Yes, you're missing something. The patch didn't say anything at all about reusable medpacks being usable by all. The only things made usable by all were certain high-level non-reusable consumables that had a Biochem requirement. EDIT: For clarity, here's what happened. Pre-patch: Energized med packs: consumed on use, require Biochem (400) Exotech med packs: consumed on use, require Biochem (400) Rakata med packs: not consumed on use, require Biochem (400) Post-patch: Energized med packs: consumed on use Exotech med packs: consumed on use Rakata med packs: not consumed on use, require Biochem (400)

As a reminder, the OP's complaint is that he's level 28 and can't find any items of the types that he wants that are for less than level 41 on the GTN. I mention it because several posts are talking about demand/supply for max-level items.

That adrenal ("Triage") reduces the damge you DEAL, not the damage DONE to you. It's designed for healers, but it doesn't give any more power than the "Attack" one so it's not very useful.

Seriously, this is 100% true. Whenever something is head and shoulders above other options in an MMO, you invest in it at your own risk. If something is way out of whack it's going to be targeted by the developers, because they want a balanced game.

Why do you need BW to confirm? Nothing in the patch notes suggests that the sub-50 reusables would be tradeable, because the level 50 reusables aren't even tradeable.

That's not entirely true, like the OP said. They sell *some* kind of commendation for your type, but they don't sell every type there is. For example, many vendors only sell "Force wielder" mods, which have more Endurance than Willpower. The OP wants "Resolve" mods, which are the other way around. There also are level gaps sometimes. A vendor might sell "___ Mod 13" when you could use "___ Mod 14", but the next planet in your progression would sell "___ mod 15."

While I think Biochem needs a true perk after this change (i.e., Rakata implants), I think people are understating the value of reusables. There's not going to be an infinite supply of Exotech items on the GTN, especially with a lot of people claiming to drop Biochem for something else once the patch hits. Plenty of times people are going to be stuck with Energized or even worse, simply because the best stuff is sold out. Having a Biochem reusable doesn't just save credits, but it ensures that you always have something at least that good on you.

Huh? In EQ everyone could max every tradeskill all at once if they wanted. So there wouldn't be a point to any bonuses even if they existed (which they didn't).

That guy probably didn't literally mean a day, either.

It's a bug. They plan to fix it. It doesn't happen to everyone, though.

I think you guys are reading way too much into what "spending a week gathering" means. I spent a week gathering ship schematics for cybertech -- but that just meant I spent 2 minutes a day checking the GTN and it took me a week to get all the ones I wanted. People are acting like he spent his entire playtime over 7 days gathering lowbie mats and schematics -- hours upon hours of running around looking for bronzium or whatever.

What do you mean, "all that work?" He just said it took him a week of prep and 100K, not that he spent an entire week of in-game time doing crafting. And he made 300% profit on stuff that everyone keeps insisting that no one wants. Plus, he doesn't have to buy schematics any more for those things so his total profit will continue to grow because a lot of his startup costs are fixed. He can continue to make more items, and because he's not focusing on high level items that take forever to get (the missions take longer), he can churn out more of them. But assuming he's level 50 (and it's not clear from the post that he is), he still can run dailies for "millions" if he wants. It's not like crafting actually takes significant time away from doing other things, particularly when doing low level crafting at higher levels. (I seem to get more crits on lowbie missions). I love how a guy posts about how he can't find certain things that he wants on the GTN, and half the responses basically say, "because there's no demand for the things you are demanding." And when another guy posts, "there's plenty of demand, because I've been supplying those people," the response is, "yeah, but those people are a waste of my ship droid's valuable time."

The Rakata reusables will be equivalent to the Energized consumables in power. That's the only nerf to reusables. That shouldn't affect your market because you can't sell Rakatas to other people now anyway.

But it was incorrect. The Exotech ones ARE consumed on use. After the patch, only Biochemists can use the reusables (same as now), but those won't be as good as the Exotech. So the "best" versions will be usable by everyone, and there will be a continual market for them because they will all be consumed on use. The only "perk" for Biochem as far as consumables are concerned will be that they can have permanent reusable ones for those times when they don't want to use the most expensive consumables.

You keep doing math like it was free to switch before, or like raids really bring shadows because of their ability to tank fights with no shield and in dps gear (which is what happens when you tank in an actual emergency). It costs 50 to switch now. So the difference is whether your raid can tolerate an additional 5 seconds, assuming you were at zero. If you're Inf, pop blackout for regen. You should get at least one Profundity proc. You might be able to force cloak to trigger shadow's respite, even though you're going to break stealth right afterward. You need to pop deflection and possibly resilience to have a chance of tanking it anyway, so that will have a bigger impact on your survival than gaining simple damage reduction from armor. If you're balance, hope for some sharpened mind procs. Bottom line is that it's not going to take a full 10 seconds of you sitting there taking full damage in order to switch stances, and even if you instantly could do it there is a high chance you're still going to get killed, unless *drum roll* your build is a tad OP. If none of that works, then wipe it up and go back. It's not the end of the world. It was a desperate last-ditch effort anyway, because people who aren't tank specced don't have any business tanking hard stuff. It's not like a guy who is 31/0/10 can step up and compete with your dps by switching techniques, so why should the reverse be true? I think your memory is clouded by nostalgia. In none of those examples did players actually use a hybrid build to grant them that flexibility. They all suffered major penalties for switching, and they all were terrible at that secondary role. But that's beside the point. You can still switch in an emergency. You just need to last a MAXIMUM of 5 seconds longer than you can last now in an emergency. Because you don't want to do mostly ranged dps? Balance sage and balance shadow play a lot differently, even if they do the same amount of dps. You have two problems: 1) You're thinking of yourself as a support class. 2) You're lumping sages in with the pure dps. If it's okay for a sage to do top dps, then it's okay for you to do it too (HINT: even dps sages can heal, which is support).

No one is saying that at all. Aside from the people who are outraged, people are just saying that the consumables shouldn't be the source of Biochem's perks. It causes too many problems. But everyone is saying that after these changes, Biochem needs a new perk or else it won't match up to the armor skills, etc., and they'll see the same mass exodus of people feeling they have to switch away from Biochem to one of those.

Forget the current progression of Rakata items. It's screwy. Go back to the very first items you get and look at those. It looks like this: Med packs: Green: Heal Blue: Heal + HoT Purple: Heal, reusable, biochem only. The blue one heals for the most (with the added heal over time), so the "best" is available to all. The purple is equivalent to green, but reusable and biochem only. Stims: Green: +stats/power, 60 mins Blue: +stats/power, 120 mins Purple: +stats/power, 60 mins, reusable, biochem only. The blue one lasts the longest, so the "best" is available to all. The purple is equivalent to green, but reusable and biochem only. Adrenals: Green: none Blue: +stat for 15 seconds Purple: +stat for 15 seconds, reusable, biochem only. This is where the earlier progression is slightly different. The stats are the same, and there's no green, but technically the "best" is still available to all, and the Biochem advantage is saving money. The Energized->Exotech->Rakata progression in the current game diverges from all of these. I'm not going to wall of text it any more, but suffice it to say that Energized is the worst, and Rakata is the best, in terms of actual stats. Plus they ALL require Biochem, which leads to the "Biochem or die" mentality at the endgame. The patch 1.1.2 changes will: Make Energized->Exotech->Rakata work like green->blue->purple does at lower level, with some variation on what makes the blue "best" (instead of duration, it will have more stats). Because earlier adrenal progression has only two steps (blue-purple), this also is a slight divergence. But the end result still means that the "best" consumable for everyone will be an actual consumable that doesn't require Biochem to use.

Not exactly. What they mean is that the armoring might be restricted to a SLOT. This is to keep you from yanking the armoring from the same type of piece over and over again to get a bonus. If the bonus was on the armoring, and there weren't any restrictions, then you could collect four hand pieces, take out the armoring from each, and put them in chest, legs, head and hands slots. BAM! You have a 4-piece bonus when if you just kept the armor you wouldn't have any bonus whatsoever. So to prevent that loophole, they are linking armoring with set bonuses to the same slot as the original item. If you want a 4-piece bonus, you'll need to collect 4 different pieces of the appropriate armor and take the armoring out. But once you do that, yo can put it in whatever you want, assuming you can wear it. Trooper armoring will be able to go into social outfits that are light armor, but you'll just end up with a trooper in light armor.

They aren't getting the reusable ones. The confusion is that the higher level consumables went way off from the normal pattern. It normally works where biochem makes green and blue consumables for sale to everyone else. You sell the blue ones to people who want the very best, and the greens to everyone else. You keep a purple for yourself (or buy one from another biochem, like I did) which is the same as the green one, but requires Biochem to use. The perk isn't that you get the best stats (that's the blue one) but you save money by not having to refill your stock of "cheap" consumables. But BW went and mixed all of that up at the very highest levels. Instead of having the very best blues and greens available to all, with only the purple ones being limited to Biochem, they ALL were restricted to Biochem. This made tons of people switch to Biochem, because, among other things, they had to be Biochem to get the best consumables, unlike earlier levels. This patch just changes the high level "greens" and blues into items that can be used by anyone (and thus sold to anyone by Biochemists), and only leaves the purple ones for Biochem-only. Of course the "green" isn't actually green, it's blue (Energized). The purple is being changed to be equivalent to this, so that the only benefit to having Biochem as a profession as far as consumables are concerned is that once-again, you save money by not having to replenish all the time. This is fine in terms of making consumables fit the earlier progression, and in making it so people don't all rush to Biochem at max-level. It is not fine in that it makes Biochem worse than the armor crafting skills in terms of stats. That's why they ought to add Rakata implants to make up the difference.

And they have a very good point. BW made a mistake with the consumables in the first place -- they tried to do something "different" but ultimately it didn't work because of the nature of consumables. As I've said a few times now, they should have made Rakata implants instead of consumables. That would have kept the benefits on par with the armor making crew skills. I didn't find them anywhere. As I said in my post, those are what the names MIGHT look like if BW hadn't suddenly used a weird naming convention. They are hypothetical. People are getting hung up on the word "Rakata". I am not trying to answer why BW is sticking with the name Rakata for these consumables because I don't know. I'm only trying to explain how the progression of these items is no less nonsensical than all the items before it. Biochem consumables have a long progression of: 1) base item, 2) slightly improved item, 3) reusable item that is equivalent to base item. The patch changes make Energized into the base item, Exotech into the improved item, and Rakata into the reusable item that is equivalent to the base item. That's the same pattern as all of the other consumables, but the NAMES are different, which is what is confusing the heck out of everyone. But that said, the changes make "sense" to the extent Biochem makes any sense at the lower levels too. The answer to the question of "what's the point of a reusable that's not as good as the blue consumable?" is: "the same as it is for every other level of Biochem, which is that it saves you money if you don't want/have/need the very best consumable." The reason the blues are best is so that people don't feel like they all have to be Biochem in order to get the best consumables. Now, of course, going back to this progression means that Biochem won't have a "true" Rakata item, and that's a problem. The simplest solution is for BW to implement actual Rakata items -- implants. They would be acquired the same way as Rakata schematics for the armor skills, and because they can crit for augment slots, they would provide the same bonus. That would only leave Cybertech behind -- they'd need some kind of Rakata two-slot earpiece or something.

Perhaps you're confused because both Exotech and Energized are blue. Think of energized as something that is blue because of the mats needed, but is "green" as far as progression goes. People would freak out at making high level stuff that was "only" green, so BW made it blue instead. Energized is a step up from Hyper-battle. Under normal naming conventions, these items might look like this: Energized hyper-battle (green): better than hyper battle (THIS IS ENERGIZED, BUT GREEN) Prototype Energized hyper-battle (blue): better than energized (THIS IS EXOTECH) Reusable Energized hyper battle (purple): Same as energized, but reusable (THIS IS THE NEW RAKATA) See? Same progression (post-patch). BW confused everyone by breaking from the normal name/color scheme at higher levels.

They aren't making the reusable ones available to everyone. There were non-reusable items that still required Biochem to use, and *those* are the ones they are making available to everyone.

1) That's not any different than it is now. The changes don't make this any worse, even if they don't fix it either. 2) It only reduces the number if the orange schematics aren't available. For all we know, they will be (or even already are), but it's hard to figure out given that the demand for high-end orange gear is suppressed by the fact that it's inferior to crit-crafted gear of the appropriate level.

I don't even want to go into everything that's wrong with this statement. Instead, I'll point out that this all begs the question. They aren't taking away your ability to TANK. They are hampering your ability to dps in your TANK stance, if you aren't tank specced. If you want to support, go right ahead. You can still activate combat technique and guard whomever you want no matter what spec you are. You'll do less dps as s result. If you want to increase your dps, switch to your dps technique. It's not rocket surgery. You're making this harder than it needs to be. I was pointing out that the system isn't flexible, and that people who looked at it and expected it to encourage flexibilty were setting themselves up for disappointment. It could have been different -- some MMO developers have picked a model where anyone can pick from any list of skills, no matter what class they are. That has its own flaws, but it's one direction to take. It's interesting that you would bring up WoW, though. WoW doesn't allow hybrid builds, and SWTOR's talent system is a copy of an earlier version of WoW's talent system. So again, I'm not sure why you thought "MMOs = flexibility" meant "the developers will be keen on whatever hybrid build I come up with". We're not talking about the same thing. For example, WoW is revamping its talent system with its next expansion. Instead of tying talents to trees, they tie abilities (and some "old" talents) to trees and you unlock them as you progress. Their talents will be from tiers that are available to all members of that "class", so players are less limited in what they really can take. No argument here. That's easier to do when you can buff a balance shadow's damage without worrying about whether you are going to overbuff some kin/balance hybrid in the process, though.

All those examples undermine your own argument. If the developers really cared about nerfing every hybrid spec or unorthodox play style just because it doesn't conform to a "vision," even if there is absolutely nothing else wrong with it, then they would nerf every hybrid spec or unorthodox playstyle, or simply make them impossible. But they didn't. They only nerfed this one (so far). So now your argument that it's not some guy with a vendetta against hybrids, it's actually some guy with a vendetta against kin/bal, kin/inf and inf/bal hybrids ONLY? It all seems tinfoil-hatty to me. It seems easier to believe that the developers at least think that the specs they are nerfing are overpowered, even if we don't agree that they really are.