Hmphf. Sad state of affairs when something that will almost certainly be exclusive to that obnoxious travesty of a cash-shop gets the community to go "squee!" Why else are the gear-sets available through normal game-play all so awful-looking, you think? Typical EA: Let's extort real money out of people for basic features that are completely free/included in....every other game in existence.

The fond hope/dream that it might get fixed? Even if only Soon? One can dream, at least.

^^This.^^ So totally, ^^this.^^ I almost hit "Unsub" button over that. [mini-rant] It's not even that the WH/EWH-off-pieces --I had started to make a "for-real this time" effort to learn how to min/max it, too, yaknow research, asking questions of full-geared veterans in Ops-chat, forum posts, and all that, and had taken the first steps to doing so -- that I'd worked my *** off to get with my thoughtfully pre-nerfed Arsen-Merc. No, it was that there was basically no warning, no notice, not so much as a how-do-you-do from the Cash Shop Clowns, combined with the lolster-bugs. (Which are still present. I take off my Expertise'd earpiece and certain relics, my stats all go up, even in 55 matches. What's wrong with this picture in a level 55 match?) If I'm going to get supwize butt-secks'ed, then I would at least appreciate the courtesy of a reach-around. The PvE players got it, they always do, but where's our new version of level 55 "recruit" gear? I learned how to play my class, and play for the team and the match as much as I can --As in, ignore K/D ratio, focus on objectives, marking healers, keeping an eye out on the opaths between nodes, guarding properly, the whole deal-- in part because of its' disadvantages, but those weren't so bad that I was constantly getting two-shotted if anyone geared even looked at me wrong. [/mini-rant] But if playing PUG WZs as a pre-2.0 Arsen-Merc have taught me anything, then it is to persevere. Or, maybe it's just awakened the sleeping masochist in me. Good luck OP, and have fun in whatever new universe you land in, we hope you'll see something enough better in SW: tOR to want to come back one day.

Mine: Initial set-up: Concussion to stun the boss --> Net + ExploDart. Then: Power Surge + 2 Tracer + Rail Shot + HSM ---> Unload if Barrage proc'ed (it usually does for me) ---> Tracers to keep the Target Lock buff max'ed for the next Rail Shot ---> Rapid Shots + Tracer + the odd Missile Blast (Because of FIRE ZE MISSILEZ) and/or Power Shot which can also proc Barrage. Second rotation: Same (just no Net, as its CD is rather long) except start with TSO + Fusion to keep up DoT. The opener will typically alpha anything sub-Elite. If there's more than one trash close together, then a DFA if you're reasonably sure that breaking the CC on the boss won't be a problem. Third rotation and up, same as first, just wait out PS's cooldown and use it again when it's back up, then use TSO + Fusion and/or Net again when they're back up. You'll rarely find that the fight will be that long though, as even Elites will usually be alpha'ed off the field by then, or very nearly so. This will make fairly easy work even of Champions (non boss-immune) if you're +2-3 levels on them and geared decently. (Use your knock-back and/or ElectroDart if they're close enough to catch a breather for a few quick self-heals when fighting Champs, and work Kolto Missile --centre it on yourself-- into the rotation as well.) It goes without saying, but: Always, always Unload whenever Barrage proc's, unless the mob has interrupts or knock-backs/-downs or stuns. Be ready with your knock-back if they get too close, as well as your interrupt. Because that kind of alpha-strike make me giggle like a psychotic girl.

Um, yeah, I actually did, thanks. This just isn't funny, though. Actually Mercs/Mandos do have some defensive CDs, they're just...well, not all that great, to put it charitably (I <3 Hydraulic Overrides, but its base duration needs legthening, and the shield needs a buff.). As it is, I'd happily trade the shield for something that makes Unload temporarily un-interrupatble

Lol. Lol! OMG, LOOOOOOOL!! That, right there, is the most perfect description of Skadge I have ever seen +11111 Internets to you! Please, EAWare, give us the option to space Skadge? Pleeeease? Ugh, he's so grating, even worse than Kaliyo, but at least that slag feels like she belongs in the story. They didn't even try with Skadge :/

Strictly IME, and that's quite limited at present, but: Just re-specc'ed my other (40-ish) Arsen to BG to satisfy my growing curiosity about healing, and pulled out Torian. He's a bit under-geared at the moment (His first Tech-staff is fully moddable, though, and uses barrels, not hilts --+AIM/+END in whichever bias you prefer, just like your blasters), but I had no trouble at all, even solo-ing that wandering Champion-level Jedi Master NPC on Quesh (although, I'll grant you, that is a very basic tank-and-gank fight, no special mechanics at all, and not boss-immune). Torian did eventually "urp" during that fight, but not before he'd tore the NPC down to like 15% health, and that was with his default starting gear (I have since "blue'd up" his techstaff, but it was box-stock on Quesh), and I just DPS'ed it down the rest of the way. I've done that fight Arsen- and Pyro-sepc with Mako, and the fight with my newly-minted BG was a bit longer, but in many ways, much less gruelling. Everything else was, for the most part, piss-easy. Exception: If you get snap-aggro'ed by multiple mobs before you can send Torian in. (On Quesh for the BH, that would be the "Endorsement" class-story end-fight.) The man hits like a rocket-powered, flame-spewing brick wall, and despite not being a tank, holds aggro much better than even some tank-companions, or at least as well, from what I can see. Then, you just stand off at range and keep him up, whilst hurling the odd Explosive Dart, Unload, and Rail Shot to help him out. (Be very careful of heat --damn, I'm not used to having to worry about heat too much as a mostly Arsen-merc player :/) His character is rather sadly lacking in depth, though. (But I've got my adorably cute little Mako, and the ever-amusing Gault for that, so no worries.)

/Sigh... I miss the earlier days of the Internet, when trolls were good at what they did :/ 1/10. Next!

[lololnecro] Ur stuffs, I can haz? [/lololnecro]

Smuggler and Guss Tuno: When you randomly "poke" Tuna, and he says: "I--I think I'm gonna--BLLLEEEEUUUURGH!!"" I found this totally at random, and no word of a lie, I laughed --hard!-- IRL for like, 15 minutes! I've never used him before even though I play 'Slingers (so healer comp. would be quite useful), but ever since then, I've been making efforts to address his gear-deficit and taking him out just so I can hear that Yes, I have a warped sense of humour. E: OMG, how could I forget: "Boss and Blizz beat you up REAL good!!" (Blizz then usually pulls out a missile launcher twice as big as he is. As someone elsewhere said, though, when Blizz does that, he isn't compensating, he's advertising )

Perhaps so, but in what form? There are a lot of pure Pay-to-Win messes out there (Battlestar Galactica Online, if what I've been hearing is true. Does anyone remember Black Prophecy, by the way?), that have been around a while, and I expect that they'll stay around for a while longer, but is that the type of game you really want to play? Especially in a PvP context? (Because, at the risk of being flamed hard, I submit that Pay-to-Win doesn't matter for PvE hardly at all --predictable NPC AI is always predictable, after all, and SW: tOR's boss-fights are, for the most part, fairly simple, if not always easy.) No arguing taste, but....That's not something I ever want to get within a country light-year of, nor do I want to see it happening to a game that, against all my inner EVE-O vet hardened cynic's preconceptions and advice, I have come to enjoy, love, and play almost constantly, warts and all. TL/DR: The "Overlords" have a proven track-record of destroying games-companies that they take over in just this manner, and have been quite successful at it. I don't trust them to not do this here --it's worked very well for them, after all (RIP Origin Systems )-- and there is nothing that shows me that they won't eventually, if SW: tOR starts haemorrhaging subs again because of this latest farce.

^^This.^^ DINGDINGDINGDINGDING!!!! We have a freakin' WINNER here, funsters! Yes, I'm serious. I don't see SW: tOR even being around after another year or at most two, and ^^that,^^ right there is the reason why. If they have any brains at all, then they will at least try for a little subtlety when --not if, when: We all know this will come, whether we want to admit or not-- they introduce Pay-to-Win to try and prolong the patient's agony life, but... I think we can say in advance: RIP, Bioware. You're not the first, nor the last, we all know who/what the real crux of the problem here is, and always was. This truly makes me sad: I'm an old-school gamer, I love Star Wars and sci-fi, and I genuinely want this game to succeed for the "right" reasons, however flawed it may be (SW: G was...errrm...far from fully-realised in any of its incarnations, if you'll recall). But given who's actually calling the shots here, I just can't see anything better over the long term. Oh well: I'll always have EVE-Online (now entering its second decade with the next major expansion in-bound for summer --how many MMOs can say that?), Gods be thanked!

Again, wrong: If you define hard work as, say driving the big truck 1100km in one go to make that "hot" delivery that five people have been screaming in your ear on the phone about over the last three days, then no, it's not work at all. But refer to my core premise: My time is not value-less. I put in the time to earn that gear, and my "payment" for same was that I spent a looooot of time analysing --in minute detail-- the décor of the re-spawn area. It's simple human nature to be a little less than amused when someone throws all that away by fiat, and makes you start all over again. I get enough of that being a trucker IRL, believe me, I would like a clean, even if only temporary, break from it in something I do for fun. I've said it before: A simple solution to this would be to allow a partial trade in of WH/EWH pieces for Partisan, especially when you consider how quickly it takes to get to the WZ comms cap, and that the cap isn't enough for more than two major pieces. Or just flip the existing caps around: WZ goes to 4,500 and RWZ comms to 2,750. Do this, and maybe at least us Arsen-Mercs* who have actually taken the effort to learn what our class --and more importantly, what we-- can/cannot do whilst getting ROFLstomped constantly by...well, everyone, because after all "Merc = free kill," right? (Not my Arsen-merc, bru. Not anymore, and not by a frigging long-shot! Because I put in the time, see above.) wouldn't feel like we just got surprise-buggered without so much as a courtesy reach-around. *(I don't discount the possibility that I may be a closeted masochist, either, just by the bye. Yes I love my Arsen-merc all the more in PvP because of his flaws.)

Dual blasters, best blasters. That is all.

^^This.^^ I like the idea of Bolster --now that they seem to have fixed a little bit of that farce (I don't see anymore fat Twi'leks running around in their skivvies on my sub-55s, which is good, because all of them were making me go "ick.") it seems to be working much closer to how it's supposed to, buuuut....Yeah. Overall, the implementation of that fundamentally sound idea is rather, well, less than sound. I don't see why they don't just either, A) Remove Expertise entirely -- come on, it's a dumb stat, and we all secretly know it, weather we want to admit it or not. or, B) Make Expertise useable in all modes --PvE as well as PvP-- so that way those of us who like to "swing both ways" can do it without having to grind for two (at least) separate gear sets. (And make mod-ripping and repair of "purple" bits after a hard boss-fight cheaper, please, thank you.) The reason I say (B) is because I've found that my overnight-nerfed-to-ground WH-with-EWH-off pieces gear works quite well in PvE (I solo'ed two of the GSI [HEROIC 2+] missions last night in mine without too much trouble, and this was before I remembered to rip the Expertise crystals out of the guns). It's not as good as role-specific PvE gear of the same rating, nor should it be, but it gives another valid option, especially a valid one for those of us who don't want to grind raids day in and day out, and like to make our money/tokens through war-zoning. Just my CAD 0.02

^^That.^^ Especially the Imp-side droid, its overwrought obsequiousness is so. Bloody. Annoying! Oh, and Skadge -- as others have others have stated, he is just a rather jarring piece of really bad story-telling in an otherwise quite decent storyline.

You're completely missing the point. Not unexpected. Next!

I was going to respond in specific, but I stopped reading about halfway through the thread, where the carebears came in and started their usual anti-PvP flame-fest. All I do know is that it took me months of painful grinding --as in, Arsenal Mercanary + PUGs, enough said!-- which got a little less so as I learned what my class --and more importantly I-- can and cannot do, used that to find my niche in the warzone (read: You are heavy-fire support, not main heavy-fire. That's what the lolsmashers and GS/Snipers with healers backing them are for), and, eventually get the full WH set, with a few EWH off-pieces for my occasionally-embattled Arsen-Merc. Now all that is worthless? Yeah, OK, I've been spoiled by going-on five years of EVE-Online, I admit --that's a proper PvP universe, not this grind-based, no-real-risk/no-real-reward derp-fest, but I don't consider my time value-less. Yet it seems that EAWare has a different view. So: Why not give us a partial trade-in our WH/EWH --a small trade-in, OK. That will still preserve the need for The Almighty Grind!-- sets for at least some of the new pieces? (Let's say you can trade in chest, belt+bracers, pants, boots, helm, and gloves, but not guns/offhand or relics/implants/earpiece. Those must be ground out anew.). Or, if it's basically to become PvE gear, then why not boost its PvE stats to be on a par with similar-rated PvE gear? We put in the bloody time, same as the PvE-only types did in their preferred type of gameplay --our group chat just had a lot of "(X) inc (node-name)" instead of "Stack here on the tank" in it. I mean, this is an on-rails theme-park MMO, so what's the real difference here (It sometimes felt like I was fighting NPCs in the WZ anyway, and I'm not any kind of great PvP'er, believe me.)? We should get the same type of reward for our work, if not exactly the same reward, and not just have all our time invalidated whilst the crying, flaming carebears shown in this thread get it all handed to them. (Oh, speaking of: To the self-absorbed, immature little punk who said that PvP'ers are " lesser people" up there, I will be reporting your post presently. Flaming and inciting flame-wars, as you are so obviously trying to do, are against the ToS, and hopefully your ban will give you time to try....maybe some PvP? Try it, you might just like it.) Ummm....Discuss, please?

Plot, depth, plot-twists, great characters --the IA has the best/most interesting companions, bar none, except for that brain-dead slag Kaliyo-- depth, a nice seasoning of British humour (type: deadpan cutting sarcastic irreverence) and did I mention depth? The other stories are just a bit too based around a single --or at most two-- old, old Star Wars tropes, with the possible exception of the Bounty Hunter. E: In other words, ^^this.^^

Just goes to show how utterly brilliant the IA's storyline is, and on how many levels (Do you like British humour/sarcasm? IA is the one for you, if so:)). I'm seriously considering another play-through --Operative, this time, which I've never tried before-- for this reason alone. Fake-edit: That's not to say that the other stories are necessarily "bad;" The BH's story is also quite good --but the IA is just so far-and-away better, it's not even funny.

Like I said, strictly IME. Were you playing Sniper or Op.? (With heals, she can keep up a lot better, I imagine. With Sniper --again, just IME-- she doesn't DPS enough to make enough gank = enough tank between the two of you. If you want "KEEEEEL IT NAO!!11!" as tank, then Vector wins, hands-down --It's actually quite amusing, the way he just tears through mobs like there's no tomorrow, but he is a bit squishy for a non-healer character-- but you don't get him till the end of Alderaan, IIRC. Also, surprisingly, the good(-ish) Doctor Lokin can DPS quite well if you gear him for it. He's also one of the most interesting of the companion characters, along with Vector, IMHO.) Which mission was it? If memory serves, there are a couple [HEROIC]s there that are just a bit too easy on that planet.

Uuuummm.... Is this the one-eyed dude? Avatar of Herpity-Derpity or whatever? Been a while since class on Voss for any of my characters, so my bad if not, but: Those two pillars that you see in front of you when you first confront him: Use them. Line-of-sight is how you win this fight, along with all your available interrupts and defensive CDs. That and all your DoTs. He does stupid damage, but is quite weak HP-wise, on my then-MM/now Eng-Sniper, I spent the last minute of the fight just spamming my free-attack (ran out of energy and forgot to pop Adrenaline Probe in all the wonderful madness ). Tough, and possibly a bit overtuned --Boss-fights on Voss in general are much tougher than all the other planets, IME-- but definitely do-able. E: Derp-derp, my bad indeed. I'm thinking of the other tough boss on that planet. Well, now you know how to fight him, too, anyway.

Mercenary's Unload ability delay/animation-lock. It makes meh haz a sad

The Harbinger's got a pretty decent community for the most part (NA West Coast, PvE). Expect lots of trolling by people who only think they know how to troll properly in Fleet-chat, though :/ If you play Imp-side there, however, then you have to show your love of BACON, lest you be declared an Enemy of the Empire. If you like to do group-content, then queue-pops --even as one of the second-class-citizen R/DPS-- are fairly quick, and there's always someone looking for a group with the local [HEROIC (X)]s as well. I haven't played much on it recently, but The Bastion (NA West Coast, PvP) was always pretty "chill" IME.

Broadly speaking, I agree with ^^this.^^ But 50 comms is simply too low -- If you're levelling thorugh mostly PvE as many people do, and assuming you do at least most of the "major" side-quests on a given planet whilst levelling, then you'll hit that limit before you're even half-done with that planet. Simply raise the cap to 75, and everything'll be just fine. (Also, raise the cap on Warzone comms to at least 3500-4000 --a full weekend play-session of Warzoning can come close to capping the current limit even if you use lots of WZ medpacs/adrenals --unless you're getting hilariously ROFL-urp'ed every single time, and even then-- but I'm digressing.) Fake Edit, because my weak search-fu is weak ATM: I'm a subscriber. In a login-queue? Not. ***********. Impressed.