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.

I do both.. PVE - Raid healer in MANY MMOs.. clicking is way more efficient for me. Never been a macro user either.. Click person in raid window.. click ability.. win.. I just move the raid window to just over the hotbar I have a Merc Stealth keyboard (Full keyboard with gamepad to the side) though so 1-12, QWERASD, and Space/Control/etc all accessable from one hand easily.. with raised/lowered keys and alignments so you don't have to look down to know what you're hitting. Never had issues "Getting out of the bad" on Raids with this setup as it's natural to move around using right click for camera turning PVP. Mouse to move/run.. 1-12 for most used abilities and 1 bound button on my mouse (Thumb) to change targets. Need to be able to turn fast in PVP and can't have a finger locked on the W key LOL.

Since when do you need a speeder to PVP... The trip from the PVP terminal to the PVP items guys and the Class trainers is all of what.. 10ft? (if you "only" PVP)

Because that's how hardcores play. If you keep that carrot on the end of the stick they'll play the same content for years to get it all. That doesn't mean YOU have to do it, but for those who WANT to do it, they can, and continue to get rewarded for doing so. Gear acquisition is the carrot, and the longer it takes to get the carrot the longer they will pay and play. As to the "Vocal minority can shove-it, I'm having fun".. Good for you. I'm having fun too, but guess what all the potential new customers are reading when they come to the forums to check out the game. The ones who are vocal, and upset with the current state of the end-game. You may not like the Hardcores, but they are the voice of the playing population in a lot of cases.

With regard to XP Gain. The leveling curve in this game is WAY too fast with compared to the amount of end-game content available. Yes, there is much more incentive in this game to play alts (Separate story lines etc) than say Rift, or WoW, or [insert Random MMO] but that's where it stops. With there not being enough end-game content to play for the "Hardcores" the leveling curve should be slowed down. I'm not saying to the rate of EVE, or EQ1 by any means but a minor (10-20%) reduction in XP gain would have added a week or two before raiding guilds had 50's in the numbers required to start taking on end-game FP's/Raids. Even without skipping dialogue, as somone who has ~3-4 hours a day of playtime (by no means hardcore) you reach level cap in under 1 month. I guess my point being, as a developer, BW needs to walk the line of enough grind to be able to frequently add content for hardcores, but not so slow that casuals end up frustrated. Unfortunately, with how insanely fast you CAN level cap a character in this game, with no solid long-term end-game a lot of hardcores have already left before the 2nd month subscription came due. I see your point here, but on the flip side, being able to see every piece of gear the game has to offer from day one, leaves nothing for the imagination. The "good ol days" where entire raids would drop 1-2 pieces of gear, that were such massive upgrades that people would blow a months worth of DKP to attain them and getting server/world-first discoveries kept the hardcore players engaged. I don't think the RNG coding in this game is good enough to handle a system like that, but this game is seriously lacking that sense of awe you get from downing that big bad mob for the first time and discovering something nobody else has. No, this is not the root of my position, but part of it. It comes down to Risk v Reward. People will always take the path of least resistance, it's in our nature. Running 16-man(person, whatever) Ops on Nightmare has no reward other than a title and being able to say you've done it. There's no reason to do it again, and no reason to "grind" the content when you and 7 buds can run 8-man hardmode a hell of a lot easier for the exact same reward. I'm not in full Rakata my self, but I still think Rakata gear should not be attainable outside of very rare hard-mode drops, and running nightmares. The drop rates should also be decreased in these to give the hardcores something to grind on. which keeps them playing and paying. So no, the hightened challenge should not be the only reward to run this content. People who punish them selves on this content would like to show something more than a title for their effort. That why the "hardcores" play, and would continue to grind this content for months if it meant getting 1 more piece of uber gear nobody else has. This is not me having an eletist attitude, its trying to give some reason for people to run the harder content, because right now there simply isn't one.

The difference between the CE vendor and Raiding is the CE vendor can be PURCHASED. The reason the CE vendor should only have fluff is because they shouldn't force you to PAY MORE for exclusive game-changing items. What they very much SHOULD do is force you to PLAY more for those game-changing exclusive items. The only way to do that is give them stats and armor that casual players cannot get (and don't need to play casually). Yes, if players want full Rakata (or whatever top-end gear) they very much should be forced to group up and take on the content that drops it.

IMO there's 3 things that BW should have done slightly differently that would have fixed a lot of the end-game issue (Not including bugs). 1 - Leveling. Currently if you do all the class quests, all the side quests and all the bonus quests you out-level the content. And that's not including PVP, Space Missions, Flashpoints etc. The XP gain should have been reduced so that if you did ALL the quests AND one of the above (PVP, Space, FP) while leveling you would not out-level content before even getting to a planet. 2 - Gear (PVE). Gear should not be gained from "Commendations". End game gear shouldn't be purchased from a vendor period. As a Raider, it gives you nothing to look forward to. YAY a TOKEN dropped.. Yipady-Crap.. End game gear should drop from the mobs, and you should have to kill the stuff before you ever see it. It leaves you wondering if there's some Rare uber drop in that loot table that nobody's ever seen. 3 - Gear Tiers / Raids - The current set-up is fundamentally flawed for raiding guilds. It encourages smaller groups, and fragments the community. As to the "I want to solo for epics" crap, that doesn't work in MMOs long-term. WoW is a EXCEPTION to the rule, not a standard to strive to. The reason so many of the recent games have flopped a few months after release is there's nothing to keep people long term as you see all the content and have all your gear before the developers could possibly push more content out. T1 (Tionese) should be Level 50 / HM Flashpoints, and Normal Ops ONLY T2 (Columi) Should be very Rare Drops in HM Flashpoints, Semi-Rare (every other boss) in 8-man HM Ops, and Standard loot (every boss) in 16 man HM Ops T3 (Rakata) should be very Rare Drops in 8-man HM Ops, Semi-Rare in 16-man HM Ops, and Standard drops in Nightmare. Currently there is no incentive to run anything over 8-man hard-mode Ops other than saying you've done it. And you can't run anything over 8/16 hard-mode unless a sizeable chunk of your raid is already in full Rakata/Battlemaster and they get nothing for it other than a title. And again, to the people who want to solo for epics. YOU DON'T NEED EPIC GEAR TO SOLO!. It should be exclusive gear for the people who have cleared the hardest content in the game AS A TEAM. Not something you can gain from commendations, tokens, and dailies. If you only have a few hours of playtime a week, you don't need this gear to do anything you'd be doing in the game.

Wow.. on the defensive much.. LOL.. If you're seriously that angry about it just roll a sage and get over yourself. Directive 7 HM with new 50's in a mix of blues/purples is rough for sages. if you don't have a tank worth their salt pulling the claw off of you every time their taunt is up (Instead of taunting the stuff murdering your DPS), the claw is yours and you spend the entire fight running around like an idiot.. That's my example.. You still have your Green beam / kolto cell that you can cast on the run in those situations which doesn't heal for a lot but can still keep you from a wipe. But really any healing class is going to suffer in a situation where the group cant get out of the fire. With regard to bubble being the defacto standard uber OMG 1337 Skillz that everyone seems to think is god of healing, haven't played a sage. Can it get you out of a sticky situation.. yes.. assuming the target can be cast on (didn't have one on them in the last 20 seconds) and if the target is low HP, I'd take a large heal over a bubble any day of the week. I don't need to L2P, I'm doing fine and having a blast actually. I'm just sick of people who compare stuff from reading other peoples post and extrapolating instead of actually playing the class in end-game content. I just proved my point to you how annoying that really is. Infuriating isn't it...

I'm in no way arguing that Merc/Com, Ops/Sc healing need love, and they've already stated that "Changes are coming". I'm just trying to point out that it's not all sunshine and lollypops on the Sage either. ESPECIALLY on the AE healing side. I personally think the Sage AE is completely OP compared to the others, but if we can't stop for 2 seconds to cast it we're as SOL as you are. And Yes, sometimes too much choice is a bad thing, with the long cast times and cooldowns in our kit, blowing a GCD on utility instead of a heal can be the difference between sucess and failure. If we're in a situation where we are constantly on the run, we have 2 options. Bubble (which doesn't give back HP) and a Hot with a 6sec cooldown. They sound awesome in theory, but try running Mentor in Directive 7 HM as a sage and compare that to a Merc and let me know how it works out. As for going out of power. When it happens on a sage it will stop you dead in your tracks with NOTHING to get you back. If we Sac without Resplendance we can easily kill our selves if there's AE damage, and it slows our regen even further. We have to blow 3 gcd's to get power back and that's only when we crit on healing trance. Even with conveyance buff its still possible to not crit on healing trance. Both Merc/Com, Ops/Sc have emergencies in these situations that the Sorc/Sage does not. Anyhow.. I'm not trying to say that we don't have tools that others do not, I'm just trying to point out that even with these tools we still have our issues, and one of them being too many tools. I also think the other two healing classes need boosts in some areas to help with AE healing, but Merc/Com are still the strongest single target healers in the game and Ops/Sc probably have the most issues that need to be addressed.

Yes, FA increase is only 2 point talent, but I was pointing out it's not part of the healing tree, it's in the DPS tree in the 2nd tier, so you need to spend 5 points in that tree to get to the 2nd tier, then 2 more to cap out the talent. Just stating it's not part of the healing tree is all. Like all other healing classes we're better off spending points outside the healing tree than using it on abilities in our healing tree that most will consider a waste of points.

The sheild increase isn't part of the healing tree, it's tier 2 of the telekenetic (DPS) tree which means you need to spend 7 points to get it (5 to get to the skill and 2 to cap it out) and the 10% buff is for 6 seconds (Capped) when you cast armor, not a perma increase while FA is active. That's why you're better spending those points elsewhere. like increasing willpower by 6% (Out of another DPS tree, not healing tree) Also, more skills doesn't always = better. you still need to proactively chose what to cast on who and when so you can optimize force which has the lowest regen rate unless you try to stick to a force positive rotation which can in most cases kill your group/raid on hard content. We can burst, but we can't burst forever, and running out of power is still a real threat unless you and your raid are paying attention.