<SWTOR> How to Gear at Level 75

[Intisar]

Intisar’s Quick and Dirty Guide to Gearing in Onslaught

Step One: Vertical Progression

Welcome to Onslaught! This post is meant to a guide to how to gear up for SWTOR's newest expansion. I’ve tried to answer some of the most common questions about the new Spoils of War system. Step two will cover the horizontal progression system meant for those wanting to min-max their gear.

Augh! I’m confused by Spoils of War! 19 tiers?! What’s an amplifier? What’s a tactical? What are Tech Fragments? Where do I start? Where does it end?

Those are all good questions! But as the Hitchhiker’s Guide reminds us: Don’t Panic.

If you complete the Onslaught story you will come away with a full set of 268 gear. Equip it all! Most loot drops are now personal, go directly to you and are based on your current average Item Level.

The first thing you should when you hit level 75 is to make sure you’re loot specialization is set. This toggle allows you to target what type of gear you want to collect, even if you’re not currently in that spec. If you’re a tank but want to compete dailies or flashpoints faster, then set your loot to tank and your spec to dps and collect away! Even classes with three dps specs like Sentinels and Snipers should make sure to set their preferred loot specialization since some gear is targeted not only for specific classes, but also specific disciplines.

The goal of the Horizontal gearing stage is to upgrade your equipment as fast as possible. Item level 306 is the highest item rating in the game right now. You can ignore balancing stats, using augments or paying attention to amplifiers until later. If you receive any item with a higher item level than what you’re currently wearing, equip it. That’s all there is to it. Much of the gear will be non-modable. That’s fine; you may only be wearing it for a few hours, so not having to mess with mods is a good thing. If you have a favorite weapon, by all means plug in mods, and barrels and hilts from your drops to keep it up to date.

As you play, any enemy you defeat can drop loot, but the more difficult the opponent, the better the odds of getting an upgrade. Therefore flashpoint and operations bosses will be your best source of upgrades. The higher the difficulty of the content, the longer you will be able to reliably farm it for upgrades. Solo flashpoint bosses award loot, but a Veteran or Master Mode boss will have a higher chance to drop upgrades.

You can also get equipment boxes from other activities: the Onderon daily Patrol and Weekly quests and the Mek Sha heroic reward boxes. Likewise, you can get extra boxes from queuing for Group Finder activities. Group Finder is currently clogged with people who only want to run the fastest flashpoints as fast as possible. If that’s your jam, go for it; Hammer Station awaits!

You can also get gear from PVP, but not at as quick a pace as flashpoint speed runs.

Crew skills: I do NOT recommend crafting for upgrades. Currently crafting is far more trouble than it’s worth. The material costs for the new augments, reusable stims, and craftable tacticals is very, very high. If you want to craft, save your mats for that stuff.

However, you can use the Treasure Hunting skill to jump-start your gearing. Both grade 10 AND 11 lockbox missions can yield 276 gear. It won’t be glamorous or well itemized, but you can skip past most of the green gear level that way.

What are Tech Fragments?

Tech Fragments are Onslaught’s new Legacy based gear currency. You get Tech Fragments from Flashpoint and Operations bosses and from deconstructing gear. You know all those drops you get that aren’t upgrades? Don’t vend them! Put them in the Deconstruction window and grind them into Jawa Junk and Tech Fragments.

You can spend Tech Fragments in three ways in the Supplies section of Fleet.

• First you can purchase specific set pieces and Tactical items from the class Vendors. Each item costs 3000 Fragments and 1 million credits. It’s not cheap, but if you want a specific item, that’s your best bet to avoid all RNG.

• Second, Kai Zykken is open for business on weekends. He sells a random selection of gear at half the price of the regular vendors. He’s not reliable but any stretch, but if you get lucky you can save some scratch.

• Finally, there is the random gear vendor. From this vendor you can purchase specific types of pieces such as implants, relics, gloves, off-hands, etc. The exact gear will be random, but it will match your currently selected loot discipline and is often an upgrade to your current gear level.

Should I save my Tech Fragments or spend them as they come in?

That’s up to you! We will eventually have more Tech Fragments than we’ll know what do with, but for now they are valuable. Personally I recommend saving them up. At the very least, try to keep a couple thousand on hand in case Kai has something good on sale some weekend. Most gear comes and goes, but a good a Tactical will last a long time. However, if you’re stuck on the cusp of a new gear level (say, you’re wearing 280 ear piece while everything else is 284), definitely grab a quick upgrade from the Random Vendor to put you over the top.

The maximum number of Tech Fragmens you can have is 5000, so be sure to spend them down if you get close to the cap.

What is Renown?

The last source of gear is Renown. Completing quests and conquest objectives, killing mobs rewards Renown points that advance your Renown level; each level comes with a crate that awards some random gear. Even if you don’t get an upgrade, I suggest claiming all gear from Renown Crates instead of grinding it into more points as we did with Galactic Command. Deconstruct that gear into Tech Fragments, which are a more reliable source of gear than Renown.

Do I really need this gear?

That depends on what you’re doing. If you want to do story stuff or have fun with NOR Sunday nights, then don’t sweat it. SWTOR has gone to great lengths to be very casual friendly and this has not changed. We don’t do gear checks for story mode operations. As you play gear will come and you’ll get it having fun with guildies. Don’t feel like you need to spend endless hours grinding Hammer Station for Best in Slot loot.

If you want to run tougher flashpoints or operations or compete in PVP then, yes, you should get to 306, but I honestly don’t want to see anyone do so in a way that isn’t fun.

How do I get gear for my alt?

It's easy! Whenever you get gear for your main character, you get gear for you alt too! Spoils of Wars has fully embraced SWTOR's Legacy system. EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF GEAR you'll get at level 75 is Legacy bound and can be mailed to your alts or stored in your Legacy bank. Eventually you'll get class specific gear, but you can also keep a generic set that any of your characters can quickly equip and use when they reach level 75

Coming soon: Step Two: Horizontal Progression! Amplifiers and Tacticals and Sets, oh my!

[Intisar]

I had hoped to get part two of this guide up this week, but it probably won’t happen until the weekend at the earliest. Since folks might start hitting item level 306 before then, I thought I’d post the short version.

DPS

For 110% accuracy you need 1590 Accuracy rating
For 1.4 second Global Cool Down you need 1213 Alacrity
Put the rest in Critical

During KotET it was possible to run high Alacrity builds to get a 1.3 second GCD, but you need 3206 Alacrity to get there now and that sacrifices too much Crit.

TANKS

Same as KotET, try to keep Shield and Absorb more or less equal. However Defense is okay again, so use Defense mods.

Level Locked Content and Relics and Stims

A side effect of all old content being Level Locked to 70 is that Endurance, Power and Mastery are set to static values. This means relics, stims, mods, augments etc. that boost those stats have NO EFFECT in any group PVE content aside from the Corellia flashpoint and the Dxun operation.

Only our gear Item Level gives us a buff that increases those stats, but tertiary stats on gear like Crit, Alacrity, Shield and Absorb still do work in Legacy content. Therefore we should be using relics and stims that boost those stats.

Devastating Vengeance and the Primeval Fate Sealer are the best relics for DPS and Healers. Healers can also use Ephemeral Mending relics as well. Yes, I am actually recommending the two relics that have traditionally been the worst. No one is more surprised than me.

Tanks should use the Shield Amplification relic and pick between Reactive Warding, Shrouded Crusader or one of the new relics with static Shield or Absorb to help balance their stats.

However, Serendipitous Assault and Focused Retribution are still the best relics for Corellia and Dxun and other level 75 areas. So we should still keep those around in our legacy banks.

Likewise the best Stim for everyone in legacy content is the Accuracy/Crit stim.

Finally augments. If you’ve leveled crafting you know how expensive even blue augments are to make. If you have any gold augments from level 70, I’d say keep using those for now. Even level 70 purple 228 augments are perfectly fine to start with.