I may be asking a broken record of a question here, but as you (the developers) have mentioned a couple of times about potentially bringing back PVP gear, can we expect it (and warzone commendations as currency to get said gear, ofc) to be returning in 6.0?

 

It would make PVP so much more enjoyable.

NO...one gear is best for this. Because while you think bringing back PVP and PVE gear si good idea...what will happen is,that you'l have to grind 2x for PVP and PVE gear with ****** RNG drop and grind. While I don't care about them raising gear lvl as they always do and have ****** rng drops and rng...I don't want to do that 2x on one toon and then waste time with augmenting PVP geart and PVE gear...I don't even do that now on some alts,because it just kills game for me. So some alts run in 230's gear without any augments and I can do PVP and PVE. One gear to rule them all !

That would make sense.

 

So they probably won't do it...

NO...one gear is best for this. Because while you think bringing back PVP and PVE gear si good idea...what will happen is,that you'l have to grind 2x for PVP and PVE gear...

 

I agree that's true *IF* there is a huge grind for both. But I think the unwritten assumption here is that if PvP gear returns, then it will have much LESS of a grind (hopefully none) to get. I think the only reason "we" want separate PvP gear is so that we can have a way to get that gear really fast, and at the same time it doesn't reduce the PvE gear grind that people seem to expect. Otherwise what's the point?

 

I mean, there's no way that bioware would split the gear and then make each one a really long grind... right? That would just be dumb. And bioware NEVER does dumb.

this topic is juicy.

 

I like how no one who responded seems to remember why pvp gear existed.

 

 

/popcorn for forums

 

NO...one gear is best for this. Because while you think bringing back PVP and PVE gear si good idea...what will happen is,that you'l have to grind 2x for PVP and PVE gear with ****** RNG drop and grind. While I don't care about them raising gear lvl as they always do and have ****** rng drops and rng...I don't want to do that 2x on one toon and then waste time with augmenting PVP geart and PVE gear...I don't even do that now on some alts,because it just kills game for me. So some alts run in 230's gear without any augments and I can do PVP and PVE. One gear to rule them all !

 

^ this made me choke I laughed so hard.

Edited January 19, 2019 by Seterade

this topic is juicy.

 

I like how no one who responded seems to remember why pvp gear existed.

 

 

/popcorn for forums

 

 

 

^ this made me choke I laughed so hard.

 

We will see who will laugh hard in the end if they indeed bring back PVP gear and we will have to grind 2 sets the same way we have to grind Ossus now.

 

When talking about return of PVP gear some people on this board think that it will be 4.0 all over again. Think again... I really don't think it will be as easy as it was back then based on their gearing practices since 5.0.

bioware is at all times of any update capable of cutting their playerbase in half by dumb decisions.

 

 

however, in this case you need to look no farther than "why did expertise exist" to min max pvp players in little to no time without affecting pve progression.

 

it should also be noted that 5.10 was not in any way an effort to aplease pvp, it was soley a pve gear progression update. you wont gain anything noticable in pvp, trust me. you are already hitting diminishing returns so bad its not funny.

 

will expertise return? I believe it will. I would like to believe it will return with 2 gear tiers, bought cheaply with UC and have no rep gate. tbh I wouldnt mind a valor gate, but no rep.

 

but hey.. its bioware. lul.. thats all that needs to be said. Im just kinda meh these days personaly. same crap with no end to be seen, so I dont take any of it seriously. this game has fallen pretty far from the tree of 3.0 when I fell in love with this game

Edited January 19, 2019 by Seterade

bioware is at all times of any update capable of cutting their playerbase in half by dumb decisions.

 

 

however, in this case you need to look no farther than "why did expertise exist" to min max pvp players in little to no time without affecting pve progression.

 

it should also be noted that 5.10 was not in any way an effort to aplease pvp, it was soley a pve gear progression update. you wont gain anything noticable in pvp, trust me. you are already hitting diminishing returns so bad its not funny.

 

will expertise return? I believe it will. I would like to believe it will return with 2 gear tiers, bought cheaply with UC and have no rep gate. tbh I wouldnt mind a valor gate, but no rep.

 

but hey.. its bioware. lul.. thats all that needs to be said. Im just kinda meh these days personaly. same crap with no end to be seen, so I dont take any of it seriously. this game has fallen pretty far from the tree of 3.0 when I fell in love with this game

 

I wish it would return.

 

I've hopped between SWTOR and WoW for a few years (SWTOR founder) always with a pvp focus. As one of those who loves to pvp and gets nothing out of end game pvE/random loot drops from bosses, expertise was always the right solution for the simple reason that I didn't have to pvE to progress the part of the game I actually wanted to play.

 

SWTOR seemed to have a great iteration at one point - I think it was when you got blue "newbie" kit for warzones so that you could play while completing your expertise gear. I remember being able to get full expertise on many toons and so it was great fun to pretty much play all classes at endgame pvp. What was especially good was then that if classes got nerfed /buffed, or you just got bored, you switched.

 

I played WoW when Legion came out and there was a terrible iteration for pvp. Raiders/high end pvers destroyed pvpers because of gear differences (they had created a separate profression path for pvp only abilities which was OK, but the artifact weapon, which could be massively empowered through pvE grind, gave you abliities and loads of extra HP.) These were days of TTK being 2-3 seconds and people in warzones (battlegrounds) with many multipliers of your HP. It was awful.

 

Returning to SWTOR I was really disappointed to see expertise had gone. I have no interest in endgame pvE gear grind especially with a random element. So right now I pvp on lowbie or midbie alts (when it pops) and am working through the story on darkside and lightside. I can't really say I'm enjoying it.

 

I still love SWTOR, but expertise gear easily obtained was such a great win for pvp. I can't imagine now playing all 8 classes in endgame pvp, and having a blast on them all. Sad.

I hope they bring it. PvP to be taken seriously needs its dedicated gear. 5.0 was a flop and had many players leaving, me included.

I like to do PvP in ths game, solo or in groups that is what I like doing.

Saying it all so far in the last two weeks Ossus is not a bad update and makes PvE more acceptable. It is possible the best planet they ever did, with the exception of Illum. But yet again those who do operations and all PvE stuff still have a big advantage to get gear, over us who do mostly PvP.

So I cannot understand how any really PvPer in this forum section can really be against having PvP gear which you get from PvP, when the grind to get PvE gear from PvP is ten times as much.

Edited January 19, 2019 by limenutpen

this topic is juicy.

 

I like how no one who responded seems to remember why pvp gear existed.

 

.

 

I remember.

 

I wasn't much into PvP then, but gear grind/progression made people sub longer - by adding time to get BiS

PvP gear was originally RNG then it went to commendations - again to make people sub longer - and even longer than longer if you wanted gear for both PvP and PVE and even longer than longer+longer if you wanted to min-max a bit or have gear sets tuned to your role in PVP or PVE - and Longer +++ if you wanted different stats for PVE than you did for PVP.

 

Every additional hour spent in game means more subscription money. - And spread across 1000s of accounts that's a lot of $$$.

 

Never be fooled into thinking gear progression is part of the MMO experience - it's basically a way of locking you in and therefore paying for longer.

 

Back on topic - It might happen. It was a dumb move to have PVP and PVE gear do differing things in the first place - then dumb to make all gear equal after people had spent 100s of hours getting both types, then it'd be dumb to split them again.... But BioWare never did anything that wasn't dumb....so it'll probably happen - By taking 6 months dev time and 6 months to fix -while people sit on their rear ends waiting for a new PVP map/PVE experience etc - only to have to grind out a new gear set x2 or 3.

 

But while you're paying for this elevated level of Dumb- it's good business for BW - so long as it doesn't tick off too many loyal customers...

Edited January 19, 2019 by Storm-Cutter

I hope they bring it. PvP to be taken seriously needs its dedicated gear. 5.0 was a flop and had many players leaving, me included.

I like to do PvP in ths game, solo or in groups that is what I like doing.

Saying it all so far in the last two weeks Ossus is not a bad update and makes PvE more acceptable. It is possible the best planet they ever did, with the exception of Illum. But yet again those who do operations and all PvE stuff still have a big advantage to get gear, over us who do mostly PvP.

So I cannot understand how any really PvPer in this forum section can really be against having PvP gear which you get from PvP, when the grind to get PvE gear from PvP is ten times as much.

 

I play only PVP.. and I'm not against return of pVP gear if it will be like 4.0.... But as our experience in these last 3 years have shown, gearing in this game is not a cheap and easy thing.

 

So that leads me to believe that PVP will not be easy to get as in 4.0 in which case, no thank you. I am good with 1 set.

 

4.0 was a long time ago. Game changed... a lot since then. expecting 4.0 like gearing for pvp is just not very realistic in my opinion.

its time to think about it... 230 vs 258 ... the gap is too important ! Edited January 19, 2019 by Syal

its time to think about it... 230 vs 258 ... the gap is too important !

 

230 is bolstered to 252 in pvp...

Some time ago, Musco said that they were working on pvp gearing and that they were thinking about expertise again. They said it's a lot of work and that it will have to be part of a major update/expansion to bring it back.

 

Honestly though, I would rather see high-end raid gear bolster equal to high end pvp gear. That way a player like me doesn't have to carry 4 sets of gear (pve dps and heal gear, pvp dps and heal gear). But I'm not sure what the metrics are.... maybe people like me -- avid pvp'ers and raider -- are unicorns. Who knows.

Edited January 19, 2019 by Rion_Starkiller

its time to think about it... 230 vs 258 ... the gap is too important !

 

I switched my Corruption Sorc over to Lightning yesterday just to try it out, average gear rating of 238. Top DPS in all 12 matches I queued.

 

If you're not competitive at Bolster 252, gear is not your problem and whining on the forum for handouts isn't helping the problem.

I switched my Corruption Sorc over to Lightning yesterday just to try it out, average gear rating of 238. Top DPS in all 12 matches I queued.

 

If you're not competitive at Bolster 252, gear is not your problem and whining on the forum for handouts isn't helping the problem.

 

Must have been plenty of bad players about. Which is usual considering they usually put 6 bad players on each team.

 

If you’ve any skill, you will be only one of 2 good players on your team. It’s not hard to top the dps on any class when you play under those circumstances

People have forgotten, rose tinted glasses, etc.

 

When pvp gear existed, and was easy to get, we still had pve leeches in matches, because max pvp gear was still better than their lower tier pve sets. We'd get the noob raiders

 

The real problem with pvp is apathy, and the return of expertise is not going to fix that.

 

If you want to deal with apathy, you need to make winning count for something, not just adding 8 UC instead of 20 to your UC grind. Warhammer Online had a system where random gear/loot was awarded to winners of a match. Nothing major or max level BIS, but some good stuff. I think they should go that route, randomly awarding a player on a winning team, biased toward teammates with good damage/heals/protection/objectives. They could make a whole line of BOE decos and pets for max level, mats and whatnot, and blues and purple gear for lowbies and mid.

 

Suddenly people want to win. Amazing.

I think it was 4.0 when Pvp gear was SUPER ULTRA cheap... Literally 3 or 4 days of dailies you'd be FULL 208.

If we want a true pvp experience we shouldn't have to grind for pvp gear at all. It's somehow instilled into the minds of the playerbase that there has to be a grind, otherwise the experience is not rewarding. Guild Wars 2 separates instanced pvp from the rest of the game and you get to pick whatever stats you want. It lets you experiment with different combinations at the cost of nothing. Say you want to try a weird, unorthodox alacrity spec with a class that does not normally use alacrity, that'd be hugely expensive and time consuming to do in SWTOR.

 

Not that I think SWTOR will ever give out pvp gear for free. Like someone has mentioned in this thread already; gear is an incentive to keep players subbed. The best we can hope for, in my opinion, is to have the expertise-stat back in the game alongside a purchaseable recruit-gear that's slightly below the end game pvp gear.

From a developer point of view having two divergent paths for gear is not good.

 

Also, some people may like double grinding for two sets of gear but I am not one of them.

People have forgotten, rose tinted glasses, etc.

 

When pvp gear existed, and was easy to get, we still had pve leeches in matches, because max pvp gear was still better than their lower tier pve sets. We'd get the noob raiders

 

The real problem with pvp is apathy, and the return of expertise is not going to fix that.

 

If you want to deal with apathy, you need to make winning count for something, not just adding 8 UC instead of 20 to your UC grind. Warhammer Online had a system where random gear/loot was awarded to winners of a match. Nothing major or max level BIS, but some good stuff. I think they should go that route, randomly awarding a player on a winning team, biased toward teammates with good damage/heals/protection/objectives. They could make a whole line of BOE decos and pets for max level, mats and whatnot, and blues and purple gear for lowbies and mid.

 

Suddenly people want to win. Amazing.

 

This is a good point, and good idea. I think it is more than this though.

 

I believe a lot of the apathy from PVPers is also from the BS gearing system in place atm, as well as a totally stale meta that has had certain classes as apex predators while the same classes have been garbage for way too long.

 

This creates boredom and resentment among the PVPers.

 

Nothing like trying to min/max all your alts for PVP with a ****** gear system on top of keeping your favorite class shelved for 2+ years because it under-performs in the WZs and is simply no fun to play.

 

They really need to change up the power paradigm regarding the classes on this game, and making the gearing enjoyable or at least tolerable would be nice too.

Must have been plenty of bad players about. Which is usual considering they usually put 6 bad players on each team.

 

If you’ve any skill, you will be only one of 2 good players on your team. It’s not hard to top the dps on any class when you play under those circumstances

 

There have always been and will always be plenty of bad players in this game, sometimes on your team sometimes on the other. Sometimes you carry sometimes you get to relax.

 

I usually play in a 4-dps premade and don't care who else I'm teamed with or going against. I've tracked all my matches since 5.9.2 to try to understand matchmaking and we win ~93% of our matches. I have a ~71% winrate solo.

 

If you're consistently losing the problem starts with you not the other players and not the meta. Take responsibility, or keep crying on the forums for daddy Bioware to make it right.

From a developer point of view having two divergent paths for gear is not good.

 

Also, some people may like double grinding for two sets of gear but I am not one of them.

 

Two different gear grinds isn't necessarily a problem. Where it comes problematic, in my mind, is when you have a PvE gear grind that is equally effective in PvP and has a higher gear level. Without expertise, the higher end PvE gear just gives too much of a benefit. That wasn't always the case and, I remember when Expertise came out, the full on PvP set player would trounce anyone in PvE gear, no matter the disparity in gear level. In turn, the problem with PvP gear was that you end up uber buffing the Tank+Healer combo.

 

There is a way to do it, I guess, in that you make it plausible trade pieces in and out, with an NPC. Or, you could keep PvP gear one level down from PvE gear but give an Expertise "aura" on every piece of PvP gear while simultaneously having Expertise reduce healing crit chance and critical healing amount. Being 90% of PvP capacity in PvE gear is fine. Being 90% of PvE capacity in PvP gear is fine. Being 100%+ of PvP capacity in PvE gear, with no repercussion, is bad and it gets worse by having a higher gear level.

 

I'm personally of the mind that SWTOR has always missed out on the trio of gear sources. Granted, I'm really out of touch with the current game, since I haven't played in 9-10 years (how long ago was it when they released Novare Coast?). But, there should always be an equal way of getting gear through raiding, PvP, and crafting. The levels don't need to be the same and the difficulty should always be equal. But, quest grinding, especially in avenues that people don't want to participate - I'm told that the Fighter aspect is sometimes a weekly requirement for a gear crystal? - is always bad. Make the gear process more fluid with options but ensure that gear with a primary focus excels at that focus and is weaker in the alternative space. People that focus on one aspect of the game should be rewarded, more so, by doing that and PvPers shouldn't have to resort to ranked play to get the Nightmare mode equivalent of gear, at least that was the way it was way back in the day.

 

By the way, since I'm kind of out of touch, if I'm wrong on any of the above, do me a solid and patiently tell me where I'm off. I'm still trying to catch up to everything that has changed.

the design of expertise was to seperate pvp content from pve. a pvper in ranked gear couldnt compete in NiM operations and a NiM gear pver couldnt compete in ranked

 

Pve gear took MUCH longer to grind, because rpg pve has always revolved around "progression" you work for something, you earn it, then you turn around and work for the next level. Pvp however is considered "action rpg" since it is a rpg game removing gear entirely would be antigame design, but it was designed to be quick as possible so the primary gameplay was skill v skill rather than gear+skilll v skill

I believe a lot of the apathy from PVPers is also from the BS gearing system in place atm, as well as a totally stale meta that has had certain classes as apex predators while the same classes have been garbage for way too long.

They really need to change up the power paradigm regarding the classes on this game, and making the gearing enjoyable or at least tolerable would be nice too.

 

I think in regular War Zones all classes can work, if someone takes some time to learn them. Some classes are more difficult to others, but that is life. It is in Ranked Arenas where there is a HUGE problem since it is just a DPS fest that some classes become useless.

If all you care is your DPS nos then yes some classes are better to others to do that. It will always happen in any MMO with different classes. SWTOR has 4 x 3 a total of 12 different stances, of which six are healing and tanking. Then there is also the Dark and Light version abilities which in the past has favored one or the other due to the type of image it does.