I'm feeling very stupid since I paid for the expansion and resubbed, then the server went down... then I played for a tiny bit, then server went down again, and now I'm in queue, which appears to be going up even if the bar is moving. Gonna be annoyed if this is a problem Friday since there are only a few nights this month my friends had our schedules synching up for group leveling.

So anyone know when this showed up or if it really was from beta for sure? That being said the first thing my mind went to given the ominous nature suggested was seeing if saying "Klaatu barada nikto" did anything

Alright, my two creds on these flashpoints. First we had everyone in full 69's if not better in the case of our healer, he did admit he had been having some lag issues, but this is what I observed. Core-meltdown to me seemed to have had no major changes from story-mode and aside from one trash pull turning bad due to a mix of spike and healer lag it was a one-shot. That being said this is what I observed for labs. At the first boss we had two melee DPS, while both could more or less stand in the electrified water for a bit of time without incident it meant that the healer had to work a little bit hard. Added to the fact that the healer was always hit by the grapple from the droid during mid channel and it became a problem. We had a commando healer who only got pulled in during the last quarter of channeled casts as if the AI governing the grapple was waiting for that. It looked like he was pulled even through hold the line several times. More or less this meant that if he was pulled in, and the adds spawned it was likely he'd drop dead too quickly for us to do anything given our two melee dps wouldn't be able to hit the mobs without diving into the electrified water and again making the healer's work harder. I think the adds getting some initial cast would help this issue. The other issue being that as the adds need to leave the electrified water and the melee DPS not being able to stay on the boss if the healer needs people to play it safe that the enrage timer might be hard to beat for 'casual' level players. People who aren't the best of the best in terms of DPS output, but still can manage to beat enrage timers normally expected of the gear level. It seems as if this is just another case of DPS issues where two average or lower ranged DPS wouldn't have a problem, but two average to good melee DPS is a major issue for the casual player.

Alright, my guild's not the most hardcore guild, we struggle to get a hard-mode team on a regular basis. At the same time we've run Scum and Villainy storymode a number of times, but when trying it tonight something was odd in the amount of damage going out for 16-man Story. The first case was Thrasher's tank swap mechanic seemed to hurt more then normal, the healers didn't expect it since we never had to worry about the swap, but we recovered well enough after a few mishaps that felt like a normal, if not a bit messy run. The trash pulls weren't fun before city, it was mostly clean for every other group but something was odd with blue-team. We had the mobs dealing around 7k with their basic attacks to our tank, the tank took around 10k per channeled attack that hit from blue team. We managed to get past this by having two tanks, one in full 69s, one in mostly 69s, and a healer who had a number of 72s. We had our tanks nearly one-shot by the operation chief's attacks and a number of DPS dying outright when rail turrets came up, either due to terrible luck at random target or the mass explosive probe exploding. The remaining bosses weren't any different then expected, not clean but we managed to get by after a few people switching characters. Just curious if there's anyone else having issues with these fights this week.

While I admit it's not exactly a big deal it is odd how this is the only ranged class who's, for lack of a better term 'auto-attack' is limited to melee range. In a good rotation I don't find myself lacking the ability to use it as some 'padding' and as far as I can tell damage wise even if I were to get in close and use it there wouldn't be a real point since it does such weak damage and seems like a GCD waste when if I'm absolutely out of force I'd probably risk the noble sacrifice and a self-heal cast over two/three hits with the current ability even if it were ranged. That being said, an ability that just serves as a ranged animation of the same attack, or something as drastic as making the ability outright ranged are options (I'll admit it would be interesting if the ranged saber strike carried over to shadows in a diminished form if that route was chosen). Though then there might be more people using the stalker armor for the shadow 2-piece set bonus on a sage, which could be overpowered, or more likely would just be a joke to see people try it.

For my low level alts: In the Hammer, Athiss, Mando, Cad flashpoints I had a trend when I was healing that every time I queued I'd find myself with a DPS that thought they could tank. I usually got lucky if I healed when I was at the bare minimum level and gear to get a good tank, but when I got these fake tanks I usually was geared well enough to scrape by if I wanted the challenge. That being said I'd try to strike up a conversation with the various tanks. "Do you have your tank stance/cell?" "I'm getting hit by these mobs a lot, could you guard me?" "Could you please attack more then one mob?" and lastly one of these "Do you speak English" or "Do you read chat" If I didn't get a response at all I started a vote kick. Any snide-remark I'd get, or other remark that conveyed a sense of entitlement and I'd vote kick. If I could heal it and they fessed up I'd just let them have their fun and enjoy a bit of a challenge. The same applied when a tank couldn't keep aggro well, or lost it to a DPS, if someone made me think they weren't entitled or and didn't try the 'I'm right, you're wrong, deal with it' stance I'd just ignore it. At those levels there's a lot of leeway and not much cost to a death so most groups seem to just ignore it. Ninja looting usually gets a vote kick, seen more then a few get vote kicked between final boss and the actual mission complete flag. When people actually try to defend that it's their right to get every piece of loot and they did nothing but DPS the whole run it's annoying to say the least. For my Endgame Characters: If you aren't the right role you're as good as dead usually, so vote kick comes quick and hard, and sometimes before I even see if a DPS can tank, or heal, the latter being far more uncommon to actually see a single heal where there are tanks who can make due in nearly every fight when they're a dps in some way or form. Ninja-looting gets you out and on my ignore list. Being a semi-fail to full fail player and winning all the loot in a run might get you kicked, but that one's more a personal issue given in early game I'll laugh it off with everyone else if it's an honest mistake. Obviously that one varies from role to role, player case to player case.

So I'm somewhat confused as to why the GTN is already flooded with [Deep Green and Medium Yellow Dye Module] and [Deep Orange and Deep Red Dye Module] given they come from the collector's edition vendor. Was this a mistake? or was it intended for these dyes to be resold?

I will admit, ignoring DPS for timing out isn't something I'd considered, but I suppose that's because I know some days a DPS will be in queue for several hours, and decide to take a bathroom break right when queue decides to pop. It's strange how since making this thread I've had groups where we end up with two tanks or two healers, and they try to complain that they don't have the gear for DPS and expect to remain in group, even stranger is my pointing this out and vote kicking such players is often met with resistance, even in PuG groups where nobody knows anyone else. Though only one other case of someone having a misqueue and kicking me who was queued as DPS due to a DPS who's class could tank forgetting to fix their role.

Our group hasn't encountered this problem yet, we have had our main-tank get lost, but the off-tank in our group hasn't gotten lost after getting the shield, that being said we haven't run this operation that many times yet.

So you're that guy who queued wrong, do you switch specs and try to fill the role you mistakenly queued for or do you leave the group hanging because it's not the role you want to play? Not the role you can play? Or maybe you're in a guild run, and one of your guild mates queues wrong and you end up needing a role filled that nobody can fill. Does one of your guild members leave? or do you remove the one unknown from the group? Do you offer the unlucky pug anything for their trouble? or just the false sorry, and perhaps false hope that you'll offer to run something with them once your run is finished? You're the unlucky pug who's been in DPS queue for a seemingly ungodly amount of time. You get into a group, maybe it's in progress, maybe not, and the group has someone queued wrong. You're the one kicked of course, so how do you react? should you just accept it? complain about it? Ignore list the players, and possibly the entirety of a guild over the matter? Bad mouth the players in General Chat? -------------------------- When it's me it's not normally a problem. I usually keep two sets of gear on all my characters, given the RNG it's not uncommon for my offspec gear to be better then my main, so with that and field respec and just play the role I land in to the best of my ability, giving the group fair warning. When I'm on a pure DPS character my options of role are limited obviously, but the chance the misqueue is my fault is just as limited. When I'm a DPS who gets kicked from the group I try to take it, but some days, when queue time seems to take an hour, or more, and I'm pressed for time, or knowing that it will be several hours at least before my turn comes again I complain about it to the group, say how long I've been in queue, and such. Maybe the group offers false hope, maybe they don't, either way it ends with me being kicked out to wait in queue again. A few times it happened twice in one night.

Interesting if true, I've had multiple people claim they were at max range from me, but slightly within the 27m of the boss and still getting stunned. I'll try to get a clearer check on that next time I can get a guild healer involved.

Sounds like I'm just having bad luck with healers being able to keep up with the damage going out then. I'm guessing I shouldn't be needing to decide between my life and a def CD outside the stun/smash combo? Since that seemed to be the case on the vanguard at least. Likewise Hold the Line on the vanguard does the same as Resilience/Force shroud in removing the stun debuff and by extension the damage and it's only a 30 sec cool-down compared to my shadow's 60 sec, not to mention it not being intended as a damage mitigation ability as far as I know. Yes Ranged-DPS have the easiest time with this fight and put the least strain on healers. They don't take damage from the stun and they don't loose damage time to the stun... so yes this fight is easy for them since there's nothing to bother them from getting perfect rotations off. Two M-DPS are going to lose a large amount of damage time during the fight, and those who don't gather up for AoE healing on the other hand are going to be torn apart repeatedly thus requiring a lot more work from the healer.

Alright, so after several runs of every level 55 Hard Mode and bonuses I've noticed this boss tends to be the hardest of the bunch. On my vanguard tank tanking it isn't too terrible unless there's an enrage timer hit. I've watched a guardian in DPS gear almost manage to tank the entirety of the fight... But when I try to tank this fight on my shadow it's almost a sure bet I'll die to that boss. This doesn't exactly make sense to me given my shadow is almost entirely in 66/69s. My vanguard conversely is barely in 61s with a few 63s added in. Things to note. The stun apparently can be dodged by remaining 27m(?) away from the boss. Stun-Breaks/Stun Resists seem to prevent the bonus damage from the boss. I have yet to see two M-DPS without a stun resist complete this fight. So does this boss need a re-balance? it it just the bane of shadows? Or is there some gimmick people have figured out to make it easy yet? (beyond the obvious troll responses)

True, tunnel-vision that comes with focusing on situational awareness and 'rotation' tends to make you loose out, but in this case the abilities are playing close to the character, making it hard to see the differences on the outside. Playing a r-dps and watching sentinels didn't look quite so interesting pre-2.0, but if it's related to alacrity or not I'm unsure. Some abilities like zen enhanced blade-rush seemed more fluid in execution from the outside view, while the chain of ability use seemed to imply my sentinel had a third lightsaber waiting to be pulled out for some of the animations to make sense.

I will admit, running a sentinel first person looked boring as usual, but watching the replay from our healer's perspective seemed like it was far more interesting.

Eh, topic as said almost feels like a troll if taken as one person refuses to know fight and plans to wipe the entire group just for the experience of not knowing what comes next. But it's valid enough to be looked at. PvP, the solution is best described as lowbies, you'll learn the maps, maybe some tricks, and while people will get mad at you they're a lot less likely to ignore list you since the lowbie bracket is really the main place people would expect first-timers on each side with no cost but the doubling of time if there's losses instead of wins. PvE has repair bills, which get to be quite expensive for higher levels, and especially F2P players, though I have yet to hear that difference yet. If you don't know the fight/area as a tank that isn't always a big loss if you are skilled at keeping aggro and surviving the hard pulls. Heals can get a little more pressing due to being the one who tends to be blamed for any deaths at all, usually people are mellow about it at level content, but the daily grinders tend to get angry about this because it's something that's been around for a while, and it just seems polite to know the fight before you take a big role in keeping people alive. That being said, the biggest insult tends to be the person who has this mindset, who doesn't learn from their mistakes. The guy who goes in, dies to a mechanic that's meant to be avoided, then goes in and does it over and over again. If that's my friend, or someone's friend I'll try to explain what they're doing wrong, even if it's someone random I'll try to explain most of the time. If they still don't listen then more then likely they'll get a vote-kick from someone if not me simply because helping a player who doesn't want to be helped tends to make players want to find out which way the majority of the group feels about the matter. Personally I have a much greater tolerance for someone not knowing the mechanics then a person who knows the 'tricks' that are extremely obscure ( because they often don't work, waste time, or are entirely pointless ) or the person self-assured in knowing a mechanic that's wrong and refusing to listen.

I apologize in advance if this has been suggested before, but given we are getting the achievement system, which would allow tracking of a character's progress. Either level, story, or some other marker in this case if needed. It would be nice to see a way of wearing the Legacy vendor armor on other characters. For example I am not saying to allow use of every armor that is trooper or bounty-hunter on opposing factions, especially given the models are different depending on faction currently, (though I'm not opposed to the idea either). This is about the empty shell armor sets from the Coruscant and Dromund Kaas Legacy Vendors. Similar sets have made it into the Cartel Market as adaptive, but if they stay for good or not has not been guaranteed as far as I am aware. Likewise in the example of the Juggernaut/Guardian armors there was no copy of the head slot released in adaptive and/or cross faction form.

Alright, I haven't scoured the entire thread so sorry if I missed these being suggested Already. But first are the seemingly Simple ones from my limited understanding of how the engine works. Make a LFG Chat channel, /1 is gen /2 is pvp and /3 is Trade if I'm remembering right, so maybe make /4 a LFG channel? Make it so all characters in Legacy show up in the mail drop down list. I have several characters who have obscure ASCII characters in their names since server transfers, and while I've memorized the alt-codes I'm always a bit paranoid I'll forget I had to change said names and accidentally mail something to one of the random inactive characters instead of my own, I can friend my alts on one faction but not the other. Mirrored eye coverings. The latest pack and rep-shop's single-eye coverings all(?) are for the right eye. A left eye variant would be interesting to me at least given some of the more interesting scar patterns are on the left side of the face. Now the harder ones would be things like An ability to Save Skill placement, honestly remembering my skill spec and changing real quick is easy, but the placement of my skills is the hard part. Not sure if that qualifies as dual spec if you don't need the game to remember your talent points so much as remember where back-blast or shoot first are placed. Legacy Cargo-Hold. I know this one is already suggested and probably an annoying one for many people, but since the Gree event vendors mean Bound to Legacy Gear is available anyway there isn't much point in this feature not existing. People already choose to need for things for alts, and often say so, with or without the group's permission. It does remove the credit sink of mod-stripping, but at the same time roughly 340k to have epic raiding gear to mail between characters isn't horribly much. The Oddball suggestion: An armor, or hat, or even just Lekku covering or some sort for Twi'leks. Make it a cartel market item, pack based, Collectors Edition, Security Key vendor, or whatever sort of item the devs want to justify it, but just make something. Hats have their issues, and since hood toggle has been forced down for Twi'leks it would seem like something. Personally I'd recommend it not go into a random pack due to the probable rage of players using another species getting a one species item.

If they're not useful then why not just remove them from the trainers? Let the people who want or have them already keep them, since if the reason they are being removed is due to lack of use it won't matter much in the grand scheme of things? They can't be used on PvP targets, and operation targets don't have much of an issue right? If the abilities really are being removed only due to lack of use then it won't hurt the grand scheme of things for the players who have the abilities now to keep them. New Knight characters miss out on some situational usefulness, old knights either have removed them from their skill bars, or haven't and will use them in the situations.

My list puts the companion flag near the top. But healing a PvP flagged player shouldn't flag you unless they're actively being attacked by another player, and even then it should purge all the active heals on a player not cast by said player. I could be wrong, but flag 'exploits' are reportable if I remember correctly, even if they are likely to be a minor slap if any punishment. But honestly with this event the flag's been bugging out on my a lot. It doesn't seem to go off on starships anymore, can't seem to make up it's mind when I've finished the flag-out in safe areas or even on fleet. Seeing the PvP flag toggle off as a visible debuff or something similar would be very helpful.

Alright, here's the thing for me at least. I do notice that repairs are roughly double what I was paying before for in combat deaths on two of my characters. Armor degradation in regular combat on my tank seems to run about 3 times as much as normal however. More or less going from 3,xxx credits to 7,xxx credits on a wipe, and from about 500 credits to 1.2-1.4k credits after running a full set of dailies without a death. So roughly 700 credits per point of dmg to the armor. My sentinel however, who's wearing a few champion shells with PvE mods seems to be having a different formula applied. Roughly 825 credits per point of armor damage. The gear levels of the characters are roughly the same, with the major difference seeming to be the shell choice. Likewise the armor seems to take damage slightly quicker in regular combat as compared to wipe based deaths. I heard people saying daily quests cost them more to run then they reward. For me I'm looking at about 1k-3k tops for a chain (without a death mind you) which makes me question those numbers a bit? I haven't tried putting on stock tioneese or anything of the sort and going out to die to test it to see the result mind you, but I'm seeing wildly different numbers from players in this thread, so maybe a developer should give feedback on what exactly is governing the differences? Because it sounds like this repair fix might have created a new bug all it's own if some of the numbers I've read from users are accurate?

Eh, the ones who are after the 'best of the best' class combo would probably be the ones to exclude someone from running something with them because of it, with advanced class change option or not. Guardian and sentinel are the closest when talking DPS since both are melee DPS, whereas the others are a switch from melee to ranged dps making the sub-role divide. Given the big patches have come and went that clarified the sub-divide in theory at least knights and warriors are going to be the only two classes having people worry about switching due to the FotM in PvE. PvP players and guilds will probably be where issues stem from that make the cases against this feature. I'm mostly avoiding thinking about Tank/Healer swapping. It is something I can't give a good comment on because honestly having someone switching from one of those roles to another when they didn't level a character of the type they're switching to implies Role population issues, which usually means a deeper issue, and will probably blow up in a guild's face if demanded like some suggest. Glad to see the quote from the interview, it's not exactly a clear-cut yes, but it implies a reason for it having been brought up. Still I'll assume that if I were motivated to actually do a daily FP as a daily with a character I'd be able to finish my way to 50 before such the feature is released given the amount of time it takes from us hearing of something to it being released.

I've played every melee DPS pub side aside from guardian. My sentinel is the most geared of the bunch, but the others are mixed black-hole and Rakata for their DPS spec, putting them all roughly on the same level of effort involved in their gear-up, even if some are stat favored by luck more then design. Scoundrel- I haven't touched the shared tree too much since the range-nerf a while back. Energy management is a bit interesting, but overall I'd say the best spike DPS output. Sub-par in the sustained DPS. Upside is you have a lot of utility, only class that can CC 2 targets, one CC being humanoid from stealth disable which is great for skipping stuff in operations or flashpoints. On the High-end for sustained AoE DPS, though the usefulness of that comes into question at times. Somewhat sub-par single target dps in the eyes of the forums, with my own experiences not giving much to sway me away from such, given the heavy combo attack reliance it's somewhat understandable that in real situations it would have issues. Although outdated opinions, I've felt this character is subpar in PvE but outstanding in PvP, and not much from the rare occasions I see others playing it now in PvE, while many still play PvP changed my opinion of the class-role combo. Shadow - I normally run as a tank shadow, that being said I've been experimenting with DPS. From the standpoint of someone with only an entry-level understanding I'd say Infiltration favors solo play more then group content. Balance is a DoT heavy DPS that feels easy to pick up. The self-heals are a nice touch, outweighing the watchman sentinel of old in my opinion. Ran around with a healer proc relic and found it somewhat useful for the build when running solo. It's utility is hit or miss, one stealth based CC, instant short-lift with a stun if broken early, etc. Puts out some good numbers in either PvE or PvP and can be outstanding or subpar depending on both luck and the player behind the character. Though again I'm still a rookie at this role/class combo. Vanguard - Tactics spec favors AoE output, a freighter flyby or smash-monkey will put out higher numbers if the targets die too quickly, but if you need to keep up AoE output, in my opinion at least, this seems the best you can manage. Hold the Line is an ability I'd have found far more useful in tank-tree, but at the same time keep finding times to use it when DPSing; more or less it's best if you just make a habit of hitting this ability against anything that spams a knock-back to stop channeled abilities. Assault Specialist is said to have the higher single target numbers. I can see it, but at the same time I can't say I've been able to pull these numbers myself. The energy management is a bit harder, but I could see it being better if not feeling more difficult to get a proper rotation down. Both specs can put forward good burn phase DPS, though tactics will recover better quicker for the next burn in my own experience at least. Utility wise you don't have any crowd control, but you do get a pull (Which won't break crowd control if used after). AoE is a strongsuit of the class. Heavy armor + Reactive Shield + Adrenaline Rush are about it for survivability, and no aggro drop ability. Guardians I haven't played so I can't say how different the DPS is from a sentinel given their shared abilities. Given this is an only melee DPS list I'd say guardians are probably closest behind sentinels. Vanguard I'd give just a slight edge over shadow due to straight forward numbers vs DoT. Scoundrel probably would bring up the rear if you're talking endgame PvE.

I'll admit, I would like this to be added, and had been under the impression it was being considered in a way that would be extremely costly, but at the same time I'm hesitant on how it should be restricted or how much it should cost, especially with real money given that might make people consider power-leveling scams. I think it should not be a pure cartel coin unlock. At the very least you should have to buy all the skills the new class. For those who switched advanced classes to something that can tank or heal they should have group-finder lock them out of the class's non-DPS roles until some requirement is met. If nothing specific is implemented as a training for roles, which I feel is somewhat needed as is for 50s before entering a HM-FP or SM-Operation via group-finder, then ideally leave this as an undroppable quest which as a byproduct would allow operation group leaders to check if someone has switched advanced class recently, assuming some marker isn't placed on the character page. I'll mention that there are people out there who don't know how to play the advanced class they've had since 50. Given the ease of even HM flashpoints for someone who has no idea what they're doing to be carried through when others are geared enough. But anyway while this could make it worse with that type of player showing up more often because they're learning a new class there is the fact that there are people who don't know how to play the role of their class anyway. (I'd assume others have already seen those oddball healers in tank gear and vice-versa) As for the FotM issue, well it is an issue as things are, there will be people who go out of their way to find and run the FotM, be they good at it or bad at it. Class, and advanced class balance keeps changing since this is an MMO, and with RotHC coming 'soon' in theory the game is going to have a massive change to class balance, for better or worse.

I'll admit usually my Powertech runs shield spec while I run Tactics on my vanguard. That being said I'd notice a bit of difference when tanking on one character compared to the other, it swaying back and forth. Honestly I thought the powertech had slower bottom end energy regeneration, though it was just assumption. That being said Tactics vs Advanced Prototype shows a trooper getting .33 more energy per tic I believe in the Cell Generator vs. Prototype Cylinder Ventilation.