Edited to add a spread sheet at the bottom

Here is a simple guide to gearing up.

1. At lvl 70, you want to have the highest iRating (total gear rating) as high as possible so that the random gear drops keeps giving you higher pieces.

2. I found the best way to do this is have one lvl 70 legacy set to share between all of your Alts (set bonus gear is useless and make no difference in lvl up to 75.

3. To achieve number 2, you can go through all of your characters and rip out all the highest iRated gear and put into legacy gear (remember, set bonuses are no longer on armoring).

4. Use this set till lvl 71 and then place it back in your legacy storage as you get 268 iRating pieces. “DO NOT UPGRADE ANY THING IN THIS SET”

5. From lvl 71-74, the highest iRated gear you can use is 268. So just store any higher rated gear in your legacy storage (even if it’s crappy gear). That includes storing excess 268 gear you may pick up.

6. Try and create a second legacy set with all 268 iRating. You can do this with some of the mod’able Armor you pick up or by using older legacy gear and ripping out 268 internals and putting them into the shells.

7. The reason you want a iRating 268 legacy set is for your Alts as they lvl from 71-74 because 270+ is only wearable by lvl 75 characters.

** note ** : you no longer have specific armoring, mods or enhancements locked to gear or slot type. So you can rip out internals from any piece to create another. ie, Rip out the armoring out of a belt, mod from a glove and enhancement from a chest to make a leg piece.

8. You will pick up a lot of 268 gear as you lvl. This should allow you to create a “sort of” min max 268 set. Even when you get to lvl 75 (if you lvl fast), you will still be getting 268 until you have a total 270 iRating.

9. It’s important to have a full set of 268 iRated gear to then store for your other Alts.

** note ** Level 75 and 270+ iRated gearing,

10. When you get to lvl 75, you will hopefully be getting 270 gear, as you lvl the gear, it’s important to watch that iRating or you will not get higher gear (very fast, if at all). That means watching all pieces and not just concentrating on getting up one piece you can min max.

11. You can achieve number 10 by also ripping out armoring, mods and enhancements. Even if you just rip out a 272 mod to a 270 hand, it can eventually contribute to your over all iRating.

11. Eventually you will have an iRating or 271, then 272, then 273 and so on. As your iRating goes up, you will get better and better gear. But only if your total iRating keeps climbing.

12. You will occasionally pick up a tactical or set piece along the way. Keep these even if they don’t match your current class properly. You will need them later for other Alts and the tactical helps get your iRating up (I think).

EDIT: since 6.0.1 patch, there is no longer a refund timer to return items. DO NOT use the method described in step 13 to store tech frags

13. Don’t buy stuff from the vendors as you lvl unless you are desperate because it’s a waste of tech frags. If you do max your tech frags, buy a set bonus piece on a little used Alt and log straight off. These pieces have a refund timer and as long as you don’t login on that Alt and let the timer run down, you can basically store excess tech frags that way till it’s time to buy your set pieces (which don’t come with internals).

14. As you lvl up, keep the best set you can for a variety of Alts. You should swap this set(s) between your Alts so that you will always be getting higher iRated gear, regardless of which Alt you are playing, you will be gearing up to 306 the fastest.

15. When you get to iRating 300+, you should start specialising in your different class gear and possibly start buying set bonus gear. By now, you should have mostly 300+ armorings, mods and enhancement to fill these up. You can still swap them with all your Alts because they will start to get drops for them too at 300+ lvl,

16. At iRating 306, you should start to min max properly. There really is no point doing it with gear lower than this because there are 19-21 different types of armoring, mods, enhancements, hilts, barrels, ear, implants and relics.

** Note ** Remember, all of your left side stuff like ears are also legacy bound now. So you can swap those between your Alts

My own plan is to not use the RNG vendor until I’m ready to min max. That may not be the best way or other people’s preferred way, but I think it will be the most efficient use of tech frags.

Let me finish by saying I’m not a fan of the 18 different types of the same gear for each iRating or the amount of iRating LvLs (268 - 306 is over kill). And I dislike the RNG factor immensely, but the ability to gear up Alts by swapping any and all gear via legacy to keep them all lvling at the highest iRating makes this the most Alt friendly gearing system this game has ever had.

Anyway, I hope that help people with gearing up. And I hope I haven’t missed anything in my explanation.

The biggest challenge I’ve found so far is the “house keeping” of all the gear in my legacy storage and making sure I don’t deconstruct anything too early.

EDIT: with so many versions of every thing. I thought I would share a spread sheet I got from some other players. It will hopefully help you navigate the 100’s of available items and what to strive for and what to deconstruct along the way to getting your characters to BiS

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1N9emf63IMOaEHt0-9qEQ2AvZGFS4jQQxOq93VcmNtIk/edit#gid=560713174

Don't waste credits moving mods around trying to maximize sets of sub 75 gear, just use what you got.

Run the new story for a set of 268 (will be moddular bind to legacy).

Run Treasure Hunting lock box missions for up to 276 gear.

At 75, equip the highest rated item for every slot and spam flashpoints over and over.

After every boss, check loot and equip anything which is an upgrade in rating.

Continue until you either die of boredom from running the same FPs over and over or you reach 306.

If at any point along the path you get stuck at an average rating with a slot or two well behind your average and no upgrades dropping, use the vendor to buy an item for that slot.

If you happen to be using a character with the Crew Skill Treasure Hunting, the level 10 & 11 lock boxes grant gear. Ratings (so far that I've seen) 270 - 276. That happens even when your toon is still level 70.

I noticed Grade 11 aren’t as good as the grade 10 for some reason. Maybe it’s because you get mats in the grade 11 boxes as well as gear.

11 treasure hunters with 3 lvl 50 comps each. I did missions for an hour and ended up with enough 276 gear that I could deconstruct all my 270-274 and a large chunk of 276 as well. I got one 278 item (which I couldn’t use). As you said in another thread, I would not be surprised if Bioware Nerf treasure hunting into the ground.

The only draw back with treasure hunting is none of it is modded gear. So you have to make sure you keep the older 270 modded gear shells to put stuff in as you pick it up doing content.

I then went from 276 to 282 just by running 6 flash points with my wife and solo some and adjusting my gear after each boss.

Red reaper runs on an assassin are the fastest and hammer station if you aren’t on a stealth.

It so much faster to run flash points than do treasure hunting. But if you are just sitting around, you may as well.

I noticed Grade 11 aren’t as good as the grade 10 for some reason. Maybe it’s because you get mats in the grade 11 boxes as well as gear.

11 treasure hunters with 3 lvl 50 comps each. I did missions for an hour and ended up with enough 276 gear that I could deconstruct all my 270-274 and a large chunk of 276 as well. I got one 278 item (which I couldn’t use). As you said in another thread, I would not be surprised if Bioware Nerf treasure hunting into the ground.

The only draw back with treasure hunting is none of it is modded gear. So you have to make sure you keep the older 270 modded gear shells to put stuff in as you pick it up doing content.

I then went from 276 to 282 just by running 6 flash points with my wife and solo some and adjusting my gear after each boss.

Red reaper runs on an assassin are the fastest and hammer station if you aren’t on a stealth.

It so much faster to run flash points than do treasure hunting. But if you are just sitting around, you may as well.

Treasure hunting is really only an option if you can spam lock box mission while leveling on your first character, then use any of the 276 items to get a jump start on the gear grind.

Also as long as you have some shells somewhere that are mod and bind to legacy, keep them handy as another option to update slots falling behind can be to mix and match random lose mods and mods inside items that by themselves are not upgrade (and the mods are not slot locked so the items do not have to match slot).

Life hack: use Loot Discipline (in your portrait menu) to get alt spec gear.

I geared my guardian for dps while getting EZ tank ques.

Nice post except the "don't buy stuff from vendors". I strongly disagree with this. I personally recommend to oftenly check your stuff and replace the lowest items you have between FPs. I think this is the most efficient way for 2 reasons :

• Tech frags are really easy to get, with a lot of available sources (even if the high end vendor request 3k of them for an item. However, your max is 5k)
  
• 2 or 3 items can heavily lower you global iRating. You can easily get 2 or 3 irating just by switching these items with upper ones.
  

Regards

Nice post except the "don't buy stuff from vendors". I strongly disagree with this. I personally recommend to oftenly check your stuff and replace the lowest items you have between FPs. I think this is the most efficient way for 2 reasons :

• Tech frags are really easy to get, with a lot of available sources (even if the high end vendor request 3k of them for an item. However, your max is 5k)
  
• 2 or 3 items can heavily lower you global iRating. You can easily get 2 or 3 irating just by switching these items with upper ones.
  

 

 

Regards

You could be right with those tech frags because it seems your gear progression can stall around 280-282 if you aren’t pushing hard enough. So spending 350 tech frags might help in that situation.

Personally I pushed through by doing some solo vet flash points (instead of group) and it seemed to push me over the “hump”. Once I hit 284, the purple stuff started to flow thick and fast.

So far I’ve purchased 2 pieces of set bonus gear for 3000 tech frags each, but I’ve got them on an Alt I don’t play so the timer to refund doesn’t run out. That way I can effectively store them till I’m ready to spend them the way I want at 306.

The 5000 tech frag limit is really a pain and not necessary. We told Bioware that people would just do what I’m doing to store extra tech frags and it’s only going to be an inconvenience for most people. We used to do the same with pvp comms and kept asking for Bioware to up the limit. Eventually they gave us the ability to buy “comm tokens” to store the excess comms and we could transfer them to other Alts. It would be simpler this time if they just upped the comm limit to 100,000 or even 999,999 because eventually people are going to be fully geared and won’t have anything to keep spending them on.

You could be right with those tech frags because it seems your gear progression can stall around 280-282 if you aren’t pushing hard enough. So spending 350 tech frags might help in that situation.

Personally I pushed through by doing some solo vet flash points (instead of group) and it seemed to push me over the “hump”. Once I hit 284, the purple stuff started to flow thick and fast.

 

So far I’ve purchased 2 pieces of set bonus gear for 3000 tech frags each, but I’ve got them on an Alt I don’t play so the timer to refund doesn’t run out. That way I can effectively store them till I’m ready to spend them the way I want at 306.

 

The 5000 tech frag limit is really a pain and not necessary. We told Bioware that people would just do what I’m doing to store extra tech frags and it’s only going to be an inconvenience for most people. We used to do the same with pvp comms and kept asking for Bioware to up the limit. Eventually they gave us the ability to buy “comm tokens” to store the excess comms and we could transfer them to other Alts. It would be simpler this time if they just upped the comm limit to 100,000 or even 999,999 because eventually people are going to be fully geared and won’t have anything to keep spending them on.

I noticed the same thing. I was not saying to spend all of your tech frags on this vendor but to boost you irating if necessary since you can stall at some point. You have to be very unlucky (but hey, I am very unlucky ). Stuff is distributed in irating tiers. For example, when you hit irating 284, you get 286 stuff and if you're lucky, 288. However, at each higher part of each tier, you can stall (the thing you noticed @280-282). Actually, my recommandation is to break this kind of tier wall by replacing your lowest items with this vendor so that the irating progression can start over.

Regards

Edit : actually, to be more precise : there are 2 sources of stuff in activities : random drops and specific "drops" e.g. stuff dropping from bosses and crates you gain in activities. Only the stuff coming from specific drops seems to be tied to the irating tier system from my experience. Actually, this rule seems to be right in nearly all situations, except in rare cases. Still accumulating data to check and validate my observations.

Thanks, Trixxie, I appreciate you taking the time to put it all down. It's very helpful. <3

You’re welcome.

Also here is a post I made in the pvp section about gearing faster in flash points,

MM will gear you the fastest. 2-4 Man Vet will let you complete the FP faster than solo, but you can often have your iRating held up if everyone is out of sync in iRating (I’ll explain below). Sometimes doing a few solo Vets will help get you over a gear hump you may be stuck at.

 

There are outliers that can also affect your gearing speed, ie, if you are in a group with higher geared people, you will gear up faster because it will drop more of the higher gear than people at your own gear rating.

(This can be good to help friends or others gear up faster. If you’re a nice person )

If you are in a group with lower geared players, you will gear more slowly because it will drop more gear at the same lvl you are at or lower. (Once again, it’s always nice to help people out doing this a little bit).

 

As you can see, it’s not as simple as just running random flash points to gear the fastest, although running them in an optimised way will gear you faster than any other content.

 

Also, if you haven’t started gearing up yet or not even at lvl 75, start running treasure hunting grade 10 lock box missions (if you have TH). This will drop 272-278 iRated gear to give you a boost at the start. You can do this on any Alt who has TH, it doesn’t matter wether they are lvl 10 or lvl 75. All the gear is legacy bound, so just put it in your legacy storage.. I’ve 11 TH Alts with lvl 50 comps, so this took me about 45 mins to get all 276 gear. This is a good booster because you don’t have to grind 270-276 gear, which can save you some hours.

Question about #8. What content are you doing that you are getting 268 gear before 75? I've been doing the new story, Rakghoul event and s smattering of heroic Star Fortresses and heroics and haven't had a single drop over 230 out side of the story line quest rewards.

I actually dont get that one, but you will get a full 268 gear set when you do the Onderon/Mek Sha story, which takes really like 30 min if you spacebar it all. Then you are ready to go and start earning 270 gear.

[...]

** note ** : you no longer have specific armoring, mods or enhancements locked to gear or slot type. So you can rip out internals from any piece to create another. ie, Rip out the armoring out of a belt, mod from a glove and enhancement from a chest to make a leg piece.[...]

WOO HOO no more slot locking.... this just solved so many gear building problems....

extra leg at current level, no problem, rip out modifcations and throw them in that under leveled chest piece...

thank you for checking that, hadn't gotten that far

Ok, so I’m at 305 iRating now after running red reaper master mode flash point with my wife for 12 hours

What I’ve discovered is at some points you will run into a blockage with your gear. Usually around 282 and 300 things slow right down. When it does, double check all of your gear and make sure no mods, armoring, enhancements are holding you back by being below your iRating.

The other thing is how expensive gearing up is if you want to rip out internals to keep pushing your gear rating up. I easily spent 12 mil today just ripping stuff out.

Lastly, we were still getting tank drops for set bonus pieces, even though we were both deception sins. In total we had 6 tank set bonus items drop, 1 tank tactical and 1 generic set bonus item.

That is really disappointing because they fixed in on the pts and tank stuff didn’t drop.

One thing – unless I’m missing something (entirely possible) I don’t see any particular reason not to get the empty set bonus shells as you go, unless you just haven’t decided what to get yet. Because they’re empty, you’re not concerned with the iLevel. I definitely wouldn’t buy the Kai Zykken stuff prior to 306, however, since that stuff has mods. Same with the RNG vendor, with the caveat Trixxie mentions a few posts above – if you find you’re at roadblock due to a couple armoring or mods that you just can’t seem to get an upgrade for, it might be worth your sanity to just go ahead and buy them. Personally, I’ve been doing this in a way that I know is less than optimal, time and credit wise, but I can’t help myself – I have indeed been ripping mods to keep my stats sorta reasonable and keep augs on at least my main armor pieces. Again, not the best way – but I can’t help myself. But in doing so, I found I just was not getting armoring upgrades at a certain level – mods, enhancements, hilts, yes, but nary an armoring in sight - so went ahead and bought some from the RNG Vendor, and it seemed to put me over some threshold and armorings are now dropping regularly.

Edit: Just thought of the reason re: the set bonus shells: In case you get a duplicate from actual drop. I doubt I’ll be patient enough to do it this way, but makes sense.

Ok, so I’m at 305 iRating now after running red reaper master mode flash point with my wife for 12 hours

 

What I’ve discovered is at some points you will run into a blockage with your gear. Usually around 282 and 300 things slow right down. When it does, double check all of your gear and make sure no mods, armoring, enhancements are holding you back by being below your iRating.

We discussed about it with guildmates. It seems to us that each iRating related to the stuff color changes (green>blue>purple>gold) may be this kind of blockage.

We discussed about it with guildmates. It seems to us that each iRating related to the stuff color changes (green>blue>purple>gold) may be this kind of blockage.

Yeah, I think you are correct.

One thing – unless I’m missing something (entirely possible) I don’t see any particular reason not to get the empty set bonus shells as you go, unless you just haven’t decided what to get yet. Because they’re empty, you’re not concerned with the iLevel. I definitely wouldn’t buy the Kai Zykken stuff prior to 306, however, since that stuff has mods. Same with the RNG vendor, with the caveat Trixxie mentions a few posts above – if you find you’re at roadblock due to a couple armoring or mods that you just can’t seem to get an upgrade for, it might be worth your sanity to just go ahead and buy them. Personally, I’ve been doing this in a way that I know is less than optimal, time and credit wise, but I can’t help myself – I have indeed been ripping mods to keep my stats sorta reasonable and keep augs on at least my main armor pieces. Again, not the best way – but I can’t help myself. But in doing so, I found I just was not getting armoring upgrades at a certain level – mods, enhancements, hilts, yes, but nary an armoring in sight - so went ahead and bought some from the RNG Vendor, and it seemed to put me over some threshold and armorings are now dropping regularly.

 

Edit: Just thought of the reason re: the set bonus shells: In case you get a duplicate from actual drop. I doubt I’ll be patient enough to do it this way, but makes sense.

Many things you pick up are non modded gear and often have a higher iRating than your mods. So you spend about 69% of the time in gear like that vs modded gear.

If you buy the shells and pull stuff in and out it will cost even more than the 12 mil it cost me. Plus you run into the issue that you could pick up one of the items you already have. My first 2 pieces dropped and I didn’t need to buy from the vendor,

While I appreciate the lengthy guide the gearing process itself is not what I would call 'simple'.

LoL, you won’t get any argument from me