It's been a while since my last PTS post, but we've had an absolute shedload of stuff come in over the past few weeks.
Firstly, legendary items have been announced and the initial batch released. Then itemisation was confirmed to be getting a massive overhaul from 6.0, including the announcement of the removal of Renown. Finally, we've now seen the options to choose a secondary combat style be implemented for existing characters.
So, what's new?
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Legendary Items
BioWare announced these with great fanfare; no more would we need to collect six armour pieces to get a set bonus, we could all just grab implants and earpieces which have the bonuses included and not worry about anything else! Except that it was soon revealed that, actually, the earpieces were included erroneously. Whoops!
From a simplicity point-of-view, this does make a lot of sense. With loadouts and multiple combat styles coming in, not to mention the sheer amount of mods you can plug into your specs now, maintaining multiple gear sets for each of your chosen combat styles would be very difficult. Just making the legendaries unique essentially means that you could more easily acquire a full set of generic for your alts and just pass the implants around. Heck, depending on the ease of acquiring legendaries you could get multiples of those as well!
Plus this also means that, while getting the "wrong" legendary is still possible, at least it won't matter as much as getting the "wrong" six-piece that just won't work with your chosen mods...
The current batch of legendaries are intriguing. Some are returning set bonuses from previous expansions, such as the Field Medic's package which has a 15% chance to increase healing done by 2% every 30 seconds whenever you heal a target, while others are part of current sets. For example, a Sage can recreate the Gathering Storm set bonus by grabbing the Gathering Storm and Unmatched Haste packages.
Something which a lot of people picked up on was how several of these had accuracy. Great for DPS, and those are the only players interested in accuracy, right? Well... one of these particular items for Scoundrel increased their critical chance by 10% whenever they gained an Upper Hand. Understandably, healers were a bit ticked off that such a useful legendary for them had a stat that they couldn't use. BioWare's response to this seems to be along the lines of: "We acknowledge that some people don't like that some useful legendaries have accuracy, so we'll just remove all accuracy from them!".
This removal of accuracy also seems to now extend to non-legendary implants and even earpieces. If - IF - this holds true for 7.0, which I hope it doesn't, this would perhaps indicate that all DPS just need to grab accuracy augments and rely on their gear for everything else, at least initially. Not great by any means, but things may yet still change.
I really hope it does, at any rate...
Incidentally, speaking of change, Adept is now Alacrity, Initiative is now Critical, and Quick Savant - of all things - is now Absorption. This only seems to apply to new items, so don't worry about your 306 Adept Enhancements now containing Alacrity. I am confused, but alright, I'll go with it.
I like the look of a good number of these Legendaries, with my particular favourites being:
- Champion's Precision (Combat Focus [et al.] increases your critical chance by 5% for 8 seconds).
- Energy Regulators (increases Energy regeneration by 1 while in cover / reduces Hunker Down's cooldown by 10 seconds and increases Energy regeneration by 2 while Hunker Down is active; this one has different descriptions depending on faction...)
- Fearless Victor (increases Melee damage dealt by 5% for 15 seconds when you use a rage-costing Melee attack)
- Force Training (increases Melee and Force damage by 3%).
- Improved Targeting (reduces the cooldown of Smuggler's Luck [et al.] by 15 seconds).
- Locked and Loaded (increases Ranged and Tech damage by 3%).
- Tactician (gaining an Upper Hand increases your critical chance by 10% for 10 seconds once every 18 seconds).
I'm very much looking forward to seeing what else they can come up with.
Just, please, something better than Gathering Storm...
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Itemisation
For the past five years, BioWare's gearing systems have mostly been along the lines of "play what you want, and eventually you'll get the best gear in the game". With the exception of 258 gear, which you could only get from Ossus and Master Mode Gods, this has held true since 5.0, with Ops just being one of the many things you could do to get gear (granted, it was an easier path to full 242 / 248 than most).
With 7.0, they seem to be introducing a hybrid system. It has elements of the following:
- 1.0's strict caps on gear from specific content.
- 4.0's "highlighted" activities giving better rewards.
- 5.2's upgrade system.
- 6.0's "everything gives gear" system.
The astute among you might notice the contradictory natures of bullet points 1 and 4, and I have to acknowledge that compared to a lot of other gearing systems BioWare have done this system is really quite complicated.
To break it down:
Each activity will have its own gear-track. Conquest will award one gear, as will Flashpoints, Operations, and PvP. The gear that comes from these activities will all be upgradeable using materials gleaned from the same activities, so you can only upgrade a "Flashpoint" piece with Flashpoint materials.
Each week, specific activities will be highlighted and give better rewards. Ostensibly, these are higher values of upgrade materials just to make the upgrade path easier. You'll still get materials from non-highlighted stuff, so you aren't prevented from doing anything you choose; you'll just get more from whatever activity BioWare have promoted for the week.
Only Conquest gear can be bought outright, using a new currency; "Medals of Commendation". You get 200 of these per Conquest completion, with more coming from additional activities. In the previous PTS build, it would cost 1,515 Medals and 210 Aquatic Resource Matrices (a new item gleaned from daily zones and heroics) to get a single character to the initial 7.0-Conquest cap. These values have since been updated and a weekly cap of 600 imposed on Medals of Commendation.
Each of these activities will also have caps that will ebb and flow throughout 7.0. Conquest gear, Noble Decurion, can be upgraded to 326, which is the same immediate max-rating as Supreme Decurion (Master Flashpoint) and Columi (Veteran Operations) gear. As time goes on, this gear can be upgraded to 328 and 330, the same rating as Rakata (Master Operations). Further complicating matters is the news that R-4 Anomaly will introduce higher ratings still (334 from Veteran), with any gear coming from 'current' content heavily implied to only be upgradeable to 330 as a maximum.
Essentially, if you get a single character into full 326 gear from Conquest, that will be enough to start doing Veteran Mode Operations (ideally when augmented) and perform to a good standard in everything below that. 326 Columi gear is functionally identical to 326 Noble Decurion, although the stats on Columi are "optimised"; that is to say that you'll be with substantially higher Endurance in Conquest gear and not hitting quite as hard. The armour rating is identical at equal rating, so you won't be squishier or anything in Conquest gear. It'll be enough to get on by with the majority of stuff, but if you want to perform to your absolute best in Master Mode operations you ideally need to get VM ops gear somewhere along the line.
To put an extra barrier on Conquest gearing rates, BioWare have updated the personal yield score to 100,000 from 50,000. This will make it a bit grindier, but since they are not actively removing any Conquest objectives beyond Renown: Rank Up, it won't be vastly slower or more tedious. The Personal Conquest Requisition also now gives 100,000 points, so if push comes to shove you could just save those up and use them on your level-80 characters to guarantee that you'd get "easy" access to the upgrade currency.
Regardless of whether you have alts or not, you would want to look primarily at Flashpoints to supplement your Conquest activities if you want to get gear quickly. You can gear through Conquest just as you would with alts - it would just be a slow activity by itself. Flashpoint and Conquest crates will give guaranteed upgrades for your lowest-rating slot, so since you can now do the Flashpoint weeklies three times a week, for example, that could well be a very lucrative way of getting gear for single characters.
For example, let's say that you get one character to full 326. All your others just have 320 mainhands and offhands from the Manaan story. If you send your Sage's 326 armour, earpiece, relics, and implants to your Gunslinger with 320-rating guns, they will have 325 rating gear. The very next Conquest or MMFP crate they open will contain a shiny new 326 gun, since that is their lowest-rating slot. Hey presto, you're now one step closer to another character in full 326 gear.
If you repeat the process, ensuring that each time you leave one slot below 326 and at or above 320, you'll get any alt to full-326 just by using fourteen crates of any kind (ignoring any loot you get at that rating from FPs). You can absolutely still game the system if you're so inclined.
Modifications are also not going to be part of this system at first. All gear introduced with 7.0, even from current Master Modes, will be static, with only the aforementioned introduction of 334-rating gear bringing in modifications again. Mods and the like will eventually be introduced to the wider player-base as well, although it's not yet clear if this will still only be 334 or if lower-rating mods will be brought in.
Understandably, this is causing a fair amount of frustration for numerous reasons. If you like 6.0's system because it got your one character 306 gear within two weeks, you'll be annoyed that you can't repeat the same feat as easily with 326 gear. If you liked getting to max. rating just by doing whatever, you'll be annoyed that BioWare are putting the "best" gear in ops again. If you liked min-maxing your characters, you'll be annoyed that you can't do that until BW introduce moddifiable gear with R-4 Anomaly and / or eventually make it accessible to the wider player-base. If you like Renown because it gave you a fun extra target to hit while also getting gear, then you'll definitely notice its absence.
Oh, yeah, Renown. Let's get to that.
BioWare are very keen to get back to a more linear gearing path, one where players can look ahead and easily identify when, how, and where they'll get their next upgrade from. Renown, a system which is purely RNG, just doesn't fit into that philosophy. Plus, with at least seven distinct gear sets, trying to adapt the system to suit it just wouldn't have worked easily.
I might have had my gripes about the system (it only rewarding gear compared to Command crates rewarding nice cosmetic items and Reputation trophies), but I won't deny that I shall miss it. I very much like the concept of endless-levelling, and I take great pride in the fact that I have two characters at 999 Renown without either having once indulged in anything like Karagga's Palace or Toborro's Courtyard farming. Screw your "it's easy if you do this" methods, I do things my own way.
I certainly won't miss the endless barrage of mods and enhancements from loot, especially as with my OCD I just had to get all the stats "perfect"; a 1 / 60 chance to get a specific enhancement... yeah, I won't miss that grind one bit.
Speaking of things not being updated to match the new system: crafting.
I had wondered why all this time crafting was not getting an update. When I realised that BioWare might be removing mods from gearing a few days before they announced their plans, I hypothesised that perhaps they were taking a deep look at crafting, since if mods weren't to be a thing then what would Cybertech get? Earpieces, that's it? Joy. So maybe, just maybe, BioWare were looking at giving Cybertech and Artifice an augment apiece, since there are enough to go around without anyone missing out, and that was the reason why--
Nope, they just aren't updating crafting with 7.0.
All 6.0 augments and augment kits will be usable, and so too will any and all of the materials that we use now. Yes, even the OEMs and RPMs, which will now be available for 7,500 Tech Frags instead of 10,000. We will eventually see crafting be updated within their 10-year-anniversary celebration plans in 2022, so the long-term viability of grinding gold augments is a tiny bit in-question still. Will it be worth it? Absolutely, for certain bits of content. How long will they be viable for? I'm guessing six - seven months, tops. Just be sure to factor in a relatively short shelf-life before you start worrying about buying gold augments now.
Something which I know concerns several people is that operations can once again be out-geared. Once you're in full 334-rating gear, you're a couple of tiers above the maximum balance for all current Master Mode operations. That means they'll just be so easy, right? Well, they'll certainly be easier but I don't really see things becoming so drastically easy that they'll be "boring". Even when we were in 252 / 258 gear we still weren't making the DPS checks on the Terror from Beyond effortlessly, after all.
Plus, this is just how things used to be - we're all so used now to 306 being the default tuning and everything being difficult that it's just ingrained in some people that this is the correct way of things. Campaign, Dread Guard, Kell Dragon, Dread Forged, Dread Master, Monolithic, GEMINI MK-5, Experimental Ossan, Masterwork Ossan. These are all gear sets that were released later on in prior expansions. Did they make things smoother? Of course they did. Did they make things one-shottable? Not really, as you just can't out-gear certain mechanics. Gear isn't going to stop you being punted off the top floor of Revan or melting to the beams of ESNE and AIVELA if you don't select the appropriate buff at the right time.
This is the first time that BioWare have outright stated that operations will eventually be out-geared before an expansion launches, and I think this is what has caused the concerns. Just because we can out-gear the other Master Modes doesn't make them irrelevant; they'll still be useful for acquiring any upgrade materials for all operations gear, so unless they make it so that 332+ gear can only be upgraded with specific materials from R-4 Anomaly (which I hope they don't - they tried that trick with Master Gods and look how well that panned out!) you should still have a very valid reason to keep doing the other Ops besides pure interest and enjoyment.
At least, that's how I hope it will work. There are lots of things we still don't know, and while I won't deny that I do have my own concerns over how some of these paths may unfold I also have to say that I'm looking forward to a lot of what BioWare have announced here. My only real disappointment is that gearing alts beyond 326 won't be a particularly fast endeavour. It'll still be possible, sure, it'll just require a fair bit more time and patience. I'm okay with that after the very fast-paced and almost pressuring gearing styles of 6.0.
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Combat Styles
With the most-recent PTS build, we now know how pre-existing characters will be able to choose our combat styles. Fresh level 1 characters can outright pick two distinct styles, but pre-existing characters will be locked into their current primary style. Force characters can choose to play as the opposing alignment if they have the Light / Dark V achievements completed, but tech characters are stuck as their current style. Additionally, you will be forced to pick a second style and this cannot be the same as your primary. Amusingly, one of my guildies was able to pick Sorcerer twice due to initially picking it instead of Sage, but I have to think that this is not supposed to be intentional.
I have to say that I'm quite disappointed by that. I was hoping that we wouldn't be forced to pick a secondary style, and that we could just roll with whatever style we kept or picked as our primary and be done with it. I had certainly not intended to pick any secondary styles for any of my characters, not even for the two who I knew for sure would be switching to Operative and Scoundrel. Ah well. Not the end of the world.
It's quite an in-depth process to pick your secondary combat style; you get teleported to this special instance (a plane of the Force for Force-users and a GSI combat-training room for tech characters), where an NPC guides you through the process, identifies the traits of your chosen new styles, and that's that. Done. Certainly far more in-depth than I had anticipated!
On the subject of combat styles, I absolutely have to gripe about Gunslingers and Snipers for a sec. BioWare have disabled the cover-bar option for both combat styles, suggesting that it is going away with 7.0. I can definitely understand why, as BW's whole mantra with this process is to reduce a lot of confusion about certain specs and how they play, and the cover-bar has often been cited as a source of confusion for many.
As someone who has used it religiously since they first started playing Gunslinger, this is going to absolutely screw with how I play those characters if it's an intentional removal. All of the combat abilities which I use in cover (so all but Haemorrhaging Blast, Shrap Bomb, and Vital Shot for Dirty Fighting) are covered up by the "Take Cover" button in row 1, at which point they become accessible. I've already adjusted this action bar to account for the removal of the cover-bar, and it's proving very, very difficult to unlearn seven years' worth of playstyle.
I'm sure I'll crack it eventually, but I am concerned that this is going to compromise my effectiveness in progression content. Hunker Down being in a new position, a new button required to put me in cover... yeah, it's going to be some time until I get that sorted.
I had already been leaning towards making Sage my main for progression content since I absolutely adore what they're doing to Balance this time, and I feel this may be the push I need. I already know my Sage playstyle won't be changing, so I won't be making as much of a mess in adjusting her to progression as I could be for my Slinger.
I can definitely understand why BioWare would want to remove the cover bar, but I really hope that it isn't an intentional long-term removal. There are things which I'm sure some readers would want me to focus on as more important changes or removals, but this is really the only thing which I feel will be a definite loss. I'll adjust if it happens, but that doesn't stop me from hoping that it won't.
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Miscellaneous
Clash of Destiny is back as the menu music! Huzzah!
Not much else to add, really. This was the main thing I was really hoping we'd get with 7.0 and I'm absolutely ecstatic that it's being reintroduced. I'm still a bit sad that The End in the Stars didn't quite land the way BioWare intended it to, but I can't deny that my ears will not miss the opening seconds.
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Conclusion
Honestly, a lot of 7.0 feels like BioWare have realised that they made quite a few mis-steps with 6.0 and are backtracking on it a lot.
- "Too many gear sets with 6.0!" There are still a lot of set bonuses, but it's much easier to get the effects without collecting every possible item.
- "Tuning for operations is out-of-whack! They've become too easy / difficult with the introduction / removal of Veteran's Edge!" All group content is now at level 80 again with appropriate balancing, and if you still find it too difficult you can eventually out-gear the content anyway.
- "Too much RNG!" Gear is now very linear with only a limited amount of RNG. Heck, even the gear-tokens are coming back once R-4 Anomaly is implemented.
- "Players shouldn't be able to get to max-rating just by running Spammer Station!" Flashpoints only go up to 326 gear by default, and even at identical ratings ops gear is more viable for higher content.
- "Crafting is too tedious!" Well... okay, nothing on this one so far apart from the notion that we can all use 6.0 augments. If accuracy remains absent on all earpieces and implants this may result in forcibly restricting all DPS to use accuracy augments, so not sure how this tediousness will change.
Regardless of whether or not you agree with any of the above sentiments, BW can't really win either which way. They make things easy, the hardcore raiders complain. They make things difficult, the more casual players complain. They try and strike a happy medium between the two and people still find something to complain about.
Have BioWare got things right this time? Not for me to say. Whatever's "right" is subjective, and not something that anyone can hope to work out from an objective standpoint without actually witnessing what these changes mean. For example, if these announcements result in pushing away a lot of players, thus forcing another major turn-around that somehow deviates from BW's initial 7.0 plans (hey, haven't we seen that somewhere before...?) then one could perhaps begin to see some merit in calling their scheme "wrong" from a majority perspective.
If, on the other hand, not a lot really changes - we all know how much the internet loves to gripe and make bold claims about how things are going to happen in bigger ways than they actually do - then it suggests that whatever BioWare are doing it is somehow working to their advantage.
Things are changing, nobody can deny that. Are the changes good, are they bad, well, you can of course form your own opinions on that.
From my perspective, I categorise the changes thus:
Linear gearing system: Good. RNG gearing was horrible for my OCD, so I am very much looking forward to knowing where my upgrades will come from and the sorts of stats I can expect. Heck, I'm even looking forward to not dealing with mods for the immediate future! I hope, really really hope, that they don't do 60 enhancements per rating again...
Removing set bonuses from gear: Good. As mentioned, this makes Loadouts much easier since you can just collect multiple 326 Conquest sets, send them to your alts, and hey presto they've all got their own gear! Nice and easy, they're able to do whatever they please, and you don't need to worry about whether or not Sage 3 has their gear in their Cargo Bay. Not that this will outright prevent people from still finding ways to lose gear, of course...
Restricting gear upgrades and caps by content: Ambivalent. Part of this seems like a bit of an unnecessary complication, such as only being able to upgrade a Flashpoint gear-piece using Flashpoint materials rather than a generic currency like Unassembled Components. The concept of upgrading is nice, and I'm pleased to see it back again. I don't necessarily mind FPs only giving up to 326 initially, as it does make Operations feel more worthwhile from a gearing perspective. I'm sorry, I'm very much one of those who was against Spammer Station being the thing to do to get gear; I'm not against them giving gear, but it should only be introductory gear for harder content rather than giving up to max-rating.
R-4 Anomaly giving access to higher item ratings than current Ops: Ambivalent. I won't pretend that I was a little bit annoyed when I first read that, as that meant that our guild's raid teams would push harder than we had anticipated to do R-4 A, but I can understand why BioWare are doing it. After all, this is something else that we've seen before, starting all the way back with EC HM dropping Campaign gear. It's just that this is once again the first time that BioWare have announced such an occasion this early into an expansion's life-cycle, severely limiting our long-term chances of encouraging more flexibility in the type of content that we could realistically encourage our teams to do. I'm pleased, therefore, that R-4 A is delayed by a month or so to ensure that we have no choice but to go and do other content first.
Crafting not getting an update: Disappointed, but not surprised. Given the nature of how gearing is going to work initially, working in all of the crafting skills to work with the revised system would be very difficult. Sure, some bits could be updated but not others, but even updating crafting a little bit takes away from BioWare's new plans for strict linear gearing. We don't know how far all this goes for the moment, such as whether we really will need to craft a shedload of accuracy augments, but we do at least know that BW do have plans to update crafting as 2022 progresses. We'll just have to hope that it won't be as tedious as 6.0's crafting was.
PvE and PvP gear being separate again: Good. While I mentioned earlier that I would have loved to have seen a more generic currency brought in for upgrades like Unassembled Components, I can definitely see that this would have consequences if PvE and PvP gear was utterly identical and one track was faster than the other. We've seen that throughout 5.0 and 6.0 both when Unassembled Components were introduced (then made more reliably accessible for doing PvE content) and when RPMs were introduced. PvEers and PvPers shouldn't be forced to do the opposite activity to get better gear faster, and since PvP caps players to 326 there is theoretically no advantage to even farming 330 gear and running in since you won't be better off for it. I'm happy to see PvPers getting a track of their own with little-to-no PvE interference.
We're still in the dark about a fair few things, but I do like a fair bit about where all this is heading. I'm genuinely very much looking forward to the expansion, and I'm intrigued to see what sort of things BioWare have up their sleeve both for 7.0 and 2022!
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