tionese gear. Now what? Should I just start doing Hard Mode FP's? Or get with my guild to try some OPS? I figured I should gear into some Black Hole gear before doing Ops. But what else? I have my crafting maxed in artifice. Just not real sure what to do.

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Getting full Tionese is a good start at least. In terms of PvE armor gear, it goes like this:

Tionese > Columi > Black Hole > Rakata > Campaign > and then the two other most recent gear that their names escape me.

If you're running with guildies who know you and are very geared, they should be able to bring you along for the ride through a few early HMs like Black Talon and such. Stay away from harder HMs and Operations until you get decently geared up.

Also, you get a free set of Recruit gear from the PvP mission terminal, and a lot of that gear can replace some of your gear right now on a temporary basis in PvE, so keep that in mind as well!

You can start with some of the easier FPs, but be sure to do them in story mode first to make sure you have the mechanics down before trying them HM.

Also, do the dailies. I find that the Black Hole dailies are very easy, and once you get them down, you can complete BH in about 40 minutes. That'll give you a few BH comms a week, plus you'll get daily comms and about 70k per day.

The daily comms can be used to purchase good earpieces and relics. The credits will come in handy for when you want to put your mods into a set of orange you really like, or augmenting whatever set of armor you decide to stick with.

Some people do the Section X, Ilum, and Belsavis dailies too, but I find that those take too long. Like you, I don't have much time to play. The Black Hole dailies work great for my limited availability.

1) I would encourage you to make quite a few storymode runs through D7 & False Emperor. Tionese level gear drops in these two.

2) Start playing with your spec, and change one talent at a time to see if you're really specced the way you like for you style of play.

3) Do dailies and get your rakata implants & an ear ~ you will earn enough credits to buy at least one from the GTN

4) Do WZ & get your war hero relics

5) Solo the Ilum H2 daily ~ if you can't do it, you need to work on your rotations & learn to use some of your less often used abilities. The dailies are a great way to tighten up sloppy play.

You can certainly do any of the HM FPs in tionese level gear, you can actually do them all with lesser gear. But it takes much better team play and coordination ~ the less well geared the team is. Considering that you're not an avid player, I'd guess that you're pugging most of the time. So you'll probably need some better gear to survive HMs

If you're maxed in artifice get your BoP relics that give 77 endurance or 52 endurance and a chance at critial or power increases when activated. They help out greatly until you can get better ones.

I skipped Story modes on most of my toons but they still have some pretty good drops and are worth doing. Once you are geared with at least part Columi/Rakata/BH (implants, ear and armguards as well) you are set to go for most Ops groups.

Tionese is a great starter set but for Ops you are very vulnerable and will probably spend more time dead or waiting to be rezzed than actually fighting lol. In fact, until they started handing out Tionese, I usually never had it until I was fully geared in Columi/Rakata/BH and when I did have enough comms for Tionese I gave it to my comps.

And lastly, do your dailies like the previous posters mentioned. This is how you get your daily comms to get ear pieces and implants and cool speeders. Also for artifice you can make some cool stuff as well.

Tionese > Columi > Black Hole > Rakata > Campaign > and then the two other most recent gear that their names escape me.

That's not quite right. It actually goes Tionese<Columi<Rakata<Black Hole/Campaign<Dread Guard/Hazmat.

Tionese is enough to do HM flashpoints (except maybe Lost Island), though if it's your first time running the flashpoints you might want to run with a guild or at least let your pick-up-group know so they can help you with some fight mechanics. At the end of each FP, the final boss will drop a Columi item. If it's suitable for your class, Need it in the loot roll. Eventually, once you run enough FPs, you'll be decked out in Columi armor and weapons. Meanwhile, run the dailies on Belsavis, Ilum, the Black Hole and Section X, which will reward you with Daily Commendations with which you can buy Rakata implants and ear pieces as well as Campaign relics.

Once you're mostly in Columi, you can run story mode Eternity Vault (EV) and Karagga's Palace (KP) operations, which reward some Columi, some Rakata. (And if you use group finder, Black Hole Commendations with which you can buy Black Hole gear).

Once you have Rakata-level gear you can run hard mode EV and KP, as well as story-mode Explosive Conflict and Terror from Beyond. These reward some Rakata and the occasional Black Hole (and you also get Black Hole comms from the mission terminal and at completion). Finally, once you're in mostly Black Hole, you can take on HM EC and TfB, which reward Dread Guard.

Story EV and KP only drop Columi, no Rakata, which means they are theoretically balanced for Tionese-geared players.

Let's put it this way: deck yourself in the free Tionese and Recruit MK-2 stuff you get (don't overlook the Battlemaster-relics, they are great) and you'll be well off for all Hardmode Flashpoints except Lost Island - and for the story mode operations EV and KP. If you're unsure of your spec or talents, better gear will fill out the gap, but you definitely don't need to be overgeared for the stuff mentioned. When you've gathered enough Columi from these instances and feel like you've gained enough experience, you can try out the Hardmode Operations of EV and KP, and Story mode EC and TfB - and that elusive Lost Island HM FP

I'd recommend trying to go out as much as you can with your guildies. Playing in a familiar group lowers the gear requirement by a considerable amount - and they need not be overgeared either. It's teamwork after all. Group finder-groups might give you a hard time about your gear, but most will be glad to show you the ropes if you just talk about your expectations. There are always idiots afoot, and the ignore-function is for that.

Getting full Tionese is a good start at least. In terms of PvE armor gear, it goes like this:

 

Tionese > Columi > Black Hole > Rakata > Campaign > and then the two other most recent gear that their names escape me.

 

If you're running with guildies who know you and are very geared, they should be able to bring you along for the ride through a few early HMs like Black Talon and such. Stay away from harder HMs and Operations until you get decently geared up.

 

Also, you get a free set of Recruit gear from the PvP mission terminal, and a lot of that gear can replace some of your gear right now on a temporary basis in PvE, so keep that in mind as well!

Black hole gear is better than Rakata

Black hole gear is better than Rakata

Matter of opinion. It has no set bonus, and the stats tend to be wonky. To get your stats balanced with black hole mods, many classes have to buy several of one piece, just for the mod/enhancement even AFTER buying the initial set for armorings.

Matter of opinion. It has no set bonus, and the stats tend to be wonky. To get your stats balanced with black hole mods, many classes have to buy several of one piece, just for the mod/enhancement even AFTER buying the initial set for armorings.

Yes, poorly optimized, but still three levels above Rakata (58->61) and more easily available. Some people might appreciate having Rakata over BH, though, because having Rakata says you have cleared HM EV and KP or SM EC and TfB multiple times, whereas having BH doesn't really say anything. "Maybe he just did a ton of dailies?"

Also, on the matter of the set bonus: just buy a Tionese piece and replace the mods with BH. Problem solved.

Yes, poorly optimized, but still three levels above Rakata (58->61) and more easily available. Some people might appreciate having Rakata over BH, though, because having Rakata says you have cleared HM EV and KP or SM EC and TfB multiple times, whereas having BH doesn't really say anything. "Maybe he just did a ton of dailies?"

 

Also, on the matter of the set bonus: just buy a Tionese piece and replace the mods with BH. Problem solved.

Didn't mean to imply BH is bad. My gunslinger, and a healer companion or two, has received upgrades via the legacy armor. So I try to make sure no mod Columi or better goes to waste.

Man, great info, guess I better get busy to get ready for the expansion, LOL. Thanks a lot everyone, this points me in a good direction and at least I know what to focus on, I did HM KP with my guild last night, we only wiped once and I was in Tionese, so I think I'm starting well.

Appreciate all the information, and don't forget, "peace is a lie".....

LOL, thanks, cya

Black hole gear is better than Rakata

Just to be clear, I put Black Hole ahead of Rakata simply because Black Hole doesn't have set bonuses. These make a noticable difference, at least for me, since the abilities that got the bonus for my Op healer were for my main heal, and the buffed crit really helped.

In any matter of opinion though, yeah I see them as basically the same.

Just to be clear, I put Black Hole ahead of Rakata simply because Black Hole doesn't have set bonuses. These make a noticable difference, at least for me, since the abilities that got the bonus for my Op healer were for my main heal, and the buffed crit really helped.

 

In any matter of opinion though, yeah I see them as basically the same.

The nice thing is you can put the BH mods/armoring/enhancements in Tionese/Columi/Rakata shells and keep the set bonus.

What makes one tier of gear better than the other is the "stat budget". Each tier has more points to allocate for the stat improvements.

However, each mod has three variants. Unlettered, "A" variant and "B" variant. Both the "A" and "B" spend the stat budget on endurance, which is bad for dps and healers. So a Rakata Artful 25 mod is going to be better than a Black Hole Artful 25A mod.

If you can stick with gear that supplies unlettered mods, and has enhancements that hit the secondaries you're trying to improve, the gear progression works is as expected. However, to get the elusive "Best in Slot" it requires mixing and matching mods and enhancements out of different pieces of gear. Sites like AskMrRobot help figure out how to put your gear together.

Here are some links to Tionese (23), Columi (24), Rakata (25), Black Hole (26) and Dread Guard (27) Artful Mods (unlettered). You can see that each tier is better than the one before.

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/gear/7380/advanced-artful-mod-23

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/gear/7382/advanced-artful-mod-24

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/gear/7388/advanced-artful-mod-25

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/gear/35040/advanced-artful-mod-26

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/gear/35039/advanced-artful-mod-27

it's can get expensive, but you can keep your Tionese/Columi/Rakata shells, rip out the Black Hole armoring/mods/enhancements and put them in your shells to keep the set bonus.

Once you get Campaign/Dread Guard amoring, the set bonus is no longer tied to the shells and you can put them in any moddable gear.

Cheers.