At the top end of play DF and Scrapper are pretty equivalent in straight DPS with DF possibly edging out Scrapper with really pro play. But for most people it underperforms as there are just too many balls to keep in the air. Damage potential is pretty high if you manage to pretty much never clip your dots and can keep up pugnacity, UH, and maintain optimal range. Unfortunately managing to keep Pugnacity and UH up while not clipping dots takes some pretty extreme timing and having to move or having an enemy move at a crucial time can send the whole house of cards tumbling down if your blaster whip is late as you have to then get the whole dot train rolling again. PvP is just a mess. Dot specs suffer int eh bursty environs of PvP anyway but DF requires 6 GCDs to get the whole thing started then on GCD 7 if you haven't been CC'd to obscurity you can get on a wounding shots.

He doesn't map well directly to the classes but I'm pretty sure he is more an inspiration for the scoundrel than gunslinger. Gunslinger is along the lines of the smuggler from the intro vids two guns blazing cowboy. Han used a blaster and sometimes from cover (though so did luke in the beginning so ... ) but his defining moments fighting were much more scoundrely, short range surprise attack on greedo, quick draw on Vader (though ineffective). I modeled my smuggler off Han and went with a DF scoundrel. Which also fits with him being moderately effective at best in combat.

Horrid mishmash of abilities make this spec harder than scrapper to manage and far more complex than any other DPS spec. Most abilities are 10 - 30m range. but only way to build UH is 4m. So in effect DF is a melee spec but reliant on using abilities that pay the ranged attack "tax" on damage. 100% fix to the spec from a good way to generate UH from range.

Well force camouflage isn't stealth. It is a vaguely stealth themed defensive cooldown/detaunt. There may be room for a similar ability for snipers but I don't feel like we need another button to be less squishy and even thematically an effect that has us vanish after engaging seems counter to the spirit of sniper style camo/stealth. Regardless of that though it just isn't stealth at all so not really the point. My point stands outside of limited PvP griefy situations it would be of basically no use to have stealth (like hide and be untargetable till attack stealth). I find that I like the idea of stationary camo alot more than I'd ever like having it I guess.

It's a realism vs. mechanics issue. Realistically even sniper agents should be trained in some stealth type abilities. However in terms of game mechanics stealth is a gap closer ability used by melee DPS to close in with enemies and not face fire while getting in range. As snipers endeavor to engage from max range it is from the perspective of game mechanics pointless to have stealth. In PvE we engage outside of aggro range. Stealth has no use. In PvP as has been explained it's limited utility would be exploitative and unbalanced really only useful for harassing people (mostly lower level players) in open world PvP situations. The only real benefit of stealth would be to stealth past mobs in some quests however due to mob spacing and our range of engagement it would mostly lead to more chance of pulling adds since we need to engage from range not in the same space as a group of mobs.

There are alot of misconceptions about this subject I think. The point from the beginning was to make this game a solid MMO with an actual story worth following. I'll go ahead and make the controversial argument that they have. The story is excellent fully up to bioware standards, not only are the class stories engaging and epic but all the way down the line to Planetary arcs, and even 'side quests' are worth following to get a fuller picture of the game world. Some people don't like strong narrative in their games certainly so to those people the story seems slow and 'bogs down' the collection of digital tokens to exchange for ever inflated digital goods and abilities. If you don't want strong narrative this argument is absolutely right, also you might want to look for games from other developers. As an MMO the game has pretty much everything one could ask for within the space of 'theme park' MMOs it has never been intended to be an open world sandbox (or like SWG litterbox). It has solid reasons to group both for flashpoints as well as heroic areas, it released with more expansive and complete "endgame" content than any other MMO. PvP warzones have been competitive and rewarding (though plagued with the assorted imbalances constantly native to the MMO framework). World PvP was a bit of a flop but once again that isn't really a Themepark element it's a bone tossed to those who want a sandbox game. All of the assorted social and vanity and busybox elements were available with datacrons, titles, robust (if in the endgame useless) crafting, and lots of options for vanity outfits and pets. So why all the hate on the MMO aspects? Well all that content they put out at launch? It was chewed through at an extreme rate by the nomadic bands of the "hardcore" who adopt, consume, discard, and vocally complain about every MMO ever. That was the MMO audience that wasn't locked in to WoW or another MMO already. Another vocal group of complainers have been ex-SWG players. They wanted SWG-2 and were never going to be satisfied with a theme park game these are also the number one group to trash PvP due to the flop of Ilum and lack of chances to run world PvP. Which brings us around to the whole F2P thing and EA (cus really it's EA not bioware) considering the game not to meet expectations. EA despite saying otherwise was wanting to take out WoW and get that kind of cash cow. Not gonna happen in the current MMO market. WoW drastically expanded the playerbase of MMOs ont he whole. But the vast majority of htose players ONLY PLAY WOW and STILL PLAY WOW. The gamers sick of WoW or done with it's content roam from game to game (till an expansion for WoW comes out to devour) and play through the content at the same rediculous rate they do WoW and did the games that came before. The only way games Pre-WoW managed to retain customers was a combination of being the only game in town (or one of few) and having extremely brutal leveling and gearing curves. WoW eliminated that and ushered in the idea that people who don't play 8+ hours a day still want to feel like thier time is well spent in the game. Thus post WoW MMOs have tried to open up to less devoted (or obsessive) players. Thing is most of those less obsessive players still play WoW, they haven't finished it yet. There are people who have played since launch and not managed to hit level cap before an expansion raises it. The strength of this game was set out to be it's story integration and that remains the games strength. That may not be enough for the bustling hive of elite players who roam from MMO to MMO devouring content and ************ about how bored they are. It certainly won't satisfy the players seeking an open world sandbox to play in. But those players who love star wars and strong narrative are devoted to the game. It that enough to satisfy EA? Doubtful hopefully F2P earns enough for them to continue supporting the game.

I never die as my sniper (lvl20) except if I get sloppy on a champion that has support. It looks to me like your rotation is not that great. I always enter cover and open with ambush (laze target buff first if it's up) that plus a snipe kills pretty much any normal mob I face plenty of them are taken down by just the ambush. Then I just spam snipe till everything is dead or ambush is up again. If the mobs are clustered around my companion I'll toss off a frag grenade and hit cover pulse if 1-2 are melee and run up on me (Kaliyo usually keeps them off me though)

Well I think its pretty clear that the reality is that tanks are pretty much balanced. There are variances but those are easily eclipsed by gear and player skill making them as close to balanced as can really be without them all being the same. The perception though is easy to see. When someone is awesome at a class the person gets the credit for being awesome. When someone sucks they get lumped into "another sucky XX" since shadow/assasins are harder to play and heal it is much more likely for mediocre players to have ruined their perceived ability add to that that they were the FotM PvP class and it's easy to see why the perception is they suck as in addition to normal bad players you have PvP players/specs in trying to tank as they level to get through queues faster.

If you are leveling primarily in flashpoints why not be tank spec? Really with companions there is little to no reason not to level as a tank spec anyway. If you don't want to play a tank why are you trying to for endgame? I think all these questions are far more relevant to your situation than what a tank can do. There really is no reason not to play as a tank spec to level so it doesn't matter if you can or not.

Honestly I would guess that the Class quest and World arc will be intact, heroics will be a content pack, and the post World arc continuing quests will be a content pack. Solo side quests would still be in. Flashpoints and Warzones will be available but limited to some number per week (with the ability to buy more for cartel coins). Operations will not be available without buying access with cartel coins. Yes he did say "most class content" which to me is more hedging on there being some minor thing you can't do on FtP he can't think of and trying to avoid the troll storm that follows any dev promise not fulfilled exactly as imagined by the hoards of angry internets.

Well to start with Bioware doesn't really write engines. Pretyt much all of their games license a core engine then Mod to taste. This is because engines are hard and writing your own is very hard. Hero Engine seemed tailor made for Bioware. It was built for MMOs thus could handle the expected loads. It's development environment is very friendly to simultaneous development on several fronts (Which later proved to be limited in the numbers ToR operated at) it also supported the range of systems Tor was aiming to support. Alot of people like to throw up Unreal as an option. It isn't. It can't handle the numbers that MMOs need to support, has pretty steep system requirements and would require extensive built from scratch subsystems to fully support MMO use. It's not an MMO engine and while great for shooters it really doesn't see use in MMO's for that reason. Terra has used it ... and well it kinda stinks. Now Hero engine has not lived up to expectations unfortunately. It's development environment couldn't stand up to a team the size that worked on ToR and Bioware needed to mod it to bring in preferred tools in alot of places. The overall graphics quality I feel is lower than they would have liked but that is a mix of engine and supporting lower end systems. Honestly though the engine is pretty solid for what it is I've not seen much int he way of lag or loss of FPS and I don't rock a top end system (nor do I try to run at those settings)

We already know that it won't be limited to cosmetic stuff. They'll be selling content. it's basically porting DLC to the MMO market. More importantly they'll be selling access to content, so that Johnny R quote you are all so fond of is actually quite appropriate, you know what the parallel is in an MMO? Raids, flashpoints, Warzones. a few PvP comendations from your next rank but out of weekly warzones? Buy a five pack and rank up, get pick-uped into an op? buy an op pass and hop on in. Yes EA is greedy absolutely but there is a simple fact to Theme park MMO reality. Pay To Win Loses money. What earns EA more selling a piece of gear for five bucks or selling a pass to a raid for a dollar that you have to run fifteen to twenty times to get that same piece of gear? The Free to play plus subscription model in MMOs is well established, (LOTRO, CoH, CO, STO, DCUO) and EA will follow in the tracks of those games and their 200-700% increases in revenue.

You are in fact mistaken actually. Glad you enjoy WoW... Why are you here again?

This has been covered by the devs actually. there is one reason they dropped day/night and that is because of the art assets. how things look changes when lighting changes. so to create an immersive contiguous feel of each of the planets and areas of planets they locked the lighting conditions allowing for more atmospheric art and less generic looks good under any lighting art. In other words day/night would take away as much as it gives if not more as far as immersion goes and would lower the overall quality of the graphics, not to mention put more strain on graphics as they have to have shadow tracking from light sources etc.

I rolled my Trooper as a commando and wish I would have gone vanguard now. I like tanking and usually just roll tanks but I already had a JG so I decided to roll as commando. Now I realize I want to play all three tank classes so I wish I had gone Vanguard in the beginning.

Free to Play is unlikely to have any significant effect on the quality of the game beyond likely bringing profits in line with what EA wants and thus keeping the game going. Bad games that go free to play continue to be bad with the same problems they had without free to play, good games continue to be pretty good with free to play as they continue to produce basically the same quality of game. Free to play does generally mean more smaller updates to content or systems. Bite sized changes that access too can be sold in the cash shop at regular intervals to keep people paying into the shop for the content. So what you can expect is basically the same as what you have now but when content comes it will not be giant expansions with two new ops a warzone and three flashpoints each of those ops, FPs and warzones will be released individually in serial. As for bug fixes those will continue to be fixed as all bug fixes are based on severity. The bugs everyone complains about here are minor and may stick around awhile, game breaking bugs are hotfixed quickly.

There are two main ways in which FtP can be implemented. You can have a cash store with a large array of vanity items and a few short cuts. Or you can have the pay to win. I have played several of the Current FtP MMO offerings (Always started as a paid sub) CoH, LoTRO, CO, all have improved with FtP revenue and there is nothing outside of vanity items that forces you to hit the cash shop in those games. On the other hand there are pay to win games where you have to hit the cash shop to really play at the top level. World Of Tanks does this. No one can play in the big leagues there without gold ammo and supporting a top tier tank without a premium account or at least a premium (cash shop only) tank to credit farm with is pretty much impossible. It's a glorified FPS though, not an MMORPG. Now I won't say EA is somehow incapable of screwing this up lord knows that isn't true. But there are solid models that are profitable and balanced for FtP and all evidence points to this being the case for what is being proposed right now. IE all content and future content (Ops, FPs, Warzones etc) will be available free to subscribers FtP players have to buy access piecemeal. That wicked reskin of wraidskin gloves your scoundrel needs? that may cost you soem store points but guess what if you're subbed you get those with your sub too. As I look at the MMO landscape as we head into a post WoW world (WoW is in decline even if it's inertia is huge) it's plain to see that the traditional MMO (endgame focused gear grinds on a subscription basis) just aren't gonna cut it. The market is too small and the investment is too large. There was a time when graphics and animation in an MMO could be laughable and it was still considered triple A. That isn't the case anymore. The investment for an MMO upfront is as big or bigger than an FPS or Single player RPG and even those all have DLC and Cash shops now. Terra, Secret World, GW2 are all stumbling despite breaking away from the MMO standards, It looks like the FtP MMO with cash shop is what MMOs are goign to be from here out. Hell even WoW has a cash shop and while not technically free to play it's not far off from what is being proposed by EA here.

That's not how shield chance works. Crit does override shield but will only eliminate it when pushed to 100% crit. This does make shield less useful but it is incredibly rare that someone will push their crit high enough to actually cut your shield chance down at all. Basically what happens if you have a 40% shield chance and are hit with a 60% crit chance attack there is a 1-100 roll 1-40 shielded 41-100 crit. If they push over 60% it will start to cut your shield chance but outside of pretty situational buffs that pretty much doesn't happen in current gear. But defenses are pretty weaksauce in PvP with the number of force/tech attacks around. It has improved as Sage/sorcs and Ops/Scoundrels have gotten clubbed about the head and shoulders with the nerf bat. But even mara/sents, sniper/slingers, etc use a fair bit of force and tech attacks so they don't help near as much as in PvE. If you are playing as a full tank and puttign your emphasis on guard and taunt and some CC it's worth it to get hte defenses usually. If you want to slap guard on a healer and play low rent DPS you won't suffer much for going in with DPS gear as far as survivability goes.

If only we had headgear that sweet.

Read the second half of the article people. Activision/Blizard is the outlier here, and is in fact largely considered to be overvalued due to that. Take two has an almost identical decline and strong CoD showings over christmas are what has propped up activision. These companies are far more than one game. Battlefield was trounced by CoD as it always is and everything but activision blizard has been in a tailspin since last holiday season. There are broader market factors at work here. The rise of Zynga presaged a fall of many other entertainment (particularly gaming) stocks. Zyngas crash and burn has not flung that confidence back onto more stable companies. as most investors are retreating to "sure things" rather than volatile entertainment stocks. As a final point. Stock value has very very little to do with a companies ability to produce it's widget of choice. It's a measure of investor confidence in the company. In other words it doesn't matter how low the stocks fall if the companies financials (profits, expenses etc) remain solid (as EA's have) the company remains solvent. At most this points to lack if trust in the CEO's vision, and a chance of him being replaced it says nothign about what is goign to happen about this game. As for Free to Play it will come or not based on the performance of SW:ToR in the companies financials not the performance of EA's stocks.

It does not scale off of absorb. It's scaling is off of Healing bonus a function of power and maybe strength. Absorb effects your absorb % on successful shielding of an attack.

Currently scales off of healing Bonus with a coefficient of 1. So every 1 Healing Bonus increase is 1 more HP absorbed. Healing Bonus scales off of Power, Force (or tech) Power, and primary stat (at least for the healing classes I would assume the same for us) Power and force power scale at 0.17 Healing Bonus per power stat. Primary stat at 0.14. It is possible that since we are not technically a healing AC we don't get a scaling of Healing Bonus off of our primary stat. So Str will give roughly 1 more HP absorbed per 7-8 Str and Power will give 1 more HP absorbed per 5-6 power. P.S. there is a base effect as well based on the level of the ability but that is static. The Bonus Healing is added to that.

well you'll be sacrificing about 770 HP for that 70 strength. Blade Barrier uses the Healing system for its absorb calculation: Ability Healing Min = Coefficient * HealingBonus + StandardHealthPercentMin * StandardHealth Ability Healing Max = Coefficient * HealingBonus + StandardHealthPercentMax * StandardHealth Willpower/Aim/Cunning Healing Bonus = (Willpower or Aim or Cunning) * 0.14 Assuming our primary stat gives the same healing bonus as healing classes main stat that's 9.8 more healing power. From current build the coefficient on blade barrier is 1 thus 9.8 more hp is provided per blade barrier proc. That means you'll make up for the difference in HP with blade barrier improvement after 79 uses (78.57 blah blah blah) Assuming use on CD (which it should be) that'll take 15 minutes 48 seconds. 70 str is 14 melee bonus damage plus as our primary stat 1 strength is worth 1 power as well so that's 16.1 damage from power so you'll get 16-30 bonus damage dependent on melee or force attack. Basically it's impact on blade barrier is negligible. Otherwise it's a pretty straight forward swap of 770 hp for 16 or 30 bonus damage. If you struggle with threat it may be worthwhile but the overall impact either direction is pretty minor.

1) Aoe threat was an issue, since 1.3 it's been fine. I don't necessarily agree with the choices of how they fixed it (the changes to guardian strike seem a net negative to me but it does help with aoe threat) bu AOE threat is no longer an issue. 2) I think perception of dps/threat has been skewed by the various hybrid specs. More threat came from dps in those specs and saw some discussion on forums and elsewhere. Cuts in DPS I think were instead focused on re-balancing around raised threat modifiers. This has kept our threat relatively static but less reliant on gear. which is a fix for the dps gear disparity on high end gear but overall is a move in the wrong direction as it will just need to be done again as the gear disparity increases. THey need to make threat scale off of defensive stats rather than acc, crit, surge and power in some capacity then the stats we want for defense help with threat until then ballooning threat modifiers will continue to need to be put in place. 3) The endurance bonus talent is meaningless. 3% end is not enough HP to be worht three talent points anywhere in the tree. In the other trees it's pure filler we have better filler throughout the tree. 4) Couldn't agree more the defense stats are fairly well balanced but the pacing of healing and damage in most HMs/Ops is such that the slightly spikier damage we take isn't much of an issue. I always felt the shield/absorb stats were due to our much better defense cooldowns rather than defense being better. 5) depends on the definition of "fine" we can complete any of the content in game. but not as easily as other tanks. That means that before long we'll be consistently passed up for "better" tanks. Balance means relitive equality, not being passable

Guardian Defense Spec 1: Still viewed as being inferior in aoe threat, and to a lesser degree threat in general. Generally thought of as inferior overall to the vigilance Hybrid specs. Not enough DPS or utility to be a viable target in PvP guard is irritating to other players but a vigilence hybrid brings that was well as semi decent dps and more utility. 2: I feel alot of our threat issues are solved int he sort term but as gear disparity grows it will come back. I'd like to see less blanket bumps of threat boost and more reactive abilities based on defensive stats to generate threat. Upper defense tree seems lackluster. Nothing really there to help with survival, and the threat boosts there are found with more DPS in vigilance. I basically find myself playing Defense out of devotion to the idea of a full tank spec rather than due to it being the best at it's role.