Shard Economy Changes [MEGA]

Bottom line is gear is almost always the bottle neck.

This is just not true.

If there are 5 toons on one hard node each - say you want Jango & Bossk, Talzin & Wicket for their events, & someone else that's decent but only available on a hard node. Nihilus maybe. Can't remember if he has another farming location, but let's say for the purpose of the example that he doesn't.

1.6 shards / day = 200 days to get those toons. You could try to do it faster, but that's 500 energy/day - all your free/accrued + 1 refresh. So let's leave it there, since you'll need crystals for other things.

Now, you could try to speed it up even further, but you're not going to get it under 100/day without huge crystal spending, which for most people isn't sustainable.

So if you're that average player, maybe even above average, but nothing special, hitting rank 49 in fleet & 199 in squad, there's no way you can farm those toons faster than 150 days.

So here's the question: can you get 5 toons from gear1/level 1 to level 85 & gear 12 in less than 150 days?

If the answer is yes, then gear is not the biggest bottleneck.
If the answer is no, then you're a petty poor player.