Eh, not considering this pay2win because you can't directly buy credits from the CM is a technicality.

Personally, I think the amplifier system is completely and utterly screwed up.

First point of contention I have is this: The damage bonuses do stack, without any amplifiers I got a 31k crit stealthed backstab. With amps I got (tech wizardry and armor pen) a 38k crit backstab AFTER trading away around 1.5k crit rating for alacrity.

The bonuses definitely stack and are a noticeable dps gain. Heres a quick parse I made to demonstrate. http://parsely.io/parser/view/447826/0

First is with AoE VS, ignore it. Second is no amps Acid Lash tactical, Fourth is amps Acid Lash tactical.

Second is 1.4s GCD, Fourth is 1.3s GCD. I crit for more on fourth parse than second simply due to amp bonuses.

I feel that damage boosting amplifiers have no place in this game. Especially when they break down into specific subtypes of damage. My second point of contention is that basically every class has a "dot" spec and a "burst" spec and the amplifiers you can get subdivide the damage bonuses to attack type (F/T/Weapon) as well as damage type Energy (armor pen)/ Internal (periodic).

Wasn't one of the stated goals for this expansion to make sharing gear easier between characters? This completely negates that stated goal as you now need up to 3 sets of gear per class with each set focusing on the different damage types you deal, Armor Pen is good for Arsenal for example while Periodic would be better for IO. Weapon Expert would be better for IO while Tech Wizardry would be better for Arsenal... etc etc...

Third point of contention is this: Crew Skill specific bonuses are terrible for similar reasons to the above. A well-rounded crafter will have all the crew skills covered on different characters. There is NO POINT then in having armor with Bioanalysis Potency on it as that will benefit one character while the others make no use of it. And why even have crew skill bonuses for missions regardless? If you have one armor set for crafting you're going to be wearing it on the character you're currently playing which bypasses the benefit of having the other characters running missions while they are not logged in.

TL;DR The amps system needs a LOT of work.

P.S. Things like featherweight are bonuses that I do like, they don't affect competitive gameplay in a significant manner but they do have a noticeable impact on gameplay in non-competitive content like heroics, exploration or datacron hunting.

P.P.S. Threat Gen as an Amplifier HAS TO GO AWAY. Don't ship that in live of you're going to get a slew of very pissed off tanks, healers & dps posting on the forums. Threat Gen for companions is fine, Threat Gen for players is unacceptable. Either positive or negative generation.

I think we really need an in depth introduction from the devs to how the amplifiers are supposed to work. I mean do we even know if two amps of the same type stack? If they dont stack then most of the Amplifiers will be useless on certain classes and you wont see any difference between having amps or not.

And if they stack you will be able to achieve some serious numbers which are nuts.

Completely agree. How on earth have they managed to add them to testing without a thread on how they are supposed to work, what each one does, the cost etc? It seems to be completely random in testing right now.

I do agree there should be a warning for recalibration cost, with a toggle off for people that don't want or need it.

I also feel like modifications should not be 100k to pull. The recalibration system and moving mods to a new shell when you get a better set bonus is already going to be credit sinking enough.

And maybe give us 3 or 4 options on rerolling instead of just two?

Possibly a credit cap on max recal cost?

Worse still, as someone else pointed out, the cost is taken each time you open the recalibration interface and the cost is far too high for something we have little to no idea how it's supposed to work or whether there are any actual benefits.

Probably should be postponed or better still - scrapped - until more consideration is given to and time is spent on improving/organising/explaining the system. It is yet another terrible RNG disaster. Why do we even bother feeding back about RNG? I'd rather have to suffer a grind for stuff so long as it's something my character needs.

The system has potential but the rng on top of rng plus a fee each time you roll is going to drive people away from it.

Agreed I love the amplifiers and there so many amplifiers to customize your character with, but the RNG might be going to far. Maybe lower the start up fee for Recalibration the amp to a 1,000 credits and then it goes up 1,000, or 500 credits each time, people might like it better. 20,000 is too much as a start up fee for Recalibration, for how many there are imo. Again I love idea of it, more customization is always better, but less rng is needed.

Kinda surprised at people in this discussion thread actually complaining about getting MORE DPS from the new amplifier system. I thought people were excited about going back to HYBRID specs. This allows us to be unique from every other Jugg or Sniper or whatever. This sorta makes up for them taking away 1 of our 3 set bonus so I'm all for it.

I do agree it needs some tweaking in how it works and is implemented: (1) Add a warning message to the actual Recalibrate button that once clicked, money is taken, (2) Instead of only giving us 2 new choices perhaps 4 or 5, (3) Remove the cost of pulling mods from our gear since this new feature will already be a credit sink, (4) After hitting Recalibrate, don't give us the same amplifier or lesser % one then the one we're rerolling on. Just to name a few.

I think this game needs a shake up. This will definitely do that. It's been kinda stale for a long time so I'm looking forward to it. Can't wait to see Jambalayabungee finished worksheet with all the Amplifiers and their percentages, description of what they do, and which ones are considered 'rare'. Awesome job!

Hybrid Specs are gone, never to come back. If you want those back then thats a whole different rabbit hole to go down as it pertains to skill trees.

Adding RNG DPS modifiers to your gear just creates imbalance between gearsets and throws the idea of higher ilvl being a better DPS increase/END increase... etc out the window because now you have to calculate if losing a flat 1.5% damage buff is worth gaining 10 extra mastery which (spoiler alert) it ain't.

This also negates the idea of vertical progression as now you need a constant source of gear to re-roll as well as a constant source of credits to use to re-roll, and the better ilvl gear may not actually be better to use.

This is basically a credit sink version of WoW titanforging.

I don't really feel like I should have to explain why that system is complete and utter crap. That information already exists.

Make the bonuses situational such as featherweight or resourcefulness and most people won't care that much. Keep **** like Tactical Wizardry and Armor Pen in and we'll get riled up when our performance gets layered behind walls of RNG.

Can't wait to see Jambalayabungee finished worksheet with all the Amplifiers and their percentages, description of what they do, and which ones are considered 'rare'. Awesome job!

lol As much as Im tempted **cough cough** , (you got me, spreadsheets are my weakness XD) I thk I'll wait a bit to see if these are fully implemented before sinking a few painstacking hours going tru all of the possible ampifiers again lol

Although now Im super intrigued by that possible "Unlucky" set .... dammit XD

There is a super rare amp that you can get on shells and accessories and relics called unlucky and apparently if you manage to get a full set of unlucky something special happens.

Well,grinded to get the Unlucky amps on full set ... (its wasnt that much rare, its still a pain to get tho) it does ... nothing yet I guess. Thats sad lol.

There is a super rare amp that you can get on shells and accessories and relics called unlucky and apparently if you manage to get a full set of unlucky something special happens.

Now that's fun. Wonder what it will do.

There are a number of things that are in placeholder states or are not yet fully implemented:

• Amplifiers are not implemented. If you see them appear anywhere expect that it is fully placeholder and not implemented.
  

I'd suggest people keep some perspective...but...

Also, discussion of material gleaned from non-official sources is a no-no on these boards.

I'd suggest people keep some perspective...but...

 

Also, discussion of material gleaned from non-official sources is a no-no on these boards.

I am 100% sure the right set of amplifiers increase dps - and if everything is at +1.5% where it can be the difference is not small - something like +3-4K on the dummy parse. So 17% seems about right. yeah...totally balanced, I guess this is the 258 vs 248 system all over again but with more rng in between.

I'd suggest people keep some perspective...but...

 

Also, discussion of material gleaned from non-official sources is a no-no on these boards.

Even if the amps are not fully implemented / functional yet, we can still see what the basic system for them will be, and its what people here seems to talk about. Of course the details might change, but the system behind might not.

Ill abstain sharing external info if its a delicate matter, the point is, having some official info would be awesome, but we dont have any. I wish they would share some just so we can stop speculating, you cant throw that kind of bone in the open and not expect people to have questions about it.

I think this game needs a shake up. This will definitely do that. It's been kinda stale for a long time so I'm looking forward to it. Can't wait to see Jambalayabungee finished worksheet with all the Amplifiers and their percentages, description of what they do, and which ones are considered 'rare'. Awesome job!

After my initial "I don't like it rant" I played around with the system for hours (after discovering the free money machine on the PTS) and I can see this system being a) awesome and b) a massive money sink!

If they end up working as intended and stack, some of the amplifiers will be fantastic to have, especially the crafting and gathering ones. Banthabreeder is right; amplifiers will "shake up" the game. I'm already amassing more credits on live to be ready for the massive amounts of credits I will throw at amplifier recalibration.

There is a super rare amp that you can get on shells and accessories and relics called unlucky and apparently if you manage to get a full set of unlucky something special happens.

I don't know if this is true, however I smell "achievement" AND I NEED IT! You just know the "something special" is going to be instant death

Even if the amps are not fully implemented / functional yet, we can still see what the basic system for them will be, and its what people here seems to talk about. Of course the details might change, but the system behind might not.

 

Ill abstain sharing external info if its a delicate matter, the point is, having some official info would be awesome, but we dont have any. I wish they would share some just so we can stop speculating, you cant throw that kind of bone in the open and not expect people to have questions about it.

If they're not implemented yet why would BW release any official information about them yet? They tell us specifically what they want us to test, so until amps are implemented we shouldn't expect any info about them. The 8 August PTS patch broke amps on old gear. So after setting up a new set of gear with functioning amps (at least in so far as they are on PTS) I decided to test them and found they made no difference in the content I was running. Many other people have noted that they don't seem to be working, and because they're not implemented we don't really know anything about how they are supposed to work. Are bonuses of the same type all supposed to stack? Is they a cap? Because they are not yet implemented for testing whatever we're seeing on PTS is still a placeholder. Might that be how they're going to work? Maybe. Might everything change because it's all placeholders and been changed internally already? Maybe. We won't know anything until they're implemented. The only thing we do know is this is a new credit sink and people who insist on micro managing every little detail about their character stats will sink a Hutt's butt of credits into it and if you don't want to go bankrupt chasing that White Amp you can ignore them and have a bunch of minor miscellaneous boosts on your gear. Or play with them a bit and maybe tweak things. The doom and gloom kvetching in this thread about a system that isn't implemented, that no one can say they've actually tested, that, as is it currently on PTS, is nothing like what several people have described, and that is completely optional would make Chicken Little proud.

Just make a new mod slot for amps and remove augment modification slot expansions and make them have a mod slot by default that is empty and needs to be filled

Augment = Conventional Stat based mod

Amplifier = Unique stat based mod

Armor piece = 5 modifications

Armoring

Mod

Enhancer

Augment

Amplifier

Best armoring from operations

Best mod from something else (maybe conquest or flashpoints)

Best Enhancer pvp

Best Augment from crafting

Best Amplifier from something else (maybe conquest, flashpoints or Tactical whatever they're called)

All listed types

Operations - Operation based Set bonuses were always the best, that can remain the same!

Pvp - Bring back the oldschool Enhancements from the good old days and make them purchasable from pvp vendors

Conquest

Crafting

Have routes and avenues to provide high end-game mods of all kinds, however, each one has an outstanding unique type that stands above the rest, those who take part in all forms can enjoy the reward of having the best item selection (BiS)

Those who dont like it can refer to the forums where they can complain to their heart's content

It's a simple enough design for even the smallest minds can digest and understand

It works well with the "Play your way" design

It's easy enough to understand that there's no possible way you can screw it up developers... ... yeah you! >:3

not only that it is totally pay2win given that if you have billions of credits, you can reroll stuff until you get all the right amplifiers.

If someone has 1 billion credits, its because they play this game a lot. You cant buy credits from a website unless its "illegal". So explain from your perspective, how is it pay to win?

Eh, not considering this pay2win because you can't directly buy credits from the CM is a technicality.

 

Personally, I think the amplifier system is completely and utterly screwed up.

First point of contention I have is this: The damage bonuses do stack, without any amplifiers I got a 31k crit stealthed backstab. With amps I got (tech wizardry and armor pen) a 38k crit backstab AFTER trading away around 1.5k crit rating for alacrity.

 

The bonuses definitely stack and are a noticeable dps gain. Heres a quick parse I made to demonstrate. http://parsely.io/parser/view/447826/0

First is with AoE VS, ignore it. Second is no amps Acid Lash tactical, Fourth is amps Acid Lash tactical.

Second is 1.4s GCD, Fourth is 1.3s GCD. I crit for more on fourth parse than second simply due to amp bonuses.

 

I feel that damage boosting amplifiers have no place in this game. Especially when they break down into specific subtypes of damage. My second point of contention is that basically every class has a "dot" spec and a "burst" spec and the amplifiers you can get subdivide the damage bonuses to attack type (F/T/Weapon) as well as damage type Energy (armor pen)/ Internal (periodic).

Wasn't one of the stated goals for this expansion to make sharing gear easier between characters? This completely negates that stated goal as you now need up to 3 sets of gear per class with each set focusing on the different damage types you deal, Armor Pen is good for Arsenal for example while Periodic would be better for IO. Weapon Expert would be better for IO while Tech Wizardry would be better for Arsenal... etc etc...

 

Third point of contention is this: Crew Skill specific bonuses are terrible for similar reasons to the above. A well-rounded crafter will have all the crew skills covered on different characters. There is NO POINT then in having armor with Bioanalysis Potency on it as that will benefit one character while the others make no use of it. And why even have crew skill bonuses for missions regardless? If you have one armor set for crafting you're going to be wearing it on the character you're currently playing which bypasses the benefit of having the other characters running missions while they are not logged in.

 

 

TL;DR The amps system needs a LOT of work.

 

P.S. Things like featherweight are bonuses that I do like, they don't affect competitive gameplay in a significant manner but they do have a noticeable impact on gameplay in non-competitive content like heroics, exploration or datacron hunting.

 

P.P.S. Threat Gen as an Amplifier HAS TO GO AWAY. Don't ship that in live of you're going to get a slew of very pissed off tanks, healers & dps posting on the forums. Threat Gen for companions is fine, Threat Gen for players is unacceptable. Either positive or negative generation.

39k crit on a 300k heal pool isnt a lot btw.

Kinda surprised at people in this discussion thread actually complaining about getting MORE DPS from the new amplifier system. I thought people were excited about going back to HYBRID specs. This allows us to be unique from every other Jugg or Sniper or whatever. This sorta makes up for them taking away 1 of our 3 set bonus so I'm all for it.

 

I do agree it needs some tweaking in how it works and is implemented: (1) Add a warning message to the actual Recalibrate button that once clicked, money is taken, (2) Instead of only giving us 2 new choices perhaps 4 or 5, (3) Remove the cost of pulling mods from our gear since this new feature will already be a credit sink, (4) After hitting Recalibrate, don't give us the same amplifier or lesser % one then the one we're rerolling on. Just to name a few.

 

I think this game needs a shake up. This will definitely do that. It's been kinda stale for a long time so I'm looking forward to it. Can't wait to see Jambalayabungee finished worksheet with all the Amplifiers and their percentages, description of what they do, and which ones are considered 'rare'. Awesome job!

Yes!! I agree completly.

Just a note. I see they changed the costs of rerolling for amps. At least my costs are a whopping 80 credits for the 1st reroll (or maybe lower, I forgot) and it goes up with 1 credit each time.

Also they now have an overlay explaining what it does

Please include this information in the opening post here

I'm actually rather happy with these amps. It shakes up the way this game is played.

For example, you can now quickly reroll for different amps if needed on a boss fight

EDIT: I don't know why but apparently the reroll cost is different??? I swear it was only 80 credits on my jugg ..... not sure how this is working ....

If they're not implemented yet why would BW release any official information about them yet? They tell us specifically what they want us to test, so until amps are implemented we shouldn't expect any info about them. The 8 August PTS patch broke amps on old gear. So after setting up a new set of gear with functioning amps (at least in so far as they are on PTS) I decided to test them and found they made no difference in the content I was running. Many other people have noted that they don't seem to be working, and because they're not implemented we don't really know anything about how they are supposed to work. Are bonuses of the same type all supposed to stack? Is they a cap? Because they are not yet implemented for testing whatever we're seeing on PTS is still a placeholder. Might that be how they're going to work? Maybe. Might everything change because it's all placeholders and been changed internally already? Maybe. We won't know anything until they're implemented. The only thing we do know is this is a new credit sink and people who insist on micro managing every little detail about their character stats will sink a Hutt's butt of credits into it and if you don't want to go bankrupt chasing that White Amp you can ignore them and have a bunch of minor miscellaneous boosts on your gear. Or play with them a bit and maybe tweak things. The doom and gloom kvetching in this thread about a system that isn't implemented, that no one can say they've actually tested, that, as is it currently on PTS, is nothing like what several people have described, and that is completely optional would make Chicken Little proud.

My complaint isn't necessarily about the stats the amplifiers provide, but the method (RNG) of obtaining the specific stats and then the 2nd RNG of getting the value you desire.

If you get an amplifier that reduces the crew skill mission time for scavenging, as an example, and it's a low value, you can re-roll it. RNG #1 can change it to artifice (costs you credits) while at the same time increase or decrease the value of that stat.

Two years ago everyone was complaining about the RNG with the command crates since it was (when first implemented) one of the primary ways to get high level gear. Now, two years later, they introduce a NEW way to improve gear, it's 100% DOUBLE RNG, and everyone's ok with it?

The RNG in this system is what I'm complaining about.

I'm amazed no one else is.

Two years ago everyone was complaining about the RNG with the command crates since it was (when first implemented) one of the primary ways to get high level gear. Now, two years later, they introduce a NEW way to improve gear, it's 100% DOUBLE RNG, and everyone's ok with it?

 

The RNG in this system is what I'm complaining about.

I'm amazed no one else is.

There's a very big difference between those two situations. In the first it was the primary way to get gear. In the second these are random, minor added stats on gear that are not calculated into PVE balance outside of MM OPs making them completely optional and not in any way a requirement to be min/maxxed thus one can tweak them if they like or completely ignore them.

I'm amazed that so many people are making a big deal out of a trivial system that has the potential, depending on how it's finally implemented, to add minor customizable benefits to one's gear.

Problem is, its not a trivial damage increase.

At minimum its 9 pieces of a potential 1.5% damage increase.

9x1.5 is... lesse... carry the ****ton and... 9x1.5 is 13.5

so its a potential 13.5% damage increase just for getting lucky.

Thats a lot of damage.

If it capped out at 1.5% damage increase total people wouldn't be as pissed off.

If it capped out as not affecting damage in the slightest we would be offering constructive criticism on how to improve the system as it exists.

As it stands now this is simply an unacceptable new layer of RNG on top of an already RNG gearing system.