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althene

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Everything posted by althene

  1. I looked at the legacy vendors on DK just the other day and they were weighted (light, med, heavy) instead of adaptive if i recall correctly. That said, there were several sets on each vendor, so you could still find a weighted set that you liked. I kinda also wanna say they might have class restrictions, but I'm not 100% on that.
  2. Honestly, I think the RNG is there to somewhat help control over-availability of high end crafted items. I don't have to agree with it, but I think that's why they did it. It doesn't help the fact that you can't really go all old school on it and spend hours farming nodes since I've yet to see an artifact material ever drop from that. That said, having slicing on a character simply to farm up mission items is and has always been a recipe for success. Again, I don't necessarily agree with having to do that, but it is what it is.
  3. Compared to the abomination that the new WoW crafting system is, swtor is far, far ahead. I'm in no way suggesting you don't have a legitimate beef, just that it's not nearly as bad as it could be. Can things be improved? Absolutely! What's the point of armstech or armormech these days outside of barrels and augments? Almost all of the patterns are completely useless outside of the possible argument that it makes gearing companions easier (although the advent of the cartel market and collections system makes this argument almost invalid). The truth is, the only truly viable crew skills these days are cybertech, biochem, slicing and artifice for enhancements and possibly due to the addition of top end relics, dyes, and color crystals. Armstech, sythweaving, and armormech are basically only useful for augments. And that's sad. Reverse engineering... my wife was all up in arms about this at first, mostly due to all the prefixes involved until I sat her down and drew it out on paper. I'll concede that sometimes RNG is a spiteful ******. I kinda hope something happens to augment this percentage, but unless you're trying to RE artifact gear for specific affixes for some reason, the only real bear is the time involved as materials are fairly abundant. And again, the crafting skills most affected by this are fairly useless these days. Gathering missions... well I'm not sure what to say there. On the one hand, the rates of return are random at best, cruel at worst. But it's not like you're really taking time out of your overall play session to gather these mats in this manner. I'm not convinced much needs to be done here, but there are exceptions by way of some of the rates of return for artifact quality materials. I think they removed the possibility of artifact materials on anything but rich or wealthy missions, which was a huge disservice to the player IMO. That said, if you're relying on rich missions to pop up in order to get your artifact materials, you're doing it wrong. Gathering mission consumables return these materials even without a critical success. Yeah, you get beans if they fail, but if your sending companions without max affection to gather artifact materials, again, you're doing it wrong. Tl;dr Crafting and gathering isn't as bad as it seems if you leverage all the available options. Sure, it can use some polish and maybe some cut and paste, but it's far from broken.
  4. If you're in a guild or have friends that plan to continue their sub, you can always see if you can work out some sort of deal to get the passes for cheaper. I'm not sure why players insist on selling items to f2p and preferred players at or more than their credit cap. Seems like bad business to me.
  5. Get the stronghold on your capitol world or NS. The chat there is almost as inane but without much of the gold spam. I'm quite fond of the tranquility gained by moving my main stronghold to tatooine.
  6. This. Although I'd argue that the subscription model is already a form of crowd funding. Especially with the hybrid f2p model they have in place. Players interested in furthering development of the game sub up. Those that lose faith/interest cancel and go preferred. Those looking for "something to do" won't spend a dime.
  7. In 'Merica? Nah, he'd be an illegal alien and people would get too wrapped up in arguing over if they're gonna deport him or not.
  8. I understand why it's there, but I'm going to put foreward a suggestion to remove the assault cannon requirement for the skill anyway. It's just not needed. Furthermore, it somewhat represents a disparity between commandos and their merc cousins in that, while the commando has an arguably questionable choice in their weapons, the merc is locked into dual pistols. I present this as a disparity due to mostly asthetic reasons, I admit, however I think it would be nice if combat medics at least had the option of using the rifle over the cannon while still being able to put out situational AoE (aside from mortar volley which has a CD). Yes, I realize this is sub optimal. But I argue that so is a healer trying to do dps. Additionally, the use of the blaster rifle doesn't deminishing their healing in the slightest, so what's the harm? Note: Yes, I'm aware hat the merc equivalent of the skill requires dual pistols. I don't believe this should be a requirement either, but as the merc doesn't have access to another viable off hand, they're kinda stuck. By comparison, the commando is able to use generators in addition to their chosen form of whoopazz.
  9. Hey, thanx for the guide and keeping it updated as the game progresses and revises itself. One thing I think you may touch on is maybe the difference between using an assault cannon and a rifle for the commando. I know and understand why this is sub optimal, but new players looking at this guide for the first time may not. It makes no difference to bounty hunters since they're locked into dual pistols, but I've seen a fair number of 'mandos rockin the rifle while healing instead of the cannon. I've done it myself while leveling in flashpoints, especially when dps had the situation well under control, but a little blurb on the pros and cons and what skills are locked out/affected might be of help to someone.
  10. Oops, I totally missed that 2nd "P" in the OPs question. My bad. What I get for posting on the graveyard shift I guess. Carry on.
  11. TACeMossie has crunched the numbers on all things stat oriented over in his 3.2 PT guide. In a nutshell, your augs are predicated on what the rest of your mods are. He's got ideal targets for power, crit, alacrity and surge there for any given stat budget and I found it quite enlightening. I believe he also gives solid reasoning why straight main stat augs are still preferable to power since the amount of power lost is negligible with relation to the small boost in crit (given any reasonable amount of surge). In addition, it seems that alacrity is the better choice since it seems it stacks multiplicatively with all things power, surge and crit.
  12. Actually, those distances were for all engagements civil and military that did not include the use of long arms, combined arms or artillery. The fact that the shotgun was so very common on the battlefield is parly due to this fact as is the advent of the sub machinegun class of firearms. Additionally, professional (i.e. guys that do this for a living and are REALLY good at it) knife throwing takes place at 4 range classes: 7, 10, 13 and 16 FEET. These are the minimum ranges, and compititions allow competitors to stand furher away, but that only makes the throw more challenging. That's not to say longer ranges aren't possible, just not efficient or effective. At a certain point, barring mechanical augmentation, the knive throw stops becoming a trajectory and starts becoming an arc, thereby losing velocity and impact in order to gain accuracy. So again, in a combat situation, why would you handicap yourself by throwing your only weapon (or one of a handful) without the best odds of success? Once again, I digress. I still agree that some form of utility root or stun would be a welcom aspect of sever tendon, but not the 30m range.
  13. While leveling, AP can get you through most story content in a snap. It's fun and powerful, especially if you like opening with a heavy blast or 2 and then moving close to shank them and possibly spit in their eye before they kick off. That said, shield tech in dps gear is pretty solid, too. Especially considering you won't really have much in the way of tanking gear available to you for the first 30 levels or so unless you go out of your way to collect coms and cash to purchase droid parts for scavenging of their mods. Also, think taking time to consider which companion you like running with or have access to is worthwhile. If you can keep up your gear, leveling with a dps companion while a tank can make some content trivial. The bounty hunter is also in the unique spot that, as a tank, you have access to your healing companion from the word go. My first power tech leveraged that for all it was worth. Mako sometimes had better gear than I did, but it worked. I would seriously recommend staying clear of pyro, though. It's a hot mess right now (pun intended). Maybe in a patch or 2, but respecs aren't that expensive anymore if that happens.
  14. I miss the shield tech pvp hybrid from when their top tier ability was a joke and retractable blade was OP. Honestly, I don't miss unload at all. I'm actually finding it refreshing that, should I find myself somehow locked outside 10 meters in a fight, I don't have to feel guilty about actually firing off a missile or 2 while I try to re-engage.
  15. I'm not sure what system of measurement you usually use, but throwing a knife 10 meters with any degree of power and/or accuracy is actually quite a feat. Additionally, most modern day civilian gunfights only occurs at a range of between 3 and 6 feet. 10 meters is roughly 30 feet. That's probably further than the distance accross your typical living room. I understand we're not talking about gunfights here, but I use to to illustrate the average range of the typical "close" engagement. But I digress. I like the idea of sever tendon having the root/mez/stun mechanic, but I feel the 10 meter range is somewhat justified given the highly melee aspect of the class. I'm sure I'll get flamed for saying so, but I always thought of our stealth mechanic as our gap closer anyway. And with all the ways we can enter and exit stealth, the idea was to continually engage and disengage at our leisure in order to break down an opponent if they couldn't be butted down in the initial engagement. Granted, that's a purely 1v1 scenario concept, but ops have lots of tools for dealing with other scenarios as well.
  16. Both holo statue trainers were found in the black market shipment, which is currently embargoed. However, they periodically go back on sale on the cartel market. So just wait for them to come back and spend your coins on them then or buy them out of the GTN. At the very least you'll be able to gain the rep items and cartel certs needed to purchase one from the rep vendor in the cartel bazaar on fleet. Be aware, though, that to get both statues, you have to have characters on both factions as they're faction specific, unlike the Hutt. Of course that doesn't matter if you only play one side or the other unless you're partial to the other factions statue. If that's the case, I guess you're kinda boned unless you want to swap factions and start over. As an aside, once you get one statue, you can unlock it in your collection at an additional cartel coin cost and make it available to all character on your legacy (provided they're of the appropriate faction).
  17. I'm gonna guess it's assassin/shadow with the 30m leg slash debacle. Evidently with the right utilities, they're able to lock players up and burn them down with no real threat of retaliation. I'll stick with my PT unless I need a stealth tank at level 60 for some odd reason.
  18. Honestly, the rail shot reset is nice, but I found just being able to open with one of my hardest hitting abilities from the get go without having to ramp up with a bleed or burn effect was just über. After that, the reset is just icing. Plus retractable blade. i use it maybe once per mob (if it lives through the opening shot or 2), but theres something inately satisfying about the animation and sound on the ability. So for me, the spec got good as soon as I chose it. YMMV.
  19. While I can't agree with Zoom that tanks would never use it, it's not a tanking ability. There's nothing that full auto/unload did for you as a tank besides MAYBE give you a significant threat boost from the damage output. That said, as a tank, you should be using taunts for that. As far as backing up his statement, the devs have said repeatedly that the ability wasn't intended to be used for what it was used for and that, because of this, vanguard and powertech tanks were overperforming. That said, did I use unload while tanking? You bet I did! It was savagely OP and it looked gnarly. We're there better uses of a global when I was actually trying to be a tank? Absolutely! And that's the point of the skills removal. It was sending mixed messages to tanks. Trust us, you'll be fine. In fact, you'll probably be better than fine once you tune your rotation around not having it. Your defensive procs will be up more often and thus your damage profile will be smoother. And that's the point of taking, not killing it before it kills you (although that should be the end result if done correctly).
  20. If you're going to pve exclusively, it doesn't really matter what you pick or how you play. That said, if you're looking for medium to long range, commando is the way to go. Vanguards have some long range and can start a rotation from there, but they're primarily a melee class. As far as the assault cannon thing goes, there are some decent looking ones from the cartel market, but I'd have to agree, most look like complete hairy *****. Fortunately, cartel market weapons, with rare exception, are fairly cheap on the GTN. So you could try browsing there before making your official decision on advanced class. In addition, as a commando, you can still use a blaster rifle. You lose DPS (a lot, actually) and your AoE blaster sweep ability (since, for some asinine reason, it requires an assault cannon), but if you choose the healer role, you won't need it for damage anyway. Last, but not least, is your overall intent for the character. You want to do ranged dps, but what about healing or tanking. Vanguards have the ability to (melee) dps or tank while commandos can either dps or heal. Food for thought if you eventually want to branch out for more group content.
  21. I won't presume to tell you how to play or what to do, but your thinking, while the common way of going about it, is actually hurting you more than helping you. It's a matter of Effective Health versus Absolute Health. Long story short, Effective Health will trump Absolute Health unless your Absolute Health reaches zero in the time it takes for the healer to land that heal. And even then, you are going to be what they refer to as "spikey". The more often your shields kick in, the more often your absorb rating can reduce the incoming damage even more (over base armor), thus making your health profile "smoother". It may not seem like a big deal at first, but your healers will love you for it.
  22. [/Quote] You could make it dynamic by giving characters a bonus to RE that was, say, 1/10 the difference between the skill required to craft the item and the character's current skill, half that for second-tier RE (so someone with a skill of 300 REing a skill 100 item from green to blue would get a 20% bonus to the RE chance, and REing the blue to purple would get a 10% bonus to the RE chance. This would inherently choke back the RE chance the closer to your skill level the items you were REing were. The only hiccup there is that the game itself is inconsistent on RE chances going from prototype to artifact sometimes. If memory serves, the old end game schematics (when skill capped at 300 or 350) only have a 10% chance to yield an artifact pattern. Again, if memory serves, the 450 schematics currently available allow 20% chance for artifact quality RE procs. The system just isn't being maintained smoothly. Again, I think it's in the best interest of game balance to make the top tier schematics relatively tough to come by initially, but I'll certainly be right there among he first to complain about how seemingly random the RE process can be. Ultimately, I think a hybrid of the 2 ideas might work best. Allow for lower skill level patterns to be RE'd easier with higher skill and also allow for an increased chance of success with repeated consecutive RE on an item. Additionally, they could allow for legacy unlocks to grant maybe 5/10/15% increase on RE attempts. But again, that may unbalance the end game.
  23. Lol! If they don't like it they can leave. I guarantee your queue times are lower than theirs. On top of that, i just shows you how ignorant they are on class mechanics. Forget them. They can tell you how to play when they pay for your account. Once you bring them back from the brink of death a couple times, they really won't care anymore.
  24. Realistically, that 65% would only apply to the very first schematics on your list and start dropping off significantly. And that's only if you had max level. At which point you wouldn't even need or want those schematics anymore. It would be more of a completion thing. At max skill level, rank 66 items would still only be around 20 or 21% chance to RE i believe. Which I feel is acceptable given the leveling a gear progression considerations.
  25. As for the commando part, you don't HAVE to use the assault cannon as a healer. You can get by just as capably with just a regular old blaster rifle. There's only one or two abilities that requires you to use the cannon and they're all dps abilities last I checked. Should you probably have one in case of a role swap? Absolutely. But you can be a combat medic just fine with the tried and true battle rifle.
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