Jump to content

lol bolster


LegendaryQuan

Recommended Posts

I have complained many times about different subjects and to be fair Bioware is going the right way this time. I play a AP/Tactics BountyHunter/Vanguard. Before 2.0, I was doing ok, playing average of 10 WZ per night and taking 3 days to complete a weekly. That's really bad, but It's just the reality of queuing solo and always having to face teams with more veteran players, maybe better gear or maybe VoIP software. I used to re-spec in mid of some WZs to Shieldtech depending on the classes in the enemy team so that I could help more.

 

After the last patch 2.0a, so far, I feel like I can add value to my team without having to switch spec. I didn't finish min/maxing before 2.0 so I'm playing with normal WH Combat Tech 80% min/maxed, to say something. In WZs, my HP without stim is 23093K, ranged attack over 1000, tech attack over 800, dont rember the exact numbers. So far, no complain about the performance, I hit harder and last longer in the WZs now.

 

I saw players with 24.7K HP naked and 1274 damage, 27Khp naked, others with 28.7K HP geared and 694 damage. Right now my only problem are the assassins/shadows. I haven't researched about their new skills but in good hands are a pain, at least for me. Healers are less hard to kill but still a hard kill, in good hands. Maybe it would had been better if Bioware made the changes gradually so people could get used to them in a less painful process, maybe first the tree changes and in another patch the bolster change, but what's done is done. Maybe I'm lucky that I got a bug in my favor or just adapted to the changes quickly, but my experience so far is good without having to go naked.

 

Bioware, thank you for the spec changes.

Edited by Grobiou
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 1.7k
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

well, Infiltration Shadow is broken for PVP, so is Balance.

The only thing we can do now in PVP is tanking.

So, as a Infil Shadow PVP DD, I am f***** twice.

I dont see any logic in this. Why do all these button clicking PVEers get rewarded for not doing any good in PVP before 2.0, while experienced PVPers who put a lot of time into learning their class (keybindings, movement, game mechanics, theorycrafting, PVP gear.....) are now forced to play naked or in PVE gear to do any good and still dont make a difference?

So, does Bioware really want an Infiltration shadow in full PVP gear not being able to kill a naked or PVE dressed (keyboardturning mouseclicking) Healer in warzones?

Really??? I don't get it :confused:

BW, please please fix this, soon...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just cancelled my subscription because of this new bolster system. Yes it's broken now, but I don't see how it can be what I'm looking for when it's working as intended.

 

You should be rewarded if you put in the time and it's really not that hard to get the PVP gear to be competitive with the discounted PVP gear now and the minimal differences in the 2 tiers.

 

Why don't I get bolstered when I join an OPs group? It feels like they are penalizing pure PVPers. Since I purely PVP, I don't see a point in a subscription when I can be competitive as a FTPer.

 

Good f**ken job BW

Link to comment
Share on other sites

yes, but then, if every one is twinked, every one is equal :)

 

no man because ppl are not twinked equaly

 

PVE gear gives way way more stats with bolster....

I only pvp ... with my gear i have less stats than the above...

naked i still have less stats than the above

 

and the difference is not small man

 

The lower the lever and the more pver you are ...the better stats you have in WZs.

Edited by Princz
Link to comment
Share on other sites

well, Infiltration Shadow is broken for PVP, so is Balance.

The only thing we can do now in PVP is tanking.

So, as a Infil Shadow PVP DD, I am f***** twice.

I dont see any logic in this. Why do all these button clicking PVEers get rewarded for not doing any good in PVP before 2.0, while experienced PVPers who put a lot of time into learning their class (keybindings, movement, game mechanics, theorycrafting, PVP gear.....) are now forced to play naked or in PVE gear to do any good and still dont make a difference?

So, does Bioware really want an Infiltration shadow in full PVP gear not being able to kill a naked or PVE dressed (keyboardturning mouseclicking) Healer in warzones?

Really??? I don't get it :confused:

BW, please please fix this, soon...

While the bolster is broken and laughable, Infil shadows are super atm. I don't know what you specced but I hopped on today to pvp for the first time in well over two months. I went full infiltraion. I removed my ear piece and relics and had at lvl 50- 24k HP, 2k expertise, 2k min stat, 30 crit rating 75 surge. I was destroying anyone I wanted to hit in 2 globals, three if they were good. That said, almost every class I saw was killing extremely fast. TTK is very very fast atm. In my opinion infil shadows are just as good as any other dps class atm. Over all though my feelings on the changes are as a whole are not good. I personally don't like expansion nor the bolster system nor the changes made to most classes. *shrugs* Some like it , some don't. I made sure to purchase all the unlocks I need from the GTN to comfortably finish all the class stories as a premium player as Bioware will not get a penny more from me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

no man because ppl are not twinked equaly

 

PVE gear gives way way more stats with bolster....

I only pvp ... with my gear i have less stats than the above...

naked i still have less stats than the above

 

and the difference is not small man

 

The lower the lever and the more pver you are ...the better stats you have in WZs.

 

besides few slots, it's not really that much, I pvped in my pve gear, pvp gear and naked (on my operative healer I went concealment for giggles, but didn't have equipt, so went naked). Sometimes you rock, sometimes you get rocked...

 

lower level you have, less skills you have, use yours...

Yes, TTK is quite low on lowbies atm, but, games are bloody fun.

Last time I've seen games so equal, with so many turns and combacks, was on a gore double exp weekend when I was witness of a game where both teams were equally uber awful (in both rotations and objectives),and it's fun to see it on regular basis.

ps, naked pvp gives about 96% accuracy (I can be wrong here), so tanks are ubber now :o

Link to comment
Share on other sites

besides few slots, it's not really that much, I pvped in my pve gear, pvp gear and naked (on my operative healer I went concealment for giggles, but didn't have equipt, so went naked). Sometimes you rock, sometimes you get rocked...

 

lower level you have, less skills you have, use yours...

Yes, TTK is quite low on lowbies atm, but, games are bloody fun.

Last time I've seen games so equal, with so many turns and combacks, was on a gore double exp weekend when I was witness of a game where both teams were equally uber awful (in both rotations and objectives),and it's fun to see it on regular basis.

ps, naked pvp gives about 96% accuracy (I can be wrong here), so tanks are ubber now :o

 

Check again and you ll see i am right

 

Unless a 4K hp is no big difference for you

Naked strips a lot of my power/crit/surge

 

why use more skills when the 1 skill you can spam is OP?

Especially now that agents/smugglers dont have to worry with energy management?

Edited by Princz
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Check again and you ll see i am right

 

Unless a 4K hp is no big difference for you

Naked strips a lot of my power/crit/surge

 

why use more skills when the 1 skill you can spam is OP?

Especially now that agents/smugglers dont have to worry with energy management?

 

more like 2-3k, 1 button spammer would ratehr be commando/merc or sorc/sage then operative/scoundrel or even smasher (smasher requires about 5 buttons minimum).

lowbie pvp is not pvp, it;s leveling ground, go 55 for real games.

(yes, bolster is broken, but it's equal to every one and lowbie pvp was NEVER EVER more fair and balanced)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I provided this in a different thread but I thought I was important to share my views here to as this has had dev responses.

 

Quote:

They're not going to remove it. At least not for a long while.

 

Even @ 55, the Bolster system encourages more people to PvP since the gear gap has been reduced to the point of non-existence. Players won't need fully modded/optimized gear sets to be competitive in ranked PvP now, and even the "elite" players should have the foresight to see that.

 

There has been very little interest in ranked teams for a long time. Inexperienced teams are still going to get stomped for awhile, but at least the 2.0 system encourages them to keep trying without having to worry about gear grinding.

Now using the quote above I feel that as a pvper who pays subs primarily to pvp and I've been this way since initial beta testing, I had to address some points.

 

I agree that the art and determination of dedicated PvPers apply to min/maxing is now void. What is the point of investing time into wz's if random PvE guys and going to get better stats than the guys who grind out the pvp gear? Where is the incentive to want to put the hours into pvping to get the conqueror gear if you can just wear PvE gear and get better star through the bolster system?? I honestly felt for the first time that pvp has now become worthless for the dedicated pvper. Yes ok bolster allows players to have an "even" chance but it strips away a PvPers reward system. Look at it this way, in pvp, you get bolster to pretty much elite gear level, why isn't there then a bolster in place for PvPers to get stat inflation when hitting hard mode or nightmare mode operations? It's seems unfair that both communities are not hit with the same brush.

 

I do agree with giving non PvPers a chance in 55 pvp but the bolster needs to be tweaked. The stats given should be no where near as good as pvp gear. Bolster should be there only to give you a helping hand until you get the pvp gear. I would say that there should be a 40% difference between bolster and full pvp geared players. Even 30% would suffice, this would mean players get a chance and if they have the skill they could even beat players in pvp gear. With this change, it would mean that dedicated PvPers like myself would have our sense of purpose back and that grinding out the wz comms becomes important again. It will give us back out reward system and give us a reason to continue doing what we enjoy most about the game.

 

In conclusion, pvp no longer has the same attraction as it did prior to 2.0. There is no longer a sense of achievement with regards to grinding gear and there is no longer a purpose for the dedicated pvper. Bolster needs to change in 55 and should most definitely not exist in ranked wz's. we don't get bolstered for PvE so why should everything be given on a plate in pvp.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Actually, the highest skilled pvp MMOs of old, didn't rely on gear, it was skill.. Meridian59 everyone basically had the same gear, with at best slight variations. PVP was insane, intense, and amazing. They didn't have levels, rather "HP", you started at 10hp, and went up to 100hp. But a 50hp guy with touch of flame could drop a 100hp dude in battle if he had skill. The 50hp guy had the same gear in general, it was all about skill and class speccing.

 

MANY (if not most) of the best old school MMOs functioned in this way.. DAOC (early on) for example, virtually everyone was in the same sets of armor/weapons by max level. So it really came down to skill, and DAOC early on had what most feel was the best PVP ever. Then the 'gear' infatuation game along, and literally ruined it. The gear infatuation needs to die a quick and painful death, it's usefulness has been outlived by a huge margin. The number of games ruined by excessive gear discrepancies is quite long.

 

Warhammer was destroyed by Gear-Flation. It is literally IMPOSSIBLE for anyone to catch up, and anyone coming into the game has no hope in ever having a fair fight. The end result is, people quit, the game dies. Same with Rift, nobody in their right mind would grind out to the higher ranked gear because it is too painful to experience the lower ranked face stop. As a result Rift has failed, the game is dying, and they've removed all focus from PVP and closed down the PVP servers, and removed daily quests, and basically shelved PVP.. It's too broken, and as a result they lost their PVP players. Gear-Grinding doesn't work in PVP, this has been well established. The primary reason is it creates imbalances that can't be overcome in a competitive game.

 

F2P model has done wonders to bring back fairness in all games that have the model. Guildwars 2 did wonders for showing you don't need insane gear-flation, or crazy gear progressionto keep people pvping, and playing. Star Trek Online had PVP issues because some folks had Jem'Hadar ships and destroyed people. The fix? Give everyone an equivalent ship to Jem'hadar for christmas, and end the gear gap! Right now you can enter STO, and within a week or two 'fully compete' in hardcore PVP against anyone.. That's how it should be.

 

SWTOR is moving in the right direction, and Hickman is a genius with this latest patch. My guess a lot of hardcore kiddies are butt-hurt now that they don't have legions of recruit geared softies to take down.. My advice is - live with it or move on, it's not going anywhere.. If you can't compete on a 100% even playing field, find a few game.

 

Well, im not lv 55 atm and im trying understand the new pvp system and why are ppl complaining about that.

I see ppl complaining but in another way i see ppl saying that is good.

I found this argument very solid.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I honestly felt for the first time that pvp has now become worthless for the dedicated pvper. Yes ok bolster allows players to have an "even" chance but it strips away a PvPers reward system. Look at it this way, in pvp, you get bolster to pretty much elite gear level, why isn't there then a bolster in place for PvPers to get stat inflation when hitting hard mode or nightmare mode operations? It's seems unfair that both communities are not hit with the same brush.

 

I do agree with giving non PvPers a chance in 55 pvp but the bolster needs to be tweaked. [...]

 

In conclusion, pvp no longer has the same attraction as it did prior to 2.0. There is no longer a sense of achievement with regards to grinding gear and there is no longer a purpose for the dedicated pvper

 

This.

 

I cannot stress it enough: I personally do not need a gear gap to pwn noobs. I am not that bad as a PVP player, who also plays RWZ (where gear gap was rarely an issue anyway, since all decent teams have full augmented WH/EWH).

 

I however, personally need a meaningful character progression after reaching max level as a PVP player (= gear progression). PVE players get is without question (Though here is a thought - shouldn't high end PVE raiding not be about "skill "as well and not about gear?)

 

If SWTOR in 2.0 has choosen to clearly put PVE first, by (a) making PVP gear even more usless in high end PVE (which they have by reducing the item level of PVP gear) and (b) making PVE gear much better in PVP (and possible equal or better to PVP gear), I simply have to decide if SWTOR is the right game for me as a PVP player with little interest in PVE.

 

Of course, we have to wait how PVP 2.0 will look once the Bolster works properly.

 

I think it is not a stretch, though, to say that the Developers have shown not much care for PVP by letting this Bolster go live - though the issues eith the Bolster where known weeks ago on the PTS.

 

p.s.

Imagine if things were different and ALL PVE content lvl 10-55 would be seriously bugged, including the lvl 50 PVE gear. Would the PVE players feel neglected? Sure they would. And then imagine that PVP players would then swarm the PVE forums and insult the dedicated PVE players by saying that the must be really bad if they want gear progression, because "real" PVE players do not need gear.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

there is nothing to say against some kind of bolster system. If it works! The current bolster obviously does not and that's the whole point.

Why should a dedicated PVPer play PVP now when there is nothing to gain?

 

You say that full PVP dressed PVPers ruled the warzones, especialy in the Level 40-49 in the <50 bracket?

Sure they did, and rightfully so!

Well, I think if somebody puts in the hours, days and weeks and maybe months to play an awful lot of PVP to get his PVP gear, this player can be called a dedicated PVPer who deserves to be there, ruling the warzone and not get bashed by a level 11 or the like...

These players worked their way up the levels, gaining skills (playerwise, not gamewise) and gear that has both been made useless now with 2.0 because of all these whining guys who refused to learn their classes and put in the time it needs to become competetive.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Everyone is missing a huge problem. Now that there is bolster there is no need to maintain any gear below 55. A very large population (perhaps 25-35%) are primarily merchant based and a little PVP/PVE. The bolster system has destroyed the entire economy. The bolster has rewarded F2Pers and people with little or no interest in sticking around in the first place. It penalizes people who have invested time and passion in to the game. Did some people have advantages before bolster... Yea - Well organized guilds with crafters, hard core players with 12 Char slots all 50s and crafters, etc. In any game people who invest the most effort are rewarded with better gear, etc. Everyone can't win a freakin trophy....... That 25-35% percent population is the long term subscribers who won't stick around and now your dependent on F2Pers.... Good luck with that business strategy..... It's the economy stupid. Edited by Glocko
Added a line
Link to comment
Share on other sites

That's what people who don't suck actually want.

 

How do you know? Are you the official spokesperson of the "people who don`t suck at pvp"?

 

What is you RWZ rating, btw?

 

Do you have a stream so we can learn to be a pro as you?

Edited by Arutar
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I suspected this. That's really too bad if that's the case.

 

Its not the case, people who are good pvpers are still winning. There is a bug but giving a guy a couple thousand more health don't necessarily make them any good. I still see the same great pvpers at the top every match. The difference is folks who only appeared to be good due to gear are getting beat and its got em mad.

 

Pre 2.0 if you ground out the gear it would make up for skill due to someone in lower gear not being able to hit you and you being able to destroy them. Moving forward, the gear gap (yes there will still be a gap and in the hands of a good pvper it will matter) will be smaller thus requiring skill to be a larger part of the equation.

 

I am handicap so I will never be a "leet" pvper but I do love it and have leveled 10 chars up thru pvp just doing the class quests when they are about to go grey then doing no pve at 40. I am usually in top 4 of a match based on the fact I play the warzones and not try to run numbers up on a board. I am happy with the changes (minus the current bug of course), it allows more people to be able to pvp without the constant rolling that occurred pre 2.0. On Shadowlands Server we have pops almost instant due to a lot more folks playing pvp now.

 

Just relax folks and give it some time, meanwhile adapt a little and have fun killing all the nekid folks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This.

 

I cannot stress it enough: I personally do not need a gear gap to pwn noobs. I am not that bad as a PVP player, who also plays RWZ (where gear gap was rarely an issue anyway, since all decent teams have full augmented WH/EWH).

 

I however, personally need a meaningful character progression after reaching max level as a PVP player (= gear progression). PVE players get is without question (Though here is a thought - shouldn't high end PVE raiding not be about "skill "as well and not about gear?)

 

If SWTOR in 2.0 has choosen to clearly put PVE first, by (a) making PVP gear even more usless in high end PVE (which they have by reducing the item level of PVP gear) and (b) making PVE gear much better in PVP (and possible equal or better to PVP gear), I simply have to decide if SWTOR is the right game for me as a PVP player with little interest in PVE.

 

Of course, we have to wait how PVP 2.0 will look once the Bolster works properly.

 

I think it is not a stretch, though, to say that the Developers have shown not much care for PVP by letting this Bolster go live - though the issues eith the Bolster where known weeks ago on the PTS.

 

p.s.

Imagine if things were different and ALL PVE content lvl 10-55 would be seriously bugged, including the lvl 50 PVE gear. Would the PVE players feel neglected? Sure they would. And then imagine that PVP players would then swarm the PVE forums and insult the dedicated PVE players by saying that the must be really bad if they want gear progression, because "real" PVE players do not need gear.

 

I agree completely.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Dev Post

Hey everyone,

 

Our combat and PvP teams have been hard at work addressing the issues of naked Bolster and the itemization issues attached to it (like War Hero gear). Here is some very detailed information on everything we are going to be doing to address these concerns right from Alex Modny. If you want the basic info here is a quick synopsis, read on for the full debrief:

 

TLDR: Going into a Warzone completely naked will now be worse than wearing gear. War Hero and Elite War Hero gear is viable again.

 

 

Naked Bolster

  • The main change being made to Bolster is how it treats item slots with no items in them aka the naked bolster. If there is a slot without an item in it, that slot will only be bolstered a portion of what placing an appropriate item in the slot would. This will remove the naked bolster situation. Being Naked in a PvP area will now be much worse the further you go up the PvP progression.
     
  • In addition to these changes we fixed many underlying bugs in the Bolster system and tweaked some numbers to make Bolster give a little less stats than it does currently. We also corrected an issue where relic slots were being treated in our system as expected to give out more Main Stats than they were. This caused relic slots to be overly valued in adding to your DPS stats when mostly they add Endurance and a Proc. All of these changes should pretty much squash out Naked Bolster as being undeniably better than any set of gear. There might be cases where Naked is ever so slightly worse but that is usually a case of the equipped gear being not so great for PvP. If you see players in PvP playing Naked from now on you should expect them to be underperforming stat wise and over performing cojones wise.

 

Elite War Hero

  • War Hero and Elite War Hero (referred to as WH and EWH from here on out) gear is now better! It is no longer worse than Naked Bolster. The reasons why WH/EWH had less stats and were worse than old Bolster is because it is ‘old’ gear and this ‘old’ gear used a different stat budget where it got its stats from. This ‘old’ stat budget (which isn’t used in 2.0) accounts for Expertise into the budget (Partisan and Conqueror do not) meaning they were lower in Main, Secondary and Tertiary stats to account for the Expertise the items had. This will be removed and the stat budget the Expertise was taking be refactored into the Main, Secondary and Tertiary stats. The net result is WH/EWH will have no Expertise and increased stats, but Partisan will still be better than it. The ranking you will see in effectiveness is WH < EWH < Partisan < Conqueror.
     
  • However, we have an issue with this conversion, the Expertise crystal in the WH/EWH weapons. Because this crystal is used in Partisan and Conquer and the system is unable to edit based on condition which item the crystal in the WH and EWH weapons still have Expertise. It is recommended that you replace this Expertise crystal with PvE crystals. We apologize that we weren’t able to fully take all the Expertise off the WH/EWH and that some players will lose customization, which is very important to us and to you.
     
  • Older PvP Gear (Battlemaster, Champion, Centurion, Recruit, and Recruit Mk2) did not receive this free upgrade conversion. At this point in the SW:TOR item progression, these items are simply out of date with the current power level and are not recommended for use.
     
  • There is a very important note in regards to how the bolster system handles mixing expertise and non-expertise mods on a single item: The short answer is, you shouldn’t do it. The longer answer is, players are much better off than when they decide to make an item a PvP-focused item, they replace all of the mods inside it with expertise mods. The bolster system handles “PvP” items slightly differently than “PvE” items, and putting even a single expertise mod inside an item tells the bolster that the item is a “PvP” item. The result of this situation can be less than ideal for a player in either content channel, and certainly isn’t working as well as we intended. We continue to discuss fixes to this particular issue, but players can work around the problem by making sure they are either pure PvE items or pure PvP items. Note: This is only with mods on a per item basis, mixing different items on a full character is fine.

 

Gear vs. Skill

  • Pre-2.0 PvP was all about your items. Being ‘the best’ meant you had EWH with augments and no one could touch you. This situation was unfortunate because it made the PvP game too harsh on the ‘have nots’ and made the grind to EWH much more bitter because of getting your face pushed in the mud day after day. The gear gap was too big and some players became non-contributors quickly because of the gear gap. It wasn’t fun for the majority of players. In 2.0 we don’t want to totally get rid of PvP gear progression, we still want a gear gap but we want to tone down how overpowered the top tier gear is versus the lower PvP gear so that the moment to moment gameplay is more enjoyable. We want everyone you group with to be contributors from a gear standpoint (them not responding to “inc grass 3” calls or not throwing you the Huttball when they are immobilized is something we can’t help :p). We have seen the argument of Skill vs. Gear throughout the existence of MMO PvP and we are of the opinion both are good for an RPG, falling on one side of the scale (gear has no purpose in PvP vs. gear is the only thing that matters in PvP) is not desirable. It is a balance act, sometimes it will slide too far on one side or the other and we will correct it but this methodology, the balance between skill vs. gear, will result in the most healthy PvP game and community possible for the long term.

P.S. Thanks DarthOvertone for making us laugh during this tribulation. :jawa_tongue:

 

Our current plan is that you will see all of these changes after our scheduled maintenance on Tuesday, April 16th. Note that these changes are NOT to address the time to kill issues. We are still actively investigating that and will get back to you as soon as we have more information.

 

-eric

 

Edited by EricMusco
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey everyone,

 

Our combat and PvP teams have been hard at work addressing the issues of naked Bolster and the itemization issues attached to it (like War Hero gear). Here is some very detailed information on everything we are going to be doing to address these concerns right from Alex Modny. If you want the basic info here is a quick synopsis, read on for the full debrief:

 

TLDR: Going into a Warzone completely naked will now be worse than wearing gear. War Hero and Elite War Hero gear is viable again.

 

 

 

 

Our current plan is that you will see all of these changes after our scheduled maintenance on Tuesday, April 16th. Note that these changes are NOT to address the time to kill issues. We are still actively investigating that and will get back to you as soon as we have more information.

 

-eric

 

 

So what exactly are you changing? I mean, you guys are notorious for not updating gear if you moved one or more of the modifications on a specific piece, how exactly are you going about removing EXP from WH/EWH gear?

Link to comment
Share on other sites


×
×
  • Create New...