The benefit of alcohol and video gaming is that that it always seems like launch day.

Decent gear is available on planets for credits. A lot of the drops/rewards are OK. It's a giant, royal, time-sucking PITA to do a 100% COMM swap anyway. I'll do one complete refresh at 52 from now on...and that's *it*. Everything else is getting replaced piece-meal...maybe except for the main hand. Besides that, the blue 190s are all "free" from just running PVE. I've found it's barely effective to run missions until I have 5-6 toons to do them efficiently. I ran up armstech from 0-450 in about 4 hours of semi-focused barrel crafting this past weekend. Polished it off Sunday after getting a guild member to farm a few more turadium for me. Now, I'm closing in on 400 scavenging since I can devote my crew to that one entirely. Frankly, the story lines are some of the best I've ever encountered. To me, it's worth playing them through cohesively, and having a stable full of max toons to tinker with, although you do bring up some valid potential draw backs.

If you think POT5 is dead, you should check out Belegoth's Bacon and The Fat Man.

Sarlacc Pit. Most definitely. 100%. Without reservation. Go for it.

Some days I long for the magical days of driving around in circles on Ilum to "PvP". I just came back last month. Does anyone still nascar for old times' sakes?

Clearly, you should have brought a better team of stun-locking operatives to make the offending healer unsubscribe.

Lolz. I was a teamlocking stunsubbing operative, before I took a arrow to the knee*, and unsubbed with the thousands of other players I had stunsubbed. *and about six over three patches to the bawlz

In the box/survey they send you when you unsub, and also in the third-party survey they email you a day or two after you unsub, I offered similar reasons for deciding to quit playing swtor. Here's hoping they figure out something fun to do with Ilum 2.5. I honestly didn't think it was horrid, for a pre-beta product, but between the slideshow (even on fast hardware), the lack of any real reason to be there except to make a kill quota for a station turn in or stay and farm valor, and the zerg-v-zergieness...what do you do? Suggestion on release of Ilum 2.5: cutscene of Deathstar blowing up old, familiar Ilum version 0.47d, and announcing the opening of the new arena planet--Muli, of course. P.S. Don't stop at Ilum 1.0 or even 2.0...keep working on it until it's 2.5

Operatives are only effective in packs that make opponents immediately unsub. Their data clearly shows this.

Someone who just found out out that typing "1337d00d" makes them look stupid, but hasn't yet figured out why?

Lol, this game should be called Star Wars Vista.

It really does work, just not as an "oh, shoot" skill the way you think it might ought to. Nor very often. Or reliably. Dot's on you, dots on them (?), companion interactions, visibility, proximity, not holding your nose right and hopping on one foot, in PvE, in PvP, in instances, with or without ham and eggs, on a truss or on a bus...it seems like anything that can make cloaking screen fail to hide you, will, routinely. It's basically useful for a second (fairly) quick hidden strike, in my experience. Or it's working as intended, 'cuz....you know, packs of operatives with a working cloaking screen might make more folks unsub out of sheer frustration of not being able to see a stealth class. Ok, I'll stop now before they decide to make Operative Sprint only half its value, out of stealth.

I'm a medic op as well. I like Dart for its range, I can pop Dart on a couple of folks before a fight starts, when you have plenty of energy anyhoo. If we're up against poor players, I'd prefer to get the dots rolling than putting KP on someone who might not end up getting the hate . At the very least, it pads your kills. You can also get the occasional killing blow with it. That's completely beside the damage per tick you're getting and if you are put into a position as a medic where you actually have to take down a player, you need every last bit of ooomph you can muster. A crit tick or two combined with a crit shiv/bs is still pretty wicked in a one-on-one, if you're all trinketed out. If you're in a WZ with a healing sorc or taking a point with another healer, then it's a critical part of your damage. You're already gimped for DPS as a medic--don't gimp yourself further by not using Ze Dart! I do have it traited up as much as possible with a 31-medic build so that it hits as hard as I can push it. I'm not completely sure that's the best way to trait, though, all things considered.

I don't know what is worse: that this thread is so true, or that I find it so funny. Whatever the case, what they've decided to do has been just really, really terrible, to quote BDM. /signed: an operative with my finger on the "stunlock my subscription" trigger

If I WASN'T 400 Biochem and if HADN'T gotten a lucky exotech attack adrenal (+530 ish power) schematic in an EV run, I'd be absolutely broke, all the time, no matter what. It's a problem I don't expect them to address very soon, but here's to hope and change. Oops.

There, I fixed it for you. No charge. One shiny day, we will have computational devices with advanced adding capabilities

The better gear you and your group have, the less able your opponent is to advance to that level of gear, and it has been this way since the game launched. It discourages newer players (noobs, is it?) and discourages any real time or allegiance commitments when each new tier becomes progressively more dominated by those who were already ahead from the subsequent..."balancing". The more "hard core" you play, the easier it is; the newer or less focused on a single toon that you are, the wider the chasm gets in terms of damage, healing, and health. In short, it's exactly the opposite of what the OP has suggested: BW is futzing PvP by magnifying PvP increments gained in non-competitive play, to vastly reduce the competitiveness of folks who did not farm lvl 10's in WZ at 50 or farm Ilum for BM. 'Coz that's classy and skillful PvP rach theyah, as they say in the South. Seems to favor the hard core player, but I speak English and Math as first and second languages, and MMO cult-speak often sounds like pops and clicks. Maybe I missed what YOU mean by "casual"?

I always start at lvl 10. Some classes (i.e. vanguard) get some pretty nice skill fairly early. The lvl 20 pvp set is a sweet complete armor set that will get you through lvl 25-26 as long as you keep boosting your weapon/offhand. Just don't show up without having picked a class, spent your points, and without a **** hat on. There are even some early options for earpiece/implants, though not for 10 unless I am mistaken. That's super cheesey, and if you continue playing that char...super cheesey is a hard rep to live down if you pvp for 40 levels and into endgame, and you'll be playing with many of the same folks for 40 levels or better

Don't forget to mark your favorite enemy healers. Otherwise, they get lonely fiddling around off by themselves, out on the periphery of the fight, just waiting to get picked to play with the rest of the team. Be sympathetic to them because they just want to play, too. Be inclusive and tolerant and kind, and go mark a healer today! They will gesture "you're welcome" (I think that's what they're saying) from the medcenter, and isn't that really the best reward, ever?

I favor the giant pistol, but the sun works in a pinch. It helps tons in pick-up groups, where "kill the **** healer" might otherwise just get ignored. In a voidstar match, after you die, it helps you get back on the right target immediately after getting out of the medcenter. Can't hardly knock that. Raid leaders who want to win will mark healers, and teams that want to win will keep shooting until they see the green stuff stop flowing.

We got Ilummed. Let me explain: Ilum was an obligatory open world PvP area which Bioware progressively applied band-aids to to try to make it viable and fun. In the end, they removed all incentive to go there (but you still can, if you want) while they dream up what they want Ilum to be when it grows up. Operatives got Ilummed, as well: progressively applied some reactionary band-aids based on out-of-what specs by the tippity-toppity folks geared in the best stuff and swinging for the fences. 4 or 5 band-aids, both across the board (although hitting us disproportionately hard, i.e., Surge nerf-herding) and with our class specifically in Conceal. They have apparently given up on making Conceal fun or compelling (but you can still do it) given us a better (read: mostly fixed) medical line, and thus Concealment has been Ilummed, waiting to figure out what it wants to be...someday.

I still like my operative, even 5 nerfs later. I break it out mostly for guild WZ's when I'm not leveling a sorc/mara. The PvP problems are that they Ilummed our concealment spec (dev's quietly give up on fixing it, leave it there, but take away any reason to go there) as of 1.2, lethality is...strange and relatively ineffective, which leave healing as our only really viable option. The story is, however, great. I think lethality is a viable spec for PvE. As of 1.2 , our backstab is getting put on a longer timer, and since we're melee...you'll be running away from scripted moments even more and stabbing a lot less...

I always choose the blaster pistol options, in hopes of finally getting to keep it.

Emer medpack is spammable with a 1.7-2.5s induction depending on talents/alacrity. It looks just like a stim...btw, he might have been popping armor/power as well. 1 rakata + 1 crit on Emer Medpack = 9-ish k health pretty easy. 5,500 crits come fairly often as well on Emer medpack. That's maybe upwards of 16k over 5 seconds. I generally had no problem 1v1 on my operative standing there and outhealing most folks dps me. Marauders and gunslingers/operatives were the occasional exception; I'd have to stun the good ones and book to find some help.

They do appear to be doing everything they can to get you out of Warzones (massive valor buff) and into their fully voiced $100,000,000 linear playground for leveling, don't they?