Debate.

Seen every single BG where the team with the best gear wins. We've been lied to over and over that gear doesn't matter in PVP. I'm here to tell you it DOES matter. It has always mattered and if someone tells you otherwise, including the developers, they are lying.

I don't care that there's a gear imbalance. I'd rather they just be HONEST about it.

And people doing rated PVP, if they see your gear is not full 258 with 10M per item augments, they will "vote" you out of the match.

They are just as bad as Blizzard saying "gear doesn't matter in PVP!".

It always has.

Always will.

Debate.

 

Seen every single BG where the team with the best gear wins. We've been lied to over and over that gear doesn't matter in PVP. I'm here to tell you it DOES matter. It has always mattered and if someone tells you otherwise, including the developers, they are lying.

 

I don't care that there's a gear imbalance. I'd rather they just be HONEST about it.

 

And people doing rated PVP, if they see your gear is not full 258 with 10M per item augments, they will "vote" you out of the match.

 

They are just as bad as Blizzard saying "gear doesn't matter in PVP!".

 

It always has.

Always will.

Everyone knows gears do matter. Even BW knows it. That's why with 6.0, they are going to have bolster in WZs boost each player's gear rating to max. That's how they are going to try to make it so gears in WZs doesn't matter.

Everyone knows gears do matter. Even BW knows it. That's why with 6.0, they are going to have bolster in WZs boost each player's gear rating to max. That's how they are going to try to make it so gears in WZs doesn't matter.

Gear will still matter because it wont bolster secondary stats and then there's the whole amplifier and tactical crap.

Gear will still matter because it wont bolster secondary stats and then there's the whole amplifier and tactical crap.

Yeah i wouldn't be surprised. But the fact they are bolstering everyone to max level gears shows they are trying to eliminate the gear gap, or at least mitigate some of it.

I haven't played the game this expansion, after reaching lvl 70. I just started playing again recently, for several reasons. I tried doing some PvP in my old lvl 65, item level 208 gear. I don't feel like I am at a huge disadvantage. Comparing my numbers to those of well geared Marauders obviously reveals a disparity, but it's more than doable.

So does gear matter? Yes. Everyone knows this. But if one team consists of better players, I feel like that gives a greater edge than having the best available gear.

I haven't played the game this expansion, after reaching lvl 70. I just started playing again recently, for several reasons. I tried doing some PvP in my old lvl 65, item level 208 gear. I don't feel like I am at a huge disadvantage. Comparing my numbers to those of well geared Marauders obviously reveals a disparity, but it's more than doable.

So does gear matter? Yes. Everyone knows this. But if one team consists of better players, I feel like that gives a greater edge than having the best available gear.

Hurry up, get to 70, join a BG then tell me you don't feel the gear difference....

Hurry up, get to 70, join a BG then tell me you don't feel the gear difference....

That is exactly what I just told you, though. I said I stopped playing after reaching lvl 70, not that I am not level 70. I tried max level WZs, and I don't believe the gear disparity is that noticable. If it is, then I do not notice it because I don't have the experience of playing a well geared character, and I am truly missing out. But my character's potency feels just fine to me.

Hurry up, get to 70, join a BG then tell me you don't feel the gear difference....

I can't tell any difference to be honest.

I am in 248s on my healers I just started playing a couple weeks ago and have not upgraded any gears. Of course, I can't compare my experience with how 258s feel because, well, I have only played in 248s.

More than likely what you see as a negligible is because you fought average or below average players. Skill makes leaps and bounds of difference in pvp, and over time you begin to recognize the players to stay away from. Whether by name, outfit or guild, these players tend to pull the highest numbers, run with hlrs and often wear either troll armors, (base starter world look) or black on black dyes. Not a sure thing, but easy to look for. It's when you fight these players when you notice gear difference. Because it doesn't matter if you are good, if they are more geared, and as good as you, you will lose.

I can't tell any difference to be honest.

 

I am in 248s on my healers I just started playing a couple weeks ago and have not upgraded any gears. Of course, I can't compare my experience with how 258s feel because, well, I have only played in 248s.

I have a jugg dps in 256 gear rating. I dont even hesitate at 2v1 in regs, unless I have some reason to suspect they are as good and premade

Debate.

 

Seen every single BG where the team with the best gear wins. We've been lied to over and over that gear doesn't matter in PVP. I'm here to tell you it DOES matter. It has always mattered and if someone tells you otherwise, including the developers, they are lying.

Not true. I guarantee you, without a shred of doubt in my mind, that if you put everyone in the exact same gear, you would still lose at the same rate that you lose now, because you're clearly not good at pvp. I've never met a single good pvper that thinks gear matters in pvp. Seterade has a theory about damage reduction not bolstering or something, but I've never seen any evidence to support it.

And people doing rated PVP, if they see your gear is not full 258 with 10M per item augments, they will "vote" you out of the match.

I've never seen anyone get kicked purely because of their gear. They probably kicked you because you performed terribly and then made dumb excuses in chat. Just a guess.

Not true. I guarantee you, without a shred of doubt in my mind, that if you put everyone in the exact same gear, you would still lose at the same rate that you lose now, because you're clearly not good at pvp. I've never met a single good pvper that thinks gear matters in pvp.

Gear does matter in pvp. It is a small percentage, but it still makes a difference. The player is by far the most important variable in pvp.

Not true. I guarantee you, without a shred of doubt in my mind, that if you put everyone in the exact same gear, you would still lose at the same rate that you lose now, because you're clearly not good at pvp. I've never met a single good pvper that thinks gear matters in pvp. Seterade has a theory about damage reduction not bolstering or something, but I've never seen any evidence to support it.

 

 

 

I've never seen anyone get kicked purely because of their gear. They probably kicked you because you performed terribly and then made dumb excuses in chat. Just a guess.

I top out the dps charts easily in 230 gear....doesn't mean I still don't notice the obvious difference in burst between my alt in 230 gear and my main that's in 252/258 gear.

Like it or not, gear does matter. I know when I'm fighting people who are under geared in pvp when on my main because they literally get deleted.

Gear does matter in pvp. It is a small percentage, but it still makes a difference. The player is by far the most important variable in pvp.

It clearly matters a small amount, the emphasis on small. If a dps comes in with all tank gear on, obviously they're going to be terrible. But if someone makes any token effort to have something resembling the right stats, the gear won't matter unless somehow the skill of the players is exactly equal. Didn't think I'd really have to spell it out this far, but here we are.

Like it or not, gear does matter. I know when I'm fighting people who are under geared in pvp when on my main because they literally get deleted.

Those people are getting deleted because they're bad. You could put them in 258s and they would still get deleted.

Those people are getting deleted because they're bad. You could put them in 258s and they would still get deleted.

No they wouldn't. You do realize bolster doesn't really impact tertiary stats right? The lack of augments and optimizing their mods also makes a huge difference.

Bad players are bad, but if you put two players of equal skill with one in 230 and one in 258, the one in 258 would win 9 out of 10 times.

No they wouldn't. You do realize bolster doesn't really impact tertiary stats right? The lack of augments and optimizing their mods also makes a huge difference.

Bolster does affect tertiary stats, and optimizing them helps a bit, but it's not a very big difference. I have personally witnessed many players in ranked improve their gear over the course of a season. It makes zero difference to their personal performance or the outcome of their matches.

Bad players are bad, but if you put two players of equal skill with one in 230 and one in 258, the one in 258 would win 9 out of 10 times.

While technically almost true, saying stuff like this is what makes people think gear matters when it really doesn't. There's no such thing as "equal skill." The difference between 230 and 258 while under bolster is minimal. Skill will decide that match up 9.9 times out of 10. In the extremely rare circumstance of two people of exactly equal skill, the 258 geared person will have a small advantage.

Most of the best ranked pvpers are still in 248 gear. That shouldn't be possible if gear really mattered.

Gear will still matter because it wont bolster secondary stats and then there's the whole amplifier and tactical crap.

I’ve been playing around with amplifiers on the PTS and they mostly give you a bonus to crafting,mission completion, mount speed and yes, they can give tiny little bonuses on “some pieces” or Armor, amorings, enhancements and hilts.

As far as I can tell, you cannot get any combat amps on ear, implants, relics or mods. These all seem to give some form or other of crafting amp.These are also split so that one type gives you potency amps for crafting (which means speed) and one give you + crafting with increases your crit on those.

I had planned to test more definitively to isolate what types of pieces give you combat amps, potent amps and +plus amps. But the pts is down again, so it will ha e to wait.

I have tested some of the combat amps and I don’t actually think they are working properly or “at all” on the pts yet. If they are working, then it was undetectable by me.

The other thing about amps is getting the right ones. Which is completely RNG and can be expensive, I spent 4 billion credits (yes BILLION) trying to maximise the amps (mostly combat). It felt like I was playing a slot machine and the money just disappeared faster than I could imagine.

With this type of system, I cannot see many people really focusing on amps that much. Especially if they are swapping Armor between Alts.

Tacticals are another matter and some seem like they will cause major issues, while others seem so useless that people won’t use them period.

Only more testing of these over time (probably live now) will provide a better picture.

Set bonuses seem worse than our current ones. I’ve been begging Bioware to add those or allow us to use them at lvl 75, but had zero response, which probably means a Big NO..

With so many changes, I think it’s going to take months and months for the dust to settle and people work out what’s BiS in pvp. Especially as every single piece of gear is RNG and as of the last PTS there were 14 different types of each mod. ie, 14 types of Lethal Mods and 14 types warding mods.

I’m still not sure what is BiS after spending over 40k in lethal Mods to BiS my sniper. Yes, mods don’t have secondary stats, but they do mess around with power vs mastery vs endurance and I don’t think Bolster will work properly with 14 different types of each mod category.

Plus, there are just as many enhancements, implants and ears that give differing stats that hardly anyone will have BiS (ever) and cookie cutter builds won’t happen, secondary stats will be all over the place.

I think all of this, from tacticals, amps and the massive amount of stat difference with gear was all done on purpose so we can never see if theyve actually balanced classes properly.

Everyone will be so busy arguing with each other on the forums that Bioware will just sit back and laugh (job well done). It seems like they’ve finally come up with the ultimate way to troll pvpers. Promise us Bolster to max (which most of us wanted), but throw a massive spanner into that so only on mastery and endurance (not sure about power yet) get bolstered and add so many RNG secondary stats and tacticals, that we’ll never know if bolstering max would ever have worked or not. Then we’ll have half the people saying Bolster doesn’t work and the other half trying to point out that it does (well done Bioware, you win).

Gear will matter about as much as usual. But mostly it will be a crap shoot on who was the luckiest with RNG or plays 100 hours a week to deconstruct enough frags and maybe get BiS in 12 months.

At this point I would accept them removing gear from pvp entirely and everyone have the same stats for their specific class, even if they weren’t stats we would have usually chosen. That is really the only way Gear won’t matter or we will ever know if they’ve balanced classes. I’m not looking forward to pvp under this system. Pve is another matter and think it will work for most, but not pvp.

At the end of the day, it will still mostly come down to skill, but it will now have pvp RNG thrown in as well. Where similarly skilled players will win on how lucky they are at RNG gearing, this is going to cause some big arguments and fights in and out of the game. Forum pvp will become the new ranked (only joking). R.I.P.

Seterade has a theory about damage reduction not bolstering or something, but I've never seen any evidence to support it.

Armor doesn't bolster. This is readily apparent if you equip anything less than 258's, and then you go into a WZ, you will see (well, I saw) that your armor rating doesn't change at all, even though all your other stats did. Example (admittedly checked with the bolsterizer), I have a sin in 230 (252 main/off hand). Armor without bolster = 4092, armor after using bolsterizer = 4092. By comparison, to show that that bolsterizer worked on other status, health goes from 115641 to 136545, crit from 2081 to 2421, power from 3293 to 4343. (I haven't checked this on the PTS with the "new and improved" bolster.)

That said, I'm not sure it makes that much of a difference - maybe to heavy armor classes?

And THAT said, I still don't disagree with your basic premise, which is that bolster works well enough that any difference in gear (barring widely inappropriate gear) is a minuscule part of a loss.

I think all of this, from tacticals, amps and the massive amount of stat difference with gear was all done on purpose so we can never see if theyve actually balanced classes properly.

I don't know, I'm kind of a believer in the adage, "never attribute to maliciousness what can be explained by incompetence". That's a saying isn't it? If not, it should be.

I think there must be some dev at bioware who just loves overly complicated systems. Bolster could have just been "look at whatever gear you have equipped and give you the stats for the max version of that stuff". Or it could have been "give fixed max stats". Or it could have been "here's a pool of points, assign them yourself". Any of those seem to me like they would have been much simpler for us end-users to work with, but no, bioware had to do some hidden super secret formula that messes with stats, and is prone to breaking.

Ancient Hypergates could have just been "a kill is worth X points, go to it!" But no, they had to do the weird kills are worth even more points each extra round scoring thing.

OPG could have just been take the "hill" and earn points. But no, they had to throw in the round robin activation, and the battle mods.

I mean, I don't mind some of the complication, but it seems a little over the top sometimes.

I think this gearing is the same thing... I picture some hiped-up-on-too-much-cafeine person in a meeting going "and we can add this, and This, and THIS, AND THIS, AND EVEN THIS!!!!". And then they don't listen when anyone says, "that's stupid".

Armor doesn't bolster. This is readily apparent if you equip anything less than 258's, and then you go into a WZ, you will see (well, I saw) that your armor rating doesn't change at all, even though all your other stats did. Example (admittedly checked with the bolsterizer), I have a sin in 230 (252 main/off hand). Armor without bolster = 4092, armor after using bolsterizer = 4092. By comparison, to show that that bolsterizer worked on other status, health goes from 115641 to 136545, crit from 2081 to 2421, power from 3293 to 4343. (I haven't checked this on the PTS with the "new and improved" bolster.)

 

That said, I'm not sure it makes that much of a difference - maybe to heavy armor classes?

I just tested it and you're right, armor rating doesn't bolster. When you hover over it, it tells you how much damage reduction it provides.

My main dps sorc in min/maxed 258-240 augs is at 4586 armor rating which equates to 20.67% damage reduction.

Another sorc I have in all 230 gear is at 4096 armor rating which equates to 18.88% damage reduction.

So, that's a whopping 1.79% difference in damage reduction. The difference between 248 and 258 is obviously even smaller than that.

That's clearly going to make virtually no difference in the vast majority of encounters. Like you say, maybe there's a bigger difference for medium/heavy armor? I can't readily test that, so I don't know.

Set bonuses seem worse than our current ones. I’ve been begging Bioware to add those or allow us to use them at lvl 75, but had zero response, which probably means a Big NO.

I suggest having someone on the forums ask this question either directly to Musco or on the forums in the PTS section... Someone that he likes and actually will answer.

I think there must be some dev at bioware who just loves overly complicated systems. Bolster could have just been "look at whatever gear you have equipped and give you the stats for the max version of that stuff". Or it could have been "give fixed max stats". Or it could have been "here's a pool of points, assign them yourself". Any of those seem to me like they would have been much simpler for us end-users to work with, but no, bioware had to do some hidden super secret formula that messes with stats, and is prone to breaking.

Yeah. They clearly are far too smart for their own good sometimes. Sometimes simple is better, really.

I think there must be some dev at bioware who just loves overly complicated systems

Yeah. They clearly are far too smart for their own good sometimes. Sometimes simple is better, really

Be careful... they might insult your intelligence too. We clearly just can't read well enough to understand what they are trying to accomplish.

Be careful... they might insult your intelligence too. We clearly just can't read well enough to understand what they are trying to accomplish.

LOL. I saw that post. "This is way overly complicated". "No no, it just seems complicated because of all the moving parts!" (I thought your reply was very civil.)

LOL. I saw that post. "This is way overly complicated". "No no, it just seems complicated because of all the moving parts!" (I thought your reply was very civil.)

I can respect that response seeing how much I love passive aggressive trolling!

KendraP, you just fail to appreciate the simplicity of the system just because you are focusing too much on all the overly complicated moving parts! Just give yourself time, you will learn to understand it soon enough!

Be careful... they might insult your intelligence too. We clearly just can't read well enough to understand what they are trying to accomplish.

Sadly I never get responses from certain BW representatives, only Charles responded or was it Keith to one of my posts when Eric was on vacation? During that time we all had plenty of interactions with BW representatives, though. Not like I got any special treatment that day.

I think Eric has me on ignore tbh.

I just tested it and you're right, armor rating doesn't bolster. When you hover over it, it tells you how much damage reduction it provides.

 

My main dps sorc in min/maxed 258-240 augs is at 4586 armor rating which equates to 20.67% damage reduction.

 

Another sorc I have in all 230 gear is at 4096 armor rating which equates to 18.88% damage reduction.

 

So, that's a whopping 1.79% difference in damage reduction. The difference between 248 and 258 is obviously even smaller than that.

 

That's clearly going to make virtually no difference in the vast majority of encounters. Like you say, maybe there's a bigger difference for medium/heavy armor? I can't readily test that, so I don't know.

230 gear vs a guy or team with 258 MH/OH is noticeable difference IMO. But the rest of the gear doesn't seem to be very important.

I think "skill" is also taking every (legal) advantage you can in a competition -- even gear.