I'm usually off on Tuesday. This week I'm off on Wednesday and Thursday. Of course the maintenance window moves to follow me.

If you reckon that someone out there both mains a Sin and has been getting smacked around by Vanguards lately - and has compromising info hacked from the cloud regarding Musco - then it all starts to make sense.

If anything, it doesn't go far enough. There are still some abilities that make use of the rifle; if their goal is to have the Vanguard's blaster be largely akin to a Sage's lightsaber, they've got some work to do.

Just curious how leveling up a VG/PT compares to, oh, say, a 'Mando or a Merc. I went Commando with my Trooper, but that big dumb assault cannon's starting to get to me and I'm thinking of shelving him for a Vanguard. Trouble is...it's been the crazy-easiest leveling experience I've had in this game. Stuff just melts. And the thought of chasing **** around in melee range again, having just capped off my Jug, is depressing.

Surprised you guys have as high an opinion of Mercs in PVP as you do. Wish you would've gone into that a bit.

I suppose that's something to consider, that people might have complained in the other direction if the Trooper's final grade. But it's not like you wind up as a general; major ain't exactly comparable to a Darth or a Jedi Master. But it's definitely Bioware being terribad at writing the military. Mass Effect was horrible for it, too. Technology advances, but we've pretty well got rank organization and forms of address sorted out, they've pretty well been sorted out for a while now, and there's not much of a change likely if we become space-people.

He was a Ranger. The Delta ground commander was airborne for the entire battle in the C2 helicopter. Rangers are part of the special operations community, certainly. They have the same squad/platoon/company/battalion/regiment organization, and accompanying leadership, as a standard infantry regiment, though. Yup. Bioware's just horrible at writing the military. Like, so horrible I think your average person would have to actively try to get it that wrong. Incomprehensible, fluid rank structures, NCOs being addressed as "sir" - by officers - squad support weapons being used as the standard arms for battalion-level officers, etc. Even granting it's the space military of the future, it's just wretched. They do it poorly here, they do it poorly with Mass Effect, I'm sure they'll do it poorly with the next remotely military-oriented game they make.

A Special Forces ODA is led by a Captain (O-3). SEAL platoons are generally led by Lieutenants (O-3). There were zero Delta officers on the ground during the "Black Hawk Down" Battle of Mogadishu. In the special operations community, the overwhelming majority of door-kickers are enlisted, not officers. A more realistic Trooper story would've had you going from Sergeant to Master Sergeant or something. Major (O-4) would be a likely rank for the commander of an entire special operations company, not one individual squad. Of course, we sort of blew the doors off military realism when officers started lugging around guns that belong in a weapons platoon.

So, this is probably a stupid question, but I'll ask it anyway: I've heard vague claims that Vanguard/Powertech range has been increased, or has the ability to be increased, to the point where one discipline at least can get off its rotation outside the 10 meter range. Any truth to that? I really need to level up a Trooper, but I've always found the "I have a rifle, so I'm going to stand three feet from you while you hit me with a laser sword" aspect of the Vanguard to be pretty dumb.

I have to agree. I've been trying to decide on Commando vs. Vanguard for a couple days now - it's the last class I need to level up for the legacy class buff - and seeing YouTube videos of Boltstorm in action pushed me into Vanguard without looking back. It looks like magic, not blaster fire.

I was actually curious about that myself, because my Trooper's been sitting at level 10 for about five days now while I try to decide on an AC. Most of the raid videos I see on YouTube involving Troopers are of Commando DPS, which makes me think that's the way to go, but I'm not wild about the assault cannon. So I reckon on Vanguard, but then remember how undesirable melee DPS is in end-game raiding, and wind up not making a decision at all and just PVPing on my Jug.

Look, not every company has the time or resources to QA their work.

Gonna be up today, or what?

TEH coming back up anytime soon?

I've seen other threads on this topic where people claim to have parsed only 5% to 10% behind an assault cannon user while using a blaster rifle, but that was pre-3.0. I'm not familiar enough with Merc/'Mando disciplines to know if that would still be the case. However, I've resolved to level up a Trooper - it's one of the few stories I haven't done - and I just can't get on board with the assault cannon, so I'm strongly considering using a blaster rifle for solo leveling, and swapping to an AC for group/PVP stuff. If I was kitted out with purple mods from 10 to 50, how viable would that be?

A) Sure I do. The Guardian and Sentinel both look like they're trying to do anime samurai moves. B) It's dumb. It also leads to at least one move apiece that involves them purposefully turning their back to their target and stabbing blindly behind themselves.

Juggernauts and Marauders are pretty good. Guardians and Sentinels have too much pointless weeaboo reverse grip nonsense in their animations for me to ever enjoy playing them.

Well, that's depressing. And yes, I too find SW far superior to what I've seen of JK, but I'd like to eventually bite the bullet and get a Knight leveled up. Just trying to find a way to do it that doesn't make me hate the voice actor and the story.

Is the Dark Side Jedi Knight story any good, or at least vaguely coherent? I've only ever gotten a Knight up to level 24 or 25 or so, and it's because I try and go through the story making "Jedi appropriate" choices, and I ultimately get sick of it. Dunno why - maybe I just can't stand Eastern philosophy or pacifism or whatever, but man, the voice acting combined with the actual Light Side lines just make me want to smack the hell out of my own PC. So I'm thinking of trying it out with a Dark Side Jedi. What's the review, from anyone who's done it?

Where do you learn the basic level 50+ schematics for things like hilts, armorings, mods, etc? The trainers on the fleet don't seem to teach them.

So I take it Marauders still aren't all that good in PVP?

It's been about a year since I've played TOR, but recently I've felt like coming back and finally finishing a Sith Warrior. I've leveled both Marauder and Juggernaut to the mid-30s in the past, but feel like starting fresh. Marauder did PVE leveling much more quickly, in my experience, while Juggernaut felt more useful in PVP. There have been a lot of patches since I played last, I'm pretty uninterested in raiding. I'd mostly like to play through the class story and do some PVP. Which AC would you take for leveling up and doing solo PVP, given the current state of the game?

I prefer Marauder animations by a wide margin. Marauder feels fast and brutal, as far as the animations go, while the Sentinel's use of twirly-hilt, reverse grip nonsense just doesn't do it for me. I also, unsurprisingly, prefer the Warrior's storyline to the Knight's. The Warrior's voice acting is much, much better, and he sounds and acts like a ******. The Knight's storyline is just a little too Boy Scoutastic.

And here, of course, we have the downside to a decent buff: there's a FOTM influx, people whining about getting killed by the FOTM class, and suddenly things that weren't even buffed are getting calls for the nerf bat. Inevitable and predictable, like the swallows returning to Capistrano.

If you want to join the flavor-of-the-month herd, you want to go Guardian/Juggernaut or Sage/Sorcerer. Now, granted, Vigilance Guardians/Vengeance Juggernauts weren't horrible before or anything - arguably one of the best 1v1 classes out there, in fact - but Enraged Defense really put them over the top, and I see it being toned down a patch or two down the road. Same goes for Sorcerers and Sages, though for different reasons. If you want a solid PVP class that's been a performer since the launch of the game and remains consistently good, Sentinel/Marauder or Vanguard/Powertech. Now, granted, not every spec among those two classes has remained great, but as a whole, since launch, I don't think any other class has been as consistent in staying at or near the top of the food chain.