The companion bar adjustment is in a drop down at the bottom of the section with the other action bar toggles. You can choose left, right, and bottom only. There is currently no option to shut it off.

^agree. It is always the small and simple things that make a difference - adding all of them might be a problem for the swtor team, but I think they should give a bit more thought to this at some point. I suspect that the learning curve has/will cause some people to quit the game. New MMO players are at the classic "did you check that your PC is plugged into the power outlet?" stage we all know and love.

thanks for pointing that out Iridor... you would think I could read after all these years... sigh. talk about feeling dumb.

Just a few things I want to bring to the swtor teams attention, from the perspective of a person who has never played an MMO before. Summary, please improve the help system... Players new to MMO's really need more information than is currently available in "help" and "on-hover" info. ------------------ {text wall} New players suffer from information overload, so better guidance from the game is very helpful. All of these things are "obvious", but only if you have actually played an MMO before! a. Example: hover over the "explanation" of some of the graphics settings (other on-hover's have the same problem) and you get the graphics name repeated twice. I didn't know what the title meant, so repeating the title is not helpful. If you don't know this stuff, you probably shouldn't be messing with it, but still people DO mess with it. Info that tells you "STOP, Don't change this unless..." would at least warn off idiots like me. b. The In Game help on the top menu really needs expanding; It is the first place new players go for help. There are too few items in the FAQ. Much of the info new players look for are in the Codex and Character sheets, so why not at least say "check the Codex/Character/Whatever under XXX" in the FAQ? c. The descriptions of the abilities: a label on each ability that tells beginners if this is an AoE, Buff, De-buff etc. (yes I know, you can tell when you read and think carefully about each it becomes "obvious" - but not to total newbies, already suffering from confusion and overload). All of the knowledgeable players on the forums use these terms, and trying to memorize each by it's name is tough (yes you can do it, but it takes a while)

It will get even more challenging when you roll a new character with a different Advance Class. After a lot of trial and even more error here is my general approach: enable and lock all bars through the preferences so I have: left bar, right bar, main bar, bottom bar, plus the "cover" bar is enabled (only shows up when playing a character that uses cover) Left Bar - all items related to heals, adrenals, stims, etc go here... Right Bar - all out of combat skills/abilities go here; includes fast travel, speeder, stances/forms, self- heal/recharge, "permanent" buffs (they don't need to be re-applied unless you die or their timer ends) Note: I set the companion bar to pop-up over the right bar. Main Bar - all instant fire combat abilities, organized left to right with the shortest cool-downs on the left and increasing length cool downs to the right Bottom bar - all combat buffs, Damage over Time (DoT), Area of Effect (AoE), and Stuns, and interupt abilities. within each I adjust positioning to suit - such as prime rotations may get shifted to the left on the Main Bar ignoring cooldown (sometimes) Also within each bar I assign keybinds that I feel help me trigger what I want, while avoiding triggering problem abilities such as AoE's - usually by assigning key combos Hope this makes some sense.

each character has it's own keybinds, so they are independent, the binds load when you load the character. This can be annoying to those who like a lot of Alt characters, because you must set up each character - the bindings do not carry over. Go into your preferences, there you will find 2 tabs at the bottom of the window. Click the keybind tab. there you will be able to change all the keybinds to whatever you want WARNING: do not change the spacebar binding. I don't think it is fixed yet. Changing the spacebar=jump setting messes up other parts of the game.

Well, looks like my confusion continues - It seems someone is correct, I just can't tell who! Is there a link, or list, or thread that really clears up damage type vs mitigation? here is where I have started: http://taugrim.com/2012/01/19/understanding-swtors-avoidance-and-mitigation-mechanics-for-tanks-in-pvp/ http://projectmayhem.com.au/swtor/2012/01/27/attack-types-damage-types-avoidance-and-mitigation-in-swtor/

doesn't energy = elemental? The damage types are a bit mixed up in my opinion...regardless, if there is a difference I don't get it. lightning by passes all armor according to what I have discovered so far. Not Understanding different damage types may well be the root of my problem edit: after writing this I did some searches and you are right, lightning is energy and is mitigated by armor... as I said, a bit confusing due to my interpretation vs. what the game really does..

Yes, seriously, thank you. It is people being helpful, and pleasant, in game that make the game fun. Thanks to the "Drive-by Buffers". Last night I had 4 buffs from different folks and had no idea who did it. But it was nice and helped me. Thanks to the Flash point helpers who are just there to help that get us lowly folks through and teach us how it is done. Thanks to those willing to wait their turn to take down the boss on a side quest, when the server was at max. And a special thanks to those who chose to keep helping me even though it was painfully obvious that I had no clue how to play in the early days. It's people like you that make this game an enjoyable place to spend a few hours.

thanks for the help - your info has been saved.... really appreciate it.

As the title says -- specificly want to know how to reduce damage from those blasted sorcerer lightning attacks:( what armor, mods, attributes etc help a JK guardian (or any other class I suppose)

After today's update, my companion abilities are toggling themselves ON at seemingly random moments. So we are in combat, I need to heal, hit the hot key--- and ---- no heal! But my companion does something wierd ... thanks - a wipe out. Where did that come from? My companion abilities are where the heals are supposed to be! I have the bars locked and never toggle the companion bar on, yet there it is. For now I switched companion bar to toggle on in the right bar (which is my out of combat abilities like speeder), so at least that won't happen again (cross fingers). It is frustrating though. Anyone else run in to this, or know why this is happening?

the lizard is just as bad... They made the reactive box around these characters too big.... the Lizard is only on the left half of the mouse over box... test it out yourself. It's even more irritating in combat when trying to click target an enemy (because tab targeting is a fail in this game) and constantly getting "You are not qualified for this conversation" instead. They need to shrink the reactive mouse-over area to be inside the character.

Since the patch I am having more trouble building focus on my low level 20 JK sentinal. The basic sabre strike gives me the error message "not enough focus" to trigger... However, now double strike builds focus instead; but it seems to build it slower because the trigger time and animation is longer. maybe the two strikes compensate? I have sabre strike attached to the right click (target) on the mouse, because I could not find a way to separate it from that key to target without using sabre strike. anyone know if this is a patch change or a bug? no I am not skilled, I am a newbie, and if you think I just need to learn to play -- you are right. that's why I am asking

If you are truly walking, ie. a casual looking stroll rather than what looks like a slow jog, then you need to toggle the run/walk toggle key - default is the slash " / " otherwise, like they said, be patient.