RE is definitely not "broke". Why, just last night as I was RE'ing my six hundredth (rounded up to the nearest 600 from 50 or so) blue skill stim (adrenal?) to try and get the reusable, I accidentally clicked on my reusable endurance adrenal (stim?) that I'd gotten off the GTN. It went poof, just as intended, and now I'm predictably back down to 14.5K instead of 16K health in WZ's for the time being. I was so mad (at myself) I almost called my game a **** and ****, with a little **** that likes to **** ****-ridden ****. Almost.

Ok, main healed BT HM last night so I'm going to backtrack a bit on what I'd said previously. This was our first HM as a guild with "the right" make up--jugg tank, op healer, assassin dps, and an op dps. We had failed it multiple times on separate occasions trying to go in with an assassin tank/healing op/assassin dps/op dps, as well as an assassin tank and two mercs. With one merc heal spec'd, we were able to keep the assassin tank alive, but couldn't beat the rage timer. Working as intended, lol. Bottom line is that I can't keep an assassin tank-spec alive in HM as an op yet, but I can keep a jugg up farily reliably. Also found out how important it is to work a little dps into the mix. We only managed to beat the rage timer on the final boss, every other fight we were finishing off the last bit with all our shields rolling while the bosses were in stomp mode. You might not think it's the case, but keeping dart on them in a close fight will mean the difference between finishing the boss while he's raged or getting finished by the boss on rage. We still have a bit to go to get it down to cake farming, and we all could use some slightly better gear (the jugg just dinged 50 this week), but we are viable end-game healers. You just have to be sporting some fancy gear, work you *** off, hit Surgical Probe every time it's ready, and use your poison dart judiciously. It's a stupid amount of effort/management for some fairly mediocre heals, but that's what we're stuck with atm. You can make it work if a keyboard turning mouse-clicker like me can

I found my heal spec operative to be a lot of fun in WZ's after you get some gear. My top rounds (mostly champ stuff and still missing several pieces) are 150k, and a sorcerer can double that in his sleep. So, it's not easy for us and I won't pretend that it is. But we do have our utility. If you can't keep up with the ball carrier, toss a couple of KP's on them as they charge the goal line. Flashbang and then fighting unsupported melees inside your orbital strike is great for kills/damage. Use your slows and darts to interfere with caps, in addition to the stun and daze. If you load up the talents, the dart is nothing to sneeze at in damage, and it acts as a "no you don't" for 18s on the door in Voidstar, for anyone you hit with it. In a good round of Voidstar, you will feel like you contribute a great deal between your heals, damage, door defense, sneaky door taking, and generally harassing the other team, baiting 1v1 and 1v2 fights where you self heal and chuckle. I'm having problems main healing. In a group with an assassin tanking and two mercs for dps, I could not keep the assassin alive, and with one of the mercs helping with heals, we couldn't kill him fast enough. This was the BT droid boss in the engine room. I did heal the KP Operation with another Op medic in HM, and we ran the first two bosses of EV normal a couple of days ago with an 2 Ops and Sorc all heal spec'd (they thought I was DPS so I went with it...). Hardmodes are doable, but you really rely on everyone else being at the top of THEIR game and on top of THEIR gear to make you a viable healer--much more so than a sorc. Edit: I have found biochem to be indispensable to me as a healer in both WZ's and PVE. In WZ, the reusable medpacks and armor are THE difference between getting away to heal yourself and getting sent back to the medcenter, and the reusuable cunning and power stims (adrenals?) are a quick ticket to your 5k single-hit damage and laying down some heat when your team needs firepower more than heals. In PvE land, while you really shouldn't be getting hit all that much, being able to use a medpack on yourself saves you from burning more power. And you already know what a fickle...witch Power is for operatives.

You just might need to employ some cover to avoid being sniped, or figure out how to approach them without your faceroll dilithium crystals at full capacity. Oh, the tragedy. Its unfortunate that you aren't able to use your same "haha-dead" rotation to 25%* of the classes out there. So very unfortunate that you have to do something different when you see a different class. Unconscionable game design, I tell you. I play an op medic. The grousing over a lack of an instant gap closer for 25% (or is it 12.5? do ops/smugglers enjoy the same effect?) of the classes you face is very refreshing. Your mileage will vary.

It defeats the purpose of sniping when distance becomes meaningless. /thread

Tab and mash your number 2 key (or whatever passes for "I want in with this AoE") on your skill bar. More often than not, you'll get credit, even if it's in the 1-2fps range. To help a bit with the fps, hang back a bit and then speeder in and hop off by tab+tossing a grenade (again, or whatever your default aoe is) to make sure you get in some damage for a guaranteed kill. I'm not sure what the buffing award situation is like. I've always liked going with the sure thing of nailing the enemy for a whopping 1 damage for my credit Subscribing to this thread to get the 411 though!

Once you start seeing the 2.5 medals, you're right at the point where you'll get them over the course of a WZ. If you're still leveling you can either level a bit more or buff your gear, or you can pop a stim/adrenal to boostie your burstie. If you're 50, you can adjust your gear/talent tree, or use the mentioned consumables. My perspective is an Op healer. Your mileage may vary.

Lol, as a healing-spec medic one of the few things I have going for me is to spam poison dart a few times if I'm getting focused. I have to work my tail off for my healing medals, doing usually 1/2 to 1/3 the heals of a decent sorc. It's quite funny watching someone interact with the door and wonder why they are being denied. Timed right, I can hold someone off a door for 15 seconds after I die. That, of course, is two handfuls of win (and one of the limited things healing operatives, or operatives overall, bring to a WZ).

sweet, thx for the heads up.

ibiddy ibiddy I read it wrong. My bad. Edited, but not soon enough.

Surge needed a bit of a takedown for PvP. Players in full BM gear will now require three button mashes to squash new fifties. PvE, it's going to make things less accessible to a lot of groups trying HM's. Rage timers going off will lead to rage quitting going down. It's a bit of a shame; not having to go spend a bunch of time on tedious crap in order to do the things you enjoy was something this game really had going for it, or at least as far as an MMO with a vested interest in keeping you doing tedious stuff has gone. Frustration leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to unsubbing. Foreseen this, I have.

Same situation here. All the worse because I was a guest in a different guild's raid and told them I'd make them some. Grrr... I'll file a ticket tonight and see if they will do anything, or at least bug it. Buggy buggy buggy.

If you're going to PvP much, I would suggest: biochem/bioanalysis/diplomacy biochem/bioanalysis/diplomacy biochem/bioanalysis/diplomacy Reusable medpacks/stims/adrenals are just that good, and you can share around the reusables when someone gets lucky on a reverse engineering. You triple your chances to "get" (not learn) the purple reusables with three people re-ing If you're not so much into PvP, the artificer is great for mods and cybertech are good alternatives.

I spent around 100K on 120ish mutagenic pastes this past weekend. I'm already at 400/400/400 bio/bio/dip. Saves me time on missions. Reallocates creds from said almost-random mission rewards to creds where I actually know what I'm getting. I've got the recipe for the best lvl 45 Operative implants I've ever seen. 15k ea implant, 25-30k if I score an augment slot. I can provide free upgrades to guild members, medpacks/armor adrenals before HardModes and still turn a decent profit at auction. Works for me. Not sure what else I would do with credits at 50 in PvP gear except turn them into crafting mats, anyhow. Your mileage may vary.

Good idea. A minimum amount of valor earned for a WZ to "count" would also help vet afk'ers.

thanks, that's helpful to know.

Black Talon is fast and (it's one way or the other) gives 150 affection and 300 DS points if you have the right companion/correct choices. It's quite lucrative if you need either points, and is a 12 minute run at 50. Esseless I would guess takes a bit longer. Seems that way, but it might just be my perspective based on all the running around I think I end up doing repub side.

lol, healing ops need a support group. glad you're enjoying the the vanguard as much as i am!

Ilum is the only spot in the game that I lag on, but I do enjoy my eyecandy @ 19x12. I'll try dialing things down and see if helps. If it does, I'll screenie it. amd hd6970, 8gigs, 1090T hexacore proc, 890fx board, couple of Vertex 2 and a Vertex 3 SSD.

It's the carrot. Random chance: carrot may be there, carrot might not be there. "I may not get a doggone thing except for 3 pretty useless cent comms for winning these 3 matches today, or any for winning 9 this week." Not so great of a motivator to queue up for that next set of WZ's. Linear progression: carrot always there. "Doing maybe 3-5 dailies and the weekly will get me two pieces of armor this week, and maybe three of the cheaper trinkets the next." If you get close enough to another piece, you're likely to queue up and burn out the 800 WZ comms it takes to pop the next bag and go shopping. This increases players available for PvP matches. Showing players that the carrot is always really there is probably a good business decision for the longevity of a subscription-based game. I lucked out on the champ bags--45-10-1 duplicate. Others in my guild have been frustrated to the point of rolling alts/not PvP'ing as much. I would also point out that with the likelihood of getting duplicates, your chances for a full set of champ gear become astronomically poor over time...just in time for Battlemaster bags to give you a bit better chance at a specific item upgrade. Now with the current system, if you PvP a lot, you get a very respectable, complete tier 2 (champ) SET a lot faster, on average. If you PvP a little, you go much more slowly, but don't waste the time you spend on duplicate pieces. This is all win and no lose imho, both for keeping people interested and motivated for some (at least now) fairly limited PvP and for the long-term health of the game.

I'm being blunt, not dismissive here, but the last time I went into a Huttball match lasting 15 minutes (approximate time for Karagga conveyor belt fight) expecting to leave with a direct shot at 1 or more endgame items for my team was never-dang-thirty. If I score 3 wins, in a row, and they count, that's around an hour (figure 2-5 mins in a queue), for essentially 1/5-1/7th of a piece of Tier 2 endgame armor. A more refined answer would be that folks can (and do) use WZ's to level...a lot. They need the cash they're missing to upgrade their armor/weps (outside of the WZ comm ones you can get at 20 and 40) from the GTN. They need a way to make cash to buy new skills as well. The money available to folks that level on planets is probably 3 times that available to WZ'ers. After all, the amount of cash and loot I have ever found on Internet_Bob's freshly dead sorceror in Huttball is also exactly zero.

If you really feel you're working that much harder than everyone else, perhaps you've gotten a bit overly-invested in this, what we call, "game". The bags still cost the same amount of "effort", which is variable depending on your Ilum situation specific to your server. That has not changed. Gear you get from the bags has been reduced. That's actually more effort in many cases. I opened 45 bags and got 10 pieces with 1 duplicate. I've been very lucky, can't say that I felt like it was "hard work". Getting the top-end battlemaster stuff will be just as randomy, if that's what you consider "work". I think you're upset because there would have always been a few unlucky people to "haha-u-dead-to-mah-gear!" with the old system. With the new system, if you PvP, you will gradually acquire the gear. If you PvP alot, you will be at least in Champ gear post valor 60 in fairly short order. Not sure what the crying is all about. People who enjoy PvP will get tier 2 PvP gear as a linear function of how much they PvP. They will be more competitive based on stats, if you are a "hardcore" player then you'll still dismantle them 1v1. The only thing it will genuinely change is possibly Ilum, when Republics are able to progressively build expertise. Still, in zerg v. zerg, you will rely on mass tactics (stealthers stunning/killing the healers in the back of the group, simultaneous mortars, etc.) to win, while bearing in mind that if either side dominates to the point of frustrating the other side into logging/WZ/pve, then nobody gets anything. It's just gear--on someone else's toon. Wats de isha?

English can be difficult when you initially encounter it. Asking questions is actually not the same as making judgements. That's why we have different "words". Keep at it though, all it takes is practice. @ rest--Thanks again for the input. Still enjoying the vanguard immensely, although the class quests thus far seem to be a bit more spread out/run-around-fests compared to the emp I play.

Rolling out at 50 in full orange with purple mods will help a lot, but there is no substitute for around 550 in expertise. The bag changes will provide some predictable progression. It will be harder for some to gear up (compared to randomy), easier for others. A good move over all. To the poster above you who has personally built million dollar homes and welcomed the impoverished to live in them, I'm sure they appreciate it, and good for you. It's pretty dumb to bring that up in the context of a $15 per month game, though.

Little list of things I'd wished I'd known starting PvP in general: 1000 WZ comm cap means you need to spend them or you lose anything you win above that 1000 mark Buy PvP gear with WZ comm at lvl 20 and 40; also some decent blasters with a tiny bit of expertise available at 42 and 46, but you'll quickly outgrow them with better mods. It's important to look at every slot on your gear and make sure you aren't wearing a Ronald McDonald helmet you picked up 8 levels ago. Get lightside/darkside points and go spend some creds on the relics from the LS/DS vendor. See also: look at every slot on your gear Hit the auction and pick up some really nice stuff for not very many creds. Don't forget to look ~3 levels above you. I hit 15 on my Vanguard last night, have probably done 1-1.5 levels PvE since 10. Recommend running flashpoints for the moddable gear/wep drop early if you can stand it. I did Eseless with another DPS'er at 13 last night with no heals. Picked up a blaster, chest, and one more piece if I remember right (lvl 12 equivalents), as well as picking up a level between the FP and the Daily board. Tab targeting is your very good friend in this class. Focus on the objective first, but then start tabbing looking for low health targets. Finish them off! You'll rack up the kills and leave the other team with that many fewer fighters. Stay a bit back, unless you are, say, guarding a door in Voidstar. Make the melee's come to you to engage, and work them over as they're getting there. Now tab around some more. Someone has to be getting low... I'm finding it's a blast playing in WZ on my Vanguard.