Hi everyone! Returning player here. Had a few questions I'm hoping the community can answer For background, I played in beta all of the way through to just after Knights of the Fallen Empire was released. I think I did whatever "episodes" were released and then fizzed out on the story after the time jump and everything. Content wise, I mostly played PVP and leveled all 16 classes up. Most of my toons are level 60 with a few at 65. My questions: 1) Where is the best place to find info on the current meta? There are a few classes I remember enjoying and was maining a sith assasin / jedi shadow when i left, but i also really enjoyed operative, sniper, powertech and a few others. Because i enjoyed several of the playstyles i would love to know what the builds and stuff are and what content each does well in right now. I used to go to Dulfy but that seems to be not actively updated when i took a quick look 2) My toons are a mix of Satile Shan and Starforge servers (i think those are the names). I notice there are fewer servers than there used to be. Are there any preferable servers over others? 3) Empire vs Republic - when i was playing it was very heavily emp skewed... what is it like these days? does one side give a better experience than others? I've enjoyed both sets of stories in the past so i don't have a good lean either way 4) UI - Have they added any notible features to the combat UI of the game? Specifically, i remember that tracking buffs on myself and HOTS and DOTS on my allies / enemies was EXTREMELY clunky. If there have been improvements, any tips on how to best use them? 5) Story - like i said a few of my toons are a few episodes through the knights of the fallen empire story. I don't really remember what happened if i am being honest, other than my general sense of not loving the time jump, losing my companions etc etc. What is my best bet? should i start on a character that hasn't done any of it yet to refresh my memory and then swich to whatever i want to play? Or can i just skip the rest of that expansion and move on to the next expansion story? im afraid i might be lost if so. Thank you in advance for any help. Really looking forward to coming back to the game and getting my Star Wars on Kenjer

Looking more at what classes you think do better at it. Also thinking things like world bosses. May be unrealistic now with the downleveling changes

Back when I played WOW and EQ2 I enjoyed trying to solo things that were never meant to be soloed. Obviously you need the gear for it, but certain classes were very well equipped for it. I'm curious what people's opinions are on the best classes to solo (and what companion to solo with). My initial instinct says an immortal Jugg with a healing companion... but i may be off base.

Been thinking about getting a SP3 for a while, but from what i heard it struggled really badly with any games. I'm curious if anyone has a new SP4 and has tried TOR yet?

Curious how people keybind shoulder cannons. The point is obviously to spam them during the burst window, but spamming shoulder cannon while hitting the other abilities as well always feels awkward to me, and i inevitably either don't do SC as fast as i can, or miss a GC on other abilities. I"m curious how other people have it set up, or if i am missing something obvious. This isn't my main class, but I've never had this sort of keybinding issue on any other class.

Thansk for the tips - i think i do most of that, but its good to know that i am "supposed" to not be able to handle focus from multiple competent DPS. I definitely can be better at using my stuns. How do you handle the arena matches that are 3dps+1 heal on each team where the other team tunnels you and your team isn't great at peeling? Are those just unfortunately going to be losses? Not sure if you "yolo" queue or only team queue. Thanks for the help, seriously nice to see a good community on these forums!

Does anyone have any tips in terms of survivability? I find that even using my cooldowns staggared and correctly, one or two people can focus me hard enough that i am quickly out of options. The biggest problem i find is that its very hard to kite away with more than 1 person on me because of the prevelance of roots lately, expecially force based ones. I simply can't roll if a jugg roots me with leap, assassins can root with one of their DOTS, sorcs can spec into root on knockback, etc. I find that i am CONSTANTLY rooted. Would love some tips - I'm new to healing and the operative style is by far my favourite (played all 3) but i just can't seem to "keep up" with the damage and CC that comes my way (and to my team)

Been healing on my operative in Ranked and getting frustrated that i can't keep up with the burst. I know Mercs have great burst healing, but I'm wondering if they are durable enough. Is Merc viable to do well in ranked, or is it all about sorc/sage these days?

Hard Switch = after pressuring one person everyone suddenly switches to another target (preferably using dps cooldowns). This is a common tactic among coordinated teams and if the healer isn't on the ball you can blow someone up quickly. Tank tunnel = Put more dps into the tank than the healer can deal with. When targeting the tank, he is unable to mitigate your teams outgoing damage using taunts (because he is the target)

Just use basic comms to get a 186 knife

Title says it all. What is your favourite comanion to solo with @ 60 doing dailies and stuff? For Heal spec? For DPS spec? Go!

1) Waaaaa i paid for something someone else gets free. Also, you only reset utilities for free. 2) No. They've made it clear hybrid is dead and too hard to balance. Whether this is your cup of tea or not (its not mine TBH) thats the design decision and i respect it.

I'm sure she is working to fix it - I got the warning too

hatred is assassin.... serenity is shadow.... same tree, different faction.

aren't they the same thing?

I am fairly new to Serenity - leveled by shadow during 12xXP and my assassin was always deception. How are people opening while leveling? I am using discharge->sever force->FiB to spread as my opener, which does seem fairly effective, but i also seem to take a ton of damage every fight. Is that normal? Also, planning on doing some PvP, is the opener fairly similar? Lastly, when fighting longer fights i seem to get a muddled rotation - is there any good guide on what i should be aiming for? In general i am trying to keep my dots up, using my execute when it procs, and filling with serenity strike or double strike... this does not seem 100% sustainable for force management though. Help and tips/tricks very much appreciated!

This is more than likely a L2P issue (i am new to healing), but I'm having a lot of trouble staying alive as a healer in the 30-54 bracket on my 31 Merc healer. It seems like after throwing down Kolto missle, i will often die before i can get more than 1 hardcast heal off. Even 1 DPS can seem to whittle me down faster than i can heal it back up. Obviously if i have my shield cooldown available i can last a bit longer, but i really don't know what i'm doing wrong. Any suggestions?

Primarily regarding the user interface: I find it difficult to track buffs and debuffs on the raid interface, especially given that so many "slots" for buffs are taken up by the default class buffs. Does anyone have some best practices for the best way to set up raid frames for the most effective healing? I am doing mostly FP's (still leveling) but also a significant amount of PVP. Cheers!

I'm not saying its doomsday - im sure the game will support the PVE community for a while yet. However, as someone who exclusively PVPs, this was the final straw. And yes, i actually did unsub, so did a whole lot of other people.

Eric, See points above. And please answer one REALLY simple question: 1) If none of the community asks are on your current roadmap, what pvp content is currently on your X months roadmap, and how many months does X represent?

.. where are people going to go PVP? Serious question, curious what strong PVP games are out there right now.

You are right. However, i think that big picture, changes like these (or the other great QOL suggestions that pop up regularly) would have a cumulative effect on the subscriber base. I also know a good number of people from my old WOW guild that have left for many of these reasons. Especially the ones to do with healing, dot tracking, proc tracking etc. I think if they launched these along with a significant content release (ie. patch 3.0) they could generate significant goodwill with the MMO community, including the MMO media (such as it is). Just look at all of the good press that FF:A realm reborn got, despite that being the worst launched MMO ever. literally.

I think part of the problem is that they originally planned on allowing limited addons / ui enhancements and seem to have abandoned that, but forgot about how poorly designed the default UI is.

Here is my list of quality of life suggestions. These are things that should be relatively easy to implement and would add a lot of value to the game. They are not blockbuster game features, but rather ones that would make our day-to-day experience as players more enjoyable. Sprint Just get rid of sprint and update the baseline speed of players, including F2P. As a subscriber, i frankly don't want anyone to have to go slower than sprint speed. It just turns people off the game. Class Buffs (and Sprint Buff) These 4/5 buffs are on practically all of the time, and clutter up the buff bar. There has got to be a better implementation for this. My suggestion would be to consolodate them into one icon that will tell you which ones you have / missing on mouseover Cooldown Tracking This is the first of three new UI "widgets" that i propose adding. This would be a customizable element similar to a hotkey bar. The player would be able to modify the size and dimentions of the bar (X rows and X columns). When the hotkeys are unlocked, the player would be able to drag abilities to this bar to track their cooldown. When locked, mouseclicks, drags, right clicks, etc would all pass through the bar (thus not interfereing with gameplay). This would allow players to position the cooldowns in a user-definable location without sacrificing playability (like you would have to today with a standard hotbar) Options for the bar could include cooldown style (circular, left to right, text, etc) as well as opacity. An option to only display when the icon is on cooldown would be helpful too. Target Debuff Tracking The second of my three proposed widgets. This would be an un-dockable, movable, resizable debuff bar on the target frame that would show only the debuffs and DOTs that you have applied to that target. Right now, its incredibly difficult for DOT specs to see which debuffs and DOTS are theirs and this would make a huge difference. Making this resizable and movable would again allow us to place the debuffs in a location that works best for each player, without having to deal wiht the bulkyness of the target unit frame. As with the above suggestion, this element should be click throughable and have opacity control. Proc Tracking Perhaps the most important of the three proposed widgets, if only because it affects almost every class. This element should track all character based procs and temporary buffs. In combat, especially pvp, it is inconvenient and distruptful to have to look to a different part of the screen and wade through the various "always on" buffs to see if something has procced, especially for those of us who rely on nameplates for health tracking The dream implementation would be something like power auras, with designs that makes sense for each class ability. The more practical implementation would be similar to the target debuff tracker. By making it click-throughable, resizable and opacity-controlled, users could set up their own dedicated proc tracking area. Click to Heal There is no reason in this day and age that click-to-heal should not be an available tool for those that prefer it. The lack of this feature is the single reason i have not played any healing spec seriously. There are passionate arguments for and against, but the bottom line is that it should be a choice that is available. Targetable Nameplates Nameplates are awesome - clickable nameplates would be about 10x more awesome. Accurate selection of targets in this game is more difficult than it needs to be, and targetable nameplates would be a great step in the right direction!

This * 1000000. An artificial timesync of having to log in and out to get the missions you want isn't even slightly fun. Even if you make it a character perk unlock (or a legacy unlock), throw us a bone! On a side-note, i think some of the filtering is likely missing to prevent botting, or at least make it a lot harder. I'd take the availability of all missions over the filters.