I've been away for a good long while and just came back. Upon leveling my character to 70, I started looking at end game gear and how to get it. From what I understand, the only way to get "end game gear" is to do PvP or get some type of boxes, which I don't know how/where to get. From the numbers I saw, I'm not willing to do PvP, especially not THAT much PvP, not to mention the fact I don't like PvP, especially in this game. I see they've unfortunately done away with commendation tokens so it seems I can't even start off with a decent affordable artifact set. How do I get geared up now without PvP?

I've been away for a good long while and just came back. Upon leveling my character to 70, I started looking at end game gear and how to get it. From what I understand, the only way to get "end game gear" is to do PvP or get some type of boxes, which I don't know how/where to get. From the numbers I saw, I'm not willing to do PvP, especially not THAT much PvP, not to mention the fact I don't like PvP, especially in this game. I see they've unfortunately done away with commendation tokens so it seems I can't even start off with a decent affordable artifact set. How do I get geared up now without PvP?

 

If by end game you mean the absolute BiS, ONE way is getting 242 from HM raids and upgrading via PvP or doing NiM ops and getting 248 right away.

 

The SECOND way is through command crates (cxp) but you need be command rank 300 and grind past 300 for more crates and hope that RNGesus gives you a 248.

 

Those are the only ways to get 248. To be honest though, 242 is really sufficient for pretty much everything in this game. Augmented 242 will make you competitive in pvp and raids. I wouldn't sweat gear and and worry more about how good you are at your class, since people who know rotations will do 100% more dps then someone who doesn't in 248 gear.

 

Welcome back, learn those rotations and have fun.

Queue in group finder,try Starfighter with a side of pvp.

You will be geared in no time mate.

Welcome to the abomination that is SWTOR 5.0.

 

When it first came out, 5.0 was a patch that brought something called Galactic Command. This was designed to be a method for everybody (not just endgame raiders or pvp'ers) to have a chance (intentional word choice here...more in a sec) at getting endgame gear. The ONLY way to get gear was to level up your Galactic Command rank by doing things that grant Command XP points, which is most things in game. Each time your GC rank increases, you get a crate in your inventory. You open the crate and if RNG favors you, you may get a set bonus gear piece or purple relic / implant / earpiece (hence the word "chance" from earlier). Most of the time, the crates contain junk and you simply disintegrate the junk to get a little CXP refunded. The drop rates were horrifically bad. Even worse, when you actually do get a nice drop, often times it will be a duplicate of something that you already have.

 

PvP gear was removed - expertise is gone. You may think this is a good thing, but mostly what was accomplished is that PvP was forced into the same miserably slow gear grind as PvE.

 

Understandably, people were not happy and quitting the game in droves. So BW said "ok ok we see you are all upset, so how about we make this small concession?" And then we eventually got gear drops from operations...but it was the last boss only.

 

People were still mad, still quitting. So BW said "ok ok we see you are all upset, so how about we make this small concession?" And then we got Unassembled Components (gearing via PvP) and Command Tokens (granted from Command Crates, used to purchase gear in combination with Unassembled Components or operations token drops).

 

People were still mad. So BW said "ok ok we see you are all upset, so how about we make this small concession?" And we finally got operations drops from all bosses and slightly improved amounts of Unassembled Components granted from warzones.

 

People were still mad. So BW said "ok ok we see you are all upset, so how about we make this small concession?" And we got slightly improved Galactic Command drop rates as you get higher in your galactic command level, within a given tier (tier 1, tier 2, tier 3).

 

So the history of the past few months is one of BW creating an atrocious system that was designed to try and keep players subbed via RNG crate gambling addiction and super slow gear grind, while stringing us along and making one small concession after another.

 

Right now, you can get gear from operations and PvP. Galactic Command can get you some pieces, but it is by nature not reliable. No matter what you do, it's a slow grind. People don't play their alts at endgame as much anymore.

 

I can't imagine that anybody would argue against 5.0 being the worst patch in the history of SWTOR. It's been slowly getting better, but they just can't seem to bring themselves to admitting it was a massive mistake and go back to prior (better) gearing systems.

 

TL;DR: Do stuff that grants Command XP and cross your fingers with RNG, run operations, and PvP. It's super grindy. RIP alts.

Edited May 19, 2017 by teclado

Welcome to the abomination that is SWTOR 5.0.

 

When it first came out, 5.0 was a patch that brought something called Galactic Command. This was designed to be a method for everybody (not just endgame raiders or pvp'ers) to have a chance (intentional word choice here...more in a sec) at getting endgame gear. The ONLY way to get gear was to level up your Galactic Command rank by doing things that grant Command XP points, which is most things in game. Each time your GC rank increases, you get a crate in your inventory. You open the crate and if RNG favors you, you may get a set bonus gear piece or purple relic / implant / earpiece (hence the word "chance" from earlier). Most of the time, the crates contain junk and you simply disintegrate the junk to get a little CXP refunded. The drop rates were horrifically bad. Even worse, when you actually do get a nice drop, often times it will be a duplicate of something that you already have.

 

PvP gear was removed - expertise is gone. You may think this is a good thing, but mostly what was accomplished is that PvP was forced into the same miserably slow gear grind as PvE.

 

Understandably, people were not happy and quitting the game in droves. So BW said "ok ok we see you are all upset, so how about we make this small concession?" And then we eventually got gear drops from operations...but it was the last boss only.

 

People were still mad, still quitting. So BW said "ok ok we see you are all upset, so how about we make this small concession?" And then we got Unassembled Components (gearing via PvP) and Command Tokens (granted from Command Crates, used to purchase gear in combination with Unassembled Components or operations token drops).

 

People were still mad. So BW said "ok ok we see you are all upset, so how about we make this small concession?" And we finally got operations drops from all bosses and slightly improved amounts of Unassembled Components granted from warzones.

 

People were still mad. So BW said "ok ok we see you are all upset, so how about we make this small concession?" And we got slightly improved Galactic Command drop rates as you get higher in your galactic command level, within a given tier (tier 1, tier 2, tier 3).

 

So the history of the past few months is one of BW creating an atrocious system that was designed to try and keep players subbed via RNG crate gambling addiction and super slow gear grind, while stringing us along and making one small concession after another.

 

Right now, you can get gear from operations and PvP. Galactic Command can get you some pieces, but it is by nature not reliable. No matter what you do, it's a slow grind. People don't play their alts at endgame as much anymore.

 

I can't imagine that anybody would argue against 5.0 being the worst patch in the history of SWTOR. It's been slowly getting better, but they just can't seem to bring themselves to admitting it was a massive mistake and go back to prior (better) gearing systems.

 

TL;DR: Do stuff that grants Command XP and cross your fingers with RNG, run operations, and PvP. It's super grindy. RIP alts.

Excellent, thank you. So run a bunch of operations and "level up" command rank for a "chance". Well, at least I'm not forced into PvP, something every game seems to be focusing on of late.

 

I understand the hatred of grinding, I don't mind it too much so long as I'm not spending a year getting a single decent set of gear and finally getting it just before the next "expansion" releases, forcing me to do it all over again *cough* WoW *cough* I've also noticed a handful of quite ridiculous bugs, you might be right on the "worst patch in SWTOR histroy", makes me feel like I'm playing at release again.

If by end game you mean the absolute BiS, ONE way is getting 242 from HM raids and upgrading via PvP or doing NiM ops and getting 248 right away.

 

The SECOND way is through command crates (cxp) but you need be command rank 300 and grind past 300 for more crates and hope that RNGesus gives you a 248.

 

Those are the only ways to get 248. To be honest though, 242 is really sufficient for pretty much everything in this game. Augmented 242 will make you competitive in pvp and raids. I wouldn't sweat gear and and worry more about how good you are at your class, since people who know rotations will do 100% more dps then someone who doesn't in 248 gear.

 

Welcome back, learn those rotations and have fun.

 

You cannot get BiS from Final NiM Ops Bosses + Tyth alone. Mainhand, Offhand, Chest, Bracers, Belt and Heapiece can only come from rng crates or upgrading hm pieces via PvP. Rest of NiM bosses is random loot of blue or purple variety.

Edited May 19, 2017 by FerkWork

Thanks for the help Edited May 20, 2017 by WickedRecluse

Queue in group finder,try Starfighter with a side of pvp.

You will be geared in no time mate.

You will be geared in no time mate.

 

hahahhahahah

Edited May 21, 2017 by jimmorrisson

I've been away for a good long while and just came back. Upon leveling my character to 70, I started looking at end game gear and how to get it. From what I understand, the only way to get "end game gear" is to do PvP or get some type of boxes, which I don't know how/where to get. From the numbers I saw, I'm not willing to do PvP, especially not THAT much PvP, not to mention the fact I don't like PvP, especially in this game. I see they've unfortunately done away with commendation tokens so it seems I can't even start off with a decent affordable artifact set. How do I get geared up now without PvP?

 

There are different ways you can get end game gear now.

 

1) You can do it the old way by operations. You can level like the old way and progress through SM/HM/NIm to acquire your gear. Only thing is there is no longer priority mission operation that will give BIS gear. You will have to do either NIM ops or Tyth HM for BIS gear in ops.

 

2) You can pvp your way straight up to BIS. This is probably the worse part of 5.0 as its grind is painful to do just pvp. This needs major improvement on the amount it costs. This is worse then before for straight pvp'ers because the cost is insane then before. The only win here would be people who enjoy both because grinding one end of gear is better than two.

 

3) Command ranks- This is a new way to grind end game gear. This gets a lot of heat because of the RNG but honestly I love it. I think it needs improvements but I enjoy playing the game multiple ways and getting command pts to gain rank and then a chance of gear from a crate. It was better than doing what I was doing and getting nothing. An example of this is doing heroics for conquest. Pre 5.0 I did heroics for conquest and I got credits and conquest pts. Now post 5.0 I get credits , conquest pts and usually enough for 1-2 crates. Now those crates have probably 1-5% chance in giving me BIS gear for my tier but its better than getting nothing. So you have 4 tiers, tier 1 is 1-90, tier 2 is 91-180, tier 3 is 181-280, tier 4 is 281-300. Pretty much everything you do in game will give you pts to gain towards your rank

 

4) Ops/PVP- This is probably the shortest grind possible. You do HMs to gain 242 gear and pvp to upgrade them. This is what I did for about half my 248 gear. The rest I got from crates while I was grinding hm ops/pvp and just playing the game.

 

Those are the ways I see grinding end game gear. The worse part of this system is for pvpers. The grind is way to long. They need a major change. For people who like pve and people who like pvp/pve I think this system is a lot better than before 5.0. It could still use improvements like legacy command ranks, legendary pieces being schematic instead so you can turn them into vendors so you can gear your alts through command ranks, purchasing gear with command tokens and a lot more ways. But this is new and I assume each update they will improve it.

Welcome to the abomination that is SWTOR 5.0

 

Your detailed post is probably the best summary on 5.0 I've seen so far, well done mate.

Queue in group finder,try Starfighter with a side of pvp.

You will be geared in no time mate.

 

This is the best post on the forums. It reminds me of LoTR:

 

"I can be killed by no man."

"I am NO MAN!"

 

I've been gearing in "no time" since November!

There are different ways you can get end game gear now.

 

1) You can do it the old way by operations. You can level like the old way and progress through SM/HM/NIm to acquire your gear. Only thing is there is no longer priority mission operation that will give BIS gear. You will have to do either NIM ops or Tyth HM for BIS gear in ops.

 

2) You can pvp your way straight up to BIS. This is probably the worse part of 5.0 as its grind is painful to do just pvp. This needs major improvement on the amount it costs. This is worse then before for straight pvp'ers because the cost is insane then before. The only win here would be people who enjoy both because grinding one end of gear is better than two.

 

3) Command ranks- This is a new way to grind end game gear. This gets a lot of heat because of the RNG but honestly I love it. I think it needs improvements but I enjoy playing the game multiple ways and getting command pts to gain rank and then a chance of gear from a crate. It was better than doing what I was doing and getting nothing. An example of this is doing heroics for conquest. Pre 5.0 I did heroics for conquest and I got credits and conquest pts. Now post 5.0 I get credits , conquest pts and usually enough for 1-2 crates. Now those crates have probably 1-5% chance in giving me BIS gear for my tier but its better than getting nothing. So you have 4 tiers, tier 1 is 1-90, tier 2 is 91-180, tier 3 is 181-280, tier 4 is 281-300. Pretty much everything you do in game will give you pts to gain towards your rank

 

4) Ops/PVP- This is probably the shortest grind possible. You do HMs to gain 242 gear and pvp to upgrade them. This is what I did for about half my 248 gear. The rest I got from crates while I was grinding hm ops/pvp and just playing the game.

 

Those are the ways I see grinding end game gear. The worse part of this system is for pvpers. The grind is way to long. They need a major change. For people who like pve and people who like pvp/pve I think this system is a lot better than before 5.0. It could still use improvements like legacy command ranks, legendary pieces being schematic instead so you can turn them into vendors so you can gear your alts through command ranks, purchasing gear with command tokens and a lot more ways. But this is new and I assume each update they will improve it.

 

Again you cannot BiS yourself via NiM and Tyth alone. Belt, Bracers, MH, OH, Head, Chest 248 do not drop off final bosses. The rest of the loot is random 244/246.

They're still fixing a gear system (that wasn't previously broken) since November.

 

Which is why there's still very little to do at endgame.

 

- just to pander for a few vocal special snowflakes who didn't want to do the hardest content or lots of PvP to earn it. - and thus didn't need the top tier of gear in the first place.

 

Those people cried rivers. They were offered a way of getting what they wanted, but they cried rivers again coz now it was too grindy.

 

On the bright-side though, there's plenty of cartel market stuff to spend your hard earned dollars to play dolly-dress-up with. - Which is only-just keeping the game on life-support. The Empire thanks you for your sacrifice.

 

Grinding CXP quick guide:

Link to quick CXP thread HERE

Edited May 22, 2017 by Storm-Cutter

I see you got a lot of answers but just wanted to make a quick summary. There are 3 ways to get gear but by doing a way alone by itself is not efficient and you need to combite the methods. The primary method is getting CXP and increasing your Galactic Command ranks which grates you a crate with gear each time, lets build on that:

 

1. PVP - get Unassembeled components + CXP

2. PVE - operations drop gear tokens SM - 236 rating, HM - 242 rating and NiM has random 244/246 rops (248 final NiM bosses)

3. Galactic command crates, at rank 300 you will be getting 244/246/248 gear from crates

 

As for PVP you get components for which you can directly buy gear and upgrade till 248 but thats not very effective. What people do is run easy HM operations like Eternity Vault or Karaggas Palace for 242 tokens, which they then upgrade to 248 by PVP or GSF. Btw GSF is a great way to get CXP and components. One won GSF match where you will be active gives you 8100 cxp (with the 100% boost) and 10 components, which is great for 10 min of play.

 

Also yes, dont forget to buy the 100% CXP boost from the vendor where all the gear is being sold on fleet. You can buy a 2 hour boost for the tokens you get in the Galactic command crates, so its basically free

 

Besides these people are constantly finding ways to farm CXP at an efficient rate and Bioware is then nerfing these methods, currently its farming the Hammer Station Master Flashpoint. Also OPerations give great CXP for the weekly so doing them on SM gives a lot if you dont want to do GSF or PVP.

They're still fixing a gear system (that wasn't previously broken) since November.

 

Which is why there's still very little to do at endgame.

 

- just to pander for a few vocal special snowflakes who didn't want to do the hardest content or lots of PvP to earn it. - and thus didn't need the top tier of gear in the first place.

 

Those people cried rivers. They were offered a way of getting what they wanted, but they cried rivers again coz now it was too grindy.

 

On the bright-side though, there's plenty of cartel market stuff to spend your hard earned dollars to play dolly-dress-up with. - Which is only-just keeping the game on life-support. The Empire thanks you for your sacrifice.

 

Grinding CXP quick guide:

Link to quick CXP thread HERE

 

I think you will find their main aim was to keep Ops players subbed. Under 4.0 you could get geared up in a week or two, then have nothing to do except complain on the forums about a lack of endgame content.

hahahhahahah

 

Actually he is not far from truth! with HM ops you can get full 242s and then upgrade by PVP/GSF

I think you will find their main aim was to keep Ops players subbed. Under 4.0 you could get geared up in a week or two, then have nothing to do except complain on the forums about a lack of endgame content.

 

Well OK, you are right, now they added LOADS of end game content in 5.0

This is the best post on the forums. It reminds me of LoTR:

 

"I can be killed by no man."

"I am NO MAN!"

 

I've been gearing in "no time" since November!

 

Took me a month to get full 248.

My main gripe was the t4 crate rng b ull**** blue relic/implant drop rate.That needs fixed badly.

It was not an enjoyable experience,not by a long shot.

Took me a month to get full 248.

My main gripe was the t4 crate rng b ull**** blue relic/implant drop rate.That needs fixed badly.

It was not an enjoyable experience,not by a long shot.

 

Dunno when 5.2 was realeased but as of yesterday evening I have 3 toons BiS 248s but one (tank) doesnt not have left side 248s.

 

Its all thanks to PVP components and EV/KP HM

Dunno when 5.2 was realeased but as of yesterday evening I have 3 toons BiS 248s but one (tank) doesnt not have left side 248s.

 

Its all thanks to PVP components and EV/KP HM

 

Well, the ops drop 242, right? So you have spent approximately 3000 UC per character to upgrade the gear, then. Something tells me you're playing a lot more than the 12h/week you claimed in the other thread

 

Figuring you're 8000 UC deep at this point, that's 1000 warzone wins, or almost 3000 losses, minus maybe 300 or so to count for the dailies and weeklies you picked up along the way. Presumably you got a couple pieces in crates too. Still, any tips on how to make that kind of UC in the 12h/week you claim to do it in? It's been six weeks since 5.2, so apparently you've been making between 1000 and 1500 UC per week? That's pretty amazing for 12h of play. Please tell us how you pull this off.

I can say that for me, I open enough command crates to have half my gear at 248 and then use UC's to get the rest.

Welcome to the abomination that is SWTOR 5.0.

 

Right now, you can get gear from operations and PvP. Galactic Command can get you some pieces, but it is by nature not reliable. No matter what you do, it's a slow grind. People don't play their alts at endgame as much anymore.

 

I can't imagine that anybody would argue against 5.0 being the worst patch in the history of SWTOR. It's been slowly getting better, but they just can't seem to bring themselves to admitting it was a massive mistake and go back to prior (better) gearing systems.

 

TL;DR: Do stuff that grants Command XP and cross your fingers with RNG, run operations, and PvP. It's super grindy. RIP alts.

 

Can you explain to me how this grind now is different then pre 5.0 other than pvp being very long of a grind. If anything now you get a extra bonus by command ranks having a chance to loot gear through crates. Pre 5.0 you had to gear through Ops. If you did HM it would give you 220 Gear and the only way to get 224 gear which was BIS was pretty much only NIM Ops. You could do a priority mission and have 5/8 of a percent to get a 224 piece per week. Now you can do Hard Modes and get 242 gear or NIM ops and get 248. Seems pretty much the same. Pre 5.0 you can loot schematics in ops and gear your alts by sending gear legacy wide which is the same as now. So the gearing system in 5.2 is identical to Pre 5.0 in operations.

 

Now you did have ultimate vendors pre 5.0 that you can buy gear. Now to get ultimate coms you pretty much had to do OPS to get 300 ultimate coms a week. This allowed you to buy 1 piece of gear per week. I think you might of been able to buy 2 implants but if you filled your gear with just buying ultimate it would take you a very long time probably around 10 weeks. Thats doing tons of SM ops a week to max your ultimate coms. This was only to get 220 gear which is not even BIS. I guarantee you if you would do the same amount of ops you did to maximize 300 ultimate coms and be able to buy a full 220 set by trading in coms you would be in command rank 300 and at least in Gear 246 and Some BIS 248. So I think this system is still better and faster to get gear than Pre 5.0. Not sure how its not.

 

Playing alts- Not sure why people wouldnt play alts since 5.2. You can gear the same way as you did pre 5.0. Loot schematics through ops and legacy gear them over or take your alts through ops like pre 5.0 to get gear. Only difference is you can no longer purchase gear with ultimate coms but that wasnt even BIS pre 5.0 and you can easily do ops on alts to get non BIS gear. Only reason people wouldnt play alts is cuz they are chasing BIS Gear which honestly most people didnt have BIS Gear pre 5.0 anyways.

 

TLDR- In short you are correct 5.0 did suck but 5.2 is def a better system then Pre 5.0 taking pvp out of it. PVP needs to be changed to make it easier to grind straight through pvp. Having the ability to gear playing the game instead of just doing Ops makes the game more fun as you dont feel once you hit highest level that all you can do is play ops. This gives you the ability to log in and advance your char without feeling the need to only do Ops. Ops is end game content but if you make all other existing content obsolete the game will get old fast. Doing content like heroics/story/gsf/fps/uprisings and any other way you would play would become useless at the highest level as they would be unrewarding. Doing the same ops over and over and over would make anyone want to quit the game unless they brough out ops every 3-4 months.

Again you cannot BiS yourself via NiM and Tyth alone. Belt, Bracers, MH, OH, Head, Chest 248 do not drop off final bosses. The rest of the loot is random 244/246.

 

You are correct and that is my mistake for not seeing that. I guess thats because I have not completed NIM ops other than SNV/TFB so I wouldnt of saw that. So they do need to change that and make sure all gear can be done by looting from NIM OPS. So hopefully in 5.3 this will be a change. Not sure how many players would be able to gear through this anyways.

I think you will find their main aim was to keep Ops players subbed. Under 4.0 you could get geared up in a week or two, then have nothing to do except complain on the forums about a lack of endgame content.

I agree. I also think its to make other in game content not obsolete after you hit the highest level. Pre 5.0 fps/heroics/story/gsf and lots of content would be obsolete once your the highest level. Now at least you can do them and get command ranks while you wait for friends to come online to raid.

I can say that for me, I open enough command crates to have half my gear at 248 and then use UC's to get the rest.

 

I believe you but that's much better luck than I have had with the crates, FWIW.