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I've been doing all this to see how changing one piece of gear's mod from an Advanced Nimble Mod 25A to an Advanced Agile Mod 25A will actually affect the attacks that I'm using.



All of it is very interesting and intricate, but I'm also a huge nerd. So I thought you guys might be interested in the generalized rules I've come up with from all of this testing.





Expertise

One rule that I've found is that when you're comparing Rakata gear to Battlemaster gear, there is no point in having more than 500-600 expertise (depending on which pieces you replace). Rakata gear has about 25% higher stats but obviously lacks the expertise stat.



Note: This is from a purely DPS perspective (Tanking/Healing might actually benefit more from the increased Expertise).



You will actually do less damage across the board sitting in 100% full Battlemaster gear than you will with a couple pieces of Rakata gear thrown in .



Because of the way the damage bonus is multiplied into skills, it actually equates to your skills hitting someone for a few damage more with Rakata gear on than if you had used the Battlemaster equivalent gear piece. This damage disparity is even larger in PvE where the Battlemaster equipped person isn't getting any bonus damage.



From what I've seen, this turning point almost always occurs between 500 and 600 expertise (depending on the specific skill being checked). Skills generally will do less damage to players at 450, 500 and 600 expertise than they do at 550 (Note that Battlemaster pieces give you 50 expertise, which is why I'm doing it in multiples of 50).



The absolute best set of equipment (when ignoring enhancements and mods, since those can go into Rakata or Battlemaster gear equally) is to wear full Battlemaster gear except for 3 slots to give you your 550 expertise.



The easiest 3 pieces of Rakata gear to acquire are Ear and the 2 implants, since you can get those from simply doing daily quests. However, that's not necessarily the best pieces to fill with Rakata gear, since it is a percentage increase in the base stats, and the ear slot has low base stats compared to other pieces. The best "bang for your buck" would be Matrix and Wrists/Waist. Another thing to consider is the set bonuses. The Rakata set will give you totally different bonuses compared to the Battlemaster set, so it may actually be worthwhile to go for a 4 piece Rakata set and have 500 expertise if the set bonus is good enough. As with everything, you have to decide on where to compromise.



Alwaysx Quote: Originally Posted by Rakata/Matrix vs BM Gear Rankings

Matrix: +58

Crit'd Belt: +49 [+21, +28/31/34 (Augment)] - Synthweaving/Armormech

Crit'd Bracer: +42 [+14, +28/31/34 (Augment)] - Synthweaving/Armormech



Weapon: ?

Chest, Boots: +28

Crit'd Relic: +28 [+28/31/34 (Augment)] - Artifice

Belt, Implants: +21

Helm, Gloves, Legs: +18

Offhand: +14-21 depending on class/offhand

Bracer, Ear: +14

Relic: +0

Crit vs Power

The first thing to keep in mind is that both Crit and Surge have hard diminishing returns, whereas Power has a "soft" diminishing return.



The best range to keep Crit in is the 200-400 range. This is where the gains are still fairly linear and you get the most increase from the smallest investment.



Power increases are purely linear. Going from 0 power to 50 power will net you a 11.50 increase in bonus damage, and going from 500 to 550 will net you a 11.50 increase in damage. The reason I say above that there is a soft diminishing return is that the percentage increase of 11.50 damage when you already have 115 bonus damage isn't as great as an 11.5 increase when you have 0 bonus damage.



Power increases do not have the same effect to skills across the board! Just because you increased your power by 50 does not mean that all of your attacks will suddenly start dealing 11.5 damage more. Some will deal 5 more, others will deal 50 more. Keep that in mind! Some skills are not as affected by power as others.





Accuracy vs Surge

Both Accuracy and Surge are affected by diminishing returns. Accuracy more so than Surge (coefficient of 30 compared to 50).



The biggest thing to keep in mind here is that all Tech and Force attacks have a base 100% chance to hit. And all players have a base 5% chance to resist those attacks. Ranged and Melee attacks have a base 90% chance to hit, and values to dodge/block/parry/etc those attacks vary wildly between classes/specs.



From my experience, and from playing around in the formulas, your best bet is to hit 5% bonus Accuracy, and dump everything else into Surge.



Unfortunately, due to what I hope is a gross oversight by Bioware, there are NO rank 25 Surge enhancements except for the Advanced Severe Enhancement which increases Defense.



You have 2 choices. One, you can use Rank 24 mods, for which there are plenty of DPS specialized enhancements that feature Surge. Or two, you can pump your Accuracy to 10% bonus and rely on other pieces of gear to pump your surge. Honestly, I hope that Bioware really takes a look at their itemization and fixes it.



There are 10 acquirable rank 25 Enhancements, 2 of which are exact duplicates with different names, meaning only 8 unique rank 25 Enhancements across the entirety of end game (Ops, HM FPs, and Battlemaster gear). Compare this to the 14 unique rank 24 enhancements. WHERES THE CUSTOMIZATION AT END GAME BIOWARE?





Enhancements and Mods

Rank 25 enhancements come in 2 distinct flavors, high endurance, and low endurance. The low endurance enhancements have higher tertiary stats compared to their high endurance counterparts.



For example:

Advanced Initiative Enhancement 25: 24 Endurance, 51 Accuracy, 37 Power

Advanced Proficient Enhancement 25: 40 Endurance, 51 Accuracy, 20 Power



Enhancements will have 1 of 4 main tertiary stats: Accuracy, Alacrity, Shield, or Surge, and 1 of 4 secondary tertiary (secondary tertiary?) stats: Critical, Power, Defense, or Absorbtion. Unfortunately not all combinations exist. For example, there is no rank 25 Shield/Defense enhancements, and there are no rank 25 enhancements that feature Surge except for one that also has Defense (But these do exist in rank 23 and 24).



Mods come in 4 different flavors: Absorbtion, Critical, Defense, and Power. All 4 of these are available in Rank 25, they give a large increase of 61 to your Primary Stat, a decent increase of 37 to Endurance, and finally an increase of 11 to your tertiary stat.



Between Accuracy, Surge, Critical, and Power you have roughly 1000 points to play around with depending on if you use Rank 25 or Rank 24 Enhancements. How you allocate them is entirely up to your play style. There are a couple of things to keep in mind though. Some things you simply can't change currently, like the bonuses you get from your mainhand and offhand. Since the mod/enhancement/crystal are all locked inside, you can't do anything about it. Likewise, your wrists, waist, ear, and implants will all have set stats that you can't really change (though there typically are a couple of options).



The final consideration is your relic and adrenal buffs. If you totally stack surge up to 500, and then pop your 230 bonus relic, you're not going to see a very big difference in your crit damage (95% at 500 to 97% at 700). As a general rule of thumb, you'll get the biggest increase in average damage by stacking crit and surge up to 200-300 (with the rest in power) and then using power adrenals and relics.





Final Word

Take all of the above with a grain of salt. I'm building my character in a very specific way and I'm aiming at accomplishing very specific things (hence min/maxing). Obviously your mileage will vary, and to truly understand all this I highly recommend building yourself a spreadsheet and start digging.



TLDR

Aim for 550 Expertise, 150 Accuracy, 300 Crit, 300 Surge, 300 Power and use your Power adrenals and relics like they're going out of style. Laugh as often as possible at people with 700 Expertise. I have all of these in a huge spreadsheet that also includes every piece of end game gear and mods (13 tabs). So I can virtually equip my character and check how much damage a specific skill is going to do, or what the tradeoff in power vs crit or crit vs surge is.I've been doing all this to see how changing one piece of gear's mod from an Advanced Nimble Mod 25A to an Advanced Agile Mod 25A will actually affect the attacks that I'm using.All of it is very interesting and intricate, but I'm also a huge nerd. So I thought you guys might be interested in the generalized rules I've come up with from all of this testing.One rule that I've found is that when you're comparing Rakata gear to Battlemaster gear, there is no point in having more than 500-600 expertise (depending on which pieces you replace). Rakata gear has about 25% higher stats but obviously lacks the expertise stat.Note: This is from a purely DPS perspective (Tanking/Healing might actually benefit more from the increased Expertise).Because of the way the damage bonus is multiplied into skills, it actually equates to your skills hitting someone for a few damage more with Rakata gear on than if you had used the Battlemaster equivalent gear piece. This damage disparity is even larger in PvE where the Battlemaster equipped person isn't getting any bonus damage.From what I've seen, this turning point almost always occurs between 500 and 600 expertise (depending on the specific skill being checked). Skills generally will do less damage to players at 450, 500 and 600 expertise than they do at 550 (Note that Battlemaster pieces give you 50 expertise, which is why I'm doing it in multiples of 50).The absolute best set of equipment (when ignoring enhancements and mods, since those can go into Rakata or Battlemaster gear equally) is to wear full Battlemaster gear except for 3 slots to give you your 550 expertise.The easiest 3 pieces of Rakata gear to acquire are Ear and the 2 implants, since you can get those from simply doing daily quests. However, that's not necessarily the best pieces to fill with Rakata gear, since it is a percentage increase in the base stats, and the ear slot has low base stats compared to other pieces. The best "bang for your buck" would be Matrix and Wrists/Waist. Another thing to consider is the set bonuses. The Rakata set will give you totally different bonuses compared to the Battlemaster set, so it may actually be worthwhile to go for a 4 piece Rakata set and have 500 expertise if the set bonus is good enough. As with everything, you have to decide on where to compromise.The first thing to keep in mind is that both Crit and Surge have hard diminishing returns, whereas Power has a "soft" diminishing return.The best range to keep Crit in is the 200-400 range. This is where the gains are still fairly linear and you get the most increase from the smallest investment.Power increases are purely linear. Going from 0 power to 50 power will net you a 11.50 increase in bonus damage, and going from 500 to 550 will net you a 11.50 increase in damage. The reason I say above that there is a soft diminishing return is that the percentage increase of 11.50 damage when you already have 115 bonus damage isn't as great as an 11.5 increase when you have 0 bonus damage.Just because you increased your power by 50 does not mean that all of your attacks will suddenly start dealing 11.5 damage more. Some will deal 5 more, others will deal 50 more. Keep that in mind! Some skills are not as affected by power as others.Both Accuracy and Surge are affected by diminishing returns. Accuracy more so than Surge (coefficient of 30 compared to 50).The biggest thing to keep in mind here is that all Tech and Force attacks have a base 100% chance to hit. And all players have a base 5% chance to resist those attacks. Ranged and Melee attacks have a base 90% chance to hit, and values to dodge/block/parry/etc those attacks vary wildly between classes/specs.From my experience, and from playing around in the formulas, your best bet is to hit 5% bonus Accuracy, and dump everything else into Surge.Unfortunately, due to what I hope is a gross oversight by Bioware,You have 2 choices. One, you can use Rank 24 mods, for which there are plenty of DPS specialized enhancements that feature Surge. Or two, you can pump your Accuracy to 10% bonus and rely on other pieces of gear to pump your surge. Honestly, I hope that Bioware really takes a look at their itemization and fixes it.Rank 25 enhancements come in 2 distinct flavors, high endurance, and low endurance. The low endurance enhancements have higher tertiary stats compared to their high endurance counterparts.For example:Advanced Initiative Enhancement 25: 24 Endurance, 51 Accuracy, 37 PowerAdvanced Proficient Enhancement 25: 40 Endurance, 51 Accuracy, 20 PowerEnhancements will have 1 of 4 main tertiary stats: Accuracy, Alacrity, Shield, or Surge, and 1 of 4 secondary tertiary (secondary tertiary?) stats: Critical, Power, Defense, or Absorbtion. Unfortunately not all combinations exist. For example, there is no rank 25 Shield/Defense enhancements, and there are no rank 25 enhancements that feature Surge except for one that also has Defense (But these do exist in rank 23 and 24).Mods come in 4 different flavors: Absorbtion, Critical, Defense, and Power. All 4 of these are available in Rank 25, they give a large increase of 61 to your Primary Stat, a decent increase of 37 to Endurance, and finally an increase of 11 to your tertiary stat.Between Accuracy, Surge, Critical, and Power you have roughly 1000 points to play around with depending on if you use Rank 25 or Rank 24 Enhancements. How you allocate them is entirely up to your play style. There are a couple of things to keep in mind though. Some things you simply can't change currently, like the bonuses you get from your mainhand and offhand. Since the mod/enhancement/crystal are all locked inside, you can't do anything about it. Likewise, your wrists, waist, ear, and implants will all have set stats that you can't really change (though there typically are a couple of options).The final consideration is your relic and adrenal buffs. If you totally stack surge up to 500, and then pop your 230 bonus relic, you're not going to see a very big difference in your crit damage (95% at 500 to 97% at 700). As a general rule of thumb, you'll get the biggest increase in average damage by stacking crit and surge up to 200-300 (with the rest in power) and then using power adrenals and relics.Take all of the above with a grain of salt. I'm building my character in a very specific way and I'm aiming at accomplishing very specific things (hence min/maxing). Obviously your mileage will vary, and to truly understand all this I highly recommend building yourself a spreadsheet and start digging.Aim for 550 Expertise, 150 Accuracy, 300 Crit, 300 Surge, 300 Power and use your Power adrenals and relics like they're going out of style. Laugh as often as possible at people with 700 Expertise.