Monday, April 22, 2013

Getting into Rise of the Hutt Cartel

I haven't played much of SWTOR lately, been waiting for the expansion fever to die down a bit.  So on Friday, I logged back in to some fairly substantial changes.  As with most big changes, all of my character skills had been reset, so I took some time to get those fixed.  Of course, there is still a bunch to do before i actually play the new expansion.

Spec. I usually spec my trooper as a Combat Medic, and did so again.  It looks like they have buffed that quite a bit with adding heals to Concussive Charge, improved Trauma Probe and even gave Kolto Bomb some loving.

Gear.  Prior to the expansion, I had two sets of gear, one for PvE and one for PvP.  It no longer looks as if that's the case  SWTOR's bolster system got some enhancements and will now also bolster your gear instead of just character stats.

My current PvE gear consists of a mix of Tionese and Columi items.  It looks like these are immediately obsolete as the mods available from the Makeb vendor in the starting area and via 410 level crafting are better.  In fact, the vendor sells Advanced quality gear for Planetary Commendations which kinda eliminates the need to craft them.  The set bonuses from my current gear are the only thing they really have going for them.

Crafting.  I stopped by the crafting trainers and unlocked the 401-450 range for my Scavenging, Armstech, Slicing, CyberTech,  and Investigation.  I also spent some time to get my finished product skills up to 410, where you get the first new items.

Companions.  One of my favorite quality of life features added in the expansion is the new Companion Gift tooltips.  They now show what affect the gift will have on a summoned companion.  So I took some time and gave out a lot of stored gifts.