From the first day it was obvious that PvP will be one of the major things in SWTOR. In Star Wars: The Old Republic, PvP will primarily occur in the open PvP world and three warzones: Alderaan, Huttball and Voidstar, which can be describe as mini-games with certain objectives.
After leaving your Starting Planet (at level 10) you’ll gain the first access to warzones and PvP rewards. There are many different rewards for PvP like Valor, Commendations, Experience, XP, Items.
Note: There are no item rewards in Open PvP World for killing (ganking) other players.
PvP players can earn two types of Commendations: Warzone Commendations from Warzones and Mercenary Commendations from open world which can be used for buying high level PvP gear with PvP Stats. These stats increase character’s damage, damage absorption, and healing effectiveness when attacking / healing a player or companion character.
From what we have seen in the Beta, your primary and secondary character stats are determined by your class, and most of them are PvE oriented. On the Character Pane, where you can see primary and secondary stats, you can also find PvP damage and healing stats when you select PvP from dropdown list.
PvP stats
- PvP Damage Boost (Percent) – Increases damage dealt when attacking a player or companion character
- PvP Damage Reduction (Percent) – Reduces damage suffered when attacked by a player or companion character
- PvP Healing Boost (Percent) – Increases health restored when healing a player or companion character who is involved in PvP combat.
- Damage Bonus (Percent) – Increases damage done in PvP
- Critical Damage Reduction (Percent) – Reduction to critical damage suffered in PvP
- Critical Chance Reduction (Percent) – Reduces chance to be critically hit in PvP
- Trauma (Percent) – PvP Healing Debuff which reduces received healing by 30%.
- Trauma Ignore (Percent) -Increases amount of healing done in PvP
There are many debates on forums about Trauma stat and its purpose. The main conclusion is that Bioware uses Trauma stat as a fine-tuning mechanism for controlling the PvP healing. The value of the Trauma Debuff can be easily increased or decreased if it turns out that healers are overpowered or too weak in PvP.
Additional PvP Stats
- Valor – Through experience points you level up your character, and through PvP activities you level up your Valor rank. Unlocking new Valor Rank will give you access to PvP equipment from specialized vendors, additional titles and other privileges.
- Expertise – increases character’s damage and healing and reduces incoming damage in PvP combat. Expertise is one of the major PvP stats since it’s used to calculate the effect of all the other pvp stats.
PvP Stats and Formulas
It is pretty obvious that every Character Stat (PvE or PvP) is determined by the appropriate formula. Wrapping up our PvP Stats guide, I’d like to show you the background calculations of some PvP formulas. For all of you interested in SWTOR Stats mechanism, there is a great post on sithwarrior.com that you should check out.PvP Damage Bonus % = 20 * ( 1 – ( 1 – ( 0.01 / 0.2 ) )^( ( Expertise / max(Level,20) ) / 0.72 ) )
PvP Damage Reduction % = 20 * ( 1 – ( 1 – ( 0.01 / 0.2 ) )^( ( Expertise / max(Level,20) ) / 0.72 ) )
PvP Trauma Ignore % = 20 * ( 1 – ( 1 – ( 0.01 / 0.2 ) )^( ( Expertise / max(Level,20) ) / 0.72 ) )
Note: Trauma ignore overcomes the Trauma (-30% healing received) debuff that players get in PvP, so it effectively improves healing.
Level = is the level the ability is trainable, not the level of the player
A Note on the formula
PvP Damage Bonus % = 20 * ( 1 – ( 1 – ( 0.01 / 0.2 ) )^( ( Expertise / max(Level,20) ) / 0.72 ) )
This first underlined section (20) is the % cap for this rating and the second underlined section (0.2) is the % cap divided by 100. In this case the cap is 20%. Remember this is the cap for the rating, not the stat, so you can’t get more than 20% PvP Damage Bonus from stacking Expertise but you may be able to get more from a skill or buff (if any exist). Since these formula’s give diminishing returns, you will never actually achieve a 20% PvP Damage Bonus from Expertise. The third underlined section (0.72) is 1/50th of the amount of rating needed to get 1% of the stat at level 50. So in this case 50 * 0.72 = 36 Expertise Rating to get 1% PvP Damage Bonus at level 50.
Note: max(level,20) -In mathematical terms, it means “Compare the value of ‘level’ to 20. If ‘level’ is less than 20, use 20 instead of ‘level'”. In practical terms, it means that your secondary stats don’t scale with level until Level 21.
Awesome job!
I’m very glad you find the guide useful.
Very nice!
My champion gear is not as good as my columni gear in terms of willpower so i expect to be fully spec’d for PvP i will loose out on my primary stat. My question is to what extent would you recomend loosing out on your primary stat for a gain in PvP bonus %?
I am constantly battling that question as well. I recommend getting as much expertise as possible though. In PvP situation, Expertise will be getting more and more importance. You can keep Columni for PvE situations. I think their direction with the latest 1.2 patch and the future patches will be to clearly separate what gear is preferable in PvP (items with as much expertise as possible) and which gear is for PvE (as much primary stat as possible)