To my knowledge, the guard's defensive stats do not come into play. So basically the way I understand it is that first the targeted persons defensive stats where applicable determine whether the ability hits, crits, is shielded or misses. After that the guard damage reduction, expertise reduction and armor reduction (if applicable) would come into play to determine the damage the ability should do. I would expect these reductions to work multiplicative, meaning the order in which they apply is unimportant. Finally the damage is split between the guarded target and its guard.

It's intended to be 1/4 (25%). However you need a pretty big sample size before everybody's droprate approaches this number, leading to a lot of very lucky and unlucky players. For example I seem unusually luck with BM tokens (4 out of 6 so far) whereas my Champion bag luck before the change rather sucked (3 items by the time my gf with less bags had gotten 8 items).

I'm pretty sure this kind of objective zone already exists in Void Star and Hutball when it comes to granting defender points and the associated medals, as I do get those occasionally in those warzones. It's far more likely to get the defender medals in Civil War though, due to the sheer amount of time you spend right at the turret during a 15 minute WZ, whereas Void Star defense is a max of less than 7 minutes, has you running back and forth between doors occasionally, and typically more frequent deaths. It could probably use a tweak though, and I agree on the general desire for a more objective oriented medal system, rather than rewarding play which can be detrimental to the outcome of the game, such as midfield fights. This coming from a tank who tries to avoid any combat which does not help getting objectives, and has no problems getting medals this way btw.

Of course most doors wins if neither team reaches the Datacore. What people are trying to find out though, and nobody seems to really know, is what happens when both sides had the same number of doors, or in many cases neither got a single door or even a bomb plant.

As said above, this was what happened every time before the most recent patch when I got in a VoidStar tie. Since then it seems to nearly be a roll of the dice, as I've lost games which by the old rules would have been wins that way. (First defender and same amount of doors)

You get a bit harsher diminishing returns on surge now, but overall I don't think I'm at levels yet where they become that big an issue. (200ish so far, still gotta swap some mods) What I do not like is DPS mods seem to always be Surge + Acccuracy/Power/Crit. Basically aside from tank enhancements and rating Accuracy rather low as Kinetic Shadow, the choices end up Surge/Crit and Surge/Power (With Surge also always being the greater stat), which can lead to unwanted levels of surge. Would like them to add Power/Crit enhancements to help around that.

This used to be the case. Since the last patch though I've lose tie games both when defending and attacking first. One included having a bomb counting down on the doors as time expired, so that's also not a factor it seems.

So far I was fairly unlucky with Champion gear drops, but seem fairly fortunate with the BM bags (4 out of 6 so far) I personally don't quite get though why when they changed the Champion bags around they didn't just quadruple the dropchance (making it a guaranteed single BM token from each bag, no more, no less) and cost of BM gear. Same average time to gear, random luck totally removed...

I like the 20 second Spinning Kick cooldown as well, so also running 2 Survivor 3 Stalker atm. I personally feel it's best to swap out the defensive stats which the survivor set gives, since it affects relatively few attacks in PVP, whereas the DPS increase from DPS mods is quite considerable.

I personally indeed like combining the two 2p bonuses, as they offer some nice utility and the 20 sec Spinning Kick is very nice for added control. As for the stats, a lot of the gear has rather non-optimal stats; the Survivor set has defensive stats which are currently rather wasted since they do nothing on Force or Tech attacks, whereas the Stalker set is filled with Accuracy which doesn't do a whole lot for us comparatively either. (Not to mention we get a bunch of unavoidable accuracy in several other slots) I'd suggest you are best off buying mostly DPS gear, remove the mods and enhancements which do not work, and replace them with mods and enhancements which are better itemized. Removing the tank mods will cost a bit but shouldn't be an issue with the daily income, and those will still be very nice for a PvE tank set. A nice source of good mods would be using excess Champion tokens (and later BM tokens) to buy pieces which do contain better mods/enhancements, remove those and put them in your actual PvP gear. Champion level mods are obviously a bit lower level (56 vs 58 I think) than BM level mods, but you should still be better off with a lower level better itemized mod. I'd say your best bet are mods which with crit, power and surge. With the new surge nerf you might not want to overly push surge too high due to the harsh diminishing returns, but otoh I'm not entirely sure if high level power/crit mods currently exist. I'm personally still debating the situational use of the shield generator (vs Snipers and certain melee specs) versus the increased damage of the power generator. I'll likely just buy both Champion versions and play around with it a bit. It will probably be the final BM item I buy due to the price so being out of whack (3 tokens) compared to the Champion versions. (40ish commendations) Update: Some browsing in the Torhead dbase later (which isn't accurate, but seems to often have an excess of info) suggests there's indeed no Power/Crit enhancements, which means your best bets are either Crit/Surge or Power/Surge enhancements then.

I missed that room, so it definitely can't be a requirement for the redeeming.

I managed to redeem him, so it's definitely possible. Not sure to what extent previous choices (how light alligned you were during the quest, what you did during Act 1 with the shielding) impact your options in the finale though. From the time he is revealed when you interact with him through holocom, there's also some times you can appeal on Syo to resist, not sure if that had any impact but very well might. (I seem to recall an NPC or companion commenting that we seemed to be coming through with the appeals after doing that during several conversations. (With Syo several times kinda trying to resist and at least temporarily weakining the First Son's personality's hold)

If a healer were unable to outheal a single DPS, it would be essentially pointless to have healing in PvP. If a single healer cannot even counteract a single DPS, it would be more efficient to bring zero healers and just replace them with DPS, since killing the other team faster would be more effective than having this healer do healing which can't counter that single DPS. Quite simply why would you bring a healer if he can't survive against a single DPS? Why would you bring a healer then, if as a result double DPS would easily beat healer + DPS since the healer can't even counteract the one DPS. This is why in many MMOs the balance was set at healers who are not being harassed being able to outheal the output of two damage dealers. This would allow a healer + DPS to compete with two DPS players, it coming down to whether the healer + DPS survive the double DPS before they can wear them down, with the outcome depending on who uses peels and interrupts the best. Personally speaking, I have no problem with healers as they are in the current game. I have no problems killing or at the very least harassing them into ineffectiveness as a Kinetic Shadow (allowing my teammates to kill the DPS in the meantime). My one gripe in general is how little interrupting a spell currently comparatively matters (since it only locks out the spell which was interrupted), which can make it a little frustrating to see the healer just cast another heal instead. That said if they started implementing school lockouts or the like, healing might have to be toned up (as well as ability to kite for some 'casters') to compensate for this, since I don't consider healing overall to be overpowered right now. The OP as a whole comes of as a long rambling statement by a person who tries to hide his ignorance behind a wall of text in an effort to seem informed and more insightful than other players. It's a lot of text, but has very little logic or substance, depending on a ridiculous concept which has never been used and makes zero sense (maximum potential health) and contrived situations of small scale combat. The reality in PvP is that it's a team game, where shockingly both sides have healers which are very much capable of being shut down or bursted down. You can keep trying to come up with hypothetical situations where supposedly the healer's side has infinite health and the side with only DPSers does not, but this is not how things work in reality. The healer's team will have considerably lower DPS output meaning it will take a fair amount of time to wear down the DPS players. Moreover burst DPS will force healers to use a lot of less efficient heals, and will run them out of resources eventually. (A healer cannot exactly heal indefinitely at maximum power, which is required to keep up with multiple players focusing a single player) In the end, having healing and tanking in PvP makes it a far more interesting team effort than just putting teams made out of DPSers only seeing who can burst down the other team quickest, and every player dying in a matter of seconds when attacked.

On Bloodworthy I get the feeling as Republic we are currently getting our kills and valor a lot quicker than the Imperials, despite those most of the time outnumbering us. Mainly due to us generally knowing how to use turrets and the Imperials on our server being happy to constantly run into them. Then again the last week if numbers got a little more even and we charged, the Imperials pretty much got destroyed, broke, ran and ended up pushed back to their spawn point...

Mostly correct, but Shield and Crit chance are checked simmultaneously with Crit chance having the priority. Having those increase could theoretically push normal hits and then even shield chance (say if your opponent has 70% crit and you have 40% shield, which is unlikely) off the combat table. You realize that defense chance (as well as shield chance) applies only to melee and ranged attacks, and not to force and tech attacks, right? Just like Turlinde I am also quite curious how you'd be hitting for those numbers, considering I am using the Stalker set (since defensive stats are borderline useless in PvP due to the above) which has a good deal more offensive stats, and if you aren't wearing PvP gear my expertise is also going to be way higher than yours. Unless you of course mean either Relic/Adrenal/Warzone damage buff stacking and/or PvE targets.

Having finished the storyline, I ran into zero missions or even mob groups which gave any issues. (Aside from the ship at the end of Act 1 which is bugged and causes multiple groups to aggro on you at once) The most popular complaints are from (ommitting potential storyline spoilers): The end of the Act 1 boss, who does a long cast spell which instant kills you if you do not interrupt. Having played MMOs and RPGs for a while, it's pretty common sense to realize that a long cast is probably powerful and thus should be interrupted. The fight is otherwise trivial. Attis Station. Puts groups of 1 elite and 2 strong enemies against you. Sapping the strongest one is again an obvious choice, as you should basically have been doing since level 20. After that, interrupting dangerous casts and taking down strong mobs with a healer companion isn't really very difficult. It just depends what you find difficult and challenging really. To me, using crowd control, interrupting casts, not AoEing close to crowd controlled mobs and the like are simple common sense when playing an MMO, and with those the storyline missions are pretty easy. For the most part Sages who neglect to use the same type of skills run into similar problems in the storyline missions btw. That said, for those who have never played MMOs before, never seeing any real use in those CC and interrupt skills until they run into a wall isn't exactly optimal design, I agree on that part.

I find a lot of these pro's and con's rather contrived, and a lot of the argumentation here make little sense. Comparing the points invested in the tree to get the skill as a criterium makes zero sense to me. We are talking here from a Kinetic viewpoint where both skills directly compete for your skillpoints, and it has zero significance if Slow Time is 41 KC or FiB is 11 points balance. Overall the whole point debate is a bit of a wash, as the skills directly compete and you end up putting multiple other skillpoints in to reach their max effectiveness. (You will be taking 2 points in Mental Potency for FiB, and similarly you will be taking Force Break as Kinetic on the way to the final tier in KC. Discussing the effects some talents deep in Balance have on FiB is also entirely pointless. If you are making a choice between Slow Time and Force in Balance, you are talking about a primarily Kinetic build which cannot reach those talents. Bottom line is those who take Slow Time will typically take Force Break and those who take Force in Balance will also take Mental Potency. Overall the whole scoring and comparing the two skills in very contrived and unimportant categories just doesn't really have any impact on the choice. Ultimately what you are debating is FiB's range and small heal compared to Slow Time's damage reduction, snare and stacking of Harnessed Shadows. As someone who used a 23/0/18 spec before the latest patch, I liked the utility which instant lift, Force Strike and FiB gave. However with the changes to Force strike, Harnessed Shadows being stacked by Slow Time and the overall utility it provides, I feel 31/0/10 is now the superior spec. Finally I do not quite get your paragraph on Slow Time if you are not the tank. If you are in a deep Kinetic Combat spec, you are playing a tank spec, you are supposed to tank and high threat is a good idea. If you are not tanking in PvE, then why are you playing a Kinetic Shadow?

I believe there is no moddable Techblade in the game. The reason behind this is the way Qyzen was changed very late during development from a ranged tank to melee tank (to better mirror Khem Val for Inquisitors). However since his skills had been coded as a ranged class (ie using Aim), he was still dependent on Aim statistics (rather than strength). With no melee weapon available which has Aim on it, they instead created a new weapon type, the Techblade (Why on the other hand half the Assault Cannons I find have Cunning on them is beyond me...). Due to the late stage at which this was changed, it was also implemented rather half-heartedly: there's only some quest rewards and craftables from Armstech, and that's it. So as result whereas Khem Val uses Juggernaut gear and Vibroblades, Bioware's late and rather lazy change of Qyzen left him using a rare weapon only used by select companions (I believe Tanno Vik for Troopers is similar) as well as Trooper armor (which isn't that bad really). When it comes to moddable weapons you run into similar issues. Whereas for other companions it makes sense since they use stats which fit their archetype, Qyzen is not so lucky. He needs melee weapons with Aim; however only barrels with Aim and Cunning (the ranged stats) exist whereas hilts only exist as Willpower and Strength. If and how they intend to fix this, nobody knows at the moment. This is also very apparent when doing one of the Belsavis Heroic 4 dailies, which gives an orange moddable level 50 weapon for every companion. Well, except for Qyzen who gets a blue level 50 techblade which cannot be upgraded instead.

Since my interrupts seemingly weren't doing anything on the rock collapse, I just ran away from him. When he's casting he roots himself in place, and the area in which the rocks come down is rather small, so it's very easy to outrange. Just used interrupts for the more dangerous of his remaining skills.

He shouldn't really ever get attacked, so tossing mods in light armor orange pieces shouldn't be a major issue. That said, it shouldn't be overly hard either to get him some medium orange pieces from spare commendations either, which you can then update from time to time

I personally play a Kinetic Shadow, whereas my girlfriend chose a Seer Sage. When it comes to the Shadow, the first 20-30 levels are somewhat boring due to the heavy usage of Double Strike and low amount of other skills worth using (which you start using once you get talents such as Particle Acceleration and Harnessed Shadows). Overall I wouldn't say the class is terribly hard. When it comes to PvE lvling, you will not have many problems if you make sensible choices in terms of gearing and companions (ie take Tharan if stuff gets somewhat challenging), use DPS skills which make sense (Double Strike, Project, Telekinetic Throw and Spinning Strike mostly) and use CC and interrupts where needed. When it comes to PvP, playing the class succesfully will require more different skills to be used (this is quite typical of PvP though compared to lvling), including some extra CC (Stun and Spinning Kick), using defensive and offensive cooldowns at the right time, taunts, guard. Overall I'd say if you are worried about lvling, you could probably get by using less than 10 buttons during combat. When you get into harder or more competitive content such as hard mode flashpoints, PvP, etc. you will need more varried skill usage. I believe I use around 25 keybinds with my 31/0/10 Kinetic Spec atm, as well as some I click when needed. (Guard, buffs, etc.) On the other hand my girlfriend hasn't had any major issues with her Seer Sage either. They get decent AoE, seemingly pretty good and not overly difficult single target DPS, some heals which aren't too radically new design (Lots which are quite similar to WoW's Priest class) and a fairly easy to grasp resource system. She does fine in both PvE and PvP as well. So either way, I'd say pick what you'd like, neither class is exactly rocket science to play in PvP, though the more skills you can use at the right time the better you will be of course. (But with the pace at which skills are introduced as well as their obvious uses, this isn't terribly problematic either really)

No issues against Willpower really (It's nice for dmg since it adds slightly less damage than Power to your abilities and also improves crit rate), there's hardly any situations where you'd have to make a choice between Willpower on the one hand and secondary stats on the other. Aside from variations where one mod has slightly more than the other for primary and secondary stats I agree with the sentiment of pushing too deep into diminishing returns is generally not very effective (on top of which Power, Surge and Crit all work multiplicative of each other), but gotta have a good luck at how steep those are before being able to state anything sensible about them.

I would note btw that at level 26 and Tatooine you aren't exactly halfway through the leveling process. Later planets tend to be bigger and have a bit more to do than most of the earlier planets, and levels also take longer.

In that spec suggested in the OP, I'd change some points around to get 3/3 Technique Mastery. 6% Elemental and Internal Damage is considerable. Prime target to remove points would be Mental Endurance. Even when quite well geared, those two points won't give you more than about 2-300 health extra).

I'm personally using two items from the Survivor set (For the cooldown reduction in Spinning Kick) and 3 items from the Stalker set (Granting the range extension for our interrupt); I can see a case for going 4 piece Survivor and replacing the mods though, as the 4p Survivor bonus of +5% dmg when guarding someone is also rather nice. Overall the way I personally view stats, which isn't always backed up by solid maths, due to the lack of solid theorycrafting we can do atm: As mentioned in several threads on various forms, Tank stats are currently not particularly functional. Shield, Absorption and Defense rating don't do a whole lot currently due to a majority of devastating attacks, including those from the most populous classes in Warzones (Read: Sorcerors and Bounty Hunters) completely bypass these stats. As such, I tend to favor replacement of these mods by DPS mods/enhancements. Accuracy. This is also loaded on a lot of Stalker pieces. It's the direct counter for defense, and from my understanding only really does anything on our melee abilities. (Double Strike and Spinning Strike primarily) but nothing really for our force abilities (which start out with 100% chance to hit). As a result, I'm personally inclined to replace these Enhancements with different stats. Power. Seems to be universally nice to me since it enhances all our attacks. Surge. Increases our burst damage, especially handy due to Particle Acceleration causing autocrits. Crit. Nice, but my suspicion is that it's not quite as good as the previous two stats. Buffs most of our attacks, but my major issue with this is that a good deal of our damage comes from Particle Acceleration Projects which already autocrit. Therefore, my personal suspicion based on some very limited guesses would be that I'd favor Power and Surge as stats, and to a lesser extent crit. (I don't really find us ever make that much of a concious choice between Endurance/Willpower and secondary stats) The problem is since I'm not aware of any diminishing returns curves on Surge/Crit or how Power scales our damage comparatively, it's hard to come up with any sort of numbers for solid stat balances. Other Kinetic Shadows feel free to correct me if I'm off with this