i just went and checked for you, imperial masks are the same as the republic ones. voices were different though which was nice

if you're seeing them kill NPCs then you're in the wrong part of Ilum. The area where the true Ilum PvP occurs doesn't have any NPCs that could really be attacked. you need to take a speeder to the westernmost area of the map and go to the area called the central assault

needs to do holy damage when a charge is used imo

if you did have a true ranged, basic, free attack and you used it.... that is the kind of action that would get you booted from a lot of groups. you should never run out of Force as a sage. not ever.

Well let's say you have to kill 2 elites that hit hard. You can lift one into the air and them have one minute to kill his friend while he just floats there helpless. That's for a sage. A shadow has less use as its shorter and we have mind maze but we still do it in pvp as 8 seconds is a long time in pvp. You can lift someone and plant a bomb right behind their back without anything they can do about it

if you dont have enough mobility as a shadow you're doing it wrong... this is one of, if not the, most mobile class.

you guys are losing money on treasure hunting because you dont know what missions to do. if it says moderate or abundant, DO NOT waste your money. those will return a white lockbox which will often be a net-loss. im not even sure of the benefit of bountiful tbh. what you want are rich yields, ever and always. you will notice that the level 49-50 bracket doesn't have many... that's why good players go down a notch to 41-48 bracket and do the rich missions there. you will recieve a blue item almost every time, often an epic. even if you have no use for it and nobody else wants it. the vendor price will get you a net profit at the very least. i have both skills, my main is a slicer. slicing gives me much more hard cash but i make a decent amount from the TH too, it shouldn't be thought bad just because some people dont know how to do it

damn, that's pretty lame indeed

the icon for companions wanting to talk to you and then disappearing is a bug that everyone gets from time to time. they dont actually have a conversation for you most likely. i'm sorry but i think you just explored your way out of a very hot, forbidden padawan-master love affair

first time i've heard of this. are you sure you're not talking about particle acceleration and force potency not workin properly together, which loses project its 50% damage bonus under certain circumstances?

if you want to aoe and use FiB like that, you're going to need to use a tank pet of some kind, iresso or qyzen. most people dont like to do that though as the heals from theran are too good. in that case i'd suggest just not using aoe. instead do a mind crush, force breach, sever force opener on a single mob after theran has that heal agro you mentioned you like. then just kill them 1 at a time that way. they will die very fast, balance has nice dps even without the FiB buff

how would shadow step compliment the balance playstyle? the only tree that would benefit from shadowstep is infiltration

Ah thanks Kitru. I thought it was just a hard cap that anything beyond 50 % rating was useless. I feel much better now lol

I never paid attention to this til last night when I realized that my shield rating with kinetic ward active is 51%. The cap for those not in the know is 50%. This means any and all shield rating I might pick up from now on is 100% useless except for those situations with lots of AoE causing the charges to drop fast. My question to my fellow kinetics is what do you suggest as the alternative. I mean what are you guys doing. Sadly I'm not aware of any defense/absorption enhancements. And I don't see sacrificing defense/shield to get absorption/accuracy as being the answer, though maybe it is. Your thoughts?

Honestly I've wondered the same thing. The changes to the tree itself are slight and there are very few generic shadow abilities that are overwhelmingly impressive for balance. I enjoy balance a lot myself and whenever I feel like going DPS for a day that's where I go. But... I made this character to tank. If I made a character just to be dps balance from the start I can't see much of any reason that I'd take shadow over sage. Seems like they are both exact same thing except one has 3 times the range

http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o13/sherira/Screenshot_2012-02-02_05_00_43_567357.jpg 31/0/10 still looking for PvE implants and a decent weapon

if that football player never set a foot down on the goal line and instead jumped OVER the goal line into the out of bounds area... then no... he would have just committed a foul

exactly the point. if by some magical means you KNEW for a FACT that it was going to take TEN tries before you procced it, by the old method you would have to cast whirling blow 10 whole times for those 10 chances before the final one worked. under the new method, each of those swings would be 5 chances in one, so your second time hitting the button would proc. 10 casts vs 2... and that's if you had the ridiculously bad luck of failing a 1:3 chance 9 times in a row.

currently, it's 50% on USE. which means: you hit double strike button, you swing twice, it rolls 1d2. 50% chance of success you hit whirling blow button, you strike 5 targets, it rolls 1d2. 50% chance of success with change, it's a 30% chane on HIT. which means: you hit double strike button, you swing twice, it rolls 2d10. 51% chance of success. you hit whirling blow button, you strike 5 targets, it rolls 5d10. 83% chance of success ADDITIONALLY!!! you hit spinning strike button, you strike the target, it rolls 1d10. 30% chance of success how you see this as a nerf i dont understand edit: the fuzzy numbers i used for probabilities were driving me nuts so i decided to put more mathematically sound numbers there (example, i was using additive probabilities such as the chance of at least one natural 3 in a 2d3 roll being equal to 60% which is of course absurd. also i was using a d3 to represent a 30% chance which is also, bad)

well let me ask you this.... if you were playing basketball, and the ball went way wide of the goal and was going out of bounds... then a player jumped up from the inbounds area, way out of bounds, caught the ball in mid-air and threw it back in bounds to a teammate before his foot hit the ground... would that ball not be good? generally sports dont' acknowledge the 3rd dimensional axis for that sort of thing. the players foot must touch the ground before it's considered out of play. in this case, the player is going up in the air, OVER the goal line, and landing on a platform BEHIND the goal area. this area is out of bounds and he is insta-killed. in order for the goal to count he would have to touch the ground itself in the goal area at some point before he hit the spawn platform

lol i wasn't going to get involved, i was more reading this just to see how ops were feeling about the changes. but on this i wanted to add. first, he said "and more" but if you really wanna know... when fighting a good op (i do mean good, not some nub you can just roll over like a sleepy hutt) i really use all the following abilities in the fight: project, force speed, force slow, slow time, tele throw, kinetic ward, mind crush, force potency, force stun, spinning kick, force breach, whirling blow and probably a force wave. doubt i'll bother with a double strike but it happens occasionally. then defensively at some point i'll most definitely use reslience, force of will, at least 1 relic and deflection. also a medpack and battle rediness for the heal. i also have a grenades as a cybertech ready, either the firestorm for damage if i think it's going well and a sludge applicator if i need to get away in a pinch. in which case i'd also be looking at a force cloak which may fail anyway if resilence isn't ready and he's got a bleed on me again. in the event it's going very well and he runs i'll need to force pull him back. that's not just a list of abilties, that's really all the crap i've gotta hit to fight a properly geared and skilled op, and it often doesn't help. so dont' ever pretend you're silly op rotation is "complicated" currently valor rank 52, full sets of both tank and dps tier 2 pvp gear. in full buffs and the tank set i run a little over 20k, 21.8k if i feel like wasting endurance stim on pvp which i rarely do. the main disconnect between me and the ops that i actually go up against frequently is going to be the difference in champ vs battlemaster sets as there are about 3 really good, well known ones on our server. my 2 creds on the change: it feels much better that i'm not getting killed so quickly that i dont really get a chance to fight back. as it was i just stood up from the opener and ran away with cloak/resil/force speed. and came back on my own terms. even with my quite meaty HP pool pre-patch ops could get me to a good 60% before stun was over and take me to dangerous levels by the time i'd really even reacted. however, there's little to no change in a 1v1 scenario, these ops still will kill me if i dont run and pick up the battle under better conditions. the stuns have gotten worse than before, now they can time them in a smart manner and just make me stand there most of the fight, there simply aren't enough breaks for them all. what this change has effectively done imo is made no difference 1v1 but allowed healers a chance to do something. as it was before.... no... by the time they noticed a need for a heal and changed targets the person was dead. ops are really the only class i personally have trouble with. as a tank i take a while to kill things but through smart play most are a joke. ops were the only class i "feared" and next would be some BHs but i dont' accuse them of any OPness and assassins a close 3rd after them. the sorc QQ threads make me laugh as i find their pvp ability as dps to be a joke. and sith warriors are just full of problems imo... the only ones that i dont just see as free valor are the ones that... i dont know the spec but they have a very strong force choke that can actually do a huge chunk of HP before it's over. srry dont know what that spec is.

ya... exactly the point... you have little reason to respond... those are examples of the few exceptions and since only really the crafted gear has augment slots that means it's a small exception... which exactly what i was saying. and i wouldn't have called the relic a tank relic if i didn't know it had defense stats on it. noooo duh, why you think i'm wearing 2 of them. you're trying to fight my argument by supporting my point. and kitru... you realize torhead has a lot of OLD data that isn't useful anymore right. i know plenty about how mods, enhancements and armoring works. you miss the point entirely. tank mods... have tank stats... and higher endurance... than dps mods.... simple fact. there might be small variations in the exact mod you're using, but the tank mods are still going to have higher endurance than the dps mods. so there's little choice in the matter. the fact that you posted this is exactly what i was saying to you. it's not your math that's wrong, its your attitude on the matter as a whole. you're getting very worked up about a very simple point... tank gear has more hp than willpower, so you dont have to choose between hp and defense. if you get a defense item, it will most often have a boosted hp value too.

not to be rude kitru but your attitude on the whole endurance thing is a little off from how it comes across. i mean you make it sound like we have to choose between having endurance and defense stats as if they were mutually exclusive. the same gear that has defense stats also has high endurance. the only time you have to make a choice that i can think of right now is 2 situations: 1. augment slots, you can choose between 22-28 of a defense stat or endurance 2. relics, because for some reason tank relics have power instead of all end like the dps relics anyway i think the OP was asking a more simplified question of say... which armoring type to use, force wielder vs resolve in which case it'd be the ones with more endurance

if shadow strike were our "signature" ability then it'd at least be on my bars somewhere and if i had to choose an ability to say that truly is our "signature" as in all shadows have it, all shadows use it, and nobody else has something just like it i'd have to say Force Breach. Some other possibilities would be spin kick, whirling blow but you get them too late to really be a core element of the class. edit: and to think of it, other classes have an execute just like whirling blow and spin kick isn't too much unlike any number of other short CC abilities out there.

http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o13/sherira/Screenshot_2012-01-27_15_41_59_864372.jpg take that for example, the mod has 48 endurance. the enhancement has 40. 40+48 = 88 item has 119 end 119 - 88 = 31 endurance the base item with no mods or enhancements has 31 endurance. expertise rating is always built into the item itself (so far at least) so mods / enhancements are always safe to remove for use in PvE gear. also to note, tank stats are always a type B mod, in case you didn't know that and the number is linked to the level of the mod. so mods with [50] next to them are always xxx mod 22 the list goes [50] = 22, craftable [51] = 23, found in centurion and tionese gear [56] = 24, found in champion and columi gear [58] = 25, found in battlemaster and rakata gear