I don't think diminishing returns have changed since 1.2 and most of what I have read and seen states that reaching 75% surge and 30% crit are the points to hit before DR stats devaluing taking surge/crit over power. Power has no diminishing returns whatsoever. If you are already at 75% surge and 30% without any buffs whatsoever, it is best to invest in power and nothing else. Point per point spent after this benchmark you sill see a more consistent increase in DPS going with power as opposed to continuing with crit and surge (realize that pushing surge higher does increase your crit cap = higher numbers, but you are playing the game of chance with crit). If we ever get a talent in our trees that increase our str by 9% or w/e it is that all other classes seem to get, then the gap between str and power returns would diminish (power would still be barely ahead, but nothing to seriously write home about imo).

Compare your model to a PvE point of view. Say I'm really savvy with the GTN and I have literally unlimited credits. I can buy a complete augment crit crafted set (aside from relics), buy full armorings + mods + enhancements + augments and practically be at top tier. Granted with the assumption that you have an unlimited amount of credits, the PvE point of view is way too easy in comparison to the PvP point of view.

It really boils down to the approach to lvl 50. 1) You PvE and you PvE and you PvE and you PvE and.....so forth. You hit 50 and crap...I never PvP'd so I have 0 WZ commendations. No problem, I am swimming in credits because I PvE'd so much I'll just buy the Recruit set. 2) You PvP and you PvP and you PvP and you PvP and.....so forth. In my and many other's suggested model, hey look at that, I have already grinding out my Battlemaster set and can finally use it, SWEET! In the current model, hmmm I can buy either 1 piece or maybe 3...what to pick? Damn that Recruit gear costs credits, too bad I didn't really quest or do PvE to fatten my wallet so I can afford all of this. EDIT: Wow what johnyangelo said is nice. Did not know that. Still sad that we have to wait until lvl 40 to change currencies.

This is a complaint about why is it that I am restricted to what I can and can't buy with currency I have worked for and earned? 1) I can spend millions of credits on anything I could want on the GTN and not face any "requires lvl xx" to purchase. Granted this would kill the economy severely but case in point, I could spend millions on lvl 50 gear as a lvl 1 character and not be restricted. 2) With WZ commendations I could purchase the lvl 20 implants and earpiece before I was lvl 20. Guess what, they sat in my bags waiting for me to achieve lvl 20 so that I could use them. Not restrictions here either and yet.... Why is it then that I cannot purchase Battlemaster gear with my earned WZ commendations? It is stated on the gear "requires lvl 50", okay yes, I cannot use it until lvl 50 however I would like to accumulate the gear as I lvl up so that I have SOMETHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO. Call it extra drive or whatever. EDIT: Or is this just a way of forcing people to purchase the Recruit set upon reaching lvl 50? Seems rather bogus if I am forced in a certain path.

I must be the only person that is picky about these kinds of things or nobody has taken the time to voice about it =/ .

Thank you for this information!

Bumpity

Bumpity

Not sure if this is the best sub forum to post this but here it is. My guild is Imperial side and we run an 8 man raid group. Assassin tank, Powertech tank, Sorcerer heal, Mercenary heal, Sniper, Mercenary dps, Powertech dps, and Marauder. The Sorcerer AoE heal applies to the nearest 8 allies which is amazing for an 8 man ops. The Mercenary AoE heal applies to their group of 4 with the initial "splash" applying to the nearest 4 or 8 (not sure about this because I have been healed by it and not been in that healers group). I believe it is the same mechanic for the Operative AoE heal? Why is it though that the Sorcerer AoE affects twice as many people as the 2 other healing classes? Is this supposed to be a niche to Sorcerer heals? Being a Marauder I see similar issues with Bloodthirst only applying to my group of 4 (the same as Berserk heals from DoTs in juyo form). The changes to Predation affecting the entire ops group was great, but what about our other 2 "buffs"? As it is we primarily run our 2 groups as: A - tank, tank, heal, heal & B - dps, dps, dps, dps. For many fights the healers aren't going to be sitting on the tanks, they will be closest to the ranged group and this just destroys the AoE design of the Mercenary and Operative heals. Why aren't the AoE heals changed to similar lines of the Sorcerer's being "nearest 4 allies"? I can understand that group setup can written off as strategy and "stacking" a dps group for Bloodthirst would apply, but it severely gimps the output of 2/3 of the healing classes. My Berserk heals cannot make up for the AoE healing of actual healing classes. Is this ever going to be changed or looked at or is it honestly "working as intended"?

While it was handy that they introduced that feature, how would somebody be able to know before they receive an item if they will be able to RE it? Most of our raids is run by master looter and as far as I can tell, you can't for example, open your bag, choose RE and then hover over the loot on the boss. Nothing pops up, unless that just verifies that you can't RE anything? Would that also apply to vendor items?

Hello everybody, From what I have been reading, all "campaign" and all "black hole" items purchased and obtained from EC can be reverse engineered with a potential to learn them right? Or is it only what is dropped in EC? Can hilts/mods/crystals/barrels/enhancements/armorings be pulled out of the new campaign/black hole gear and RE'd with a chance to learn them? Being an Artificer I am also looking at how I can crit craft some off hands for our members that could use them, but currently I have learned the lvl 48 greens from the trainer. Is it possible to RE rakata off hands to learn or is it only new campaign/black hole off hands? Thanks!

It will most likely end up being the latter of what you have said. Vendor sold "augment kits" would indeed kill crafting, but it would also give Bioware another player moneysink if their metrics deem it necessary. But most likely it will be a crafted item, hopefully not an easily crafted item to still give crit crafting a chance in the market.

Huttball has become a game of pulls and invincibility+resist, aka whichever team has the most sages/sorcs and shadows/assassins. All huttball is with these set ups is a sage/sorc pulling a tank up when they grab the ball, tank sprints through first fire and then pops their cooldown to safely run through the second fire and thats a point in a span of 10-15 seconds? Even if you push or pull the tank down, the healer up top just waltzes over to the goal line and waits to pull the tank up again. Friendly pulls need to apply a debuff to the target that they cannot be pulled again for a span of time, say 1 minute or 2 minutes. Other ideas have been that a friendly pull adds to their resolve bar, but I say no to that because it messes up CC when you want it. To sum it up, teams full of pulls = not a fun huttball. (Also the fact that the classes that have friendly pull are also the classes that have AoE knockback = staying up top is a breeze.)

1. You will have to give something new or something from another AC to Mara/Sent to compensate. Like people are saying, this buff is one of the very few reasons you take this AC to operations. 2 The ability itself has a 5 minute cooldown so this is a moot point =/. Imo, from an 8 man perspective yes having a Mara/Sent in your ops is a huge benefit because your entire dps squad is going to get the buff. If you are a 16 man guild then taking 1 Mara/Sent is going to be lackluster because only that group of 4 is going to benefit, so in total you would need more like 2-3 Mara/Sent for a 16 man ops.

Explosive Conflict is the newest content, even in storymode it should not be a walk in the park. Like practically all other MMO's the newest content to be released starts out hard, but IT IS DOABLE. After enough time has passed it gets "nerfed" so that more people can clear the content, but at least it will have had its time of being difficult and in my opinion a greater sense of achievement and reward upon completion. My guild just recently cleared SM EC after 2 days of raiding (~5-6 hours total time in EC) and we have NMM KP/EV on farm. Most people are full rakata but some aren't. I would consider SM EC to be more of a transition point of finishing rakata and gaining black hole gear (albeit slow to gain the black hole gear, 1 earpiece off of last boss). To those complaining about healer nerfs and whatnot, my guild's 8 man set up is: 1 sin tank, 1 pt tank, 1 mara, 1 sniper, 1 merc arsenal, 1 pt pyro, 1 merc heals and 1 sorc heals. Yes we have cleared SM EC with what many people claim to be the 2 most "nerfed" healers with the recent patch. Sorc healers will still stand out as the best AoE heals due to their AoE heal affecting the 8 nearest ALLIES as opposed to the "bombs" from mercs and agents being their group of 4 getting the most out of the "bomb" (the initial blast of the "bomb" does however heal anybody nearby as far as I can tell). Toth and Zorn wasn't too bad, have anybody that can cleanse DoTs do so, it helps the healers. Double Tanks, just be quick about getting into safe zones. Colonel minefield, we actually had multiple wipes from hitting the enrage during the minefield phase. Melee DPS priority = PROBE. Ranged DPS priority = 2 droids > PROBE > 3 humanoids. You can also ask healers to throw some dps on the PROBE. Warlord, many, many wipes. Have somebody (preferably a ranged dps) call out locations that the chicken walker is doing his AoE so you can transition quickly. You cannot miss killing the bomb carriers because if you miss too many, you will eventually run into time where the warlord is immune to damage while the chicken walker is still alive, thus hitting his enrage is almost guaranteed (have healers help dps bomb carriers if you are struggling here). Warlord himself hits like a mofo truck, when he does his breath and the void zone phase is going, his double slash was hitting one of our tanks for about 14k dmg and his regular hits were doing something like 4k-6k.

I would GLADLY anyday trade 1 strength to gain 30 power and I would do it over and over. Crit and Surge rating is always a fun balancing game though (not sure how much stats have been tweaked since 1.2 and what the new softcaps are, if they have changed?).

This would be amazing! I really do hate running around the imperial fleet and seeing all of those quest triangles and I feel like I've missed something important only to find out that it is for a lower level normal mode flashpoint. I do believe for some of them they have some text on their window that pops up when you select them that says "flashpoint courier" or something to that extent, but not all of them. Please Bioware, do something about this!

All true and from the economical viewpoint its all great. Coming from prior MMO's and many other people likewise, the norm for crafting is that one or some of the options are a superior choice depending on your class (or just in general). I'm not trying to say that it should be this way, I'm just looking for the info that would show what will give that advantage. From what it is sounding like that all crafting will become BoE then crafting choices will mostly be flavor and/or support for your guild. From a raiding perspective, I want to offer the best I can for my guild when I raid. Sadly for me it is looking like I will be going back to cybertech just for the grenades which I had already maxed and crafted all of them haha. Random thing about cybertech and grenades, when will there be a healing grenade for healers eh?

So assuming all crafting professions that craft equipment items will create their wares as BoE, then it looks like nothing will really have an edge anymore. Well maybe cybertech with its grenades but no crafting will provide higher stats than the other.

As it stands now in live you can purchase expertise crystals which allows you to turn PvE weapons into PvP weapons. The reason why you can't pull as many "mods" out of PvP items is because Bioware locked that slot on the weapons because they contain the expertise stat and they didn't want the expertise stat moveable. Come 1.2 players will be able to craft expertise crystals and I believe PvP weapons will be unlocked and the crystals moveable.

So from what you have said, then that would put artifice towards the top assuming they continue with higher tier learned relic recipes that are BoP. Otherwise like I mentioned in my first post, going armstech for the dps augments also has top tier potential depending on how many levels of augments they implement (potentially some being BoP).

So all the hubbub about crit-crafting oranges with augment slots and pulling armoring/mods/enhancements out of raid gear to essentially obtain BiS come patch 1.2. However, with the addition of crafting orange wrists and belts, how much of the crafted gear is going to be BoP as opposed to BoE? Say I switch to synthweaving for 1.2, crit-craft wrists, belt, helm, chest, legs and gloves (gloves obtained through RE'ing raid drops) and now I have 6 pieces I have personally crafted with augment slots on each. Assuming these items would be BoP upon crafting (also assuming there will at least be some BoP pieces to give a unique look for crafters) then it would be valid to say that synthweaving/armormech would be the best crafting skill if you are a min/max seeker. If however those 6 slots are able to be made as BoE, then wouldn't biochem stay the best crafting skill until the next tier of stims/adrenals/medpacs are released? (Supposedly future tiers of consumables will not be "not-consumed by biochemists.") Even going armstech for the better options of augments (I'm a dps so I see armstech as having the best options for augment crafting) and the potential for BiS crafted augments being BoP that way. Even yet another possibility is artifice becomming the new underdog champ, being a marauder I wouldn't mind some crit-crafted weapons and if artifice relics stay BoP then artifice would have the advantage with the only BoP crit-crafted item. (Also doesn't hurt that artifice will be making some serious dough for those that will craft PvP crystals.) All in all I'm seeking answers as to what crafting professions will fore-go their BoP crafted items and go the way of BoE and which crafting professions will keep their BoP crafted items. I am essentially seeking the "BiS" of crafting options.

In the current state of the game and with what the designers I believe to have stuck with is, you are not a raid buffer but a group buffer and the buffs have been allowed to stack. If our buffs were to be changed to raid buffs then they would without a doubt have to make it not stackable. Personally only raiding in 8 mans I don't see much purpose in changing it to a raid wide buff, running 1 tank, 2 heals, 5 dps = not much lost there. Given a 16 man situation if you only raid with 1 marauder/sentinel then yes I would totally agree that it should be a raid wide buff.

Being annihilation spec makes force charge have a lower cooldown and no minimum range, great for PvP, but still has a cooldown and with the abundance of knockbacks in this game having another ranged ability is nothing people should scoff at.

Exactly my plan. I've already maxed cyber/scav/UT my first round of crew skills, got all of the epic nades and after the nerf to them dropped those skills fast. Now its biochem/bioan/diplo (diplo not maxed, but not really necessary) just for the reusables. With the 1.2 changes on the horizon, warriors would benefit from going synthweaving and maxing out affection with Jaesa. Having those extra slots on crit crafted OJ gear is going to be too good to pass up also the potential of looking ****** with some BoP synth only stuff. As far as what to get while leveling, I'd suggest taking purely gathering skills. Don't have to worry about taking time to craft (imo crafted stuff is hardly that much better than gear obtained from questing and commendations) and you can accumulate money through slicing, accumulate crafting materials to sell or use when you hit 50 and then level up your crafting skill. Just plan a little ahead and for example if you wanted to take artifice as your crafting skill, level with: slicing (for the monies), archaeology (gather resources while you level) and treasure hunting (sending out extra companions to gather resources/extra monies).