Longevity of Custom Armor.

[Derah]

Ok, I still haven't gotten SWTOR yet (4 more days!!!) but I've been reading guides non-stop to prepare myself as much as possible (plan on making a Sith Assassin and an Operative, then later on a Jedi Sentinel and a Commando) and something catched my eye.

Custom armor.

Now, I've found them very ingenious because while every other item (Green, blue, purple, white) is replaced the moment you find an upgrade, Custom armor just requires you to add stronger mods to it and voila, it can compete with that superior blue piece you just got.

My question is......... how long can you keep this going? I ask because I've seen screenshots of some of the social wear and they look gorgeous. From that pilot uniform, sandpeople clothing, the elegant dress, and yes, why not? even Leia's Iconic Slave Costume (tm).

I love those pieces and I'd rather use those, than a mismatch pastiche of high-grade epics that quite frankly, don't look so good. I've been seeing some of the high-end pvp and pve gear and I just don't like how they look. Is it possible for me to remain competitive on PVE at least by wearing a custom armor like the slave outfit or the elegant dress? or at some point I HAVE to ditch them for some epics?

up to what point can I keep these orange custom items being good/useful? can they last me all the way to 50 and beyond? or they're meant to be just gimmicks to use when strolling on the fleets/cities?.

Thanks for your answers.

[Deleted]

They can last you as long as you want. They are ment for you to customize your looks however you want. The best gear you can get, is in fact custom orange crit crafted gear with augments. Gear obtained from PvP and PvE has mods, you can extract these mods onto any customizable piece of armor you want to gain same stats on it. However right now social gear is still limited to being one armor type, but bioware have stated they want interchangable armor types so you can use social gear for all types of classes.

[Reavyn]

I love those pieces and I'd rather use those, than a mismatch pastiche of high-grade epics that quite frankly, don't look so good.

You can colormatch your gear with the color of your chest gear. It makes pretty much anything look decent at worst and will allow you to pick and match gear even if the colors don't match. So, even if it'd normally look like something took a rainbow-colored dump on your armor but the actual models look awesome, you can recolor them.

And any orange gear will last at least till 50. At 50, when you get Tier gear, you're kinda stuck with it because the set bonus don't tranfer. Now I don't know about tier 2 gear after patch 1.2. I think you can swap those set bonusses (but don't quote me on that since I've lost interest in most end-game due to lack of time I can invest).

[Deleted]

They can last you as long as you want. They are ment for you to customize your looks however you want. The best gear you can get, is in fact custom orange crit crafted gear with augments. Gear obtained from PvP and PvE has mods, you can extract these mods onto any customizable piece of armor you want to gain same stats on it. However right now social gear is still limited to being one armor type, but bioware have stated they want interchangable armor types so you can use social gear for all types of classes.

They have also stated they wanted to add in items to add augment slots to gear that didn't have them, I personally think that they either need to add new augments each tier or make augments one use (such as WoW's gem's) otherwise there will be no market once you have augmented gear and augments.

[Derah]

They can last you as long as you want. They are ment for you to customize your looks however you want. The best gear you can get, is in fact custom orange crit crafted gear with augments. Gear obtained from PvP and PvE has mods, you can extract these mods onto any customizable piece of armor you want to gain same stats on it.

Awesome =D so that means I could get....... say a blue piece, I can strip that piece of its mods, install them to a custom armor, and gain the same stats? that's great.

However right now social gear is still limited to being one armor type, but bioware have stated they want interchangable armor types so you can use social gear for all types of classes.

That's not a problem for me, Sith inquisitors wear light armor by default, so there won't be any armor incompatibility there. There will be with the agent and trooper, and knight, but I wont level those until the inquisitor is 50, and to be fair, not ALL the high-end gear looks like crap. I just don't like how the inquisitor PVE armor looks. Way too many spikes and voodoo masks.

You can colormatch your gear with the color of your chest gear. It makes pretty much anything look decent at worst and will allow you to pick and match gear even if the colors don't match. So, even if it'd normally look like something took a rainbow-colored dump on your armor but the actual models look awesome, you can recolor them.

Yeah but being able to match colors doesn't do much when the actual design of the piece looks like crap. Yellow crap is every bit as horrible as pink crap or gray crap.

This is mainly to the inquisitor armors. I just hate the theme they got going for them. Seriously look at this stuff:





I DO NOT wanna prance about wearing that stuff, I'd rather wear something cute, provocative, or badass looking. Such as the elegant dress, slave outfit, or Sandpeople uniform.

And any orange gear will last at least till 50. At 50, when you get Tier gear, you're kinda stuck with it because the set bonus don't tranfer. Now I don't know about tier 2 gear after patch 1.2. I think you can swap those set bonusses (but don't quote me on that since I've lost interest in most end-game due to lack of time I can invest).

This isn't much of a problem for me, I'm not a hardcore raider, heck I'll probably only do each raid like once (twice if they have a lightside/darkside plot on them) I do dungeons for the lore, story, and roleplaying in them, not the gear. As long as I'm not a burden for my team I'm satisfied. If I'm doing 5% less DPS than my peers due to wearing custom-gear that's acceptable. If I'm doing 40% less DPS than my peers due to custom gear then that's a problem.

As long as I can carry my own weight without being a burden, I can let go of the tier bonuses.

[Forsedar]

I did not bother to read the comments (sorry). If this was already said then I guess you can disregard:

Custom Items will only work with Campaign gear and higher. Rakata gear has the set bonuses tied to the pieces. However, once you have the full custom armor with campaign armorings in them, you can use those custom pieces forever. Yes, forever.

[Grognard]

I believe that 1.2 made the armoring for "tier gear" removable so that you can transfer set bonuses to orange gear. But I don't know if that applies solely to the new set that came with 1.2 or if it's retroactively applicable to the original set. Haven't played since March, either, so I can't confirm one way or the other...Not that I had any tier pieces to begin with, what with the lack of active 50s on my server.

[RoninaThorstone]

I did not bother to read the comments (sorry). If this was already said then I guess you can disregard:

Custom Items will only work with Campaign gear and higher. Rakata gear has the set bonuses tied to the pieces. However, once you have the full custom armor with campaign armorings in them, you can use those custom pieces forever. Yes, forever.

Custom armor is the greatest thing ever.

There's like 50 craftable moddable sets in the game... And all of them are end game material. BWAHAHA

And if you don't care about augment slots then well... Jeez. You can look however you want.

---------- Post added 2012-04-28 at 05:55 PM ----------

And any orange gear will last at least till 50. At 50, when you get Tier gear, you're kinda stuck with it because the set bonus don't tranfer. Now I don't know about tier 2 gear after patch 1.2. I think you can swap those set bonusses (but don't quote me on that since I've lost interest in most end-game due to lack of time I can invest).

all the 1.2 gear has its set bonus tied to the armoring. So it can transfer to orange pieces.

---------- Post added 2012-04-28 at 05:56 PM ----------

And any orange gear will last at least till 50. At 50, when you get Tier gear, you're kinda stuck with it because the set bonus don't tranfer. Now I don't know about tier 2 gear after patch 1.2. I think you can swap those set bonusses (but don't quote me on that since I've lost interest in most end-game due to lack of time I can invest).

all the 1.2 gear has its set bonus tied to the armoring. So it can transfer to orange pieces.

[Forsedar]

I believe that 1.2 made the armoring for "tier gear" removable so that you can transfer set bonuses to orange gear. But I don't know if that applies solely to the new set that came with 1.2 or if it's retroactively applicable to the original set. Haven't played since March, either, so I can't confirm one way or the other...Not that I had any tier pieces to begin with, what with the lack of active 50s on my server.

Its solely to the new set and whatever will come out from here on out.

[Dedweight]

Awesome =D so that means I could get....... say a blue piece, I can strip that piece of its mods, install them to a custom armor, and gain the same stats? that's great.

Pretty much, I currently am using an Orange quality lightsaber with Columi level mods because I have yet to have a mainhand saber drop for my Marauder.

I did not bother to read the comments (sorry). If this was already said then I guess you can disregard:

Custom Items will only work with Campaign gear and higher. Rakata gear has the set bonuses tied to the pieces. However, once you have the full custom armor with campaign armorings in them, you can use those custom pieces forever. Yes, forever.

As Grognard said, that's been changed with 1.2 as far as I know the bonuses are now applied to the armoring for those sets and not the gear itself.

[Forsedar]

Pretty much, I currently am using an Orange quality lightsaber with Columi level mods because I have yet to have a mainhand saber drop for my Marauder.



As Grognard said, that's been changed with 1.2 as far as I know the bonuses are now applied to the armoring for those sets and not the gear itself.

No. Set bonuses are tied to Rakata and lower. For the 1.2 gear, set bonuses are tied to the armorings. I would know. I have the gear changes to prove it. Even Stephen Reid said that the technology they're working with won't allow them to change what people already have equipped so they did it with Campaign gear and any future gear sets.