What does the 1-49 bracket teach us about PVP gear?

I think alot of people are missing the point on the whole Gear thing.

BW had a great idea but it just isn't working out.

That idea wasn't creating special PvP gear - that idea was creating "Expertise"

The theory here (and Devs sorry if I am wrong but this is my assumption...) is that for pvp specific gear you can get a certain stat that is usefull only in pvp that rewards people who put in the time to get the rewards.

but it doesn't work that way...

I PvP alot I have a 50 Trooper at Valor 54, I have a 45 Sorcerer at valor 45, 38 Jedi Knight at Valor level 36 and a 21 Sniper at Valor level 19.

I leveled into level 50 with Valor 48 or so on the Trooper he had ZERO expertise, You can get 15 - 18 expertise if you use PvP weapons off the PvP vendors, but I make my own weapons so had Zero Expertise.

Yet I was going against people iwth much less Valor level and much better gear...

To use BattleMaster gear you need valor level 60 but you can get Centurian gear really cheap and Champion gear can be fairly easy to get as well - provided you can win.

This is where BW couldn't estimate...

Cent and Champ gear is as easy to get for both Factions.
however with Server ratios of 3 Imp for every Rep you have improved your chances of getting a PvP win at 50.

So (these numbers are fake I am making them up to illustrate my point)...

Sith level 50 valor 20 Gets his Daily done in 4 missions
Rep level 50 valor 20 gets his daily done in 12 missions

Numbers are estimates assuming with 3 times less the number of people it takes you 3 times as long to get a single win (plenty of holes but stay with me it's just an estimate)

PvP as both Rep and Imp on the same server if you doubt me. Rep - I almost never see Huttball, when I do I am battleing Imps. Imp I get one Voidstar for every 4 or 5 huttballs I see and then mostly imp vs Imp.

So by the time the Rep toon gets his first bag from Dailies, the Imp toon has his daily done AND tons of winning points.

I have said in other posts, it takes 800 Warzone commendations to buy a Champ bag - I usually get 800 Warzone points before I get my 3 daily wins. (thats ALOT of dying)

In the beginning you get a slight out of balance
Now here we are a month and a half after the game goes live and you see imps Earning Valor much faster because of - more points if you win, more commendations if you win and this = more chances at better armor

Winning has to be worth something, but in this case it has created a huge "have's vs Havenot's" scenerio where the Rich get richer and the poor get more and more disenfranchised.

When they nerfed the number of points you get when you lose they created an environment where both sides hide to be equal to stay ahead.

Solutions?
Can make Expertise easier to get - will trivialize the benefit but this is really why people complain about the gear.

As a Trooper grav Round is my baby
with 273 Expertise I am now hitting for around 1200 - 1400 points
When I had 48 Expertise using the same weapon I was hitting for 700 - 900 points per hit.
Huge increase for 220 or so Expertise.

I know when I face a Battlemaster - My hits drop from 1200 - 1400 down to 700 to 900 on the rare occassion I have seen my damage output drop all the way down to 500 points.
but I also see it hitting for 2000+ regularly on new level 50's with low expertise.

that is a HUGE amount of damage mitigation wrapped into mostly a single Stat.

I expect when I get my Expertise over 500 I will hit for 1500 - 2000 per hit dropping down to 1200 to 1500 against the other battlemasters out there

THIS is why people are complaining about gear
500 - 2000 is the range I hit right now on different people... lessen this gap to 1000 - 1500 and you will see less people complaining. You will start hitting battlemasters for more damage and you will start hitting newbies for less.

no need to FIX the gear - fix the way Expertise calculates to lessen the gap...

in PvE people want things like an extra 25 Endurance so they have 250 extra hit points because that is one extra hit against this mob or whatever.

but PvP gear is strictly about the expertise, and since you can't "ramp up" expertise prior to 50 you are as one poster put it - the Grey mob in the room...

Oh, but there is. Unless your reality is different to the rest of ours?

And it's quite cute, that you, a pro PVP gear carebear, who's PVP experience clearly is clearly limited to WOW clones, is here discussing what makes a 'real PVP MMO' - and acting like you are somehow hardcore because you 'earned' your gear advantage (like kill trading, crate clicking, and grinding wf's takes skill yeah?).

But the fact of the matter is, if you were a 'real PVP'er' you would welcome a fair fight. You would welcome challenging PVP. But nooooooo.....

We are getting some insight into just how addicted to your crutches you are. Interesting.

I have a feeling you would not last too long without some form of computer code advantage.

I don't think them lessening the gap through easier centurion and champ gear is exactly what you're advocating though.

So many people read that one quote and come up with so many different interpretations,"zomg nerfing BM gear!" etc.

Fact of the matter is that people who stick in longer are providing the server with more of a pool of players and probably putting up with more crap as a result. Having the gear there to grind for is something that helps keep more players around, reducing queues and keeping pvp alive.

The reason it's not an eSport is because developers and some players insist on unbalanced gear progression. WoW was an eSport for short while(part of MLG circuit) but they blew it by making horribly balance decisions. This was possibly because arena gear was stupid easy to get and you always fought people at your level thanks to their matchmaking(no getting curb stomped for weeks unless you were just plain worse than every other player).

If for example I queued for WZ's and was pitted against people of similar skill and gear then depending on the results I would move up or down in rank and this would continue things would be much better. By the time you got up to the people that are "geared" you would also have the gear to compete and there would be no issues. To compare what happens here to wow it would be like having a fresh 85 with green quest gear thrown against 3k Arena players in arena gear and wondering why the fresh 85's aren't having fun.

MMORPG's aren't eSports because of simple developer refusal to adapt. They stick to, and copy, what was done before in hopes that we will be satisfied and that stopped working for many people a long time ago.

If you could "play" you would not need PVP gear.

Nice try though.

The whole reason PvP gear is implemented is to counter-balance players in top-tier PvE gear. I'm fine if you want to remove the gear and turn this into Modern Warfare 3, but you need to remove all of the gear from the game. There can't be any chance that someone will have a competitive advantage. Also, the Datacrons need to be removed from the game because that'll influence an end-game players stats and, well, not everyone has the time or patience to go searching around for little cubes. Also, this 1 - 49 leveling thing needs to be removed completely. There should be a single player mode and a multiplayer mode that allows me to skip the single player mode. Once this has all been accomplished, then I will be fine with all PvP gear being removed from the game.

Well said.

I do more damage in my PvE gear, which is lower level than my PvP gear.

Try to get your head around that.

more to the point, it is gear you can have within hours of hiting level 50.

People pvp in 1st person shooters all the time.. you don't get better gear. You do it because it presents the challenge of a human opponent. Why play chess when you're always going to start with the same pieces every game?!