Say that you want to lower total hps while improving burst capabilities... Tweak one ability for an on the surface appearance of increased burst. Nerf the abilities that support that ability. Nerf other burst abilities. Nerf HoTs. Nerf resource management. ...good changes. Mission statement accomplished.

I'd just like to point out, for all the discussion about the differences between how straight male and female LIs are handled, there are only two same-gender romance options for male characters that are more than a brief flirtation. One is Koth. Can betray you. Can be killed. The other is Theron.

This is kinda where I'm at with the whole thing. Shock value for the sake of shock value, driven by out of character actions, is bad writing, and this is why I get annoyed with the whole "the story is succeeding because it's making you feel something" line of argument from earlier in the thread. There is a difference between feeling irritated with the story because the characters did something that you didn't want to happen and feeling irritated with a story because the thing those characters did makes no sense according to who they have been developed to be. It's the difference between a moment like the Red Wedding in Game of Thrones, which is rooted in and the consequence of well developed character motivations and actions, and a moment like this, which seems to come out of left field. And for the record, I do believe the most likely explanation for this story is something to do with going undercover, but it's just so poorly presented that I'm just blah about the whole thing.

Some People: Git Gud b4 ranked with Unranked Arenas Other People: Remove Unranked Arenas

The real question after this story is how much of that healing went to her and how much to her team. I've had matches where a single dps has tunneled me for the entire thing on my operative healer. I still topped the healing chart with 3 million or so, but since I took 2.5 million damage, not a whole lot of my healing actually helped my team.

As I said in my post, I've been playing on and off for those 5 years. One of those off periods was about 2 years long (so, yes, my 5 years to 75 claim was a bit hyperbolic and should have really been put as 3, my bad). I also mentioned that when I play, I tend to be somewhere between casual and hardcore, depending on what else is going on in my life at the time. Putting aside the years that it took me to get to the valor rank I'm at, however, let's just look at the last month. During the last month, I've been closer to the hardcore end of the spectrum than the casual. I've been playing 3 to 5 hours a day, every day, all month long. In general, about 2 hours of that has been PvP and nothing but PvP. In that time (30 days x 2 hours/day = 60 hours), I've gone from valor rank 67 to valor rank 76. 9 ranks in 60 hours. Add in the other 65 ranks, and it has been a long grind. Which is the entire point that I was making in my post. Getting valor rank 75+ is a long grind. Gating a small community constantly complaining about not having enough people behind a long grind is a bad idea. And as a side note, I understand that I don't play as much as others, but to say that I must not PvP much at all because you have 5 rank 100s and I don't is just ridiculous. I play a variety of content in the game; I don't exclusively do warzones, but the largest chunk of my time has been spent on PvP. If you don't consider 60 hours in a month spend on one kind of content in one game much, then I don't know what to tell you other than your definition of the word "much" is a bit off.

It's not that I don't want dps to use the kolto stations, I just don't want them to use the stations when they're not needed. It's one thing to use them when one or more people drop below 50%, it's another to spam them while everyone consistently stays above 80%. The second situation is the pet peeve that I'm complaining about.

All of this talk about needing valor rank 75+ is ridiculous and insane. I've been playing the game on and off since launch, but have been playing more on than off since the months leading up to KotFE. I primarily play 1 character, and I split my time between doing PvP on that character and running the story on alts. I consider myself to be somewhere between a casual and a hardcore player. When I have a few weeks free I play a LOT, and when I don't, I'll log on for an hour a day a few times per week. I just now got to rank 75 after 5 years. Valor rank is not a mark of skill. Valor rank is not a mark of class knowledge. Valor rank is the biggest grind in the entire game. Gating ranked behind any Valor rank is a bad idea. Gating ranked behind Valor rank 75 is, once again, ridiculous and insane. You would be cutting off a large chunk of current players from ranked and making it such a daunting grind for new players that ranked, a community that has consistently complained about how small it's population is, will rarely ever get anyone else to join.

So, with 5.0 I have started running more veteran flashpoints than I used to. For the most part, I have actually been enjoying myself. There is one thing, however, that has started to bug me. The way players use kolto stations. I play as a healer most of the time, and while I don't think I'm the best healer ever, I am adequate. People in the groups I'm a part of do not tend to die. Which brings me to the pet peeve. I understand using the kolto stations when I flub something up and people come close to dying, and I understand using them during bosses with a particularly rough damaging phase. But even when no one in my group has dropped below 80% for the entirety of the boss fight, and in some cases where the group is actually at 95% and above, some people just keep spamming the kolto stations. Why? Am I missing something? Wouldn't it be better for them, as dps (because it's usually the dps), to just keep killing to boss, and let me worry about the healing? Or is the healer supposed to just dps the whole time and let the dps heal the group with kolto stations? I just don't get it.

I would like to propose that Bioware create a station that players can use to disintegrate the schematics that drop from command crates, even after players have claimed them. There are several reasons why I believe that this would be a good idea. First, the current system makes it very annoying and bothersome to keep track of which schematics a player's legacy's crafters have learned (making duplicates safe to disintegrate), and which schematics are new to them. There are only two ways that I can think of to do this. 1) Manually create a list of learned schematics outside of the game that can be checked every time a command crate is opened, adding a new schematic to the list every time a new schematic drops in game. 2) Log out of the character that just opened a command crate, log onto the relevant crafter to see if that schematic has been learned, and then log back onto the first character to either claim or disintegrate the schematic. Neither method is good. Both are inconvenient to players. Under the current system, I would personally rather just gamble, claim every schematic I get and then vendor them if I later find that they are duplicates. The solution to this would be a way for players to disintegrate the schematics after they have been claimed. A disintegration station. The second reason that I believe creating this disintegration station would be a good idea is that I believe that it could be a way to help, if in a small way, the game economy's inflation problem by providing another credit sink. The station could charge, and I'm going to throw out a random number here that is completely open for discussion and adjustment, 25,000 credits per use, and it would be a service that I can guarantee players would use. It would result in removing more credits from the game while making players happy. One counterargument to my idea of a disintegration station could be that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to make sure that the character who uses it to get CXP is the same character who originally claimed the schematic, allowing players to give characters a little jolt of CXP without actually earning it. Too this, I say, good. This is the third reason that a disintegration station is a good idea. It would provide a small (and considering the effort required to get one schematic weighed against the 150 CXP you get for disintegrating it, I would definitely say small) way for players to help reduce the CXP grind on their alts once they no longer need it on their mains. This is a good thing. So, to sum up with a TLDR. Bioware should create a disintegration station that allows players to pay an amount to credits to disintegrate their claimed command crate schematics and get the CXP from them. It would: 1) Making it easier for players to claim the schematics they need while still giving them the benefit of disintegration for those they don't. 2) Provide another credit sink to an already overinflated economy. 3) Allow a small way for players to boost the CXP gain of their alts.

This is an overbroad generalization. I do progression gearing. I am interested in fluff. I like collecting different shells and appearance options. I like the rep items because I never seem to be around for stuff like the Gree event. And you're right. You can't blame people for getting upset at getting a lot of stuff they don't care about, which is why I mentioned in my post that discussions about the way the actual pieces of gear drop are worth having. But, once again, those actual pieces of gear come separate from and in addition to the fluff. The fluff is not blocking people from getting gear. The fluff is not hurting anyone.

People find some really weird things to complain about. If you use the word "junk" to refer to the green and blue pieces of actual gear, then that's one thing. It's a conversation worth having. Based off of the number of threads complaining about the RNG and people not getting set pieces, rebalancing the drop rates of green/blue/purple gear is something that should be looked into (as well as the idea of getting rid of greens altogether). But complaining about the extra fluff that the command crates give out as if it's standing in the way of getting more set pieces? That's something else entirely. And it's silly. Command crates always give one piece of actual gear. Always. This is how they were designed. You might not like that design. You can argue that they should give more or at least have a chance to give more. Again, this would be a conversation worth having. But, again, to complain about the fluff in a way that implies that it's somehow taking up a drop that might have given you a set piece is, again, silly. The fluff is a bonus. When you open a command crate you get a piece of gear and you get the bonus fluff (shells, schematics, rep items, gifts, etc). Argue about the mechanics of the way the actual gear drops all you want, but the bonus fluff is a good thing. It comes in addition to the gear, not in place of more gear.

I would like to make a suggestion to have an armor set that combines the relaxed vestments chestwraps with the dashing hero's chestplate but puts the hood down.

Giving this thread a bump because it's been awhile, and the issue still hasn't been adequately addressed. Not sure that I expect that it ever will be, but one can hope.

When I played through the agent class story, I was light about 70% of the time and dark the other 30%. I simply felt that a lot of the LS choices were smarter when trying to RP from the perspective of an intelligence operative. Often, I would be making a choice like, (LS) Keep person x alive so I can turn them into an asset for the Empire or (DS) Kill person x because I'm evil and stuff.

I actually really enjoyed chapter six. I just wish there had been a few chances to have short side conversations with the npcs.

A bit off topic, but I miss the pvp effect of detaunts from that game.

I just wish there was a more general option that let's you pick which warzones your q'ing for. Like what exists in almost every other MMO I've ever played. And like what exists in this MMO for pve content.

Something everyone saying to get more experience before joining ranked are missing: Ranked experience is not the same as regular experience. Even if someone worked really hard to get better, got fully geared, and ground their way all the way from valor 1 to valor 100 through regs before entering ranked, there will still be a learning curve when they move up. And it's not a learning curve you can really work through in regs. Basically, you need to play ranked to get the experience you need to get good at ranked.

I'm normally a Bioware defender, but I just can't with this. I'm done playing until this gets fixed. No point in wasting my time just to see everything erased. And don't even get me started on the apparent GTN wipe. That better get fixed ASAP. I didn't have much of value on it during the rollback, so I wasn't personally affected all that much. People with platinum rarity cartel market items they were trying to sell though...

Breaking everything down by the categories the Companions and Contacts menu uses, I have: Total Followers - 52 Main Characters - 13 Companions: Imperial Agent - 2 Creatures - 6 Droids - 6 Other Followers - 25 Total Contacts - 7 Main Characters - 3 Alliance Specialists - 4 So that's 59, when everyone on the menu is added together. This, of course, excludes the 2 that I should have but do not: Master Ranos and the Mawvorr.

I'm having the exact same issue on my agent. Additionally, I bought the Mawvorr creature companion from the new pack off the GTN, and after completing the quest to get it, it never showed up on my Companions and Contacts menu. Just like Ranos. I used the Holocommunicator on all of my other characters (because none of them have progressed past the basic class stories, while my agent has done everything) and it worked for them. I unlocked the Mawvorr handler's license in my collections for the rest of my account and tested it on one of my other characters. This also worked. I'm beginning to wonder if there is some limit to the number of companions we can have show up under our Companions and Contacts menu because on my agent, I have unlocked every possible companion from every alert and every cartel pack, and it's just now that these two, the newest two, are not showing up. This issue is frustrating, and it has me worried about any future companions.

Just to add why I feel the change is stupid: For the last few days, when I've wanted to work on my CXP, I've done it by playing unranked warzones. I enjoy PvP, and my favorite form of it in the game is doing the 8v8 matches. I was happy when I felt like I was getting more of a reward from playing them than I had before the patch. This hasn't changed with the gold mob nerf. What has changed is how I feel about doing the rest of the game's content. I had always intended to run heroics and flashpoints when I wanted to take a break from PvP, but now I feel like this would be too much of a waste of time. 10 xp per gold mob seemed like what would keep the other forms of content competitive with PvP in CXP grinding efficiency, but by changing it to 1 CXP per gold mob, I now feel like I would be wasting my time by trying to enjoy the game. Having multiple ways to play the game with relatively, if not entirely, equivalent grinding speeds is a good thing. It encourages people to go out and enjoy all aspects of the game, while letting them focus on the ones they find most enjoyable. The change from 10 CXP to 1 CXP for gold mobs severely damages this equivalency and puts some forms of grinding far above the others. This is not good.

So far I've enjoyed and been defensive of the new CXP system and the RNG grind, but this change is just stupid.

I did feel echoes of Mass Effect while playing through the new chapters more than I've felt before in this game.