SWTOR Masterwork Gear Changes in 5.10

Hey folks,

For those of you who are familiar with current Masterwork gearing plans from PTS, you will notice some changes. Otherwise, this may be an introduction to how all of this will work in 5.10. Throughout this post when I refer to Masterwork gear, I am referring to the new 252 and 258 item rating gear being introduced in 5.10. Based on our initial implementation there were a few key things we wanted to address:

• Getting Masterwork gear solely from PvP was more difficult than we would like.
• The implementation encouraged working directly to 258 while skipping 252. We don’t have a problem with this, but it made getting any gear upgrades more challenging and expensive than desired. By “stair stepping” up to 252 and then 258 there can be constant progression that isn’t as expensive as trying to jump straight to best in slot.
• We needed more opportunities for players to get Masterwork Data Crystals and gear overall.
• Players had no long term value in getting 252 since they could not be upgraded to 258.

Before we dive into the way MW gear acquisition will work in 5.10, just a reminder that 258 gear can be crafted by gathering materials from a variety of sources, including Master Mode Gods from the Machine. This ensures that the new MM in 5.10 is a very valuable source for progression Ops players. Outside of crafting, there are two ways of acquiring MW gear, by turning in MW Data Crystals to a vendor for 252 / 258 or by receiving 252 gear directly. Let’s cover each of these methods and within each, the separation of PvE and PvP where applicable.

Masterwork Data Crystals
There are two places where you can purchase MW gear:

• Lord Fural / Major Pucenisco on Ossus – 252 Gear
  • Requires Ossus Reputation rank between Outsider and Hero, depending on gear piece
  • Each piece costs 2 Masterwork Data Crystals
• Lord Bay’lor / Captain Anfel on Ossus – 258 Gear
  • Requires Ossus Reputation rank of Champion or Legend, depending on gear piece
  • Each piece costs 3-4 Masterwork Data Crystals and a matching piece of 252 gear

Here are the ways in which you can acquire MW Data Crystals per week:
PvE

• 1 Crystal – [Weekly] Masterwork Data Crystal – This Mission is to defeat both world bosses -or- earn 50 Group Ranked Arena Points
• 1 Crystal – New rotating Weekly Mission (50% chance of being a PvE objective)

PvP

• 1 Crystal – [Weekly] Masterwork Data Crystal – This Mission is to defeat both world bosses -or- earn 50 Group Ranked Arena Points
• 1 Crystal – New rotating Weekly Mission (50% chance of being a PvP objective)

Both

• Rare chance of MW Data Crystals dropping out of Command Crates at Tier 3 and up
• 1-2 Crystals – Turning in Unassembled Components

252 Gear Drops
In addition to being able to purchase gear for MW Data Crystals, there are a two places where you can outright acquire 252 gear.

• [Weekly] Daily Area Ossus will allow you to choose one of the 3 Artifact Lockboxes:
  • Artifact Lockbox (Lower Body): Waist, Legs, Feet, or Relic
  • Artifact Lockbox (Tech): Main Hand, Offhand, Head, or Ear
  • Artifact Lockbox (Upper Body): Chest, Wrists, Hands, or Implant
• Once you are in Tier 3 of Galactic Command there is a chance that an Artifact Lockbox containing one random 252 piece can drop from Command Crates.

Additional Changes
There are some other changes to help support Masterwork Gear (mostly targeted at PvPers). They are:

• We increased the current 252 disintegration rates from PTS. 252 gear will disintegrate into 175 Unassembled Components in 5.10 (up from 9 to 45).
• To help PvPers get the required Reputation for the MW Data Crystal vendors, we are adding Rep rewards to Ranked PvP Missions:
  • [DAILY] Arena of Death!: 2 Geonosian Power Cell
  • [DAILY] My Kind of Scum: 1 Geonosian Power Cell
  • [WEEKLY] Go Berserk!: 4 Encrypted Data Disks
  • [WEEKLY] Time for Pain!: 2 Encrypted Data Disks

TLDR – If a player simply does two Weekly Missions of their chosen playstyle they will be able to acquire a minimum of two 252 pieces per week (or upgrade one 252 piece to 258). This does not include crossing over into both PvP and PvE, any MW Data Crystals or drops from Command Crates, or purchasing any crafted versions of this gear, which can speed up your acquisition rate of MW gear.

Let us know your thoughts on the changes to acquiring Masterwork gear in 5.10!

-eric

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toraak  Can we get an answer on what all of the rotating weekly missions will be, and if there will be a GSF mission in the rotation?

The rotating Mission will contain one of 4 objectives:

• Story Mode Ops
• Master Mode Flashpoints
• Galactic Starfighter
• Ranked PvP (the team is exploring changing this to unranked instead)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Goologne  One thing was not mentioned in the post from Eric. In the commando crates is a possibility to get a random reputation token. Will there be with 5.10 also the Ossus reputation token included in the commando crates? Would be interesting to know, now this rank matters for the vendor to get the MW gear.

Currently Ossus Rep tokens will not drop in Command Crates. However, there are a large number of sources both on and off Ossus to earn that Reputation. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jdast  So you are making it easier to acquire 252 gear, but making it much more difficult to acquire 258 gear? You can spin this however you want, but lets be clear — 258 gear is now harder to obtain unless you are SIGNIFICANTLY increasing the drops of MWS in T3 and T4 crates. Dasty

Totally hear you on this, so let me try to provide a specific example of how it worked on PTS, vs how it will work now. For this example let’s say your goal is to acquire a 258 chest piece.

PTS
The purchase from a vendor costs 5 Masterwork Data Crystals

• You could not purchase the 252 chest at all, and it was not required for the 258 purchase – Total cost of 5

Now
The purchase from a vendor costs 4 Masterwork Data Crystals and the 252 chest.

• If you purchased the 252 chest from the vendor for 2 MW Data Crystals – Total cost of 6
• If you have the 252 chest from a Command Crate or Ossus Weekly Mission – Total cost of 4

You are correct that from PTS if you only use MW Data Crystals to acquire gear it will cost 1 more Crystal per piece of gear. However, for any 258 that you purchase using a 252 piece acquired from a Command Crate or the Ossus Weekly it is actually 1 Crystal cheaper.