Is changing a force user's primary combat style based on alignment only a thing for pre 7.0 characters? I have an Assassin that I created after 7.0 launched that I've played to light 5. I was going to switch them over to a Shadow, but I don't get the option, even after having completed the main story. I know on older characters created before the expansion I was given the option, so I'm thinking this may be the case, which if so is kind of disappointing.

Vitiate: “There is no death, only the Force, and I am its master.” I very much enjoyed the dialogue between the Knight and the Emperor in the original story. The whole conversation hits the right tone, but this line in particular stuck with me. Honorable mention:

What abilities make the Sentinel unique to you? - Speed and volume of attack. Combat used to be my favorite sentinel spec for this reason before it was nerfed into mediocrity. Do these ability paths feel effective against enemies? - I guess? It's hard to say based on Onderon. I would be concerned with the quality of PvP and Operations, though, as much of the thinking and reactivity required to be successful has been removed. Seems to me it might get very boring. With Awe, Stasis, Clarity, Pacify, Guarded by the Force and Transcendence all gone, there's really nothing to do but hack and slash through the simple rotation over and over and over. Perhaps that kind of simplicity is what you're going for, but it seems like a sharp downgrade to someone who's put in the time to get good at this game. If you have feedback on the different disciplines and loadouts, please note your feedback accordingly so we can track it. - I tried both loadouts for Concentration, as that's what I play the most, and loadout A for Combat. I REALLY miss Transcendence in all of these rotations. Like I said above, speed is one of the key elements that makes Sentinel fun and you feel it's absence as you plod along from enemy to enemy. Especially painful if you've had a slow applied to you and now have very few options other then to absorb blaster fire. As for just the offensive rotation: Concentation A feels about right, though no blade blitz AND no transcendence makes it a slog. Concentration B is about the same, though the AOE on Focused Burst seems a bit unnecessary. I found myself not really using Sweep at all since it wouldn't make much sense to use one or the other without the proc. I don't know if FB does more or less AOE damage, but if it does more, why even have sweep? If it doesn't, why ever use it in an AOE situation over Sweep? Combat A the attacking is fast, which is always great, but again, mobility when you're not on the target is an issue. Even more then Conc, as you don't have Zealous leap to close the shorter gaps quickly. It might actually be worth using in PVP if no one has any stuns anymore, but if slows are still a thing, the whole class could be a hard pass. Overall Impressions: I was very excited when I learned about loadouts. The ability to have a smuggler with a sniper rifle, or a bounty hunter with an assault cannon, and to be able to have my light side Marauder use Jedi abilities is something I had wished for and wanted for a long time. Not to mention the possibility this could open up for adding brand new combat paths to the game easily, without having to go build an entire new character story.. all very exciting. After testing and seeing how you're planning to execute it... not as exciting. Deflating, actually. It's a dumbed down, more boring, and even frustrating at times version of what we have now. It is for Sentinels, at the very least. My other favorite class is Shadow, and what makes them unique is the control they have over opponents. The mez/stun purge here has me very worried, but I'll withhold judgment there until I can test. My advice would be keep the loadouts, dial it way back on the ability pruning. There are a few instances where baking in abilities would be very welcome. For example, utilities like Stoic, Defensive roll and Zealous judgment I never spec out of, so having them as passive or part of the rotation is great. Even button abilities like Clarity and Rebuke are kinda nice to have baked into the rotation as you sort of just mindless refresh them off of cooldown anyway. But that's about as far as I would go. What you're doing now is fundamentally changing how combat works to favor facerollers over veteran players. It's been 10 years. I'm still here because I enjoy this game (and I imagine I'm not alone in that). You don't need to reinvent the wheel. Go gently, I beg you.

I don’t post very often, but I definitely want to add my voice to this topic. Merging the brackets is completely inexplicable to me. Essentially what this does is create an environment where your games are essentially determined by group finder and not the players themselves (especially if you want to queue under lvl 50). On its own this is bad, but combined with the requirement for wins in order to progress dailies/weeklies, it becomes a joke. Lowbies are where you’re supposed to learn how pvp works. Anyone hoping to learn who stumbles into this will learn “can’t win, don’t try.” At the very least return the daily/weekly requirements to what they were if there’s to be any point to queuing before lvl 50.

So, a few points to help with healing a vet flashpoint at lower levels based on my own experience: 1. Know your class. The Scoundrel, for example, relies heavily on heals over time, which means it's a lot less forgiving than the other two healer classes, especially at lower levels. To really be effective you need to anticipate who is going to be taking damage and when so you can have your HoTs on them and ready... which brings me to the second point. 2. Know the flashpoint. This is important at all levels of healing, but can really make up for some deficiencies at lower levels. Knowing which mob pulls do lots of damage, what attacks the boss uses that need to be cleansed, etc. will give you a huge leg up. This, again, is especially true for Scoundrels who need to have their HoTs ready to mitigate incoming damage. 3. You can't help everyone. The unfortunate truth is, no matter how savvy you are there's only so much you can do yourself as a low level healer. Maybe with all your tools at level 75 you could drag a bad group kicking and screaming over the finish line, but at lower levels if you have a group that's never heard of a DCD, or is constantly pulling everything they stumble into, you're gonna have a bad time. A healer's main job is to prop up the group, so you can only be as good as the group you're propping up. EDIT: I was reading another thread on the forum and it reminded me of one more important point; Don't worry about doing damage. At low levels your resource management is going to be a real pain. One of the most common mistakes I've seen from healers in flashpoints is going into a pull with a "fight first, heal when there's trouble" mentality. To fulfill your role properly at these levels doing damage is a waste of your resources. I would even say, when your resources are low, it's better sometimes to even do nothing for a GCD then to waste it on an attack. You should only worry about doing damage when you're confident in your own abilities and your teams ability to survive.

So rather than try to make the best out of a bad situation, you're going to attempt to ruin the warzone for the rest of the people on team who may actually want to play? And for what, because you'd rather waste everyone else's time then sit out 15 minutes of your own time? Or, god forbid, just play the wz to the best of your ability if you're going to be there anyway? I'll never understand this kind of thinking.

Seeing as how they've not figured out how to toggle hoods on and off yet, I wouldn't get my hopes up for this.

I agree. I'd much rather have the weapon on the hip rather than over the shoulder. Hip is where a lightsaber should be, in my opinion. Obviously we don't all agree on this, but I do hope over the shoulder isn't going to be the default moving forward. Switching it up every now and then would be acceptable. Or maybe even a toggle (won't hold my breath for that).

It's nice that Charge was fixed, but Fade utility still doesn't effect the cooldown on Force Cloak (tooptip says 1m30s, but still takes 2 minutes). Oh well... one thing at a time I guess...

Also, I've noticed that abilities that have "charges" now no longer display cooldown text when you have that setting active. Not as major as some others, but definitely annoying.

Similarly, Force Cloak for assassins now has charges and has a 2 minute cooldown despite having the Fade utility which should reduce the CD by 30 seconds. Tool tip still says 1m30s, but it actually takes the full 2 minutes.

This is more what I meant when I said "as a Shadow this hurts my soul". I'm not sure exactly how competitive Shadows will be in 6.0, but regardless it makes zero sense to not return this ability to us, but give it to snipers. Even if you're not giving it back to Shadows, there are other classes that could use a disengagement ability like this long before snipers. I'd love to hear the thinking behind this.

More force regen would be extremely pointless for Deception. Hatred might have some use for it, though...

As a Shadow main, this hurts my soul.

Deception is kind of "meh" right now. Still a difficult class to deal with 1v1 in the right hands due to a high amount of control, but you'll find your damage output and burst a bit underwhelming. At least, that's been my experience with it. If you enjoy the play style it can still be fun to play, though. So don't let me dissuade you if that's the case.

I do like the tactical items for the most part, but my main concern is for the set bonuses. As someone who primarily plays Infiltration/Deception, the 15 sec CD reduction on recklessness is very important to the flow of our rotation, and the auto crit on Maul is one of our heaviest hitting attacks. If we're not going to be able to utilize these bonuses with top end gear anymore, I'd ask that they at least be added to as baseline abilities for the spec itself (perhaps gained between levels 70 and 75), because right now on paper I don't think I'd prefer any of these set bonuses for a Deception Assassin above those two that I already have.

Another idea for a purely cosmetic tactical item, this time for Sage/Sorcerers. Telekinetic Combat So the lightsaber has always been kind of useless for a Sage/Sorc. This tactical would change that while not really adding any new abilities, just changing the animations of a few old ones. For starters when you draw your lightsaber the weapon will now hover close by instead of being held. It could still spin occasionally or slowly orbit the player when they're stationary, and just follow behind when they move. Whatever works best. (Saber Strike): I imagine the animation would be mostly the same, just the lightsaber moving on its own without the player swinging it. (Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning): The animation for these abilites would be replaced by sending the lightsaber out to the target and having it spin around them rapidly over the course of the channel. The twirling barrage from the lightsaber would also slow them for the duration. So, same attack just a different look. (Disturbance/Lightning Strike): The animation here would involve charging the lighsaber floating in front of the sorc/sage with energy during the channeling part (I imagine lightning building on the blade for a sorc and a glowing effect for a sage), then the saber being flung at the target for the attack. Hopefully these are the sorts of things tactical items will even be able to do. Guess we'll see.

I posted this in another thread, but an idea for a purely cosmetic tactical item; how about a tactical item that when equipped would change your abilities/icons to that of your mirror class? So, for example, a Light Side Sorcerer could now use Sage abilities, and vice versa. I suppose this could (or may have to) also switch up their stance as well - e.g. A Juggernaut would now have two hands on their lightsaber. This would be easy enough for the Force using classes, as all of their mirrors use the same weapons. It may be trickier for non Force users unless you don't mind Mercenaries running around with assault cannons or Gunslingers with sniper rifles (personally I think that would be awesome). Just a thought as I do find it kind of immersion breaking when I have a light side Sorc constantly throwing around lightning, and I've always wanted a dark Jedi Knight that could use Force Choke.

Not sure if it's been mentioned already, but I think an item that changes your animations from imperial to republic and vice versa would be nice. It could be tougher for non force users (unless you allowed say a gunslinger to use a sniper rifle and a sniper blaster pistols, for example), but for Jedi/Sith it would be nice to have my dark Jedi use force choke, or a light side sith not shooting lightning. It could even go so far as switching the stances too (so say, two hands on the lightsaber for a light side Juggernaut, for example).

Just throwing some ideas at the wall here: Something that allows Ball lightning to not trigger a second attack, but just deliver extra damage (so it doesn't use up charges of recklessness). Make Maul do full damage regardless of positioning. Have low slash also apply a heal debuff (similar to what marauders and snipers have). An Item that removes the extra damage from overcharge saber, but gives it a better heal (or vice versa)

A .25 second Global Cooldown has been added to Shadow Stride to prevent an issue when this ability was overlapped with other movement abilities. In all seriousness, I'm wondering if anyone can actually tell me what this issue was... or if it was even that big of a problem. Looking back, I'm still not sure what it was they actually fixed with this update. I've looked over the forums and can find zero mention of this particular issue by the devs or otherwise leading up to this patch. The only complaints I could find were about the ability occasionally not taking you all the way to the target, or much too far. Issues I've actually experienced. The sad part is it's been almost five months now and I doubt very much at this point that bioware cares to address it. Infiltration is probably my favorite spec in this game, one I've stuck with even after the substantial nerf to its damage. Shadow stride is a very big part of the rotation and this inexplicable update has made it extremely clunky. I guess all I want is even a passing acknowledgement from bioware that this is working as intended, at least, so I can stop hoping for a fix.

I want to bump this for visibility and to add my two cents; this has made deception extremely clunky to play, specifically when using Reaper's Rush. After defeating an enemy you now have to wait a full GCD before you can jump to the next enemy. It may not sound like much, but it completely disrupts the flow of the spec and the damage that can be done to multiple enemies. As the changes here were meant to be a fix (to a problem I've never experienced) and not a nerf, I hope this can be adjusted or rolled back soon.

The very first time I encountered Revan in the Maelstrom Prison. At that time it had been nearly a decade since we'd seen Revan in anything, so finally finding him and setting him free was a moment I'd long waited for.

I think your mistake is engaging with these types of people at all. Whether you’re good or not there will always be someone salty about it (taunting you because you’re focusing them and killing them too much, or just for making a simple mistake). I always get a good laugh when I get a hostile whisper or comment directed at me in chat, but I never respond unless the inquiry is polite. I’ve had plenty of butt-hurt people try to taunt me but haven’t had to add any to ignore yet. They usually get bored if you don’t respond and just watch them have a one sided tantrum.

After having read most of this thread, I feel like there have been some really good suggestions for how to crack down on skank tanks AND provide a reason to use a tank in PVP. I apologize for not quoting the people with these ideas directly, but I don’t have time to go back and search for them. 1. Cap the benefits of dps stats like power and crit for tank specs. This would remove skank tanks without negatively impacting PVE. 2. Reduce the base effectiveness of taunt/guard against other players. Then, say, have taunts damage reduction scale up with defense and guards scale up with shield/absorb. The max for this may only be a little higher than the default is now. This would create a reason to bring a tank into pvp and won’t create a crisis with heal/tank combos being too strong.