PSA:

Any Battlemaster, Recruit, Recruit MKII or Centurion gear is now negatively impacted by the new bolster system in 2.0, and should NOT be worn. Wearing it will give you worse stats in WZs than you would have if you just picked up some old green PvE quest/leveling gear. Seriously, go buy some trash greens from the GTN.

Please, do us all a favour and stop queuing in it. It's great that people are trying PvP again after obviously being away for a while, but you're doing yourself no favours at all by wearing that old gear. If you don't have somewhere around 24k hp minimum, something is screwing your bolster up. If you have 20k hp and 1500 expertise, you are going to get *massacred* for no good reason.

I believe it is also still the case that you should remove the expertise color crystals from any War Hero or Elite War hero weapons you have, and replace them with PvE crystals (power/crit/end). You should also ideally replace any pre2.0 PvP relics with versions that don't have expertise on (EDIT: WH/EWH relics of boundless ages should be ok, as the huge power bonuses may make up for the bolster shortfall).

Is there any chance this could be stickied, and ideally have some kind of ingame mail sent to players returning after a long absence? This kind of thing has to be making their lives miserable in WZs.

This message was brought to you by the committee of 'I just hit that guy for 11k and took more than half his health'.

So I can use my champion gear instead?

/bonk

You know what's funny..

I joined a wz last night with a guildie and I was tanking in half Partisan and a mix and match of 69 and 66 mods. 40k health and 1.7k expertise. Some guy started having a go at me because I was wearing some PvE gear, telling me to wear PvP gear.

I shrugged it off at first until I noticed him dying fast, I looked at his stats and he's still using some recruit pieces and he's 1.4k expertise. made me facepalm.

Battlemaster shells with partisan mods are okay, right ?

Shells of anything are fine. Just don't wear any pre 2.0 pvp mods or unmoddable pvp gear.

Hmm i was wondering about this tbh.

I came back a week ago after leaving in March 2012. I left with my scoundrel beeing a War Hero with full BM gear. Now i''m playing new OP but i wanted to dust off my scoundrel and play some WZ's and now i see this...

Is he really going to be a punch bag for everyone else because he is full BM gear? How can a player wearing PvE gear have better stats? I know there was some bolster change but is it bolstering PvE pieces so much that they outmatch PvP specific gear?

In other words: PvE gear > PvP gear right now in PvP environment? If so, what was BW thinking when implementing something like this?

Can someone tell me what gear should i get for my scoundrel insteads of a BM gear?

Confused a bit...

Before you hit level 55, it is not recommended to wear anything with Expertise on it; however, if you happen to have War Hero or Elite War Hero gear, you can keep it (except for the Relics). Once you reach level 55, buy Partisan and Conqueror. Simple as that.

This is crazy...so the BM gear is now worse than green PvE gear? Bw has outdone themselves big time i see with this bolster change...

Seriously how can a PvP gear be worse than PvE gear in PvP environment?

Is it because of the whine from PvE players that wanted to play a WZ from time to time but were stomped in their precious PvE gear so they cried and now we have what we have?

I thought BW would learn but after a year they come up with even more stupid ideas...

This is crazy...so the BM gear is now worse than green PvE gear? Bw has outdone themselves big time i see with this bolster change...

 

Seriously how can a PvP gear be worse than PvE gear in PvP environment?

 

Is it because of the whine from PvE players that wanted to play a WZ from time to time but were stomped in their precious PvE gear so they cried and now we have what we have?

 

I thought BW would learn but after a year they come up with even more stupid ideas...

simple answer is that Bioware has no clue, and has given up on this sinking ship.

This is crazy...so the BM gear is now worse than green PvE gear? Bw has outdone themselves big time i see with this bolster change...

 

Seriously how can a PvP gear be worse than PvE gear in PvP environment?

 

Is it because of the whine from PvE players that wanted to play a WZ from time to time but were stomped in their precious PvE gear so they cried and now we have what we have?

 

I thought BW would learn but after a year they come up with even more stupid ideas...

I dislike bolster too, but you misunderstand what is going on. Bolster now looks at your gear and if a piece has expertise on it then it is not bolstered. Therefore since the expertise max was increased up to 2018, any old gear with expertise on it falls way short because it gets no help from bolster. For the last 2 sets in game, WH and EWH, they changed the stats to match that levels top raiding gear and removed the expertise. But then in war zones bolster adds back the expertise making them viable, but any gear older than two tiers ago is worthless. This isn't the bad design part of bolster, this is just the effect of an expansion and new tiers of gear.

PSA:

 

Any Battlemaster, Recruit, Recruit MKII or Centurion gear is now negatively impacted by the new bolster system in 2.0, and should NOT be worn. Wearing it will give you worse stats in WZs than you would have if you just picked up some old green PvE quest/leveling gear. Seriously, go buy some trash greens from the GTN.

 

Please, do us all a favour and stop queuing in it. It's great that people are trying PvP again after obviously being away for a while, but you're doing yourself no favours at all by wearing that old gear. If you don't have somewhere around 24k hp minimum, something is screwing your bolster up. If you have 20k hp and 1500 expertise, you are going to get *massacred* for no good reason.

 

I believe it is also still the case that you should remove the expertise color crystals from any War Hero or Elite War hero weapons you have, and replace them with PvE crystals (power/crit/end). You should also ideally replace any pre2.0 PvP relics with versions that don't have expertise on.

 

Is there any chance this could be stickied, and ideally have some kind of ingame mail sent to players returning after a long absence? This kind of thing has to be making their lives miserable in WZs.

 

 

This message was brought to you by the committee of 'I just hit that guy for 11k and took more than half his health'.

I support this message, but I would add that the WH/EWH relics are still ok. The static power add makes up for the

loss expertise from bolster. You could also add your matrix cube or a low level relic, but is you have the old PVP ones, its not a priority to change them.. just buy two conqueror relics, with different procs...

I dislike bolster too, but you misunderstand what is going on. Bolster now looks at your gear and if a piece has expertise on it then it is not bolstered. Therefore since the expertise max was increased up to 2018, any old gear with expertise on it falls way short because it gets no help from bolster. For the last 2 sets in game, WH and EWH, they changed the stats to match that levels top raiding gear and removed the expertise. But then in war zones bolster adds back the expertise making them viable, but any gear older than two tiers ago is worthless. This isn't the bad design part of bolster, this is just the effect of an expansion and new tiers of gear.

Ok but shouldn't new bolster, just bolster the PvE pieces to a certain lvl? Why they get bolstered to a maximum?

I think PvP gear should always be better than PvE gear in PvP environment so i do not understand why my full BM gear is worse than green PvE gear ( i mean i understand i just don't understand why it was changed in this way). Regardless of how the new bolster is working, it's strange to have crap PvE gear performing better than PvP specific gear.

Anyway, thanks for answers. Will have to adjust to the change it seems.

Ok but shouldn't new bolster, just bolster the PvE pieces to a certain lvl? Why they get bolstered to a maximum?

 

I think PvP gear should always be better than PvE gear in PvP environment so i do not understand why my full BM gear is worse than green PvE gear ( i mean i understand i just don't understand why it was changed in this way). Regardless of how the new bolster is working, it's strange to have crap PvE gear performing better than PvP specific gear.

 

Anyway, thanks for answers. Will have to adjust to the change it seems.

You just came back to the game, if you came back in Jan your gear would've been obsolete and you would be crushed in 50 PvP by WH you would have to get Recruit gear. They adjusted the top end PvP gear most players had that were active at the time.

This really is no different. I just came back as well I have toons in Champ/BM but I fully expected I had to regear for some reason you seem hung up on that but you cant expect to be gone for a year then come back in a gear grinding MMO and not have to adjust the PvE gear part doesnt really matter with BM/Champ/Cent ect no longer available in the game. Take your planet comms go to the Makeb vendor and switch out mods, shazam.

Ok but shouldn't new bolster, just bolster the PvE pieces to a certain lvl? Why they get bolstered to a maximum?

 

I think PvP gear should always be better than PvE gear in PvP environment so i do not understand why my full BM gear is worse than green PvE gear ( i mean i understand i just don't understand why it was changed in this way). Regardless of how the new bolster is working, it's strange to have crap PvE gear performing better than PvP specific gear.

Generally speaking, it is. The problem with Battlemaster is that it's a bit antiquated; it was actually phased out of the game in late 2012 almost entirely due to the fact that it was so much weaker than full War Hero. As for recruit, well it never really worked and we all knew it; it was like handing someone and umbrella before they jumped out of a plane.

Think of it from the point of view from a fresh level 50 character: PvP is much easier to get into because the gap in your gear and proper gear is much less profound. They don't have to have two sets of gear if they decide to do both and if they do decide to focus on PvP they can eventually build a suit that will give them an advantage against most who are in PvE gear.

Ok but shouldn't new bolster, just bolster the PvE pieces to a certain lvl? Why they get bolstered to a maximum?

 

I think PvP gear should always be better than PvE gear in PvP environment so i do not understand why my full BM gear is worse than green PvE gear ( i mean i understand i just don't understand why it was changed in this way). Regardless of how the new bolster is working, it's strange to have crap PvE gear performing better than PvP specific gear.

 

Anyway, thanks for answers. Will have to adjust to the change it seems.

The reasoning is this:

In order to level the playing field, bolster needs to bring people to within a few percentage points of output to each other, regardless if what they are wearing.

The way they did it was bad. Basically, bolster looks at what level a specific piece is and whether EXP is present. Since the old BM gear et al has expertise it gets 0 bolster(relatively). They didn't update those sets because they are two gear patches behind. It didn't make sense to do it. They knew peeps had mostly WH/EWH gear so they removed EXP from that so bolster on that gear is just as good as bolster on leveling greens.

Right now, the rules of thumb is don't wear and legacy PVP gear, wear crafted purples on ear/implants, PVP gear eveywhere else, don't mix EXP with non expertise slots on one specific item(ie EXP crystal, pve hilt). Do these and you will be over 1900+ EXP.

I support this message, but I would add that the WH/EWH relics are still ok. The static power add makes up for the

loss expertise from bolster. You could also add your matrix cube or a low level relic, but is you have the old PVP ones, its not a priority to change them.. just buy two conqueror relics, with different procs...

Thanks, yeah I'll tweak the bit about relics - I used EWH ones myself but had heard it wasn't really optimal.

I hope more returning people see this thread. I know its hard to lose all the gear you've ground out, but short of BW revisiting all the old PvP tiers and tweaking them like they did WH/EWH, there's not much you can do but replace your gear.

Again, YES a full set of BM gear is now worse than greens in WZs. Please replace accordingly.

Wait wait wait!

PVE, crafted, and recruit implants and relics are BIS over partisan or conqueror with full 2018 expertise?

You're joking right?

Wait wait wait!

 

PVE, crafted, and recruit implants and relics are BIS over partisan or conqueror with full 2018 expertise?

 

You're joking right?

No...

PvE crafted items below level 66 are slightly lower than Partisan, thereby nullifying the requirement that you buy Partisan. In some cases, like level 53 purple implants/ear pieces, the secondary stats are FAR better than Partisan, and you only lose a minor amount of EXP compared to the Partisan ones. The bolster is like 146EXP on those versus 150EXP native on Partisan.

No legacy pvp pieces, that still have EXP, are BiS. You can still use the relics (assuming you don't have comms to buy the Congq ones), but you should replace those with Conq ones asap...

Please keep queueing in recruit, bm, centurion and champion because i want 12k crits.

^This

Seriously... this sh*t really makes me mad and "sad"... I get a "klump i magen" as we would say in sweden, and really lost a bit of joy for the game.

I love to pvp and i think it's unacceptable that green GTN-gear is better than most pvp-gear...

I think that the bolster should not be the same or better stats as the pvp-gear... Really close to it is fine with me, but it should absolutley not be better or even as good as...