I'd actually be kind of curious to compare the math on this. Would the additional expertise in the Recruit gear offset the lower hp and damage compared to full Rakata? Honestly, I would think that, thanks to the massive benefits of Expertise (since it adds to both your offensive and defensive capabilities), it would overcome even Rakata gear difference (it's only a difference of 12-16 gear rating), but I'd be curious to see the math concerning it.

Recruit commando dps:

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/48449d00-02c4-4ee6-96d5-23e9c4d4e8b6

14k health

31% crit

63% surge

---

28% damage reduction (armor) + 15.15% damage reduction (expertise) = 43%

955 base damage + 17.86% damage boost (expertise) = 1125

366 bonus damage + 17.86% damage boost (expertise) = 431

Rakata (stock, unoptimised, no augments)

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/455f6d54-7395-414c-9b28-4077ac59084b

18k health

34% crit

72% surge

---

30% damage reduction (armor)

1095 base damage

498 bonus damage

Here's how I compare them (and I could be mistaken about the math):

The base damage is worse but the bonus damage is better. But taking into account a higher crit and surge, the stock Rakata would edge out the Recruit damage.

The recruit has a 13% better damage reduction, but a 22% loss in health. If you don't have a healer handy, the Rakata will stay alive longer. If you have a healer, the 9.8% healing boost would even out the odds. Plus the emotional consideration of a healing seeing a Rakata player -- you may not get the heals as they're annoyed you don't have PvP gear.

I believe one could argue either way with stock Rakata gear. But to be fair, stock Rakata is sort of crappy for PvE anyway due to how poorly it is optimized. If you start replacing some of that gear with Black Hole, add some augments and optimize the mods/enhancements better, it would easily outstrip the recruit gear.

Now skipping the math, my anectodal experience (which you can take with a grain of salt) is that in a warzone in Recruit gear I died quickly and killed slowly and it was an unpleasant experience. But when I put on my end-game PvE gear I did much better, and was willing to muscle through to start getting Battlemaster pieces.

YMMV.

I really like to know how you can claim this one. If I have full Campaign and BH gear and PvP against someone in recruit gear... They are going to kick my ***?

Yes and no. I think the person with full BM set will definitely have a gear advantage but if the player behind the gear sucks, then you'd have the advantage. As much as it is all gear, some skill is required .

I'd actually be kind of curious to compare the math on this. Would the additional expertise in the Recruit gear offset the lower hp and damage compared to full Rakata? Honestly, I would think that, thanks to the massive benefits of Expertise (since it adds to both your offensive and defensive capabilities), it would overcome even Rakata gear difference (it's only a difference of 12-16 gear rating), but I'd be curious to see the math concerning it.

Ran a Warzone today that did test it out. the healer in our group had a hodge podge gear set with 2 or 3 BH pieces, 2 or 3 BM pieces and the rest was all Rak...Rak or better pve gear appear to work as well or better than recruit gear especially if it is fully aug'd....he healed for 360k and we had minimal deaths on our side.

Here's how I compare them (and I could be mistaken about the math)

I've always been under the impression that Expertise operated as an end multiplier (so any damage that gets through your DR is further reduced by the sum of your Expertise resist minus your attacker's Expertise bonus damage). The easiest way to expertise calculate the advantage differentiation with that is to reduce your target's hp by your Expertise and increase your hp by your expertise. With the numbers you provided, the Recruit would have a functional HP of 16.5k, and the Rakata would have a functional hp of 15.2k before factoring in difference from other stats. I see that as relatively good evidence as to just how big of an advantage Expertise provides. Everything else remains largely similar, but the Expertise soundly turns the tables around from the Hp perspective.

I've always been under the impression that Expertise operated as an end multiplier (so any damage that gets through your DR is further reduced by the sum of your Expertise resist minus your attacker's Expertise bonus damage). The easiest way to expertise calculate the advantage differentiation with that is to reduce your target's hp by your Expertise and increase your hp by your expertise. With the numbers you provided, the Recruit would have a functional HP of 16.5k, and the Rakata would have a functional hp of 15.2k before factoring in difference from other stats. I see that as relatively good evidence as to just how big of an advantage Expertise provides. Everything else remains largely similar, but the Expertise soundly turns the tables around from the Hp perspective.

I believe you're double-counting expertise by increasing the Recruit hp and reducing the Rakata hp in this comparison, and I don't think that's correct.

I suppose one way to verify this would be to have two Commandos duel while spamming ONLY grav round at each other. One wearing full Recruit and the other wearing stock Rakata. See who dies first.

I just might give this a go, come to think of it.

I believe you're double-counting expertise by increasing the Recruit hp and reducing the Rakata hp in this comparison, and I don't think that's correct.

The Recruit hp increase is to account for the Expertise damage reduction, and the Rakata hp reduction is to account for the Expertise damage increase, both of which are applied separately. The double-effect that you notice is one of the reasons why Expertise is so friggin' potent: it's both a survivability *and* a DPS stat. It's for this reason that I say that PvE gear doesn't really have much place in PvP.

The Recruit hp increase is to account for the Expertise damage reduction, and the Rakata hp reduction is to account for the Expertise damage increase, both of which are applied separately. The double-effect that you notice is one of the reasons why Expertise is so friggin' potent: it's both a survivability *and* a DPS stat. It's for this reason that I say that PvE gear doesn't really have much place in PvP.

Okay that's a fair statement.

But the difference in base damage, crit and surge also affect your survival.

Recruit

16.5k hp (adjusted up for expertise)

955 damage

31% crit

63% surge

Rakata

15.2k (adjusted down for expertise)

1095 damage

32% crit

72% surge

So your tradeoff in this comparison is health vs damage. Which is why i say that you could argue Recruit vs stock Rakata either way. But, as soon as you start augmenting it, optimizing mods and adding Black Hole gear to your PvE set, it will outstrip Recruit.

By way of example, my current PvE gear

20k hp (adjusted down becomes 17k)

1265 damage

35% crit

75% surge

Would (theoretically) blow recruit out of the water. But it's all theory and opinion until tried in the "real" virtual world. One of my guildies is a Commando dps. Next time we're on I'll put on Recruit gear and duel him. I'll report the results.

I really like to know how you can claim this one. If I have full Campaign and BH gear and PvP against someone in recruit gear... They are going to kick my ***?

 

The damage reduction from the set is 15.40% at the loss of 25% of the total HP (500 endurance x 10 = 5000HP) so that's a handicap right there.

 

The bonus damage from the set is 18.20% at the cost of 500 of your primary stat (100 bonus damage and 3% crit), 100 surge (5%) , 50 crit (1%) and 250 power (57.5 bonus damage). Total loss of 157.5 bonus damage, 4% crit, and 5% surge....plus a set bonus. Assuming you started at around 1000 bonus damage from Campaign gear, the bonus damage loss alone is 15.75% damage. That set bonus could also be a huge determent depending on what class you are playing.

 

I don't see any reason why you would make the assumption that high end PvE gear would be absolutely worthless for PvP if your only choice was the recruit set. It works just as well as WH gear in EV/KP (mediocre).

 

Either way, your going to get destroyed by BM/WH players...

Codex, you are absolutely correct about the numbers, full Cam/BH is way better than recruit gear as is fully aug'd rakata gear (but not that much)...the problem that comes with wearing pve gear that is better then recruit gear is two fold and player related...first, if I see someone in pvp who is not wearing pvp gear, they will be my secondary target (after healers) for the whole game...(yes I will ignore a tank in full camp gear with 26k HP)...I am not the only one who does this Next, a lot of healers tend to avoid healing players who they feel are not geared correctly...like you said, earlier...the high end pve gear is better than recruit, but there are a lot of 14 yo trolls playing this game who cant do math

The way I look it is cam/bh is fine for pvp, anything else and you should be in recruit gear for a couple of days til you start grinding into bm....it does go pretty quickly....show up in Tionese and/or fresh 50 leveling gear (116 rated) and I will harass you until you leave the group and then continue to harass you in fleet until you block me or follow me to the pvp vendor to get your free F@#$ing gear.

The Recruit hp increase is to account for the Expertise damage reduction, and the Rakata hp reduction is to account for the Expertise damage increase, both of which are applied separately. The double-effect that you notice is one of the reasons why Expertise is so friggin' potent: it's both a survivability *and* a DPS stat. It's for this reason that I say that PvE gear doesn't really have much place in PvP.

I'm still not following you.

I fully agree with scaling up the recruit HP due to the expertise damage reduction but both sets should be assumed to take the same damage (modified or not). It doesn't matter what the enemy is wearing and the expertise damage modifier is already applied into your personal DPS.

I can either say the recruit gear cancels out (not evenly, but relatively close) the increased damage from expertise with it's absorption buffer, thus a need to decrease Rakata HP to account for the increased damage is needed. Or I can say that both sets are taking an increased damage from the enemy but recruit gear has the absorption buffer which should be accounted for by raising the HP.

By doing both it seems like you are double counting the expertise modification unnecessarily.

In my experience, severely undergeared players who know what they're doing can perform very well in PvE content.

^ Truth.

And I've observed super-geared I'm-so-Leet attitude guys perform mediocre.

Itemization is SW:TOR's weakest point and I suspect once of the reasons many people left.

Every class is a two stat hero mean making mods will always revolve around those stats with the usual crit, surge tagged on the end.

It's also too easy to reach the point of diminish returns which means going from Campaign to Dreadnaught is just there for e-peens really.

There is the glaring fact that 5 tiers of armor all have the set bonus

Recruit commando dps:

28% damage reduction (armor) + 15.15% damage reduction (expertise) = 43%

955 base damage + 17.86% damage boost (expertise) = 1125

366 bonus damage + 17.86% damage boost (expertise) = 431

 

Rakata (stock, unoptimised, no augments)

30% damage reduction (armor)

1095 base damage

498 bonus damage

Math is wrong on the damage reduction.

Recruit gives you 15.15% damage reduction on the 72% damage portion, or 10.9% "more" damage reduction.

28+10.9 = 38.9 vs 30%

This doesn't account for all damage types and such, though, so it's far from perfect.

Overall, Campaign >> Recruit unless you're a living training dummy. Recruit is crap in PvE, BM is ok for HM FPs and story tier 1 ops, WH is good for HM tier 1 ops and the lone HM tier 2 FP.

In fact, with some dailies you'll be able to equip BH secondary items (ear/implants/bracer/belt) on top of your fully augmented WH armor, and be just a tad under the campaign stuff. As a heal merc, I went quite some times in HM LI/EV/KP with this combo, and AFAIK, noone complains (WH blasters are a good bit better than Columi ones considering I replaced the expertise crystal).