Wildstar Guidence - the thing to do in 50!

You need to know that this guide is massive before you read.

So, you may want to skip the parts you are not interested in and focus on the content you would like to know. 

1 - Introduction

Well, have you just reached level 50 for the first time in Wildstar?

First of all, great job cupcake, you just officially made Nexus an even more awesome-sauce planet.

It also probably means that you are most likely very confused about what you should be doing right about now!

Well don't worry fella, I reckon this guide may just provide the answers you are looking for.

Before we delve into this giant post full of information, tips and advices, let me properly describe what you will be able to find in this guide.

The scope of this guide is to cover as many things as possible regarding how to start out as a fresh 50 as well as explain, talk and remind new or experienced or veteran players about what you can do as a player to improve yourself and make it easier for both you and the people around you.

There are several things in this guide that are subjective and should be taken as such. Keep in mind while reading this guide that even with my 10+ years of playing MMORPGs, I can still be wrong about things and I am very opened to feedback and comments.

Let's start with talking about the content that is available to you at level 50.

2 - What content is available to you

2.1 - General information

First off, here is a list of things that you can do at level 50

Guilds

Circles

Veteran Expeditions

Veteran Adventures

Veteran Dungeons

Raids

World Bosses

Battlegrounds

Arenas

Warplots

Dailies

Contracts

Master Crafting

Housing

Some of them were already available to you pre-50 but you may not have looked into it.

Obviously, there is more to do than that (Like RP, challenges, story quests, events, etc.), but those are the main things I want to cover in this guide.

Let's go down the list.

Guilds

You want a guild in Wildstar. I don't think I really have to explain what it is or how to join one, it is up to you to find a guild that suit your need, whether you want to do PvE or PvP in a casual, semi-hardcore or hardcore way, there are guilds meant for every type of players out there. You just need to find the good one.

Guilds are, by far, one of the most important feature of any MMORPG. You cannot do everything all by yourself, in fact, you can barely do anything by yourself in a MMO. Getting with a group of like-minded players is a must.

Circles

Circles aren't like guilds. It is basically a small community of players that have a similar goal or a "circle" of friends. It can be used for many things.

Its biggest use is to get crafting materials from housing. By joining an harvesting circle, you can gain crafting materials from simply having an harvesting plot on your house with a 50/50 sharing option. This allow anyone in your circle to go to your house, harvest your plots, taking 50% of the materials and sending the other 50% to your mail automatically. It also allow you to go to other people houses to do the same for them.

Another use for circles is for group content. You can join a circle of players who do world bosses for example or a circle for raiding if your guild isn't actively raiding.

There are a lot of uses for circles, it's up to you to find a circle that fit what you want in the game has they can make your life much easier in Wildstar.

Veteran Expeditions

Whether you want to go solo or with 1 or 2 friends, Veteran Expeditions should be done by everyone at least once for each different Expedition. Even the veterans should be doing them once has they unlock an AMP upgrade for a couple Renown currency. More on this later in this guide.

Veteran Adventures

Adventures are a great place to start for any fresh 50, they provide you with basic gear and is a great way to prepare for the next step. They are easy enough that you don't have to worry about being a dead weight if you do not perform like a pro raider. But beware! When joining Veteran Adventures, you should still be prepared! I will explain more on this later in the guide.

Veteran dungeons

"You are not prepared"

If you know where this quote come from, well let me tell you... Illidan was a push-over compared to the bosses of Wildstar. You are most likely "not prepared" for what is ahead.

Veteran dungeons are where things start to get really ruff and one should be prepared before going there. But don't despair! That's what this guide is here for. To prepare you for the massive repair bill you are going to be paying over and over again on Planet Nexus.

Raids

Raids are basically Veteran Dungeons... except harder... much harder... meaner and bigger, with 19 other players. It's fair to say that you should never step into a raid until you are actually experienced enough as a level 50 to understand what doing a raid in itself mean.

World Bosses

Those are bosses found in the world meant for 20 people, they are perfectly safe to do for anyone because it is possible to be way more than 20 people and usually, group leaders trying to do world bosses only require more bodies. Be wary though that those world bosses have mechanics that are equivalent to raid bosses. Prepare your purse because the repair bill is going to be long if you aren't familiar with those bosses.

Battlegrounds

The bread and butter of PvP. Do a lot of them. They give a lot of Prestige and a player with starter PvP gear can contribute more than enough in a battleground. Make sure to understand clearly how gearing and rune function first! 

Arenas

Group up with up to 4 other friends for arenas. Not much to say here.

Warplots

40vs40 full on chaos. I'll skip this one has I am not very familiar with Warplots yet.

Dailies

For when you have nothing more important to do. Doing dailies provide you with reputation towards factions which is important if you want to get into raiding. Take it at your own pace. Slowly if you want to take your time, and fast if you are hardcore.

Contracts

One of the most important feature of Wildstar and something that you should be doing everyday if you are able to. Basically, a contract is like a daily quest that provide you with both rewards that you would usually get from a daily and points toward your contract rewards.

I'll go in further details on both PvE and PvP contracts in the sections below.

Master Crafting

This here is often ignored but is actually very important. Master Crafting is one of the best way to gear up. This is also why a guild is very important has you can have your gear made by your guild's crafters. This is however only important for PvE.

Housing

I won't talk about housing in this guide, it has its use when it come to gearing, but it's mostly meant has an activity in itself.

Now that we've gone through the list of content available, you may be wondering where you can find all of that content.

Well, most of it, you will find it in your faction's main city or using the Looking for Group feature.

There is an area close to Transit consoles (The things that teleport you to other zones) with plenty of NPC offering quests and selling lot of gear. You can find at this location the contract board, PvP gear, PvE gear, several dailies for both PvE and PvP and some more things like the Elder Gem vendor.

Speaking of Elder Gem, now that you are level 50, your experienced bar changed into an Elder Points bar. Each time the bar is filled, you receive 1 Elder Gem up to a maximum of 250 per week. This weekly limit only apply to Elder Gems gained from Elder Points. Elder Gems gained by other means (Quests, daily login, etc.) can get you more than 250 gems per week.

2.2 - PvE

Contracts

Now, let's go into more detailed explanation on what a new level 50 should be doing if their focus is PvE, starting with Contracts.

The PvE Contracts are basically separated in 5 different contracts that change every day.

1. The repeatable contract which require you to do simple things like kill X monster of Y race or do Z amount of triple kills, etc. awarding you 50 contract points.

2. 3 contracts that require you to do a little more than the repeatable contract but award you 150 contract points.

3. The big contract that give a whopping 450 points but ask of you to participate in a 20+ man content such as a world boss or a 20 man event in the world, etc.

Contracts are extremely important to do has the reward for it is very high. Upon reach each reward tiers (every 1000 contract points) you get to choose a reward. Either a piece of gear or bag of superb runecrafting material, I will go in further details regarding runecrafting later on. As for the top reward when reaching 5000 points, you gain a piece of Raid level gear (item level 100) for your class of the selected role (assault or support). This gear is extremely good. For those who don't need that gear (The geared raiders) there is also the choice of a box containing vanity items.

Where to start for PvE progression

This being said, what does a fresh 50 that want to focus on PvE should be doing? Well first of all, you should prepare yourself by having your current gear runed and ready (See section #3 of this guide) and understand your class and the role you want to perform correctly (See section #4 of this guide) but for now, you should know which content to start with.

Like I said when giving a short description of the content, Veteran Expeditions are a must do for anyone. Starting there is a good way to acquire a useful gadget and some basic stuff to get you started.

The next step are Veteran Adventures. With Adventures, you can prepare yourself for dungeons by gaining adequate gear for them.

Then come the Veteran Dungeons. You shouldn't hit the dungeons before you are comfortable enough with playing with a group of 5 players and understanding how to deal with mechanics. You can learn this in Adventures.

I highly recommend starting Veteran Dungeons with your guild at first in order to learn them before engaging into pug dungeons where people aren't there to care for you as much. Watching video guides or written guides on the dungeons can help a lot to get prepared for them.

Attunements

In order to get into raids, a player must get attuned to the raid first.

The first raid a player can get attuned to is Genetic Archives (GA). To get attuned, a player need to equip the Genesis Key that is given to them by a quest they receive from Drusera at level 50. Once equipped, you will receive an imbuement quest for the Genesis Key. In order to enter Genetic Archives, you need 2/4 for the imbuement.

The first step, getting 1/4 imbuement, requires you to finish the veteran dungeons: Stormtalon Lair, Skullcano, Ruins of Kel Voreth and Sanctuary of the Swordmaiden. You do not require any specific medals in those veteran dungeons, only to finish them.

The second step, getting 2/4 imbuement, requires you to kill the optional boss in Ruins of Kel Voreth. This boss can be found between the first and second boss in the instance after first stepping into the area with constructs. She can be found on an island separated from the main path which can be reached using the console near the edge overlooking the island.

Once that is done, head to the Genetic Archives entrance and talk to the Caretaker to have your Genesis Key imbued to 2/4. Further imbuement of the Genesis Key require you to go into the Genetic Archives raid.

2.3 - PvP

The PvP part is pretty simple.

Contracts

The PvP contracts are similar to PvE contracts, see the above section for more information on it. The only difference here are the rewards. 

There are 3 tiers of rewards compared to the 5 tiers from PvE. The first 2 tiers give a choice between a piece of Season 1 gear and a runecrafting bag. For those 2 rewards, you want to take the runecrafting bags has the piece of Season 1 gear is  quite useless when you have an easy access to Season 2 gear. Has for the third and last reward, this one is up to you which item you want to take.

The equipment chests will provide you one piece of Season 2 blue gear on top of several Greater Set Rune Fragments, which you need a lot of for runing your gear, while the fluff chest give you vanity items as well as a chance at Elder Gems.

My advice: If you enjoy and want to PvP, go for the equipment chest in order to get more runes.

The most important factor in your character strength in PvP is to have a set of PvP gear with proper runes. In order to get the proper runes, you will require a lot of Greater Set Rune Fragments and other materials, choosing the equipment chest will speed up the gearing process.

P.S. Keep in mind that I may be wrong regarding which rewards are better. If anyone could confirm about the validity of my statements regarding the contracts rewards for PvP, I'd appreciate. I went with the information I managed to gather from both myself and a friend who currently solely play PvP.

What about progression though?

PvP progression is all about 2 things.

- Gear

- Rating

Buy the Season 2 PvP gear, your Amp and Ability point upgrades and buy as many Gladiator's Superb Runecrafting Bag as you need to rune all of your gear (See section 3.4 for runes). You can get everything you need for PvP from PvP alone.

You can do Battlegrounds, Arenas, Warplots or go enjoy some open world PvP if you are on a PvP server.

Really, PvP is all about having fun and contrary to PvE, there is no real progression in term of content and all of the PvP content is available to you right off the bat.

3 - Gearing and currencies

3.1 - Currencies

It is a good thing to know what each currencies are used for and where they come from. In this section, I'll list every major currencies and provide the what and where for each of them.

Important note: Guild elixirs can, and SHOULD, be used to increase the gain in currency for most of the currencies. Especially currencies like Prestige and Glory which are 2 of the most important currencies for PvP and PvE respectively.

You can find the Guild elixirs at a Renown vendor. Those can be found near the guild bank in your capital city (Ask a city guard for direction) as well as the entrance of any player house.

Here is the list of important currencies to know about:

Gold

Duh... Don't really need to explain that one do I?

Prestige

Gained from PvP, this is used to buy PvP gear or other PvP related items.

Furthermore, you can buy as many AMP or Ability Point upgrade as you need to finish getting all of your AMP/AP with Prestige.

It also provide an easy source for Superb Rune Fragments that will allow you to make good runes for your gear by buying the Gladiator's Superb Runecrafting Bag.

Keep in mind that even a PvE player can be tempted to acquire Prestige from PvP due to this currency being the best source of Superb runes.

Renown

Gained from Expeditions, Adventures, Housing challenges and other means.

Renown can be used to buy starter gear of item level 60 to 70, if you have the appropriate achievements for it, as well as miscellaneous items, guild elixirs, vanity items, etc.

Glory

Gained from Dungeons, World bosses, Raids, T3 contracts and other means.

Glory can be used to buy dungeon and raid gear of item level 80 to 120, if you have the appropriate achievements for it. It can also be used to buy several other things such as runecrafting bags, vanity items, etc.

Elder Gems

Gained from being level 50 and filling the Elder Points bar as well as certain quests, daily login rewards, etc.

Used to buy things from the Elder Gems vendor. The most noticeable items to buy are the Action Set 3 and 4 unlock that provide you with 2 additional action sets that can be used. You can also get Amp and Ability Point upgrade from it. Most of the items found at the Elder Gem vendor are vanity items.

Crafting Vouchers

Gained from doing crafting dailies, selling certain crafting schematics, daily login rewards, etc.

Used to buy schematics for your professions or certain materials required by schematics from your professions. See the crafting area in your capital for the vendor.

Crafting Vouchers can also be used to reset your crafting professions talent trees.

I highly recommend to avoid buying the bags of crafting components or the buff increase drop rate from nodes as they provide very little and you require a lot of Crafting Vouchers for more important things.

OmniBits

Gained from doing all sort of activities on Nexus, such as killing stuff, completing challenges, quests, etc.

Used to buy stuff on the NStore.

This is a very important currency as it save you from having to pay real money for many of the NStore important features for your account, such as Character Slot Expansion, Service Tokens, Expert riding permit, etc.

Try not wasting it or else you may regret it in the future.

Service Token

Bought from the NStore using OmniBits or NCoins or gained from special means like Daily login rewards.

Used for several different services such as changing a rune slot to a certain element, dying your gear, buying extra "Rez here", etc.

Service Tokens aren't cheap and you should be careful when spending them as you can run out of tokens rather quickly.

NCoins

Bought with real money.

Used to buy stuff on the NStore.

If you enjoy Wildstar, which I am sure you do, feel free to buy NCoins for your account. This help Carbine keep the game alive and provide us with updates and new content. It also gives you many benefits by awarding you with Cosmic points on top of having your NCoins to buy stuff with.

Cosmic points is the system Carbine use to reward paying customer with lot of awesome stuff. You can see the cosmic rewards from the NStore.

Fortune Coins

Bought from the NStore. One of the only thing (The only?) which cannot be bought with OmniBits.

Used at the Madam Fay's Fortune to gain fortune chests and a chance at awesome vanity items.

Be warned that playing the Fortune game is a dice roll. There is a system that allow you to get rewarded after spending a certain amount of fortune coin to avoid case of extreme bad luck, but this is still a casino-style game.

If you have money and are willing to spend it on Fortune Coins, be my guess, any money sent to Carbine is money invested in the future of Wildstar.

C.R.E.D.D.

Bought with real money or from another layers for gold. When consumed, a C.R.E.D.D. gives you 1 month of signature subscription.

See this page for more info.

Just like NCoins, any money spent on C.R.E.D.D. is money sent to Carbine and the future of Wildstar. And remember...

Don't buy from the gold sellers!

3.2 - Stats

It may seem a little silly to talk about stats here, what with them having a description and all that, but it is very important to understand what each stats do exactly in order to gear properly at level 50. Contrary to when you were leveling, where your character strength was highly dependent on its level rather than its overall gear, at level 50, gear, especially runes, become paramount to your character as it define how powerful the said character can be.

Item Level

While not a stat in itself, this is a very important number which indicate the strength of a piece of gear and also limit the quality of the rune you can use on said piece of gear.

Also known as iLvl, iLevel, Gear Score, Epeen Level and other similar names, the average item level of a character is often used to know when said character is ready for more difficult content.

Be warned though that higher item level doesn't necessarily means that the piece of gear is stronger. For example, a iLevel 98 legendary is greater than a iLevel 100 epic item because it provide the player with an extra rune slot. Also, once you know which stats are important for you, some pieces may be less attractive because of their stats distribution.

Assault/Support Power

Not to be mistaken with Assault/Support Rating.

Assault/Support Power is increased by how much Assault/Support Rating you have. A weapon that show 6000 Assault Rating will not give you 6000 Assault Power. Refer to your character sheet to know how much Assault/Support Power your character has.

Nevertheless, any increase in Assault/Support Rating will directly increase Assault/Support Power. Simply not a 1 for 1 increase.

Assault/Support Power is the effective power granted to your Assault/Support abilities respectively. I won't talk about maths in this guide, but there is formulas for calculating all of that stuff and you can find the ratio of your abilities on website like Jabbithole to know how much contribution Assault/Support Power have over your abilities.

The basic of Assault/Support Power is that... the higher the stat, the higher your numbers.

Higher Assault Power will increase the numbers you get for abilities under the Assault tab in your Action Set builder while higher Support Power will increase the numbers you get for abilities found under the Support tab. Abilities under the Utility tab benefit from both Assault and Support Power equally. Exception may or may not apply.

Strikethrough

Your target chance to deflect is reduced by your Strikethrough percentage. 5% Strikethrough will reduce the chance an enemy has to deflect your attacks by 5%. If your Strikethrough chance is greater than the target deflect chance, the extra % of Strikethrough is converted to armor pierce.

According to what I've been told, in order to avoid having your attack deflected in PvE, you require:

- 8% for Veteran Dungeons

- 10% for Raids

- 12% for certain bosses in Raids

I am unaware of how much Armor Pierce is granted by Strikethrough, if I had to take a wild guess, it would be equal to the extra % chance above the target Deflect % chance. For example, an enemy with 10% Deflect chance versus you with 15% Strikethrough would make your attack bypass the enemy Deflect chance and provide you 5% extra Armor Pierce. This is very important because it allows Amps, buffs or debuffs that temporarily increase your Strikethrough % or reduce the target Deflect chance a way to avoid being completely wasted by converting the extra Strikethrough you have on the target into Armor Pierce.

P.S. If anyone has any information regarding the Strikethrough to Armor Pierce conversion or can confirm that the numbers for avoiding deflect in raids are correct, I'd appreciate.

Vigor

This stat increase your damage done depending on your percentage of health. The higher your percentage of health, the more damage you deal.

I am unsure about the exact numbers regarding the Current Health to Vigor's damage increase conversion, but I believe that Vigor apply its bonus at the same rate as your current health. For example, if you have 10% Vigor, at 50% health left, you would only gain 5% damage increase from Vigor while at 100% health you would gain the full 10% damage increase.

P.S. If anyone has any information regarding the effectiveness of Vigor depending on health, I'd appreciate.

Critical Chance and Critical Severity

Critical chance does exactly what it says it does, increase your chance to critical hit, while Critical Severity indicate how much damage your critical hit will do. 170% critical Severity means that your critical attacks will deal an additional 70% more damage. (100% + 70% = 170%)

Multi-hit Chance and Multi-hit Severity

The chance for your attack to apply a second, less powerful, attack and the severity of that attack. 30% Multi-hit Severity means that the extra hit done by your Multi-hit attack will deal 30% of the original attack damage.

While arguably similar to Critical hit, remember that Multi-hit count as an extra attack with exceptions.

I do not know the exact specifics of Multi-hit, such as whether or not the extra hit as a chance to proc Fusion runes or if they benefit from Amp that require a hit on the target.

Any information on this would be appreciated.

Glance, Deflect and Critical Mitigation

Glance reduce the damage received from an attack that was glanced. Glance Chance increase the chance to glance an attack (Base 5% glance chance) while Glance Mitigation increase the damage reduction (Base 50%).

Deflect negate 100% of an attack. Deflect chance work similar to Glance Chance.

Deflect Critical Hit Chance reduce the chance a target has to critically hit you.

Critical Mitigation reduce the damage a critical hit will deal to you. It is the direct opposite of Critical Severity.

Shields

Damage received will be reduced by an amount equal to shield mitigation. This reduced damage will be dealt to your shield. If the shield is depleted, 100% of the damage will be dealt to the health instead.

Shield reboot time is the time it take for shield to start regenerating after no damage was taken. Taking any damage will reset the timer.

Shield regen rate is the % of max shield regenerating per tick. The frequency of the ticks is defined by Shield Tick Time

Certain healing abilities or Amps can regenerate shield or force the reboot of shield even if the timer for rebooting isn't ready.

Shields are especially important to tanks and a good understanding of shields will help tremendously in mitigating damage.

Focus

Basically a mana bar for healers.

Support abilities for Spellslingers, Espers and Medics cost Focus to use. Once depleted, the abilities cannot be used until enough focus is gained.

Focus Pool is the maximum amount of focus you have, Focus regeneration is the % of your maximum Focus Pool that get regenerated per second and Focus Cost Reduction reduce the cost in Focus of your abilities that cost Focus.

More information on the optimal use of Focus can be found in guides for your classes.

Reflect Chance and Reflect Damage

Doesn't prevent damage. Reflect Chance is the chance that an attack will be Reflected while Reflect Damage is the % of that damage that will be dealt back to the attack.

You still receive 100% of the damage that was going to be dealt to you.

Intensity

Increase the amount of heal provided by your heals by the % of Intensity. Also increase the cost in Focus by the same %.

Life Steal

Cause your damage dealt to heal you for an amount equal to a certain % of said damage. 5% Life Steal will cause 5% of the damage dealt to be returned as health. Example: Dealing 1000 damage with 5% Life Steal will heal you for 50.

This doesn't increase or decrease how much damage you deal.

This stat is mostly useful for soloing and should be consider a much lower priority than other stats unless granted in very large amount from abilities like Blood Thirst for Stalker and Augmented Blade from Warrior.

P.S. If anyone know whether or not Life Steal healing is reduced by PvP healing reduction or healing debuffs, please do let me know.

PvP Power, Healing and Defense

PvP Power increase your damage dealt to player.

PvP Defense reduce your damage dealt to player.

PvP Healing is the reduction in healing you have while engaged in PvP combat. The reduction is lower the higher your PvP Power is.

You pretty much want to stack both PvP Power and PvP Defense as much as you can when doing PvP.

Those stats are useless in PvE content.

Maximum Health

Some may ask why I include this in here... I add it in here because Maximum Health is actually a very important stat in Wildstar, and any MMORPG in general imo.

Why is it important? Because if that stat is too low, you gonna die pumpkin.

The truth is, you mostly do not have to worry about managing this stat if you aren't a tank as your gear will provide you with all of the Maximum Health you need and you absolutely do not want to use health runes as a DPS or healer. I include it in here because Maximum Health become very important in harder content. It increase the amount of punishment you can take and provide healers with more time to heal you back to full.

"A dead DPS deal no DPS." This very sentence is one of the most important thing  in any MMORPG and every DPS should remember that, avoiding red is almost always more important than finishing a cast or landing an extra attack.

And this leads me to a stat that is technically not a stat in itself but rather a combination of multiple things.

Effective Health

It is your Maximum Health, Maximum Shield, Shield mitigation, Damage Reduction and all other things that either reduce the damage you take, reduce the damage the enemy does to you, prolong your life or increase the amount of punishment you can take before your health reach 0.

This is the single most important thing for a tank!

Not only is this important for a tank, but this is also important for both DPS and healers, especially in Wildstar where healing doesn't come at a steady rate and there are a lot of scenarios in which you will not receive any heals for a prolonged amount of time.

Like I said in the Maximum Health stat, a dead DPS deal no DPS. This is why you should keep in mind what you have at your disposition to improve your Effective Health, even if it is temporary. Obviously, as a DPS in PvE, you want to maximize your DPS, but  sometimes, it is much more important to improve your survivability at the cost of some DPS if it means the difference between being dead and being alive.

Let me give you an example of how important it can be.

As a Stalker, I have access to different stances to fight with.

Two of those stances are called: Nano Skin: Lethal and Nano Skin: Agile.

While in Nano Skin: Lethal, my attacks from stealth have 100% chance to critically hit and I receive a 3 seconds buff increasing my critical hit chance by 20%.

While in Nano Skin: Agile, my attacks from stealth increase my movespeed by 10% for a short duration. On top of it, Nano Skin: Agile passively (all the time from just being in that stance) provide me with 10% more dash and endurance regeneration, allowing me to sprint and dodge more often, as well as an extra 5% lifesteal.

The important part here is that Nano Skin: Lethal is only useful for attacks I use while in stealth but is completely useless otherwise while Nano Skin: Agile doesn't increase my DPS but provide me with passive bonuses that improve my Effective Health (5% Lifesteal) and survivability (10% dash and endurance regeneration).

Unfortunately, changing stance drop the Stalker of their Suit Power to 0 while in combat (Like Energy for Rogues in WoW), which makes it very unattractive to switch stance in the middle of a fight. But certain specs, like mine, use the Amp that remove the Suit Power cost to change stance as well as providing a buff that regen Suit Power over time making Stance dancing more than viable and actually a good thing.

And it is because of this Stance dancing that I can go from Lethal, improving my damage when I Stealth, to Agile, improving my Effective Health and Survivability when out of Stealth.

Does it sound silly? Because it is not. There are very few bosses in Veteran Dungeons where I actually require any healing from the healer because of Nano Skin: Agile's Life Steal and my capacity to avoid damage more frequently. 5% Life Steal saved my life more than once without ever reducing my damage output  because Nano Skin: Agile and the Follow Up Amp are at my disposal in my PvE DPS spec.

Sorry for writing such an essay on Effective Health, but I cannot express how important it is for every player to understand that every little things count. For every extra you bring to your group, you will effectively reduce the amount of effort required for any content by your whole group.

But remember... When you join group content, you most likely have a role assigned to you and your job is to fulfil that role to the best of your competence. If you are DPS, do not try being a healer. It is your healer's job to heal, it is your job to kill things.

The best heals are the ones you do not have to do and just like a dead DPS do no DPS, a dead enemy do no damage.

3.3 - Where to obtain gear

First thing first, every new players should know that they can buy a full set of PvP starter gear for gold at the PvP Season 2 vendor found at multiple location in their capital city. This starter gear can also be used in PvE as a good starting point as it provide a good amount of base stats and offer enough rune slots to be worth something.

Regarding gear, the usual path to gearing in PvE goes like this:

Starter PvP gear or other gear found while leveling (~iLvl 50) -> Veteran Expeditions (iLvl 60) > Veteran Adventures and Expert Crafted gear (iLvl 68-70) > Veteran dungeons (iLvL 78-80) > World Bosses and Master Crafted gear (iLvL 88-90) > Raid and Master Crafted gear (iLvl 98+)

The best way to obtain gear is to follow the path above in terms of gearing and only moving to the next step when ready to do so. Some steps can be skipped (Veteran Expeditions and Veteran Adventures) for players that are skilled and informed enough.

Try finding someone, preferably from your guild, who is able to craft you gear.

An Expert crafter can easily craft Epic gear of iLevel 70 at a low cost in materials.

A Master crafter can craft Epic gear of iLevel 72 that can be imbued to iLevel 78 from completing a Veteran Dungeon while the crafter equipment is equipped and then iLevel 88 from killing a World Boss. This gear however is more expensive in terms of materials and require material found in dungeons.

Better crafted gear can only crafted using raid materials and is imbued from completing raid related content.

As for PvP:

Starter PvP gear > Prestige Season 2 gear > Epic Prestige Season 2 gear > Legendary Prestige Season 2 gear

Each PvP tier increase the maximum amount of runes you can slot in a piece by 1.

PvP is pretty straightforward. Buy the starter PvP gear, replace with Prestige Season 2 gear as you gain prestige, upgrade said gear.

The most important part about both PvE and PvP gear though is... runes.

3.4 - Runes

Note: This section is extremely important and should be read carefully by anyone who is not familiar with the runecrafting system in Drop-6

And now we get to the most complicated and less understood part of being a level 50... or is it?

Yes it's literally the most complicated and less understood part of being a level 50 and it's also the most important! So pay close attention to this part of the guide because runes are the biggest factor in a character power level.

What is a rune?

A rune is an item you can craft at any runecrafting station, usually found in major towns or quests hubs of each zones. You can find a runecrafting station at the crafting area of your capital city for all your runecrafting needs.

You can also randomly get runes from monster drops, loot bags, etc.

Or you can buy and sell them at the auction house or trade them with other players.

Where do I use those runes?

You can only apply runes to these gear slots:

- Weapons

- Helmet

- Shoulders

- Chest

- Gloves

- Pants

- Boots

But here's an important thing about runes. The number of runes you can apply to a piece is directly related to the quality of said piece.

A rare (blue quality) piece start with 2 rune slots which you can add 1 additional rune slot to it at a runecrafting station.

An epic (purple quality) piece start with 3 with 1 additional rune slot that can be added in the same manner.

A legendary (orange quality) piece start with 4 and can be upgraded to 5.

This is extremely important to know because when you have to decided between a iLevel 98 legendary and a iLevel 100 epic item, the legendary will almost always win over the epic item because of the extra rune slot and the possibility it provide you regarding rune sets... Before getting into rune sets though, let's focus on understanding the basics first.

What are the different runes that can be crafted?

There are 3 different category of runes: Basic runes, Set runes and Fusion runes.

Basic runes provide you with a flat amount of stats.

While Set runes provide you with a similar flat amount of stats as well as giving points toward a certain set that can be applied to your piece of gear.

Fusion runes are runes that are specific to certain gear slot and can be applied into a rune socket of any element. Fusion runes give unique bonuses in the form of procs, buffs or debuffs.

Basic and Set runes can be of 1 of the 6 elements and each elements provide certain stats.

Water : Multi-hit, Glance

Life : Health, Lifesteal, Focus Pool

Air : Deflect, Strikethrough, Focus Recovery

Fire : Reflect, Critical Hit

Logic : Intensity, Vigor, Critical Mitigation

Earth : Armor, Critical Severity, Resilience

You'll notice that each element provide at least 1 stat that can be useful for each role (Tank, DPS or Heal). However, the usefulness of those stats aren't exactly equal. For example, a tank doesn't really like the Reflect stat from Fire because it doesn't provide any mitigation or effective health for them.

Leveling Runes and Elder Game Runes... what does that mean?

Leveling Runes are basically the runes you will craft depending on your level. It is pretty straightforward. Level 1-9, use level 10 runes on your gear,10-19 use level 20 runes, etc.

It become a little more complicated at level 50 where you add in Elder Game Runes.

The levels here are a little misleading.

They represent the iLevel of the runes and not the level that you need to have to apply those runes.

In order to use level 10 runes, you only need to be... level 1.

Level 20 require level 10, level 30 require level 20... you get the deal.

At level 40 you can already apply the level 50 runes.

At level 50, the only important runes are the level 50 Leveling Runes and the level 80, 100 and 120 Elder Game Runes.

From now on, we will call those runes by their name and give them a Tier.

Level 50 runes: High runes - Tier 0 - Require character level 40+

Level 80 runes: Superb runes - Tier 1 - Require iLevel 70 gear

Level 100 runes: Pure runes - Tier 2 - Require iLevel 90 gear

Level 120 runes: Divine runes - Tier 3 - Require iLevel 110 gear

High runes are your bread and butter runes that you apply to fill in your empty rune slots because you can't afford the Elder Game runes or because your gear doesn't meet the iLevel required to use a certain Tier of Elder runes.

Superb runes can be applied to any gear that has an iLevel of 70 or higher and are usually a must want for any pieces of iLevel 78+ until you reach raiding gear...

Pure runes is meant for raiding gear of iLevel 90+

Divine runes is meant for raiding gear of iLevel 110+

Okay but... Set runes?

Yes, let's talk about set runes. It is important to understand what set runes are and do before you end up wasting materials on basic runes when you could have crafted set runes in the first place!

Basically, a set rune is just like your basic runes with one additional factor.

Each set rune is part of a certain set.

Each rune sets have a certain rune level at which you can start crafting them.

Certain rune sets can be crafted as early as level 30 while other can only be crafted at Elder Rune level.

It can be a little overwhelming to know each sets at first, but knowing them is a good way to know how to rune your gear properly.

There is also 2 different type of sets. The 6 points sets and the 8 points sets.

The 6 points sets provide you with % increase to your stats.

For example, the Devastation rune set give 0.21% strikethrough at 2 points in.

So if I have a piece with at least 2 points in the Devastation set, this is the result:

The 0.21% only affect the Strikethrough Percent and not the Rating. I lost Rating because the item I removed had 400 Strikethrough on it.

The 8 points sets also provide you with % increase to your stats but also provide unique bonuses at 4 points and 8 points into the set.

Those bonuses are specific to your class and will often change how a certain ability function.

There are very important details regarding set runes.

6 points sets runes are unique-per-item

Which means you cannot have the same exact rune twice in the same equipment. This however means you can have the same rune on a different piece of equipment. It also means that you can use a lower level rune of the same stat to complete your set or use a 1 point rune and 2 points rune of the same stats.

For example, if we take the Devastation rune set:

The first 3 runes are 2 points runes while the last 3 runes are 1 points runes.

In order to fill your 6 points set you have 3 choices...

1. You can use the first 3 runes, fire, earth and life. This means you get 6 points at the cost of 3 runes but it also means you get a health rune which is pretty worthless for a DPS. This would be a bad choice.

2. You can use the 2 points fire and earth runes and the 1 points fire and earth runes. This means you get the perfect amount of stats as well as your 6 points sets but at the cost of 4 runes instead of 3.

3. You can use the 2 points fire and earth runes and use a different level rune of the same set to get a 2 points fire or earth rune. In the case of the Devastation rune set, you cannot get anything below Superb for it. This would only work for Pure or Divine runes that could use a rune from a tier below. In this case, if you are using Superb runes, you'd go with option 2.

This right here is where the min-maxing and spreadsheets means a lot. It requires a lot of maths to find a good balance in runes for each of your pieces.

8 point sets runes are... special

Take a look at this picture

This is the Assassin set for Stalker. There is a lot of information on this rune that needs to be kept in mind.

1. Unique Equipped

This means that the item can only be used ONCE across ALL OF YOUR GEAR. Be very wary of this because a 8 points set runes is extremely important when it comes to both PvP and PvE. You do not want to put that set in a piece of gear that is subject to being changed in the near future.

2. Required Item Type

This means that you can only slot this rune into a piece of equipment of the same item type. You cannot use the Assassin rune on a piece of PvP equipment for example (Anyway the iLevel wouldn't allow it.) just like you cannot use the Garroter rune on a piece of PvE gear since it is restricted to PvP equipment.

3. Unique Per Item

This means the same as the 6 points set runes explained above.

4. Required Item Level

This means you can only apply it to an item of this item level or higher.

5. Class

This means that it can only be used by this class.

6. (4) and (8) are disabled while in PvP (PvE) instances.

This means that the bonus won't apply while in said instance.

As a general note, currently, every 8 points rune set of Superb quality are Restricted to PvP while every Pure and Divine sets are Restricted to PvE. This means that you only can use a 8 points rune set once you reach raid gear for PvE.

Wait, wait, wait, wait... WAIT! You said something about Fusion runes didn't you?

Yes, I did mention Fusion runes.

Now that I've covered what set runes are, I can talk to you about the Fusion runes.

They are basically an added layer of complexity above the already very complex system of runes.

Basically, a fusion rune is a rune that can applied to any element socket but only to the gear slot the Fusion rune is tied to.

For example, you can apply a weapon Fusion rune to any rune slot in your weapon but not to your pants. (Even though those Aurin's butt should be considered weapon of mass destruction. Giggity)

This means 1 important thing... a Fusion rune takes up 1 of your rune slot on that piece of equipment, leaving you with a max of 2 slots for blue items, 3 slots for purple and 4 slots for orange. Keep this in mind when dealing with rune sets.

Not every gear slot has fusion runes meant for them and some slots fusion runes are less attractive than set runes. It is up to you to find what you need. There are plenty of guides out there to help you in the right path. As much as I'd like to cover every runes for every slots of every classes, my knowledge regarding min-maxing is limited and I am still in a learning phase for my own class with which runes to use.

This guide is meant to explain to you how it works rather than tell you what to do.

Okay, this all make sense, but... What about the materials I need to make those runes?

Well, to make high runes, you need to salvage any gear below iLevel 70 (Correct me if I'm wrong) and you can find materials in High runecrafting bags or from random drops. You can also get occasional drops of High runes from monsters or other things.

Those are pretty easy to get.

The materials that matter the most are the superb rune materials.

You can find Superb rune fragments by salvaging gear between iLevel 70 and somewhere around iLevel 85 (Unsure about this). You can also find them in Superb runecrafting bag and random drop from monsters in veteran dungeons.

The best way to get Superb runecrafting mats are from PvP Gladiator's Superb Runecrafting Bag that can be bought for 800 prestige at the PvP consumable vendor and also from contract rewards.

As for the Pure and Divine mats, you get them from salvaging raid gear. You can also get them from Pure and Divine runecrafting bags bought for Glory.

4 - Improving your performance

Wow, that rune section was huge! But we're not done just yet. Now that we know how gear, stats and runecrafting work and we are aware of what content is available to us and which one we should go for, there is one last important section to cover...  Gameplay.

This guide will not teach you how to play your class, nor will it provide you with any specific builds or boss strategy. Instead, in this section, I will try to give you the necessary tools that will allow you to learn how to play your class, make your own builds and understand bosses strategy by yourself.

Like the idiom say: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

4.1 - Action sets

Let's start by talking about action sets. Also known as LAS (Limited Action Set) and often called a "spec", an action set is the combination of your amps and ability bar saved into a set.

You are able to change action set while out of combat, allowing you to use a certain build that will allow you to succeed at whichever content you are currently working on.

You start with 2 action sets and can gain 2 additional sets by buying them at the Elder Gem items vendor.

Abilities

In order to make an action set, you must choose abilities that you will use in combat.

At level 50, you are limited to 8 abilities at a time and must choose wisely which one you want to use.

You can increase the tier level of your chosen abilities by spending ability points into them up to a maximum of 48 total ability points. You can also remove those ability points from the abilities to use them on other abilities at will.

There is no cost to changing your abilities or their tier levels.

48 points? Why does it show me less than 48?

Because in order to get 48 points, you must unlock the rest of your points by using Ability Point unlocks.

Those can be gained in multiple ways:

- Bought with Prestige

- Reaching maximum reputation (Beloved) with certain level 50 factions and buying them at those faction reputation vendors

- Rare drop from monsters in the world

- Bought from other players, either on the commodity exchange or directly from them

- From the adventure gear vendor after getting gold stars in every adventures

- For a huge amount of renown at the renown vendor

Which abilities should I choose then?

Choosing which abilities you want to use depends on a lot of factors.

The first thing you should ask yourself is what you are trying to accomplish with those abilities.

If you are doing solo content, the choice of abilities will be different to group content. It will also differ whether you are on a PvE or PvP server due to the filthy dominions on PvP servers (Exiles are the best!).

Having less than 48 ability points will also change which abilities you may want to use.

Okay but... what should I choose?!?

That is not for me to tell you unfortunately. What YOU want to use can only be chosen by you and you alone.

What I can tell you however is what you should always keep in mind when choosing your abilities...

Flexibility.

Always be flexible in your choice of abilities.

You can choose to go for 8 Assault abilities to do more damage... But that doesn't mean you will actually do more "damage".

A popular saying in MMORPG is that a dead DPS do no DPS. In Wildstar, this is especially important because of how hazardous fights can be. Like I said in section #3 when I talked about maximum health, you will spend a lot of your game time without receiving heals from anyone even during boss fight where you have an healer actively healing your group. I will be talking about telegraphs and movement in this section to give tips on how to deal with those situations.

I was told to always have an interrupt, is that true?

If you managed to get to level 50, you are most likely already aware of what an interrupt is. If not, let me explain it to you.

An interrupt is an ability that cause an "interrupt" when used on an enemy target. Usually, an interrupt is any abilities that apply a crowd control (stun, push, pull, displacement) or abilities that specify in its description that it apply an interrupt or remove an interrupt armor. In order to successfully interrupt an enemy, that enemy must be casting or channelling an ability and have no interrupt armor left. An interrupt armor is a protection against interrupt enemies have. They can have multiple stacks of interrupt armors requiring you to have multiple interrupts in order to stop their cast/channel.

You can see if they have any interrupt armor and how many they have from a shield icon next to their portrait when you target them. A steel shield means that they cannot be interrupt.

Once interrupted, the enemy become vulnerable (Some enemies do not become vulnerable after being interrupted on certain abilities.) making them take an additional 50% damage for several seconds and showing a broken shield icon next to their portrait.

Additionally, players do not become vulnerable when interrupted can gain temporary interrupt armor(s) from certain abilities and/or amps.

The reason why interrupts are so important is because some bosses abilities will kill a player or even an entire group in one shot or cause massive amount of damage or cause other hazardous effects that can be very bad for you and/or your group.

Is it a good thing to always have an interrupt? The answer is no.

Some may argue with me on this, but I'll reiterate what I already said. Always be flexible in your choice of abilities.

You have the luxury of changing which abilities and what tier level your abilities are on the fly. Some bosses have absolutely nothing to interrupt. An example of this is the infamous Fire boss in Sanctuary of the Swordmaiden.

Of course, you should be using at the very least 1 interrupt on almost every fights and I'd recommend going for 2 interrupts or even 3 for most fights, but do not limit yourself by locking you into having abilities that won't be useful to you or your group for the current fights you are fighting.

So aside from interrupt, do I just take damage dealing or healing abilities? What about tanks?

No. There are multiple other things you can and should use in fights. Movement abilities, CC breaking abilities, self/group cleanse, buffs, debuffs, self heals, etc.

There are many times you will find yourself disarmed, tethered, knocked down, stunned, etc. A CC break will give you much more DPS or chance at survival than using another damage dealing ability.

When soloing, you can easily kill most of the things with just damaging abilities, but if you want to tackle bigger foes by yourself, you will need abilities that will allow you to do so.

For example, I am able to solo almost every 5 man quests in the world by using T8 Blood thirst bringing my lifesteal on my Stalker to up to 35% for the duration of the Blood Thirst. Also using Preparation to heal myself and Pounce to give me the extra mobility to kite while I regen.

Read all of your abilities carefully, every single abilities in the game, for every classes, have their uses. It's up to you to find when and why use them.

Remember though that when in a group, you still have a role you must fulfil. It is still your healers job to heal you if you are a DPS and you shouldn't be a playing a spec meant for soloing in group content. (Unless you are carrying...)

As for tanks, it is very hard to find a good balance in which abilities you want to use as a tank. Whether you want to go for more threat, survivability, control, interrupt, movement, etc. It is pretty much the same as I explained. Be flexible.

The good thing about being a tank is that they are usually the ones who set the pace at which a group is moving through content. This give them the opportunity to take more or less time to change their abilities to fit the fights.

Amps

If you are familiar with Talent Trees from other games, the Amp system is similar to a talent tree.

Basically, you have 6 sides (Hexagon). 3 sides that are related to a certain playstyle (Assault, Support and Utility) as well as 3 other sides which are a mix of 2 playstyle (Assault-Support, Assault-Utility and Support-Utility).

Each side have 3 tiers of Amps. The first tier require 1 point for each Amps and has 9 different Amps per side. The second tier require 4 points for each Amps and has 5 Amps for Assault, Support and Utility and 4 amps for the other 3 sides. The third and last tier require 6 points for each Amps and has 2 Amps per side with 1 additional 2 points cost Amp in Assault, Support and Utility. Those 2 points Amps are actually unlockable abilities that can only be used if the 2 points Amp is taken.

In order to reach the next tier of Amps for a side, you require a certain amount of points in the previous tier.

Tier 2 requires 3 points.

Tier 3 requires 11 points.

Only points spent in the same side of the hexagon will count toward unlocking the next tier of said side.

You can have a total of 57 Amp Points. Just like ability points, you require Amp points unlocks in order to get all of your Amp points.

Those can be gained in multiple ways:

- Bought with Prestige

- For a huge amount of renown

- Reaching maximum reputation with certain factions

- Bought with renown after getting gold in every veteran expedition

- Found as random drops in the world

- Bought from other players

I won't talk much about Amps, it is pretty much the same thing as abilities. Be flexible.

There is however one important thing to keep in mind regarding Amps... Because an Amp is on a certain side, doesn't mean that it is better for what you are trying to achieve than a side that may seem completely unrelated.

For example, a Stalker DPS depends on how much resources they have available. Once they are out of Suit Power, they cannot use their most powerful abilities until they have enough Suit Power again. Many amps which improve Suit Power management and regeneration can be found in sides other than Assault. So spending all your points into Assault will not yield you the best DPS... not even close.

It is up to you to learn your class Amps and how to best build your characters.

There is a lot of information you can find, which is good for your class to save you from having to find out yourself what is the perfect for certain stuff.