Whoever designed the stats for tier armor should have been fired years before the release of this game. Lvl 50 dailies yielded 'awesome mods/armor/enhancements 'a great first step in the direction to thinking your character was really progressing. You felt that power & appreciated it and in the weeks grinding it felt it was swtor's (first amazing step up the loot table to even bigger badder more jaw dropping gear. Than my guild started getting tier .5? , tier 1 and 2 pcs slowly. Only the saddest part was i noticed on my inquisitor was these new beautiful pieces of gear didnt give me much over what'd I'd just gained from doing dailies. Example 1: My daily geared cleric had like 38% crit , 600 power , than after spending weeks working on all those 'new' HM, ops, etc I foud that most of their rewards dumbfounded me. Sure my chest piece gave me an extra 60hps, But the stat boosts were major inreases to force casting speed / power. So all my work over that month yieled me with another 600hp 'or so'

And enuff alacrity to spend my now new non crit spells in mere seconds. Where as before with a hug crit surge build I had worries of what to do next . not pondering if my mana/engery was ever going to tick back up.

Armor should progress , not degress ( hire somone who knows the basics a little better) Incremental stages based on zone / level, not just 5 developers all choosing stats they """THINK"""" fit the bill for said quest/area. Way to many variables.trading 550 power w/ 40% crit for 650p/20%crit / marginal alacrity bonus. First cleric out of mana with their upgraded Lower level Heals made spammable was the worst design in an mmo I've seen to date... Oh well, from what i'd read you guys didn't listen to beta testers and I"m just pondering who REALLY needs put in charge of trash pickup amongst everyone up there.

Edited May 17, 2012 by BrutikusIV

Top tier sets' itemization is bad, yes. But tell me - are you saying that crit is better then power?

My base crit heal after maxing crit / surge 42% base crit + think it was around 78% surge was like 5.5k if i remember right. Guild than went into raiding, after weeks and weeks i'd amassed almost full tier 2 , which for inquisitors meant I lost about 15% crit to gain 200 power and some alacrity. Doing endgame content to Gain Alacrity ( means of helping you exhaust your Force FASTER so your OOF (oom) QUICKER) ( one of the dumbest upgrades I've ever seen in 15 years of gaming) So now I can crit for 4k once in a blue moon and exhaust all my force ASAP as Biowares great gift of upgrades just helped me live a bit longer with the extra HPS, but because I'm OOF the tank dies, but wait I can get some force back if give half my hps away , oh wait tanks dead allready nvm.

Armor UPGRADES should be upgrades, not trade offs with even sadly worse than before results.....

 

 

Long story short they direly need to make all gear PROGRESS, not regress... sadly I've allready lost almost all interest from the dissappointments I've endured the last month I played.

Edited May 17, 2012 by BrutikusIV

I hear what you are saying. The campaign gear for my DPS sage seems to want me to have an extra 250 power, a 0% crit chance, and 125% accuracy.

 

My biggest frustration though is the in-between itemization as you gear up, because a Tionese chest doesn't boost the same secondary stats as Columi, which is different than Rakata, which is different than Black Hole, which is different than Campaign. If you sum up all the stats for a tier, they usually work out to be better than the tier below (why this isn't true for Campaign vs Rakata seems stupid), but as you acquire that gear, you can end up with some stat combinations that really shouldn't exist. I find myself frequently having to swap or keep old mods to maintain some balance.

Yeah. Sad mechanics. Properly each tier should have been better upgrades to crit/power/alacrity/accuracy ACROSS the board to make you a better improved player with each upgrade. But it looks like they released 18 chimps with each a dif tool ( screwdriver , hammer , saw, file , wrench,etc) and asked them to design the level progression system. Really sad. . One of the most satisfying expectations I expect from an mmo is horribly massacred in this game .

Had the same experience with my seer. And I took a violent turn away from it. Many of my mods actually come from smuggler gear. My Implants are for a stalker. I've been dumping alacrity wherever and however possible, trading alacrity for crit, and crit for power. I also dumped about 200 willpower for 600 endurance. At first glance, most people can't figure out what my spec is, because my gear is so weird. The set bonuses on my endgame gear were not even worth keeping.

Yeah, the idea of gear leveling is so basic its scary how bad they failed. It's sad how twisted developers can become when A: left to their own private non supervised twisted self ideals of what THEY think 'should' be awesome radical new gear change ( when it's actually dummer than designs of some 3 year olds) or B: stressed out beyond actuall intelligent comprehension of what they should actually be designing because a big company like EA is FORCIBLY pushing the game out early . And we ALL KNOW how many games of late big publishers like EA and SONY have KILLED. Wish Lucas Arts and Bioware would come to their senses and make their own and lose that filthy dumb logo... Level progressing will Never be anything but what it is, every increasing to stats. Sad they chose to shoehorn unworthy stats onto broken armor designs when it's simple.

 

Primary Stat increase X% * (tier) ( usually the higher increase)

Secondary Stat Increase X% ( tier) ( usually a little less than primary)

Remainder bonus stats : crit , power , alacrity, acuracy ALL INCREASED a % based on class and function

(these should always be greater than ANY TIER obtainable at lower levels / dungeon dificulties) /sigh

 

And last but not least you have crafted armor which for lvl 49/50 should fit right in and even maybe be a tad stronger than the first low grade tiered dungeon sets. SIMPLE and EASY...

Edited May 19, 2012 by BrutikusIV

The end game gear is pretty sad with it's lack of itemization. The fact that some tiers seem to not really be an upgrade, random stats that seem worthless for the class (like surge on a tank set, or accuracy on any sets), and add in that each successive tier gives different stats (like 1 columi piece giving you power, then the exact same slot "upgrade" drops all power for crit randomly).

 

Bioware really needs to get on the ball with gear if they want to retain people, the endgame is about gearing, but if the gear is so ****ed up, then why bother playing?

*Sigh* I can't help but agree with the points raised here on my heal sage I am going to end up getting nearly 2 complete black hole sets then pulling mods armorings etc and sloting into my Rakata just so I can keep a similar stat balance to what I had with Rakata.