The Old Republic for Dummies

[Mav]

There seems to be a lot of confusion surrounding the stats and secondary stats, so I thought I'd try to clarify to the best of my ability and understanding.

 

Main Stats

 

The 5 main stats are Aim, Cunning, Strength, Willpower and Endurance. Each class has a separate main stat, Aim = BH/Trooper, Cunning = Smuggler/Agent, Strength = Knight/Warrior, Willpower = Consular/Inquisitor, and lastly Endurance is used by all classes and is directly related to your HP. There are exceptions, but generally speaking DPS and Healers want more main stat than Endurance and Tanks want more Endurance than main stat.

 

You do get secondary bonuses from other main stats, such as the Smuggler getting a bonus to Crit % from Aim, but you should not use gear/equipment with "secondary main stats" for this purpose as it isn't worth it.

 

Secondary Stats

 

There is a lot more confusion surrounding secondary stats than main stats for a variety of reasons. For one, diminishing returns play a much larger factor when you're talking about secondary stats, secondly you have to balance more stats instead of just stacking 1 like you would with your main stat. Secondary stats tend to break down nicely into groups.

 

Power and Critical Rating

 

Power is very simple to understand, for every 1 point in Power you gain a value of .24 to your Bonus Damage (and I think .17 Bonus Healing). So in layman's terms for every 100 points in power you will do on average 24 more damage to a target. It is important to note that Power has no diminishing returns, every point in Power will equal .24 bonus damage no matter how much Power you stack.

 

Critical Rating provides you with a bonus to the percentage that your attacks hit for critical damage. An easy concept to understand, but what is important here is that the Crit Rating is on a diminishing return curve so therefore past a certain point each point of Crit Rating gives you less and less benefit. Generally speaking the target range for a DPS/Heal class is around 285-350 points in crit.

 

Balancing Power and Critical Rating

 

You can get Power and Critical Rating from Mods, Enhancements, Color Crystals, Earpieces, Implants and Relics. However, you can never have both Power and Crit on the same modification, e.g. there is no Enhancement in the game that gives you +Power and +Crit. That makes stat balancing very simple! Once you get your Critical Rating around that 285-350 sweet spot range, everything else should go to Power.

 

Accuracy, Alacrity, and Surge

 

Accuracy is another simple stat to understand when you know the mechanics behind everything. All attacks in the game can be broken down into 2 different types, White Damage and Yellow Damage (colors are based on the flytext). There are sub-types of damage but that isn't important for this. What is important is that your % to hit/accuracy for White Damage is based on your standard/Weapon Accuracy %, and the % to hit/accuracy for Yellow Damage is based on your Tech/Force Accuracy %.

 

Now the real important part to know is that Weapon Accuracy starts at 90%, and Tech/Force Accuracy starts at 100%, so if your class/skill tree deals only Tech/Force damage, you don't need any points in Accuracy at all! DPS Sorceror's and Sage's fall into this category, and ALL healers don't need accuracy because heals are 100% to 'hit'. However, the classes that do deal in Weapon damage will want points in Accuracy. Depending on the class you tend to want around 250+ points in Accuracy which works out to 4 or 5 pieces of gear with Accuracy, some classes may be even less it depends on a lot of things, such as skill tree talent points that give accuracy and other factors.

 

Alacrity kind of works like 'haste' in other games, it lessens the total amount of time for any abilities with a cast bar, it does not matter if it is an activation cast or a channeled cast. In the case of a channeled cast, if an ability normally would do 1000 damage over 3 seconds, with Alacrity, you would still do 1000 damage, but maybe over the course of 2.7 seconds now. Basically although the channel time is less, the total damage is the same, so you can see how this would lead to a DPS increase. Oh and also very important, ALACRITY DOES NOT DECREASE THE LENGTH OF THE GLOBAL COOLDOWN.

 

Common sense would then dictate that the Stand and Cast DPS classes like Sages, Commandos and Gunslingers would gain a DPS boost from Alacrity, however that's really only true for Sages. If you put points into Alacrity as a Commando or Gunslinger, you run the risk of using your skills too fast without having enough time to regenerate your resource, be that Ammo or Energy, Commando's and Slingers get skill tree talents that boost Alacrity enough without spending stat points on it anyway, you are better off with your points in Accuracy or Surge.

 

Surge increases the bonus damage dealt by attack that are critical hits, so by default a Critical hit will deal 50% more damage than a standard hit of the same ability. Points in Surge further increase that 50% bonus damage, generally to the 70% and up range on most builds for classes. Similar to Crit Rating Surge reaches it's diminishing returns right around the 285+ points range.

 

Balancing Accuracy, Alacrity and Surge

 

Accuracy, Alacrity and Surge can be gained from the same pieces of equipment as Power and Critical Rating, with the exception that you cannot find these stats on Mods or Color Crystals. Although this group has 3 stats, you really only have to worry about balancing 2. Healers and DPS Sages don't need Accuracy, so then have to find the balance between Alacrity and Surge. All the other DPS classes don't use Alacrity so they are balancing Accuracy with Surge. Personally what I tend to do is "cap" my Accuracy or Alacrity and then dump the rest of my points into Surge, even though this means you are severely deep into the diminishing returns on Surge.

 

The Tanking Stats, Shield, Defense and Absorb

 

We'll talk about Shield first because you don't ever have to worry about Shield. What the Shield Rating does is boost your % chance that you will shield incoming damage, a shielded attack has its damage reduced by the % of Absorb. Not all attacks are shield-able, but that is a separate discussion from stat allocations. What you need to know about Shield is that when picking your stats as a tank you can choose between Shield and Accuracy, and since your role as a tank is damage mitigation and not specifically dealing damage, you don't care about accuracy so you will never take it. Therefore, you don't really need to 'manage' your shield rating, so lets move on to defense and absorb.

 

Defense and Absorb have the same stat relationship as Power and Critical Rating, so the stats can be found on all the pieces of gear and modifications with the exception of color crystals.

 

The Defense stat increases the Defense Chance %, this is the percentage chance that an incoming attack will completely miss you, dealing zero damage.

 

The Absorb stat increases your Shield Absorption %, so this stat works in tandem with your Shield percentage. As a quick example, let's say your shield has a 66% chance to proc with a 60% Shield Absorption rate. What this means is that 2/3rds of all incoming attack will be intercepted by your shield, and those intercepted attacks will do 60% less damage. So in effect you are taking 27% less damage than you would without a shield.

 

Anyway, tanking stats a lot more complicated than the stats for DPS as the desired values for tanks vary wildly depending on which class you are talking about, Guardian/Juggernaut, Vanguard/Powertech or Shadow/Assassin.

 

Speaking generically, Guardian's will want to be heavy on Defense, with less emphasis on Absorb because they have the lowest Shield chance. Vanguard's are the opposite, they rely the most on their shield and have the lowest innate defense chance so make less use of the defense stat. Shadow's tend to be in the middle and want a more even spread between Defense and Absorb. If you want to tank for end-game raids I highly suggest you do more in depth research for your specific class, and believe it or not the official SWTOR forums have topics with a wealth on information on tanking.

[Al_Ciao]

Thanks for the breakdown! You said only Sages get any benefit from Alacrity - does this apply also to their Imp equivalents, Sorcerers?

[mimartin]

Thanks for the breakdown! You said only Sages get any benefit from Alacrity - does this apply also to their Imp equivalents, Sorcerers?

 

yes it would

[Mav]

Thanks for the breakdown! You said only Sages get any benefit from Alacrity - does this apply also to their Imp equivalents, Sorcerers?

As mim said, yes, but perhaps I should clarify, all the healing classes benefit from Alacrity, so Sage/Sorceror, Scoundrel/Operative and Commando/Mercenary. DPS classes wise, generally speaking only the DPS Sage/Sorceror gets any real use from Alacrity. It's debatable whether or not small amounts of Alacrity provide a DPS boost to other cast classes like Commandos and Gunslingers, while in theory the answer should be an obvious yes, the problem is it makes it much more difficult to manage your resource pool, and if you run out of your resource, you'd end up doing a lot less damage . Sages/Sorcs don't really have that issue.

[Al_Ciao]

Cool! I'm DPS Sorcerer, which is why I asked I also have the Madness skill, which means I get Force Lightning (3 sec channel) with ZERO cooldown :D

 

*cue evil laughter*

[Eefluxx]

how do you tell what your surge is? I haven't been able to find anything on my characters that says surge is this even tho I know have surge on the characters.

[mimartin]

Few ways, the method I use and the one that will give you the best tools to optimize your gear and to get others to help you optimize you gear is sign up and put you, build, gear and datacrons on Ask Mr. Robot.

 

Bremiaha

 

Mar'ina

 

Another way to do it is just look at you gear and add up the numbers. Old fashion, but still works.

 

In game way is go to the Character Sheet hover mouse over Critical Mutiplier.

[Totenkopf]

Interesting find. Bookmarked for future reference.

[Hassat Hunter]

I want bugs crushed. And even though, when I was still a sub all my reports got ignored (even the tiny text issues haven't gotten fixed)... here's another shot.

 

If someone wants to report this (can't since no sub anymore) either through the ingame system (copy+paste works) or the forums (link!) that would be appreciated. Hopefully BW listens for a change...

 

Bad ones;

* Whenever I get kicked by the server no more selection screen, but infinite loading screen.

* Doing Taral V. Getting killed after the bombing. Being spawned at the start, going all the way back, locked door, couldn't finish the flashpoint. Someone mentioned it might happen skipping bosses, but we killed all, even the bonus one.

* Containing the Beast (Belsavis daily quest). When my teammate entered the instance, my quest got reset, including the bonus (or social points gained during the initial convo). Maybe make the instances forced solo, better solution than this. Bonus (small) issue; kicking the box for the wielder has no description text.

 

* Helping out someone else for the Illum MQ in the Jedi Temple the messages kept getting repeated whenever I hit the trigger. They only run once for her (proper way) though.

* When still being on Balmorra, my Sith Warrior loading screen mentioned travelling to Nar Shaddaa already.

* Certain powers no longer stack their icons, meaning you can get a lot of debuff icons on you when fighting enemies. Annoying. Affected include (but probably not limited to); Shocked (Tech), Slowed (Tech), Crushed (Force), Poisoned (Physical).

* Certain actions miss description also in the english version. Aforementioned kick and; "Zyyskel" special attack (Belsavis), "Elshuu's Nightmare Warrior" special attack (Belsavis), Placing the bomb for detionation (Explosive Discontent, Dromund Kaas), "Captain Grimyk" special attack (Cademimu flashpoint, Republic), "Morgukai Cultist" and "Morgukai Chieftain" special attack (Nar Shaddaa). The other types of Morgukai it works flawlessly with though.

* During the final convo of Repelling Invasion (Balmorra Empire) helmets dissapeared. And that without being able to even use 'don't show helmets' (pref. players, no unlock bought).

* Vanguard Outpost (Balmorra, Empire) lacks a vendor droid.

* Certain weapons lack a proper description, like the Ilum turrets (on the big battlezone) or during the Battle of Ilum flahspoint (Republic, Hard); "acklay_droid_ranged_huttamingdroid" I got killed by.

* For Republic atleast (Consular ship), travelling to Hoth's animation seems broken. Tried both Fleet and Corscant, both time nothing happened when flying there, and exiting the ship showed landing on the Fleet/Coruscant. Did properly load Hoth afterwards though.

* Talking to Ciqala (Nar Shaddaa, Republic bonus) after accepting his quest gives a full cutscene mode look even though it's one line and should be a subsequent given during regular play.

[Hassat Hunter]

So I mentioned in a different post I bought an artifact unlock for my account on the GTN.

 

Guess what, it's broken.

It just says "unlock already applied on this character" when using it. And obviously I haven't (since I can't use purple gear).

 

Going to be really pissed if that's 1 million credits down the drain and BW does nothing about it.

[Eefluxx]

So a quick question about the legacy gear.

 

I hear you can take bound mods and armor and enhancements out of endgame gear and put them in legacy gear to send to an alt to use. and considering that the armor in the endgame gear is bound to chest feet hands etc you would need a complete set of legacy gear to send everything really.

 

So if this is true, is it possible if you kit the legacy gear can you send bound augments for alts to use? If so I can send all the willpower lvl 15 augs I had on Synfal to a Sage if i create it for the Sage to use. Was just wondering if anyone has tried this yet and if it works.

 

Also there doesn't appear to be any legacy anything to send crystals back and forth or barrels or hilts.

[Mav]

yes, if you augment legacy gear you can send bound augments.

 

technically there are legacy bound bowcasters that allow you to send color crystals and barrels between characters, but they are no longer available as they were part of a world event. and there are no legacy bound swords/lightsabers, so yeah you cannot send hilts to alts.

[Hassat Hunter]

Well, I got a mail back saying I have to skype VoIP support... joy (not). It better fixes my issue.

 

In the meanwhile, can someone pester support over at the costumer support forum (or with ingame support) about the "loose teammates bug" after flashpoints? It's annoying me and zbyl to no end that you have to manually spawn them after getting off the speeder and loading every map...

 

Or you can update my thread I made as sub here;

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=574063

with the new info. Since I know a lot more about the cause then I did then (which was not much as you can read).

[Hassat Hunter]

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=596077

 

Someone has the same issue.

Now I can't reply myself *grumbles* but could someone add that I have the same issue. Hopefully support would be quick to help us both then instead of just the OP.

Appreciated.

 

And sorry I have to ask you all, would love to just post myself :/

 

EDIT: Account name Hassat-Hunter, char name Jaellan... would help to mention

EDIT2: Asked the same on the OE boards and Deadlystream.

[Eefluxx]

One thing me and my buddy would do is after a FP or a herioc where we grouped with someone else we would degroup back to solo and then regroup with each other. This seemed to fix it for us. We just had to remember to do this.

 

One thing we have had a problem with is not being able to see if the other is losing health. The character bar on the side would constantly show full health but if you actually targeted your partner you would see he was almost dead. Relogging helped with this but it is annoying when one of us is always playing a helaer and has to relog to be able to make sure our partner is not getting killed.

 

But these thing only happend when we were in a group and didn't degroup and then regroup afterwards.

 

And Mav thank you for the answer to my question

[Hassat Hunter]

Worth a try next time, thanks.

[mimartin]

I had to call CS today, after reading the horror stories I was really worried. First they appoligized for long wait times, oh great this is going to take forever. Within 2 mins I was talking to a human. I told them my security key was the problem. She did not make me jump through 50 hoops proving that was the problem. She deleted the secuirty key and then told me to reinstall it.

 

I was back in game in 10 mins. I wish all CS was that good.

[Eefluxx]

So it looks like my prayers have been answered with this new Gree event. They have legacy bound weapons and if by some miracle I can get a gun and a lightsaber then I can send anything across to all my alts. Don't want to use the weapons as they look like end game gear anyway. I swear the blaster is the Taung blaster you can get from the Tionese vendor. The armor looks pretty cool but I wonder how long before people get tired of the glow in the dark image.

 

 

I do have a question about the event. It seems to be for level 50 but when I got to Ilum and went to the western shelf I think its called it said my levels have been upped to a lvl 50. Does this mean a lowbie could go in there and do the dailies and events as well?

 

 

Plus I have a question about the security key. I want to purchase one and since I don't have a cell phone I have to get a physical one from Origin. When I tried it asked for my EA email and password. So do I need to get an EA account just to get a security key?

 

Plus bought a Phantom mask last night before I went offline. This morning in my mail I had a classic Phantom mask as well as classic stuff from other things I had bought. Personally I didn't see the difference in the 2 Phantom masks nor in the 2 Despot masks but oh well. And I like the new look of the Trailblazer armor as compared to the old one. Makes me wish I had bought a Phantom chestpiece instead tho.

 

Also went ahead and pre-ordered the exspanion pack.

 

 

And one last thing I wanted to add. My commando healer is now lvl 37 almost 38 and of course healer specced. I still had Priorty Targets I in my mission log and had already beaten the World Boss on Coruscant with a group so I needed the one on Taris.

 

Lo and behold noone is interested in the World Boss so I decided to tackle it myself. Since Elara is basically useless in this situation (or so I thought) I had her out anyways. It turns out whenever Taris Alpha kicked me thru the goalpost for the winning score he would then concentrate on Elara allowing me to heal myself in the process. This worked out really well until she died of course. But after long minutes and constant shooting with an occasional heal and flame grenade I managed to take him down by my lonesome. I know lvl 50's can do it but I felt proud of myself being lvl 37 and accomplishing this feat.

[Hassat Hunter]

My 1.7 report... part 1;

As expected, Ilum exploded after 1.7's release. 10 full instances? Server has trouble.

 

Overall dailies are fun. PvP still sucks. Not noticing you are flagged than getting gangbanged solo by 8 imperials isn't fun.

Aside from that, it's something new.

 

Some quirks though... to limit traffic on the heroic there are 5 points to do it. Good you say? Well, they planted 2 damn inside the PVP zone. And trust me, the Heroic is hard enough without having to worry about PvP groups killing you. So in reality, only 3 are in use, and one of them also has severe imperial raid parties hanging about.

Final result; it really only has 2 nodes, where constantly about 3+ groups battle for the spawns and useable items... :/

 

Also funny was we got a group to do the heroic, got 1/3, then our healer vanished. Returned a while later... "Guess they didn't fix the crashes"... After that went flawless though, excluding the lag.

 

And last annoying bug/quirk; In the north was a quest marker. You would think you have to go around there. There was a champion opponent there. Okay. Tried attacking it, insta-kill. Worst of it was that unlike other types of such defense you did need to pay repair costs. 5000 credits to waste due to a stupid marker being too high up. And the damn turret (why is it there anyway) being bugged.

Also seems repair costs gone up... might have to do with them fixing enchantments being in selling (and repair?) prices.

 

End of report of the first 2 hours with 1.7

 

part 2 (a few hours late);

My authorisation I mentioned before? I noticed it changed. It now says it's for the player char, not the account. Aargh. And worst is... it STILL DOESN'T work.

 

They also made changes to the GTN. "any" doesn't work anymore, you need "cheap or higher"... that it's the same exact thing makes no difference. They added a 3-char limit for search. So finding mod 7? Fat chance, can't search for 7 anymore, good luck finding 7 between pages of other mods.

 

They added new legacy unlocks. Ship teleport. Also 3 to make it from 18-1 hour. They are already pre-unlocked though. Wonder if BioWare is going to turn that back...

 

The "gree" pvp event on Ilum is horrible. Apparently the want people to contest in the middle. But all it leads to it's 12 enemies being bored waiting for respawn there. And sometimes you do get a group of 4 thinking it's fun to kill single people around. So much joy. I'll never do that daily ever again.

 

Also got a big ops group of about 10 people for the Heroic. So much hectic fighting. And somehow half the people never got stuff to update properly, making us fight way more than we really had to, and much trouble shooting was needed.

 

Aside that the usual with lag, players getting kicked and crashing.

 

It started with fun, but when the evening went on, I logged out being utterly annoyed. Mostly noticing my item change and the gtn. *sigh*

[mimartin]

I did the Gree stuff (not PvP) on 4 different toons tonight, 2 times mainly solo and 2 times in groups. Even did the heroic once solo. Found everything extremely easy, with the exception of doing the heroic solo with my healer without the use of flyby. Never any danger of dying, but it took forever because I couldn't use 2 of by best attacks for fear over flagging myself.

 

No lag or crashes on my end.

[Miltiades]

It's definitely their way to try reinvigorate the Ilum PvP scene. If that's gonna work, I don't know, but for the moment, there's definitely some PvP going on. By the way, Hassat, you should be getting a warning whenever you enter PvP areas. You get 10 seconds to get out of such an area if you don't want to be flagged.

 

For the non-PvP dailies you best not be flagged, since toons from the opposing factions are definitely going to hide out in the other faction's area trying to spoil up the fun.

[Hassat Hunter]

I know, but to do all dailies, you have no choice.

And sometimes I end up flagged for stuff I have no idea why. Teammates? Flashpoints? Not always so sure why I'm suddenly flagged, it's not always warned.

[Miltiades]

I know, but to do all dailies, you have no choice.

And sometimes I end up flagged for stuff I have no idea why. Teammates? Flashpoints? Not always so sure why I'm suddenly flagged, it's not always warned.

Teammates, probably. If one of your group is flagged and he buffs/heals you, you get flagged as well. Then you don't get warned, that's true.

 

Luckily, the reputation system is legacy wide, meaning every toon works towards one goal and you don't have to do all the dailies with one toon to get through the ranks at a decent pace.

[Hassat Hunter]

I only got one lvl 50 though...

 

Anyway, anyone else notices heavily increased repair costs? I did. Less than 3000 for wipe before, now over 5000 for wipe. Almost double.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=596970

 

Let's hope they hear our dissatisfaction and change it back. I can only dread how much repair costs if I actually had items worth mentioning 0_o

 

EDIT:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5847876#edit5847876

Can I say "called it"?

[mimartin]

EDIT:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5847876#edit5847876

Can I say "called it"?

What...makes perfect sense to me.

 

I didn't notice anything different about repair cost. My largest repair cost was 5k with my Jedi Knight because we did die once when I messed up and helped imps kill their target instead of helping Mav with our target. Too much crap blowing up at once.

 

My repair bill on the other three toons ranged from 174 credit on Brem to 1000 something on the rest, but none of them died.

 

I already did everything but the heroic on my Shadow this morning since besides my sawbones she is the slowest dps. Looks like I will max out legacy rep before the reset even just doing the PvE stuff.