Let's get naked for PvP

A common sight in PvP warzones since patch 2.0 has been naked players. An oversight in the bolster system has meant that a lot of players have been better off not having any item equipped. This is about to be fixed, with changes being made to War hero and Elite War hero gear. What will the changes mean?

The lack of clothing on PvP has included players who had War Hero or even Elite War Hero gear. Simply unequipping items like the relics could give you thousands of extra health and dramatically increase your overall damage or healing. This has been recorded as a known bug and in a lot of player's books, an exploit. 

BioWar will be fixing this bug tonight in patch 2.0.0b. The patch notes remark:

The effect of Bolster on empty item slots has been decreased.

Due to itemization changes, Expertise has been removed from all War Hero and Elite War Hero pieces except for weapon crystals.

When I first saw the patch notes I was a little bit concerned - will my War Hero and Elite War Hero gear be gimped? Well, according to Alex Modny, this will not be the case at all. Your War Hero and Elite War Hero stats will be brought up to equivalent PvE gear and going into a warzone with them equipped, they will receive the appropriate bolster, making that gear comparable to wearing high end level 50 PvE gear. The way in which the bolster works is that it only grants a bonus to non-PvP items and the bolster is equivalent to entry level, level 55 PvP gear, which is better than Elite War Hero. By changing Elite War Hero to a PvE item, it means that it will receive the bolster and will be better, not only in PvP but PvE as well.

These changes have all come about because of the realization that players prefer a skill-base competition than a gear-based competition. It gets disheartening really fast if you're dominated by players who have superior gear. BioWare wants to still be able to reward avid PvPers with cool gear, but they don't want to take that to the stage where that gear provides unfair advantages in competitions. 

I love this change and as a PvP enthusiast I'm looking forward to real competitions on not only with my main character but my lower level characters as well.