The "Slicing Was Nerfed" Thread

[luckton]

Because we need more topics, and I think to have everyone's rage compressed to one thread for posterity.   

http://www.swtor.com/patchnotes/1.0.1/12272011

Crew Skills

Gathering Skills

Slicing

- Rewards from Slicing have been reduced to bring them into balance with other skills.
- Adjusted incorrect values for medium slicing boxes.

Get your angst on!

[Azuredream]

I dropped slicing before the patch to make room for synthweaving, so I dodged the bullet. Not sure how much they nerfed it though, it might have been a minor nerf.

[Threash]

It's still free money, as long as the other trade skills are not fixed so they make anything worth using at end game free money beats the big fat nothing everything else gets you.  Cept Biochem i guess, that one actually rocks.

[El Gallo]

Color me unshocked.  Luckily I got all my inventory slots and enough banked to get all my speeder skills and a comfy nest egg.  If I knew the nerf was coming, I would've gone at it a bit harder to max out my cargo hold though.  

[apocrypha]

"to bring them into balance with other skills."

My experience of the other skills is that they cost you money to use. So does that mean that slicing is now a money sink? Because if so then what's the point of it?

[Paelos]

"to bring them into balance with other skills."

My experience of the other skills is that they cost you money to use. So does that mean that slicing is now a money sink? Because if so then what's the point of it?

Augmentations and Recipes.

[caladein]

The recipes aren't too interesting as they're just the ship/vehicle ones.  Still, augments and crafting missions mean I'll likely keep it on my main and use an alt for Underworld Trading.

Income really depends on where medium boxes end up though, as they were about the same as blue ones in my experience.

[tmp]

It's still free money, as long as the other trade skills are not fixed so they make anything worth using at end game free money beats the big fat nothing everything else gets you.

Does something happen at the end game that prevents you from harvesting resource nodes and selling the results to the vendors? Because that's free money, too.

[Paelos]

I may dump it, I may not. It's certainly earned me money on the way up.

[sam, an eggplant]

It's still free money, as long as the other trade skills are not fixed so they make anything worth using at end game free money beats the big fat nothing everything else gets you.  Cept Biochem i guess, that one actually rocks.

I believe the crafting tradeskills offer bind-on-pickup gear crafted from materials dropped by hard-mode flashpoints and operations. Whether that gear is actually valuable or easily replaced by drops is another question entirely.

[El Gallo]

It's still free money, as long as the other trade skills are not fixed so they make anything worth using at end game free money beats the big fat nothing everything else gets you.

Does something happen at the end game that prevents you from harvesting resource nodes and selling the results to the vendors? Because that's free money, too.

There's a wee bit of difference between actively harvesting nodes on one character and cycling through an account full of characters running slicing missions on 5 companions each.  

[Fabricated]

It was going to break the hell out of the economy if it hasn't already. It needed nerfed honestly no matter how cool "Push Butan, receiv credits" was.

Like 99% of Goon Squad was abusing the shit out of it so I look forward to logging in tonight to hear all the bitching.

[VainEldritch]

Not sure how much they nerfed it though, it might have been a minor nerf.

They say it will now be "in line with other gathering skills"... which would suggest little profit outside what can be sold on the GTN (augments).

Guess we'll see after their "extended" maintenance...

 

[Amaron]

From what I understand it was already heavily nerfed in beta.   Probably a fair chance this was just a basic credit nerf and they don't understand the actual problem with the others.

[tmp]

There's a wee bit of difference between actively harvesting nodes on one character and cycling through an account full of characters running slicing missions on 5 companions each.  

Yes, you end up with more money. However, if all other tradeskills supposedly don't provide anything worth using at the "end game", what's the benefit of having all this extra money you get from the slicing, at that stage?

[sam, an eggplant]

Buying dungeon/raid drops, augments, modifications, vanity items, consumables, etc.

[tmp]

Buying dungeon/raid drops, augments, modifications, vanity items, consumables, etc.

Are any of these better than the supposedly worthless results of other crafting specializations, and/or actually possible to acquire for plain cash?

[Merusk]

Augments?

Who here has actually slotted an augment on anything they didn't craft?  I've tried selling them, even at the silly-low rate the AH sets for them and all I got was a lot of wasted deposit money.  With everyone and their brother wanting Orange gear or quest drops Augments don't have a place.  The whole slotting system needs tweaking based on this.  They know it but haven't moved forward with a plan yet.  Until they give them a place other than "hey, crafting crit!" augments are fairly useless.

Ditto for missions. Nobody's interested in buying them, particularly since they're one-off.  I got a slicing mission, ran it and got .. a lot of purple augments and some decent credits.  I also got a scavenging mission that was 2 levels below my tier, ran it and failed.  I can't see spending big money on then as a player only to have to pay the expense of a "Wealthy" return mission on top of it.

Schematics are a chance since eventually folks will have what they want and the prices on them will plummet, probably below the point of making slicing worth it.

The free money  boxes in the world are about the only reason to have the skill if missions aren't profitable.

[sam, an eggplant]

Umm, augments fit into orange gear. At maximum level, everybody will be in either purple or orange gear with purple augments/mods/enhancements/whatever.

[tmp]

Umm, augments fit into orange gear. At maximum level, everybody will be in either purple or orange gear with purple augments/mods/enhancements/whatever.

Augments fit into slot created on critical succes crafted gear (not necessarily orange) You know, the one that no one will make because no one will take up anything other than slicing, since it's all worthless at the end game

[Merusk]

What slot on orange gear?  I haven't seen any augment slots on any of the stuff I've gotten.

faked cuz tmp was fasteR:  Oh crafted oranges.  Yeah, not getting made for endgame stuff.  Purps and whatnot don't have aug slots.  None of the crafted oranges have been nice-looking enough to purchase, either.

[Thrawn]

I'm not sure what I find stranger, that they took so long to do this, or that so many people made up convoluted reasons to themselves that this wasn't needed.  (see the "She's Crafty" thread for multiple examples)

I've been hoarding all of my slicing mission/recipie finds in anticipation of this nerf too, so here's hoping the values of them will shoot back up now with less people sinking all of their companion missions into slicing.

[Threash]

Crafted oranges don't get augment slots, no one has ever reported getting one.

[tmp]

Purps and whatnot don't have aug slots.  None of the crafted oranges have been nice-looking enough to purchase, either.

I went to the torhead thing to check meantime and it seems the PURPZ can have augment slot, actually: http://www.torhead.com/items/catg/2/subcatg/1/slot/7

(unless that info is outdated, of course. i should probably check at the vendor in game to make sure)

so i suppose yeah, there's a great profit to be made from selling these augments

[sam, an eggplant]

Thanks for the correction-- SWTOR has so many types of "crap that slots into other crap" that it's easy to get them confused.

[caladein]

I wouldn't trust Torhead on Augment slots just yet.  It seems like they added one to everything a few days ago.  Another DB has the couple of orange items I looked at listed as impossible to critical on, but that could be an equally unreliable data point.

[Threash]

I'm going by the multiple threads asking if anyone has ever crit an orange recipe full of negative answers as well as no one in my large one having gotten one.  They could be extremely rare, which still makes those augments completely useless.

[sam, an eggplant]

Shrug, if that's the case I'll drop slicing. It's not exactly like I have a huge sunk cost here-- leveling it made me money.

[Ghambit]

I'd always thought slicing worked fine the way it was.  Frankly, wasnt that great for anything besides making money... therefore typically you'd have to spend said money to buy stuff anyways (for instance, I bought headgear for Kaliyo yesterday and pretty much spent every dime I ever made slicing).  You can slice missions as rewards, but typically they're not even from your crafting specialty and good luck selling em.

Also, they're gonna have to adjust the pricing on pretty much everything else if there are no slicers out there with spare coin to buy at current values.  This means playing with vendors pricing, pricing on missions and mats, etc.  This is all assuming they set the economy with "imba" slicing taken into account in the 1st place.

[ajax34i]

Nobody seems to have taken cybertech on my server; having a hard time finding extra motors, sensors, etc., and as far as I can tell all the droid parts do use augments and mods a lot.

[kildorn]

Nobody seems to have taken cybertech on my server; having a hard time finding extra motors, sensors, etc., and as far as I can tell all the droid parts do use augments and mods a lot.

Nobody makes droid parts unless it's a request. Everyone but 2-3 companions per faction uses Armor pieces and Mods instead. Personally, I have 3 of my 6 epic armor plates done, and 2 more levels to gather the mats for the rest (damned purple rare metals..)

[Teleku]

Hrm, if augments are as useless as everybody says, I may just drop slicing and grab underworld trading.  Sounds like I can just buy the augs easily for the rare times I need to use them.  I've already accumulated about 15 blue augs just from last night.

[Maledict]

The problem is that other than biochem crafting appears to be worthless. Armourmech has been handy for gearing out companions whilst levelling, but it creates nothing at the high end at all. Everyone will be wearing either purple bought gear or orange recipes, both of which cannot have augment slots.

The entire crafting & mod systems needs another overhaul to be frank. It just doesnt work and is complicated as hell for very little payoff.

[Koyasha]

So far, slicing is still turning a profit for me, but missions take half an hour or more to run so it'll be a while before I have enough missions run to see if I'm just getting lucky on these first few or not.

[Ingmar]

Mods (at least most types) will certainly be money makers at max level.