Nucairion
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Storm / Jet Charge has not been removed.
However what do you guys think of vanguard post 5.0 ? ... Personnaly I think have become the new mercs in ranked arena, tried doing a few solo queues, and general rule of thumb is kill the vanguard first, pretty tought to survive in 3+ dps team ups, maybe it's down to my gear still a majority of 208 stuff.
i thought i would play more powertech this expansion but having spent all morning doing pvp, pyro at least and i think powertech/vanguard in general are weak as hell compared to other classes. we basically have no surviablity as dps minus a 25% damage reduction and a heal below 30% ability while msot if not all other classes in game have a much better defensive cooldowns. mercs is so powerful, why they didnt think to give us a new defensive cd i have no idea. not sure powertech/vanguard gonna be worth it for pvp at this rate. mercs are in a much better position.
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According to the time-worn criteria previously published in a million billion other threads about species on these forums:
* Trandoshans are out: too large, don't speak Basic, head not human-like (lekku and the like don't count, duh), not really romanceable - who'd kiss a lizard-man?
* Devaronians could work: reasonably human size, speak Basic, human-like face, compatible in romance terms (see for example the spoiler box below). But have you ever seen a female?
Devaronian Romance spoiler:
Hylo Visz and Gault Rennow
trandoshans can speak basic. there problems in game stem from fact they cant where items on the hands and feet. (not to much of a problem given the togruta solution they did say may open up possibilites from some other asked for rqaces like rodians.
the second and biggest problem with trandoshans are romances. would not work or be right to have trandoshan toon romancing someone. dont know how they could do it but they could bypass that issue by finding away to disable romance option for the species. how they could do that i have no idea. im no programmer but there has to be a way
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I dont know if this has been suggested before but it would really be good idea if your added a vendor for cartel market packs that allowed you to trade a like for like item. for example you get the vented dualsaber but dont want it and need the vented lightsaber but got dualsaber in a pack. then you could trade it to the vendor for a bind on pickup version. thus preventing you from selling the traded item and getting it for personal use.
my other suggestion is remvoe those pesky chance cubes they drop for to many. from 1 hypercrate i got 33 chance cubes. from second 38 and from 3rd 31 that took away some many chances of plat items from my pack. your gambling from the beggining buying a pack, adding an item to take away chances of better items by replacing that chance with another gambling is unfair
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that's good to know, I've been wanting/waiting for them forever, i am glad that they are putting them in the game soon, i just wished i knew when they where releasing them, all i know is that they said early 2015 do they mean like winter early(preferably janurary) or spring early?
early 2015 for bw could mean as early as January or as late as april/may. But it really depends on a couple of things. firstly other than the nyc cantina tour podcast we have not had an official word from eric musco or anyone else about this. so im not entirely sure its even happening until a post from one of them does indeed confirm it or announce it.
second thing would also be depending on when they started development on making it a playable species. most of the ground work is done as its in the game already but still have to make it into playable and customizable version
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It's actually two weird old tricks, and a few other hints. And here they are, yours for no charge, and with no obligation. If you are not 100% satisfied with the advice in this post, return it within 30 days for a full refund.
1. USE A HEALING COMPANION
First, use a healing companion. This is the single biggest thing you can do to offset any stat gap you may fall into. If you do this, and as long as you keep your armor rating and weapon rating within the ballpark for your current level, then you should have no problems getting through the class missions.
2. GET CHEAP MODS FOR CREDITS FROM PLANET VENDORS
Second, buy cheap seven piece orange adaptive armor sets from the GTN for you and your companion, and fill them with green armorings, barrels, and hilts that you can buy from the vendors that sell them for credits on each leveling planet. Yes, these vendors exist. No, you probably have not ever seen or used them before.
These vendors may not be the cheapest possible way to gear up, but they are cheap enough, and unlike the GTN they have a never ending supply, at prices that never go up no matter what.
You will find one of these vendors on each new planet near the arrival zone. Just look for the one named <Mods Vendor>. This vendor always will be in the main market area of the planet, somewhere around where the vendors called <Heavy Armor Vendor> and <Light Armor Vendor> are. Buy as many green armorings and barrels / hilts as you need to fill all your orange pieces for you and your companion.
Because the skill training costs have been zeroed out for the duration of the 12x bonus time, the credits you get from the class missions and selling trash drops ought to more than cover the cost, if you refresh your gear once at the start of each planet, or every other planet if you want to economize. So these mods should be affordable on your class mission stipends alone, even if you are leveling your very first character on the 12x bonus, with no Old Money from a wealthy main to subsidize you.
Fill in the mod and enhancement slots as you are able, with the drops you get eventually from class missions, or with the cheapest pieces you can get off the GTN, even if far below your level. You can even leave the other slots empty, because you don't need them filled just to get by.
The trick is that, as long as you're using a healing companion, the only thing that really matters is that you have a reasonably good armor rating (damage reduction) and weapon rating, so the damage you do can outrun the damage enemies are doing to you, minus the healing your companion does. These green armorings and barrels / hilts are enough to get you over that hump, even if all your other slots are empty.
OTHER TIPS
Head to Makeb at Level 47
Keep in mind that once you hit 47 gear is a non-issue. As soon as you ding 47, you can go to your ship, get the Makeb quest from your holoterminal, go to Makeb and pick up the bolster from the terminal near the shuttle on the orbital station (also available at any taxi stand), and then blitz through Makeb from 47 to 55 in less than an hour.
You do not need to finish Chapter 3 in order to start Makeb, and you probably don't need to finish Makeb in order to get to the level cap. I have leveled two toons now on the 12x bonus, and on both I hit 47 after the second or third class mission on Voss, and hit 55 at the end of the next to last planet story line mission on Makeb.
Once you hit 55, you can go back and finish the Chapter 3 missions at your leisure, with the added boost of being far over leveled for them. The Makeb planet story line also will give you between five and seven pieces of decent green level 51 to 53 gear, which will more than do for finishing your Chapter 3 missions.
Optional: Get Your Human Species and Companion Presence Bonuses
If you don't have the +100 bonus to presence from leveling a human character, now is a great time to do one. If you don't want to level one, you can buy the unlock in the legacy window for credits or CC.
Also, once you complete all conversations with all five companions on a new character, you'll have a +50 bonus to presence (+10 for each companion), permanently, for each base class that you do this on.
If you get all the class unlocks and the Human species bonus, you will have 500+ presence at level 1, which makes your companion an absolute monster at low levels. I usually summon HK-51 at level 1 on my new alts, strip off all his gear, and give him an empty orange sniper rifle from my collection. Once you hit around 350-400 presence or more at level 1 from the legacy bonuses, he will solo anything on the starter planets this way, including packs of HEROIC mobs, while you stand around and watch.
Even at higher levels this bonus is helpful. With 500 presence, your companion will have an extra 2.5k total health, and in the level 40-50 range presence will contribute about as much to the companion's bonus damage and bonus healing as their main stat does.
If you do want to complete your companion conversations for the presence bonus, then below is a cheap and sure route for doing that. It will kill your finger clicking, but it saves time hunting and paying high prices on the GTN for gifts, or taking ages to gather them with crew skills. You should be able to take five companions from 0 to 10k affection in about an hour this way.
This will cost in the neighborhood of 300-400k to max out five companions, give or take (not counting wear and tear on your right mouse button). So this may not be something you can afford if you don't have some credits already saved up or a ready source of them from older characters.
- Buy the companion gift and conversation affection bonuses from the Legacy window for your character.
- Go to the companion gifts vendor on fleet and give one of each Rank 1 gift type to figure out which is the favorite for your current companion.
- Buy 99 of the gift that gives the highest affection (+125 with the bonus, with most companions, starting from zero) and give them all. The gain will eventually slow down to +25, but just keep going. Note that you could use Rank 2 gifts after 4,000 affection, but the minimum affection gain from three Rank 1 gifts is more than from a single Rank 2 gift, and the cost is the same for 3x Rank 1 as it is for 1x Rank 2, so it's cheaper to stick with Rank 1 gifts until the gain hits zero (it's more clicks, but not that much more).
- When you run out, you should be around 5,000+ affection. Buy ~20 more Rank 1 gifts, however many are needed, to get to 6,000 affection. At 6,000 affection the gain will hit 0.
- Buy 80 Rank 2 gifts, which should be enough to get you to 8,000. Note that you may have to buy a few gifts more for companions that don't have a "favorite" gift category that gives +125 affection at the start.
- Lather, rinse, repeat, for all five companions, until you are at 8,000 affection on all of them.
- Go to your ship and do all of the conversations for all companions. This may get you to 10k with some of them, depending on your choices. If not, buy a few blue Rank 5 gifts of your companion's favorite or second favorite type off the GTN to finish them up.
For one companion you also will have to do one or two short story line quests to get them to finish their conversations with you. For the other four, they should complete without having to do any actual quests.
For a handful of companions like Mako, the companion story line won't complete until a certain point in the middle of Chapter 3. If a companion is at 10k and seems stuck, and won't talk to you any more, but you haven't gotten the legacy unlock, just do a class mission or two until they want to talk again, and then they should finish.
Optional: Get Treek
If you want to have a healing companion earlier than you normally would get it on some classes, then the 12x event is a good excuse to unlock Treek. Once you buy her for your first character for 2,100 CC, you can unlock her in Collections for all characters for 700 CC, and then you can summon her for free on any new character from level 10.
there is a flaw in your logic about companion gifts and lvling up on a budget. to get one companion to 10k affection via rank 1 and 2 gifts your looking at over 350k credits per character and that is excluding getting gifts for treek and hk
- Buy the companion gift and conversation affection bonuses from the Legacy window for your character.
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With how fast people are leveling and consequently how much game experience they are skipping entirely, then you factor in the legions of derps making threads like "The Weird people you meet in Group Finder" possible, Ive been wishing there was a thread like this (and that bioware would somehow force people to read it...). So:
10/22 Update: Added a section on Gearing for fresh 55s.
About Classes
BH/Trooper
- Powertechs and Vangaurds ARE NOT RANGED CLASSES. They may have ranged abilities and a gun, but they are melee and should be in melee range using melee abilities. If youre using Unload/Full Auto and Missile Blast/Explosive Round, you should have made a Merc or a Commando.
- Missile Blast and Explosive Round are terrible abilities that have almost no practical use once you are level 15 or 20. Once you are level 20, there isnt much reason for them to be on your action bar. The only time they have a real use is in pvp when you need to stop multiple people from capping a node and dont have access or the ability to use anything better (which would be just about anything else).
Inquisitor/Consular
- Sorcs/Sages are Ranged, Assassins/Shadows are Melee. Seriously.
- The only Assassin/Shadow spec that should ever use Crushing Darkness/Mind Crush is the Madness/Balance spec. If you are not Madness/Balance take it off your bar. If you are Madness/Balance, NEVER, EVER HARD CAST IT. EVER. INSTANT CAST WITH PROC, ONLY!!!!
- The only Assassin/Shadow spec that should be making regular use of Force Lightning/Telekinetic Throw is the tanking spec. This is because this ability directly figures in to your damage mitigation. Other specs have no use for it outside of using Recklessness or Force Potency for the extra range when you can move.
- Spamming Force Storm/Forcequake may look cool, but if you are using it on a single target because you are lazy, you dont look cool. You look like a tool.
- Spamming Overload/Force Wave is also a bad idea. As far as dps goes, its a waste of a GCD. It also tends to completely upset position, interrupt Ravages, break CC's. Its a situation skill, not rotational. -MillionsKNives
Agent/Smuggler
- Operatives/Scoundrels are MELEE. Yes, like Powertechs and Vanguards they have a couple ranged abilities. But they are NOT ranged.
- If youre a sniper/gunslinger and facing stealth/jumpers in a warzone, standing around not in cover is like an early birthday present for the enemy team.
Warrior/Knight
- Just because a Marauder/Sentinel has two lightsabers does NOT mean they are god's gift to mmo players.
- If youre Annihilation/Watchman, stop using Force Scream/Blade Storm.
About Roles
Tanks
- Stop guarding the healer. The only things that will ever even think about attacking the healer are stuff that the threat reduction from the guard does not affect. In other words, it is completely USELESS to guard them. Put it on a dps.
- Tanking does not mean attacking one target at a time. All three tanking classes have the tools to grab the attention of most if not all of the enemies in any given pack. Plus, if your DPS are doing their jobs appropriately, any 'escapees' will be focused out first.
- Stop starting combat with taunt. Its a total waste of taunt.
- Learn to plan ahead the usage of your cooldowns.
- Dont try and stare down the trash. It doesnt work. Standing around without a good reason (Ex. an important CD for a difficult trash pack) is wasteful, silly, and somewhat rude. General rule, if everyones at full health, and nothings happening, thats bad.
DPS
- Focus on the weakest enemies in any particular group first. Yes, its less "glorious" to have your Ravage interrupted mid cast cause you already killed 'it' but it benefits the group more to reduce the size of a group as fast as possible.
- Seriously, stop breaking CC.
- Trust me, you DO have an interrupt.
Healers
- Stop asking for guard. Having guard on you will not prevent the stuff that has been running at your face from doing so. A 25% reduction in functionally infinite threat is still infinite. If you still dont agree, scroll down and read the section in Mechanics entitled Aggro.
- Cleanse the Mining Laser debuff in Hammer. Im serious. Actually, understand that you can cleanse period. There are a lot of "healers" out there that dont seem to understand this.
About Combat Mechanics
Threat
First off: when you deal damage or heal hp, you also "deal threat." Enemies have an "Aggro Table," a list of all the players they are threatened by. Say a DPS Player A does 1k damage to some NPC, some other DPS Player B does 1.2K to the same NPC, and a healer heals 500 damage from one of the two dps players in combat with that same NPC. The NPC now has a list of:
Player B - 1.2k Threat
Player A - 1k Threat
Healer - 500 Threat.
Because Player B is higher on the table, the NPC attacks Player B.
Lets say that over the next few seconds, Player A really turns on the gas, puts on their Big Boy Pants, and deals another 1k Damage. Now the table is:
Player A - 2k Threat
Player B - 1.2k Threat
Healer - 500 Threat.
Because Player A has manned up and is now higher on the table, the NPC shifts their attention to Player A.
Threat Modifiers
Tanks throw a few more elements into the equation. For starters, their tanking stance doubles the threat that their abilities generate. IE, Tank does 1k damage to an NPC but does 2k threat to said NPC. They also have abilities which naturally deal more threat than their basic damage would otherwise generate.
Healers on the other hand, assuming they have the talent (which should be absolutely impossible to miss) generate 55% less threat than the amount of HP their heals regen. Futhermore, they only generate aggro based on actual healing DONE. IE, They may hit you with a 14k which you would expect to generate a little less than 6.3k threat, but if you were only missing 10k hp at the time, then that 14k heal only generates 4.5k threat.
The caveat to this is that healers generate this aggro on ALL enemies they are in combat with.
This brings us nicely to a more detailed discussion of why putting a guard on a healer is completely retarded.
Aggro
The Guard ability that tanks have reduce the threat that the affected player generates by 25%. IE, you deal 1k damage, but generate only 750 threat on the NPC. This also applies to healers. IE, they heal for 1k but generate only approximately 350 threat, instead of the expected value of 450 due to their talents.
So why not guard the healer then? As noted above, whenever they heal, they generate aggro on EVERYTHING they are in combat with. That sounds like a lot of aggro, no? So why not?
Because, A: Its stupid. B: Its STUPID, and C: Healers generate VERY little aggro. The ONLY reason that stray adds start attacking the healer is because no one hit them. Quite often, its perfectly possible for the tank to get aggro on everything and corral everything nicely. But sometimes, its not and there are a couple enemies spread out all over creation being a giant nuisance. Well, if no one else hits them, guess who they will aggro onto, even though the actual number value of that threat may be small, if you compare a small number to 0, that small number is still infinitely larger.
This is why guarding a healer is one of the biggest Noob-Flags a tank can raise. That 25% reduction will reduce the aggro that the healer generates on mobs the rest of the party hasnt touched, but since you dont have ANY threat on them at all, a 25% reduction of Infinity is still Infinity and those mobs are going to attack the healer anyway. And, to correct the problem, someone is going to have to do exactly what they should have done to begin with. Attack them. Realistically speaking, the DPS in the party should be taking care of it (whether those stray weaker mobs are a problem or not) as their kill order is *supposed* to be Weakest to Strongest.
The final bit of wisdom necessary on this subject is a discussion of how Taunts and Threat Drops work.
Aggro Management
Taunts
In other games, a taunt forces the Taunt-ee to attack the Taunt-er for some determined amount of time but has no other effect. Not so in TOR. Taunts in this game actually increase your threat, in addition to forcing the target to attack you for 6 seconds. Every time a tank taunts, their threat value with the NPC they taunted is set to 10% above the highest value on the table at the time of the taunt, even if they have the highest threat on the enemy at that time.
This is why starting combat with Taunt is such a terrible idea. It actually makes it HARDER to hold aggro on an NPC. If you start combat with taunt, your threat on that NPC will be 1. This might as well be 0 for all the good it will do you. It also puts your taunt on cooldown for 15 seconds. Meaning that, the overgeared Mega-DPS in your party that pulled aggro off of you 6 seconds into the fight? Well, it means hes keeping it for a while. Yes, you could use your AOE taunt to regain threat, but that has a much longer cool down of 45 seconds, and you may need that for other situations, depending on the fight.
Threat Drops
As for threat drops, there are three different kinds. Moves that apply a percent reduction to threat, moves that drop combat and erase all threat, and some weird thing that marauders and sentinels have.
The first type are the moves like Chaff Flare or Cloud Mind. They take whatever value of threat you have, apply a percentage multiplier to that value, and set your threat to that new value. The most effective way to use these moves is to either anticipate moving ahead of the tank on the table (or see that its going to happen on Parsec or a simliar program) and preemptively use the ability, OR, if you do pull ahead of the tank, WAIT to use the threat drop until AFTER the tank taunts the Boss or whatever back off of you. Yes, you may take some damage, but overall youll help the tank out more. If you drop threat before they taunt it back, then the highest value on the table will be cut significantly, resulting in a smaller boost for the tanks on threat. If you wait, and drop threat after the tank taunts back, it allows their taunt to use your higher threat value for its base figure maximizing the possible threat that the tank could have at that point and then minimising your own immediately afterword giving them a much larger cushion to work with.
The second type are the Assassin/Shadow and Operative/Scoundrel Vanish ability. By dropping combat entirely, they reset your threat back to zero. Again, its best if you wait until after the tank has taunted to maximise their threat gain but the vanish ability has an important place in the damage dealing rotations of each class, so you shouldnt be using it to help the tank (this is more true for more serious content, if youre in some podunk flashpoint, its fine, its not going to matter anyway).
The third type takes all of the concepts behind the first two, dances around them a bit and then defenestrates them entirely. Marauder's and Sentinel's Force Camouflage only actually helps if you use it after taking damage, of any kind and from any source.
About PVP
Warzones
Warzones are not about fighting, doing damage and getting kills, they are about coordinated objective play. Quite often, fighting helps your team meet those objectives. But focusing too much on fighting, doing damage, and getting kills can just as easily lose you a match as it can win it.
Nodes
When guarding nodes. DONT chase the enemy off the node. They WANT YOU TO DO THAT. Guarding the node is the priority. If the other team wants to sit out of range staring at you for the entire warzone thats just fine and dandy. Force them to come to you, do not make their job easier by running after them and giving up the node to the stealther who snuck up behind you.
Conversely, if youre trying to take a node, fighting 50 meters away from it isnt helping anything. If you dont fight on the node. You literally cannot ever take the thing. Unless the enemy is totally stupid and all runs out to fight you way out of range to do anything, fighting away from the node is a total waste of time.
Communication
COMMUNICATION WINS WARZONES! Its true. It does. Communicating information is almost always the single most important thing you can do. If you see people running towards the node youre guarding all by yourself, your most important job is to tell your team about it as soon as you possibly can. If this means that you have to sit their typing while youre getting killed, THEN DO IT. If you fight, die, and then decide to let people know, all you have managed to do is give your team NO CHANCE to respond and defend the node in time to prevent a cap.
COMMUNICATION IS A TWO-WAY STREET! Part of being a good communicator is paying attention to what others are communicating to you. If you dont notice the repeated calls of "2 inc west!" or "Stealth in Mid" or "PYLON NOW! and so forth because you are too busy derping at the enemy, you are not doing your part.
SPECIFICITY IN COMMUNICATION IS PARAMOUNT! One of the more annoying things that still crops up now and then is someone using subjective directional indicators rather than the definite cardinal direction directly from the minimap. IE, they say Left. Well, there are two lefts. Theres the left to your left, and then theres the other left to your other left if you turn around. Be specific and use the minimap. Dont assume a universal orientation based on which starting gate you come out of. --Sullster-
Situational Awareness
SITUATIONAL AWARENESS SAVES WARZONES! The leading cause of the word 'DEFEAT' popping up on the warzone scorecard at the end of a match is people not being aware of their surroundings. Quite often, it boils down to them not looking at a node. If the point of the match is to control or guard some node, guess what is more important? Guarding the node or watching some random punk dancing off in the distance? Its the first one. PAY ATTENTION TO WHATS GOING ON AROUND YOU!.
SITUATIONAL AWARENESS DOES NOT SOLELY CONCERN THE ENEMY! Part of being a good pvper is the ability to use your awareness of your surroundings to make intelligent inferences in the absence of direct information. As should be obvious to all, you can rarely count on the random pug guarding the other node to let people know about the legion of bad guys that showed up in time for you to do anything about it. If there is only one enemy at the node youre at but six of your teammates and you cant see anyone else, you might want to check the other node. This is also known as COMMON SENSE.
Warzone Evaluation
The Scorecard is not objectively correct. One of the more common mistakes I see people make is taking the information off the scorecard at face value. Just because you are higher up the table on the default ordering than someone else does not mean that you did better than them or had a bigger effect. Occasionally, it can be a direct indication that you did worse. Quite often its totally meaningless and has no bearing on anything at all. There are so many things that the score card does not track that have enormous import in determining a win or a loss. There is also no way for the card to directly show the context that resulted in the numbers the score card displays.
Arenas (Ranked)
Basically, Dont suck.
Oh, and if you dont have at least a full set of the basic WZ commendation PVP gear. STAY OUT.
About PVE
Gear
You can get a free set of 156 gear from just doing the Oricon story missions, a free level 148 weapon from doing the CZ-198 story missions. There is all this obnoxiously free gear out there. You dont need to show up to an HM 55 wearing the crap you got back on Voss.
Group Finder
Regular Flashpoints
Because it is possible for your class to queue for a role does NOT mean you have the right to queue as it to get a faster pop. If you are unprepared to fulfill a role but you select it anyway to save time you are screwing over your entire group. DONT DO IT.
Dont queue for hardmode flashpoints immediately after hitting 55. They are NOT a beginner level 55 activity. Youre supposed to have an average Item level of 148 before you do HM FPs.
By extension, "Average Item Level of 148" means that the AVERAGE of your item levels is 148. If you take the item level for each item youre wearing, and divide that by 14 (the number of items you should be wearing) and you dont get at least 146 you are NOT prepared and you wont be able to contribute what you are supposed to be able to to the group.
If you are completely new to flashpoints, its better to bring it up at the start rather than waiting. You may sometimes get instantly kicked before the first trash pack, but a group like this would kick you eventually anyway. At least this way you waste less time. More often that that, though, your group will be understanding and tell you the things you need to know to be successful. They will typically also be more forgiving of the mistakes are almost guaranteed to make due to unfamiliarity.
Tacticals
Minor, but seriously, STOP FREAKING OUT when I have a tank icon next to my name but Im in a dps spec. Its a tactical flashpoint. Its not like youre pulling aggro off me anyway, and Im not giving up 3 or 4k dps just so I can "tank." Im making this go twice as fast as it otherwise would have and youre complaining?
Operations
Realistically, if youre reading this post and learning things, you might not be ready for ops. Yes, there are plenty of people who can go into an operation half asleep and completely drunk and do just fine and dandy but that is a result of gear, familiarity, and hours of practice.
If youre just starting operations here are some things you should know:
Operations are a tier above Flashpoints. Fights are rarely "run in, attack boss, kill boss, loot corpse." Bosses have mechanics, things you have to pay attention to, watch out for, avoid, take care of.
When the person leading the raid gives instructions PAY ATTENTION. As mentioned above, there are things you need to know. Some fights, all it takes is one person not doing their job and you can kill your entire team.
Operations are also more demanding than flashpoints. In KDY, you can get away with doing almost everything wrong while wearing no gear. Operations hold you to a higher standard. Even if you think you know how to play your class, check out a guide or do some parsing. You may be in for a rude awakening, but better that way than being kicked from an ops because you cant pull your weight.
Most of all, calm down and dont freak out. Pay attention to what youre doing and whats going on around you.
About Gearing
One of the design flaws in this game is that the group finder system does not enforce any sort of item level requirements. No content is gated. The second you have met the Character level requirement, you are automatically eligible for the instance as far as the system is concerned. Whether you actually have the gear necessary to do it is immaterial.
The other side of the problem is how de-emphasized "gearing up" is while leveling. You can go from 10 to 55 without ever getting anything more than what was handed out on your starter planet.
The end result is a ton of people ending up in content they arent ready for making things more difficult for everyone.
So, how can you avoid being *that* person?
A Lesson on Comm storage
A while back, Bioware introduced a system that allowed people to sell back certain types of items for full purchase price. IE, you purchase a weapon from the PvP vendor for 900 Warzone Commendations. You have a two hour grace period in which to sell the weapon back and get back your 900 Wz Comms.
The clincher is, this timer does NOT count down while offline it only counts ingame playtime. The second clincher is, you can sell back an item and then immediately repurchase it and you get a new, full 2 hour timer.
This makes it possible for us to store commendations far in excess of the cap listed on our currency page.
Example: You have 2732 warzone commendations. If you do another warzone, most of the commendations you get will be wasted as you can only have a max of 2750. So, instead, you can purchase 3 of the 900 comm pvp weapons from the vendor next to the mission terminal. Now, you have 32 comms (and room for 2718 more) and 3 items in your inventory that for the next two hours of play time can be resold for 900 comms each.
As the timer gets close to running out, you can sell back the weapons (being careful not to go over 2750) and then purchase them right back.
As long as you make sure to refresh the timer before the two hours are up, you can store as many comms as you have inventory space to hold items.
This "trick" works for anything you buy with commendations. IE, Storage boxes from the Planetary commendation vendors, and there is absolutely nothing against the rules about it.
Just make sure you DONT FORGET TO REFRESH THE TIMER. IF you do, youll be very pissed off.
Pre-50
By storing commendations, you can get a head start on the gearing process.
For example, if you store 12500 wz comms (approx 14 weapons), the second you hit level 55 you can purchase a full set of pvp gear. Armour, weapons and offhand, Earpiece, implants, and both relics. Right off the bat. If pvp isnt your thing (or even if it is), you can store planetary comms to purchase the grade 25 item mods from the makeb vendor on fleet as soon as you hit level 50.
Around level 47 dailies start opening up on Ilum and Belsavis. These give credits, some basic level 50 item mods as well as classic commendations, which can be used to purchase levle 50 gear from vendors on fleet and in some of the daily areas.
At Level 50
Once you are level 50, the old level 50 Hard Mode flashpoints become available. Bosses in these instances drop the old Black Hole (146 rating) gear as well as classic commendations that can be used to purchase Campaign from the vendors on fleet. Black Hole and Campaign are both good enough to serve as entry level gear for HM 55s
Dailies open up in the Black Hole (on Corellia) and Section X (on Belsavis). They give credits as well as classic commendations.
You can also begin to do the classic operations (Eternity Vault, Karagga's Palace, and Explosive Conflict) at level 50. These drop Hazmat (grade 150) gear as well as Dread Guard tokens (grade 150 w/ set bonus).
At Level 55
The real gear grind begins here.
But to start, you want to get yourself the rest of the way ready for Level 55 HMs.
Two new daily areas open up once youre are 55, CZ-198 and Oricon. Both have storyline quests attached that give you very decent gear for a starting 55. Technically, you can start doing Czerka Dailies at level 50, but you wont be able to do them by yourself until about level 52 or 53 (depending on the kind of gear you have). Oricon requires level 55 to start.
The easiest place to start the story line quests are on CZ-198 itself. There are two droids in on the landing platfrom, one sends you to fleet and starts the quest for Czerka. The other sends you to Oricon for the culmination of the Dread Master story line that began back on good ol' Belsavis.
Round about now would be a good point to start thinking about getting a permanent armour set. The way gearing and itemisation works in TOR, alot of the mods that come in the gear you get will be somewhat useless. And so, when you get a new peice of gear, its quite likely youll only want one or two of the mods it contains. So, its better to have one set that you augment and then upgrade piecemeal as you can.
Post-55
You can continue the gear grind without doing operations purchasing vendor gear using Elite and Ultimate comms you get from weeklies and flashpoints, but that stuff is almost all suboptimal. Only the power and crit mods are halfway decent. The enhancements, and all of the tank gear is ultimately, trash. However, this "trash" is probably still better than the flash point gear youre wearing.
As far as fine-tuning your stats, consult a guide/website devoted to that sort of thing.
One thing I find missing from this consists of what you say about GF ops. Seeing as you now get bolstered in GF ops gear is really not an issue sure over geared people would prefer other over geared people or people at least geared for it but bolster essentially does that for you.
what I think the issue really is is people joining GF ops without a clue what there doing not speaking up before and dying coz they don't no mechanics or just simply do not know there class prior to joining the the ops.
- Powertechs and Vangaurds ARE NOT RANGED CLASSES. They may have ranged abilities and a gun, but they are melee and should be in melee range using melee abilities. If youre using Unload/Full Auto and Missile Blast/Explosive Round, you should have made a Merc or a Commando.
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im delighted this appears to be next race coming. I always felt they should have been in at launch and will defo be changing some of my toons to tugruta. in a perfect world wookie would be next but that has no chance
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Personally, I think that it was a bad move to delay, If they had a plan to release info and start pre-orders by the end of the month they should of had everything in the works long before now.
I'm guessing they have a feature that they are trying to get into 3.0 but it's on the edge and they don't want to promise something and it doesn't make it then they have other issues, however they should be in late testing/polish now if they want to release by the end of the year.
Another possibility is that Star Wars Rebels comes out on Friday and then starts on the 13th and they either don't want to mix them or want the hype from Rebels to try and carry over to SWTOR.
Either way, completely holding back all information seems like a bad plan, given the "WE WILL HAVE A FULL REVEAL BY THE END OF THE MONTH" comments.
Is it the end of the world or the game? no. Am I going to unsub? no. Am I frustrated and a bit angry? yes.
When someone says they are going to do something they need to do it or give em an update worth mentioning, something to tide me over...a progress report and some details is what i'm looking for.
Their best and easiest course of action at this point is some images and maybe some info (videos take too much unless they are done), that would completely defuse the entire situation and keep people(most anyway) happy. But complete silence and a "I'm sorry" post doesn't do anything but look bad(even though it's a nice act) and fuel the fire!
agreed. the thing is they didn't even have to go into much detail. the could have just said a full annocuncement on the upcoming expansion has been delayed a couple of weeks but to here is a little info and at least given us the name of expansion. giving us the name wouldn't have hurt the process eric mentions unless there totally clueless and decide to change the name of it 2 days before launch ;p
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are ashes still recruiting?
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how about adding some new playable races to the game. you added cathar and from what I remember that was going to be the start of new species coming to the game once in awhile. so how about getting round to adding some.
others can feel free to add they wants if not listed.
races id like to see added.
1. Nautolans. (coolest race ever)
2. Kel-dor
3. kaleesh.
4. Gungans. (just kidding) seriously togruta.
there the ones I want to see added. what does everyone else want added
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^^
Quoted for truth!! Good find there!!
thanks I read it earlier and I was thinking it was some way of. so decided to do the math and make a point ;p
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Honestly, a $60 for a legacy transfer would be fair. $20 is too seep for one character with an automated service, $240 is too steep for 12.
also your maths is well of it is not $240 for 12 transfers. the best value cc you can buy is 5500 for $39.99 that gives you 3 transfers. at 1800 points per transfer if you round that of to 2000 per transfer you would get 2 transfers in that 5500 leaving you 1500 coins remaining deduct the 400 from rounding of that leaves you with 1900 coins allowing for a 3rd transfers with 100 coins left. 4x$40= $160 so in total its $160 to transfer 12 characters
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Honestly, a $60 for a legacy transfer would be fair. $20 is too seep for one character with an automated service, $240 is too steep for 12.
lol $60 for all twelve. that would be like wow allowing you to transfer all your chars for $80. is $240 to steep for 12 chars not in my opinion no. would a different fee be better sure everyone wants things cheaper. wot I would have given to get my £1500 pc to be £700. the fact is nothing in this life is free and more and more each year things become more expensive. be greatful you have a fixed steady price that isn't going to increase further or be happy you don't have to buy the upcoming expansion this time round.
seriously I do understand you put a lot into your characters but no1 is forcing you to transfer them ALL at the same time. why not do a couple build up some points with your allocation each month and transfer more over a period of time.
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No it isn't and you don't get to decide that.. Bioware is will within their right to charge us for server transfers.. If you want to transfer then you need to pay for it..
Like I said in my first post.. Why should they lose money to accommodate you??
agreed.
I find it funny people find so much to complain about with this game but here is further support that the transfer service bioware provide is both fair and reasonable.
in the uk it costs £11.99 for 2400, that gives you one character transfer and still some coins left over. in wow a character transfer costs £15-20 even more to include a faction change or race change.
now I know the op is going to say well this isn't wow blah blah blah. its still cheaper in swtor to transfer a char than it is in wow. and also.it is not free for them. they had to set up the transfer servers which takes time and man hours to do they have to moniter the transfers to make sure they go through in the order received and make sure things go off without problems and as a previous poster stated they have to have customer service reps available should something go wrong so that they can get to the bottom of the issue and fix it as soon as they can.
to suggest this is all covered by a monthly fee is absurd. the monthly fee you pay at least before f2p was the right to use the servers to play the game and to use the service they provide, now with f2p that clearly changes that abit but considering how limited they are f2p players barely play for free to experiances the full game.
heres a solution why transfer all in one go. I understand you have put a lot of time and effort into your characters aswell as money but do u really need them ALL at the same time, why not transfers 2-3 to start with gear up any that still need gearing and then in the future transfer a couple more?
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Seems to depend on the server, too. On some servers, one faction seems to be "ruling", on others, it's the other one, I've read.
And yes, daytime, weektime and expertise definitively are a factor.
Sorcerors & Sages seem to currently have a hard time, as well. I play one myself and have largely withdrawn from PvP with him (and enjoy PVe rather, now).
that's not really true im lvling my sorc from 50 maybe make it my main as having a lot of fun with it. sure if against a smart team as a sorc your focused down very quick but position yourself and u can go for awhile before being hit if your lucky or if your against new player or people that don't really no pvp well u can go an entire warzone without being hit.
my sorcs lvl 52 halfway to 53 now but at lvl 50 after a year of not playing it I decided to lvl it in second warzone I did I hit 686k odd game over 80k healing. top of medal table and a chunk of defender points aswell so to say they have a hard time over any class is strange one. in terms of big hits yes they are not the most powerful of classes in pvp the cast times can really limit you against good players that no to interrupt you or focus you (if theres no healers).
now im not an expert at sorc and im certain im nowhere near the best players of sorcs/sages but I do take my time to learn my class learn to you what skills and when. when to pop cooldowns when run and when to stay and fight. after all pvp isn't ment ot be easy dispite the fact sometimes you win really easily or loose easily but that's just down to the quality of the team and there ability to work together
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I don't get this spec at all what is the point of hybrid without the auto crit on rail shot??
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L2P issue. You need to run with a Sin or a PT (Tank, I guess?) and utilize the pull. THen CC the other healer, and burn the pulled one.
lol will never take that seriously. and I no how to play thanks. and *** do you think we did? dance around all stupid and clueless
this was our set up for my team 2 merc dps operative healer and a sin tank. no matter what we did pulling one healer away from others he could just force speed back to his team when stuns were used and bubble and root.
when you have 2 healers against you, you don't have a chance especially in pugs and while my team did listen the 2 healers could just keep eachother alive.
so NO its is NOT a L2P issue so stop making pathetic and stupid assumptions and actually think before you spec. if you had more dps yes its doable but in an arena of 4 per 2 you DO not have dps to take out 2 healers.
but cant say im surprised typical elitist response on these forums. just shout L2P like everyone but them are noobs. get real not everyone is so stupid so get of your high horse and get a grip as just shouting L2P is just a ******* response from someone who cant stop to think that not everyone is clueless
and not to mention IN PUG queues you CANNOT choose what group composition you get
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so I have seen a fair few ranked and normal arenas and while most of them tend to be balanced some of them are not. like 3 times today I have seen unbalanced teams like the last one in normal arena my team consisted of 3 dps one healer the enemy team consisted of 2 healers and 1 tank and 1 dps making it IMPOSSIBLE to kill anything.
focus one healer the other heals keeping him alive. have 2 dps on 1 healer and other one the second healer not enough damage done to one healer and the second healer doesn't take enough damage and still gets of most of his heals. this needs to be dealth with as that is not a fair balanced fight.
I have seen plenty of other unbalanced combinations aswell so its not like this was a one off
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Wow. I must've caught all the anti-companion players today.
Seriously, though. SSSP -> Class Balance -> Companion update. Companions are a fun part of the game and a part that is important to me. A companion patch would be way more fun than that update (was it 2.1?) where everything was CM related.
i agree that companions are a fun part of the game but I do disagree they should release a companion only patch. if they could make a patch that included some companion changes great but not waste an entire 6week content update solely on companions.
here is how I I would have it done.
wait until a new EXPANSION where your adding a lot of new content or a good amount of new content where you can add a new chapter of class story or 2 new chapters maybe even 3 if they feel like it. add 2 new companions for each class 1 male one female. introduce the full SGR and also allow you to kill of companions like they allowed in orginal beta for awhile. if you kill one off you either have a choose to replace like for like with a new one or you loose that companion and can never get a replacement making you think before you act.
then introduce some new conversations and quests that develop the story further say u talked with ur love interest about kids maybe spring a kid into the story for companion??? but do it so it doesn't take the the sole focus of a patch but is seen as a nice addition to patch for those that like it and want it and isn't essential for those that don't care
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I have made a post about this before somewhere but here is my opinion. this debate will never end and in end all the so called good pvpers just say stupids comments like l2p or get over it or they disagree and weather they have the stones to admit it or not it simply comes down to this PREMADES love facerolling pugs coz it makes them look BETTER than they really are and the fear an equal challenge.
no granted there are some really good pvp guilds out there and I have seen my fair share of really really good pvpers. who im sure if ranked popped almost instantly after leaving 1 they would only do ranked but fact is bw cant get a system in place that everybody enjoys. either ranked fails coz some guilds that thought they were awesome got stomped every match and stopped doing rank or pugs complain about premades in normal wzs.
no party can ever really be happy with systems we have atm. one suggest would be to make ranked just grouped pvp from 2/8 players and normals solo casual q but even if they did that people would still find away to complain coz this game simply doesn't have the sub/player base of other mmos that can do bigger or separated pvp queues.
do I think premades ruin pvp in this game yes do I think it will ever change no, why coz bw don't really care to much about anything these days if its not store related or store related bugs. they have shown consistently since patch 1.1 they don't really care about pvp as much as pve and im not surprised as its the same team who did warhammer AOR pvp and that was worse than this,
my poit is accept it way it is or play another game if all you care about is pvp but ur not likely to find a grouping/solo system that's any different to this
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In other words all you're doing is making it harder for the more skilled to play against the lesser skilled. I am absolutely tired of more fortunate people getting shafted and less fortunate getting all of the attention just because it's pc.
Bads will be bads, they deserve to get rolled, they do not deserve to be carried.
Much better players do not deserve to be subject to the bad's demands to be carried.
In an optimal match making system, similarly skilled teams would go up against each other.
Even still, a system where 1 team is equally skilled against another equally skilled but better (8 pros vs 8 bads) would be a much better version of what we have now, which is random.
There needs to be a reward for skill. Rolling bads is an appropriate reward.
tbh all I see in your post is the suggestion you like rolling over pugs coz they make you look better than you really are.
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Pugs need to evolve and get better. This game does not need to cater to the casual/bad players anymore than it already does. I left the Halo series because they started catering to the casual scene; I don't want to leave this game but I will if they start implementing the crap that casual/bad players want.
lol pugs getting better? skill has nothing to do with it. its the lack of being able to communicate on the go without having to type. its about people running of and doing there own thing you cant stop that in bads. and if you think this game doesn't cater to the casuals already then clearly your not opening your eyes beyond the little premade farming
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There is only one way to fix PvP in this game.
1. Remove Expertise from the game.
2. Make PvP gear equal in stats to PvE gear of like level.
3. Use Bolster to bring people in gear not equal to those wearing more advanced gear to match stats of of the highest gear in the warzone, thus leveling the playing field in all areas of PvP.
Expertise is the bane of this game's PvP and it should be removed, period. Without it, skill will become more prominent.
Gear progression is still there. PvP gear should have its own look as it does now. With equal stats, PvP players can participate in all HM FPs and Ops.
If you really want to be radical, make the gear a dual spec type of gear. Meaning, the gear will have two set bonuses, one for PvE and one for PvP. I know this is possible because CoH/CoV had it for their enhancements used for the AC's powers. It worked great and made for fun times in PvE and PvP.
Changes like this will allow players to focus on what is important in the current PvP game. No more excuses of gear imbalance or the "belief" bolster is making high level PvE gear "beyond" that of what PvP gear is.
And to back that last statement up, I entered the warzone with crafted level 66 gear, including ear and implants. My expertise level was 1636. While my stats may have been higher, the fact I was 10% less in damage (50%), 12% less in damage reduction (25%), and 12% less in healing bonuses (10%), meant my higher stats, save for my hit points, were negated. Bolster did that.
The argument about crafted gear, Arkanian or Underworld is giving an advantage over PvP gear is a false narrative being exploited by players because they want to have the gross advantage over new players they had prior to 2.0.
im no diehard hardcore pvp but neither am I a diehard hardcore pver but even I know that removing expertise from this game would completely kill pvp in swtor.
WHY??? because those hardcore pvper for many years dating back many mmo's ago demanded there pvp choice have something that makes them stand out from pvers other than just appearance of armour. not that bioware even do that now seeing as both pve and pvp armour is identical. (WAY TO SHOW LACK OF IMAGINATION BW). and someone somethere decided best thing they can do to separate pve and pvp players is by giving pvpers a different stat. its become so prominent in almost if not every mmo I have played since wow that this is how pvpers and pver's have been separated. no this game lost a lot of sub in I think it was eiter 1.1 o 1.2 when bw destroyed ilum open world. taking away expertise will cause the remaining pvpers to quit thus dropping subs to a point I doubt the game would surivie with just f2p casuals and pvers.
I find it funny that so many people complain about pvp (and yes I have been one of them) in this game saying nerf this get rid of that or this needs changing and yet they are only thinking about what they think will make it better and not what statistically and general for everyone improve the pvp expeirance.
we all have our concerns or hates with swtors pvp and those that don't are either lying or just dealing with what we have and getting on with it. but every mmo with pvp like this has these issues and always has issues and none of them can every be completely made to EVERYONES liking.
as for class balance its an ILLUSION, yes some classes perform better than others now and clearly imo the dev or devs responsible for pvp balance just make the current class/classes they play op until enough posts screaming for nerfs ocme in then they nerf some buffing others.
many classes in this game can infact perform VERY well or very badly depending on the player controlling it. some haven't learnt the most effective rotation or how to optimize there stats and dps/hps. others just play casually and don't care about numbers. you could have the most op class right now imo sniper and he gets totally out damaged has less kills and kbs than everyone else in the warzone even to the most underpowered class because the person controlling it doesn't no what he is doing or what the best rotation is and so on.
my point is whether u like it or not this is probably the best pvp is gonna get and barring small arenas like wow has expect pvp to be vastly populated by op specs and pre mades and expertise and what ever else and either just get on with it or find something else to do or play that has the pvp your looking for.
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you do need an imp character to get the datacron master title as you do need to get all the imperial specific crons aswell.
when why its datacron master
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