Legacy Perks from PTS 1.3

[Thank you to my guild leader @Asros of NSTK for the screen shot!]

Today we had a torrent of SWTOR information sent down the pipes. Twitter started to go crazy over the first bit of information about Patch 1.3 on the PTS and the notes related to it, and before we even had time to read over them all we were slammed by specifics of the 1.3 Legacy perks. Just as we were starting to add that to the info we were already trying to take it we got slammed yet again with server transfers being confirmed to start next Tuesday, June 12th.

As I’ve done with my other Legacy posts, I’m going to give you the scoop on what they do, how they work, and how much you’ll have to pay to get the. I’ll also share my thoughts on cost vs. benefit.

Legacy Perks 1.3 Are Character-Specific
One thing that you must keep in mind with these perks is that they are not unlocked on a global level, instead they are unlocked only for the character that you purchase them with. That applies to all of the 1.3 Legacy perks.

The idea behind this is that you can pick and choose how you want to level each character and you can choose for each character to be different. We’ll see how it all actually plays out in the end, but for right now you need to be aware of that restriction.

Advancement
This is the section that I was most interested in as an altoholic. Here you have options to increase the rate at which you earn experience with various activities. There are five different categories that you can increase your experience gains from, and each of those five categories has five ranks worth of bonus experience. The bonuses from each rank are cumulative, meaning that their bonuses stack with one another, and you have to purchase the ranks in order.

Improved Warzone Experience
Increases the amount of experience you receive from completing warzones.

Rank	Credits	Req. Legacy Lv	Bonus Exp
1	20,000	5	2%
2	30,000	10	4%
3	50,000	15	6%
4	75,000	20	8%
5	100,000	25	10%
Total	275,000		30%

I see this being a very popular purchase. SWTOR has some of the best PvP you can get in the 10-49 bracket, and I think we’ll see people more than happy to level solely through PvP and class quests.

Improved Flashpoint Experience
Increases the amount of experience you receive from defeating enemies in flashpoints.

Rank	Credits	Req. Legacy Lv	Bonus Exp
1	20,000	5	2%
2	30,000	10	4%
3	50,000	15	6%
4	75,000	20	8%
5	100,000	25	10%
Total	275,000		30%

With this patch also introducing LFG, I think we’ll see a lot of people investing in this one as well. I’ve mostly avoided flashpoints while leveling because my wife doesn’t like PUG’s, and we almost always play together with just the two of us in the party, so my knowledge of which level ranges this would be effective in and which it wouldn’t restricts my judgement on how popular this one might become. My gut tells me this is going to be a big deal though.

Improved Space Mission Experience
Increases the amount of experience you receive from completing space missions.

Rank	Credits	Req. Legacy Lv	Bonus Exp
1	10,000	5	2%
2	20,000	10	4%
3	30,000	15	6%
4	40,000	20	8%
5	50,000	25	10%
Total	150,000		30%

Overall, it’s a good thing this one has a lower price tag because there’s not just a ton of experience to be had from space missions. However, if you weigh the time it takes to complete the missions versus how much experience you get from them, they’re actually pretty dang good already. For those of you who have limited play time and want to maximize your leveling speed you might want to consider investing in these.

Improved Class Mission Experience
Increases the amount of experience you receive from completing class quests.

Rank	Credits	Req. Legacy Lv	Bonus Exp
1	20,000	5	2%
2	30,000	10	4%
3	50,000	15	6%
4	75,000	20	8%
5	100,000	25	10%
Total	275,000		30%

Class missions are a key part of progressing your character, so basically everyone is going to use class quests for leveling. With that in mind, purchasing these is will definitely be beneficial. How beneficial is the question that I don’t have an answer to yet. There really aren’t all that many class quests in the game compared to all of the other quests out there, so it may not be worth the credits to go all the way. As I said though, you are going to do the quests one way or another if you want to progress your story so it wouldn’t hurt to get them.

Improved Exploration Experience
Increases the amount of experience you receive from exploration.

Rank	Credits	Req. Legacy Lv	Bonus Exp
1	10,000	5	2%
2	20,000	10	4%
3	30,000	15	6%
4	40,000	20	8%
5	50,000	25	10%
Total	150,000		30%

Maybe I just haven’t paid close enough attention to my exploration experience, but this seems almost worthless to me. I know you get experience from exploration, but I don’t know that you get 150,000 credits worth to justify increasing the experience gains. It does have the benefit of being a form of experience that you’re guaranteed to benefit from if you play the game at all, I just don’t think there’s enough experience from it out there to justify the price tag.

Companion
These perks increase affection gain with companions, improve crit chance for crafting skills, and reduces the time required to have your companions sell your junk for you.

Legacy of Altruism
Increases the amount of affection your companions gain from Companion Gifts.

Rank	Credits	Req. Legacy Lv	Bonus Affection
1	25,000	5	5%
2	75,000	10	5%
3	150,000	20	5%
Total	250,000		15%

For maximizing companion affection in a hurry, this is a fantastic perk. Some classes have it easy with companion affection and others have it pretty hard. As someone who fills my character slots up and levels all of them at once, that’s just far too many credits for too little return, so in most cases I would rarely consider buying beyond the first rank for any of my characters unless they had a companion that didn’t like gifts who I hated using but still wanted to max. For example, I would consider using this on a Consular because I hate Qyzen and gifting him sucks.

Legacy of Persuasion
Increases the amount of affection your companions gain from Conversations.

Rank	Credits	Req. Legacy Lv	Bonus Affection
1	25,000	5	5%
2	75,000	10	5%
3	150,000	20	5%
Total	250,000		15%

You can’t go wrong with conversation-based affection, so this is going to be a real benefit to most classes. Jedi Knights and Light-side Sith Warriors are the classes who can benefit from it the most since they each have two companions who have no Favorite companion gift, making them harder to max out than other classes. Inquisitor, Trooper, Consular and Smuggler each have a companion who has no favorite gift either, so these will benefit them as well. For other classes, this is still a really good perk, it just isn’t as important for them as the classes with picky companions.

Legacy of Crafting
Increases the chance of an augmented result while crafting.

Rank	Credits	Req. Legacy Lv	Bonus Crit
1	50,000	5	1%
2	100,000	10	1%
3	200,000	20	1%
Total	350,000		3%

Keep in mind that the Legacy of Crafting specifically states “augmented result while crafting” which suggests it does not apply to Missions, consumables, or anything else that can’t proc an augment slot. The question has been asked if it will apply to missions as well, but as far as I am aware there has not an official response.

If you’re a crafter and you sell your goods on the GTN, then this is definitely one that you want to consider. If this provides a crit bonus to all crafting then those of you in the business of selling consumables and item modifications will get the biggest bang for your buck as crits produce extra quantities of the items. If it really is purely a higher chance to proc an augment slot then Synthweavers and Armormechs are the top dogs here.

If you’re not into selling your goods on the GTN, then I would say that these prices are personally too high for me to consider them worthwhile unless I’m rolling in credits.

Legacy of Leadership
Companions return from selling junk sooner.

Rank	Credits	Req. Legacy Lv	Sell Time
1	10,000	5	30 seconds
2	50,000	10	5 seconds
Total	60,000

You could chop off most of my fingers and I would still be able to count on one hand how many times I’ve needed to send my companions to sell my junk for me. There’s no way I would ever get 60,000 credits worth of use out of this thing, or even 10,000 for the first rank. Unless I become a billionaire in the near future, there’s no way I’ll buy either of these on any of my characters.

Travel
These perks give you additional methods of teleporting to specific locations beyond Quick Travel and Fleet Passes, and also reduces the level requirements for using speeders.

Priority Transport
Four new methods of quickly traveling to specific locations. Each of these four options shares a 9 hour cooldown with the other three. These four do not require that you have any of the others, they can all be purchased at any time once you meet the requirements.

Destination	Credits	Req. Legacy Lv
Capital World	20,000	10
Outlaw Den	50,000	10
Fleet Vanguard Vessel	50,000	10
Black Hole	200,000	10

How useful the Priority Transport options are to you will vary from player to player and character to character. I don’t think we’re going to see a whole lot of interest in Outlaw Den unless they do something to draw people to the zone since right now there’s no reason to go there beyond the chests that spawn only once every 30 minutes. That would have been one heck of a perk during the Rakghoul Event, though. Capital Worlds are pretty similar to that in my opinion since there’s not much of a reason to go back there once you level passed them except for the few quests that tell you to return there. Maybe the Legacy Vendors will gain more important items to sell in the future, so you’ll want to go back more frequently? Beats me.

Fleet Vanguard Vessel and Black Hole are the two I suspect will be the most common. I don’t know much of anything about Black Hole since I don’t care for end game content, but those who do will probably enjoy being able to jump right over there to get things done.

Improve Speeder Piloting
Reduces the level requirements to use speeders. Each rank requires you to have already purchased the previous rank.

Rank	Credits	Req. Legacy Lv	New Level Req.
1	40,000	5	Speeder I at Lv 10
2	175,000	5	Speeder II at Lv 30
3	250,000	5	Speeder III at Lv 40
Total	465,000

Speeder Piloting is another one that’s going to matter more to some people than to others. Initially I didn’t care much for these perks beyond the first rank because the cost was just too ridiculous. However, Asros did confirm yesterday that buying these legacy perks also includes the cost of the speeder training itself, so while these prices are high they aren’t as bad as they actually look.

Current speeder costs are 35k, 150k, and 225k so when you cut those out of the costs you’re actually only paying 5,000 for the first rank, 25,000 for the second, and 25,000 for the third which means these aren’t bad at all. So if you were to take the current costs and subtract them from the cost of the perk then you end up with the following:

Speeder Perk Minus Speeder Training
Rank	Credits	Req. Legacy Lv	New Level Req.
1	+5,000	5	Speeder I at Lv 10
2	+25,000	5	Speeder II at Lv 30
3	+25,000	5	Speeder III at Lv 40
Total	+55,000

Those costs aren’t too bad at all if we can assume that the Rank 2 & 3 similarly include training costs in them. With how many alts I level and how often that keeps my overall credits fairly low, I don’t think I’ll bother buying more than the first rank on any of my characters. I leveled my most recent 50 using the first speeder the whole time, and it really doesn’t bother me to miss out on a little extra speed while I’m leveling. If there was more farming to be done in this game then I would be tempted to go for the others, but as it stands there just isn’t enough need to justify it for my personal playstyle.

Convenience

Field Repair Droid
You may deploy a Field Repair Droid that provides repair and vendor services.

Type	Credits	Req. Legacy Lv	Benefits
Basic	50,000	10	Extensive cooldown
Improved	150,000	20	Reduces cooldown, also sells consumables
Advanced	300,000	30	Reduces cooldown further, also sells crew skill items
Total	500,000

For those of you who do enjoy end game content, you’ll probably find these droids pretty useful. For someone like me who likes to level alts all day long, this is pretty useless. The Improved version could be useful while leveling if you’re playing a squishy class and need some medpacs out in the middle of nowhere, but if you’re playing a class like that then you probably know well in advance that you should carry around a healthy supply of them when questing. The Advanced version could be useful primarily for the crew skills items, but I would rather spend that 500,000 credits on all the vendored mats I’ll ever need than spend it on a Droid I’ll use a dozen times.

Field Mail Droid
You may summon a Basic Field Mail Droid. (The first item here is the droid itself, and the Redeployment ranks reduce its cooldown.)

Type	Req. Legacy Lv	Req Lv	Credits
Droid	5	10	20,000
Redeployment Improvement I	5	10	20,000
Redeployment Improvement II	5	10	20,000
Total	60,000

Having access to a mailbox at any time certainly has its uses, but I don’t know that those uses necessarily exist in SWTOR. I used them all the time in WoW when I was farming dungeons or nodes or something like that, but you can’t really do that in SWTOR. And, since mats and things stack up to 99 rather than just 20, even when you do go farming you won’t be filling up your bag slots so much that these droids would be necessary. Convenient, yes. Necessary, no.

I might buy the first one on some of my characters just because it’s fairly cheap and it would give me the option to use it on those rare occasions, but beyond that I don’t think I’ll bother. I might be tempted to make an exception on my bank alts if I ever get really heavily involved with the GTN, but otherwise it’s not worth it to me.

Field Respecialization
You may reassign your skill points while in the field. Normal respec costs apply.

Perk	Req. Legacy Lv	Req Lv	Credits
Field Respecialization	10	10	200,000

Being able to respec on the fly is really cool. The most common user for these is going to be end game raiders who need to swap specs to take on content where I would use it simply to experience different specs while I’m leveling. For me, this is a totally ridiculous price. For raiders or people who frequently group with different people or who like to use different specs for different content or something, it’s probably going to be a great deal. Kind of sucks that you still have to pay the respec fee on top of it, though.

Psynister’s Thoughts
Overall, I like what they have for us in 1.3’s Legacy. Some of the unlockable perks are pretty crappy, but for the most part what’s offered are things that will appeal to people. From an altoholic perspective I think they’ve really done a great job of providing options that will cover the playstyles of the vast majority of players. One of the biggest annoyances of SWTOR right now is how much travel time is involved in going from one place to another, and reducing the level requirement of speeders will alleviate that a little bit (not enough, but we’ll take what we can get right?).

I do think that prices are once again too high, over all. On the one hand, you can unlock most of the individual perks with a single day worth of dailies, but on the other if you’re spending all of your time doing dailies to get money then you probably aren’t spending time leveling the alts that you’re unlocking these perks on. If you were only paying for them once, like the global unlocks, then I think these prices would have been pretty spot on for most of them. Since you have to pay these prices for every character, it’s going to be one heck of a credit sink for those of us who are serious about alting. Earning credits at end game might be a breeze, but when most of your playtime takes place in the 1-40 brackets and you’re spending credits maximizing crew skills to 400 before your characters are even in their 20’s, credits can be quite hard to come by.

I think we’re still heading in the right direction with Legacy, and I liked reading the massive patch notes for 1.3 yesterday. I like what we’re seeing and can’t wait to move forward with some of these changes. I still don’t feel that Bioware has quite grasped the essence of being an altohilic with their Legacy system as it is, but I do think that what they have done and are planning to do will open the doors of alting to more players and that future installments of the Legacy system will likely grow to embrace it more and more as we get further down the line. We aren’t there yet, but we are making progress.