Single most frustrating fight in the game so far...bad news is, it's not the only one of these you're going to face either. Your next act, pretty much the same fight though slightly different with a better companion selection. Took me a good 10 - 12 tries to finally squeak out a kill. I suspect I'll never finish my end of game quest to become a darth without help. On this one, I finally broke down and "cheated"...I hauled one of my L50 guldies in and he pwned the tart for me in about 5 seconds flat. The most frustrating part of this fight for me (other than the fact I was never able to get her down even 1/4 of her HP before dying) was the sheer amount of stuff you're being required to manage at one time. Stay out of AOE, Keep Companion out of AOE, Keep shield on Khem or yourself, interrupt heal and/or AOE, heal and do damage. All of which requires you to have a SEPARATE target selected every time. I can't see what Zash is casting without her selected, but I can't heal khem with zash targeted...and trying to maneuver myself and khem out of AOE lightning is a pain all around. Interrupt *is* the key to this fight. Interrupting the RIGHT spells at the RIGHT time. That leads me to believe YOU should be the one tanking the fight, NOT khem. This was a 180 degree jump for me (and I never got to try it as my guldie was on the way when I came up with the tactic) since I've been playing healer to khem since level 10. Your best bet is probably to put khem on DPS mode, turn off his taunts and let him go agro on Zash, while she follows you around with lightning. A few DOT/Lighting strikes should keep her attention focused on you and chasing you while khem stands back and beats the crap out of her....generally out of AOE range since she's trying to catch you as the main threat. This also allows you to switch between bubble/heal without losing target since your bubble / heal will automatically affect you while your damage/dps will automatically affect zash. Being the tank in this scenario takes out alot of the complexity of the fight and may just make it do-able. I won't know since it'll be a LONG LONG time before I ever see that fight again. --Illydth

Subscribed, this is awesome information, thanks for the time it took to compile it!

The answer is actually that you've hit the nail on the head. If you have 5 pieces of orange gear and your companion has 3 you're looking at something like 110 commendations on a single world just to upgrade all of the equipment. That's not something you're going to get even if you select absolutely no equipment at all and only EVER select commendations (which is a BAD idea btw). You're correct on the costs and they are maintained all the way up: 7 Commendations for a Hilt, Barrel or Armoring Mod Slot Item (Blue) 2 Commendations for a Mod or Enhancement Mod Slot Item (Blue) Green mod slots DO NOT keep pace with your equipment level, don't buy them they're useless to you. In general your best method of upgrading multiple pieces of orange equipment are as follows: * When presented with the option to take an armoring, hilt or barrel mod, you should probably ALWAYS take that option...they're always blue and 99.9% of the time will be as good as or better than what you currently have. * Orange items obtained from quests (particularly heroics) are going to have better mods than you have right now, or at least AS GOOD. NEVER hesitate to take an item you can't use that has mods you can and savage the item. Heroics can be done multiple times, so if you get a head slot orange item with an armoring 60 mod on it, and you have 5 pieces of gear that have armoring 50 on them, don't hesitate to run the heroic multiple times to get that head slot item over and over again. You may not be using the item, but it's like getting 7 commendations every time you finish the quest.

The point Mok is not that class complaints aren't there, of course they are, some people just like to complain and won't be happy unless they can. The point is that right now, without real numbers, you have no PROOF that sorcerers are behind snipers in dps. Each time you run an instance you may be able to say "we got through last time with a sniper but failed with a sorcerer", but for each of those you're going to also experience a slothly sniper and a damn good sorcerer. You may be able to go to PVP and see "who's best" but that rarely carries over to PVE well. I play a sorcerer, I have gotten through content I don't feel ANYONE has a right to get through, I feel my class is overpowered and I expect to see a nurf to it. Then I get talking with my friends and find out they also got through the same stuff and I no longer feel I'm so overpowered...or I feel they are. They then get farther and I feel they are passing content I can't pass...till I get there, and realize I can. Right now, it's all guesswork, and any given player of any given class can get it's chance at end game because numbers aren't available to determine who's best and who's not. It's a much different ballgame when the player community can empirically determine who is and isn't better than who else. You don't need damage meters to see if your group mate sucks. You need damage meters if you want to determine if your class sucks. That's why I don't like them.

That's not how I am complaining about DPS meters being used. But then again, in this situation as you point out you don't NEED dps meters to determine the 4th guy isn't pulling his weight do you? DPS meters are used for Class vs. Class comparisons. It's used to determine that when I want a tank X class is who I should be looking for, with "Y" class being unable to properly perform that job because they're some % behind class X. THAT is where elitism comes from and THAT is where the class ************ comes from.

Exactly. My initial statement still stands. I used Recount religiously in WoW, I had an offline DPS meter in EQ that I spooled logs out to...hell I even WROTE one in my EQ days when the DPS meter I was using didn't do it exactly how I wanted it to. They're bad for a game...period. You want to throw WoW's balance problems into Bliz's lap as their issue. In some way's you're right, Bliz was ultimately responsible for balance in their game, no other entity could have fixed the problems...I apprecaite it. Have you ever considered, however, how you modify balance in an MMO with classes and races and millions of players worldwide? It's not just something you can tweek and tune overnight, there's not a database table somewhere where you can put a number into and poof, all classes DPS are now balanced. The problem with making the numbers available is that the player base doesn't run a business, they're not involved in a programming project of this size and magnetude. They feel "I've proven that my class is worse than your class, I should get fixed. I'm waiting till the next patch and I'm done." They're right, they HAVE proven that their class is under-balanced...that doesn't help matters...no company can react as fast as their player base can "prove" a problem. And in many times, acting can be considered detrimental to either the revenue stream or to game balance overall. Let me give you two examples: * Assume 60% of your players play rogues. Are you really going to throw a nurf out at rogues? That's a revenue stream issue and marketing is unlikely to let you. * Assume your end game raid for this content was balanced with rouges doing twice the DPS as any other class? How do you re-tune so melee warriors are in balance with rogue DPS? The skills aren't the same, the timers aren't the same the abilities aren't the same, you can't simply turn a switch halving rogue DPS and multiplying warrior DPS by 1.5 and say "all's well". You could totally invalidate your end game content, all of it, through a simple tuning of classes. You don't run an MMO, you have NO idea what kinds of things the developers of an MMO face or are expected to perform. Claiming it's Bliz's fault they don't have balanced classes is uninformed at best. And that leads back to the playerbase and the information you provide. Right now, in EQ and in WoW The playerbase drove who got nurfed and who got buffed. No MMO Producer would acknowledge that, but we all know that's how it works. If enough classes ***** loud enough that Class X is too powerful, a nurf bat will find it's way down on class X. This is done BECAUSE the player base has access to the data, they can aggregate the DPS data and determine who's best and thus they'll let the axe fall on the "best" if it's not them. It's a bad system. As much as I LIKE being able to tune my character to be the most efficient it can be, as much as I LOVE theorycrafting and testing rotations and equipment, it's TERRIBLE for a game for the players to have that much information. They have no idea how to use it, they become elitist when they min/max and they feel that data should drive changes that they have NO IDEA what the full effect would be on the game as a whole. Players are Short Sighted, Data Driven, Elitists who, given a piece of data, will decide that their proof should drive how the game is developed. I am 100% against giving players any data that allows them to compare themselves against another class. Class Strife may be rife now, but it's all guesswork based off of incomplete information. Give them a DPS meter and now, all of a sudden, the real eletist stuff will start. --Illydth

ABSOLUTELY NOT. Damage meters is the death to games. There's a thread on this already somewhere, look for it. Basically, the moment I can determine that class X is L% behind class Y in something, class X no longer gets to play the game due to the min/maxing mentality of upper end players. The longer no one knows if Sorcerer DPS is behind Sniper DPS or that BH's mitigate 5% more damage than Juggernauts the better this game plays for EVERYONE. --Illydth

*shrug* Why not do the following with the Belkin N52: 14 buttons, shifter, thumb movement. Macro buttons 1 - 12 to ability bar 1-12. Macro Thumb button + 1 - 12 to the following macro: < select player 1 > < click cast heal > < select previous target > (you can do previous target through focus if you want to by changing the macro to: focus current target select player 1 click cast heal select focus target Set this up for all buttons 1 - 14 and you should be able to "focus cast" at least 14 targets in the raid. Not sure what max raid force size is so this might not cover everyone, still it definitely works for flashpoints. Why post this? Simple enough, all of you complaining about click to cast being OP or otherwise problematic don't seem to realize that there's hardware out there that allows you to do this pretty quickly and easily (N52, there's another one with like 20 buttons on it that does the same thing, Logitech G15 Keyboard, etc. etc. etc.). Anything I can macro to a programmable hardware button should be able to be shortcut through the game itself in some way...otherwise I'm simply required to have specific hardware to be more efficient at playing my class. -Illydth

@ Braushh: "Casual people can group with other casual people and completely ignore/laugh at the damage meter. I've never once heard someone suggest they are leaving WoW because they allow meters or addons." You're right, no one has ever said they're leaving WoW because it allows addons. However, how many people have left WoW because of the information those addons provide? How many "I'm quitting because my class sucks!" posts have there been in WoW/EQ's history? Christ dude, the class boards are RIFE with practically every post being either about how horrible another class is because it's better or how horrible that class is because it's worse. How do you think these people come up with this? They're not just pulling numbers out of some warm dark smelly place. They've got hard data from Recount and other Damage Meters. So no, no one's ever left because WoW allows mods...but hundreds of thousands have left because WoW ALLOWED mods. (I'll leave that last statement up to the reader to figure out it's meaning.) --Illydth

Er Zaph: Macros have not been allowed within UI Mods since EQ's time. Since DAY 1 it has been illegal in WoW to create a UI mod that allows your character to perform an action based upon a condition. You're absolutely correct that this would cause an unfair advantage, even at the point where a player with a faster computer or internet connection would aggregate and react to a situation than a player with a slower computer. No "macroing" has been allowed in MMOs in many many years.

Because the numbers lock players out of content. Let me start by saying I'm a raider, always have been through 4 years of EQ and 7 years of WoW. I install any mod I feel will give me an edge and I min-max as best I can. Let me also say this is a great way to get burnt out on the game. There are several REALLY GOOD reasons why you DO NOT want, particularly, DPS/HPS numbers able to be obtained within the game. * The moment you can see that class X's Max DPS is L% worse than class Y's Max DPS, Class X no longer gets group invites. Look at the threads already about "only looking for X Class, no others need apply". PLAYERS MIN MAX, particularly end game raid players, and what that means is, if you aren't the top DPS player, you don't get a slot as DPS in a hard mode instance. Remove the numbers, and you can no longer TELL who is max DPS and who's not, thus, no classes get locked out of being able to play the game at the top level. * Maxing Numbers = Class Warfare. And for good reason, when the community figures out that my Sorcerer's DPS is perpetually 5% behind the Sniper's DPS, I get locked out of content. So my only recourse is to come to the threads and ***** about how much my class sucks because we're not max DPS and thus don't get group invites. This causes the rest of the classes to HATE ON the top class in whatever factor (tank, heal, dps) they are because they're not best so they don't get invites. * Maxing Numbers = Game Sagnation: The longer you follow down this path the more you realize that patches become the nurfing/buffing of everyone over and over and over again to provide someone who isn't currently getting an invite an invite at the expense of someone else who will now no longer get an invite. It's no longer about fixing content, it's about who got nurfed and who got buffed this go around and "OMG i'm Quitting Sorcerer because Sniper is SO MUCH BETTER!" 11 years of MMO play has taught me, the numbers drive facts and the facts drive changes. While this is a GOOD thing, you have to look at the facts: There are 8 classes on each side of the game, there are only 4 slots in a group. This means 4 classes are going to be on the out. Once the numbers are available to figure out which 4 classes those are, the class warfare begins. IN THIS CASE Obfuscation is an ends to a means. The less you know about the internals of the game the less you'll be able to force your min/maxing view on others. "Let them go run with the casual players then". You are equating casual with sucking, that's not the case. For a time, the BEST DPS warrior in WOW could not out damage a majority of the DPS classes. That didn't mean the DPS warrior was a casual player or that he sucked, he just wasn't a DPS class, and that locked out DPS warriors from properly playing the game. That's bad for any MMO. "Let them find something not so hard-core to do then!" - Like what? It's been said multiple times, there are very few things to do at level 50 at this point. You have a set of operations and hard mode flaspoints and that's about it. If the majority of the community is, as you're saying, attempting to obtain the best equipment possible then it goes without saying they're trying to do it as efficiently as possible. And in doing that they're going to put together the best group they can...which will NOT include the second, third or 4th best healer class or the second, third or fourth best DPS or tank class. The numbers are AWESOME to the min/maxing player, but they're NOT awesome for the GAME or for GAME PLAY. And from a business standpoint they're NOT awesome for BioWare because they start the MMO down the track of class warfare and players /rage quitting the game because they can't be the best. I'm all for a moddable UI that provides better ways of viewing what is already being presented to you (incoming damage, etc.), I am actually entirely against meters of ANY kind, simply because they cause too many players to focus too much attention on what's "best" and not on simply playing the game. --Illydth

Sorry for dredging this back up from last night but the final post needed responding to. "Bring Friends" I'll tell you the same thing my guildie told me when I was asking him (who has finished this) how tough this is and whether it was tuned for a group or not. "It'd be pretty hard for them to tune the ending of a class quest for a group. Who are you going to get that is willing to ruin a crucial moment in a class quest story that they haven't experienced yet to help another person out with it?" "Bring Friends" is more than you think on this one. The plot twist (while it's been lead up to several times before this and isn't a huge surprise) is still a twist and asking someone who may wish to play this class in the future on a second or third play through to ruin it for themselves by coming to help someone out is poor design. As well, as I mentioned above, ALL class quests up to this point (and I don't know if this is just our class quest or all of them that are this difficult) have been tuned to be beatable/accomplishable by you and a party member, this is NOT tuned that way. Obviously it can be done, but right now it's tuned to a level SURE to frustrate. "Get Friends...this is, you know, an MMORPG" is not an answer, it's *a* solution, but it's not an answer.

Khem is so slow to respond that by the time I move, I hit ctrl 2, he ***walks*** to me, the force storm is over and he's taken full damage. If this is going to require a group, mark the damned thing heroic, at least then people who have soloed their bloody class quest for 30+ levels can be warned. There's NOTHING LIKE THIS BATTLE anywhere in the MMO before this point. Not in the flashpoints, not in the story quest, nothing. I understand it's not impossible...but i'm not going to be the only person to have trouble with this. There's TOO MUCH to keep track of in this single fight. If the fight were against a strong with 5 - 6K hp, I get the complexity...you only have to keep the madness up for half a minute or so. She's got 15K hp, heals, CC's, AOEs, and has a really high direct damage. Jolt is an every 12 second interrupt. She casts a heal or force storm more often than every 12 seconds, for force storm not to be a problem you'd pretty much have to already be OUT of the storm and if that's the case how the hell does khem even come into play in the battle? I was hoping someone was going to come back and say "You ARE wearing the mask from Whoozits Right? It removes the damage you take from Zash's force powers making you only have to worry about Khem." As no one has said anything, I'm going to assume that's not the case and that there is no shortcut to this other than to be able to react quick enough like a GD FPS game. I HATE FPS games, and if there's anything else like this in the game, I might as well quit playing now. I've played EQ for around 4 years and WoW For almost 7. I've NEVER been unable to complete a solo based quest in 11 years of MMO play. This is rediculous. --Illydth

32 is the top level alderaan is rated for, i shouldn't have to overlevel in this case. Even then 2 - 3 levels is NOT going to help this case. At the end of the day I have 4 things I have to focus on all at the same time...where I am standing, where my pet is standing, what zash is casting and what my and my pet's health is, all of which requires me to have a DIFFERENT target selected each time. THat's not something a couple levels is going to cure. Focus is a useful suggestion, where's the documentation on how to set and use a focus in this game?

WHO THE HELL THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD QUEST? Let me back up, I'm at the final part of the Legacy....Kill Darth Zash. Oh sure, whirlwind force storm force lighting healing. REALLY? In 4 attempts I've lasted less than 15 seconds at BEST, I've managed to take her down by 3K hp AT BEST. THIS IS CRAP. I don't know who's idea of a good time this was, but this is looking pretty damned impossible to me right now. Frustration doesn't even BEGIN to explain my feeling right now. Yes, I know the first thing that will be posted back is "Interrupt" I cannot keep her targeted to interrupt her heal, move to stay out of force storm and keep khem selected to avoid her force storm and stop her whirlwind all at the same damn time. Not to mention healing Khem. I can't stand still for more than 4 seconds in the entire fight and I cannot heal, bubble, interrupt zash and keep out of force storm all at the same damn time. I know this is supposed to be POSSIBLE but I am just not all FPS / PVP enough to handle this. THis is an MMO it's about TACTICS not fracking run and gun and hit 99 buttons at the same time. I'm about -> <- Close to throwing both the class and the game away. IDIOTIC DESIGN. There's either a bloody trick I'm not seeing or this class quest was only meant to be passed by those with 30 years of FPS experience under their belts. HELP --Illydth

Quick correlary to my previous post: Keep in mind that the more orange items you obtain/slot on you and your companions the harder and harder it will be to keep those items up to date. A given armoring mod at the mods commendation vendor (again, generally the best armoring mod you will get ahold of in quantity at any given level) typically costs 7 commendations. While Mod/Enhancement upgrades cost 2 commendations. Assume, for a moment you have 1 piece of orange gear on your character: You'll need 11 commendations to upgrade that gear to keep pace with what else will be dropping during your stint on this planet. 11 commendations won't take you long to get ahold of, in general. Now assume, for a moment, you have 5 pieces of orange gear, your companion has 3 pieces of orange gear, and each of you has an orange weapon. YOu are now talking about 5x11 = 55 Commendations to upgrade your gear, 3x11=33 commendations to upgrade your companion's gear, and 11 commendations each to upgrade your weapons...for a total cost of 110 commendations on each planet you need to get ahold of to properly upgrade all of your gear. The more orange equipment you have while leveling up, the more likely that equipment is to fall behind the GBP (Green/Blue/Purple) equipment dropping through your normal quest opportunities. While you CAN buy mods, most mod vendors that are non-commendation sell only green mods and those mods are FAR BELOW what you would find dropping on planet...making purchasing mods with credits an unlikely way to keep your gear up to date. There's an argument to be made that having the most advanced gear while leveling isn't important, and that once you hit end game you'll catch up with everyone else. This is very true, however the more orange equipment you find, the more likely you'll be to be replacing an orange piece of equipment with a better Blue or Purple piece just because you can't get/find the upgrades for your orange that you need to keep pace with what's dropping. If you like your look / prefer orange equipment, you will likely end up losing stats and/or letting go technically better pieces of equipment. You will also likely be doing more of a planet in gear that is below your level than you would picking up the GBP quest gear and wearing that. The correlary to this, of course, is Artifice and ESPECIALLY Cybertech which, if you can keep pace with the planet you're on, can provide you an ability to upgrade all of your equipment quickly without the rather humongous commendation cost. --Illydth

As there still seems to be some question allow me to provide more information on Mods and how to handle orange gear: The basics: All orange gear of a given armor type is identical to each other. If you strip all mods from ANY orange piece of gear of the same type (light, medium, heavy armor, single/double bladed lightsaber, etc.) you will find any orange piece of equipment (including the special social equipment which is all considered "light" armor) has identical stats..somewhere around AC 7 and nothing else for the light armor version. To be clear: A light armor orange chest drop obtained from Black Talon at level 10 will be IDENTICAL, with all mods removed, to an orange drop obtained off of the last boss in whatever the level 50 Flashpoint is. THERE WILL BE NO DIFFERENCE OTHER THAN LOOKS. (NOTE: This may not hold true for raid level equipment which is rumored to be much better.) The FIRST thing to realize is that the numbers appearing at the top of an item when you mouse over it are the COMBINED NUMBERS including all gains from mods. An item that shows AC 150, +30 Endurance, +25 Willpower is showing you that the item, with all currently equipped mods in place, has those stats. IF you were to remove one mod and add a different one, that text at the top of the time would change to reflect the new overall stats. Each orange item, then, has a certain number of mod slots: For Armor, it's 3 (Armoring, Mod, Enhancement) and for Weapons it's 4 (Color Crystal, Hilt/Barrel, Mod, Enhancement). Of these slots there is ***1*** slot that is MUCH more important than ANY other slot...for armor this is the "armoring" slot, for weapons it is the "hilt" or "barrel" slot (depending on whether you're wielding a sword/staff type weapon or a gun type weapon). Mod and Enhancement slots are the same slots across the board for ANY modable piece of equipment (green, blue, purple or orange, weapon or armor it doesn't matter). These slots are ONLY stat increasing slots. WYSIWYG. If the "mod" or "ehnamcement" slot says you get +10 Endurance and +10 Willpower, you get EXACTLY that and nothing more. These stats are adding to any existing stats on the piece of equipment. Keep in mind that GREEN, BLUE and PURPLE equipment GENERALLY have additional BASE stats that are there even if the item is unmodded while orange equipment has NO ADDITIONAL STATS. So for green equipment that has +30 Endurance on it, adding a +10 Endurance / +10 Willpower mod to the item creates a +40 Endurance/+10 Willpower piece of equipment. The color crystal also is MOSTLY a WYSIWYG slot: The stat bonus the color crystal gives is exactly added just like the Mod and Enhancement slots. The only difference here is that the color crystal affects the color of either the glow of the weapon or the color of the bolts fired from the gun. That brings us to Hilt/Barrel and Armoring, the important slots. The mods for hilt, barrel and armoring have a special addition to them other than the stats they provide, you'll see this written as "Armor Rating" or "Power/Damage Rating" with a number next to it...for instance "Armor Rating: 70". The armoring mod controls the AC that an item provides. Along with the stats it provides, the armoring "Armor Rating" causes the item to have a particlar AC. While I can't prove this is the case, you can think of the armor raiting as a "multiplyer" for some base armor value which is different based upon whether the item is a light, medium, or heavy piece of armor. When multiplied out, this is the AC that will show on the item once the mod is applied. The jumps are also static: If a 58 Raiting mod produces a light armor piece that has 150 AC and a 59 raiting mod produces a light armor piece with 165 AC, then a 60 rating mod will produce an item with 180 AC. THE SAME AC RATING PROVIDES THE SAME AC TO ALL PIECES OF EQUIPMENT (of the same type/class). Chest doesn't have a different base rating than head for instance. This means any armoring mod can go into any modable piece of gear and proivde exactly the same AC bonus as if it went in any other piece of gear...there is no "priority" when upgrading orange pieces of equipment. Again, it will not matter whether that 60 raiting mod is in the head slot, chest slot or leg slot (or any other slot) it will still produce an item with 180 AC. Hilt/Barrel then do the EXACT SAME THING for the weapon, however it controls the min/max damage for the weapon instead of the armor rating for the piece of armor. Same concept, a double bladed lightsaber has a different min/max base damage than a single bladed lightsaber. The SAME Power/Damage raiting (Say rating 70) going into a double bladed light saber will prodce a different min/max damage for the double bladed saber as it would for a signle bladed saber, but it will produce the SAME min/max damage regardless of what double bladed lightsaber you put it into (whether aquired at level 10 or level 50). Any two double bladed lightsabers with a rating 70 mod in it will have the same min/max damage, but take that same 70 rating mod and put it in a single bladed lightsaber and it will produce a differetn min/max than what was on the double bladed saber. So why ever would we use Orange equipment when you can get a green with base stats and mod slots? The answer is because most Green/Blue/Purple equipment DO NOT HAVE the Armoring/Hilt/Barrel slots. The slots that are typically added to blue/purple and some green equipment are the MOD and ENHANCEMENT slots, NOT the Armoring slot which is the big one. For those GBP pieces of equipment that DO have an armoring or hilt or barrel piece to them, they have NO base stats in that department...or generally worse mods slotted overall. Either the EQUIPMENT piece has a base Armor / Damage rating or the MOD has a base Armor/Damage rating, there is NO SUCH THING as an armor mod that ADDS TO the raiting of an existing rating. Adding an Armor Rating 70 mod to an armor rating 65 green piece of equipment would NOT produce an Armor Rating 135 piece of equipment...that's not how the system works. The highest rating will apply. At the end of the day, an orange piece of equipment modded with all purple mods will be equivalent to a purple drop of the same level (even though the purple equipment has base stats on it, the purple armoring mod should be able to match or come close to those same stats). Same with an orange piece of euquipment modded with all bule mods (equivalent to a blue drop), etc. When picking up an orange piece of equipemnt you simply need to realize that it can be kept pace with other dropping equipment by simply upgrading the important slot (armoring, hilt, barrel) with a mod of equal level. What this means is that you only ever need *1* orange piece of equipment for ANY GIVEN SLOT. Once you find an orange piece of equipment you like the look of, KEEP IT till you hit end game, just upgrade it. You can generally find the best available mods from the Commendations vendor on each planet. While those mods will NOT be the stats you may want (for instance the armoring mod that is Endurance/Willpower for sorcerers is heaver on ENDURANCE than on Willpower) you will find that the rating on the mod outweighs the stat issues. Happy orange equipment modding folks! If there are additional questions, please let me know.

@ reillan The difference here is that in most games I've heard of you couldn't argue over a PIECE of an item being an upgrade. In your situation with the offspec vs. mainspec item in WoW there can be a clear concept: for which character does the piece provide the most benfit over the longest term. In your case, you got screwed. In the case of moddable equipment that line gets blurred, does the hilt mod that enhances the assassin's DPS outweigh the enhancement mod that enhances the tank's AC or HP? That's unclear, and it's not really possible to calculate. The issue at question here is the fact that we've never delt with PIECES of an item being upgrades to people before, THAT is where my concern over orange drops comes from. Were that double bladed lightsaber to have it's own base DPS that was different based upon what saber dropped that would be something different, but as i've found, any two orange inquisitor robes with no mods (one came from Black Talon the other came from the very end of Dromman Kaas, a 10 level difference) is likely to be the EXACT same item (both of these items were AC 7 as base stats unmodded). The ONLY real upgrades in my situation are the mods themselves...and when 1 mod benefits one person and another mod benefits the other, it creates a situation where an item that LOOKS like it should OBIVOUSLY go to one person may REALLY be better off in the hands of someone who can't use it. THAT is the situation that bothers me because most of the player base isn't going to see that. --Illydth

I beg to differ with you. The Hilt mod produces an upgrade regardless of stats. A hilt with "Damage/Power Rating:" above mine produces a large benefit to my orange item regardless of it's additional stats, PARTICULARLY at lower levels of play. A "Damage/Power" Raiting of 50 vs. 60 is a VERY Significant difference in the Min/Max damage of my saber. Regardless of whether the hilt additional stats are +will or +strength, that hilt at 60 power rating is a signficant upgrade, regardless of my lightsaber class. This gets even WORSE with the amroring slot. With Hilt/Barrel it affects only 2 classes at a time (Warrior/Inquisitor and BH/Operative), with Armoring, all 4 classes benefit. What happens when a light armor piece drops an armoring (60) mod that's an upgrade to everyone? ALL CLASSES benefit from a higher AC, and what happens when that armoring 60 mod drops on a light armor piece of equipment and the tank claims he has a right to it because he needs a higher AC. A few willpower vs. strength is immaterial to a group when you're talking about AC and / or higher HP for the tank. I appreciate my examples may not be driving home my argument, so I'd ask that you look at this from a broader perspective...since orange items are GENERALLY about the same without mods they act as mearly containers for the mods they carry. In my previous example the Sith Assassin really has no leg to stand on because that double bladed saber that dropped is likely the same base stats as he already has...because of that the item shouldn't automatically go to him even though it is CLEARLY a Sith Assassin item. Looking more broadly at ROLES vs. Classes, an item with a higher armor value and/or higher hit points has always gone to the tank class because that is what a tank needs. That means that a mod with a higher AC/HP value is arguable for the tank over the "designed" owner simply because the mod provides a higher ac/hp. We WILL see this kind of thing happen at the top end guilds who are trying to tweak their tanks / healers to be the most efficient they can be for top level raiding. At the top level of the game where upgrades are going to come in incremental steps, there's definately an argument to be made for an orange double bladed lightsaber with an enhancement mod that has a higher stamina or defence rating on it to go to a BH tank than a DPS assassin...regardless of what the rest of the weapon provides. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to advocate ninja looting items out from under people, I'm simply suggesting that I see a high likelyhood of this causing problems. --Illydth

I'm sure this has been covered somewhere but I wanted to bring this up in case it hasn't. It seems to me that orange (Heirloom? Custom? not sure what to classify them as in this game) items are going to cause some SIGNIFICANT looting issues in NBG Groups/Guilds. Here's the scenario I see. Lets say I'm a sith sorceress and I have an orange quality single blade lightsaber item with a +11 Endurance Enhancement. I'm in a group with a BH, Operative and a Sith Assassin when the following item drops: Orange Double Bladed Lightsaber. Crystal: Purple, +6 Endurance Hilt: Power (60), +10 Endurance, +7 Strength Mod: +7 Endurance, +7 Strength Enhancement: +15 Endurance Now, here's where the problem comes in: * The purple crystal is wanted by everyone. * The hilt is an upgrade to my lightsaber and the Assassin's Light Saber * The mod is appropriate as an upgrade for the Operative as well as my Pet Khem Val * The Enhancement is appropriate as an upgrade to everyone. * The lightsaber itself is obviously the property of the Sith Assassin as they're the only ones that can use it. Here's where the put together NBG group breaks down. Every class in the group has a claim to PART of this orange piece of equipment as a VIABLE and VALID upgrade for their character. An item that SHOULD by RIGHTS go to the Assassin (it's an assassin's item afterall) can be logically contested by every member of the group. This is complecated by the fact that, in general, that orange double bladed lightsaber that just dropped is, at it's base when mods are removed, likely no better than the double bladed lightsaber that the assassin got 10 to 20 levels ago...but it COULD be slightly better if all of the mods were removed. In other words the assassin argues he should be the only one to roll because the base item MAY be an upgrade to his base item by a few damage and he's the only one that can use the base item. The Sorcerer argues that the hilt provides the largest upgrade to his orange lightsaber and makes up the vast majority of the base stats on the equipment so he should ALSO be allowed to roll on it. The BH and the Operative both argue that they should be included beceaus they have orange equipment and they should ALSO get the opportunity to upgrade their equipment with the mods and enahncement slots...and that really the base item is not going to provide a significant upgrade so it's not "made for a specific class". Don't get me wrong, I LOVE orange equipment, I LOVE how customizable that equipment is and how you can keep the same orange item through your entire career if you wish to (wished I knew that a long time ago, i've thrown out/sold so many orange pieces of equipment...). I don't want changes to the way oranges work... But the potential for oranges to cause significant loot issues is extremely high and I can't imagine it doesn't get worse the more orange equipment you get/the higher level you are. --Illydth

Just so people don't get this confused. When you suggest you're playing via "bootcamp", that's the piece of Apple's product where you physically install a physically different operating system and reboot the machine into the new operating system. In other words, you're physically running windows on your macbook right? This isn't a virtual layer of software/hardware like a VMWare, Virtual Box or Parallels right? --Illydth

ROFL, no that doesn't work, because then everyone on the queue servers decides to move somewhere else and creates queues there. Also, there's still several hundred thousand people who will be joining us on the 20th who can't get in right now....and several more on the 24th/25th as they open their Christmas presents. Allowing you to move right now would be rediculous and put you right back in the same boat. Sit tight till the middle of January, if it hasn't been fixed by that point, then *****.

You can't put a server lock on things. The moment you do this you get the other side of the fence whining that "My brother/cousin/friend/ex-wife/dog/bird/fish is playing on this server and I have to play with them!" Forcing people not to create on populated servers cannot and will never be the answer. The QUEUE is, in essence, the server lock. A new player who logs into the game with no prior connections to anyone playing is going to say "Lets see, that box says queue wait is 30 minutes...I'm not creating there" and will create on a server that is not listed as "full". Anyone who creates on an over populated server (and that's many of us) is doing so because our guilds, friends or fish are playing on that server and that, in essence, is what playing in an MMO is all about isn't it? This isn't the first, last nor only time you will see server queues, and if anyone tells you these will be "fixed", they're selling snake oil. Queues are never "Fixed". The players who create on Server X aren't going to delete that character and create on server Y just for the hell of it. The server population that creates a 1K person queue will ALWAYS BE THERE until the game starts losing popularity and people start quitting. Queues WILL drop off, as people stop obsessing over the game a few weeks from now (those who are planning on spending 24/7 on-line for weeks will eventually cap out, have done everything they can, and then will spend their time here on the forums ************ that there's no raid content and how the hell could Bioware do this to them!)...so they won't be playing. A week or so after that a significant portion of the player population will experience the same thing and will stop logging on obsessively...as people get back to their normal lives and jobs server queues will go down. That doesn't mean that the population that created the queues has gone away however. The next expansion or major content patch that comes out will again jump every server back up into the Queue red zone as EVERYONE comes rushing back to the game to be the next "first"...queueing will start all over again, this thread will start up in multiple different forms all over again, and the complaints will continue to abound...till that content is done, people get back to their lives, and it settles down again. Welcome to MMO's it's been this way for literally 15 years...the cycle will repeat itself over and over again and will continue in the next major MMO...where've you been? --Illydth

^^^ <--- This Yea, same problem. I would suspect those with higher end systems (P7 750 Quad Core 3.0xGhz overlclocked, 12G Ram, 2xNVidia 460's in SLI) will see the same problems. I'm currently set to 1% myself. It's playable, a bit faster than I prefer to turn, but after 15 years of mouse look/mouse movement in MMOs It's not unplayable for me. I suspect it has something to do with graphics acceleration and CPU, not mouse. The Windows 7 Setting mentioned on P5/6 is interesting to me, anyone tried it? Knows it works or doesn't work? --Illydth

First I apologize for putting this in the new player help section, I figure it may belong here because I MAY just be missing something. So last night late I was looking for group for 3 of the quests on the Sith Home World...two elite and one that probably should be marked as such (blood something...) For one of them, I invited 2 people to group and got a popup message that someone was not in the same instance I was...that seemed odd since as far as I knew none of the people I invited were instanced, so I cancelled the message and moved on. Turns out, one of the players I had invited was on a different instance of Korriban and we never could get hooked up. So, I wanted to first note to the new player community (because this was a surprise to me). *** Even outdoor non-dungeon areas in SWTOR are instanced! "General" chat seems to span all of these instances of the outdoor world, but just because you can see a player call for group in General doesn't mean you can physically find that player on the world some where...they may be in a different "Korriban" than you are. This caused me, personally, some HUGE confusion during beta when I was trying to find people I was chatting with and/or just wandering around and waiting on friends who never seemed to be able to reach where I was. As far as I know, this is one of the few MMO's that actually INSTANCES their OUTDOOR/PUBLIC content. While it's a good idea it's creating quite a confusing situation for people who are new to the game (and I have 15 years of MMO experience dating back to EQ) trying to hook up with other people. Second, I have to say that in attempting to make the pop up (asking you to shift phases to get on the same instance as your group) more in character, I think you've obfuscated what is actually happening to the point where a player not familiar with SWTOR instancing doesn't understand that it's vital that they select this. The popup needs to be MUCH more informational: "Your group members are in a different instance of the world than you are and thus you are unable to group with these members unless you switch phases. Switch phase now?" Third, I found it confusing that when *I* was the one creating the group it was asking me to "phase" to one of my group MEMBERS instances. I would expect that being the group leader, everyone would phase to "my" instance. I realize there's likely some very large technical reasons for this, but it certainly makes for a confusing situation. Fourth, another thing I didn't realize: When you click the ok on the pop up and it says "Dispatching a Shuttle to your location" you aren't actually physically changing locations (I originally assumed that you were being transported to where your group already was gathered...I had no idea it was switching your instance phase). The only change is the phase. You will re-appear after the "dispatch" in the EXACT SAME LOCATION you were standing before, just in a new instance of the zone. Fifth, I realize the game interface is "new" to many who haven't played in the beta for more than a few days, but resetting/switching/changing instances/phases is NOT in a trivial to find location. Nor is there any information / tutorial information popups describing instances, phasing or forcefully clearing/switching phases, I know there's a place in the interface somewhere where you can do this (though I don't know if you can manually force switch instance phases) but I have no idea where. Bioware: There needs to be EITHER some major communication on instancing, phasing, and connecting up with your group, or this process needs to be made ALOT more seamless to the user. At the end of the day, one of the players who THOUGHT they were going to get a group last night never did, because there was no way for them to reach where we were...even after spending 15 minutes trying to phase correctly. I did finally realize (since his chat posts were tagged with (Korriban: 1) on the end) what that meant, but we never were able to figure out (including de-grouping/regrouping him) how to get him to our phase of the instance. Anyone out there know how this works IN DETAIL and can explain (with no guesses or mis-information) how phasing/instancing works and how to fix instancing problems? An instancing/phasing FAQ would probably be helpful. --Illydth