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.

All healers are a little gimped on the medals in Warzones, though I believe it's something I saw the Devs were addressing in patches to come, so *crosses fingers* I'll keep hoping. That said, there are a few things you can do to help. 1 - Pick up expertise buffs whenever you can and throw out some damage. I play a Scoundrel. My dps is terrible, but if I grab an expertise buff and get a lucky crit on Shoot First, I can get the 2.5k damage medal. As a Merc, you should still have some pretty beefy AoE. Depending on the other team and the length of the match, you may also be able to get the 50k damage medal. 2 - Kill steal once per match. I know it sounds awful, and honestly I hate having to do it. But in order to get more than 2 medals a game, I need to do it just once. Follow around a dps, keep them alive, wait for the last moment and yoink a killing blow on an opponent. At the end of the day, it's a whole lot easier for a dps to get this medal than a healer, and you helped earn the kill by healing your teammate. Most dps get this medal very easily in a match, and will probably already have it before you ninja one for yourself, so you're probably just saving a kb from going to waste (I know, bad justification is bad ). 3 - Stick with the bigger group. By following around the largest group of teammates, you're more likely to get more kills. 10 kills = one more medal for you. 4 - Defense! Whatever you do, earn those defense medals! Hold a node in Alderaan for as long as you can. You can get 2 medals for this, Defender (1k defense points) and Warden (3k defense points). I often find the center is the best place, since it's also where your zerging teammates are usually, and it'll help with number 3. Unfortunately, as it currently stands for healers, we gain more medals for doing things that aren't healing than we do for the job we're spec'd for. Which sadly encourages us to do things that aren't always in the best interest of the team. Many of these are easy enough to get, and will hopefully tide you over until the Devs add in a few more for us. I have to confess, however, that as it currently stands, you will never earn the number of medals a dps or tank can earn. It's just the way of things at the moment.

Don't know the numbers for certain, but I'd guess that while the Imps outnumber the Republic on Port Nowhere fairly well, it can't be that bad. At least not all the time. I've gotten into an astounding 2 Huttballs that were actually same-faction, as Republic.

Just a heads up, technically right-click is bound to the upper, left ability box on your bottom-center bars, not specifically to the "1" key. I rebind my top center bar to alt-1-=, and the lower center bar to just 1-=. But my right-click attack is now the same as alt-1, rather than just 1. Just wanted to let you guys know, in case anyone else rebinds their basic bar keys and wonders why the right mouse button doesn't seem to be working right. It's location specific, rather than number specific. ^.-

Personally, it just depends on my mood. Some days red = dead. Others, I just like to mess with other people; I'll charge toward them on my speeder, stealth, then just casually walk away until I'm out of sight and unstealth, mount-up, and move on. I've had that done to me a few times as well. Freaks you out for a good few minutes as you wonder where they went or if they're just waiting for you to pull a mob before they jump you. And of course, there are the days when I'm just being nice. I level with a partner, I can stealth and he can't. I'll follow him around in stealth if we catch sight of any Imps. If they jump him, we attack and crush them since they thought they were only up against one person, otherwise we might leave them alone. Generally though, I hate killing people who are already engaged with a mob, or already mostly dead from a pull, the exception being if it was someone who ganked - or attempted to gank - me earlier. Then all bets are off, and I'll be perfectly happy to finish the job when they're half dead from a mob.

Precisely. In fact, seeing things like the "Paladin" medal and such, make me wonder why there aren't equivalent healing versions. Like healing 20k in one life. Or healing the ball carrier in Huttball for 5k. Healing for 30k while defending or attacking a turret in Alderaan, etc. A tank couldn't get half their medals if they didn't have a pocket healer keeping them up through their Guard damage. Getting a medal for healing a tank for x amount with Guard up would also be great. Good synergy. It rewards the healer for helping the tank help someone else in turn. Since everything in PvP is about the group dynamic, more medals rewarding group play would be great.

Just going to throw my two cents in as player whose been healing in MMOs for years. I know that many people feel that healers in other games were godly, unkillable machines. And to some degree that may be true. But we traded our own killing ability for our healing. While healing may have been to powerful in games that have come before, that doesn't mean healers here need quite so harsh a penalty. I saw someone say earlier in the thread that if healers were more powerful, everyone would just heal. I'm afraid that just isn't true. I don't have statistics and metrics, and I'm not going to make up some number, but from experience, it feels (even in games where healers were considered horribly OP) that healers were a rare creature. I doubt we'll ever see the day where dps'ers disappear and everyone rolls a full on healing spec'd toon (without some drastic measures by the devs to purposely force everyone that way). After all, in that other unmentionable game, healers were so-called godly, yet still managed to be in short supply most of the time, compared to dps. To the poster a bit before me, I don't think anyone here is really asking to main heal in a dps spec (if they are, I'd have to strongly disagree with them). The problem is that you can't main heal as a full healing spec. To make fully spec'd healers as useless as they currently are is only going to make those few of us (I use us referring to myself and it seems some others posting here, there may be some masochistic healers out there who I certainly can't speak for ^.-) who actually enjoy healing, stop PvPing entirely, or switch to a dps or tank role, which is more rewarding both in usefulness to the team and in earning medals. I do believe that the Trauma debuff needs to be looked at and changed. Maybe by reducing it's affect by 50 or 75%, or by finding another way. It is true that in other games, classes had debuffs to put on a target to reduce healing. The difference here is, reducing a healer's effectiveness doesn't take thought, or skill, or practice, or even a single GCD and some resources. It just takes showing up.

The problem isn't that 'we' can't get it, the problem is it's unfair to healers, whose main source of medals is healing and who cannot gain access to protection medals or the higher dps/killing/assassin/etc medals that tanks and dps can get. It's part of a system that is unfortunately currently imbalanced against healers.

Scoundrels/Ops get their battle res at 50 (and I assume something similar for Sages/Sorcs). Last I heard, Commando/Mercs don't get one. As to why you haven't gotten a b-res? Because there's no purpose in it. The res timer is mostly short, trying to res someone is time consuming in a chaotic battle and will just get the caster killed, there's a debuff that limits it's use, and the Warzone battlefields are so small that once you get out of your res-point, it takes ~10 seconds to get back to where you died.

I just want to take a moment to mention that there is actually one AC that has no access to pushbacks or gap closers and is quite the squishy meleer. The third quote I have above me links to "Cover Pulse", a gunslinger/sniper ability. The poster was trying to disprove another person saying Smugglers/Agents don't get any form of knockback. Unfortunately Scoundrels/Operatives don't get any sort of knockback, it is only a Gunslinger/Sniper ability, and we are also the only melee class with no gapcloser. Speaking as a Sawbones Scoundrel, the lack of kiting ability due to no Force Speed, AoE or single target knockbacks, and only a single slow on a cooldown, is the only thing I feel is unbalanced. I think it would be just fine if everyone got a knockback, as many people say, but it isn't true. In turn, speaking as someone who played an Assassin in beta, and also plays a Sage now, I feel just fine with the idea of at least doubling the cooldown of Overload/Force Wave to 45 seconds to 1 minute. At the moment, it's just to powerful, mostly because of the short cooldown. If it were talentable down to 20 or 30 seconds, that would be fine, but it's just naturally too short in my opinion. I know some people say that the squishy ranged healer needs the knockback for survivability, but if Sawbones are expected to survive just fine without it and a surprisingly hardy bubble, I think Inquisitors/Consulars can do fine with it on a slightly longer cooldown, thanks to their added bonus of Force Speed. Similarly, I don't see why Shadows/Assassins have the ability at all. They are not a kiting class, they are not ranged, they are as melee as a Scoundrel, but with more utility, between Force Speed and their AoE knockback. I'm the last person who wants to see homogenization. I've quit games when I saw it coming. But lets not ignore certain imbalances for fear of that. Tweaks, not major overhauls, just little changes, can fix a lot of the imbalances currently seen in the game. Like increasing a cooldown here, or changing a talent there.

When I was a kid (10), I played games that were probably considered very inappropriate for my age. In fact, my online gaming started back in the good ol' days of MUDing, and I can assure you, the people who played those games were just as twisted as anything you'll see in this game, as content or in general chat... and back then there was no way to just turn it all off. I played them and learned the emotional maturity required to deal with the things I experienced. Despite the references to sex, blood, violence, and drug and alcohol use depicted in those games (like this game) and the hundreds that came after, I turned into a fairly normal person. All that said, if you truly believe your daughter has the maturity to be able to handle content and themes that are meant for 16+, then she should also have the maturity to either have the determination to figure things out on her own, or the maturity to ask for help without hurting her poor, childish pride. If she doesn't have either, then I can guarantee you, she doesn't have the emotional maturity to handle the content found in a game meant for people more than half a decade older than her. This coming from another woman who was once in her position. If anything, you should be ashamed. You are teaching your daughter that it's okay to quit and give in, that it's okay not to try and improve herself. Video games are more than just simple entertainment, they are a lesson unto themselves. They teach persistence, social skills, reading comprehension, and much more. Instead, coach her, let her improve, and let her discover on her own the rewards she can earn from determination and ambition. Rather than teaching her that the world will bend over backwards for her... because I have news for you, it most definitely won't.