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.

I got my early access invite maybe three days before full release and I rolled on the most overcrowded server with the longest queue times I could find for just this reason. Queue times sucked for 3-6 days, but I haven't seen a queue timer since and have never seen my server drop below standard pop. Save the, "GHHHK WANT INVITE NAO", people, it seems to me that early access went rather smoothly. I'm sure if BW initiated the Early Access program around the same time as another AAA title was released there wouldn't have been nearly as much rage, as the aforementioned impatients would have had something to sate their ADD.

I seem to recall getting my first credit farmer mail back in beta, of all things. Not exactly sure who would pay for credits on an account that's going to be wiped in a month, but, whatever. After that, though, I really haven't had much trouble with 'em. I've seen maybe five farmer mails and just reported 'em. Haven't seen a single bot spamming general, even once, and that's a first. Trion was pretty good about keeping the gold farmers at bay, but BW's been doing even better in this regard, it seems. Blocking ALL the farmer spam will probably never really be possible, but BioWare's gotten pretty damn close.

I haven't done FE in a few weeks, but I know I've run into a whole slew of bugs in that place. Mobs reset in the middle of combat, Malgus kicks people through solid objects, the Trandoshan boss on the bridge chain-kicks the tank once he enters range until the tank's off the edge (been kicked five times in a row before hitting the ground after Force Charging in), HK has never once spawned for me the first time I enter his room, done three runs where I'd run into invisible walls and be incapable of attacking anything behind these "walls" due to a "cannot see the target" message (/stuck is the only thing that would fix this) and, my personal favorite, twice I've knocked Malgus off the bridge during his force lightning phase (with Force Push) only to have my entire group fall over dead as he resets. BUT we end up getting credit for killing him AND locked out so we can't loot or try again. You can see him standing at the bottom of the stairs at full health before you respawn, but it credits you with completing the FP right before you die, so you end up locked out.

While I certainly agree that the system as it currently stands isn't a sustainable one and I also agree that endless nerfs really isn't the way to solve the problem, what I was saying is that I don't believe there really is a way to fix this. Consumables crafting will always have an advantage over gear crafting, and there's really no way to balance the two without breaking something fundamental. Could you imagine the backlash from the community if Bioware came out and said, "We've decided that Nightmare Mode-dropped raid gear now has the same stat potential as orange gear you can craft at level 10. Congratulations on all the effort you put into farming that pretty but statistically useless gear you spent so much time on." I believe that if someone puts forth the time and effort required to earn Columi/Rakata gear that they should get a tangible, non-cosmetic reward for that time and effort. If the reward for clearing Nightmare/Hard Mode content is a new skin for your character that you may or may not like the look of and is identical in every way, mechanics-wise, to level 10 commendation gear, I, personally, don't see a whole lot of a reason to put that much effort into doing end-game content. I'm sure not everyone would agree with me, but I think a very substantial percentage of players would not support having the stat boosts they worked for stolen from them because the crafting system was inherently broken. Of course, this is entirely conjecture, as I haven't seen any data supporting a preference between stats and visual improvement on an item other than my own personal observations. You can't really say, "This game has shown that people will go to extremes to keep a certain 'look'", without having something other than limited, personal observations to back up your statement. How did the game show that? Who did the game show that too? How was that data gathered? etc. etc. On that note, it would be interesting to see what percentage of players value stat improvements over appearance and how much of an improvement to one would cause a player to forgo the other. How ugly does a piece of gear with better stats have to be to make someone who values stats over appearance consider not using it? How much of a stat downgrade on a more visually appealing piece would a player who values appearance over stats tolerate to get that better look? I'd love to see some solid numbers on this.

I agree completely. I had a long discussion about this with a friend of mine the other day, and after some discussion we realized that there's really not a whole lot you can do to fix these issues. You can't really open up much more of the crafted gear for sale without invalidating the instanced content. You'd end up with folks buying stacks of the cheapest crafted Columi piece (gloves or whatever) and splitting the mods up amongst their whole gearset, allowing them to bypass multiple dungeons, especially once armoring is added to set gear. Anyone who actually wanted to DO the dungeons would never be able to find groups, as there would no longer be an incentive to run those dungeons. I've been thinking about this issue for a while, as it's not just a ToR problem. It's an MMOs-as-a-whole problem. You can't add crafted gear that invalidates your end-game content, so there's not a whole lot you can do to get gear crafting professions up to a level of viability that consumables crafting professions enjoy. Potion/stim/enchantment/rune production also has a constant, built-in market since they have to be repurchased over and over and over again. And even if you could craft an entire Columi set, you'd still be stuck buying stims to help farm Rakata gear. The same basic problem crops up in pretty much every MMO I've played and I really can't think of a way to fix it without breaking something else. Exclusive, temporary stat bonuses you can only get from consumables crafters will always be more viable than gear-based professions. When it comes to requiring stims for raiding, I completely agree with you on that, as well. Though the stim bonuses are rather large, I wouldn't say they're anywhere near necessary. I've never even heard of this "gating" issue occurring, personally, but apparently Bioware's been keeping track of it and has seen it in a large enough swath of the population to warrant sweeping changes to end-game crafting. My point was that I believe this change is going to make the issue worse by forcing people to pay exorbitant prices for the Exotech/Energized stims if they want to raid, making stims a sort of admission fee for raiding since Biotech 400 won't be required for the best stim bonus available anymore. And I'll be sticking with Biochem, as well, as I won't miss 20 stat points as much as I'd miss having reusable medpacs, adrenals and stims that each have effects that you'd need to pay upwards of 70k credits for if you bought them in single-use form.

Frankly, I have absolutely no problem with the upcoming Biochem "nerfs". Allow me to explain why: The key "problems" Bioware saw with Biochem as it stands now is that the Rakata stims/adrenals/medpacs have better stats than the sellable, blue stims. On top of this, the stats on the stims are so good that there's been reports of raid groups that refuse to allow anyone into the op that's not a biochemist, thus making the Rakata stims a sort of gating mechanism for raiding. Finally, and I'm not exactly sure why, Bioware believes that you can't make enough money with Biochem at the moment (ridiculous, I know). Bioware's answer to this is to reduce the Rakata stim buffs to the level of the dropped-recipe blue stims (Exotech and Energized), and make those stims sellable. It's Bioware's belief that this will allow non-biochemists to acquire stims that are equal in power to Rakata stims (removing the need to be a biochemist to get into raids) while creating a market for said stims so that biochemists can make money off of them (like, I guess, we couldn't before...?). Here's what I believe is going to occur in reality: Firstly: The reduction in stats from the current Rakata level to Exotech/Energized level is about 20 stat points. I'm certainly not losing any sleep over 20 stat points, and I doubt anyone else will, either, so I don't see this as causing many people to switch out of Biochem for something else. Secondly: If Rakata stims are currently being demanded for a significant number of raid groups, then creating a sellable blue version isn't going to change this. Now, instead of being expected to roll Biochem for the Rakata stims, you're going to be expected to pay EXORBITANT amounts of money for Exotech/Energized stims EVERY SINGLE TIME you want to raid. Hyper-battle stims (level 48 blue stims) are priced around 20k on average on Lord Praven, Empire-side. The Exotech/Energized stims require FOUR tier 6 purple mats, making the cost of even creating these stims relatively steep. To make a profit, then, these new stims will have to be sold for upwards of 50/60/70k each as a conservative estimate. If you add on repair costs, you're looking at having to pay upwards of 100k credits each and every time you want to get into a single raid group. Now, instead of hearing, "You can't join our raid if you're not a biochemist," you're going to hear, "You can't join our raid because you didn't pay 60k for a stim." This makes stims a sort of admission fee for operations. Thirdly: The biggest advantage Biochem has over all the other professions (with the slight exception of Cybertech, and this is the case with ALL consumable-crafting trade skills in practically any MMO around) is that you WILL need to use stims to raid. Crafted gear is only really useful in hard mode flashpoints, as it's rapidly rendered obsolete by Columi gear. By the time you start raiding, you would never even consider buying crafted gear, but apparently you WILL be required to buy stims. Someone who's in full Rakata gear will not purchase crafted gear, but they most certainly will purchase stims. Fourthly: Stims only last two hours. When you buy crafted gear, you buy a piece of gear and it sticks with you until something better drops. When you buy a stim, it vanishes in two hours. Think of stims as being their own gear slot, where you stick a stim in that slot to get a number of stat points. Since you can only have one stim active at a time, this makes sense, as you can't equip two chests at once (for example). Only, when you equip a stim into this "stim slot", it vanishes in two hours. You buy gear once and use it as long as you want, while no matter how many times you buy a stim, you're always going to run out and have to buy more. You don't buy stims. You rent them. Lastly: The only stims worth using come from biochemists. Vendor-purchased stims are garbage and mob-dropped stims are garbage (and very rarely ever dropped in the first place). As a biochemist, I don't care that I can only craft implants, 'cause I can get better gear than I can get from crafters out of hard modes. Stims, on the other hand, HAVE to be purchased from biochemists if you want stims that are even worth buying, 'cause you're certainly not going to see an Exotech/Energized stim drop in a flashpoint. You have plenty of sources where you can get easy gear that's vastly superior to anything a crafter can make, but NO sources where you can get stims that aren't garbage other than biochemists. If you want something worth using in that "stim slot", you've gotta come to a biochemist. That all being said, as a biochemist I absolutely adore these new changes. I'm gonna make money hand-over-fist once folks start forcing each other to buy stims for raiding instead of swapping over to Biotech. If you're forced to swap to Biotech, then you're no longer a customer. If there's gonna be stims that have the same stats as the Rakata stims, then you're just gonna be told to go buy some of those. From me. I will be available all week to accept your operation admission fee.

Because if it hasn't happened to you then it's never happened to anyone, right? There's no world outside the tiny sliver of it you've experiences personally? I don't care what game it is, clipping though solid geometry is a bug. If your back is in physical contact with a solid object and you pass through it, that is a bug. If you fall through the floor, that is a bug. If a mob passes into a wall and kills you through the floor, that is a bug. If mobs respawn while you're fighting them, that is a bug. If you kill a boss only to watch your entire group drop dead while the boss resets, that is a bug. Also, you can't be rezzed if you fall through the world and nobody can reach your corpse. Releasing is your only option if you don't feel like leaving your character dead and re-rolling a new one. Yes, they are. Please see the list I posted around two pages ago of the bugs I encounter in ONE run. And what should we "not do" to prevent the boss from wiping the entire group and resetting after we kick him off the edge? Let him force-lightning us dead instead? Not being able to get back into an instance after finishing the boss is exactly what this thread was about in the first place. It's the ENTIRE point. And, again, if you've seen people roll on loot while dead that must mean nobody's ever not been able to loot while dead. If you've never seen it, it's never happened, it doesn't affect you and everyone who's been inconvenienced by these problems need to shut up and L2P, right? I'm getting incredibly sick of people blaming the player for shoddy programming and it's becoming increasingly difficult to remain civil.

Because we all know game bugs are the result of lack of player skill. BioWare totally needs to hire you to just sit around their office and be so pro it miracles all the bad code out of the game, right? But then there would have to be bugs in the first place, 'cause if it never happens to you then it never happens to anyone and we just sit here and spend time reporting this stuff for fun. But that's alright, 'cause you're so polite and helpful that I'm sure they could find you a spot on their customer service team. You'd fit right in.

Look at these two sentences: "I got killed by getting knocked off a platform." "I can't re-enter the instance after dying." If you could explain to me how these sentences are even similar, let alone identical, I would really appreciate it, because I have absolutely no idea how you people are so ridiculously off the mark as to what this thread is even about. Do words even mean anything around here or do people just read every fourth word and fill in the blanks with whatever gives them a feeling of superiority like a narcissist with Down's syndrome?

Then you push him off the edge, your entire party mysteriously wipes and he resets. Or he kicks you through a solid object. Or he hits you with Unlimited Power without channeling it. Try running FE a few more times and see if you feel any differently after one of Malgus' many bugs. Or the Trandoshan boss punt spam. Or an entire room aggros. Or a mob gets stuck in a wall/under the floor and wipes your whole party. Or you run into an invisible wall in the middle of combat that prevents you from using your skills because you "can't see" the mob. Or you get kicked through a solid object and locked out. Or HK doesn't spawn after you enter the room and you can't progress because you need to kill him to lower the shields between you and the rest of the FP. I really don't see the point in blaming the player for bugs in the game.