Further Adventures on the Onslaught PTS

As I was hoping, the PTS was brought online before I had to disappear off across the Atlantic, allowing some time to hop back on and analyse the changes.

Along with reporting on these various changes, there were some inaccuracies in my original post that really needed updating. Granted, some of these were due to updates that were announced or brought in shortly after the post was uploaded but there were some which I had completely the wrong idea about.

I get easily confused by a lot of things these days.

Half a Decade

I may not be blogging consistently these days, something which I attribute to real life goings-on (which I will not go into any more detail on), and I'm honestly surprised I've been able to keep this going on for as long as it has been.

Most of my personal endeavours have collapsed in on themselves after a year at most. Based on this history, I would never have imagined my blog to have lasted two years, let alone five. Yet here we are. Fifth year over, and the sixth is beginning.

I don't have many plans for the blog currently, at least as far as pre-Expansion writings go, as indicated by just how empty this celebration post is especially after the last couple of years. There's a post I've been working on for the past couple of months which will go live on the last day of 5.0, showcasing my favourite and least-favourite aspects of the current expansion.

Beyond that, I think it will purely be PTS-related stuff. I am already fairly certain that Phase Two will begin after I'm out of the country from next Thursday, but we're still to see Hunters hit the PTS, hopefully this weekend, so I'll try and crank a post out before I depart for new territory if I can.

There are certainly some inaccuracies in my original post regarding the PTS, either because things have since been updated (I had already noted one change, but it is clear from the Mercenary and Powertech posts that set-bonuses in general are receiving a significant update at some point) or because I had completely the wrong end of the stick (e.g. set bonus attribute gain) at the time. It would just be easier to include those corrections in a new post than adjust a post that people may no longer be reading.

Or at least I view it that way.

So, five years on. How many may yet follow? I do not know, nor do I particularly wish to know. As with a lot of things for me these days, this blog is very much on "take it as it comes" status. I daresay things won't be at all different for the SWtOR community with its absence, but it's still been a useful outlet for my thoughts across the years.

That's all there is to this year's post. Now, on to the future and what it brings.

Thank you for your readership, those of you who have stuck with it all this while.

~Cal.

Adventures on the Onslaught PTS: Phase 1.5

With Onslaught due to launch next month (!), BioWare have been providing us with a steady flow of details regarding Classes, their new Abilities, and their various Tacticals and Set Bonus pieces. Last week they opened up the PTS, allowing people to test out the changes for Inquisitors and Warriors, before bringing it down within that same week to prepare for the inclusion of Agents. The PTS is currently open in "phase 1.5" of testing, although it will probably be brought down again next week to prepare for Hunters and phase 2.

I missed the initial batch of testing due to being on holiday, much to my disappointment. I was able to keep up with what people were saying on the testing forums, but both their reports and the official word of BioWare was not enough to really sate my interest. Notably, we knew what the ultimate tiers of the various Set Bonus items were going to be but the lower tiers were still a mystery - BioWare had highlighted that they would mainly be stat boosts and left it at that. Additionally, we didn't know how many of these sets would or wouldn't have six pieces.

Speaking of Set Bonus and Tactical items, the only ones that had been listed were specific to Classes; we'd already been told that there would be several items which everyone could use, but we weren't informed about any of these. Granted, considering the sheer potential of 'generic' items, this is likely because all the options aren't yet finished, but it would still have been interesting to receive official word on those which were ready to go. 

Then what about the Companions? BioWare had been hinting that they'd like to give Companion re-balancing another go, given how lackluster or powerful certain characters are, but there had been no indication of whether or not they'd even started this. 

So, when the PTS came back up on Wednesday, I happily launched myself into it. I'm in the fortunate situation whereby the Classes 'ready' for testing are those which I have the most experience with (sorry, Hunters) so when it came time for BioWare to list all the sets and Tacticals, I already had a good idea in my head of which items I was going to try out.

In this overview, I will also be listing just extremely generic findings as well as Class-specific ones. If you want to know what these are but have no interest in reading about Classes, you need merely look for the screenshots of the Imperial Fleet as that will be the cutoff point for Class details.