I have to agree with this. I played a Defiler in EQ2 and much like the inquisitor I had SOOO many tools at my disposal. Single Ward, Group Ward, Emergency Single / Group Wards, Fast small heal, Slow large heal, group heal, Death prevention, emergency rez, 2 slows, 4 debuffs, 4 cures for single / 1 group, 3 group buffs, reactive shield debuffs etc etc etc.. As a Sage I have Smal heal, Big Heal, Bubble, Hot, Channel, AOE Heal (Which is NOT the same as a group heal) Horrid in-combat Rez and a Cure. Standar healing rotation. Bubble, Hot, Channel, Sac.. If it's hitting the fan.. Bubble, Hot, Big heal, Channel, Sac.. AOE Damage.. AOE Heal, top up random people with Hot, Big heal, Channel.. Healing in this game is way over simplified. Defiler was my favourite healing class I've ever played, and Rift's Chloromancer was probably number 2. They were both extremely dynamic, had a ton of tools at their disposal, and there was no set "Rotation". It was use the best tool for the job at the time. Hard to master, but when you got it right you could literally stop HUGE amounts of incoming damage.

I'm one of those "Broke" level 50's.. Here's why. I ran Dailies till I got my Rakata Ear / Implants. Had about $600-700K in the bank at that point, as I would usually pull new 50's in the guild through hardmodes and repair costs chipped away at it as they were learning the mobs. Then - I dropped Artifice for Biochem for the Rakata Stims once I had my relics. Leveled 3 new Crew Skills from 0-400 by doing missions (not killing). That cost about $300K credits We started running HM Ops - Repar costs for a full suit of Columi is about 80K. and if you have to repair 1-2 times a night it gets expensive. Instead of farming Dailies - I rolled an alt on the Imp side with a buddy, so have mainly just been logging in my main for weekly ops. Purchased a purple crystal for $240-250K when that hit, and it dropped me below $100K credits. Now I just run Ilum dailies on raid nights before we raid to cover repair costs. I float between 100K and 200K credits. I have more money on my level 35 alt.

The EASIEST way for BW to fix this is to completely remove the class restriction from the commendations and reduce the drop rate to 1 per boss for 8-man, and 2 per boss for 16 man. An 8-man group would take ~2 months (8 weeks) to gear everyone in every slot (Assuming you can clear once per week), and you would never run into the issue of XX Class/member getting fully geared in 1 run unless that's how you CHOOSE to do it. HM FP/Normal Ops should still drop columi with VERY RARE chance of rakata HM Ops/NMM Ops should drop Rakata

We're talking balance here. Not design and bugs. God knows BW needs to get a fumigation team for their servers to get rid of the amount of bugs in this game. For balance, Operative healing in Beta was insanely over tuned. A couple patches before launch they nerfed the class to its current state, which was too far. HOPEFULLY the changes in 1.2, and some minor tweeks before it hits live should bring it in line with the other two classes. It's the goldy locks method of coding, which just about every balance patch is about. And they will continue to balance as time goes on, people gear up, min/max in spreadsheets, and the cycle begins again. Name one MMO that was perfect at launch and didn't require balance patches as the game progressed?

I don't disagree with that statement one bit. But out of the last 5-6 MMOs I've played from beta through launch, there's always been 1 MAJOR balance patch a couple months after the game goes live. This is nothing new for MMOs. Players always find ways to min/max the system to a point that was unintended, or not thought of by the developers and a wave of changes goes though to put the game back on track for the long-term plan.

You all make me laugh... Here's why... 1) This is a GAME 2) Healers will never be happy until they have a single button "WIN" healing rotation. 3) DPS will never be happy until they have a single button "WIN" DPS rotation. 4) Tanks will never be happy until they can throw one taunt at the start of the fight and just stand there until the mob is dead. Getting as bent out of shape as you are without actually TESTING the changes just makes me laugh. A lot of you are taking this as a personal slam to you. BW did not make these changes without changing the current content. If they had, I can see the "outrage" but that's not the case. There are a LOT of changes to mechanics, DR caps, and basic "Math" for how the game works. For all you know this could be a BUFF to everyone (doubtful, but possible). Crying NERF without testing in end-game content is just stupid. CM/BH Resource management changes may have been needed because the content doesn't hit as hard/often, or you heal for more and have to cast less often. They want to make resource something you need to pay attention to. It negates spam healing, and makes you think. Having a power neutral/positive 100% guaranteed never run out of power rotation might as well be a 1 button insta 10K heal on the GCD. I hate to say it, but "Click these 5 buttons in this order" is the same as "Click this 1 button until mob is dead".. It's not complex or complicated, and does not require thought. Sage/Sorc changes were again put in to slow down outgoing heals, and make resource something you have to think about. I actually look forward to testing this out in-game. Op/Sc changes were to bring them in line with the above two. They probably had THE most resource problems prior to this update, and will now be closer to par, with some increases to AE healing (That they were seriously lacking). But again.. even after all of that. You won't know if this is a square kick in the pants until you actually play it, in end-game content, against the patched content. If people are hitting harder in general, taking less damage in general, then healing needs to be toned down to keep it challenging, but not impossible. Also.. Re-read point 1 above. In case you forgot. It's not worth raising your blood pressure over. If, after you've tested in patched content, and it's ridiculously hard / impossible to keep up then a buff is required, but going by past experience in this game, I don't think this is something BW is planning considering their target audience.

Usually the more hype thrown around a game the more suckage you see after release. People's expectations are WAY too high these days. SWTOR could have spent at least another year in development, fixed the majority of the issues surrounding the game, and released their "1.4" version as 1.0 and people would still complain. I do believe that they rushed the release date, however, with an MMO of this size, 4 years of development is a pretty short timeframe to get the amount of content they have in this game. And yes.. Voice overs, cutscenes, planets, quests, etc are all content. But there comes a time where they need to start paying the bills of all of the people who have been working the title and a release date has to be set. To the above. Yes.. GW2 will suck for a lot of people becuase they have an unrealistic expecation of what the game will be. I have a fellow guild member who game hops and you can almost set your calendar after a game launch for when he's starts talking about how "EPIC" the NEXT GAME will be... We've actually debated recording his vent conversations to play back to him every time this happens. We've been playing the same MMO's for the past 10 years together.

Ranged DPS playability: BH Merc is your best bet I'd say. Very cool animations, you get a heal companion (Mako) out of the gate who feels like a little sister at the start and grows up as you progress. PVP is a lot more survivable compared to a sniper as you get self heals if needed. Sniper is probably more needed end-game if you're in to Ops, but the cover mechanic can take some getting used to and you're mobility goes in the toilet. Not to say mercs are much more mobile, just having to duck and cover before doing anything can get tired. Story: BH story is OK (Played to end of Act 1 so far). It doesn't feel "epic" though. It is engaging and will suck you in if you're in to that sort of thing. Not going to spoil it. IA story is really good so far (only level 27). It feels much faster paced than the others, and I like the themes of the story line. Also your companion is a riot if you like a "Butch female antagonist" type of character.

Personal experience: Trooper. Best single target healer. Wears heavy armor, so can take a few more hits. Has no combat rez or interrupt. Limited AOE healing, but fairly simple resource management. slightly more mobile than the other two. Scoundrel. Fun to level and great healer in FP / PVP. Has stealth so can sneak around if needed. Probably the weakest OPS healer currently, but changes coming in 1.2 should hopefully address that. Any significant DPS is melee range wich may or may not be your thing. Sage. Best overall toolkit and resource management provided your paying attention to cooldowns. Least amount of armor, but offset by bubble and instant HOT in a pinch. I would say best OPS healer, and AOE healer currently provided people are able to stack. Edit: Sage "uberness" is completely offset by how completely ugly our end-game gear looks. Mobs die from laughter.. seriously...

The problem with jumping in this game is the geometry + a very small bit of latency. There are a lot of pipes, boxes, etc where it seems your toon gets "stuck" on the corner. At least that's how it feels. Also nothing more frustrating then if you but up against something and can't jump like that incline plane next to you is holding you down. The geometry in this game is seriously out of whack. It's like the LOS issues in Taral V on the paths.

I'm all for grouping with people.. with one exception: If they SPAM the group invite over and over.. I was playing an alt the other day and I had some loony toss me a group invite. he was in an area he shouldn't have been (Too low). I declined the first invite because I was half way through killing a mob and the window was in my way. Then I got invite after invite after invite. I sent a "polite" tell basically asking the poor SOB what he needed help with. No response. More invite spamming. I finally had to put the guy on ignore, and he proceeded to follow me around like a lost puppy. I THANKFULLY had to go into a class instance so I could get away from him. If you want to group.. Ask.. or toss 1.. maybe 2 (if the other person is/was fighting).. more than that and you're on a one-way trip to the ignore list.

Double Post - Please delete

No, Aion's downfall was the goldspamtastic gankfest. Aion had a lot of good aspects, but was ruined by the sheer amount of plat farmers, and level capped raids PVP wiping the level 20-30 areas for kicks. There were days where you couldn't walk 20 feet before you had 15 people blowing you up.

Skipping a bunch of this thread, but this mindset is one of the main problems with Modern MMOs and their communities. Heroics encourage grouping.. the MM part of MMO.. You are not FORCED to do them, however I could see adding a different colour indicator over the quest giver to denote if said side-quest is heroic or solo so you can choose to pick up or not depending on playstyle. Heroic/group content is a risk v reward thing. Some heroic 4's later in the game are pretty difficult if you don't have an optimal group, and crazy fun if you want to try it as a duo with 2 companions. With that, the rewards from Heroics are generally better than what you will get from soloing content. Much like the rewards you receive from FPs are better than what you get from solo content. These rewards will in some cases last 5-10 levels where the solo content rewards last 1-2. Just because YOU don't like to do them/can't find a group/don't have a guild/haven't made/invited any friends in game, doesn't mean there aren't people out there who enjoy the content, and actually seek them out. Also, heroic quests are repeatable once per day. Removing the already shockingly low amount of group oriented content in this game just makes it feel more like a single player game than it already is. This game should already be categorized as ORPG.

EQ2 had a "mentor" system were any higher level player could mentor a lower level player to help them quest, do dungeon crawls, etc. The system was set up to help lower level players catch up by providing bonus experience to the person being mentored. The higher level player would also get a small amount of XP for mentoring, but not as much as they would if they were level appropriate. Due to how quick the leveling curve is already in SWTOR, I don't think any bonus XP is needed, but it would be nice to be able to "level down" to help a friend, and do low level FP's because you simply out level them so fast. EQ2, however, had a lot more GROUP content than SWTOR. So some sort of assistance was beneficial to progress through the content. Yes, you could solo to level cap, but it was a crazy slow grind. Unfortunately, the way most MMOs are going these days by adding leveling benefits to solo players to support the "casual" market, I'm afraid the majority of people just end up taking the path of least resisitance and don't bother grouping. With regard to social points. I duo'd up to 50 on my main with a friend. We each had an alt we played if the other wasn't online so we wouldn't get out of sync. We ended up at social 5-6 when we hit 50. I could see if you did the content in a 4-some all the way through you would hit social 10 (or be very close). I believe this is "working as intended" and is the extra benefit to grouping all the way through.