Step 3 - Gear baby gear

Alright, you have a toon.  Now let's talk gear.  Gear, like in many games, is key at a low level.  So spend some creds to survive.

Advanced players - the good stuff's at the bottom of the page.  Scroll down my young apprentice.

The main thing to know is gear quality, here is the order in which they are effective from weakest to strongest:
White <  Green < Blue < Purple < Yellow
Orange gear is to be modified, may or not come with armoring/mods/enhancements.  Adaptive gear is not limited by class so a Commando usually requiring heavy armor can wear stylish dancer boots.

 Yellow: this is a new tier of gear in 5.x where is is also named "Legendary" and is the highest level you can get based on your CXP tier through packs, or through boss drops in operations.

 Some terminology you'll see in-game & in forums:

  • Left side: earpiece, implants, relics - cannot be legacy gear (see below)
  • Right side: all 7 armor pieces even if the braces are on left side, makes things simpler and may be legacy
  • MH: mainhand item - your primary weapon, may be Legacy
  • OH: offhand item - shield/focus/generator/knife/shotgun/pistol/saber, may be legacy


Where to get gear before level 70:
    1. Galactic Trade Network: place where players buy & sell stuff, it's the eBay of SWTOR.  When leveling a toon to 65, I stick to low-cost gear because I level too fast to benefit from the expensive stuff, I outgrow it too quickly.  So I stick with green or low-cost blue.
    2. Vendors all over, some take credits some commendations.  The Supplies area on fleet only takes commendations (you get those through drops or mission rewards).
    3. Drops!  Go in fights, win, get drops!  The badder the bosses, the better the gear.  You can also get drops in Flashpoints & Operations.  Kill stuff get gear, easy.
    4. Heroics will give you crates with 2 pieces of blue-grade gear so you don't need to spend a dime gearing while leveling.  Random each time but free > good :)
Personally I don't spend on gear I do the heroics until I hit 70 for gear for the boxes and buy if needed green on GTN as you level so fast these days.

Once you get to 70 it's a whole new ballgame, time to invest.  The purples you get from CXP packs now are raid-set bonus pieces for armor so you want to keep them (mouse over to see the bonuses at 2/7, 4/7 & 6/7 pieces).  If you use the same class on multiple toons (I have 2 dps commandos & 2 dps merc) you want to use "Legacy" gear - the orange type with the shield icon like my toon here (no comments on stats, work in progress!):

That legacy gear is mailable to alt toons or put in your legacy stronghold.  Gear once use many.  Lastly you want to add "Augments" on your toom (GTN or craft for yourself) and you need to buy the "augment kit" to install one - more creds to spend but worth it.  This is really important to boost your toon's specs and survive harder activities, look at Dulfy.net for class guides for the details of what you need to slap in for them specs.

One key thing is "Augments" where you can add an extra layer of "oomph" to your gear to push things further.  Any piece of gear can be augmented (even greens) but be smart the process is expensive.  View this as more stat slots for the same item, really useful.  A few tips:

  • You need to buy augment kits based on your level, I never augment anything unless it's the top-tier augment (which is currently MK-10).  You can put a MK-10 kit on anything but the augment slot you are bound by your toon's level.  So if I get a new toon, use a mainhand piece I really like & augment it (it will be an orange one for sure, adaptive or not) I'll put the level appropriate augment in there
  • Other than a mainhand I never augment anything until I hit level 70, waste of credits if you ask me, we level so fast this is not 1.0 anymore
  • The augments will help optimize results for your toons, use the guides at Dulfy for this (see below).
  • Also, this is a great way to make sure you get to 110% accuracy for raids.  Operation bosses give you a loving automatic 10% accuracy debuff (even the huge ones like Blaster), if you want to be effective get 110% and the Dulfy class guides have good info on what to use an the links at the bottom of this page too).  We all keep an eye out in guild & especially in pugs as some bosses/fights are dps and/or healer checks.
    •  Important note: healers DO NOT need accuracy as your heals will *always* hit.  If someone boats they added accuracy on a healer for raids, be weary!
    • Important note 2: well some accuracy on healers ain't bad if you wanna dps a bit but never add accuracy to your healers.  Just use whatever comes in your gear.  Remember you're there to keep folks alive not kill stuff.  If you wanna kill stuff "for realz like dude I wanna murder virtual critters" just dps silly Jawa..
  • You can craft the kits (Synthweaving, Armortech & Armstech if memory serves me well) or buy them on GTN
  • A full set for a toon is.. 14 like the 14 pieces of gear you have

You can get these gear pieces many places like reputation vendors on planets & fleet (Cartel Market) plus there is a vendor on fleet named "Adaptative Gear Vendor" in the supplies area.  Your next though should be - damn this toon is uuuuugly!  And rightfully so.  Would not use the look above for a toon, I do have a minimum of taste.  You can unlock "outfit" slots for credits on the right (I have 7 on this toon), here is the current look I use:


Here are some useful links:

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)