Ok? Where gear needs the most work is on spicing it up. They need to give us more unique items. Instead of the same old boring Campaign this, that, and the other... maybe we can have "Gordo's Trusty Sidearm" or "Sorceror's Helm of Insanity", etc.

Ah-whaaaaaaaaat?

No. This game is like WoW in that there are basically cookie cutter builds that work. Mish-mash hybrids that you facerolled your keyboard to come up with are not viable. Sorry.

Good point. I attended the Guild Summit in March and I wouldn't even call that communication. Yes, we got to sit in a nice banquet hall and watch presentations. Yes, we even had an open bar (thanks BioWare!) and free meals. However, the actual face time with devs was limited. My guildmate and I only had face time with Gabe Amatangelo to talk about PvP because he was getting drunk at the bar after the final dinner event. Someone kept buying him whisky shots to keep him talking. Regardless, nobody was willing to share much and only spoke in generalities.

Story-wise, it wouldn't make sense for it to repeat. More events in general would be nice though... any day now. Also, an events vendor on the fleet so I can spend the bunches of DNA I have left over would be nice, and can't be that difficult to work into a patch. Unfortunately, some of us were blocked from the vendor for hours, and hours, and hours on the final day by faction imbalance, and couldn't spend it.

THIS, THIS, A THOUSAND TIMES THIS. I just had to deal with this today. And the day before... and the one before that. The barrel damage adds to YOUR threat, so let the tank pop it please. ALSO DONT POP THEM BEFORE SPAWNING MOBS COMPLETE THEIR INITIAL ANIMATION. IT WILL DO ABSOLUTELY NO DAMAGE TO THEM AND IS A COMPLETE WASTE. Thanks. >_<

Uh, read the article... assuming you can. That 600 employee figure includes EA Sports Austin and the customer support staff. So no, they didn't all work on SWTOR.

Yeah, and the layoffs weren't 3 days ago, they were earlier in the week.

Or if, as in my case, you're using a 120hz monitor and thus your ideal frame rate is going to be higher than 60, up to 120fps, as long as you're turning Vsync off. Running some games in 1920x1080@120hz with ALL the eye candy set to max and trying to get that stable 60+ fps has certainly made my GTX 580 SLI investment worthwhile.

What guy??? Allison posted on Friday, so unless you're privy to something no one else is... AFAIK, it's like nobody is alive in Austin today, anyway.

Honestly? All BioWare needs to do to retain me as a paying customer once my sub expires in August is COMMUNICATE WITH US. It looks bad when you hide where you're at on upcoming content. It makes people think you're hiding something. BE OPEN AND TRANSPARENT like you claimed you would be. Have someone write up a blog twice a month detailing where the team is at on the road to upcoming content. Tease us with some screenshots. Release a few tidbits to get people salivating. Silence is as good as death in this realm of the gaming universe.

HeroEngine was a mistake from the very start... http://www.heroengine.com/2011/11/heroengine-meets-starwars/ Some choice quotes: So did they accomplish this? I don't get it. So, they were always in a hurry, yet six years later they rushed a still incomplete project? :/ Yep. Sounds like EA. That's HeroEngine's creators covering their butts for how awful SWTOR's engine turned out to be, imho. In fact, part of me wonders if BioWare's initial intentions were to use HE to prototype the game, similar to the way Elder Scrolls Online did, but then transition into their own in-house engine. That would've been a much, much better course of action, but I bet someone at EA pulled the plug on that idea for monetary reasons.

So the point is, as most of the reasonable posters have been saying, that crappy tanks guard their healer. Good tanks guard high damage melee DPS.

Fair enough on the first point. I've never bothered to guard ranged folks since threat is .8 per damage at range. The answer IS melee dps. They only need to surpass me by 110% to rip aggro (vs 130% for ranged as previously mentioned), and if one of our Marauders decides to pop bloodlust, cooldowns, and an adrenal right from the start, that's likely to happen. Having guard on him *allows* him that luxury on the fights where it's beneficial, without risking him pulling off of me. Seriously, unless you FLAT OUT just can't get a hit off on every mob within the first 10-15 seconds of a fight(e.g. you're BAD), nothing should be going after your healer. Also, since you insist nothing else matters in this conversation but HM FPs, is it not possible for a tank to have melee DPS that outgears him or her in a group? I guarantee you that a Campaign geared Marauder would rip aggro off a Columi geared tank in a heartbeat.

Try clearing HM EC in 24 hours, and farming it for the last 3 months. No kidding they need to speed it up... If the tools are not available to produce content at a faster pace, they should have been developed. Rift does a pretty good job of churning out content, overall quality of the game notwithstanding. At least some reasoning as to why this is taking so long would work wonders at easing the level of impatience some of us are reaching. Is is a technical hurdle? Are the tools still in development? More than likely, their team is spread thin covering other bases since so many people have been laid off.

Please provide some proof to back up this claim. I'm pretty sure that's not true. Also, as a tank that has extensive experience in every facet of this game so far, I can tell you right now that guarding the healer is pointless. If somehow I miss a mob in my initial grab on a trash pack, and it attacks the healer, I can usually get its attention back with a simple auto attack if nothing else were available. If loose mobs are attacking the healer, a guard won't make the difference... you just have a bad tank. Tank threat is 2 per point of damage. Healing generates .5 threat per point of healing (not factoring talents which reduce aggro). Pulling aggro at range requires 130% of the current target's threat. If a healer is taking threat from a tank, THE TANK IS BAD.

Technically, you already can... Step 1: Buy credits. How you do it is up to you. Step 2: Buy iLevel 61 Armorings/Mods/Enhancements with said credits. Step 3: Put them all into orange moddable gear. Step 4: ?????? Step 5: Profit & Enjoy your BiS gear with zero time invested. *sigh*

For Shield Tech 1. I believe we're seen as one of the better PvE tanks. However, from my experience leveling other characters, especially at early levels some Powertechs seem to believe they're meant to tank at range which is untrue. 2. I believe it's a strong PvE tanking spec, but shields need to provide some mitigation against force and tech attacks, imho. Also, Shadow/Assassin tanks are still stronger than us overall, imho, despite the "nerfs". Finally, I wish my spec had more viability overall in PvP, either via damage increase, or once again a reworking to the way shields work against more damage types.

All the guilds that cleared HM EC in the first week or two of release did it in un-augmented Rakata. As was stated before, it's about execution and people playing optimally, not "optimal gear".

I remember this video. What's striking is how terrible all of BioWare's (what I assume to be) in-house testers are at the game. Epic backpedaling!

Interesting. Thanks, Genshen. I'll pick them up since they're simple enough to acquire and I'll give it a whirl. I'm thinking a comparison of overall incoming damage between each set should give a good enough idea of whether or not the differences are worth it.

Honestly, I'm not certain they're BiS right now. Certainly, better than the proc absorb relic, but I'm sticking with the upgraded Matrix Cube and the Shield/Absorb clicky trinket. My reasoning for this stems from my personal experiences, backed up by this statement by senior designer Austin Peckenpaugh: You sacrifice quite a bit of endurance as well as offensive stats (Aim on the Matrix Cube, and Power on the others) by using the Battlemaster trinkets. Granted the increase in secondary mitigation stats is nice, but what about all those times you're getting hit repeatedly with attacks that cannot be shielded or defended against? Last week, I made changes to my mods, enhancements, and augments which put me over 26,000 hit points when buffed (without stim), but with a base of 14% defense, 53% shield, and 54% absorb. This week, I've swapped again, going with just about exactly 24,000 hit points buffed, but with base defense of 17.5%, 53.5% shield, and 60% absorb. After our raids, I plan to examine our logs for differences in damage taken, and ask my healers if it felt any different for them. Personally, I think right now going pure mitigation without regard for endurance is not the best course of action. However, I'm totally willing to hear arguments to the contrary. What do you think?

And down they go!

1.4? Nightmare mode Denova, more balance passes, maybe a new character perk to replace the run speed one they scrapped with increased mount speed (since those can't be used in warzones and won't imbalance PvP). I don't see any of the E3 video stuff happening before 1.5 to be honest.

Or.... you know... swap mods as you go.