Hi,

 

I have stopped discussing on this forum, because I am so disappointed with 6.0 that I don't even feel like expressing my opinion here anymore. Not even Zion is able to lurk me into replying to him.

 

I just have one question and as a premise, please accept that I play this game only solo these days. Yes, I did group up in the past, I ran one of the biggest guilds on The Progenitor back in the days, organised ingame events etc. pp. That's not the point. These days, I have a very demanding job and I can only do some quick gaming every now and then. That's just the situation. Don't judge me for that, thanks.

 

"Play your way" was BW's promise and I would like to experience this in the game, however I reached a barrier with that approach: irating 276. Is this the end level for strictly solo play? How do I progress past 276?

 

At the beginning of last week, I got the char I use as my main for Onslaught to full irating 276. All armor, main hand and off hand are blue 276s. Ear, implants and relics are green 276. Last week (between the weekly resets), I played the following:

 

-Onderon weekly

-Ziost weekly

-one Nar Shaddaa heroic per day

-the Nar Shaddaa bounty (almost) every day

-some solo mode flashpoints

-I advanced a few renown levels

-I achieved my personal conquest goal

 

Things like these are pretty much all I can and want to do these days. I don't need top gear and one feedback from me during PTS was that I would hope for more goodies dropping. I really liked the concept of galactic command. They had nice shinies like pets and speeders. I had hoped that they add new items so that I could get a feeling of reward for doing stuff in this game. Alas, all you get these days is gear.

 

And this is where my progression came to a hold and so does my little remaining joy of playing this game.

 

I have been stuck on irating 276 for a full week, despite doing the things I can and want to do in this game, in other words: I played my way.

 

And I got not one better gear piece. Not one 278. Particularly the new renown crates are... well, the game would be better off without them these days. I felt angry while opening them: green 270 gear all around. My char is in full 276 gear. Similarly bad was my solo flashpoint experience. I got almost exclusively green 272s. Of that a lot though, from every boss.

 

The conquest reward gave me more blue 276 gear, same level at least. So did the Onderon weekly. And along the way I got a few more blue 276s. Thanks to RNGesus, I have 5 blue 276 helmets now.

 

So, regarding the question in my title, is irating 276 the threshold for solo play? If not, how do I get 278 gear if I exclusively play solo (and I am since 6.0 not able anymore to solo vet fps)? Is it meant so that I have to manually buy those random gear pieces from the vendor on the fleet for tech fragments, hoping that those will be 278s? I thought that this vendor was added as an alternative, but not to be used as the main road to progression.

 

Is the solo play the following; Play what you want, reengineer all the gear drops and get the tech fragments from them. Then buy the ? gear surprise packages on the fleet?

 

Or is there a trick I have overseen so far? Please tell me your tricks about how to get to 278. Thank you.

 

TL;DR: Char is stuck on blue irating 276 gear. How does he progress to 278 without having to do group content?

I can say with absolute certainty that Solo Mode FPs, Conquest Boxes, and Renown boxes all drop 278+ gear. It's just a matter of luck. I'm at ilvl 285 or 286 atm and haven't done any group content to get that. Make sure you are checking the mods in dropped items because lower ilvl gear may have higher level mods in it and just keep at it. You'll eventually run into a string of good luck and get some drops.

See if this helps http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=970390

 

Edit: I made this simple guide to gearing at lvl 75. It explains how to get past soft blocks or humps when you get stuck at an iRating.

Edited November 12, 2019 by TrixxieTriss

Must be a case of bad/good luck because I've been running solo FPs on my 274 and she's been getting a ton of 278 blues. And I rarely only do it on a whim because I'm not a grind person.

The evil gear drop 6 wall you have encountered. Random vendor you must go to over come the wall. Use on lowest piece. or mod or armoring, or enhancement. Remember this for 286, and 296

No offence Trixxie...but that guide of yours seem to be aimed at those who like to grind on their High Level.

 

What about when you start at Lvl1 ? I'm getting GREEN stuff . are those the ''Gear' everyone talking about ? and I'm supposed to keep ?

 

what about if you like to get a fancy armor from the GTN ? You take the mod out and add them ?

 

So you cant buy mod anymore from merchant ???

 

I usually wait a while before I update my mod , like say when I get to Voss...and get new ones . Can you still do that ????

You didn't mention if you had a stealth character for the ultimate way to gear: Stealth Toon Gearing System™ http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=971299 - basically run stealth veteran Red Reaper. The bosses can be easily solo-ed even in 276 gear and if nothing else you can complete the veteran fp weekly for some more equpment crates and tech fragments. Although there may have been a Stealth Nerf™ to this system it does (or did) work at lower iRating to level up.

 

Without that method, overall, expect a slower gear grind - it took over 20 solo flashpoints, some Mek-sha heroics and a few Onderon weeklies and I had only improved from 276 to 286. But I would say that anything that rewards a loot crate is your best chance - Onderon dailies/weeklies, Mek-sha heroics, completing Conquest. Then do solo flashpoints as your time allows.

 

I also personally found gearing upwards impossible without spending tech fragments. For me, gearing seemed to get stuck at times. I would often have to buy gear from the Evil RNG vendor to complete an iRating level - i.e. if you have one piece currently at 270 but everything else is 276, buy the one piece for tech fragments to get all your gear at 276 or higher. Sometimes I would need to buy more than one piece to complete a level or to get it to tick upwards one level. For me this seemed to happen more at odd iRating levels (especially 279, 289, 299). Once all gear is the same iRating level and/or once the iRating level ticks from say 279 to 280 the gear wheel would start back up and loot would get better. So you may just have to spend tech fragments to buy some gear to make sure all items are rated at 276 (or higher) or to tick the level to 277 to get that gear wheel moving.

 

I will say that once all gear is at iRating level 300, things do seem to change a bit - there seems to be an uptick in the chance to acquire tacticals and set bonus pieces from all sources. So if nothing else it helps to push the gear to 300 if you are hoping to get these as loot drops.

 

Sadly, at this time heroics and non-Onderon weeklies do not drop gear that will help your iRating - they just drop junk gear to deconstruct. And I cannot even remember the last time I got a Renown crate that was actually an upgrade - so gearing wise, these activities will not help. Maybe we will all get lucky and Bioware will add some kind of equipment crate to weeklies/heroics but until then unless you just want an achievement or possibly credits you are better off doing other activities if you want to gear.

 

Thanks to RNG experiences may vary wildly though.

Good luck and as always just my two cents on the matter.

No offence Trixxie...but that guide of yours seem to be aimed at those who like to grind on their High Level.

 

What about when you start at Lvl1 ? I'm getting GREEN stuff . are those the ''Gear' everyone talking about ? and I'm supposed to keep ?

 

what about if you like to get a fancy armor from the GTN ? You take the mod out and add them ?

 

So you cant buy mod anymore from merchant ???

 

I usually wait a while before I update my mod , like say when I get to Voss...and get new ones . Can you still do that ????

 

I think you might misunderstand the iRating system I described in my thread. It is only setup for lvl 75. Any thing below lvl 70 is the same as it was before. You can buy mods directly from the different lvl vendors as you go up or use drops from the planets or buy crafted stuff on the GTN.

 

You are correct that I used flash points as an example for lvl 75, but the iRating system works the same as most of the other lvl 75 gear with regards to increasing it when it drop.

 

The only anomalies I’ve found so far is pvp, which consistently gives you gear that is 6-10 gear Lvls lower than your iRating. Plus when you get to iRating 306, horizontal gearing seems to be broken because I mostly get 302-304 items drop from everything, but pvp, which drops 292-298

 

You can buy mods for lvl 75 characters from the RNG vendor, but as the name suggests, you can’t guarantee what type you will get or even what LvL. But, if you have ALL of your gear at the same iRating or only one or two pieces below, it will normally give you an iRating item that is 1-2 lvls higher than your equipped one,

 

If you aren’t lvl 70-75 yet. Don’t stress, nothing has changed for you with the gear system. It’s still exactly the same as it’s been for 3 years.

The evil gear drop 6 wall you have encountered. Random vendor you must go to over come the wall. Use on lowest piece. or mod or armoring, or enhancement. Remember this for 286, and 296

 

Seems to be one at 300 too if you don’t have ALL 300+ stuff equipped. I found just one lower mod would prevent it giving better gear and that’s when the vendor comes in handy to push you over the gear wall.

 

All of my gear walls, road blocks, humps or what ever term people choose to use, all seemed to happen when I was at the point of going from the green bracket to blue bracket to purple bracket and to the last gold bracket.

 

Edit:

 

Also, as my guide mentions, the fastest and easiest way to get to 276 iRating is doing level 10 treasure hunting lock box missions.

I was lucky that I have a multitude of treasure hunters with lvl 50 comps (3.50min to run the mission).

So it took me 50 minutes to get all 276 gear running the missions over and over again and switching between my Alts. I even got a few 278 pieces.

Anything you get that’s not 276 or you can’t use it, you just deconstruct and add to your tech frags,

Edited November 12, 2019 by TrixxieTriss

They could stand to expand content that supports gear drops. Star Fortresses, Uprisings, Eternal Championship, older daily areas (Black Hole, Section X, etc) and Heroics are all a bit sparse. They should offer loot crates for at least their group completions.

 

That said you should be able to progress. I have gotten 306 gear from Conquest boxes, I will say you have been unlucky. Also Renown boxes "hide" a lot of their loots actual stats, so claim everything and decon for mats to use or sell. Solo Flashpoints might be worth looking at as well. Mek-Sha heroics and the Onderon Weekly/Daily Patrol also give gear boxes, they are worth going after, but it sounds like you had some bad luck. IF you get an item or so that seems to get stuck at a lower rating as it trailing behind, use your Tech Fragments to buy a random item from the vendor in fleet for that slot, it will give you something equal to your item level rating.

Hi,

 

I have stopped discussing on this forum, because I am so disappointed with 6.0 that I don't even feel like expressing my opinion here anymore. Not even Zion is able to lurk me into replying to him.

 

I just have one question and as a premise, please accept that I play this game only solo these days. Yes, I did group up in the past, I ran one of the biggest guilds on The Progenitor back in the days, organised ingame events etc. pp. That's not the point. These days, I have a very demanding job and I can only do some quick gaming every now and then. That's just the situation. Don't judge me for that, thanks.

 

"Play your way" was BW's promise and I would like to experience this in the game, however I reached a barrier with that approach: irating 276. Is this the end level for strictly solo play? How do I progress past 276?

 

At the beginning of last week, I got the char I use as my main for Onslaught to full irating 276. All armor, main hand and off hand are blue 276s. Ear, implants and relics are green 276. Last week (between the weekly resets), I played the following:

 

-Onderon weekly

-Ziost weekly

-one Nar Shaddaa heroic per day

-the Nar Shaddaa bounty (almost) every day

-some solo mode flashpoints

-I advanced a few renown levels

-I achieved my personal conquest goal

 

Things like these are pretty much all I can and want to do these days. I don't need top gear and one feedback from me during PTS was that I would hope for more goodies dropping. I really liked the concept of galactic command. They had nice shinies like pets and speeders. I had hoped that they add new items so that I could get a feeling of reward for doing stuff in this game. Alas, all you get these days is gear.

 

And this is where my progression came to a hold and so does my little remaining joy of playing this game.

 

I have been stuck on irating 276 for a full week, despite doing the things I can and want to do in this game, in other words: I played my way.

 

And I got not one better gear piece. Not one 278. Particularly the new renown crates are... well, the game would be better off without them these days. I felt angry while opening them: green 270 gear all around. My char is in full 276 gear. Similarly bad was my solo flashpoint experience. I got almost exclusively green 272s. Of that a lot though, from every boss.

 

The conquest reward gave me more blue 276 gear, same level at least. So did the Onderon weekly. And along the way I got a few more blue 276s. Thanks to RNGesus, I have 5 blue 276 helmets now.

 

So, regarding the question in my title, is irating 276 the threshold for solo play? If not, how do I get 278 gear if I exclusively play solo (and I am since 6.0 not able anymore to solo vet fps)? Is it meant so that I have to manually buy those random gear pieces from the vendor on the fleet for tech fragments, hoping that those will be 278s? I thought that this vendor was added as an alternative, but not to be used as the main road to progression.

 

Is the solo play the following; Play what you want, reengineer all the gear drops and get the tech fragments from them. Then buy the ? gear surprise packages on the fleet?

 

Or is there a trick I have overseen so far? Please tell me your tricks about how to get to 278. Thank you.

 

TL;DR: Char is stuck on blue irating 276 gear. How does he progress to 278 without having to do group content?

 

 

The dreaded Zion has entered the thread!!!

 

*Imperial March plays*

 

 

In all Seriousness, even for solo play, are you a part of a guild that does conquest? Might work out for you even as a solo player, because guild conquest rewards have granted some very good items in the way of set bonuses, tacticals and gear.

 

Beyond that, I think there is a bit of a wall there - not impossible to breach, but just will take longer.

 

If you can put up with a bare minimum of grouping that fits your busy schedule, I would grab the Master Mode Flashpoints weekly and just do one a night or every other night or as time allows. Grouping kept to a minimum and it does tend to help you get past that wall.

 

The Dreaded Zion will now leave the thread!

 

*Imperial March cresendos*

well I got a couple of lvl 75 (3 of them ) and the gears (or Mod) are the ones I got from when I did the story content. You know..rishi..makeb..kotfe and kotet and stuff like that .

 

So that whole IRating is for Pvp or peoples who wanna grind for Mod and stuff?

 

Phew..thats good LOL I like simple things , and this sound complicated like hell to me

I'm by no means a hardcore player, in fact, I have a visual disability and so have to figure out the way each class and spec work for me. That being said, I have a lvl 75 assassin and I can solo Red Reaper. In two days I've gone from the 270's to the 290's just from grinding that fps. I have encountered a few walls here and there, but I just pushed through. I always equip the highest rated gear I have, even if it actually lowers stats I want. The drops are based off your overall rating. You can fine tune stats once you get to the highest rating. It's tedious, but it seems to work. If you have a stealther is makes it a bit easier..

I have been playing exclusively solo on a few characters and have some on 278 average with several 280 pieces. I have been doing the daily/weekly on Onderon which award crates with multiple pieces and also getting renown crates. When my tech fragments get over 3000 I buy a set piece or tactical from the vendor.

 

A lot of the time there will be items at or below my current rating in the crates, but occassionally there will be an upgrade. If you have multiple crates in your inventory at the same time, be sure to open one, check for an upgrade, equip any improved item, then move to the next one. This is a very slow method, but like you I don't want to join the FP rat race right now.

As a solo player, I have reached 306 ratings in a week. Walktrough solo Flashpoints and chapters. Flashpoints and chapters only.

The one thing I have found that makes the most difference, no matter what your style of play, is equipping the highest-rated items available to your entire legacy in every slot whenever you open a reward box of any kind (renown crate, conquest crate, etc.). Doesn't matter if some of them are tanking items and the character you're playing when opening the box isn't a tank. Just equip the highest-rated items regardless when opening those boxes. Also, moddable items may not be an upgrade on average, but might contain one mod that is an upgrade if you pull it out and add it to a different item. Through this method, simply playing story and whatever other solo content I feel like, but making sure to cap conquest on all my eligible characters, I'm at 294 currently. Yes, I could do flashpoint spam if desired and gear quicker, but I do not want to; I want to "play my way."

 

So, basically, put your "highest-rated" set into legacy storage just before you log each character out, so it's available for whatever character you play next, and you're good to go. The conquest is probably what makes the biggest difference, though. Those conquest reward crates can contain a lot of items, and it's a rare occasion when none of them are upgrades.

Edited November 13, 2019 by Estelindis

Remember that you can send your highest iRating gear over to you lower iRating toons, equip the gear, and THEN open any reward boxes, especially the flashpoint crates. It’s longer for that first toon, but once you get them close to 290 you can jumpstart the others. I stockpiled boxes on my guardian last night, sent over my rating 290 healing gear, equipped that, and ended up with a full set of 290 tank gear after opening the flashpoint crates. The boxes don’t care whether you are wearing healer gear or tank gear all they care about is you iRating and what discipline you are currently in.

 

Also remember that the crates and personal loot drops can sometimes give you 1-2 levels below but the RNG vendor on the fleet will always be at level or higher.

 

Using the above two techniques I managed to get three characters from low 270s to 290 last night, two tanks and a healer.