SWTOR 5.10 PTS Refresh 3 Brings New Tier 5 Gear and Operations Changes

BioWare introduced the brand new Tier 5 Gear to the newest SWTOR 5.10 PTS Refresh number 3 for testing plus a fresh batch of GftM Operation Changes

Note: I am currently working to bring you the video preview with the actual stats of the gear. Please, check this article in an hour or so and it will be available here.

HIGHLIGHTS

To make the non Master Mode Operation gameplay through Gods from the Machine, the overall HP of the mobs forming the thrash pulls between bosses, have been nerfed significantly – ~15% for Story Mode and ~13% for Veteran Mode.

This is also the last week when Tyth – the God of Rage (first boss) will be available for testing. The devs want to shift theirs and your attention to the later boss encounters, so Tyth will be a “forced skip” when the next refresh of the PTS happens.

A button has been added for testers to skip to Nahut directly now too.

The second PTS refresh in one week and the third overall for SWTOR 5.10 PTS was introduced just now by BioWare’s Operations designer Matt Pucevich. This patch brings the new Tier 5 gear (Item Rating 258) to the game for testing. Note that the gear is available on a Odessen vendor. It is there just for testing purposes and dummy bashing attempts.

NEW TIER 5 GEAR APPEARANCE

Below you can see a collection of images with the Tier 5 Gear Appearance on different classes.

PATCH NOTES

Below you can see the full Patch Notes, as they were posted by Matt on the SWTOR forums.

General

• Tier 5 Legendary Gear (258) is now available from purchase from ED-5E L at the Odessen landing area. There is also a vendor selling 258 components.
• To try and ease the total run time of the GftM operation in non-master modes, the health of non-boss encounters have been reduced by ~15% in Story Mode, and ~13% in Veteran Mode.

Tyth

Just a couple of odds and ends here, cleaning up things that went wonky with the build.

I’m leaving Tyth open this refresh to get a little more information about the power level of the Justice buff (especially when it’s actually working as intended). If it’s making things too easy, we’ll dial it back a bit.

All Modes

• Lances are no longer taunt immune.

Master

• The Justice Drones’ Energized Overload proc now actually applies its damage buff to players.
• The Justice Drones’ Energized Overload proc will no longer apply its damage buff to Tyth and other Drones.

Veteran

• Removed Inversion’s hinder component, as it was odd to do this in Veteran mode but not in Master mode.

Aivela & Esne

No more permanent disco mode, and a little bit of time pulled out of Phase 3 (approx 1 million HP), to pull the encounter forward just a tad faster. We’ll see how this goes.

Master

• Pushing the Nexus from Phase 0 to Phase 1 before destroying all of the Codex Obelisks will now unleash a Codex Feedback shockwave that wipes the raid.
• Half of the Nexus’s Phase 3 health has been removed. The net result of this is that the Nexus has 25% less HP than it used to, and the transition point out of Phase 0 is 33% instead of 50%.

Nahut

A little quality of life for Nahut, but not much more, as testers were unable to make much of any headway into the encounter without 258 gear. It turns out Master Mode Nahut is kind of a hard encounter. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So, funny story: Way back when, in the long long ago… Candle passes originally hit the first thing in their path (player or Nahut). As it turns out, this was a horrendously mean thing to do. I removed it by simply flagging the player interception behavior as Master Mode only (since we weren’t making Master Mode, it was the quickest and cleanest change to remove it). Fast forward to the reality of today, and you Master Mode testers were delighted(?) to discover these new candle interception mechanics.

Spoiler: Candle interception is still not an okay thing to do, so that business has been rightly and properly removed.

Master Mode

• Power Cells will now become usable 6s earlier than before (3s after Candle Pickup, down from 9s) so that players have ample time to pick up a cell and get back to the center.
• Other players can no longer accidentally intercept candle passes in Master mode. (Nahut can still intercept passes, just like Veteran mode)
• The debuff associated with the Radiation Field outside the Singularity Chamber should no longer be right-click dispellable.

Veteran

• Rail Turrets should actually have 20% less HP in Vet8 now.

For more information on SWTOR, check out the NEWS and GUIDES sections here on VULKK.com. Don’t forget to share your thoughts and opinions in the comments below! Let me know what do you think!