Just No. NPC vendors ruin the player economy. Vendors selling the best gear completely negates the work done by crafters. IMO there never should have been a vendor in the first place. As it is, I stocked up on extra purple crystals that I'm now selling in the GTN. I'm sure the patterns for artificers to create them will begin showing up soon - it's already confirmed that +expertise comes from pvp rewards, I'm assuming the others will be either operation/flashpoint drops or world boss drops (like the original magenta patterns).

I totally agree that he *should* benefit appropriately from shield and absorb. I like him alot as a character and the lore of being my real apprentice, and so I've worked around his inefficiencies. With endurance and defense only, he does work. It helps that I play a healing spec'd sorc, so keeping him alive is actually pretty easy for me. He seems to initiate combat, and establish threat faster than Khem ever did, which is why I powered through his bugginess. All that being said, I almost never pull him out anymore, as Ashara plows through mobs so fast that I really dont need a tank except for heroics.

Advanced class is a permanent choice and likely always will be. Remember, AC is a class and not a specialization talent tree. Flipping between AC's would be like changing from mage to rogue without rerolling in other games.

Rank 25 mods of all types exist as drops from operation-level content (eternity vault and karagga's palace), and come pre-fitted into Rakata level gear. They cannot be crafted. You will occasionally see them on the GTN for a considerable chunk of change (500K and up). Supposedly the rank 26's that'll come in the new tier of gear *may* be researchable to learn the pattern, but I have yet to see any.

Inquisitors and Consulars can also serve as Tank/Melee dps through their Assassin and Shadow advanced classes - the ranged dps/heals comes with sorcerer and sage.

Xalek works fine with defense gear - we know shield/absorb isnt working properly. After getting Xalek, I completely quit using Khem and never had any issues with the remainder of the levelling process or even lvl 50 dailies. I've solo'd the end boss of the Old Enemies [Heroic 4] daily on belsavis with him tanking (took 15 mins, but we did it!). Xalek can make a fine tank if you know how to gear him - use defense gear wherever you can, not shield/defense.

As a pve healing sorc, I'm doing 2-set pve bonus and augments - 4 set isnt terribly impressive, and i feel like we get more bang for our buck with augments in 3/5 slots that otherwise could have tier gear.

I agree with Clonedzero. Completely viable, but horrible idea due to loot crossovers. The other issue is when doing class quests - you'd have to do the same quest 4 times, one for each member of the group. Only one inquisitor can advance his class quest chain in a class-only area at a time. Also, Bounty Hunter/Republic Trooper can actually fill all 3 roles as well - Powertech/Vanguard and tank/dps, Mercenary/Commando can heal/dps. Same problems as above with gear and class quest areas.

Certainly they should avoid General (as I've done for several months!). They should also avoid threads like this one!

Many of the colors other than red, blue and yellow are available through other, more difficult to obtain, means. Last night, I saw a Black-Orange crystal drop out of Denova (I didnt win). It is my understanding that item mods, including crystals, from new flashpoints and operations can be RE'd to potentially learn the schematic. Not that anyone would actually want to break down the Black-Orange crystal for a 20% or less chance to learn it (if it's even available for the dual-colored crystals). Like I said, it was never in my inventory, so I can't verify if RE was even an option for this particular crystal.

No. The new crafted light sabers are not elligible for reverse engineering at all. It is not a case of 'nothing to learn' as an upgrade, but the complete inability to break them down for materials. They become vendor trash if they are not crit, basically.

Yep, you do NOT 'gotta catch em all'!

um... datacrons are completely optional and not required for advancement. Some are difficult to get, yes, but they are meant to be something extra - a small bonus for an achievement that took a little work to obtain. You could be perfectly competitive without any of them. Feel free to drop your subscription over something as trivial as this, the game world will likely be better without your personality type.

Have you shelled out the million creds to purchase the ship astromech droid? He is supposed to have mods that you can put in your standard ship droid that will effect his crafting - artifice *may* be among the possibilities, but as I have not yet payed for this service, I cannot confirm.

Assassin tanks have a dedicated set JUST for them; healers and dps likewise, have sets JUST for them (force-mystic & force-master, respectively). "Get it now?" Above posters are correct, there's no reason for the Force-Mystic (healer) set to have defense stat - it's obviously an error. An assassin tank should not be wearing force-mystic or force-master gear.

Read the talent again. It says that innervate will proc force surge which removes the force regen debuff from consumption. Using consumption without this proc will hinder your natural regen rate (and stacks the more you use it), which overall, makes the ability not really worth using without force surge - this is why you rarely see DPS sorcs using it. While we no longer get to use it completely free, we do still benefit from not having our native force regeneration hindered after it's use.

I agree with this. I've been healing almost since launch (respec'd heals a week after hitting 50) and it was stupid easy - we had a nearly infinite force pool and could basically spam 3 abilities only using reviv and dark infus in certain situations and never using dark heal. We now have to triage our heals better - dark heal is actually useful, and dark infus is now used more judiciously. Consumption is also used less frequently - before I would basically consume after every innervate, never dropping below 90% force. Now I reserve consumption for when I can afford to toss myself a resurg or put a reviv at my feet. I'm no longer an infinite-force fount of never-ending healing, and that's ok. This change forces out bad players, and makes good players less bored, IMO. I say good riddence to the Flavor-of-the-Month players - maybe now I won't have to compete against half the ops group for loot!

Strange. I JUST started noticing this since the patch. Guess I'll submit it, although it's such a minor issue, it's not likely to make 'the list.'

Has anyone else noticed that Ashara won't put her light sabers away since 1.2? When she is summoned, they come out, when I dismount from a speeder, they come out. She will put them away after combat, but as soon as I enter the fleet, she pulls them out again. It's really only a minor issue, but somewhat annoying - I've taken to dismissing her until I'm actually questing!

The only difference I've noticed is that I have to toss myself a resurgence HoT before or after consumption - otherwise I've had no trouble keeping myself and my group alive in PVE after 1.2. The other alternative is to cast revivification at my own feet a little more often to counteract my use of consumption. It's only slightly more complicated than it was before, the increase to the health-cost-reduction talent of consume makes the amount of health spent almost negligible and easily healed off with a single resurgence or reviv. I use consume every bit as much as I ever did.

I'm fairly certain that only the *new* gear from the *new* operation has this option. Columi and Rakata level stuff will not be researchable. Also, any armoring with a set bonus tied to it will not be researchable either, so you'll likely need the new equivalent to Exotech gear (non tier, equal level) to rip out mods for research purposes.

Schematics for blue and red crystals in Endurance, Crit, and Power varieties are on the daily vendor in Corelia - the PVP vendor has Yellow (and not sure which others). Green, Orange and Purple have not been spotted yet to my knowledge - they are either unavailable or drops or from some other method as yet undiscovered.

Slicing missions - expect it to be exceedingly expensive as pattern drops from missions are pretty uncommon.

I had something strange happen with this system. I had never altered the mods in my columi and rakata gear, having heard that if an item was in it's original state, that you would then be able to move mods around and keep set bonuses. Upon moving the armoring mod from head and chest and placing them in their corresponding peices of custom gear, the set bonus did in fact carry over and my tooltip was still showing 4 set bonus. After an hour or so, i checked again, and suddenly i only had 2 set bonus - I put on the now empty helm and chest and the tooltip updated with 4 set bonus again. My conclusion is that the set bonus did not actually carry over from existing gear (but is supposed to from the new teir of gear) and that there is some tooltip glitch that falsely shows set bonuses from custom gear when you first transfer mods. Has anyone else seen this?

There are also daily vendors on Belsavis in the daily quest area - there should be one near the new Corelia daily quests as well.