Really? I would think good design would suggest it would be a unique long, or other combination of letters and numbers, and the name would be an attribute of the character object. While having it a unique name, and a suitable name length, would give you more possible unique combinations, combinations that people would actually want seems like it would be less, where as a long would have 18 billion billion combinations without the user having any objections or even needing to know. This is probably further proven by the character names being changed if you name conflicts with another on the server, as changing an attribute is a lot less painful than assigning all new attributes to a primary key. If we assume for a second that it is just a long that is incremented by one, you could have 21 billion accounts with 900 million characters each before running out of numbers.

Troll the forums.

Is there any information on how to parse/read the combat log? I'm not looking for a parser, but instead how it can be read.

These arguments are dumb. BW should just release a linux version and no one has to be pay or be locked in to any operating system or hardware. 100% of problems solved. I can just see it now, open up your terminal and type: sudo apt-get install swtor or yum install swtor And your done!

You are right. If only I had seen the Imperial/Republic count when I made my characters, it all could have been stopped!

I'm going to have to disagree with this. While I agree that Marauders are generally left out of the gear scheme, end-game columni gear is not the case. Sure I only have the bracers, belt, boots, and pants, but I have also only tried for the chestpiece one time, and I have never tried for the headpiece. It is my personal experience that the drops are harder for certian pieces for certian classes. For example, it took about 10 BT runs for get columni bracers for our inquisiter, but in the meantime I got them 3 times. I have also gotten the boots about three times.

As everyone knows, when you crit on a bleed with an Annihilation spec, you will do a group heal. However, when you are fighting the 1v1 fight in EV, when you crit on a bleed it will do the group heal -- however the heal will be for 0. That said, even though the heal is 0, it will still make the fight unbeatable. Does anyone else see this as a bug? I mean if it actually healed for something, I would say that it was working as intended, however it appears the devs went out of the there way to set the heal to 0 for this particular fight. Just sucks if you're annihilation and you cant use your bleeds.

I updated the thread, and Annih is the clear winner from my testing. That said, I would like to see what other people get, or, hell, even other classes. However, it would be hard to directly compare results due to differences in gear and rotation.

This is an offshoot of my question: Marauder, by the numbers?. I realize the sample size is small, and it is prone to human error, but, for now, this really is the best we have in which we are not theory crafting with a spreadsheet. Spreadsheets are fine, but in-game results do not lie. Objective: Try and kill the same mob (control) with different specs to try and see what the best DPS is, in order to see if we are (1) broken, (2) realistic numbers in terms of dps, and (3) is this what the devs wanted? I came up with dps numbers by using fraps to pinpoint the second in which the fight started (the first hit) to the killing blow. Republic Stealth Commander (Elite), from the Belsavis Daily in which you kill 10 regs. and 2 elite mobs. HP: 32,500 Elite Found at: -810, 2420 on Belsavis Rage Spec (dps): 878, 955, 984, 1048, 1083 Avg: 989.6 Exclude lowest (seems to be too low): 1017.5 Annihilation Spec (dps): 984, 1015, 1048, 1083, 1300 (Annihilate reset rupture so got to use it again) Avg: 1086 Exclude highest (seems to be too high): 1032.5 Carnage Spec DPS (fight): 769(4), 929(1), 940(5), 1020(6), 816 (7) Notes: 1. Died all fights 2. Didnt record fight 2 & 3 3. Fight 5 had 2 rage left from last fight 4. Fight 6 only lasted 15 seconds because additional aggro pulled 769(4), 929(1), 940(5), 1020(6), 816 (7) The rage spec is from Zandermill's Marauder Q&A - DPS and you. To include the rotation. Sometimes, the 3 & 4 is interchanged with the 4&5 in the rotation. The Annihilation Spec is http://i42.tinypic.com/5e70k5.jpg. Rotation is Force Charge > Deadly Saber > Battering Assault > Ravage > Annihilate. Then whatever to maximize dps. Berserk was used at least once in every fight, and I tried to make sure there was no fury build up before entering any fight. Stats/Gear: http://i39.tinypic.com/r2rpk4.jpg As you can see, I am fairly well geared for pve. I have 3 columni pieces, EV offhand, class-specific relic, columni bracers (not counted towards bonus for whatever reason), I have daily purples in everything orange, and Columni purples in my chest peice (lvl 56, columni boots dropped again for me, so I extracted the mods), and rakata earpiece. Discussion/Results: While it was only 5 fights each, Annihilation is winning, by far when you do pure averages. While Annihilation's high seems too high, and Rage's low seems too low, those were actual in-game results (whether they resulted from human error or not is another story). That said, i would rather have an outlier that is too high than one is too low. Perhaps this just means that Annihilation is more forgiving (which would, ultimately, make it higher average dps for most everyone). Tomorrow, I hope to update this thread with Carnage spec as well. The reason I chose one mob to do this on, is because it would at least keep things in a somewhat controlled environment. I had a guild-mate tell me his dps dropped by 500 points (he is a sith assassin) while fighting this mob vs others he was dpsing. **NOTE** This was a 1v1 fight with the Elite. While broonmark can be seen in the pictures, he was on passive mode the whole time so he could not attack. This is pure marauder v. the mob. No heals were ever used in order to maximize dps. Updated Discussion/Results As you can see, in my testing Annihilation won. Carnage spec and rotation/rotation priority was taken directly from the sticky at the top of the forum. I should say that I am least familiar with Carnage as a spec. I only played it up to lvl 25, then went Annih until about a week into 50 and then was Rage for ~2 weeks. When I switched from Annih to Rage, I thought Rage was doing better, but at least in my testing, Annih came out on top. It would be interesting to see other people do the same or similar test. The DPS may not match, due to gear and/or skill, but I would like to at least see if the order is the same.

I'm still trying to work out the results, but using this spec and following the rotation, I got 1048 dps and 955 dps. Going to run some more tests, but starting to rethink this whole spec, and advice.

There is a lot of theory-crafting in this game, but has anyone actually sat down and run the numbers and have actual proof? For instance, I was thinking we could pick the most popular specs and actually figure out the dps for them based upon gear. Like I would fraps taking down an elite on belsavis (the daily where you have to take down 2 elites and 10 regulars) with a rage spec, annihilation, and carnage spec and then run the numbers to see which one actually does the most dps. Has anyone done anything similar?

Unless you are taking less than 2 seconds to move from mob to mob -- and quinn can heal you in less than 2 seonds (1.33 moves) -- this makes no sense. You can't heal yourself in less than 2 seconds -- like you can your tank, and if you are doing it right you shouldnt take ANY damage except for a double silver, or possibly an elite + 2 normals. Even then you are relying upon quinn to heal you during all moving to another mob, and if you are using your speeder -- to reduce your downtime -- quinn can't heal you at all. Unless you are talking about healing your companion. In that case, do you use a speeder bike to go from mob to mob? That is .5 seconds of downtime and instaheals your companion. If not, it is a 1 second cast time to dismiss and resummon them. Either way, you have less downtime from a tank because you take no damage, and they are much faster to heal than yourself.

How so? I was annihilation, until I got good pve gear (currently columni bracers, boots, gloves, legs, and off-hand, with columni extracted mods in chest, with rakata earpeice, and the rest being level 50+ purples from dailies and/or drops) when I notice annihilation wasn't scaling well. That is when I switched to rage. From there the AOE smash alone -- criting at over 4.5k in pve -- made it worth the switch. Combine an AOE sorcerer with that smash and you can clear 90% of the trash in 2 hits. Sure, I don't get the passive heals, but that is what the healer is for. And, after all, if I am taking any damage at all, it is from an AOE or it is because either I or the tank is not doing their job well.

It's not only the light/dark-side vendors. It's pretty much every vendor in the game. The fact is Marauder's are very gimped when it comes to gear. Whether it is the light/dark-side vendor, commendation vendor, and, i would argue, even the columni/rakata vendors. It is clear that Marauders were changed, very late in the process, from heavy armor to medium armor. Hell, I have personal friends ( not just some online friends, but people I went to college with, and were groomsmen in my wedding ) who beta tested, from early beta, telling me not to roll a marauder because -- EVEN IN BETA -- they were seen a gimped not only skill wise, but item wise as well. **EDIT** From my post in early-January when I first hit 50, you can see that commendation vendors, even late in the game, do not provide adequate marauder gear: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=127039 If you look at the marauder-specific relic, you can see just what a pain in the *** it is to get. I personally spent 6 hours getting it in game. Even then, I only found one rakata energy cube, and happened to stumble across others who would do the shard with me. You can find the best information about it here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=113717 No other class (besides republic equivalant to marauders) has to do anything of this scale. Really, it just adds insult to injury and is not enjoyable by even the most sadistic.

As a male, I ONLY play female characters in the game. Why? Well why would I want to spend god knows how many hours staring male toon when I could be doing the exact same thing with a female toon? Hell, half of my guild, who are males, play female toons for the same reason. So why would it be weird at all if a female played a male toon? However, the better question would be, why should anyone care what gender the player is? And if you do care, I can pretty much guarantee that you are a sexist piece of ****.

TBH, I can see where they are coming from. Marauder is an extremely gear-dependent class, and tough to play. When first hitting 50, it can be a little rough -- especially since our gear is not carried in the commendation scheme. However, this is very disturbing because it reflects upon the general attitude towards marauders. What was BW excuse for nerfing biochem again? Something along the lines of guilds and raid groups requiring it? Now instead we have an entire class being locked out of raid and flash point groups. That said, if I were to organize a raid, I would want two marauders in my group for one skill: Bloodthirst. It's hard to argue against 30 seconds of +15% extra damage on a boss fight for the entire raid group. That could mean the difference between hitting the enrage timer or not.

What downtime? Companions only take 2 seconds, or less, to heal. If you are in a place where you can use a speeder, pull it out and get off when you reach your next mob; your companion is instantly healed. If you cannot use a speeder, dismiss them and pull them back out.

Broonmark, when you get him. No one on these forums seems to use him, to me, having a tank companion with a dps class makes perfect sense.

tldr; bye

If you press ctrl+A it will say Ambience On or Off, but what exactly does it do? I've never noticed a difference either way.

Just a small, and I do mean really small, sample of what the Fleet has become without a LFG tool. http://i44.tinypic.com/qzomcg.jpg It was a ton of fun spending 30 minutes today just to get a HM BT group going! It was even more fun spending 2 hours trying -- and failing -- to get any other HM going!

Found it: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=1435443#edit1435443 Thanks for pointing out the dev comments on it already.

from http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/367/feature/5997/Star-Wars-The-Old-Republic-The-Future-of-the-Old-Republic.html At least I can only assume it is going to be a buff. I would find it hard that warrior's would get nerfed at this point. Especially marauders...

Also, which buff should we be using, as well as form? Beserk or Predation? Juyo or Shii-Cho? Beserk would seem an obvious answer, but Vicious slash doesn't seem to be in the lineup, and I'm wonder if I would just be gimping myself by using it.

good post following it now, annih wasnt working as well as i expected endgame