7.0 Gearing Guide

Gearing in SWTOR involves the following stats:

• Mastery: Increases bonus damage by 0.20 per point, bonus healing by 0.14 per point and slightly increases critical chance

• Endurance: Increases maximum health by 14 per point

• Power: Increases bonus damage by 0.23 per point and bonus healing by 0.17 per point

• Defense: Increases the chance to dodge or resist an attack

• Critical: Increases chance to critically hit with a damage or healing ability and increases the bonus critical damage or healing for any ability that critically hits

• Alacrity: Increases base energy regeneration rate and reduces cooldown on most abilities

• Accuracy: Increases chance to hit target

• Shield: Increases chance to shield an attack

• Absorb: Increases the amount of damage that is absorbed by a shield

Stats in SWTOR are separated into three categories: primary, secondary or tertiary stats.

This classification governs how stats are found on gear. Some gear pieces have only primary and secondary stats (armoring, mods, hilts, barrels) while others (enhancements, earpieces, implants, some augments) will also have tertiary stats.

• Primary: Mastery, Endurance

• Secondary: Power, Defense

• Tertiary: Critical, Alacrity, Accuracy, Shield, Absorb

This discussion is very high level. For a much deeper dive on SWTOR stats, please see Stats and Damage Calculations in SWTOR . This is a slightly outdated but still really great guide talking about stats in SWTOR. I highly recommend it as a supplement to this guide.

Gear pieces contain stats as follows:

• Earpieces and Implants each contain Mastery, Endurance, Power or Defense, and a tertiary stat.

• Relics contain either Mastery and Defense (tank relics) or Endurance and Power (DPS/healer relics). Some tank relics may also contain tertiary tank stats in lieu of a passive or active temporary buff to a stat.

• Wrist and Belt gear pieces each contain modification slots for

  • Armoring: Mastery, Endurance

  • Mod: Mastery, Endurance, Power (Lethal Mod) or Defense (Warding Mod)

• Head, Chest, Hands, Legs and Feet gear pieces each contain modification slots for

  • Armoring: Mastery, Endurance

  • Mod: Mastery, Endurance, Power (Lethal Mod) or Defense (Warding Mod)

  • Enhancement: Endurance, Power or Defense, Tertiary stat

• Mainhand and Offhand gear pieces each contain modification slots for the following

  • Armoring, Hilt or Barrel: Mastery, Endurance

  • Mod: Mastery, Endurance, Power (Lethal Mod) or Defense (Warding Mod)

• Enhancement: Endurance, Power or Defense, Tertiary stat

With respect to each gear piece or gear piece modification (hilt, barrel, armoring, mod, enhancement), many versions of each item are available that have different total stat pools and stat pool allocations between each stat category. This allows for significant customization and diversity in stats between players.

So what does this all mean? No matter how you gear, you will get a lot of Mastery, Endurance and either Power (DPS or healer) or Defense (tanks). Between enhancements, earpiece and both implants, you will have the equivalent of 10 enhancements to provide your base budget of tertiary stats. Augments can be added to each gear item as well, which will be discussed later.

Your choices will primarily be whether to prioritize Power or Defense in your Secondary stat budget, how to prioritize Tertiary stats and the overall mix of stats for your role/class/discipline.

Gearing for DPS generally follows a simple gearing strategy for your tertiary stat points:

1. Reach 110% Accuracy rating. As of the 7.0 game update, reaching 110% accuracy requires 2,694 accuracy points in your gear. Operations bosses typically have a default 10% defense chance, so having less than 110% accuracy can lead to missed attacks. It is usually preferable to go very slightly over 2,694 rather than have less though in most cases getting close either way is fine.

2. Reach target GCD Alacrity breakpoint. See the table above for the number of alacrity points required for your discipline to reach the desired GCD breakpoint. It is very important to reach and preferably go 200-400 points over, as coming close to but less than the breakpoint will result in wasted alacrity stat points.

3. Place remaining tertiary stats into Critical. There is no benefit to surpassing the targets for Accuracy and usually little or no benefit to doing so for Alacrity either, so the remainder should go to critical.

Gearing choices are very straightforward in the 7.0 patch update due to all gear drops being nonmoddable. Set bonuses were also moved to Legendary Implants. This design lets players swap between gear pieces to target the tertiary stats they need. Further optimization will depend on augments and upgrading to better gear pieces and item rating.

DPS should use either Versatile or Proficient stims and attack adrenals. I expect the Proficient stim will be more useful given the challenge many players will face in gearing for Accuracy Rating and Alacrity Rating targets and still having meaningful Critical Rating.

It is also worth noting that various approaches exist for gearing for alacrity for DPS disciplines. All DPS disciplines should gear for at least the 1.4 second GCD. Disciplines with a passive or rotational alacrity buff will likely benefit from gearing to reach the 1.3 second GCD.

For PVP, Master Mode Operations or parsing, the majority of disciplines will see the best benefit from gearing for the 1.4 second GCD. There are a few common exceptions as noted below:

• Telekinetic Sage / Lightning Sorcerer: Gearing for the 1.3 second GCD is very common due to these disciplines already having a +5% alacrity passive ability. However, most theorycrafters seem to agree that the discipline performs well across a spectrum of alacrity points so while this seems the most common gearing approach it is not mandatory by any means. Another common approach is to overgear in alacrity slightly to achieve an incremental GCD reduction of 0.1 seconds while under the effects of Mental Alacrity / Polarity Shift.

• Combat Sentinel / Carnage Marauder: Receives a +3% passive alacrity buff, these disciplines can easily opt to either a 1.3 or 1.4 second GCD. This seems to be largely a matter of playstyle, as the discipline plays very fast with a 1.3 second GCD when combined with the alacrity buff applied by Zen / Berserk.

• Gunnery Commando / Arsenal Mercenary: Receives a +3% passive alacrity buff, these disciplines can easily opt to either a 1.3 or 1.4 second GCD.

• Ranged Tech Disciplines: Most ranged tech DPS disciplines (Gunslingers, Snipers, Assault Specialist Commando, Innovative Ordnance Mercenary) can benefit from various alacrity breakpoints below the 1.4s GCD to improve energy management and target certain rotational breakpoints for receiving extra DoT ticks or proccing certain passive skills. Some of these would benefit from reaching the 1.3s GCD if gearing allowed for it, though current estimates are that it will not be beneficial at current stat budget levels.

Gearing for Healers generally follows a simple gearing strategy for your tertiary stat points:

1. Reach target GCD Alacrity breakpoint. See the table above for the number of alacrity points required for your discipline to reach the desired GCD breakpoint. It is very important to reach and preferably go 200-400 points over, as coming close to but less than the breakpoint will result in wasted alacrity stat points.

2. (Optional) Add Accuracy Rating. Some healers may opt to add Accuracy Rating to assist with dealing damage in progression or especially when interrupts are necessary for encounter mechanics. Interrupts can miss without 110% accuracy so some Accuracy Rating can help healers more consistently get interrupts. I do not recommend healers add Accuracy Rating in their gear until they are ready for "Hardmare" Veteran Mode operations or Master Mode operations.

3. Place remaining tertiary stats into Critical. After reaching the desired level of Alacrity Rating and any desired Accuracy Rating (generally should be none), the remainder should go to critical.

Gearing choices are very straightforward in the 7.0 patch update due to all gear drops being nonmoddable. Set bonuses were also moved to Legendary Implants. This design lets players swap between gear pieces to target the tertiary stats they need. Further optimization will depend on augments and upgrading to better gear pieces and item rating.

Healers should generally use a Versatile and triage adrenals. A Proficient stim and/or attack adrenal may be situationally useful in specific fights with difficult DPS checks or where healer interrupts are necessary for encounter mechanics.

With respect to alacrity breakpoints, most healers should always gear for the 1.3 second GCD when the Zeal perk applies. When the Zeal perk does not apply, healers should generally stick to the 1.4 second GCD with tech-based healers perhaps adding more to reach energy regeneration breakpoints.

Gearing for Tanks generally follows a simple gearing strategy for your tertiary stat points:

1. Reach target Shield/Absorb stats. See discussion below over Shield/Absorb stat balancing, which varies by approach (minimize average DTPS or spike damage gearing) and by class.

2. Reach target GCD Alacrity breakpoint (if offensive gearing). See the discussion below over offensive tank gearing strategies. If the Guild Zeal Perk applies, then reaching the 1.4s GCD is viable with 560 points of Alacrity Rating. If the Zeal perk does not apply or in content where it is removed then most tanks are not recommended to gear Alacrity Rating since it will cost a significant amount of mitigation.

3. Place extra stats into Critical (if offensive gearing). Any remaining points can be placed into Critical Rating to further increase tank DPS. For players who do not benefit from the Zeal perk or who primarily run content that removes the Zeal perk, any offensive gearing should generally be done through Critical Rating without any Alacrity Rating due to the very high stat cost of reaching the 1.4s GCD.

Please note that if you are not building any offensive gearing in your tank build, then your gearing objective is solely to balance Shield and Absorb tertiary stats.

For 7.0 I recommend players only focus on mitigation gearing until reaching the maximum item rating (326 for most content, 330 for Master Mode Operations) then experiment with offensive gearing as applicable. All disciplines lost mitigation through fewer offensive cooldowns and in some cases other movement and utility skills and abilities that can increase survivability, tanks included. As such, players will be less able to rely on skillful defensive cooldown use to "cheese" mechanics and keep damage taken at an acceptable level despite being significantly under geared in mitigation stats relative to the content difficulty.

Does this mean offensive gearing is not an option? Definitely not. If anything it seems that tanks may deal more damage in 7.0 given the greater range of passive skill tree options that increase damage.

Early analysis of shield and absorb stat formulas suggest that Shield Rating will be more beneficial for most tanks than Absorb rating. As such and assuming this holds true upon further testing, the early indications are that the most effective method to offensively gear will be to swap Absorb Rating for Critical Rating. Maintaining a high Shield Chance but lower Absorb will lead to higher average damage taken but without a higher probability of taking spike damage, which is the biggest danger to tanks.

Gearing for tanks is simple but has enormous diversity in practice. Thankfully, tanks care very little about breakpoints in gearing so their gearing practice is across a spectrum for mitigation and damage/threat generation, meaning that tanks are much freer to experiment with what feels comfortable than DPS or healers.

The first determination comes down to whether you are gearing defensively or offensively. Defensive gearing seeks to minimize damage taken per second but typically has diminishing returns on points invested in shield, absorb and especially defense, whereas offensive gearing seeks to still maintain acceptable mitigation levels but otherwise maximizing damage to ensure sufficient threat generation and to help meet DPS checks.

For less experienced players, I highly recommend defensive gearing at first before experimenting with offensive gearing approaches.

For defensive gearing strategies, tanks should generally look to maximize their tertiary stat points and invest all of them in shield and absorb. For offensive gearing strategies, tanks should still invest the majority of their tertiary stat budget in shield and absorb but should seek to add in some alacrity and critical stat points also.

So how should tanks balance the points invested in shield and absorb? It depends! First, let’s briefly recap how these stats work.

Shield points increase the tank’s chance to shield eligible attacks (see below, not all attacks can be shielded), while Absorb points increase the amount of damage absorbed when a tank successfully shields an attack. Shield is more important because you need to successfully shield an attack in order to absorb any damage!

The early indication are that 7.0 will continue the trend of high Shield Rating builds being the most popular and effective in progression raiding, and if anything might even favor Shield Rating more heavily than before with Vanguard/Powertech tanks needing little or no Absorb Rating to optimize mitigation.

Gearing for shield and absorb also has two philosophies.

Average Mitigation

The first is trying to minimize average damage taken over the course of a fight. This gearing focused on reducing the average healing pressure on healers, with hopes that by optimizing their average mitigation that healers will have more energy available to deal with burst damage. Gearing by tank discipline mostly works out something like the following and is focused on having average shield chance and the average absorb chance be equal with a discipline’s passive active:

• Defense Guardian / Immortal Juggernaut: Shield and Absorb should be relatively close with Shield slightly higher. A stat distribution around 60/40 or 55/45 for Shield/Absorb is very reasonable. These disciplines have a wide range of mitigation passives that do not lean heavily in any direction so the passive shield and absorb chance are good metrics for balancing stats.

• Kinetic Combat Shadow / Darkness Assassin: Shield and Absorb should be relatively close with Absorb slightly higher (i.e., anywhere from around the same to maybe a few hundred points higher). These disciplines get very strong rotational buffs to both Shield (Kinetic Ward / Dark Ward provides +15% shield chance) and Absorb (up to +8% as stacks of Kinetic Ward / Dark Ward are consumed), but the buff to Shield is much higher and constant. As such, the discipline generally benefits from proportionally more points to Absorb Rating.

• Shield Specialist Vanguard / Shield Tech Powertech: These disciplines have lots of passive and rotational buffs to shield absorption so need much higher Shield Rating to maximize the mitigation benefit.

Spike Damage Mitigation

The second philosophy focuses on gearing for spike damage. With few exceptions, most healers should not struggle with average sustained healing requirements if they have the requisite skill for the content being run. The concern for tanks and healers is surviving spike damage. Tanks have defensive cooldowns to help mitigate predictable spikes but for fights with heavy spike damage potential they can be heavily reliant on RNG where a few bad shield rolls can kill a tank.

Gearing for spike damage mitigation focuses on significantly higher shield points than absorb. This gearing leads to tanks shielding more attacks but each successful shield absorbing slightly less damage. Put differently, this makes tanks take slightly higher average damage but with fewer spikes in damage. I highly recommend this gearing approach as it is far more important in Veteran and Master Mode content. There is no perfect answer but I usually look to gear around 1,000 or so extra points in Shield versus Absorb as compared to the recommendations above for average mitigation gearing.

I highly recommend gearing for spike damage as a tank running any progression Hard / Veteran Mode or Nightmare / Master Mode content.