With all due respect, I don't know that a comparison to rank 22 mods holds any merrit. These mods are completely useless thanks to daily vendors selling rank 23's. Of course they will not sell well on the GTN because they are easily outstripped for a measely 8 commendations. Also, new players really don't need to worry about this much because 'new players' wouldnt have access to this top tier of gear without a little work anyhow. By the time they obtain said gear, they should also have enough money to move around a few mods. Again, it's not about "gimme everything on a silver platter NOW." End game takes a little bit of effort, and in this case, that effort is making money.

I don't think there IS a companion with +Crit to artifice; Khem Val gets +15 efficiency (and apparently Scourge get's +10), but as previously stated, efficiency effects speed at which they craft, not thier crit chance. It's widely believed that the best way to increase your chances at crits is to use companions at 10,000 affection. The only other thing is to craft a TON of the item you're trying to crit; eventually you'll see a crit.... eventually.

Players weren't miraculously cured when the event ended. The players can still 'host' the disease and spread it. There are those of us that intentionally keep it going!

I can't speak for warriors, but Inquisitors do infact get an equivalent title: Apprentice. It is granted upon completion of the initial Korriban quest chain.

Let's call a Spade a Spade, shall we? Often these 'gold-sellers' steal your personal information to hack your account and rob your characters of their currency to be sold to unsavory people willing to put real money up for fake money. By obtaining your account info, they have direct access to your identity and credit card info as well. Doing business with these people is very risky to you personally, is a detriment to the gaming environment, and a Term of Service violation (read: account-suspending offense). Do not support these people, and report them whenever they contact you in game. Also, protect yourself and use a security key.

You will not find any purple crystals available until level 50, and even then they are not as common as other colors, sorry. Other colors are available through the Artificing crewskill. Purple in particular exists in Columi level PVE gear at lvl 50, and some PVP weapons, also level 50. It *may* be craftable, but you will not find the schematic available on any trainer; there are scattered reports of the schematic dropping as loot, but no confirmation as to where exactly this happens with any frequency.

The vendor that existed prior to 1.2 never sold +50 stat crystals; he had +41 stat crystals that required LEVEL 50 to use. +41 is the highest currently in existence on any color crystal, be it crafted, dropped, or awarded. The vendor is gone, hopefully for good. Color crystals should now be the priopriety of Artificers, although they are still obtained from Operations and PVP gear. Lots of other threads on this topic.

Flavor of the Month players and the hardcore power-gamers will always flock to the class with the most mechanical advantage. Once a change is made to bring that class down to a more 'balanced' power level, those players leave and find the next class that's somewhat out of balance. It's the nature of MMO gaming. These players lack the desire, or maybe skill, to adapt to a new play style and will jump ship to the next 'easy mode' class. A small subset of players in each class is truly dedicated to that class for reasons other than mechanical strength in one or more aspects of the game. I'm glad to see so many people leaving the sorcerer class - I was getting sick of being one of 3 or 4 inquisitors in every 8 man group!

3 - Tionese, Columi, Rakata and their PVP equivalents are NOT transferring set bonuses via armoring. For pre-1.2 tiered items, the set bonus is linked to the armor, NOT the armoring mod.

I've had 2 of 3 magenta patterns since before they were purchasable - I was selling magenta crystals for half a million creds each before the vendor showed up. Those patterns are now obsolete since they are only +33 to a stat. The new magenta patterns are dropping in the Corelia daily area and from the Voss world boss that come with a +41 stat. The purple schematics are far more difficult to come by, and I'm not even sure where to find them. All that being said, since the vendor was around so long, everyone and his brother seems to already have a +41 crystal, and so the price has come WAAAAY down. I happened to buy 4 extra purple crystals from the vendor that I've been trying to sell since 1.2 went live... not a one has gone yet.

Magenta is much closer to red than purple - the magenta crystals basically produce a PINK lightsaber blade. The purple ones are exactly the color of saber used by Mace Windu, and this is the one everyone wants. There is a big difference.

I don't really think the OP understands that the plague is mostly just RP fluff with no real consequence to his character. With the event over, the ONLY way to get it is to be near someone who dies from it. As there is no source of NEW infection, it will go away. If you don't want it, don't stand in large groups of players who are intentionally TRYING to get it from someone else!

I would argue that the level 50 "elegant" ones are actually easier to produce simply because in questing in daily areas, I find grade 6 materials - it takes 'farming' low level zones, or spam running low level missions to obtain the materials to make the lvl 20 version. Yes, they are functionally exactly the same, as is all orange gear of a given type, but I would say that many of us end up with an abundance of grade 6 materials, but never see grade 3 materials unless we go after them specifically.

Once the plague has killed you, you can only get it again if you stand near someone that explodes. The vaccine is really unnecessary. Let it wear off, then dont stand near people with the green glowy cloud around them.

The schematic was never sold for purple crystals - the MAGENTA schematics were available for purchase prior to 1.2, however, and they continue to exist as world boss drops. The purple crystals themselves were sold by the same vendor prior to 1.2 and they continue to exist in Columi level weapons. There are scattered reports of purple crystal schematics dropping as loot rewards, but so far they are extremely rare, and inconsistently reported.

As far as the "nearly no stats" comment: it's a CUSTOM weapon, meaning you put in your own stats with various modifications. The point of this item is that it can be decked out with any mods useful to the character using it; it can just as easily be a tank's weapon or a healer's weapon with the proper mods. By removing mods from any end-game weapon, it will be EQUAL to that end-game weapon; the difference is that it can actually be BETTER with an additional AUGMENT modification that will only exist on a crafted item that was CRIT during creation.

No one ever said there would be low-level purple crystals. There ARE low level MAGENTA crystals, however. They are kind of rare at the moment, as there is a chain of events involved in obtaining the mats and patterns, just like before. I don't expect to see alot of people putting in the effort for a crystal that'll be out-leveled in 4-8 levels, to be honest.

When you click on the Reverse Engineer icon in your inventory, your cursor changes to a little wand (as I'm sure you're aware). In 1.2, if you hover that wand icon over any item you will see a message that says "Research Chance: X%." If this message is absent, there is NO schematic to be learned from that item.

Functionality of reverse engineering aside, there's actually NO reason to reverse engineer a rank 22 hilt up to artifact for the simple fact that 8 daily commendations gets you a rank 23 artifact hilt. Save your time, money, and sanity and do 6 daily quests (*maybe* 1 hour's work) and buy one better than you'd ever be able to make.

That being said, you should almost never accept the default price and put your own in based on what others are selling the item for. You can usually get vastly more money for it than the system 'thinks' it's worth.

Consider this; the Slicer can only sell the schematic once, you can make that item an infinite number of times. So maybe you don't recoop your entire investment on the very first craft, but over the course of time, you likely will. Augmented items are still going for around 100K - if you paid 40K to learn the schematic, and invested maybe another 20K on mats and wasted items trying to get that augmented item, and then sell it for 100K, you're still up 40K. I see no problem with slicers charging 30-40K for a schematic that only they can obtain.

If you are not specialized in the healing talent tree, you will only have those 2 heals and they are horribly inefficient. When playing a sorcerer, you have a choice to make, play as pure damage-dealer (dps) or play as a healer. The Corruption talent tree contains the rest of the heals available to sorcerers, including the area-of-effect (aoe) heal at the top of the tree, as well as ways to make the existing heals more effective and more efficient. If you ARE playing a healing spec'd sorcerer, I'd guess you're doing something wrong - either poorly spec'd or don't fully understand how the talents work together. The bottome line is, Madness and Lightning spec'd sorcerers aren't healers - you should be able to kill stuff before you really need to heal (worst case scenario, you toss yourself a shield and maybe 1 heal). Sorcs are pretty powerful healers when spec'd and played correctly, and being low level you shouldnt have been effected much by the recent change, even if you are spec'd heals.

I'll just add that sages and sorcerers really have no reason to swing a light saber - we have far stronger and more efficient abilities at our disposal. You should never be close enough to an enemy to use a light saber - stand back and reign down chaos with your force abilities.

Our server seems to hover right around 200K for augmented sabers - double-blades go for a tad more since there seem to be less of them (since they only cater to 1 class, vs 3 for single blades). Far cry from the 2.5 million I got for one before 1.2 dropped, but they are far easier to make in mass quantities now.