Is it Greedo?

That's the requirement, though. Always use all hooks. I'm just saying it would open up more possibilities in decoration, and to me empty rooms are much less of a immersion breaker than 90 paintings commemorating my victories in story mode Eternity Vault. Or 400 circular class holo signs. It's probably not the most critical feature, and I don't care too much either way - I have all strongholds fully decked out, be they pretty or not - just thought it would be a good addition. Obviously also depends on how much work it'd be to code it, but objectively I cannot see any way in which it'd break current functionality. Only open up the freedom to not compulsively cover every wall in banners and paintings. I'd also love to choose in which room characters are placed when traveling to the stronghold, but that's probably a much bigger project.

I've recently gone through the rite of passage "stuff all your strongholds full of random achievement pictures until 100% reached". And even though I've never much cared for decorating the strongholds, especially my Yavin place looks like an abomination now. I'd love to get at least some actual decorating done whenever I find the time, but here's the problem: As soon as I remove those 800 pictures of the Alderaan Civil War, I lose Conquest bonus. Now, I could always just look for other, more remote spaces to cram useless junk into, but it sort of feels... wrong. I thought it might be nice if we could unlock certain "milestones" of conquest bonus (perhaps at 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%). So once you've reached a milestone, even if you remove all decorations from your strongholds, conquest bonus remains at the milestone percentage. This would still require everyone to "decorate" at least once, but open up more options after the fact. I could also imagine connecting the conquest bonus straight away to number of available instead of used hooks, but "just unlock everything" seems a bit too easy indeed. Now since I'm not exactly in the "stronghold scene", there's a good chance I'm missing something about this, so please educate me in case there's some way this would lead to problems

I have to admit, I find knockbacks as tank the LEAST annoying, out of all the roles. First reason, there's Force Speed, Force Charge or Jet Charge to get back there. More than one knockback per cooldown is pretty rare, can't think of anything off the top of my head. Second reason, it doesn't really interrupt me. Sure, it's slightly annoying when it happens while channeling Depredating Volts, or some similar ability on other tank classes. But let's be honest here, losing threat isn't usually a problem... and my damage output is low anyway, matters little if I lose some uptime. Last but not least, outside of Depredating Volts for assassins, Flame Thrower for powertechs and, uh... Ravage, I guess? for juggernauts, there are no casts in a tank's arsenal. And of those, only Depredating Volts has any connection to survivability. Really can't think of any boss where I always think "I hate this fight, and it's because of knockbacks". It's just a tool to check spatial awareness, imho - whether or not the tank remembers to not stand back against the 1000 mile ledge. Perhaps not the most intricate of checks, but in my book that's okay. Any specific bosses that drive you insane with knockbacks?

I honestly don't understand the hate for the damage reduction part of guard. Is it incredibly impactful? Well, certainly not. But it does exactly what it says on the box - decreases damage taken by 5%. Yes, it's not additive damage reduction, hence doesn't decrease damage by MORE than the stated percentage (the powertech energy shield, for instance, increases damage reduction by 25% which resulted in about 40% less damage last time I did the math, not sure if still valid). But if a dps or healer takes 1000 damage from a periodic ability before guard is applied, they take 950 after. 5% reduction. Again, it's not a huge factor, but it does exactly what it says. And while a 5% boost of ANYTHING is hardly noticeable, I don't see why tanks shouldn't make use of it on whoever is most prone to taking damage

It seems that on cyborg characters I can't pick some hair color options in customization. I don't know whether that's intentional or not, but they're being displayed as available. So either it's a bug that they're not usable or they're being offered in the menu by accident. If I pick a new color, it'll show in the preview screen, but the Apply/Exit button won't update to allow for a change. If I change something else to force it, the resculpt will fail. Screenshots: Just the hair color option Together with another change

Amen to the disproportionate rewards... some of the bonus bosses can actually be a challenge, certainly to groups attempting them the first time. Reward for your struggle? 2 basic comms. In word: Two. That's a bit disappointing, I have to say. No gear (not even prototype), no crafting mats, not even an elite commendation or 2... just two basic comms. Talk about anticlimactic.

Sorry, but saying that you need augmented 192 gear to play HMs is just wrong. Those flashpoint DROP 192. Get the basic commendation stuff for level 60, maybe swap some mods/enhancements around for your spec, and you can play a hardmode. Yes, you'll have to actually *play* it and not just AoE every trash pack and tunnel vision on every boss, margin of error is a bit more narrow than if you completely outgear the content. I played it in 180 gear, so did tons of DDs I ran with, so did my healers. No problem whatsoever. You might need a bit CC here and there (shocker, I know)... but please, nobody read this and think you can't play flashpoints unless in augmented 192 gear. That's just plain stupid. You'll need 5 minutes longer due to lower damage output, but that's about it. If you die in 180 gear, you did something wrong. Period.

no bloody idea which number I have. Probably in the first 500k or so *shrug* EDIT: Oh, look. 86912. Guess I'm one of the last in the cool kids' club. Always had a subscription, but nobody wanted me for closed beta.

I have to say, it's been ages since I last had tanks drop group in the middle of a flashpoint. IF it happens, it's usually right at the start because they queued with a friend to put them at the top of the groupfinder list (instant invite thanks to tank in group -> tank drops -> replacement search with higher priority). It's also been ages since I had any problems in a group when playing my own tank. No damage dealers so terrible we couldn't finish the flashpoint, no healers too bad to cope, just overall pretty normal. Only time I leave a group is if we wipe two times on the first boss of a flashpoint, for instance. If I'm doing "that one" Czerka flashpoint with the droid as first boss (I can, for the life of me, not memorize the names) and we hit the enrage timer on it two times (with 30% left), then there's not exactly a lot to be gained by continuing. Stuff like that. What prevents me nine times out of ten from doing groupfinder runs isn't my trust in the abilities of other players, but rather just the time it takes. The difference between a run with damage dealers in 146 gear and 186 gear is tremendous. Thus, if I have a choice, I'll go with people from my guild... because it's going to be about twice as fast. Would some incentive for tanks/healers change that? Maybe... though at this point, I'm not sure what it should be. Additional ultimate comms? Eh, I'll take it, but I'm not going to queue for just 5 or 10 more. Gear? If it's NiM quality, sure. Otherwise... nice for companions, I guess. Credits? Hmm. An additional 50k or 75k as incentive would perhaps sway my mood. I think the main problem is this: Tanking is a very unrewarding role to play if you're bad in it. And if you're good at tanking, you'll usually have a guild and ops group with whom you regularly play. That leads to a lot of high-quality gear from operations, which means you have jack all to gain from flashpoints. So what you end up with is the healer or dps alts of those tanks, all the healer and dps mains, and the bad and average tanks (plus every now and then a good tank without a guild for whatever reason). Perhaps that explains some experiences? I'm not sure. Another thing that decreases "tank supply": Say you're a damage dealer and you're tired of waiting. If you can spec to healer, you might have some surplus accuracy, but all your other stats are going to "work" for you regardless. Meanwhile, if you want to tank, you need tanking gear. DPS gear is doing nothing for your tanking role, tanking gear is doing nothing for your dps role. The separation is just much sharper than between dps and healing.

I'm running an i5 2500, 8 GB ram and a gtx 770. Works fine in most situations, but of course frame rate with that setup is CPU limited. get something with a bit more cpu power and you should be fine. graphics card is probably overkill for your listed games, I guess you can go for a gtx 750 and still be adequately equipped. If you have to decide, I'd suggest getting an SSD instead of 20% or 30% more graphics power. Usually grants the better experience. Don't know exact prices, but for 800 pounds you should easily get a comparable setup.

#1 Absolutely true. Reusables are slightly worse. #2 This is plain wrong. Math below. #3 If neither you nor your ops group makes any mistake, you don't need it. Without hilariously outgearing the fight though, adrenals are certainly nice to have on tough fights. Regarding the absorb adrenal: A first hint might be the fact that especially powertechs and assassins already stack shield and absorb sky high. So an adrenal that buffs those two stats mainly fights diminishing returns curve... and not much else. But let's do some napkin math with my sin's stats. Character sheet shows 40.45% damage reduction when idling on fleet. Harnessed Darkness brings this to 44.45% during combat (damn, they could've done something great with .01% less). The Rakata adrenal provides 1575 armor rating, which translates into an additional 9.64% damage reduction, totaling 54.09%. This is equal to a reduction of 1 - (1 - 0.5409)/(1 - 0.4445) = 0.1735, so let's be generous and make that 17.4% less incoming damage. Note that this also synergizes beautifully with Overcharge Saber or Energy Shield (both increase Damage Reduction additively by 25%). I can't immediately think of a situation that would absolutely require this synergy, but it certainly doesn't hurt. Now, for the absorb adrenal. Normal stats in shield/absorb with just Dark Ward (20% shield chance buff, and I believe on average about 6% absorb, fuzzy on that one): 58,36% shield chance, 55,84% absorb. The nano-infused absorb adrenal brings this to 65.29% (shield) and 62.04% (absorb). To calculate average damage reduction of that adrenal, again take damage w/ adrenal divided by damage w/o adrenal: 1 - [(0.6529*(1 - 0.6204) + (1 - 0.6529)) / (0.5836*(1 - 0.5584) + (1 - 0.5836))] = 0.1175 So the absorb adrenal provides about 11.8% reduced incoming damage. On my assassin tank, that's a pretty easy decision - 17% reduction with a reusable (ergo dirt cheap) adrenal, or 11% with an adrenal for 5k to 9k credits a pop. For the other two tanking classes, this should look similar. So unless you find a mistake in my calculations (in which case, by all means correct me!) I think we shouldn't discourage people from using the rakata adrenal! :-)

See, that's what I meant with "while still in queue". You do missions at the *** end of space, like Hoth or whatever. Your warzone pops. You now have the chance to respec, with the field respec perk. You switch to heal, or damage, or whatever your heart's desire is. You enter the warzone. This way, you still get random team compositions, but at least you play a spec you like. No switching inbetween rounds, no "perfect" teams due to respecs in the spawn area, just a way for leveling content and PvP to peacefully coexist.

To chime in as well, the level 50 adrenals do NOT provide defense rating. They grant armor rating. That's also the reason they are better than the level 55 ones: Instead of RNG dependent mitigation you get flat damage reduction, and in fact even more than the average value of the shield/absorb buff.

Hello everyone, I thought I'd ask for a bit of feedback on an idea I always have when queueing while I level characters. I understand why they implemented the change to queueing and respecing. Nobody wants to play huttball against a team of sin and jugg tanks. And as someone explained to me a while ago, if respecing was generally allowed while still in queue, a premade might send in one of theirs to check the warzone, then the others respec and join as well. But that's usually just pertaining to 55 warzones. Not too many organized premades going on in lowbie warzones. Hence my suggestion: Would there be any drawbacks to allow respecing while still in queue (warzone invite pops, but you are not yet IN the warzone) for solo-queueing, sub level 55 characters only? Background: I enjoy both PvE and PvP in this games, but I enjoy different specs in both. I'm sure others feel the same way. This change would allow people to comfortably level for example in a damage oriented spec and join a warzone as healer, if they so desire. The only downsides to this I can think of is more balanced teams in lowbie warzones and fewer people standing around on fleet waiting for warzones to pop. Then again, I'm not an avid PvPer. Are there other drawbacks you can think of? Why is this a bad idea? Would there be people desperate enough to organize lowbie premades to exploit this?

Also had problems with CZ last run... my assassin is in dread forged gear, so around 2700 budget, using "average" distribution. Don't know if it was just extremely bad luck, but I did not shield a single of his sweeping slashes, during 3 attempts. Resulted in up to 45k damage within 3 seconds. Not exactly a onehit, but it still took us a couple attempts to down him. Normally it's a one-stop shop for the weekly. My powertech co-tank also felt a lot squishier than he normally does. Might have been purely incidental bad luck, I guess.

As the others said, never break Spike unless it is obviously required. The stun lasts 2 seconds, starting at the front of the assassin's GCD. So basically you're defenseless for one ability. Electrocute lasts 4 seconds, so after the GCD there are still 2.5 seconds left -> defenseless for two abilities. Also, since it can be used anytime instead of only from stealth, you're likely to have dots running or be stunned at a time when the assassin has 3 stacks for discharge ready and a Maul proc running, resulting in even more damage during that time. So yeah, never break mezzes or very short/conditional stuns unless you obviously have to (objective about to be taken etc.). Save it for the 4 second stuns, because usually those are used in a crucial moment.

A little remark from the tank side of things: Yes, in a flashpoint, no healer should ever need me to use a cooldown. But if I know I'm running into a big pack, I just pop an "unneeded" cooldown proactively. If I can make the healer's life easier, why wouldn't I! Some tanks feel like using cooldowns on trash pulls makes them look bad or anything. If you find a tank taking a lot of damage on trash and completely manageable amounts on bosses, just talk to them. Maybe they just didn't look at your gear and run through the flashpoint in autopilot. Especially guardians and shadows have enough cooldowns on low enough timers to basically use one on every big trash pull without running out of cooldowns in a bossfight afterwards.

Ashara for everything, though Xalek with my dps gear might work too. I no longer care for healing companions, since it really makes no difference if I go out of fights with 85% or 100% health. The travel time inbetween missions is enough to heal back up. The hero 2 leaves me lower, but I believe the 5 seconds it takes to get back to health are more than compensated by Ashara's damage during the encounter.

Honestly, I don't really care if they Double Saber Throw/Force Charge in there or not. If they do: Force Speed, area taunt, proceed. If they don't: Force Speed, Wither, proceed. Not much of a difference. Only thing that slightly annoys me is assassins or sorcerers who think Overload is a great damage tool. Scattering the mob group across the room for the 5 damage it deals... oh, honey. The only thing I can think of that might qualify as a philosophy is "Better use a cooldown and not need it than not use it and need it"? But that of course depends 100% on knowing the fight.

Well, in flashpoints... since my assassin is pretty much immortal there (special mechanics excluded, of course), I just expect the occasional heal. If it's an operative, keeping the group topped off with HoTs is nice, because it's quicker than the standard regen abilities on dps. In general, I can't even remember the last time I had a problematic experience with healers in a flashpoint. Sure, I appreciate it if they take advantage of the 5% healing increase, but that's about it. Cleansing debuffs is always a plus, of course. Only thing that makes me roll my eyes so hard I have to see a doctor is if healers say "you only have 42k health" or "assassins are only good as offtanks"... It's not 2.0 anymore, folks. If it worked out for Dread Council HM fight, I'm sure you can heal my "squishy" assassin through Hammer Station. What I also hate is people who stick to the mantra of "everyone heals themselves between pulls". Yes, if we barely survive a pull for whatever reasons, everyone can click that little button to heal up. But if it's just one dps at 30% from some dot or dispatching adds... stop being a sithhole. Slap a hot on it and be done. Also: Healers who insist on guard (to the point of refusing heals without it) while there are two full dread forged DDs in the group. No, I don't need guard to hold aggro, but insisting on it as a healer just shows a blatant ignorance regarding game mechanics. In operations, it's hard to say since I only do guild runs with a more or less static team. I expect them to be superb, I guess, but they always are. So not much to tell there. In short, I expect them to heal (duh), not judge tanks based on ACs alone and understand the game. Also, just... be a nice person. I think this applies to just about any role in a group, though.

Honest question: Assuming you're talking about PvE, what's the point of power surge, except when you're on the move? Seems a bit strange to me, blowing the one cooldown that makes arsenal at least a BIT mobile right at the start. And it's not doing anything, really... without power surge, you have a 1.5 second cast, with power surge you have an instanz cast with 1.5 seconds of GCD. So all you gain is a blown cooldown?

Hello everyone, I wonder what everyone's opinion on warzone-related respecs is. I frequently run into the following issue: While leveling an alt, I enjoy a certain spec (for instance something damage oriented). Since it is a fun part of the game, I like to supplement leveling with PvP matches - but maybe I like to play a healer in PvP. Now, I understand that it's a good thing to kill respecs during a warzone. No complaints there. But is it necessary to lock people into specs even before that warzone? My suggestion would be to allow respecs until you join a warzone. So if you level as spec A, you get a pop, you respec to B, you enter. It's still not possible to adapt/tailor a group composition (which the respec ban was put in place to achieve, I think), but you can enter PvP in the spec you are most comfortable with. The respec before joining could be restricted to level 1-54 queues, but I believe it would allow for easier integration of PvP into the leveling experience. What are others' opinions on this? Do I forget any problems caused by this suggestion? Would it change PvP matches in a meaningful way?

I would love this. Just tone down the graphics on Assassin's Shelter as a whole. It's way over the top in my opinion - making it noticeable is one thing, but this giant purple sun on the floor eclipses basically everything else that's going on in the vicinity. Another thing I'd love is a better way to replace Phase Walk. When I'm in a raid and want to renew the beacon, it is POSSIBLE to look for that specific buff amidst my 24 (give or take) buffs, procs and HoTs. It is not, however, convenient in any way. If this is an intended difficulty, I have no problem with it as well. But especially with all the procs on a sin tank... well, you get the picture. Overall though, I'm very happy with the state of Darkness PvE and the spec options we have. Perhaps some clarification regarding the Darkness/Deception hybrids with the 25% damage reduction and 30% area damage reduction would be nice (is it considered "okay" to use those specs, or will they be removed in a future patch?).

I was in a warzone and got rooted while using Exfiltrate. This resulted in me being unable to move even though the root had worn off. Even after dying and respawning I still could not move. Only resolved by leaving warzone. Is this a known issue? If not, I'd like to add it to the list :-)