will orange gear become obsolete with 1.2?

let's say i have a level 36 purple armor piece that has an augment slot. will i be able to remove the armor, mod and enhancement, effectively making it the same as an orange that can accept all three slots?

we'd end up with tier 3 gear plus an augment slot... better than current. is this a way to make crafting viable while keeping heroic pve gear the best?

Quite the opposite, actually. One of the other changes coming is the ability to crit-craft orange gear, which will actually make said pieces the best gear in the game, when you fill them with Rakata level mods and an Augment.

This.

Right now, a lot of the endgame gear looks like bantha poo-doo. Being able to remove endgame barrels/hilts/armoring and throw them into orange gear allows you to customize your character look at endgame like you can while levelling, without sacrificing stat values or set bonuses. Combined with the ability to crit-craft orange gear, it will be far MORE useful than it is now.

right now, you can remove mods and enhancements from purples, and replace them with other mods and enhancements. if they add the ability to remove the armor mod as well, will we also be able to put a different armor mod back into the same piece?

if that is the case, then any purple would be the same as an orange, which is just a piece with three fillable slots.

I was wondering this myself... if we can get the mods out of the purple pieces, then it means that purple pieces work just as the orange ones (which would be awesome, since the more options for the look you have - the better)... not sure how BW wants to prceed here, maybe they will allow us to take the mods out of purple items but not to put any into them.

Would love to get some clarification on this.

This^

(Though I do not like the crit craft concept when it comes to gear. If I want the best I would have to craft a piece of gear for ages in hopes of one of them being a crit. Armormech, etc. should just get the bonus when the gear is equipped and BoP)

The way I understand it, it will make all non-crafter-orange gear obsolete, because of crits. On one hand I am happy we will be able to remove tier armoring, on the other it feels like we are abandoning an one way road for another. Some of those mid level oranges acquired with commendations - instances have amazing looks, but crafted ones will be preferred because those augment bonuses add up.

I personally hate the concept behind Orange armor.

Elaborate please.

I'm curious to see how it turns out myself.

<SPECULATION INCOMING>

I assume what you said will be true, that if you remove the mods from purple items you won't be able to put others in - maybe at best you could only reinstall the same mods. I think end game purples are BoP, yes? That would mean the same for their mods logically, so they wouldn't be trade-able.

Thus the difference would be

-Orange items would be BoE and craftable but would either not have as good quality mods, armoring etc as you could get from raiding etc or have none at all, but you could mod them repeatedly.

-Purples would be BoP (mostly) and only obtainable from end-game stuff, and once you removed the mods you wouldn't be able to further modify them (maybe you could resocket them with the same mods though but no others).