Hi everyone, I am playing a Sage at the moment and I mainly like to do PVP warzones. Everyone keeps telling me that the way to go is Balance because of the overall damage and survivability but there is just something about Telekinetics that draws me. Also in ranked apparently no Sage with respect for him/herself goes Telekinetics? I have tried both specs and I agree that my damage output in Balance is often x2 compared to what I can do of output in Telekinetics. Also I seem to get just as many killing blows. But none of those killing blows are any that I really recall after the match. I am thinking that all the ticking dots are lucky enough to get the actual killing blow every now and then. In Telekinetics spec I really see the damage and the health bars drop when I do a perfect rotation with the right crits. It is really noticeable that people die when they are relatively low and my whole combo goes off. Also I know that the healing from the Balance tree is good but I like the mobility of the Telekinetics tree since I rarely have to stand still and cast because of procs. In the Balance spec you have to stand still at least every time you do telekinetic throw which is a bread and butter skill here. So what do you reckon is better? I am telling my mates that Telekinetics is competitive because it helps drop that healer, but they see numbers in damage dealt and killing blows as well where Balance is the obvious winner. We are running normal PVP warzones with 1 healer, 1 tank and 2 DPS. Eventually we want to try ranked as well.

A very simple question. I think Force Scream is force damage so I am in doubt if Gore effects it with the 100% extra armor penetration. Does anybody know? PS. I did google it but i found only old topics. With the many patches I cannot rely on the information there, so pardon me if you think I am a lazy slob.

I'm in the same boat as you here. When I played before I started out as infiltration spec, but I found out later on that the 23/1/17 build that you are referring to was much more efficient. Now I was kind of hoping that infiltration is viable again since that is what I enjoy playing the most but I would like to get some info as well regarding good PVP specs.

It has been a long time since I have played my shadow. Back then it was leaning towards that the only really viable spec was either the tank spec or a mix between tank and balance. I think that the infiltration line has gotten some buffs in a patch so maybe it is actually viable in PVP? And in that case what spec would you use? Thanks for the help

Ye this is really annoying. Especially if you struggle with winning 3 matches because your faction fail all the time its annoying that half of your wins do not count. :S

I use Stalker gear for all of my slots except for the off hand where I use a shield generator. With Kinetic Ward I find this to be the best trade off between survivability and damage. I use this build when specced 23/0/18: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#601rsMokrskZZf0cRrMz.1 But I am starting to feel the urge to go back to my good old 0/33/8 burst spec: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#601ZhGrRkhrbtzZf0c.1 At least it is nice there is no 1 cookie cutter spec. Both of these specs are very viable. I find the 23/0/18 setup better for pvp in groups that do not have a perfect setup or solo queueing as you I can help shielding damage more efficiently from my allies. Also my survivability is much greater and I can make up for incompetent pugs not being able to prevent their side in Void Star to be capped with a Force in Balance. For a good group setup I think the 0/33/8 is very good because of the burst potential. You can checkout Powerr's burst guide if you are geared and want to try another spec: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=165927

I tried exactly that and I specced back to 23/0/18 after determining that the new slow time is not that much of an advantage compared with what you lose in the balance tree. The loss of: Force in balance Instant force lift with a 2 sec stun on early break Instant cast mind crush with no force cost (proc) 50% extra damage on double strike crits did not make up for what you gain in the kinetic combat tree. (Slow time and the buff to telekinetic throw through harnessed shadows.) That was my experience at least.

/signed This really needs to be fixed...

To be honest I do not agree with you. Bioware has people from Mythic who designed Warhammer Online. They need to look into Vanilla WAR and make adjustments based on the key features that worked so well there. Even features from DAOC will give this game a huge boost.

Ye seriously. The Republic base on Ilum on Basilisk Droid is officially taken over by the Imperials who are farming everyone who click to medicenter. They will be Valor Rank 100 by the end of the evening and the Republic will be even more at disadvantage. Bioware you surprised me a lot with a really poor thought through ORVR system when the game launched but what surprises me even more is that your "fix" is even worse - MUCH WORSE. How could you not see this coming? I had hopes but right now I just don't see how this game can become enjoyable unless some miracle patch will introduce a LOT more PVP content (working content that is ofc).

Bioware was this really how you intended ORVR to be in your game? First of all your mechanics gives the advantage to the faction with more people. The faction that controls the points get more valor. So that means the imperials on my server will always have 5 points and just farm the %#@ out of the republic at our base: http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/9738/messr.jpg My guess is that they outnumber us by at least a factor 5 here on Basilisk Droid as you can see on the screenshot. Yes the PVP was bad before and no it is not better by an inch now. Now it's just laggy because your engine handles many people at the same spot very poorly and also just down right borring to be farmed at the spawn over and over again. Really Bioware? You couldn't foresee this?

Bioware. You want incentives for people to go out into Ilum to do open world PVP and I couldn't agree with you more. Also I like that you recognize PVP as a major part of the game. However on my server as Republic we are probably outnumbered 1:4 in Illum at best. So what is my incentive to go out in the completely Imperial controlled Ilum and being farmed like a boss at the scales 1:4 and on top of that seeing that the enemies get 200% valor for controlling all when I get 100%? In Warhammer Online the underdog was rewarded with a renown(valor) boost for taking up a seemingly hopeless battle against the zerg. The boost made up for the underdogs killing fewer of the enemies because they were much fewer in numbers. Here you want to reward the side that has the numbers on their side and will already dominate the enemies? I want an Ilum with incentives too but an incentive for me is not going out to be farmed like some grey mob because the server is not balanced. Not gonna happen Bioware. You gotta give us something for fighting against all odds like in Warhammer or open world PVP will be base camping the underdogs 24/7. You have developers from DAOC and Warhammer Online. They will know this is true.

Can you guys stop talking about the delay on the Project ability? It is the biggest advantage we have in this game. The delay is ~1 second and that is what gives us so much burst potential since we can do a force breach right after and hit people for 6k+ within a second. With upheaval it is 2 rocks in the face as well as a force breach in very short time. Embrace it as the advantage it is instead of crying for a nerf.

I can confirm that it can be deactivated. And since yesterday it works all the time, so that should be no issue at all.

The gear is not that much different as said before. When you have 10.000 dark side or light side points you can buy a level 50 speeder. They look identical except the one has a light color and the other has a dark color. The other gear you can buy are relics that are no different on either side and then some more or less useless boots and gloves. As dark side you can have a red (and orange I think?) light saber color and as light side you can have a green and blue light saber. I went through the whole story as pure dark side on my shadow and there are no problems in the story at all. Some people might wonder why you are never able to save any of the people you encounter and always end up killing them for their crimes but that's about it. Also you need to figure out what you like more. As dark side you tend to end up killing some people you might not think deserved it and on light side you might let some people go that deserved to be killed. So what do you rather want? Go dark side and might end up taking some nasty choices or go light side and some times be a bit too unselfish and a momma's boy. It's quite nice actually that there are these morale dilemmas in a computer game.