Its funny how its pretty much a 50/50 split between the "leave Biggs as naked as possible" people and the "buff the heck out of him for more survivability" people.

"leave Biggs as naked as possible"

Eeew

"leave Biggs as naked as possible"

Eeew

The glorious mustache is all he needs to cover his body!

Its funny how its pretty much a 50/50 split between the "leave Biggs as naked as possible" people and the "buff the heck out of him for more survivability" people.

Well those are basically the only two options - either you assume he dies and run him lean, or you try to make him immortal.

Its funny how its pretty much a 50/50 split between the "leave Biggs as naked as possible" people and the "buff the heck out of him for more survivability" people.

Buffed Biggs only works if he can mitigate damage at a similar rate to its application. In this regard, he is limited by the fundemental stats of the T65 he rides in. 5 health (6 with IA) behind 2 green dice with no Evade action is pretty limiting. The meta is currently awash with ships like CDP Fangs and /x7 Defenders. The result is that people build lists that emphasize spike damage to burn through these defenses.

However damage that can burn through a Defender's token stack will go through Biggs like vindaloo through a short granny. You cannot buff Biggs enough to survive long against those kind of alpha strikes which means that the moment you run into one, the extra points you spent buffing Biggs are effectively wasted.

R4-D6 Biggs is good because you can judge fairly well how long he will last and that value is fixed. A buffed Biggs may work well or may not which makes taking him a bit of a gamble in a competitive setting.

What can work well is if you have other things around that can buff Biggs but are not bought exclusively for the purpose of doing so. Kanan is a great example of this as his pilot skill is good anyway but happens to be extra useful when Biggs is around. These sorts of upgrades can help keep Biggs around a little longer but if/when he dies, your list is not weakened as a result.

That is why I like to keep Biggs cheap but am happy to support him with other elements of my list.