It needs to be adjusted, plain and simple. Here is why, in a standard 8 man Ops Group in SnV for example, you'll get 4 Arkanian Drops unless a Relic Drops at Thrasher. On those 4 drops you have between 12.5% and 25% chance to get a piece if you complete the instance which only can be done weekly.

 

For those of us that have been running FPs all along, the BM pieces from the other bosses have little value, we're looking for the set bonuses and ultimate Comms not more BM pieces.

 

I have no problem with only having Arkanian after the weekly credit boss or the weekly lock out, but there needs to be another way for those that have been diligently running Ops for gear to have a shot at the set bonuses other than the absurd RNG.

 

I recommend another quest where you get an Arkanian piece for 2 or 3 full clears of the Op. The quest would be simple each boss listed x2 and as they are killed it gets checked off like the speeder quests. Once complete you turn in and select an Unassembled Arkanian piece for reward. You could also have one for HM and NiM. This would also generate more interest in completing ops rather than just doing a "Comms Run".

Gearing is a grind, and it's that way on purpose.

 

I currently have my Vanguard tank in BiS 69s, with a few pieces of Verpine that I bought with coms. Since I started raiding TfB/S&V with her post-2.0..... I have gotten exactly 3 arkanian drops. Mainhand, Offhand and Legs. Most runs, I walk away with no Arkanian though.

 

You just have to make a sacrifice to the RNG Gods before every raid, and hope for the best.

 

I think, with all of the Elite/Ultimate coms that are handed out for doing sub-tier content, players are given PLENTY of opportunity to get "consolation" prize gear, by stacking coms and buying BM and Verpine gear. Sure, you can't get your set bonus without Arkanian/Underworld.... but, the grind is a grind for a reason.

 

Besides... right now on my tank, I am actually using Dread Guard armorings to get my 4-set bonus, with the Arkanian leg armoring I have, sitting in my bank. I will wait until I get all 4 of them, and put them in at once, so I don't lose my set bonus.

 

The point is.... this is how MMO's work. If you don't like the gear grind, and the random nature of gear rolls, then you are playing the wrong type of game. Another idea? Do guild-only Ops runs. If you run guild teams, same team makeup (or close to it) each week, whenever someone wins a piece of gear, you know that is one less person you have to roll against the next time that piece drops. If you are PuG'ing? It's all luck of the roll.

Gearing is a grind, and it's that way on purpose.

 

I currently have my Vanguard tank in BiS 69s, with a few pieces of Verpine that I bought with coms. Since I started raiding TfB/S&V with her post-2.0..... I have gotten exactly 3 arkanian drops. Mainhand, Offhand and Legs. Most runs, I walk away with no Arkanian though.

 

You just have to make a sacrifice to the RNG Gods before every raid, and hope for the best.

 

I think, with all of the Elite/Ultimate coms that are handed out for doing sub-tier content, players are given PLENTY of opportunity to get "consolation" prize gear, by stacking coms and buying BM and Verpine gear. Sure, you can't get your set bonus without Arkanian/Underworld.... but, the grind is a grind for a reason.

 

Besides... right now on my tank, I am actually using Dread Guard armorings to get my 4-set bonus, with the Arkanian leg armoring I have, sitting in my bank. I will wait until I get all 4 of them, and put them in at once, so I don't lose my set bonus.

 

The point is.... this is how MMO's work. If you don't like the gear grind, and the random nature of gear rolls, then you are playing the wrong type of game. Another idea? Do guild-only Ops runs. If you run guild teams, same team makeup (or close to it) each week, whenever someone wins a piece of gear, you know that is one less person you have to roll against the next time that piece drops. If you are PuG'ing? It's all luck of the roll.

 

We predominantly do guild runs. The only time there might be a couple pugs is if we do 16m Ops. That being said, we don't have set groups because we have a fairly deep pool of people that are able to Raid. I don't mind putting the time in but when you invest several evenings into Ops and only walk away with a repair bill and a few Comms, the grind is no longer fun.

 

Not all MMOs worked this way, in SWG, you got a commendation for finishing the Op. There were rare loots that also dropped from it, but the commendation was what was needed to get the jewelry that provided the set bonus. A complete set IIRC would cost 30 total commendations from the 5 Operations. Just because you didn't get a drop didn't mean you didn't progress. But this is a flaw with linear games, it's set up so people can half- a** an Op and get "credit" for it, get comms and call it good enough.

I recommend another quest where you get an Arkanian piece for 2 or 3 full clears of the Op. The quest would be simple each boss listed x2 and as they are killed it gets checked off like the speeder quests. Once complete you turn in and select an Unassembled Arkanian piece for reward. You could also have one for HM and NiM. This would also generate more interest in completing ops rather than just doing a "Comms Run".

 

That's a good idea, an alternate way of completing your bonus set . Now, you could complete your set in one week. Or not complete it in months.

Last week I pugged S&V 3 times with my alts hoping I would get 1 or 2 pieces to complete my main's set. All I got was a power proc relic for my healer. And this were the successful ones. After all that, I'm as close to complete a set as I was at the start.

Alts.

 

Alts get you your gear you need on your main. 69s or Ult comms for 72 mods

Alts.

 

Alts get you your gear you need on your main. 69s or Ult comms for 72 mods

 

The OP (if I understand correctly)... is strictly referring to set bonus pieces. 69 and 72 (Black Market and Verpine) can be obtained pretty darned easy... but the process of praying and hoping you get lucky on /rolls to win Arkanian/Underworld can be a grind.

 

Also... many guilds/groups get butthurt when you roll for alts.

I've also completed 3 full 69 sets min/max done several ops an TC twice a week, and all I've gotten from the set bonus is a set of boots that my brother got as a repeat drop. I do agree there should be an alternative way to get set bonus.

The OP (if I understand correctly)... is strictly referring to set bonus pieces. 69 and 72 (Black Market and Verpine) can be obtained pretty darned easy... but the process of praying and hoping you get lucky on /rolls to win Arkanian/Underworld can be a grind.

 

Also... many guilds/groups get butthurt when you roll for alts.

 

This...In our guild runs, it's need if it's an improvement to the character you're using. Then greed or pass if you wish. If we have pugs we set it to ML and inspect them just to make sure they're not rolling for an alt or companion then award to the highest roller.

Your solution is not that good, as it has plenty of space for abusing it.

For example, running also hm halves times required to complete that q, and gives alts that can be geared just by running them triugh 2 ops extra stuff, and that's entirely not point of this thread.

 

You have 3 pieces of set, run SaV, and lose roll on all 2 things that you want from whole ops. Yep, that hurts. But it's also part of life/game. By enabling players to get thsoe pieces trough alternate way, it really cheapens those pieces as reward.

On the other hand, I'm not sure if access to set bonus should be thing that is so hard to get.

 

 

If such quest were to ever appear, it should also require huge amount of comms(equal to weekly cap, or even greater)

What if.......

 

Black Market gloves cost what... 100 elite coms?

 

What if you could buy the Arkanian gloves for say, 300 elite coms? Or possible a better solution, and wouldn't make the system too overpowered....

 

What if you could buy EITHER Verpine non-set-bonus gear, OR Arkanian set-bonus gear with Ultimate coms? (Not Underworld) So say, a set of Verpine Gloves costs 100 ultimate coms, but you could also buy Arkanian Gloves for say.... 150 ultimate coms?

 

It would give players a method of eventually seeing a guaranteed light at the end of the tunnel, that they can stack coms to get set bonus pieces, even if the RNG gods hate them.

 

Thoughts?

Your solution is not that good, as it has plenty of space for abusing it.

For example, running also hm halves times required to complete that q, and gives alts that can be geared just by running them triugh 2 ops extra stuff, and that's entirely not point of this thread.

 

OP suggested 3 full clears of an operation to be granted 1 token. 55hms obviuosly dont count towards it. And such quest would be exclusive per toon, like they all them , so alts can't help.

Three full clears means 3 weeks. Guaranteeing one token after that do you really think is that much ?

I dont see any reason they couldn't add just the set bonus armorings for a price on the PvE vendors - just like they did with campain for black hole comms before. For ~100 comms you can either get a full piece with no set bonus (like it is now) or the armoring only but with a set bonus. Seems fair to me

OP suggested 3 full clears of an operation to be granted 1 token. 55hms obviuosly dont count towards it. And such quest would be exclusive per toon, like they all them , so alts can't help.

Three full clears means 3 weeks. Guaranteeing one token after that do you really think is that much ?

 

But you could still take the mods from the Arkanian piece and send them to an alt via legacy gear. And you could speed up the process of gearing one character by running ops on multiple characters and then use the obtained tokens for only one char (again via legacy gear).

 

Not that it's not a good idea, I like it. Maybe make it 4 combined runs of TFB and SAV instead of 3 of a single one and you could take care of it in two weeks, which would net you setbonuses faster, but with still roughly the same amount of work (more, actually).

 

I have a huge dilemma with setbonuses myself, on my Sage. I'm playing both heal and dps pretty much on a 50/50 ratio, so you can imagine my frustration on acquiring two full setbonuses. I have a full 69 Black Market -healer set (not completely BiS though) and my dps-set is around half-way there. I have 0 Arkanian (or UW) set pieces, even when I have run both operations multiple times.

Just some feedback on this thread.

 

• NO the Set Bonus shouldn't be sold. (IMHO)
  
• YES running on ALT's is a great way to get a single set of real gear.
  
• Have you been running TC weekly? That drops random Set Bonus Gear most the time and it's an easy Boss.
  
• 16 man, 16 man, 16 man runs. If you are not doing these I would highly suggest you do them. Ultimate comm's are worth the trip and chaos as well 2x the drops.
  

But you could still take the mods from the Arkanian piece and send them to an alt via legacy gear. And you could speed up the process of gearing one character by running ops on multiple characters and then use the obtained tokens for only one char (again via legacy gear).

.

 

oh, well... yeah, but you can already help gearing your "main" that way.

 

OP's point is about having an alternate way that does not rely on RNG. Obviously, the more alts you have, the better, just like for everything. But that doesn't change one bit the amount of work and hours you have to spend to succesfuly clear those operations.

And not everybody have multiple characters. Half the regular raiders in my guild play only one character and that's it.

Your solution is not that good, as it has plenty of space for abusing it.

For example, running also hm halves times required to complete that q, and gives alts that can be geared just by running them triugh 2 ops extra stuff, and that's entirely not point of this thread.

 

You have 3 pieces of set, run SaV, and lose roll on all 2 things that you want from whole ops. Yep, that hurts. But it's also part of life/game. By enabling players to get thsoe pieces trough alternate way, it really cheapens those pieces as reward.

On the other hand, I'm not sure if access to set bonus should be thing that is so hard to get.

 

 

If such quest were to ever appear, it should also require huge amount of comms(equal to weekly cap, or even greater)

 

You kind of misunderstood me, I think. Running HM would have an UW Piece. You would have to complete the Operation twice in order to qualify for the piece. So it would take 2 weeks minimum to get 1 piece. To slow people from abusing the system, you make it so the boss kills are counted, like the speeder quests. You could even tie TFB bosses to it as well. It's still a time sink, but at least there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

If people have the time to run alts through, more power to them. I have a life outside SW TOR and can usually only dedicate 2 maybe 3 evenings to game long enough to complete an Op in 1 sitting.

Just some feedback on this thread.

 

• NO the Set Bonus shouldn't be sold. (IMHO)
  
• YES running on ALT's is a great way to get a single set of real gear.
  
• Have you been running TC weekly? That drops random Set Bonus Gear most the time and it's an easy Boss.
  
• 16 man, 16 man, 16 man runs. If you are not doing these I would highly suggest you do them. Ultimate comm's are worth the trip and chaos as well 2x the drops.
  

 

Yes, we do TC weekly and 16m more often than not, that's where I got my only piece of Arkanian...Other than that, I've seen the legs and gloves dropped there, which I lost the roll both times, plus the MH, which I bought a 30 barrel.

16 man (which we do about 50% of the time) might have twice the drop but it's also twice the people, so same percentage...

I dont see any reason they couldn't add just the set bonus armorings for a price on the PvE vendors - just like they did with campain for black hole comms before. For ~100 comms you can either get a full piece with no set bonus (like it is now) or the armoring only but with a set bonus. Seems fair to me

 

Agreed. Bioware already set the precedent for this before and you are spot on. I have a 2 set bonus currently and its just becoming boring running the same things over and over trying t o get a 4 set.

I think it's interesting that there is a lot of dissatisfaction with the difficulty of obtaining set bonus pieces, yet there are much less complaints raised about the availability of good enhancements. With 2.0, the game is structured so that set bonus pieces (and enhancements as well) are much more limited in distribution because they are simply that extra bonus that groups "need" to complete the hardest level of content. Previously, set bonuses were something everyone could get because of shells, but people could also get BiS gear without doing any operations. For whatever reason, the not having set bonuses seems to stand out to people more, I guess because it has a more significant impact in the changing of one piece of gear. Still, the set bonuses are not really necessary for anything, but that will most likely change with nightmare modes. However, if you're running with pugs or a random set in your operations each week, you are not likely to get far in nightmare, and thus have no "need" for set bonuses (given the right people it can be done, but I would have high doubts of it). As such, I would suggest getting a group together that raids consistently every week so that drops are distributed as equally as possible.

 

With that being said, I agree that it can quite frustrating to get drops given the fact that the set bonus pieces don't drop until the second or third boss in an operation. I wish there was a way around that, so that an incomplete operation would penalize a group as little as possible.

You kind of misunderstood me, I think. Running HM would have an UW Piece. You would have to complete the Operation twice in order to qualify for the piece. So it would take 2 weeks minimum to get 1 piece. To slow people from abusing the system, you make it so the boss kills are counted, like the speeder quests. You could even tie TFB bosses to it as well. It's still a time sink, but at least there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

If people have the time to run alts through, more power to them. I have a life outside SW TOR and can usually only dedicate 2 maybe 3 evenings to game long enough to complete an Op in 1 sitting.

 

I was thinking something similar. For example, 3 full clears of TfB, you get to choose 1 token for either boots or head. 3 full clears of S&V for either gloves, chest or legs.

Hell, could even be one appropiate armoring for your AC, so the "but some people have many alts" thing wouldn't matter in the least. Even with such restriction things will be better than they are now.

NO. Just absolutely NOT. It is exactly how it should be. If you could buy set bonus gear you would have an even harder time finding people to run the ops with. Also, if it takes you 3 weeks to get 1 piece of Arkanian, you are doing something terribly wrong, If you only have 1 alt to run the raids with, well that sucks but we all were there at one point, and didn't cry out for easier ways to get the gear. You want the set bonus? Buy some campaign gear, you put the set bonus gear up for sale, and you are taking away a HUGE part of the satisfaction of getting that piece of gear that you really want, and will raid over and over to get that set bonus. The only people who think there needs to be easier ways to get the set bonus gear are people incapable of raiding, or clearing, end of story. Our guild is greed rolling on UW mainhands, and half the rest of the gear from s&v and tfb. Obviously it is not "too hard" to get gear. Find a guild, it will make gearing a thousand times easier, and your time in-game a lot more fun. Edited June 6, 2013 by TrillOG-

Since grade 26 (Campaign) pieces have set bonus, and can be obtained with comms, use those for the set bonus until you can replace it with Arkanian / Underworld.

 

You can also run HM EC (which let's be honest, is pretty darn easy now) for the grade 27 (Dread Guard) set bonus pieces.

 

With 4 pieces of Campaign Armoring for the set bonus, you are only losing out 52 points of main stat (over Black Market) . With 4 pieces of Dread Guard, you are only losing out 36 points of main stat (over Black Market). That's about ONE augment worth of stats.

 

As a tank, I wouldn't go below Dread Guard as you'd lose too much armor rating. But for a dps or healer? You'd be fine.

 

This will hold you over until you get enough Arkanian / Underworld pieces to make up the difference.

. The only people who think there needs to be easier ways to get the set bonus gear are people incapable of raiding, or clearing, end of story. Our guild is greed rolling on UW mainhands, and half the rest of the gear from s&v and tfb. Obviously it is not "too hard" to get gear. Find a guild, it will make gearing a thousand times easier, and your time in-game a lot more fun.

 

I clear regularly TfB and S&V hm with my guild, so you're absolutely wrong. Make up another story as to why you are opposed to this.

NO. Just absolutely NOT. It is exactly how it should be. If you could buy set bonus gear you would have an even harder time finding people to run the ops with. Also, if it takes you 3 weeks to get 1 piece of Arkanian, you are doing something terribly wrong, If you only have 1 alt to run the raids with, well that sucks but we all were there at one point, and didn't cry out for easier ways to get the gear. You want the set bonus? Buy some campaign gear, you put the set bonus gear up for sale, and you are taking away a HUGE part of the satisfaction of getting that piece of gear that you really want, and will raid over and over to get that set bonus. The only people who think there needs to be easier ways to get the set bonus gear are people incapable of raiding, or clearing, end of story. Our guild is greed rolling on UW mainhands, and half the rest of the gear from s&v and tfb. Obviously it is not "too hard" to get gear. Find a guild, it will make gearing a thousand times easier, and your time in-game a lot more fun.

 

Nice Try...2.0 has been out for 8 WEEKS. That means if you went with a progression group of 8 dedicated people, they would just now be getting getting the last person their complete suit. If you got alts and have no life and are able to raid 24/7...good for you. A Lot of us have jobs and a life and don't want to be raid focused in our remaining free time.

Edited June 7, 2013 by Lowyjowylof

Since grade 26 (Campaign) pieces have set bonus, and can be obtained with comms, use those for the set bonus until you can replace it with Arkanian / Underworld.

 

You can also run HM EC (which let's be honest, is pretty darn easy now) for the grade 27 (Dread Guard) set bonus pieces.

 

With 4 pieces of Campaign Armoring for the set bonus, you are only losing out 52 points of main stat (over Black Market) . With 4 pieces of Dread Guard, you are only losing out 36 points of main stat (over Black Market). That's about ONE augment worth of stats.

 

As a tank, I wouldn't go below Dread Guard as you'd lose too much armor rating. But for a dps or healer? You'd be fine.

 

This will hold you over until you get enough Arkanian / Underworld pieces to make up the difference.

 

I have the 4 piece Dreadguard and this is what I am doing. I already have the Verpine Offand and chest as well.