Bioware was a great company, but they took an EA to the knee... Sorry I had to do it I just gave up on swtor, its clear that they dont want us to test class balance, they want us to go to the PTS to find bugs. Austin Peckenpaugh clearly said at the oficial swtor podcast that our(players) "math" doesnt mean **** to them, they have their own assumptions and views of the game on top of their own math so...lets see how well that will work for them. You can check the podcast here, his statement starts at 04:35.

So...that brings us again to the same question: If commandos/mercs and sages/sorcerers can have almost the same single target HPS and sages/sorcerers have a MUCH MUCH better aoe healing, why take a commando/merc instead of a sage/sorcerer?

The Only difference I see here (and that is the problem I'm having between armormech and biochem) is that if you go synth you will need to find an artificer who got the same end game relic that you need and buy the augmented one from him. If you go artifice you can get the relic you want from dailies/ops and you can always use ANY orange gear (even lvl 10 ones). So...its kinda harder to find an artificer who REed the same relic that you need than buying any orange gear. I've been biochem until now but I'm still deciding between implants and orange armor because of the same problem.

That's blizzard's way, bioware releases things when they want, done or not.

If they are saying that old gear wont have the set bonus on the armoring but on the item what happens if we remove the armoring from the rakata chest, grab an armoring from the tier 2 chest and put it on the rakata chest? 2 set bonuses? o.O

Maybe Georg is right but to me those "under the hood" changes he stated translate to: "We screwed up and now I'm here trying to make you guys stay a bit longer so we have more time to try to fix things a bit". IMO an MMO should NEVER have "under the hood" changes, they need to post EVERYTHING that changed on the patch notes, and I can't see how changing diminishing returns or giving us more stats will solve the regen problem, stronger heals means nothing if you can't cast them. The only thing i can see them doing is giving us more regen through set bonuses, but then again what a *********** stupid idea, nerfing the class because they wanted to give us regen through set bonuses. And again, every healer would benefit from those stat changes so that still means we are now the worst healer of the 3 and i can't see why any raid leader would bring a commando/merc healer if they can bring better healers (plus they both have a battle ress).

I'm a commando healer and I know that if any champion geared commando/merc healer achieve 500k healing in a WZ the other team is just dumb and is not focusing them, have 1 or 2 people focus you the entire time while you try to heal and tell me if you can do 500k healing. Interrupts, CC, Knockbacks, -% Heal debuffs....yeah op, right. Play against a decent group and tell me if commando/merc is op.

Wow that was quick xD thx for the fix =)

RuQu I've tested the new 1.0.6b and something wierd is happening with alacrity (commando version). I think the problem is with the "First Responder" and "Weapon Calibration" Skill choices. I'm using these stats: Lvl: 50 Aim: 1777 Power: 269 Tech Power: 1173 Crit: 302 Surge: 147 Alacrity: 330 Cunning: 140 Skill Choices (from top to bottom): 3-3-1-5-0-0-2-2-2 All buffs, 4pc bonus Fixed casts: 300 secs Min ammo for med: 10 Min ammo for adv med: 4 Recharge cells at 5 Using those stats I get cast reduce of 0.899729 (shouldn't it be like 14%?) and alacrity weight normalized to power as 0.7881. Ok now if I change the First responder to 2 the cast time reduction does not change and the alacrity weight changes to -51.665 Using First reponder 0 and Weapon Calibration 2 alacrity weight changes to 38.861, no changes on cast time reduction. Using both at 2 we get alacrity weight = 7.3360, no changes on cast time reduction.

Tried the GUI version here and it worked fine, hps worked too. Thanks again for all the effort RuQu =)

Walls of texts are fine xD I'm a theorycrafter like you and I love to research and keep up with the math behind my skills and such. So I'll try my best here to reduce this alacrity, I may be able to get some rakata pieces if no one uses them in my raid and get the eliminator's set enhancements, they have some power/surge enhancements to replace my alacrity ones, it will take a while tho. But hey your spreadsheet is awesome, and I thank you again for bringing this to the community and for the help on the alacrity matter, looking forward to see how that c++ one will work. Its been a while since I programmed in C but let me know if i can help you with something.

Thanks for the great guide RuQu, I've been folowing your discussion about alacrity for some time now and just to make it clear: I was looking at that hps chart under the alacrity section and basically that means that we should try to keep our Activation Speed between 14.5% and 16.5% right? As of now i have 19.8%, 10.8% from gear, 9% from talents (rakata gear sux =| ). So i should drop that 5% talent and stay with 14.8%??? Thank you.

Awesome guide =) That's pretty much what I've been doing so far with my rotations, I didn't think that waiting in stealth after using cloak was good, I was using it and following with an attack, thanks for the tip =D The only problem is with the BIS list, not sure if its final yet but you can get better mods (23) from daily commendations in ilum and better gear in hardmode flashpoints (tionese commendations and columi gear from last bosses), you can also get a rakata ear and rakata implant from daily commendations (tier 3), rakata belt and bracer from synthweaving. The pvp sets/weapons are also better than corelian commendation gear (yes even for pve) they come with "23" and "24" mods.

Not sure why you need a gear list, its so simple, there are 3 tiers available: tionese, columi and rakata. Tionese is the first one, drops from hard flashpoints (not sure if it drops from normal lvl 50 flashpoints). Columi is the second, drops from the last boss of hard flashpoints and every boss in normal operations. All you need to do is focus on those tiers, they have different sets for each class, for example I'm speced into deception so I will always get "stalker" pieces. Each boss drop one part so go there do every flashpoint atleast once, if you see a belt droping from one boss he will always drop a belt, so you know where to find yours. If you still dont want to do those flashpoints and still want a complete list so you can skip some flashpoints I'm not sure wath to say to you, you're playing a new MMO, might as well enjoy your $60 game. Pre ops I've never seen any mods better than those of the tiers, the best ones I saw you can get on ilum with daily commendations, they are numbered "23". You migh as well check the pvp sets, if you have mainly tier 1 pve gear, some tier 2 pvp pieces will be better, if you have tier 2 pve some tier 3 pvp will be better, just dont remove set pieces or you will loose the pve set bonus (ear, implants, relics, weapons, offhand, wrists and belts are not part of the set bonus but they still carry the set name).

I've checked it and it is indeed a great spot to farm, by the time you finish one run the ones you gathered already respawned so you can keep going without interruptions (took me 5:30 more or less for one run). I did circles there for like 30 mins and came out with 40 red goos. Thanks for the help man =)