PSA Re: Ranked Commendations (pre-50)Follow

OK, so I hit 50 on my Assassin with 3500 Ranked Commendations (RC) and 2000 Warzone Commendations (WZC) so I promptly went and bought myself the War Hero weapon. What I didn't know is that you can buy WZC 10-for-10 with RC. This means that if you save up RC as you level, you can effectively hit level 50 with 5500 WZC, allowing you to purchase a fair amount of Battlemaster gear. I wish I had known this before purchasing the War Hero weapon. The gap between Recruit and BM gear is fairly large. I could have saved a bunch of credits, too.

Oh well, at least I won't have to grind out the 3475 RC later on for my weapon.

I don't know the rank terminology and such, but there was a Dev post recently about how Recruit gear is better than anything PVE oriented that's currently available, because Expertise is hugely important. So, if you don't have it, I'd prioritize that.

Thanks for the link. So, essentially, expertise cancels out expertise? That is to say, it makes no difference (except with regards to healing) when the two players have equal amounts, but will be strongly in favor of the higher geared if they are unequal? Makes sense, I suppose.

No, my tankassin is only level 44ish and I don't have any PVP gear (if there is gear with expertise on it for pre-50s). I knew expertise was the PVP stat and sort of how it worked, I just didn't know there were 2 different types of commendations and how they were related.

I wasn't real big on PVP in WoW, but the few matches I have done so far in TOR have been really fun. The only problem is I'm already ahead of the levelling curve (only 2-3 quests into Belsavis and over 3/4 of the way to 45) so I don't want to take a bunch of time out to spam WZs as that will just exacerbate the problem.

I'll probably just farm dailies once I get to 50 to be able to buy the set of gear you can get for credits and then really get into PVP when one of the many friends I've made while levelling isn't pulling my into an FP to tank for them.

One of the things I love about PVP in TOR is that tanks can actually tank and taunts have an effect on PCs.

Assuming I'm not going to do much more PVP before 50 (which is most likely the case), should I buy the full set of recruit gear as soon as I have the credits for it? I can always pass it on to Xavrekk (I think that's his name) when I upgrade to Battlemasters.

I like PVE tanking, but as I said being able to actually tank in PVP is very appealing, so I'll probably be splitting time. My guild also organizes guild PVP nights where we queue up as a group and steamroll. I want to join with them, but don't want to be the weak link because I don't have PVP gear. I'll have to go and check how much the full set of recruit gear is. From what I can tell, top end PVE gear really doesn't cost anything, so I don't see what else I'll really have to spend credits on.

It's important to note that you'll still need to buy the regular BM gear. The crafted stuff just means you can feasibly get an augment slot via crit and then import the BM mods to that gear (set bonuses included). So you'll still need to buy the BM gear with coms.

Also, for a new tanksin at 50, I'd suggest doing what you can to remain on the "outskirts" of the fight until you get up around 600ish expertise. By "outskirts" I mean don't get engaged in a huge clusterf*ck if you can help it. i.e. in Huttball use your stealth to position yourself for quick pass-and-scoring opportunities. Keep your guard on a mid-priority target (unless you're the only tank) and focus exclusively on debuffing people with your Dark Charge Discharge and rotate your taunts and Force Slow as needed to keep high dps targets down. Well-timed use of your aoe taunt will net you 2-3 medals instantly in a big group fight, and your stealth and sapping can let you guard a node strategically and earn defender points. And above all, abuse your 10m range abilities. Your biggest threat will be melee that you can't get off of you (good Juggs/Maras and Ops/Sins) because you can always LoS a Sniper or Tracer noob and Pyrotechs are just friggin' OP anyway. So abuse the crap out of Wither and your Dark Discharge (which makes it sound like you need a kolto tank) as well as your Shocks and your Healy Lightning.

Edited, Apr 25th 2012 4:11pm by Quor

I'm not sure I understand the question, particularly what you mean by incentive.

The incentive of playing PVP is to have fun playing PVP. Yeah, you start out with low gear. But it won't stay that way. And Warzones aren't your only option--Ilum dailies will allow you to gain some PVP gear, iirc. And it's not like everyone but you will have a full set of recruit gear or better. Everyone starts at the bottom. I dunno if you can buy expertise mods from vendors (for credits) or the GTN, but that might be a viable option if you don't want to start PVPing without some expertise.

Remember, though, that while you might gain more rewards from doing better in a Warzone, you only need to earn 3 medals to gain a reward win or lose. So just playing, even if your team loses, will get you recruit gear in time.

Right now, PVP favors the geared players a little too heavily. But once ranked Warzones are introduced, that won't be as much of an issue, because many of the geared players will be interested in those, and only go into regular WZs for a more casual experience.

Well, the motivation is no different than if you were highly geared. The motivation would be that you enjoy PVP, that you want to get better at it, etc.

Yeah, it will be harder for you to play while undergeared. But imo that just means you need to play differently. You shouldn't be 1v1ing when undergeared. Instead, find a healer and do everything in your power to be an irritant to the other team. You might feel weak when someone focuses you, but you're still being effective. In virtue of focusing on you, the healer lives longer. If they focus on the healer, you're still free to use all of your stuns, snares, knockbacks, etc without it being mitigated by Expertise.

Pvping as soon as possible in TOR isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it isn't required to succeed either. It used to be that you were best off pvping as much as possible to keep your valor rank capped to your level, but then they changed how valor was rewarded (increased the gain of it per WZ) and now it's much easier to keep your valor rank capped to your level without doing pvp for 80% of your experience bar.

Having said that, pvp for most classes tends to "take off" around the mid 20's. That's when a lot of classes have picked up an iconic move or two as well as enough supporting talents to make a big difference in how they play. Certain specs mature at different rates; Marauders and Sentinels hit their heyday at level 40, and from 40-49 will dominate when played right, but sub-20 they are rather basic, best served in a disruption and "steady DoT" kind of role (due to the fact that they lack any utility tools and high damage abilities). The 20's are great for Pyrotech and Assault Specialist BHs/Troopers because they get the core skills that enable them to put out a lot of damage, whereas Juggernauts and Guardians don't really hit their stride until 30+ or 40+ (depending on spec).

It would be a good thing to get into pvp at the pre-50 levels. Like Spoony said, you'll get a feeling for how the WZ's work as well as an idea of how your class works in pvp. Should you want to pursue pvp at 50, having that knowledge will be invaluable in terms of making you an asset to your team regardless of your gear. For instance, in Huttball, you don't *need* a lot of resilience to survive and be useful if you're an Operative or Assassin. Your stealth gives you the ability to set up key passing opportunities or to get into position to safely control an area with your knockback (if Sin) or intercept a pass. I could go into detail about the stuff you could do, but it would take an entirely new thread to talk about it all, and the best way to learn that stuff is via experience anyway. For a general idea of "outskirts" play until you get more expertise check what I wrote above for BigD.

Half of your post makes a lot of sense to me but the other half...doesn't O.o. So let me clear up a couple of things.

Pacify is Sentinel only for one, and Opportune Strike is only useable on pve targets (much like the similar Sage skill). Blade Storm has a base CD of 12s, while Saber Throw has a base CD of 30s. Both can be talented via the Vigilance tree for decreased CD and increased utility (Blade Storm will add a burn effect while Saber Throw will add a stack or two of sunder in addition to a reduced CD). The Focus tree will also indirectly buff Blade Storm thanks to the crit damage bonus talent for Force-based attacks.

My personal experience found Juggernaut taking a big turn for the positive when I got Force Push at 26. Everything after that was nice, don't get me wrong, but 26 was the first level I pvp'ed and said to myself "Yeah, I have a strong, measurable effect on the battlefield," especially in Huttball. Having said that, any tank in tank stance has value starting at level 14 (Guard) and Juggernauts/Guardians especially have value at 16 with the spammable aoe snare that can be talented to cost nothing.

It's still a good skill. I use it on my Sent pretty much every time it's up. My feeling is that the "pve only" skills were added to classes to address some weaknesses in pve damage without directly buffing the class in pvp. I can't imagine *not* using the two pve only skills on my Jugg or Sent when I'm doing pve stuff. It makes battles go much smoother and ensures I save my "main" moves for the mobs that need it.

Would be nice having it in pvp, but a pair skills, 15 and 45s CD's on each of them, that can't be avoided in any way (due to be classed as Force attacks) that require only movement impairment or incapacitation would give JK's and SW's a good bit of extra burst. All of a sudden deep tank Guardians and Jugg's would be using Choke/Stasis > OS/PS > G. Slash/C. Blow > Execute combos to put out some rather insane burst damage on par with actual dps-specced classes. And that's a no-no (not to mention how it would increase Vig/Vengy burst....oi). Again, that would be nice, but with the recent changes I think the JK and SW classes are in a good spot now. Just as soon as people learn how to deal with Sentinels and Marauders anyway.

That's actually the general idea. Charge the weakest one and finish it quickly while it's vulnerable from the immobilize. Then you Sweep or Storm another standard or weak target and hit them with incapacitate version. That should put two mobs down in short order, leaving 1-2 more mobs to handle (at 50, with one of the two being a silver). How I do it as Vengeance is to Charge > Savage Kick (which is OS basically) > Smash > Pommel Strike (which is the incapacitate version on f a 45s CD) and then Impale + Scream on the final non-silver target. Impale procs the +crit chance bonus on Scream, meaning the two together will typically end a standard right away (and if they don't then the two DoT's will). Then I turn to the silver, Sunder it, apply Shatter, and begin going about my normal butt-kicking rotation. Add Ravage as needed (generally to finish the silver or quickly disable/kill a high dps standard mob).

Contrasted to my Sorc, who will bubble Khem, send him in against the silver, and then just Force Storm everything, letting the damage + stun proc deal with the standards and weaks while Khem holds the silver. I mean, I *can* choose to use CC and be a bit more refined with my approach, but brute forcing things as a Sorc (especially Madness) is just so damned easy. I've never used Tumult on my Sorc, but I've used Savage Kick and PS on my Jugg ALL the time.

Yeah, that gets annoying. You'll get Awe at 42, which helps *some* but it's only 6s, and a soft CC at that. But you can make up for it easily with creative companion use. T7 or Kira both have defensive CD's that can let them tank pretty well (T7 better than Kira of course, but if you micro Kira a bit she can work just fine, I've used her almost exclusively since I got her on my Sentinel and I'm almost done with Voss). A good trick as a Guardian is to let your companion go in first to take the brunt of the attack while you manually activate their defensive CD and then once they hit about half life you taunt the mob off onto yourself and use your defensive CD's as necessary. With the ranged DPS companions you can also abuse Freezing Force and taunt to kill things via kiting, which has saved me on my Jugg quite a few times.

Well, Taunt comes at 14 and Freezing Force at 12, I think. I assume you're going Guardian because of your language.

Sentinels get a lot of utility in the late teens/early twenties, IIRC.

Yeah, I want to make a Marauder later on, and I'm trying to not play mirrors of the same AC on the same legacy.

I'm hoping I can blow through the last 85% of level 50 in 4 hours or so tonight, otherwise I won't ding 50 until Wednesday because I have my son tomorrow night.

I'm at work right now so I can't log on and check, but can anybody look and see how much it would cost for the entire set of recruit gear for an assassin/shadow tank? I'm making credits hand over fist just by questing, but I also spammed UT missions all weekend (went from ~20 to ~360 in 2 days) and I'm wondering if I should stop so I have enough to buy the whole recruit set.

Also, once I finish Voss, how many more planets do I have for my class quest? What planet do I do level 50 dailies on and what do I have to do to unlock them? Is it worth going back and doing the Hoth bonus series (and the Alderaan one since I don't think I did that one either)?

Basically, assuming I can ding 50 with just the Voss bonus series (and maybe going to do the Hoth one if I come up short), what should I do when I'm done with Voss?

That's all? That's not really bad at all. I had like 600k by the time I was done with Corellia.

Once I had hit 500k, I just stopped trying to make money on my Sage. Dropped Slicing, power leveled Underworld Trading, and stopped doing space missions. UT was 400 by the time I finished the planet, and I was up 100k.

That's unfortunate, because they return over 100k for about an hour of work at level cap.