Healing is still really easy. Majority of the time people are dying to mechanics they've been dismissing over the last year or more. I've healed through (all SM so far, waiting for guildies to gear to 208/216 mix before HM): DP, ToS, EC, and KP, as well as a handful of HM FP's. So far the only thing that I've noticed is that trash in older FP's seem overtuned, but that's an easy fix. The damage is really bursty on trash, as a Sage that's easy to combat with Force Armor on everyone and a Rejuvenate->Wandering Mend with a Salvation down, Rejuvenate & Healing Trance as necessary. I have honestly barely noticed the increase in ability cost. I think the only fight that I really noticed the increased cost on was Underlurker, but that's because I was with a level 50 Commando as my healing partner. Honestly, everything feels just right to me.

I don't think that they said play without them. He said if you have a problem with your companions being op, then go and create a toon on another server to see how mediocre they are when you don't have all of the presence datacrons to buff them on top of their influence level. To sum up his post in a few words: Your companions are overpowered because you played the game for a long time and were rewarded with powerful companions so stop complaining.

Well then.. add a /sarcasm to your post because it is literally impossible to read sarcasm. Thanks. Now we're all friends! YAY!

I have a Vanguard that I play all the time and tank ops with, why should I be kicked from the group because my boosted Powertech doesn't have titles? In fact, my Vanguard and boosted powertech are even going to share some legacy gear. Your comment is typical elitist bs that is the root of many problems in this game.

You get none of them as it doesn't count towards completing the class story. Obviously all legacy titles are available so you can still sound like you did... something. Edit - I am 100% positive you don't get any titles because I used my free token on a powertech and he only has the titles from in-game mail retrieval.

This. Do a few early planet heroics from the terminal (you can travel directly to location at the click of a button). They can all be solo'd, and if you have any trouble at all then set your companion to heals and you won't die. The loot box you get will contain a worthwhile piece of gear. You want to save all of your comms until max level so you can jump right in on as many 208/216 pieces as possible.

ROFL. I saw the same thing. Awesomeness. Here's my Treek right now: http://imageshack.com/a/img907/1278/ils4h5.jpg

So why the heck are you still complaining on the official forums if you're unsubbing?! You love to call people trolls yet you are still here posting your inflammatory remarks about a game you admittedly have no interest in continuing to pay for. When you're gone, good riddance. As for the topic, almost everything on the patch notes looks awesome. I'm interested to see how that Star Fortress flashpoint works out... sounds really cool. The NPC's dropping a significantly reduced amount of credits is a little off-putting at first glance. I wish they would clarify that with where. For instance, I can't imagine Bioware reducing the amount of credits dropped by mobs on Coruscant, but I can see them greatly reducing the amount of credits dropped on Ziost/Yavin 4.

I pretty much hate Kephess, but I do agree with the rest of this post! I want more QoL changes like this during 4.0!

Doesn't matter, the people complaining (you) already lost the case. Level sync is happening. You all have three options: play it and find that you enjoy it, quit the game, or try it out and complain when you have actual evidence that shows how level sync is "destroying" your gameplay experience. I am 100% positive that a month or two after release, if the community begins showing a massive distaste for level sync, Bioware will fix the problems with it.

It wasn't a lie at all. Exaggeration? Yes. He's called people that disagree with him forum griefers and trolls on many occasions, including the post I quoted. In fact, in the quote from my post, he called everyone that doesn't agree with him the, "white knights and forum griefers." Again, it's strange that you didn't even read a post in it's entirety before you commented on one line. Foolish. That's the way of the world these days. The funniest part is that I have stated in multiple threads that I can't see any outright problems with level sync being mandatory, however, I am withholding final judgment until after it releases. Stupid me for wanting to try something out before I feel like I'm in a good position to argue for or against it.

I think the problem with all this name-calling back and forth is that we're destroying the true meaning of the words. It can be argued that this entire thread was created to Troll. The OP wanted to gather up everyone that agree's with him and bash all of the people the don't agree. I can argue that point, as I'm sure many others could. Is that really what happened? Absolutely not. The OP is worried that a game they enjoy is going to be ruined by some portion of this expansion, so they are bringing their worries to the forums where the developers will see them. I don't share the OP's thoughts on the matter. I think 4.0 will breathe new life into a game that has grown stagnant over the last year or so. Now, if the OP is allowed to create a thread that can be misconstrued as actually trolling - trying to incite a negative reaction - then why are people being called trolls for posting their opposing opinion? If anything, they should be accused of doing the one thing that they're actually doing, feeding the trolls. For those that don't know, disagreeing with someone is not trolling despite what many in this thread have stated. Trolling is when you make a statement with the sole purpose of creating controversy. Disagreeing with someone is not trolling... especially when your point of view is the one that lacks hyperbole. Every planet is level synced. What's to guess at? And proof that you need to group for World Bosses? How about the fact you won't be able to solo them anymore... not really a guess.

Troll. Forum griefer. Can't believe the disdain you show towards people that disagree with you. Disgusting! joking... if you didn't get that.

I love how you assume I've only read one reply from him. How about you click on his name and go to his forum posts. Everything he talks about is death of swtor, everyone's a troll except him, blah blah blah. I'm pretty sure he even called me a troll and ignored me because I said something about people not reading what the OP said. If that's what he believes is trolling then I don't know how he makes it through a single day in the real world. I also love that out of my entire reply, you picked the one part about your buddy to comment on. /gg

Out of the toons that are currently 60, I probably won't kneel on any of them. So, no kneeling on Sage, Shadow, Sentinel, Scoundrel, or Mercenary. Out of the toons that are story complete (55+): I think I will kneel on my Juggernaut and Assassin. And a hell no for Sorcerer, Operative, and Vanguard. Leftover toons (<55): Probably mostly a no when I buckle down and level them. Except for my Commando, just because he's pretty rebellious as it is, so going against the Empire and Republic by swearing allegiance to a 3rd party... heck yeah! I make sure to diss the General on this toon whenever the opportunity arises! lol Free level 60: Powertech. He's going to kneel because he's a free level 60... and I already have plans for him to just hate the old factions, but he's also going to be plotting a coup. Time for a Mandalorian (faction) uprising!

I love how you call everyone that disagrees with you a, "forum griefer." The best part about it is that you are the one forum griefing, telling everyone how bad the game is going to be and how 4.0 is going to implode SWTOR. Having an opinion is fine, but at least offer evidence to back your claims. And stop calling everyone that disagrees with you a troll, or forum griefer... it's really childish and makes your opinion matter even less. To respond to the OP: I respectfully disagree with you. I, as well as many people I play with, haven't been this excited for an expansion since they brought in the Group Finder. In fact, the news of the expansion has already guaranteed that a few of my friends that I started this game with are coming back to give it a try again... and they quit shortly after 1.2. Not even free-to-play brought them back, but something in this expansion is bringing them back to try it. I don't know what more people could want from a free expansion? New planet(s), five levels, revamped skills, level sync, at least 16 chapters of story, nine of those chapters at release, (slightly) improved group finder, different types of companions (pets), massive UI improvements, legacy datacrons, and new Alliance system. Seems like a lot of new stuff to me for my $15/month that I was already paying without this expansion. Granted, my poll was done with a few dozen people and hardly represents the entire community, but at least I know that I will be having fun in 4.0. I think that people need to give it a try and stop worrying about which specific feature they hate. After a month of 4.0, we'll see how the entire expansion comes together as a game and then real arguments could be made for how terrible individual features are.

It may sound strange, but you will need to do a few things: 1. Follow the link in the post above me to turn off nVidia Streaming Service. That nVidia streaming service can, and will, bog you down. 2. Make sure that you have the newest nVidia drivers installed. This I cannot stress enough. Your best bet is to actually go and uninstall the drivers (and GeForce Experience), download the driver package directly from nvidia.com, install using custom settings and only install what you need. For instance, I only install Graphics, PhysX, and Sound drivers. I do not have nVidia 3D, so there is no need to install those drivers. DO NOT install the beta drivers. The current Beta drivers are buggy... really buggy. I actually just uninstalled them and re-installed the release drivers. 3. Turn your graphics settings up to max, visible players to Medium. You want the game to use more of your graphics card power, and the only way to kind of force this is to turn graphics settings up higher. Like someone said before me, this game is not really optimized for GPU power, so you basically need to put your rig in a situation where it needs to use more GPU to support the CPU. Sounds strange, but it's what I do with my PC and it hasn't let me down since back in 1.3.

It doesn't matter what the reason is. Bioware hath spoken, level sync shall be mandatory, and it becoming optional is not even being discussed. Time for all of the people that don't want it to either unsub, or start the healing process. This isn't the droid you're looking for... move along, move along.

What about this question: What are you guys doing to make queuing through Group Finder worthwhile for tanks and healers? Anything, nothing, who cares? Changing 40 Basic Commendations to 40 green color crystals is not tricking us at all. Plans to do something meaningful?

Your questions still leave the poll open to major problems. If people hate the idea of level sync, they are obviously going to choose Optional, along with all of the people who want it to be Optional. You need a poll with One question, three answers: Q: What kind of level sync do you want in SWTOR? A1: Forced level sync. A2: Optional level sync. A3: No level sync. The problem with polls like the kind everyone wants (multiple questions/answers) is that you can't possibly build off of them in later questions with current free poll websites. You would need to build your own poll using if/else statements for the next questions and then build the stats in a table at the end like: Q1 A1 Total (%) Q2 A1 Total (%) Q2 A2 Total (%) Q2 A3 Total (%) Q3 A1... Q1 A2 Total (%)... Q1 A3 Total (%)... As you (hopefully) see from my abridged table, the answers to the later questions are put into the same row with the corresponding Q1 answers. So, unless you can customize your poll like that, the stats will only matter for the first question, and if the first question is worded wonky the whole poll falls to junk stats.

I'm holding off for the new packs... I don't have any other reason other than I'm a "grass-is-always-greener" type of guy. I might buy my first new pack in the expansion and hate life... so don't do what I do! Or, do! Good luck, and I hope I was as unhelpful as this post sounds.

Actually, it should have been 3 options: Forced, Optional, None. And you can't simply take numbers from one and slide them into another because when you give people the real options maybe they don't slide in perfectly where you placed them. Psychology is strange like that. Bioware should just make a poll to see what the temperature of the players truly is. There will be mandatory level sync in 4.0, but who's to say if they did a poll on it and took real statistics from players after 4.0 drops that it doesn't become optional in 4.1, 4.2, or 4.3? Or, maybe players decide it's not the end of humanity and it stays.

Cross-Server will assist in alleviating the role imbalance, but of course nothing will truly fix it. Players either enjoy being the center of attention or they don't. There's a reason capable tanks are highly sought after in guilds across all MMO's. Tanks are solely responsible for positioning the boss so DPS are effective and don't have to stand in bad, LOSing pulls, driving the group, etc. It's a tough role to play and not many people want to do it all the time. To prove my point about cross-server actually helping in alleviating role imbalance on servers, let's make numbers for pretend servers: Server A: 3 tanks, 4 healers, 10 dps Server B: 0 tanks, 1 healer, 3 dps Server C: 10 tanks, 15 healers, 23 dps Server D: 4 tanks, 2 healers, 7 dps With the current situation, Server A would have 3 flashpoints running, B would have 0, C would have 10, D would have 2. A total of 60 players (73%) would be running 15 different flashpoints. The players on Server B are seriously suffering because no tanks are queued, even if the others have been queued for the longest amount of time. If cross-server were active, there would now be 17 tanks queued, 22 healers, and 43 dps queued for a total of 68 players (83%) running 17 flashpoints... players from every server would be enjoying flashpoints. These numbers are small compared to the number of players actually playing, so scale that up three or four times at any given time during the day and you see how cross-server will make a difference towards role imbalance. Like I touched on earlier, nothing will truly fix the role imbalance, short of making tanking as easy as DPSing. 1:1:3 would do wonders for queuing, I do agree with that as well.

You're right, that wasn't the rebuttal. The rebuttal - albeit weak since I gave a much better rebuttal in an earlier post to basically the same exact statement and was tired of repeating myself - was, "If you're so certain about the queue's being so uniform, why does every other major MMO do cross-server queuing?" Again, I have to restate the obvious, reading comprehension is a lost art. Also, debating depends highly on the debater's ability to, in this case, comprehend what they're reading and offer a counter. The two of you have been bringing this thread so far off-topic based on your inability to understand something I thought was plainly written. I have no problem debating with people that want to offer a clear counter to what I've proposed in my OP. Jumping in mid-conversation with no context will only leave yourself open to looking foolish. Tacticals do not require tanks/healers for a queue to pop. You can have four DPS which, as we all know, are easy to come by. That's because there is no real incentive for tanks/healers to queue using solely the Group Finder tool, currently. I'm hoping Bioware devs look at this and come up with a solid incentive. Like someone just before you said, it's very annoying to run a flashpoint as a tank knowing that you're going to be spending more on a repair bill than you get in rewards. Beyond this, it is far easier to run through Ziost in two hours and have a full set of rating 190 blue's to jump right into SM Ops for tier pieces.

I didn't claim there was any uniformity, nor did I claim there was a server with more tanks than dps. Reading comprehension must be a lost art. What I stated was that there is not uniformity between the numbers of roles on different servers, so making a 1:1 comparison is impossible. Saying that because my server only has 1 tank, 1 healer, 10 dps so that means the rest of the servers have the same ratio is like saying because all of my friends are missing at least one arm or leg, that means everyone's friends are missing an arm or leg. The world just got less touchy. If you read my OP, the 4th option I presented gave incentives to people joining groups through group finder. Also, I've played WoW for probably ~7 years now and I have played with people that only spoke everything from Spanish to Portuguese to Italian to French to Mandarin. I can promise you that there will be at least one person in every group that speaks the universal language of English. English is spoken and taught in every country in the world, some people don't speak it well and that's not their fault at all. However, I don't see the language barrier as a problem anyway. You're not trying to form an unbreakable bond with these people, you're trying to help them, help you get through a few boss fights for some loot.