In beta, they did wear hoods, and their lekku poked out the back. I'd surmise that people complained about the sort of clipping caused by them just sticking out the back and it was changed to always show as "helm down".

I played a little of Ragnarok, and you won't find anything that complicated here. Thank goodness. And the grind.. good god. Dying once meant losing hours and hours and hours and.. well you get the idea... of work. If I ever kill another poring, it'll be to soon. If you're looking for specific formulas to calculate, the closest you're going to get is secondary stats, but as this game is fairly new and lacks a combat log at the moment, you'll find theory crafting difficult at this point. Give it some time and you'll see more stuff come up, but it'll never be as crazy complex as some of those Asian MMOs of the past.

Not positive on this, since I haven't let it get to that point but... If the title/item-type-text is in red, and you have it equipped there's a distinct chance that means the item is "broken" and you need to go to a vendor and hit the little "Repair" button on the lower, lefthand corner. Could be wrong though, I repair every single time I pass a vendor, so I'm not sure if it changes the title/item-type-text to red. A lesson I learned after attempting to tank something in the game-that-will-not-be-mentioned and had my weapon break in the middle of a boss fight. Talk about embarrassing, thankfully I had a backup on me and swapped them out before I caused a wipe. To be fair, I was a little drunk that night... Which led me to learning my lesson about drinking and raiding, but that's a whole other story.

Not arguing that it isn't possible for a side to have 12 people, just saying that the end screen showing the stats isn't an accurate judge of that. Like I said, I've seen the opposing team with more than 8 several times. Sometimes it's an accident, sometimes it's purposely exploited, but the only way to be sure that they really have more than 8 is to see 'em all clustered up somewhere. Playing an Alderaan when you have 7 people and the other side as 10 really sucks. Lets just say that particular game thankfully ended quickly.

Just a heads up, going by the results screen isn't accurate, when judging the other team's numbers. If any of their team left and was replaced, it'll show both the person who left and the new player. So if two or three people dropped and new players came in, it would make it look like the other side had more players. On your side, you can tell based on who you can vote for MVP, you can't MVP a player who ditched in the middle of the WZ. Not saying it's not possible to have more than 8, I was in a WZ with 9 once, and more than once I've seen the Imps on my server with 10+. Just saying the final screen isn't accurate. You'd need to actually see all the names during the battle to be sure. ^.-

Problem with pushing it back to 4 or 5 am is that is directly in the middle of the UK/European prime time. This is a worldwide game. Someone, somewhere is always going to be in the middle of their prime time when the servers go down. Just be thankful they tried to find a time that had the least impact on its players. Any earlier, and it's better for Europe, but smack in the middle of the west coast prime time, any later and it gives another hour or so to west coasters but kills the European players. This is as close to a compromise as they're going to get until they have more teams and have multiple down times, which is something I'd guess will eventually happen, but not for quite sometime. I wouldn't expect it anytime this year at least. A lot of it, I'm sure is money constraints, but I know I've seen this questioned by the European players who are currently impacted by the chosen down times. I believe the official response was that they want to have everyone updated at the same time, rather than offering advantages or disadvantages to certain time zones/server locations, etc, because people gain access to the new patches sooner or later than other people.

There is an option in preferences that allows you to show alignment types beside the response options so you don't have to mouseover to see it. That said, the number 1 option in conversations is the default for the character class, rather than being based on 1=light 2/3=dark. So if you're playing a Trooper, you may do some things that are "Darksided" by default because you're a soldier following orders/laws/rules from superiors, rather than a Jedi who goes by a totally different code. Similarly, a Sith character will almost always default to Darkside options in the number 1 spot, while a Bounty Hunter or Agent may not, based on that particular class's default story. You'll just have to be careful, and like I said above, turning on the option to see the symbols beside the options without needing to mouseover helps a lot. I'm on my second toon (a Trooper as well), and have noticed some differences in default responses. Where my Smuggler might have defaulted dark, the trooper is light, and vice versa.

I'd be totally on board with something like take 5% reduced damage when you have an active Upper Hand. But to be honest, without the deadly opener, other aspects of the class can be looked at. Before, people said that we didn't need gap closers or pushbacks because we had devastating burst. Without that, I personally feel we need a sprint and some kind of knockback as well. The damage nerf seems like it'll bring Scrapper damage down to Assassin/Shadow level. So gaining some of their utility (speed/knockback) wouldn't be out of reason in this case. Having a speed boost, a knockback, and my aforementioned damage boost might go a long way to balancing things out, both for the Scrapper spec that was nerfed, and the incidentally nerfed Sawbones spec that relied on Shoot First for it's very miniscule amount of damage done.

I'll say right up front, I don't play a Scrapper, I've been a Sawbones since level 10. That out of the way, I'd like to offer my opinion. Ironically, in PvP the Op/Scoundrel was the only dps I could usually escape. Just pop my CC breaker after the opener, slow, and bolt. Any other class has a closer or is ranged and I get slaughtered, but not the Op/Scoundrel. That said, I know other people seemed to have survivability problems against the opener in PvP, and this will really hurt players in PvE. Because of the real lack of sustainable damage for Scoundrels/Ops in both, I think a minor buff to sustainable would be a good balancing act here. Add a small, unspec'd DoT to Backblast that lasts for 9 seconds (100% uptime, about equal to 20 or 25% of the Backblast hit). When the DoT is active on your target, have Blaster Whip deal an additional 10% damage. Obviously the numbers may need tweaking, but I think trading off the 'OP' burst for a little more sustainable damage seems a fair compromise so those that want to PvE aren't left totally out in the cold.

This line reminds me so very much of a an early time in that other game that will not be named. I played a resto druid from the very first time I logged on, in vanilla. Back then all resto druids were good for was innervating the holy priests during raids. I did manage to heal most instances though, without to much trouble. The real problem arose when more than one person died in a 30 min time frame. See, back then druids were the only "healing class" that didn't get a real, reliable, out of combat res. Instead we got the only battle res in the game, on a 30 minute cooldown. I can't tell you the number of times I would get shot down as being a healer for a normal instance or a mini-raid like UBERS because I was a "pseudo-healer" with no res. Took them, what 2 years to give me one? While it is annoying, keep in mind that in this game once any in-combat res is used, it puts a debuff on the entire raid for 5 minutes. It's less useful than you might think in the long game. In a 4 man instance, sure, it's handy, though I find that when I try to 'pop' people, they don't even notice or bother taking it. Apparently the graphics affect is so minimal most people don't even pay attention. And otherwise, in a 4-man, people just immediately release and run back during the fight. So if you're raiding with 2 commando/merc healers, sure it's annoying. But then you already have issues with no variety, and that's a whole other (ad bigger) problem. All you really need is one in-combat res'er. As to the whole "single-target healer" bit. Well, I can't speak for sages, but Sawbones are single-target healers too. In fact, group healing in this game generally feels pathetic. The HoTs for Sawbones are "okay" for spot healing after the damage is done, but if there's a big AoE damage phase, we're out of resources just as fast as you are. So the thing to really be looking at is how the pathetic AoE spells Medics/Sawbones get can be improved. EDIT: I realized after I hit post, I forgot to add that I do feel that Medics should get an in-combat res. Perhaps attached to a higher tier healing talent. I don't think the dps specs need it, but I wouldn't mind seeing the healers get it. The above is just a statement that I believe that even without it, Medics can be perfectly apt healers and while missing something, people shouldn't avoid playing them just because they lack that one skill. I just strongly believe there are other, much worse healing imbalances right now, though I do, fully agree, that this one should be on the list of fixes somewhere (along with some talent somewhere, that starts the recently res'd player with more health than nil, right now they pop then immediately die again). I would much rather see the lacking healing ability of Medics/Sawbones brought up to speed with that of the Seer, first. I'd rather have the ability to prevent death, than to just give the player a shorter run back ^.-

As they said, use the Ops frames. You can also re-size and move them which is immensely useful to a healer. I make mine pretty darn big to make it easier to target, then move 'em closer to my normal UI so I can keep track of everything in one tight space.

I also play on Port Nowhere, and I'll admit, when I see one of the groups is all Condemned, I feel a little better. Though I can't speak if a 1:20 (assuming 100 warzone wins, and 5 losses) win ratio is right or not, I do admit that their pre-mades tend to be pretty good. However, lately I've started to give up on Warzones because we just can't win. Three days ago, I did 5 Warzones with my pvp buddy (he's a tank and I'm a healer). Literally, each time we started down 1 person, and as things were looking bad for us because we were short, more than half the team afk'd out. 30 seconds later I saw some of the very same names come right back in. They dropped, requeued, and got sent back in. Then of course, they realized what happened and dropped again (I actually saw one guy a third time, and he finally just stuck it out by standing in a corner not doing anything). Needless to say, I haven't joined a level 50 warzone since. It's just disheartening. It kinda feels like some of the other Republic players I've seen on our server feel similarly, and are beginning to give up. Either that, or I'm just suddenly playing at the wrong times and don't see the beastly players I used to a week or so ago.

The other day, my PUG was up against a very well geared pre-made. Took 3+ dps to take down their ball carrier when he was running it alone (myself excluded, I hardly count, I'm a healer with little damage). After 5 caps, they grabbed the ball and just kept passing it back and forth between teammates to avoid the "blow up" effect from carrying too long while they farmed us. After finally getting frustrated enough, a Vanguard on our side managed to yank their ball carrier across our line to save us another 7 minutes of pointless endeavor. Personally, I'd like to see either the above, or something like the countdown on the ball exploding has diminishing returns when being passed to someone of the same team. So if they're just passing back and forth for 5 min, it'll still blow up eventually unless it gets transferred to the other team or goes back to neutral. Or maybe a combination of the two ideas. When I lose a Warzone, I accept it as the other team was simply better. They outplayed us and I have no problem with that. However, when a defeat just won't end, I'll admit it can make you feel a bit bitter about the game. Thankfully being farmed hasn't happened often to me (it was the first time), but I can sympathize with those who have been forced to put up with it constantly. All it'll do is discourage queuing, making everyone else pay the price for these few players' desire to milk the warzone, so to speak. If they could earn greater rewards by finishing the match quickly, then everyone could move to a new game where they actually stand a chance. Being farmed isn't fun for anyone.

Smuggler > Scoundrel > Sawbones.

I play a healer in Warzones as well, and I'd like to add my own experiences. 1 - I have no bubble and my (double-stacked) HoT's total heal heals for about 2 swings of the average DPS. Seems most of them consistently hit for well over 2k a hit, and much more on crits. 2 - I have 1 DoT, and it deals about 300 damage more than my basic attack, but costs some of my very very small resource pool. While I use it, it is impossible to kill someone with it. 3 - I have 2 stuns (one on a 45 sec CD, another on a 90 sec CD), a slow with a cooldown on it and I need to be in melee range to use (same with my interrupt), and no knockbacks/knockdowns or roots. 4 - Since I can't do anything from range, it is nearly impossible for me to attack first, unless I somehow get lucky and are either out of combat (rare in Warzones), or have just died and can stealth. However, as the DPS trees of my class are burst damage, and I am healer and therefore lack that burst, I usually hit like a wet noodle. 5 - I have no force speed on a fairly low cooldown, or any sort of gap closer. I have an in-combat stealth that has a 3 minute cooldown, however most of the time I am instantly seen after using it, since I lack any talents that increase my stealth level, etc. Most classes can easily counter it with nearly spammable AoEs that will break me out of it, if they don't happen to see right through it. I often feel as if I spend most of my time dead, and it's incredibly frustrating how quickly I go down because I feel as if I lack many of the basic survival tools that are necessary to survival in a match. I am not looking for a "godmode" or "easymode" or anything of the sort. I'm simply looking for the ability to survive for more than 5 seconds against a single dps on my own. A fair shot of survival or winning, obviously based on my own and my opponent's skill. As is stands now, pretty much every dps class can kill me before I can get 3 GCDs in, if I'm not guarded and have a pocket tank spamming taunts. As it stands now, tanks are useless without a healer, healers are useless without a tank, and dps just slaughter everything without breaking a sweat. Seems a little unfair when you need both rock and paper just to put a ding in scissors. Obviously this is just what I've seen and experienced myself. I'm not offering any faux statistics or percentages, other than things I've personally experienced in Warzones. Maybe I chose the wrong class, but class balance means each healer should be able to preform their chosen duties, and a healer can't do anything if they spend most of their time in Warzones dead.