SW:TOR – Level 55 gearing up

[-PLASMA]

#895

Greetings everyone,
As I promised in my previous post (SW:TOR Leveling tips (reposted)) about leveling&gearing up, as you get to level 55 the game is not over, but is just begining, actualy. A whole new world opens once you get to 55 with new options and a totaly new play style. As until 55 you might play and progress with a “not-so-efficient” play style, and by staying overleveled you actualy could progress and level up pretty easy even with a not-so-good gear and with a not-so-perfect fighting styles, once at 55 this changes. To be able to properly face challenges that waits for you at 55, you’ll need an as-good-as-posible gear and a as-close-as-perfect fighting style. The purpose of this post is to give a glimpse, in my personal perspective, about how to approach the new challenges that lvl 55 prepares for you. I don’t say that is perfect, but is how I managed to survive and play after 55.
Gear-wise, the preparation for level 55 starts at level 50 when, for the first time, some special tiers of gears are becoming available:

1. Level 58 modable gear – that is available for planetary commendations from Makeb commendations vendor from supply section at the fleet (which is available even if you didn’t have done Makeb or even if you don’t have the Makeb extention available)
2. Level 61 modable gear – that is available for classic commendations from class specific vendors from supply section at the fleet (classic commendations can be obtained by running flashpoints starting with level 48 and from the daily and weekly missions from Ilum and Black Hole)

Both those types of gear are artifact quality, so a subscription is still requiered.
The rules for equiping these mods are the same as those pre-50 and were detailed in my previous post. If you have questions about this, just post a reply to this post with those questions.
The next stage of preparation for lvl 55 continues at level 53, when a new class of gear is becoming available, level 66 modable gear. This is no longer available from vendors, but can be obtained in 2 ways:

1. As random drops from missions, dailies and weeklies from Makeb, Czerka and Oricon zones.
2. From GTN from crafters.

This gear is available in 3 qualities: green, prototype (blue) and artifact (purple). Therefore, it can be used by prefered status players too (as you need to get to level 53, you can no longer be a F2P basic player for this).
Also, at this level is becoming available a new range of items for implants and earpiece that can be successfully used even at lvl 55. Those are the “microfilament” based devices that gives you high level stats even from this level. Those devices will work fine at lvl 55 too, replacing them afterwords being a tricky bussiness, as items better then those are very rare. Those items are either available from drops (lesser quality) or from crafters, via GTN.
The final stage end up at level 55, when new commendations levels are available and therefore new gear levels too:

1. Level 69 gear – available for basic comemndations from class specific vendors in teh supply section of teh fleet and on Czerka, Makeb and Oricon vendors. The basic comms can be obtained by running the weekly mision from Black Hole, the dailies and weeklies from Section X, Makeb, Czerka and Oricon and from level 50 Hard-mode Flashpoints and their coresponding dailies and weeklies.
2. Level 66 augments – available on GTN and from some rare random drops from FP’s.
3. Level 72 gear – available for elite commendations from class specific vendors in the supply section of the fleet. The elite comms can be obtained by running Weeklies from Makeb, Czerka and Oricon , from level 55 hard mode flashpoints and their coresponding weeklies and from level 50 and level 55 Ops.
4. Level 78 gear – available for ultimate commendations from class specific vendors in the supply section of teh fleet. The ultimate comemndations can be obtained by running the 55 HM FP weeklies and from Ops.
Also, at level 55, new relics are available from teh class specific commendation vendors from fleet.

The gearing up should be made this way:

1. Starting with level 53, you should start filling up your gear with lvl 66 mods, upgrade your earpiece and implant with “microfilament” ones. The missions you should run at this level, besides the class/planetary missions shoudl be Ilum dailies (and use those classic comms for gearing up your companion), Black Hole (also use the classic comms for your companion gear or for upgrading your relic with dread guard ones and start tresuring the basic comms for further use) and Section X (for basic comms and for credits). Also you should start doing as many level 50 FP’s as possible, both story mode and hard mode.
2. Once at 55, make sure you have all gear upgraded to lvl 66, augment all your gear with lvl 66 augments and be sure you have both implants and the earpiece in artifact (purple) microfilament items. Also get either Dread Guard or Black Hole level relics. At this point you may start running the level 55 Flashpoints – hardmode, do the Oricon missions and dailies and start collecting elite and ultimate gear.
3. Once you have ALL your gear at level 69 and your weapon with level 72 hilt/barrel you may start thinking running some Ops, in story mode. You should start with with some easy ones, like “Toborro Courtyard” from Makeb, the “Dread Fortress” from Oricon and, if available, with the Gree Event Ops. Those will start giving you ALOT of elite commendations and much more ultimates then usual, enough to allow you to start getting level 72 gear regularly and at least one piece of level 78 gear per week.
4. Once you have all your gear at level 72 with few level 78 pieces, you may start doing all Ops available, in both SM and HM modes
5. Once you have all your gear in level 78, you may start doing nightmare level Ops, to get the post level 78 gear (lvl 78 – legendary gear).

As the post became rather long, I’ll stop here for now and I’ll continue with the fighting styles in a later post.
One final note, though: Always, before doing 55 HM FP’s or any Ops, you should read the walkthroughts and know what you have to do, in relation with the role you play (tank, dps or heal). Also, you should arm yourself with patience and understand that your random team players are usualy veterans that might have little patience for errors and for doing other things that their role dictates. For instance, I personaly kick out those that being healers in 55 HM FP’s, even if warned before, keeps trying to do damage, instead of focusing to healing exclusively, tanks that are poorly geared and does not know how to keep taunt or dps’s that keeps running ahead and not listening for tanks lead.
Please feel free to ask any questions as replies for this post, I’ll try to answer to those asap.
All the best,
Kara

[-PLASMA]

#2802

Thanks Kara for the tips and gear advice.

I have learnt a lot and I seem to be on the right track for this stage, can’t wait to get the level 78 gear 🙂

Thanks again for your efforts!

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