SO Ive been leveling up as deception--- Im interested in both PVE and PVP. Ive done pretty well with it in PVE so far (just hit 40). My usual PVE rotation has been to pretty much been to try and keep recklessness up (instant, free to cast), popping assassinate, discharge, maul in that order of priority. I use Blackout for bursts of energy, as well as Saber Strike when everythings on cooldown and/or I need energy. I stun when I need to get behind an enemy, and Force Cloak when I need to shrug threat. Im normally able to keep mauls throwing left and right and land have been capable of landing pretty solid sustained dps. Now in PVP it was another matter. I started off not playing so well and dieing as often as I was killing. Since practice makes perfect, Ive learned to adapt and Ive noticed my medal count drift upwards from 2-3 per match to an average of 5 or 6. However........ Im looking at my toon right now, and thinking about things--- and Im not sure Im really where I need to be. ----------------------------------------- 1) Is deception really that much worse than madness at DPS in PVE? 2) Ive seen people talking about different priorities in PVE. Some are swearing by Voltaic Slash + Shock cycles, while others are saying no--- maul really is your bread and butter in PVE-- go that way and splash darkness instead. Any thoughts?

A small % of people may have had a rare reason for choosing empire. However, I have several friends that came here from wow (friends IRL, not counting wow friends) and they all went empire for the same reasons that I think most did. It had NOTHING to do with class animations, story line (per say), thoughts that one side would be superior to the other. Instead it was these reasons: 1) Everyone wants to play the bad guy. Look at just about every MMO out there with a clearly evil or dark inspired faction--- chances are thats where most of your players are in that mmo. 2) The evil faction tends to look darker and cooler. 3) Playing as an evil toon is just fun. We all have to behave in everyday life, its nice to get a break from that. ------------- How to fix it: Lock out the dominate faction during early content releases in future expansions. Introduce new races and open up near areas and let the minority faction in a good week or so before the majority faction as a way to promote that faction on that server. In a worse case scenario it doesnt work--- but for a brief time, the minority gets a shot to get ahead of the majority so that they can complete the content without getting camped while leveling etc, and may even get a chance to be the camper for a fleeting time. Also--- introduce darker races for the lightside-- and some pretty races for the dark side. Ok that might be a lame way to word it-- but adding those in early and fast would help to balance things out now while the game is growing rather than trying to fix it later well after pop size has peaked. One idea--- introduce Droid as a race. Make it available to the minority faction on each server-- based on the number of max lvl characters or average pop# of each faction on each server right away with the promise that it would be unlocked for the other faction later down the road.

I actually agree with the OP to a fault. Passing from the pit to the goal line feels cheap-- as does passing to anyone on a different elevation. 2 people on vent, one with stealth-- thats all it takes to turn a fun game of pugs into a lopsided match. That said-- I also feel that if youre going to implement a change like this you would also have to cut range's distance of attack down by a great deal when targeting a player at a different elevation as well as to balance it out. I really think that it would make the match more fun. Or they could leave it as it is. I enjoy it now as well.

Lots of good info in the posts above, will be interested in an answer to this.

No i know what youre saying. If all I needed right now was that Id just save up and buy it-- but like I said, Ive got some other major purchases that need to be made. Paying a little more but being able to do so over 18 months is just something I can afford to do. Gotta have $ to save $ sometimes, and I dont. Ill keep that in mind. Found what looks to be a good 560ti, with some pretty good reviews (even one from a tor player on there). I was so used to the old PSU units (Ill never pretend to be a PC expert), and I had never had one go out until my last one did-- that I didnt realize how the modern PSUs work in regards to the airflow. I imagined, from looking at them, that the giant fan on the bottom was the outtake fan. maybe it was an intake. hm. Something to think about. Ill see if I can find a good top rated 500w power supply or something better that will fit my case. The one I have now is an Antec Green Energy-Efficient Power Supply EA500D

Yes, but to be honest--- I dont have the money to just order something out right as of right now. Thats why Im looking at bestbuy-- I can use my card there and pick up some other things I need and take advantage of the 0% interest and pay it off fairly quickly.

4, I can go to 8 and have considered it. Im not sure which would be a better move though--- more ram, or a better card. Card wise Ive got a Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT.

Thank you for reminding me. I switched out my PSU earlier this year. Ive got a dell, and the case its in is very.... picky. The fan has to blow out the back. Most of the PSUs Ive looked at want to blow out the top, and my case simply wont allow for that, so I havent been able to find a larger unit yet than what I had. Ill have to take a look at that today while Im out. As of right now, i believe Ive got a 500w psu unit.

Processor is an Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz

Thanks! Unfortunately though, I gotta stick with bestbuy for other reasons. Otherwise, Id just hit up newegg.

Hey guys, I had my PC custom built like 4 years ago. I used top of the line EVERYTHING because I got tired of buying something off the shelf and having to replace something every year in order to keep it running smooth as new games and software came out. As a result, I have been able to run everything on the highest settings for 4 years now (including wow, where I could easly run well over 100 fps, though I could tell no difference between 120 and 60). And then TOR came out. Im running on the lowest settings and not too happy about it--- so its time for a new graphics card. The only problem is--- I suppose because Ive been able to just sit on what I had for so long-- that Im having a hard time telling the good from the bad when looking at the current generation of graphics cards. I no longer know what series is what, so I was hoping you guys would help me out. Ill probably pick something up from bestbuy. If you could use their website, what would you suggest in the 100-300 $ range? Money is an issue this time around, so Im looking for the best bang for the buck. Thanks!

I HATE the generalization of this thread. Check out Assassin/Deception and youll understand why. OP/Smugglers have too much burst--- their damage needs to be shifted a bit from burst to sustained to even them out without breaking them. But they are not the only class/specs that have stealth and are a melee class... There are LOTS of them, and most of the time-- those other builds are at a severe disadvantage to ranged classes so they perform pretty poorly in the current pvp metagame.

I havent played as an OP, but if the OPS here who are complaining that they dont need a nerff because their burst is high but after that, their dps is low is true--- (and I take everything with a grain of salt), then it would seem that the best way to bring OPs in line is to decrease their burst significantly but boost the rest of their damage. Everyone else doesnt die before they get a chance to get back up--- so they can actually participate in the fight and have a chance at winning= win OP being able to get a nice first shot in, but still having to battle it out with their target without being at too much of a disadvantage-- so anyone can still win this fight=win.

It gets as old explaining WHY youre getting so much huttball for us in these forums, as you are getting tired of playing it. Everyone and their brother rolled Empire. As a consequence, you could be sitting in ques for hours on end waiting to play the other warzones, while the rebels could pretty much insta-que into them without huttball. With huttball, you usually get into a game in a matter of minuites. If you want to PVP and youre Empire, Huttball is the only thing letting you do so at a reasonable rate. If you want to play other warzones, you should roll a rebel, where you will see much less huttball because of the reasons above.

Im thinking it would be pretty sweet to have a small expansion pack that was nothing but new battlegrounds. Im thinking a good 4-5 new maps, Hutt themed. (IE, the huttball sports idea w/mixed faction queing), for a small-- but reasonable-- one time fee. Im thinking maybe $5. It would be cool if it was all free--- but Id imagine we wouldnt get so many maps all at once without having to sink a bit of cash into it, and at $5 it wouldnt hurt the old wallet too much.

Of course another option is to get off your behind and lvl up to 50, then you too can be that guy smashing face in pvp. Just saying. It doesnt take that long to lvl, so why complain. I cant imagine it taking over a month to max out even if all you did was PVP.

Thank the Lord, I was wondering who the spokesperson was for everyone in the game. Now I know. end /sarcasm. If you signed up for TOR you have 2 months of play time right off the bat. A few will take off before then, but most new mmos--- and most fail, which really underlines things for this-- still dont lose their initial customers until after that initial period. So TOR probably wont see any real drop off for at least 2 months. The problem then is that people are glowing about this game. For everyone that isnt happy with it-- Ive seen way many more who are really enjoying it. That means that by the time people let their accounts expire, youre probably going to have seen TORs membership number climb much higher than the number you will have lost. Now TOR is in an unusual position. Most MMOs cant compete with wow, who sponge up their lost customers after the new guy dies. In this case, as TOR continues to eat new customers and further drain WOW, those who go back are going to find a game that is even worse than the one they left by that point. In any case, I dont see TOR going away just because of a few angry PVP players. PVP does not an MMO make. Besides, the biggest issues Ive seen people complain about are population imbalance issues. If you want the problem fixed just reroll rebel and stop QQing because you dont want to but you want everyone else to. The other big issue is imbalance of class--- something WOW has never really been that good at doing and theyve had way longer than TOR to try and figure out. Give BW some time to monitor and track the results of their BGs, and then to get some possible fixes worked out before getting your panties in a twist and you might see something happen.

Juggs need love--------------- in PVE. Theyre horrible tanks. Theyre maybe a little too good in PVP. When you see people say Juggs need love, its because theyve read it somewhere-- probably somewhere with someone complaining about then in PVE. Tank spec though, they hit hard and are hard to kill in PVP. Its not uncommon to see a good tank spec player hit top in damage right next to the BH and SIS.

Let me begin with the fact that I LOVE this game. Furthermore, I think its had the best launch of any MMO to date-- including WOW. None the less---- and perhaps because of its success--- Ive seen many many many of the QQ threads that used to appear in the wow forums. You know--- those same threads that the developers of that other mmo started listening too and as a result, we got a game that drove people away by the millions. Instead-- Let me offer some ideas that would solve some of that QQ in a constructive way: 1) SERVER IMBALANCE - This might be tricky to code, but instead of allowing people to log into the server and then choose which character they want--- allow people to que into a server based on what faction they will be allowed to play. Display the que times for each side, and allow for players of the minority faction to get priority que over the other faction. This will reduce the que time for rebel players and increase the que time for Empire--- helping to tilt population back the other way. - On servers where population balance is very poor, reduce the XP needed to level for the minority faction and mark what servers have this ability on the server selection list. - Finally, increase rewards for missions, quests, pvp, etc for the minority faction. - As an alternative idea to those above, you could lock out factions that hit a higher ratio of 3 to 1 from character creation. This would need to be done by looking at whos on rather than total number of characters have been made to prevent players from mass creating dummy characters just to fake server balance. Because this almost encourages fraud to get around, It is the weakest idea. ------------------------- 2) PVP - Allow players to que for up specific maps, I think when people realize there might be a 2 hour wait for something besides Huttball they might start to appreciate how golden it is. - More Huttball maps. Im visualizing an entire Hutt Sports enterprise, this would allow for variety despite faction imbalance. -------------------------- 3) CHARACTER LOOKS/ HIGH LEVEL GEAR - All high lvl raid and PVP gear needs to be treated like 1-50 orange gear. The real reward should be the mods with the better specs. People seem to REALLY like customizing how their character looks. Let them. It can also be a credit sink since you have to pay to remove crystals, mods, etc from gear. Its a win-win------ players get the look they want, the in game economy is drained from credits creating a need for players to continue working to make more.

I enjoy world pvp. The only problem I have with it at this point is the faction imbalance. A bigger push on world pvp would create tons of pressure on rebel players-- who are by far and away the minority right now. That kind of pressure tends to create an even bigger gap than whats there already-- and before long, world pvp would be dead completely because there would be no one left to world pvp against. Its nice to think we live in a perfect sandbox, but we dont. In order for something like this to happen something would have to occur to drive players to reroll rebel first. When the numbers get in the ballpark of being equal you might see something happen.

What I said still applies........ If everyone else is playing, and 2 rebel premades que up.. guess whos going to play. And it will match premades vs premades as much as possible. A rebel premade will be paired against other rebel premades if no imperial premades are in que.

premades are supposed to play premades..... it just means they were the only other one in que.

I have my doubts about this. While not impossible-- think about how many hutt balls are fireing off... Then think about the odds that you could get your friend in the same match as you on the opposite team. Sure its possible... but not likely. More than likely youve got an idiot team member that ran the wrong way and doesnt know what hes doing-- or someone just trying to ruin the game and be a jerk.

Hey everyone Noob question Im sure-- but with orange gear, I just noticed all the stats are based on the mods. So other than armor-- is it ever really needed to get rid of this gear if you keep updating the mods? Ive seen gear Id like to set out, but Ive been vendoring it as I get new stuff. Now that Im realizing that with new mods that old stuff might be just as good as the new stuff, Im thinking I should have kept it and updated it instead.

Do you even PVP? The system buffs you up at lower lvls. At lvl 20 Ive taken out lvl 50 players before. Learn to PVP. The only advantage lvl 50 players really have is that their pvp gear is better than whats available at lower lvls. You can overcome that by hitting max lvl. No mmo has ever balanced pvp around lower lvls, its always about the top lvl. Get there and stop your QQ. You talk like youve never used the tor pvp system before. ps---- the guy that said 50s have more experience.. the games been out for a few days. Are you really going to QQ about experience now?