In this fine Wednesday evening BioWare has brought back up the SWTOR Public Test Server for “Phase 1.5” with a new 6.0 Onslaught build on it. The highlights of this build include the new Adaptive Level Sync tech for Operations and Flashpoints, updated Test Dummies to their 6.0 values, Imperial Agents with their own new Ability, Set Bonuses and Tactical Items and more! Make the jump with me to find out what’s new!
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Phase 1 lasted only a couple of days. It allowed you to play test the new Sith Warrior and Sith Inquisitor abilities as well as take a closer look at the new Item Rating 306 gear, set bonuses and some tactical items for the four advanced classes.
In case you had forgotten or did not follow the previous testing phases, here are a few quick links to bring you back up to speed before I continue with the new build and what’s on it:
- SWTOR 6.0 PTS New Inquisitor Ability, Set Bonuses and Tactical Items
- SWTOR 6.0: New Warrior Ability, Set Bonuses and Tactical Items
- SWTOR 6.0: New Juggernaut Ability, Set Bonuses and Tactical Items
- BioWare Opens up SWTOR 6.0 Onslaught PTS – Phase 1
Now, onto the real new stuff. Phase 1.5 was announced a few days ago and was scheduled to appear “early next week”. Wednesday is not exactly early, but it’s here and before I drop the full official Patch Notes for today’s build, let’s check what are the highlights for this new build.
The Imperial Agent along with its new Ability, set bonuses and Tactical Items are available on Odessen. A new vendor has been placed for this class and its advanced classes. In addition a new teleporter/terminal has been placed on Hutta to allow your newly created Agent to quickly travel to Odessen, get up to level 75 and let’s not forget about the 10 million credits placed right in your pockets.
On top of that all new vendors on Odessen sell their contents for 1 (that’s ONE) credit. You will be able to get anything you need for your testing purposes. The Training Dummies are still on the platform, near the vendors. More about them in a moment!
This is called “Phase 1.5” for a reason! It’s a steady dump of new stuff on top of the initial PTS release from last week, but not much is available and certainly not all.
The best part, in my opinion, is the inclusion of the new Adaptive Level Sync Technology (ALST?). Currently it is only applied to two operations and a Flashpoint – Karagga’s Palace, Eternety Vault and Hammer Station.
“The idea behind this scaling tech is that we are trying to avoid some of the pitfalls from previous expansions. By re-leveling them to max level, we effectively have to rebalance them all over again. This creates some obvious issues where FPs and Ops can quickly become too easy, or too hard. The goal of applying this scaling tech is that it will allow us to leverage the original balance that for this content” – Eric Musco, SWTOR community manager
It is unfortunate that they decided to try the scaling on the oldest and, quite frankly, the most boring Operations and Flashpoint, but there is strong logic behind that decision! KP and EV are part of SWTOR since day one (well, KP had only one functioning boss at launch, but let’s not go there now). The Hammer Station is one of the first Flashpoints every new player attempts and it is by far the easiest and most popular for farming purposes. These facts contribute to the reason why this content is the first to be tested with the new adaptive level sync system – almost every player is very familiar with it and can tell the difference right away.
Important note – none of the other Operations and Flashpoints are part of this test. They are available on PTS, of course. BioWare even asks you to go test them too and compare how they feel next to the level sync/scaled EV, KP and HS.
Because testing the new builds, abilities and balancing is slowly coming to the front lines, BioWare has updated the Training Dummies in this PTS build to match the “6.0 values”. Details are listed further below in the patch notes.
The previously announced participation rewards are not available in Phase 1.5. You will be able to earn them when Phase 2 launches, later in August (perhaps – not confirmed yet!). In case you don’t know what these are, here’s a quick reminder from my previous PTS-related article:
“Back by popular demand, we are happy to announce the return of PTS rewards! However, not every round of PTS will track progress towards these rewards, so keep your eyes peeled for more PTS blogs in the future. This first round of PTS will not have a reward associated with it. Once we start the second round however, there will be a new PTS-only Achievement that will require you to complete five in-game group activities. When we get into the third round, we will then have a similar PTS-only Achievement of completing 10 in-game group activities.”
All rewards will be granted with or shortly after the launch of Onslaught. Completing the achievements will earn you the following:
- One of the two Achievements – The Strike Team Specialist and Strike Team Commander character Titles.
- Both Achievements – A new and very unique mount that will be revealed in a future PTS article.
SWTOR 6.0 Onslaught PTS Phase 1.5 Patch Notes
Note: These are the official patch notes, as listed on the SWTOR Forums, but as community manager Eric Musto explains, they are not extensive and complete. Take it as “these are the notes we want you to make a note of” kind of a list.
- Severing Slash’s damage has been increased by 25%
- Dark Return’s damage has been increased by 60%.
- Tempest of Rho’s proc chance from Force Lightning has been increased from 10% to 20%
- Crystals are now available on the PTS Mod Vendor
- Moddable Main-hand and Off-hand weapons are now available on the PTS Weapons & Accessory Vendor.
- Agents are available for testing
- Agent Set bonus gear and Tacticals are now available on PTS vendors
- Taxi’s on the fleet have had their speed increased.
- Hutta now has a teleporter to Odessen so that Agents can join in the fun.
- Reminder that Bounty Hunters are not yet ready for testing; they won’t have any gear vendors on Odessen just yet
- Vendors will no longer hide their item list if you have a discipline selected.
- We’re testing out a new adaptive level sync for Story and Veteran difficulty group content to determine whether we want to use it for certain older content in 6.0. Check out Karagga’s Palace or Eternity Vault at level 75 and give us feedback on how the scaling feels if you’re interested!
- Note: None of the other Operations are using this sync yet, so you can bounce between them to check out the differences if you’d like.
- Fixed a bug with cooldowns not appearing properly on some abilities
- This may not be completely fixed, please bug/post if you see more of these with very specific info
- Using the boost terminal will now let you unlock your legacy properly.
- Aggro radius of enemies have been fixed
- Fixed a bug where conal AOEs weren’t working right (Haley/JR have more info about this if you need it)
- Unstable Acceleration and Anomalous Entropy now behave as their tooltip suggests they should in Nightmare mode.
- Nahut’s electrified ring is now actually electrified.
- Teleporter/boost terminal on Hutta and Korriban will now grant all companions.
- The new key art is now on the splash screen
- Training Dummy Health Modulators have been updated to 6.0 values:
- Basic Modulator: 0.5 Mil -> 1.0 Mil
- Standard Modulator: 1.5 Mil -> 2.5 Mil
- Advanced Modulator: 2.5 Mil -> 4.0 Mil
- Expert Modulator: 4.0 Mil -> 6.0 Mil
- Fixed healing crit chance on the lucky tactical (since it was 100% crit chance)
Things that do not work or are not yet complete in this PTS Build
As with the previous build, this one is also not complete and therefore has a lot of items missing, broken or simply present as placeholders. Here are the notes BioWare wants you to know before you head onto the test server.
- New tooltips have been implemented, but they are still a work in progress.
- All of the Onslaught gear is using existing armor appearances, that is likely to change.
- Amplifiers are not implemented. If you see them appear anywhere expect that it is fully placeholder and not implemented.
- Tactical item slots appearance in the character sheet is temporary.
- Crafting inventory and crew skills are not yet ready for testing.
- The spoils of war style of loot drops are not yet implemented, that will be a major focus of a future PTS phase.
- Nautolans are not implemented but you will see a section for them in character creation.
- None of the new areas or storyline should be accessible during PTS.
There are several forum threats open on the official site swtor.com. If you wish to participate in the discussions there and tell BioWare what you think of the new Spoils of War changes, the Adaptive Level Sync tech or anything else from PTS, check this link for the collective post from Eric Musco about the PTS Feedback.
While BioWare has not officially announced how long Phase 1.5 will be, I imagine it will surely be longer than Phase 1, which lasted only a couple of days. The new Adaptive Level Sync technology would likely be tweaked and improved in the next phases, but before additional changes are made, some testing would be required, so I expect this build would last at least for a week, possibly longer. As soon as any time frame becomes known, I will let you know, of course.
If you are a Free-to-play player or a returning veteran and are considering subscribing to SWTOR for Onslaught, I have a few interesting cheap offers for Game Time Cards that you might find interesting:
