Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

BioWare’s weekly Community Q&A for Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) ran a little behind this time around. The latest edition was posted yesterday rather than last week and addressed a number of questions relating to item rarity, statistics, the ongoing class balance changes and planned changes for PvP/PvE items such as relics.

In the long run our intent is to make sure PvP gear is never competitive in end-game PvE situations. Unfortunately, it’s still too early in the design process for us to give an ETA or release any details on what we’re planning for PvP gear.

We currently have no plans to change the PvE relics. In theory the active abilities on the PvE relics do not provide quite as much sustained damage-per-second as a passive relic at the same item level. In practice, when used at the correct time they can deliver a huge amount of damage when you actually need it, and can make you much more effective overall. This is especially true when the relic is paired with powerful cooldowns or burst damage attacks. This is the primary reason we changed the PvP relics into passive relics, as skilled players could wipe out their opponents much more quickly than intended, and nobody likes to be killed before they get a chance to fight back. On the PvE side we decided to keep that extra bit of gameplay, since it helps break up rotations and adds a extra little optimization element to damage dealing in boss fights.

Source: SWTOR Community Q&A: July 23rd, 2012