Gearing a toon is an important part of raiding in SWTOR. As most of you know, the ratings for gear are 162, 168, 174, 180, and most recently 186. These can be acquired in the following places:
162: Basic Comm Vendor and Arkanian Drops from SM 55 Operations.
168: Elite Comm Vendor and Underworld Drops from Final Bosses in SM Operations and S&V and TFB HM
174: Kell Dragon Drops from S&V and TFB NiM
180: Ultimate Comm Vendor and DF and DP HM
186: DF and DP NiM
This Guide is built around min/maxing a toon in 180 gear.
I. INTRO TO MIN/MAXING
Now, everyone always focuses on gear rating, which is largely seen by how much health and mainstat a toon has; however, once you finish getting you 180s, that doesn't mean that you are done gearing. Min/maxing is the process of changing out the mods and enhancements in your gear to make your character deal maximum damage or dish out maximum heals.
On a DPS character, you are shooting for the stats of 25% Critical Chance, 75% Critical Multiplier, 110% Accuracy and 0 Alacrity Rating (Though you may have alacrity as part of your skill tree, such as on an Arsenal Mercenary or Lethality Operative)
On a Healing character, you are shooting for the stats 25% Critical Chance, 75% Critical Multiplier, over 5% Alacrity and 0 Accuracy rating.
Any other remaining stat points should be used to maximize your Power Rating.
Note: There is one exception to the 0 alacrity rating on DPS, that is a Lightning specced Sorcerer. Once you get surge to 75% and Accuracy to 110%, a Lightning Sorcerer can benefit from alacrity rating to speed up their attacks, but only after reaching the soft caps of Accuracy and Surge.
n.b. These stats are viewed under Force or Tech on the character screen, NOT ranged or melee.
The reason that you should min/max your characters this way is because of something called "soft caps". After you hit 25% critical chance and 75% Surge rating, each point that you put into these becomes less and less potent. At 30% Critical Chance, you Critical Rating points are worth very little at this point and are not helping you as much as putting them into power, where they would not be affected by the diminishing returns.
II. MOD/ENHANCEMENT BREAKDOWN
There are two reasons why we focus so much on Mods and Enhancements. The first one is that your armoring will always be your mainstat armoring, so you should never need to switch it. Another reason is that armoring is bound to a specific slot. You cannot pull the armoring out of a chest piece and put it into you boots. However, you can take the mod and enhancement out of a chest piece and put them into your boots.
Each mod and enhancement contains different stats. Using these mods and enhancements to effectively gear a toon is a hassle, but your abilities and group utility will be significantly increased once you have these recommended stats. (To see these stats, it is very helpful to turn on detailed tooltips in preferences)
A MODIFICATION will increase your:
-Endurance
-Mainstat (Willpower, Strength, Cunning, or Aim)
-Power OR Crit Rating
An ENHANCEMENT will increase your:
-Endurance
-Power OR Crit Rating
-Alacrity OR Accuracy OR Surge Rating
Because of the way that the Mods and Enhancements gear you, you must use them in different ways. For example, if our Critical Rating is too high, you cannot switch Critical to Surge, because they are not interchangeable, you can only switch it to Power. If your Accuracy is too low, you must switch it out of Surge Rating (or Alacrity, if you are running any on your DPS) because they are slotted to the same spot in the enhancement.
III. MIN/MAX EXAMPLE
Let's do another example. If my Sorcerer healer is running 27% Critical Chance, 72% Surge and 9.2% Alacrity. I should switch out an enhancement that provides Endurance, Critical Rating and Alacrity (Advanced Volition Enhancement 34) for an Enhancement that provides Endurance, Power and Surge (Advanced Efficient Ehancement 34). At this point, our sorcerer healer has around 25% Crit Chance, 73-74% Surge and 8% Alacrity. He still has too much Alacrity and not enough Surge. So he replaces a Endurance, Power and Alacrity Enhancement with a Endurance Power and Surge Enhancement and Finally reaches the desired 25% Crit Chance, 75% Crit Multiplier and around 7.1% Alacrity.
n.b. When min/maxing a toon, it is better to get rid of the stats you don't need first rather than replacing the ones you need, but just need less of. For example as a healer get rid off accuracy first and as a DPS get rid of alacrity first, then start to raise and lower the numbers of the stats you need.
IV. BEST IN SLOT
Another key thing about Enhancements is something called "Best in Slot". These BiS Enhancements are much better than their counterparts, although both are technically rated as 180. Here is the difference:
Oriconian MK-1 Enhancements (Ultimate Comm Vendor pieces) provide:
-76 Endurace
-39 Crit Rating OR Power
-94 Accuracy OR Alacrity OR Surge Rating
Oriconian MK-2 and Dread Forged pieces (Dread Fortress/Palace HM Drops) provide:
-55 Endurance
-62 Crit Rating OR Power
-94 Accuracy OR Alacrity OR Surge Rating
These enhancements will lower your health, however they vastly improve your group utility allowing you to heal for more or deal more damage. There are no BiS Mods, only BiS Enhancements
V. AUGMENTING
The next (brief) part of this is about Augmenting your character. Augments provide boost to your stats making you more viable in fights and increase your group utility. For your PVE sets for DPS or healing, you should run MAINSTAT augs. There really isn't much of an exception to this rule. There is no soft cap on mainstat, and once you hit full 180 gear, you will reach all of the soft caps for your stats with soft caps. Stacking mainstat in your augments will increase your health, bonus healing/damage and critical chance making them the most viable augments.
A mainstat augment will give you:
20 Endurance
32 Mainstat (Willpower, Strength, Aim, Cunning)
It is tempting to try to run Critical/Alacrity/Surge/Accuracy/Power mods, however, the benefit that they provide next to a mainstat augment in negligible in PVE scenarios.
VI. RELICS
One of the hardest things in the game to get are the 180 relics. They drop only from Hard Mode Calphayus in the Dread Palace and they run for over 500K plus mats if you are looking to have them crafted. These are the second best relics in the game for PVE (the best being Dread Master (rated 186)). They improve your stats significantly and are worth the money that you have to pay for them. The 2 Relics that DPS and healers need are the "Dread Forged Relic of Serendipitous Assault" and the "Dread Forged Relic of Focused Retribution". These augments will increase your Power (Serendipitous) and Mainstat (Focused Retribution) by 740 for 6 seconds every 20 seconds. This is a HUGE benefit and can result in massive heals and DPS during a dual-proc.
However, not everyone has the money and MMGs to spare on these relics. Many people tend to just stick to the Arkanian relics (can be bought for 150 from the Basic Comms vendor OR can be acquired from the DF/DP One-time mission OR can drop from bosses such as Calphayus or the Dread Guards in TFB). However the Arkanian relics are pretty much crap. The Arkanian Relics give very low stats and do not help your overall DPS or heals very much at all. However there is a very easy relic to get that is better than both the Arkanian relics (rating 162) and the Underworld relics (ranked 168). The OBROAN.
These PVP relics are actually rated 158, less than both Arkanian and Underworld, but if you look at the actual stats it gives, it provides more Mainstat and Power on the proc than either the Arkanian or the Underworld. The Obroan relics give 625 Power and Mainstat on the procs, whereas the Underworld gives 550 and the Arkanian give significantly less than that. Another advantage to buying the Obroan is that they only cost 700 WZ comms, which is very cheap considering how good they are in both PVP and PVE.
In short, buy Dread Forged if you've got the money and mats to spare, stick with Obroan if you don't.
VII. WHAT TO BUY
Now, an important part of getting into full 180s is getting all your pieces. An important thing to remember here is that you cannot switch armorings into other slots (e.g. you cannot switch the armoring from a chest piece into your boots). So, this means that you must buy at least one of each slot to get the 180 armoring before you can really start to min/max your character. However, this does not mean that you should just go to the vendor and buy whichever pieces say healer or DPS on them.
The first thing you should buy is your offhand weapon. This costs 140 ultimate comms, but it provides more of a bonus than any other piece because it gives you Force power or Tech Power. This Force/Tech power significantly increase your bonus healing/damage and cannot be gained from any piece except for Offhand an Mainhand weapons; however the mainhand is not sold at vendors and is only dropped from the HM Council. Force/Tech Power gives you (roughly) a .23 Bonus Damage per point, and the Force/Tech power is determined by the barrel/armoring/hilt in your weapons. Since you are buying the 180 Offhand first, you are essentially getting a free 264.73 bonus damage with the item in addition to the stats that the mod and enhancement give you. So remember OFFHAND FIRST!
After you buy your offhand weapon, what you should do is start to improve your lowest quality pieces. Look at your gear, find the lowest rating (or any prototype (blues) or premium (greens) quality items) and replace them with the corresponding 180 version of that item.
However, you need to be a careful shopper to avoid spending a lot of time and effort min/maxing once you reach all 180s. If you just go in as a healer or DPS and buy the healer or DPS gear, respectively, your gear will be very far from correct once you hit full 180s and you will have to spend a lot of time ripping out mods and enhancements, when you could have just shopped wisely the first time. When you go to buy a piece, don't just buy it because of the name, look at what stats it gives. If the piece labeled for a healer gives you Critical and Accuracy, but you need more Power and Surge, look at the DPS piece and see what it gives you. If you are a healer, but the DPS piece is better suited to min/max you, or vice versa, then buy that piece. It will save you a lot of hassle and wasted comms that could be used to gear alts in the future.
Before I end this guide I want to make something clear to all you Dread Lords out there. You don't have to be perfectly min/maxed to raid with us or do events or whatever else we choose to do. This guide is simply here to make you better geared players, more equipped to easily deal with operations bosses and other enemies you may face in the game.
Thanks for reading my guide. Good Luck!
