I would be happy with an Admiral Ackbar vanity pet that occasionally goes bonkers - running around shouting "It's a trap!"

Yup - I am also getting this. Have to quit the game and restart.

I did a bit of testing on friday after noticing my SCORPIO had less than 15k hp. The items that must be reequipped every time the companion spawns are; Earpiece, Both implants Also - if a piece of gear has the mods changed *while* a companion is wearing them then that item must be reequipped otherwise the stats are not recognised.

Another bug for you to add... companion gear is not registering. Every time you summon your companion you have to unequip/reequip a lot of its gear to get the stats to register. This is *highly* annoying! edit:: correction - it seems to be ony the earpiece and implants that need to be unequipped/reequipped which is a little less taxing... although if you change the mods in any companion item while they are wearing them then that item will also need to be reequipped.

I see your point here, it would need to be 4 of each - I myself have no interest in playing republic characters so would be limited to 200 presence bonus from companions.

Just to clarify, the guilds summit presentation info was thus; You only receive one unique bonus from each companion subtype, so only one boost to crit etc... You receive +10 presence for *EVERY* companion you max out, regardless of duplicates. So that gives a total presence bonus achieveable of; Human unlock: 100 Companions: 10 * 8 * 5 = 400 Datacrons: CBA to work it out So without datacrons you can achieve +500 presence just by maxing out affection on 40 companions spread across 8 characters on a server. And yes, it is very noticeable, especially on lower level characters!

On the plus side, Ops healing got a bit of a buff so we should now be competitive with the "normalised" abilities of the Merc and Sorc healers out there - this makes me happy

I was thinking x should be around 10-15 seconds - possibly more if it were to replace the "Advanced Cloaking" talent. Obviously it would need to be tested and maybe some kind of internal cooldown would be required... A 10 second reduction and 10 second internal cooldown combined with the existing Advanced Cloaking talent would result in a minimum cooldown of 60 seconds for Cloaking screen if the Op got 6 TA's at exactly the right time. If it replaced the Advanced Cloaking talent then reducing the cooldown by 20 seconds per TA with a 10 second internal cooldown would produce the same result (reduce cooldown by up to 20 seconds every 10 seconds, max 2/3 reduction in cooldown). Having 10 seconds with 5 internal cooldown sounds the same but would benefit players more in more active situations where TAs are being generated more often.

Before 1.2 I would say pick Merc if you want an easy life, pick Operative if you want a healer that will keep you on your toes. Hopefully 1.2 will have the desired effect and require all healers to actually think about resource management and healing priorities a bit more - and also have a knock on effect and make DPS (and to a lesser extent the tank - I say lesser as tanks I have grouped with are pretty much aware of the need to avoid mitigate damage) not stand in the fire so much! All that aside, I enjoy healing as Operative. It makes you think about whether you absolutely need to top player x off or not, you need to be aware of incoming damage and how to best recover from "oh s**t" moments.

I posted this in the Class forum and thought it might be worth posting here as a suggestion... there is a lot of shouting in the Ops forum for a close ability, but I would suggest an alternative that switches the focus back to stealth as the core feature of Operative combat;

Dunno if a shadowstep ability is the right way to go - in my mind we should be stealthed and picking off the weak or taking out tactical targets rather than going for out and out dps - fact is our DPS appears to be built around the burst from a stealth opening. So why not have a talent (or passive... whatever balances best) that reduces the cooldown on vanish by x seconds every time you gain a TA? That way it would be useable in PvP, we could get back to stealth instead of running around in combat waiting to die and unable to close and we could work it into a rotation on PvE boss fights.

Fairy nuff, levelled to 50 healer specced with my mouse arm in a cast, so never used either of them to today. I did read the description, which does not say it may not be used on elite mobs specifically - I made the assumption they were grouped up under the strong mob classification. Always glad to learn something new - hopefully others will find the info useful as I can't be the only person to make such an assumption.

The more sensible option would be to add costume slots so we can put items in for looks only while the main slot provides the stats, that way medium and heavy armour classes can enjoy the social outfits that currently are only really usable by light armour users and we can keep our preferred look without all the hassle. It would also allow us to keep a consistent look when dual spec comes in 1.2 and we have two sets of gear to cope with!

Quick and easy question guys... I have noticed recently after respeccing to Operative DPS for a few guild HM's that Eviscerate is no longer activatable on incapacitated targets and on checking neither is headshot. In the whole of 2 HM's (and deliberately incapacitating targets on skill cooldowns) I noticed these skills light up *TWICE* in the evening. Is this a UI problem (i.e. the skill is usable but not showing as such on the task bar) or is there a more serious problem at work? Also - on the two occasions that it actually allowed me to use the skill both times eviscerate did less damage than shiv, given the conditional nature of the skill shouldn't it be doing at least a bit more damage or be off global cooldown? As it is eviscerate and headshot seem like a complete waste of space!

Loving the way that both sides of this "debate" are using the insult argument rather than any kind of constructive discussion - was nice of the OP to remove the Elitist Jerk comment, but I will quote it anyway as it is worth addressing. So let's see... No I do not suck. I recognise that there are plenty of reasons, especially in SWTOR, for one player to be doing less DPS than another which includes things out of the players control such as overly melee unfriendly bosses and class imbalances. To the counter argument, not-everyone who wants a DPS meter is an elitist jerk. It is an invaluable tool for raid leaders and just as you could find people blacklisting players who repeatedly perform poorly you can also blacklist those that spam DPS meters bshouting about how much they win (as their AoE spam breaks CC and pulls agro off the tank - MUST MAX DPS TO WIN THE INTARWEBZ!!1!LOL). Ignore is there to make these people go away. Personally, I like the compromise, a DPS meter that is personal. But I would like the option to share it with the group/raid leader. Then if I want help with a rotation I can, by my own choice, let someone else parse my performance. Admittedly, this bring with it "Why joo no share meter, joo must teh suxxors!" but it's a start, if you have a better suggestion let's hear it