/signed I feel like this has been around for months. I normally give BW the benefit of the doubt but I cannot believe we're still experiencing this bug.

This is so amazing I really hope it's true.

This. In FFXI, I hated this system at first but then I grew to love it. It's not neeaarly as harsh as some other games, but it's still a pretty big spank when you don't play carefully. This game needs more of a death penalty, not less, in my opinion.

The best thing about the event was its randomness and lack of notice. It just sort've happened... and was left there for people to explore. I hope future events are also just as spontaneous and that they are not "canned" or "hyped-up" in advance. The idea that it's possible for you to miss the whole thing entirely because you don't log in for two weeks adds balance to the game imo. Too much of swtor is scripted/instanced and random events that can pass you by give more of an existential feel to an otherwise scripted world. In the future, maybe some sort of high-level NPC assault or sneak attack can happen on one planet requiring players to band together for a week to beat it back. Perhaps this threat could even come from beyond the outer rim (!!!) which would necessitate both Empire and Republic alike to temporarily put aside their quarrels and face a common enemy... This would create a conflict with something at stake for both sides (preventing a third faction from occupying a given planet and its friendly NPCs) while avoiding the widespread problem of faction imbalance.

I disagree with this idea. Republic PUG groups on my server generally do fairly well against empire premades in PvP. Not always, of course. Some empire premades are talented and play tenaciously. But, I've played a lot of PvP both with my guild and solo, and the enthusiastic PUG groups that I've been in--the ones willing to communicate and play as a team--have been nigh unbeatable. I would much rather have shorter queue times than separate PUGs and Premades. Use teamwork and don't be afraid to communicate with teammates you don't know. Filling an empty chat box in Voidstar or thinking intuitively about passing/positioning in Huttball is often the difference between victory and defeat and PUGs can do these things just as well as premades can (sometimes even better). Be the difference you want to see in public PvP. Also, what if you're solo queuing and trying to get into the same warzone as a group of four of your friends? That would not be an option under this hypothetical segregated PvP system and presents another problem in addition to longer queue times (which would be catastrophic on light pop servers). Bottom line: There should not be a separate queue for PUGs and Premades.

I leveled Underworld Trading from 1 to 250 since patch 1.2 and received 14 orange crafting schematics in total: 7 Synthweaving and 7 Armormech, lowest crafting skill required being 60 armormech and the highest being 400 synthweaving.

Welcome back to swtor and thank you so much for working so hard on this thread! It's the most common sense and comprehensive guide to choosing crew skills I've seen. Well written also.

This is a really cool idea. I definitely support it +1

holy smokes this is an awesome post. definitely sets an example for others in this forum.

Zaodon, overall this is a really helpful guide. It was nice of you to take the time to put it together, and I know it really would have helped me a lot when I first started PvPing. Just a quick suggestion regarding your "Tank" role overview, however. I would argue that tanking in PvP is not dysfunctional at all. A well-played tank who uses Guard judiciously and taunts frequently can keep one or two others alive against superior numbers much longer than just a regular class. There's a reason why Protection is tracked and encouraged with medals. I would advise new players that there is in fact a "tank" role in PvP and that it is not a "free kill" when played properly in a team setting. You don't force enemies to attack you, but by using Guard, Taunts, and interrupts, you can make the opposing team's attacks almost useless unless they're focused on you, and then you have healers to keep you alive. Thus, you'll either be taking a beating from all sides but you'll be living like a champ, or they'll continue to attack your healer but won't do much to him because you'll be shunting the damage back onto yourself with guard/taunt. Either way, you're soaking up damage and keeping others alive to do damage. That's the role I fill in almost every match I play as a Kinetic Shadow and I definitely feel like I'm tanking. *disclaimer* I'm only lvl 49, not 50 yet, so if this changes at lvl 50 I could be mistaken. Aside from that small gripe, your guide is very informative. Thanks again for putting it together.

This guy is 100% right. Like the OP, I too was also against Bioware splitting the gear because I want to play both PvE and PvP in SWTOR. After reading this post, I realized that the gear is split for precisely this reason! A bifurcated gear structure incentivizes players to experience the whole of PvE and PvP (or at least a larger chunk), not just the end of it. That's an excellent reason as far as I'm concerned and it's not a bad thing at all if you truly want to get the most out of both PvE and PvP experiences.

People yelling at each other to pass might not be "social," and 1 social point per MVP vote is a very neat idea, but what about combining the two? One social point per completed pass! That would be kinda neat as it would encourage people to pass the Huttball a bit more. Obviously this would be open to exploitation so perhaps there would need to be a timer on it (can only gain 1 point per minute max or something), but still, the prospect of working social points into PvP as an incentive is very attractive because social points are worth earning, you can't really get them easily if you pvp a lot, and they don't really have an effect on pvp balance (they're a non-gamebreaking incentive).

I am a PvPer & PvEer

I've been playing since early access and have one character up to lvl 45--a kinetic shadow. With all the improvements coming in 1.1.5 and 1.2 there's no reason not to take your time to 50, y'know?

From: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=336098 (clicking the torboard.com link will take you to a list of what was said in the interview)