I shelf-canned my Bioware 3.0 fubarred lvl 53 Commando and Merc and found the Shadow to be barely playable, but fun in that you get to fight your battles on the fly instead of a heavy rotation and fixed range and use a few tricks now and then. I will still play it, but the heals seem very low for the Boss fights. Not really the Force health-drinker spec it's described to be. The loss of the 30 meter attacks will make the battles much more boring. So thanks for the free week Bioware, but not re-newing. You keep wasting my time on these on again, off again Classes and I do not PvP unless it is a straight-up duel anyway. I hate those "Capture the Blob" mazes, just no relationship to the game or lore. So I hope you are not nerfing for that. I was going to re-new till I read this. Since you block the Forums for F2P. Good-bye. ex-Founder and Closed Beta Tester.

Mine is a little higher at level 25 and the trash mobs do nothing, but the Elite bosses even minus 2 levels are unbeatable even in Epic gear for level 25. Slot two +41 Critical Crystals would be the way to go? Other than that the character sucks down the force in a few seconds of combat, how do you fix that? Looked at the Dulfy guide, but that is only for level 60's and I won't likely get there any time soon.

Roll a Powertech. Plenty of range options and you can Tank too if you decide or need too. Merc and Commando had their survivability hosed by the 3.0 changes. You have been warned.

My DPS Merc and Commando both suck in difficult PvE missions now. They can't complete them. So bad I quit the two characters and re-rolled some new ones, but as an F2P player now rather than the subscriber I had been for 3 years. My Commando turned 910 days today, level 53, my highest level, but just for crafting now.

Well the Heals suck in DPS spec now. I can't play the Class anymore in PvE. Don't care about PvP.

I just un-subbed after 3 years or whenever the Closed Beta was. Commando can't heal anymore in a damage spec so it's busted for me. I just PvE really so not even considering PvP. When you can't complete the hard PvE quests in all epic gear, something is wrong. I am just not going to mess with it. Tried a damage spec where I set-up a Heal rotation that healed as fast as possible and too slow to keep up with damage even for my companion tanks.

I quit playing my level 54 Commando DPS because it lost it's self-healing abilities that made it tough in a long fight. Now I go back and fight difficult bosses I beat in 2.*** four levels ago and can no longer beat them. My Commando is either powering through stuff or blown to bits in 10 seconds or less. There is no in between or tough battle that you eventually win. I created a heal rotation where you get off the maximum number of heals in the shortest span to try to fix this, but too weak for any tough/elite boss battle. I play SWtoR for the PvE gaming, PvP is not so important or interesting to me. Anyway, BW's 3.0 changes forced me to start a new character because the Commando changes in 3.0 were not oriented to PvE's higher challenges. Subscriber/player since the Closed Beta, but if you have any suggestions to make the heals work for the DPS Commando to tank elite bosses, go right ahead.

The problem is the non-tank classes are too weak now. BW boosted their damage, but gutted their survivability. And I am only talking about PvE missions. I took my Scoundrel to Balmorra to complete Class quests, etc. that were two levels lower and it costs 12000-15000 in armor repairs every 2 hours or so from dying all the time in full purple armor. Same thing with my Commando and Merc. It's so bad I just stopped playing them and went with my tanker classes. I gather the OP is only concerned with PvP which I can take it or leave it. I want to be able to play the PvE game and in that area the damage-dealing/healers are just horrid. I couldn't even keep up with the repair costs to my Scoundrel/Ruffian on -2 levels missions!!!!!!!!!!!!! Balance is totally borked, and it's the other non-Tank Class's survivability!! Fix them before you do anything else BW!

I re-evaluated the various 3.0 Heals on my non-Medic Commando and Mercenary and came up with a maximum heal rotation. Then I went back and fought some old super-elite Bosses that I beat easily enough four levels earlier in 2.***. Now, in 3.0, my Heals can't keep up with the damage from the elite Boss who is 4 levels lower now! I can barely just keep my Companion alive, who is the Tank role. So, yes, BW, you ruined my level 54 Commando for serious PvE gameplay which is the minimal mark I hold all my characters to, so I am not playing it and feel the Commando and Merc have changed so much in 3.0 that we players should be allowed to re-select our Advanced Class. My advice to you, BW, is to go back to the drawing board with the new Commando heals in the new Disciplines and restore the older, better gameplay.

If you recall, Han Solo was always out-shooting the Imp Troopers with his Blaster vs their auto-cannons, etc., so Gunslinger. He had no stealth field and was often heard to say few things are a match for a good Blaster at your side. How did the Smuggler get confused with Healer is what I can't understand. It sure destroyed any chance the Scoundrel might have had to be like Han Solo.

lol, Flavor of the Month.

Operative is very fragile in 3.0 compared to previous versions and BW obviously did not think this through very well. And I am talking about PvE and Class missions. Not talking PvP at all. If you do go Agent the female is the better acted version of the story, the male sounds like an adolescent Beaver Cleaver, no Daniel Craig or Sean Connery here. Storyline is very good. The Assassin is a good tank which is what 3.0 PvE was designed for so you have some flexibility and the storyline is also very good. You get Khem Val which is the best companion other than Blizz maybe. So plus one star there. The agent does very high damage, but has to set those attacks up with 1-2 priming attacks so hard on Bosses and too slow on Silvers which can quickly overwhelm the Op if there are 2-3 Strong/Lt.s in the mob. The Assassin is a Force tank and damage mitigation mostly comes from Endurance rather than armor. My thoughts on 3.0 is that BW made the mobs and Silvers especially harder to beat and gave all the Classes higher damage. That says SWtoR balance is skewed toward tanking damage and actual damage dealers kill very very fast now. Up to you, but you could try both and see for yourself. I like my Sniper much better than my Op.

I shelved mine, Commando, and pretty much my Scoundrel. Part of the bargain with these two is the heals can keep them alive and they trade weak armoring for those heals. BW took that away, the heals are too weak and slow now and they broke them. For me. No interest in either anymore. The Commando was my level 53. Absolutely horrible now. BW broke the class by capping the heals and giving it no armor to make up for the loss of those heals which was what the Commando was given instead of the armor and damage tanking of the Vanguard. That is a rules set foul.

I play Alts of most Classes and some have most of their Utility powers as just filler/placeholders. Agent/Smuggler is not so bad with just a few useless utility powers. All in all I liked pre-3.0 ten times better than what we have now. More choices, better thought out Skill-trees, better PvE Mission balancing (much better!), gameplay more responsive to player action input. That pretty much is true for all the Classes. Worst for me is Commando and Scoundrel, which I hate.

Some Alacrity might help.

You can drag the levels out to 17 in Coruscant and Dromund by fighting all the mobs, but it's kind of hard to get past level 16 on Dromund and in fact my character turned lvl 16 on completing the quest in question. (character also took 25% XP buffs from level 1-15, always). This was the first time playing through this mission that every NPC targeted my character though. That was weird. BUG? Who knows. As far as the Silver mob balances you mention, I think BW messed up by applying a game-wide buff to the A.I. mobs without reviewing all the quests to see the results of the buff. Usually it's okay, but in most high difficulty missions it's too much. And in SWtoR there is little you can do to setup for a tougher mission. You have what you have each time.

Now I did get through the early levels to 15 and leaving Dromund Kaas so this is really a critque of BW's new higher difficulty levels and just to say you must not have played these levels in 3.0 yet BW! Most missions went fine, no problem, but sometimes the character just runs out of HPs too fast.

Bounty Hunter. One of the better tales and good powersets. Easiest is Powertech, the tank type, but some dps roles too.

Vanguard. Commando is messed up in my opinion. BW made the 3.0 Commando into kind of a Glass Cannon. Takes damage very fast when it counts and, except for the Medic, has useless heals. 2.x was fairly rugged and could heal it's way out of a lot of jams. No more of that. I shelved my level 53 Commando, it's just completely different now and I think BW's idea is a bit flawed. Vanguard is too melee oriented for a Blaster Rifle class, but it cuts a swathe across battles. Up to you.

Same here. I stopped playing my Commando and Scoundrel. I don't know what BW was thinking, but my Damage+Heal class characters are just a headache to play now. Very fragile with bad heals for a small damage buff. I'll be playing along and some silver mobs jump out and the Scoundrel is dead in between checking the HP bar and making an attack. The Commando can't get through a tough fight now. I am going to try to play a different type of Class, but my Commando was my level 53, in a Guild. Now I am just dropping it.

Closed Beta Tester. 3 year Subscriber. Legacy Level 26. No I don't live for SWtoR, I think I just play it differently. I craft almost all my own gear. Mods, Weapons, Potions, Armor. Sell at lowest prices. I am actually more into the story than leveling, hence I don't level very fast. I spent most of a month of my free time leveling my Commando to 53 only to have the Commando 3.0 gameplay style be changed into something I do not enjoy. However it is up to BW whether they want to stand behind their 3.0 changes or not. There is no harm in asking.

Need 12xXP reset because Discipline changes changed my main character too much for me to want to continue playing it. Actually it changed all my characters so much only a few have a play style that I like now and it is not the character leveled to 52 (Commando). Basically the 3.0 Damage/Healer is too fragile and the Heals too weak to counter that fragility, for me at least. They do more damage, but I don't like the way the character plays anymore. However, this is my only level 50 character after playing SWtoR as a Subscriber since the original beta test. So for me SWtoR is taking too long and I am basically repeating content I have seen many, many times before on Alts. Now maybe you don't think refunding a month of 12xXP is right, but then players like me wasted the one chance to see level 50 content. Maybe you should get faster leveling at Legacy level 25 instead? Anyway, at my current pace it will take me about 3 more years to get my current character to level 50.

I think BW weighted the Scoundrel/OP for Skill Augs because it sure is weak sauce with all Alacrity Augs. My 37 Scoundrel is sitting at 140-150 Alacrity and this, for instance drops Dirty Kick cooldown to 27.5 seconds from 30. She never runs out of Energy though. I have never even touched Cool Head.

My Scoundrel/Ruffian is level 35 in full purple modded gear with full Alacrity Augs doing the Balmora missions vs mobs that are 33 to 34. Her companion is similarly outfitted, but with some blue items as well. She dies at every main or complex encounter. In seconds. So fast you are left wondering what happened to the HP bar that was full a second ago. If I catch it in time, the Heals are too weak to keep up with the incoming damage for her or her companion. Repairs are at 10k credits for 2 hours of PvE mission gameplay. Now if she was in old weak armor or battling level 37's at level 35 this would be expected, but the content is for level 33-34 and the missions are just the Class missions on Balmora. No Elite bosses. In the battle where you aquire Akavi, save Moff Tyrek, it's just some trash mobs and an Lt..... Dead in 5-8 seconds. Heal too slow, too weak. I think Akavi got killed too because I got a notice that the instance was re-setting due to the death of a mission critical character. So, maybe Alacrity is not the Stat to Aug, but the armor can't be better and I have been playing the new skill tree for a few days so I understand what to do. Anyway it seems like every mob is doing double damage since 3.0 and the missions are scripted for a lower level of damage.

@OP. So true. I got one character to level 52, but I don't like it so I am back at a level 30 character I do like. I bought the Revan 12xXP offer almost the day it came out too. I guess I don't play often enough though, although at least 10 hours per week or more. Some weeks more like 40 hours. 12xXP might be too much, but after playing SWtoR since the Closed Beta as a paid subscriber almost the whole time and only getting one character to level 50 (thanks to 12xXP) you might want to revue your XP reward system. It doesn't work.... unless you want a lot of players to take 10 years to get to level 60.