/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)

Thanks so much for bullet-pointing out the major answers. Made life a lot easier. New fresh lvl 50 gear is intriguing to me... I'm chilling at lvl 45 right now and have been dutifully saving for 1000/1000 commendations plus 1 champ bag. Do I take my time and save hitting 50 until 1.2? Or do I plow ahead as usual.

This is exactly what I did. I'm 400 Cybertech/Slicing/Scavenging and have bought all the UT Metals I've needed off the GTN. That was a lot easier to do when Slicing missions were super profitable early on and when more people were selling UT metals. While it used to work well enough in the first month of the game, I wouldn't recommend doing it now. Slicing doesn't turn as much of a profit anymore, and with the decrease in population/activity (at least on my server), there are far fewer UT metals for sale on the GTN, and those that are for sale are much more expensive now. The only reason why I haven't dropped slicing for Underworld Trading is because I'm curious to see if anything interesting happens to it in 1.2 (they've said Augments will be craftable, does that mean slicers will be the ones to craft them?). But, barring a slicing miracle, I'll be dropping it for UT in a month (or whenever 1.2 comes out). Edit: The guy below me makes an excellent point I forgot about. The missions/schematics you get from slicing do add some synergy to Cybertech. I totally forgot that I had been stockpiling the UT missions I was getting in my cargo bay until I read that post. If you're planning on switching slicing for UT, hang onto those UT missions you get from slicing. There's no guarantee they'll be for sale on he GTN.

Do you guys think Slicing will get any love in 1.2? I feel like a lot of people dropped it for other skills, but if it's true that we'll be able to craft Augments in 1.2, will slicers gain this ability (since the utility of their augment missions will accordingly decrease)?

/signed - I share almost all your opinions, particularly about how fun the story&PvP are and how "meh" crafting has been. My only wishes are that the new WZ that's coming out wasn't cross-faction (I rolled Republic specifically to kill Imps, not to fight alongside them) and that players had the ability to veto one of the Warzones and remove it from their map pool (so people that only get huttball can stop whining).

The initial hit of a DoT attack will still disrupt the cap right? (even though subsequent ticks no longer will).

Me too man, though it's more because of the misplaced panic/hysteria than the substance of the requests themselves. Everyone, chill. The game is fun. Perhaps not as complete or fun as it will be in the future, but it's fun now and will only get better. Stuff is being added, worked on, and communicated. More goes into a project like this than any of us (save for a select few with mmo dev experience) can possibly understand. The world is not ending. Take a deep breath and enjoy yourself.

Thanks for your thoughts man. I'm totally with you in the sense that I love this game but my biggest concern is server population. I'm willing to stay subbed for many more months to wait for more content and bug fixes, that's just what I expect to be part of an mmo and after 2 months I'm still not quite to 50 with my first character. What I won't wait for, though, is for the population to go up so that it actually feels like an mmo when I play. I haven't seen more than 80 people on the republic fleet in several weeks, and since I play so little it's really not ideal for me to reroll on a more populous server (if they exist) so I can spend another 2 months getting back to where I am now with the same character.

Thank you so much for this! The intro was a bit long, but still awesome, and the actual content/instruction was extremely helpful.

Slow Time is a targeted ability, not ground target.

@OP you're totally wrong. I had several wins last night that were epic comebacks. In one, there was a guy really good at PvP that I had queued with several times in a row when we were on a winning streak. He wordlessly left Civil War the very second that the imps took two of three turrets. We brought that game back in hilarious fashion with great communication against a well-organized and focus-firing opposing team, and I have since lost all respect for this player. Apparently I was wrong about him being good and carrying our teams. We didn't even miss him when he quit You can keep skipping out on tough games too if you like. Or, you can try to communicate and rally your team together with encouragement and strategy. In the end, SWTOR is a game just like any other, and in any other game you disrespect yourself and your teammates when you quit on them. Nobody wants to be the Albert Haynesworth of SWTOR. Do you?