Ok so I finished my class quest today and was able to hit level 48 and I hope to hit 50 in a few days. From what I have read I should run HM's until I have Columi/Tionness gear before I start running raids, ok I understand that, but what gear should I use before I get gear from running HM's? Should I pvp and buy champ bugs and use that and the other gear that I have been using up to where I am now? Btw I'm only around rank 36 valor.

Ok so I finished my class quest today and was able to hit level 48 and I hope to hit 50 in a few days. From what I have read I should run HM's until I have Columi/Tionness gear before I start running raids, ok I understand that, but what gear should I use before I get gear from running HM's? Should I pvp and buy champ bugs and use that and the other gear that I have been using up to where I am now? Btw I'm only around rank 36 valor.

 

Hit up ilum and belsavis dailies (bonus series) , you will hit 50 today. If you can find a guild that would bring you into normal EV or KP, you won't need to farm hard modes. To tell you the truth, its better to go for the pvp gear. Why? Because 99.999999% of the time, your class loot will not drop in hard modes.

Ok so I finished my class quest today and was able to hit level 48 and I hope to hit 50 in a few days. From what I have read I should run HM's until I have Columi/Tionness gear before I start running raids, ok I understand that, but what gear should I use before I get gear from running HM's? Should I pvp and buy champ bugs and use that and the other gear that I have been using up to where I am now? Btw I'm only around rank 36 valor.

 

You can easily run normal mode operations with orange gear modified with armoring/mods/enhancements from the level 50 dailies on Belsavis and Ilum. Refer to this thread for more details on gearing up.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=176836

You can easily run normal mode operations with orange gear modified with armoring/mods/enhancements from the level 50 dailies on Belsavis and Ilum. Refer to this thread for more details on gearing up.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=176836

 

That as well. Hell I completely forgot about those mods by now lol... good catch.

Running operations with 'blue and orange' usually means your other guild members in Columi/Rakata is carrying you. The same is true for most hardmodes.

Running operations with 'blue and orange' usually means your other guild members in Columi/Rakata is carrying you. The same is true for most hardmodes.

 

Oranges modded with level 50/51 purples are equivalent to Tionese for primary stats and better itemized for secondary stats. You and your guild members definitely do not need a single piece of Columi/Rakata to start doing normal mode operations or HM Black Talon, Foundry, or False Emperor provided you follow instructions and communicate properly. So no your guild members will not be carrying you unless you have no idea what you're doing in the operation. Blues maybe but properly modded oranges probably not.

Edited March 20, 2012 by SunsNRses

My guild mates and I started doing HM flashpoints with oranges modded with the daily mods. Once we knew the fights, it was no problem. You can get a lot of the columi gear just from doing the HM FP's if you want but it is, imo, more fun to get them in a normal operation such as EV and Karagga's Palace (plus, you can get several items per run). Once you know the fights (youtube is great here), you'll have no problem running any of them in daily modded orange gear. Edited March 20, 2012 by Chadnab

Orange with purple armor/mod/enhancements is perfectly fine. Orange with blue however will be very challenging. I have tanked for PUG enough times to have a good idea about whether a group will hit enrage timer or not. For the two DPS, you need around 14k hp to beat the enrage timer(except for Black Talon). A DPS with blue mods will have around 12-13k hp, and it become a matter of how good can your tank survive enrage.

Champ gear is fine (not ideal) to raid with. Cent gear is a bit weak though. As long as you're in all 126+, it's fine (just not all cent)

I was told that the best option in case of lack of groups for HM's FP or NORMAL OP's is to get a set of orange gear, do belsavis and illum dailies to stack on 51 mods to start up.

 

A full set of orange gear with commendation mods is the equivalent of a Tionese set minus the set bonus, and a well built modded orange gear can even surpass the Tionese set if you use the right bonuses for your class, considering tionese gear usually lacks on the main need of your class, like on my sage, Tionese doesnt add AT ALL to Surge and Crit, wich is a common skill as a healer.

 

So... do your dailies, stack some commendations and use the heroic rewards, should take you about 5 days to fill up on purple mods.

 

 

To be honest it took me less than a week to get a set of columi on my sage, but i had the luck to pug on 2 normal raids and had the loot table working on my side.

Edited March 20, 2012 by dskhury

And to be honest, OPS is not only gear based...

 

i would say it is

 

30% Gear

40% knowing what to do in each encounter

30% PAYING ATENTION

 

A full group of orange geared and decent mods could sweep a normal run on EV if they know what to do and know their class roles.

just throwing this out there. cuz it happened to me. hard modes and normal difficulty ops share all the same loot. you can do either or for your set.