While not a terrible idea, implants very rarely ever sell. Even the Columi implants you need raid-dropped schematics for don't sell all that often as you can get Rakata implants from a few days of dalies. All the other professions can make augmented orange gear that you can't get through any means other than crafting, but Biochem would be stuck with recipes that are inferior to items you can get from farming dalies for four days. Once you've farmed two Rakata implants, you'd never have to purchase from a Biochemist even once, whereas a Synthweaver/Armormech can craft augmented gear for seven slots that you can't get anywhere else. Stims are pretty much all we've got that people actually want to buy, especially with the medkit nerf. If other professions can craft gear for seven slots you can't get anywhere else, Biochem sorta needs consume-on-use items that are exclusive to itself to be worth using at all. The gear other professions craft take about the same amount of money to create material-wise and average out at about the same sale price if you take crafts that don't crit an augment slot into account, so I frankly think that the system is working relatively well as it is. Everyone's got something that's exclusive to their profession that's actually desirable at end game and isn't just going to be obsolete once your customer makes one purchase. The one problem I do foresee occurring is that eventually most people will have a full set of augmented shells and purple augments, at which point we will end up running into the same problem of consumables being the only desirable crafted items, especially with no new crystals or augments coming until 1.5 (yes, *five*) at the earliest. Augmented orange gear is doing pretty well at keeping the other professions in line at the moment, and probably will continue to do so for some time, but once folks get sick of rolling and gearing alts, it's going to probably be back to consumables being the only option when it comes to end-game crafting.

You mean the new 1.2 sets? I'm not sure about the PvP sets, but I know the PvE sets (Black Hole and Campaign) are relatively similar. They both use level 61-equivalent purple mods, but the Black Hole set (Nightmare-mode old raids and normal mode Explosive Conflict) doesn't even have a set bonus and the Campaign set (Hard-mode Explosive Conflict) comes with augment slots and, I believe, the same set bonus from the old gear. They're also itemized differently. Same number of stats on both sets, but they're different. That being the case, I suppose there wouldn't be any new set bonus to stack, anyway.

No. Set bonuses do not stack.

The feature he's talking about was called "target-of-target" in Rift, and it allowed you to DPS on whatever your tank was targeting without de-targeting the tank. It was an incredibly nice feature to have, as it greatly limited the amount of DPS that ends up on the wrong mobs during an FP/OP and makes it far easier for tanks to hold aggro on groups. Having to switch your target's (tank's) target to your primary target can cause issues if you hit it too early while the tank's still switching targets to get solid aggro on everything. It was also relatively useful for healers, allowing them to add a little bit of DPS during the low damage phases of bosses with short enrage timers. I don't think it's quite as much of a necessity in ToR than it was in Rift, though. Rift had classes that absolutely needed that sort of thing (Chloromancers), and just sorta waiting for your tank to get a few hits off and choose their main target before targeting off them should work fine. Sure, as a tank, I would have loved to just tell people in FPs to target me and keep me targeted so that we wouldn't have everyone attacking something different and pulling aggro, but bads gonna bad.

Force power is the equivalent of attack power for force attacks (any skill that isn't a lightsaber strike like Force Scream or Force Lift) and applies only to Sith Warriors/Jedi Guardians and Sith Inquisitors/Jedi Consulars. Tech power is the same thing but it only applies to tech skills (I believe any attack that doesn't specifically use your equipped weapon, like Death from Above or Fragmentation Grenade) and only applies to Bounty Hunters/Republic Troopers and Imperial Agents/Smugglers.

I wouldn't worry too much about the weekly quests as the only reward is 20 Columi commendations and your Champion gear is more than adequate for hard mode ops. I'd start on hard mode Karagga's Palace or try clearing hard mode Eternity Vault up to Soa. I didn't really notice much of a difference in difficulty between normal and hard mode raiding until I hit Soa, but that's more because of the lightning orb bugs. I wouldn't even suggest trying Soa until those bugs are fixed.

I'm not sure if that's how it works, unless I've missed a dev post somewhere. I think they just cut out the drops for classes that aren't present. Though it still doesn't fix the fact that the three BHs in my guild all rolled their toons after I had already started doing HM raids and they've turned down more Rakata gear than I've ever seen drop for my Warrior, let alone actually won. Hell, back in the day when I was farming Kaon for my Columi hat (back when two hats dropped), it took nine days. In the span of those nine days, both bosses dropped BH hats on five of those days and one BH hat on the remaining four. I can't think of a time I've ever run an Operation and not seen a preponderance of BH drops over everything else. In fact, after rolling my Merc healer, I ended up with three Columi pieces in one EV run, which is unthinkable for my Warrior. All that being said, I do hope there's more work being done to the drop chances beyond just removing any drops for a class that's not there, seeing as how a lot of Ops run with at least one of every class anyway. It'd be nice if it took into account what gear everyone already has. Like, if you're doing Bonethrasher for the 11th time and you have three Bounty Hunters that already have the hat and have turned down hat tokens for the past six or seven weeks then the game would maybe reduce the chance of two BH tokens dropping from 99% to, maybe, 98%.

Two weeks ago I ended up with my Rakata belt stuck in the box after Jarg & Sorno. Filed a ticket and got a shiny new belt in the mail six days later, so it does happen. Relatively quickly, as well. It seems BW's actually pretty good about getting you what you earned if it's due to a known issue.

I didn't even know there was such an attack. I always just position myself so I get knocked back into the corner of the wall. You can taunt before you even hit the ground, so I guess I just end up soaking/deflecting/absorbing the hit and don't even notice. So my suggestion would be to just have your tank position himself so he gets swiped into the corner of the wall just behind where the boss spawns in and have him taunt right after the swipe hits.

The skills/buffs entry is the bonus you have to that stat from points you've spent in your skill tree and from buffs. The reason you can't get that above 0 is because Juggs don't have any skills or buffs that affect absorption. You should have 2.00 on the skills/buffs for shield chance from Shield Specialization, but that's about it.

Community Q&A: Friday March 30th 2012: Game Update 1.2 Special

I don't have an issue with the RE system so much as I take issue with this paradigm shift to empty crafted gear being BiS. Even PvE gameplay is competitive in the way that your gear reflects your accomplishments as a player. The new change makes it impossible for me to acquire gear through player skill and time invested with the content that one can acquire by simply farming up credits. Sure, the default set gear will be "good enough", but it's aggravating when the only way to improve (when you've got the end-game mods) is to farm more credits and pay someone for a slotted version of the gear you fought through a raid for (and earned) or grind all the crew skills and farm all the mats and farm all the schematics, etc. etc. Everyone wants the best there is, and that means non-slotted gear will be relegated to twinking gear or simply RE'd for more mats to throw at the RNG in the hopes you'll proc a slotted piece while you strip down and throw away/RE your empty, useless raid gear. On top of that, there's a lot of players that don't care about appearance. They'll grind level 15 orange gear until they get a slot and just use that, so you're going to end up with large quantities of mishmashed early-game sets running around with purple 61 mods. It's FAR easier to make a level 15 piece of gear BiS than it is to make a crafted end-game item BiS, but the stat reward is identical. I can totally understand wanting to allow players to use whatever gear appearance they want at end-game, but FAR better systems already exist for this. It's called the wardrobe system. You have two gear sets: One set is "hidden", but is the set you derive your stats from, and the second is merely what shows up on your character model. Don't like the way your end-game set looks? Pick up a set you do like from a crafter (or wherever you feel like) and throw it in your wardrobe. If you want crafters to be able to provide gear with different looks (which people will buy, even if it's not BiS), implement a wardrobe system to give unslotted gear a place in the game besides RE fodder and prevent crafting from becoming *mandatory* for end-game gear progression. This worked wonderfully for Rift and I was astounded to find it not implemented in SWToR. It's one of the greatest things I miss about Rift.

This pretty much sums it up. Keep Biochem, buy the crit crafted gear you like (once), forget about all the other skills until the next patch while you churn out stims that everyone needs regardless of class at a far higher profit margin because you don't need raid drops to craft 'em. As much as I hate to say it, I don't think it's even possible to bring a gear crafting profession in-line with a consumables profession since those items are, well, consumed and have to be repurchased. When the majority of the player population has the crafted gear they want, they're still gonna be buying stims. A good way to look at it is that crafted gear is something you buy. Stims are something you rent.

I don't think this is entirely accurate. There have already been statements from BioWare indicating that the homosexual romance options aren't something you're probably ever going to see without making a conscious effort to look for them. For those who want to see them, there are will be relatively clear dialogue paths one can take to get there, but if you don't want to see it and don't go specifically looking for it then it's likely you'll never see it at all. It's not going to be something you're forced into experiencing or something you'll likely be able to stumble upon by accident like some sort of gay trap door. To add a toggle that will turn off content you're unlikely to experience without actively working towards it seems like an unnecessary step that will only serve to alienate a portion of the player base by suggesting that homosexual content is more offensive than heterosexual content.

I play rather heavily (3-6 hours a day) and I think I hit 50 on my main almost exactly one month in. Did all the flashpoints, all the quests (heroics and bonus series included) and got all the datacrons (Yes, ALL of them). Took me another two or three weeks to get the last of the datacrons only because I was unaware of the +10 to all stats datacron on the fleet. My alt, on the other hand, is taking a bit longer. 37 after about a month. Probably because I've been swapping back to my main for raiding three days a week and once or twice a week after that for credit farming, and finding groups to do heroic content with is a lot tougher these days. I just bypass most of that junk now 'cause I've already seen it. Just as an observation for those who are still levelling, I'm noticing that if you do all the content on all the planets, especially if you hang around for the bonus series, you end up outlevelling not only the planet you're on, but the planet after that, as well. I ended up 50 before leaving Belsavis (third-to-last planet) on my main, and my alt's two or three levels away from outlevelling Hoth without setting foot on Taris. Just finished the Great Hunt. If you want to get to end-game as quickly as possible, don't feel bad about skipping all the side quests for a planet or two and just doing the story quests. You're not missing out on a whole lot. The side quests aren't nearly as fleshed-out as the story and main planetary quests are. The main planetary quests can be kinda neat, especially on Alderaan and whatnot.