Just guesswork I'd say. Though if it Does fill the bar i'll likely drop the talent for something more beneficial, Moving talent points to 30 second stun with a 30 percent speed increase will be just fine i think. In essence we do gain more control as if i we skip the knockdown, we have our flashbang and our stun for a full 12 seconds of control. Either way it's fine.

Part of the MMO genre has always been you put in effort to acquire gear, that has always been the mmo standard. This holds true for both PvE and PvP. If you want a level playing field where everyone has the same stats, You might as well play Call of Duty or some other Class based FPS game. Configuring gear and stats and gear addons, choosing your specific build, be it cookie cutter or your own build is what mmo's are about. Blizzard created a PvP stat was because around tier 3 of their vanilla raid content. Grand Marshals/High Warlords were outgeared by people in AQ/Naxx gear, This forced them to have to raid to stay competitive. Not to mention the theory crafting that comes into the mix from the different numbers on gear. People actually enjoy crunching math numbers to find the most optimal combination of gear, weather it be a majority of PvP gear and maybe some pve trinkets. or whatever. It adds a layer of depth to the game that most people dont even bother to see. Be thankful that alot of these people who do run the numbers game create websites and share their findings for those interested. cause they could use that information to dominate us with a gear edge we never knew existed because they put in the work to find that hidden edge. It all comes back to extra layers of depth. whether it be from having clutch reflexes to being good with numbers and theory crafting. An excellent example of depth using numbers is frame data in fighting games. Most people dont even know it exists or has anything to do with the games advanced play, But people who study frame data are the ones who know exactly how much recovery is on one move and if it has an avalible counter. These people also create combos from frame data, by crunching numbers.

PVP gear was created to keep pve nerds from being able to dominate pvp and pve with one gear set while those who were pvp enthusiasts were stuck in the cold with no options but to raid to aquire gear to pvp in. The expertise stat will give pvp'ers the edge in pvp while pve'ers either have to grind pvp gear if they want to be on the same level as the pvp'ers, or get used to being a confetti balloon when they are focused. Sorry, but you cant have pve gear that is better than pvp gear for pvp. Deal with it, grind your gear like everyone else.

I'm not sure why your so happy, since they still havent fixed the problem, Sure, 30 percent less damage on the opener will help you survive maybe 3 seconds longer than you normally would have, doesnt mean i cant blow 500+ power adrenal with 250+ surge/crit trinket to nuke you down in the exact same manner. You can still create powerful buff stack combos, So, see you here when 1.1.1 goes live crying about 'WHAAAA, operatives still pwn me:('

What has to bother me the most about the ability delay is interrupting. It's very difficult to interrupt casting quickly when your ability takes a one second or more to fire off in the middle of an intense battle. Luckily most casts are slow enough to have plenty of time to get the interrupt off. But channeled abilities aren't worth interrupting at all due to how fast they are, especially quick 1.5 second heals, the 1 second delay on interrupts at times means healers literally get a .5 second heal.

Well, to address a few things you said. I'm not claiming a moral victory over anyone. I'm thanking the developers for some communication to the playerbase about a widely known and probably the biggest concern for any serious play. It makes me feel better that as a player who's currently frustrated as hell with the game that Bioware hears our concerns and while it has taken them long enough to reply about something that's been around for some time. I'm glad they finally did and they atleast say they have something in the works, That's tangible and we can reference to. I would really like this game to succeed, so i'm showing my appreciation for them displaying an intrest to iron out the problem that's so rampant in the game.

I just wanna say thank you so much for responding to the community about this issue. The ability delay is by far my single biggest concern for the game right now and it renews my faith in you and your game to hear that a fix is in the works and will be implemented soon. Thanks again, and thanks for listening.

I cant help but agree here. Ilum is in bad shape, The most noticeable thing is the absolutely horrid FPS lag, I understand the patch today was supposed to take care of some of that stuff but it's still tremendously bad, to the point of it being unplayable. The ability lag is even worse the more players that converge in the same area. As an operative i was forced to just try and AOE as much as possible so i could get quest credit then get the hell out of there. When a player cant wait to get out of an area because he cant stand the game he's in but only does it because he's trying to earn daily quest rewards, something is wrong. TBH I bought a gamecard and i'm giving the dev's the extent of that gamecard to resolve the optimization of the game, the ability lag, then I'm done.

I have yet to read any valid reason to not have combat meters, (Which are coming, whether you like it or not). Basically every complaint against them can be translated to such: I don't want combat logs because I'm bad/lazy and I'd rather hide in a raid pointing fingers at other so i can mash my auto attack while watching tv. Seriously, there's no reason not to have them, they are a tool for so much more than damage, If SWTOR wants to make encounters based on Enrage timers, we're going to need them to separate the wheat from the chaff. If you wanna play the game your way with your own spec, then just stick to solo content or play with a group of like minded friends. Your not high end raiding material and you shouldn't be so quick to waste other peoples time by trying to pose as such.

Pyrotech is in my opinion, better for people who want a more mobile spec, It's a godsend compared to the alternative, tracermissle, which basically turns you into a turret. I'm in full tier 2 pvp gear and I do extremely well with pyrotech, i top the dps charts ever game just about. And i can somewhat kite with the spec, For those looking for a good explanation of what pyrotech offers, here it is. Pyrotech offers much more mobility, giving you kiting options against melee, Since most of it's moves are instant cast. You can fire them off while running, Though i dont think SWTOR kiting is very effective due to there being very little for us to use aside from energy shield to escape snares/roots. It does pack nasty punch that'll sneak up on people. I've easily taken down 50 healer sorcs who thought they could just sit and cast in my line of site due to the burst this build can offer. Here's my general ability order 1. Incendiary Missie>Thermal Detonator>Power shot>rail shot>unload (rail shot again if talent procs)>More powershot This should only be used if your stationary and just applying dps. See next rotation if your kiting 2. Incendiary Missie>Thermal Detonator>Rail shot> Rapid Shots When your kiting, rapid shots will apply a snare off your gas cylinder, Along with another dot that'll tick with incendiary missile. count your rapid shots and you've got yourself some nice consistent damage, If you get enough spacing you can throw out your unload and hope you get a railshot proc for more burst, throw out railshot and thermal detonator on CD, Also if your fighting another ranged, use line of site against them, Most all other ranged need to channel/cast against you, you have the advantage of almost all your moves being instant, so abuse line of site like crazy. I've beaten tracer spamming BH's into the ground cause they cannot get a cast off on me while i just dip in and out of LoS applying rapid shots, and rail shot and thermal detonator. P.S. I should also add that i think SWTOR is not kite friendly. It's exceedingly hard to kite and use your abilities at the same time due to how the animation of pointing the guns gets in the way. There seems to be a dead zone where your character cannot fire if your strafing away from he opponent, and he follows you dead center to your character, you cannot shoot or use any abilities, You also cannot jump strafe due to you using speed when doing so, It's taken alot of adjustment to get used to this system, But i think it needs work.

There's an issue with Ilum, Nobody plays it, On my server republic and empire both refuse to play it, they wont even do the dailys, so the points just sit under empires control all week because nobody goes there. maybe 1 or 2 people from the republic will do the objectives then promptly leave, they don't even meet any opposition from the empire because we need them to reset the caps so we can have a shot at doing the daily. It's terribly implemented and it needs to have an overhaul so that people will actually want to do it. that's not the players fault, it's Biowares fault.

I'm for letting people roll on gear if it's for a companion. As long as nobody in the group needs it for their player character, then why not let it goto a companion, what else are you going to do with it? vendor it? Let the gear goto some usage, there's no reason why someone cant need it for a companion if nobody in the group needs it.

I agree, the animations are nice to look at, but what scares me here is that they may have sacrificed responsiveness for eyecandy when it comes to fights. And it may be a engine issue they cannot fix. Which of course will in the long term, give us 2 options, 1, eventually leave the game. or adapt. But to be honest, with the system in place as it is now. I think the former is more possible. I know it is for me.

What WoW does is allow you to cast even during the finishing animation for your last cast, Say you casted frostbolt, and you casted it again immediately after it's 2.0 sec casting time was done. THe casting would finish, the mage would extend their hand and throw the frostbolt. but while you were tapping the frostbolt key, fight as the cast time finished. You would get another frostbolt that would start during the finishing animation of the last frostbolt. This is the kinda responsiveness we're talking about here, In SWTOR, you cannot cast another ability till your animation finishes, which ontop of the input delay makes the game feel EXTREMELY sluggish and unresponsive. IMO it should be biowares top priority to fix this. Normally i don't chime in on these types of threads, but this needs to be addressed with haste. Before people get so frustrated that they stop playing.

I feel there are two sides here. the competitve side, which can consist of a hardecore/casual type audience who strives for the best they can be, and want to explore every knook and cranny of the games engine to find ways to be the best they can possibly be, because their competitive spirit drives them to be the best. Then you h ave other players who are pretty much just casuals, who probably dont play as much and aren't the competitive type. They just wanna sit down and have some fun in their off time after work or whatever. Which is fine. The problem is that in an mmo these two players are going to collide, And when they are eventually pitted against each other, the first group is going to absolutely destroy the second group in any type of warzone/raid/whatever. Thus making the second group feel that the first group is what's wrong with the game, and the devs should make it so they cant compete on a higher level which never works, cause group one will always find a way to excel over group 2 who just wants to play for casual fun. The sound answer would be to separate both groups and let them play with like minded people. But that's not going to happen, Sooner or later a hardcore/competitive player is going to face the casual/non serious player, and yeah, the competitive player is going to stomp them, making any sort of gear advancement in pvp difficult and very frustrating, cause lets face it. People don't like to lose, in both groups. But in WoW's case, the competitive/hardcore of that game has actually inspired some of the fun loving/casual gamers to up their game and compete at higher levels. I've seen casual players who just played for fun and didn't raid/pvp become friends with better players who have helped them increase their knowledge of the game and how to play at a better/more efficient level. And players like that have never went back to how they played before. because they took the time to understand the games mechanics better. TL;DR So in closing i think the hardcore players/serious raiders/pvp'ers do help to add life to an MMO.