Well it all depends. I mean, we have no idea how deep the problem really is. It could be a significant flaw in the core game engine that just can't keep up and fixing it would basically require rebuilding the game engine from the ground up.

As a Guardian player, I know exactly where you're coming from. It basically boils down to the fact that what is being drawn on your screen is not reality. The game engine just can't keep up and it seems especially bad in PvP where the game just chokes itself to death.

STO, really? lol, I thought they shut that crap down and took it offline. (yes, I played it. It was bad, very bad, much worse than SWTOR. SWTOR can at least be fixed, STO had zero redeeming qualities)

Save your stun break for when your resolve bar is full. It takes about 2 stuns or other CC effects (not counting snares and roots) to fill the resolve bar and make you immune. However, if you blow your stun break before resolve is full, you'll waste your immunity.

There have been developer statements to the point that crits can't be shielded. It may have been in the beta forums so there's no link I can give you. Regardless of if it's a 1-roll or a multi-roll system, the fact remains, you can not shield a critical hit. @ OP: The answer to which is better is real simple. Both. As a tank, which is the only role that you would be worried about these stats in the first place, needs all 3: defense rating, shield rating and absorption rating. Stack all three until one starts to hit diminishing returns and then focus on the remaining two.

Take up crafting. Patch 1.2 is making it easier to reverse engineer schematics to get better quality items. Take Synthweaving or armormech depending on your class.

L2P /5char

Guilds will always consume content faster than the devs can create it. So is this patch enough? Nope, but then again, it will never be "enough." No matter what Bioware, or any MMO developer does, there will be guilds that complete the content in a week, 2 weeks, a month, whatever and the be asking for more. But the fact remains, it takes them longer than that to make the content.

I think you'll see less shifting without them as now middle becomes the only point worth fighting over. The only reason to go for the sides was their ease of defense. Now that that's gone, it will boil down to who controls the middle. In a typical scenario where you control your left and the other team controls both mid and your right, sending a group to attack right will be problematic. The enemy team knows you can only spawn at the center, so they'll camp just outside the landing area and cut you off from ever getting to right. Your other option would be to go left and then through the tunnel under mid to get to right, but that route will take much longer and give the defending team time to react.

This is simply not true. Bonus areas of most Ch1 planets after Nar Shadaa and all Ch3 planets as well as Hoth have extensive overlap in their questing areas. Tatooine and Alderaan even send both factions on the same quest if you complete the world arc there. I've been through both areas several times and seen many opposite faction players down there. Hoth has a lot of overalp as well. Basically once you're past the first section of the map, it's all overlap area. Voss questing areas are virtually all overlap from the very first quest. Belsavis and Correlia are full overlap past the first section of the map with each faction's spaceport. I will admit, it's easier to notice the overlap areas when you've played both factions to max level as I have. When I leveled up my republic toon at release, I remember an open world, underground area on Hoth in the 2nd section of the map. Both myself and a guildmate were trying to complete several quests in there as well as our class missions while several Imps were in there doing the same. It was back and forth for over an hour while people were coming and going with everyone jumping the other faction while they were still trying to fight mobs. It was great fun and it shows that Bioware went out of their way to make sure that the factions did cross paths at many different points. The problem for anyone leveling now is that the server populations are so low that it's unlikely you'll happen across people like we did at release.

Yeah, that's exactly what I see happening.

You play those classes for a different style of play. Playing a Sentinel is completely different than playing a DPS specced Guardian. However, if you're just going to compare base dps figures, no, there probably isn't a compelling reason to play one over the other.

compare ratings on the vendor mod to the rating number on your equipped item. Since armorings can be put in light, medium or heavy armor, the final armor stat will be different for the same mod depending on what base item you put it in. That's why you have to compare ratings. So look on the hilt, armoring or barrel and there will be a note like "rating 100," that's what you want to compare.

I agree with the OP, I even brought this up during beta. There needs to be a secondary check before the warzone starts to make sure that all 8 players accepted the queue and have zoned into the WZ. If the queue pops for 8 people and only 7 take it, the WZ needs to be delayed until an 8th person can be queued in and ready to go. Also, it has nothing to do with rated WZs or 8 man premades. You can still solo queue or queue as a duo/trio for rated WZs, so the problem will still persist.

BM comms can come from BM bags (daily/weekly missions) or bought with 1000/1000 merc/wz commendations They're bought with columi commendations, daily commendations are a different thing.

In order of lowest to highest, PvP sets are Centurion, Champion and Battlemaster. The items are bought with commendations. Centurion and Champion commendations come from Champion bags which are rewards from Daily/Weekly missions. Battlemaster items require valor rank 60. Tionese -> Columi -> Rakata. Tionese comes from mini-bosses in HMFPs and some bosses in normal mode ops. Columi comes from the end bosses in HMFPs as well as bosses in normal ops. Columi can also be purchased with commendations. Rakata items only come from HM/NMM ops. That works for only mods and enhancements, armorings are locked. This is changing in 1.2. There are top-tier mods, including armoring, that drop from HM/NMM ops. They are rare drops and it will take a long time to get full sets of the exact stats that you want.

And thank the stars for that, but it would still be nice if they made items that actually looked good and that people wanted to use.

A proper pug will have loot rules set at Round-robin with loot quality threshold: premium. This will allow everyone equal amounts of trash drop loots and ensure that everything green quality or better gets an automatic roll. You should always loot any corpse that has loot on it as shown with the colored beacon coming from it. You don't need to wait for the group leader to loot first, order makes no difference. Bosses in hardmode FPs drop commendations/crystals in addition to the regular item drops, but each person in the group needs to loot individually.

The new sets look terrible, I agree.

Well, that assumes everyone selects only 1 warzone to play. There would undoubtedly be some players that select all warzones and some who select more than 1. On the flip side, if there are so few people queuing up to begin with that you have the scenario you're describing, then there are other problems that need to be addressed (server merges or x-server queues).

I agree with OP, we need to be able to select what warzones to play (or to avoid). The idea that allowing this would somehow break the queue system where some warzones don't get played is ridiculous. If specific warzones are being avoided enmass, perhaps they're poorly designed or not as fun as the devs think they are.

They're melee, so they both suck.

IMO, HMFPs are for farming columi gear, not for story. If you're pugging, that's the expectation that I have of the rest of the group. In your case, where you're interested in the story, I think you should run it on normal mode first with a group of friends/guild or other people that want story. It will also go faster on normal mode and you'll get through the story quicker. Either that, or form your own group for HM and tell people that you're not skipping the convos and see how many people join your group. Because there are no HM versions of those flashpoints. Only the main story arc FPs have HM options at level 50. Also, it should be pointed out that most people, myself included, have different expectations of HMFPs compared to normal mode. Running normal modes while leveling, watching the cutscenes is acceptable. Once you're max level and your running HMs of the exact same FPs that you did while leveling up, you should be skipping because you've already seen it.

I think what he's experiencing is when the technicians dispell CC effects on their friends. You have to simultaneously hit all technicians with CC. If even one is not CC'd, he will dispell all of his friends. The surest way to deal with this is to use mind snap and tranq/sleep dart on all but one technician. Since these spells do not start combat, the remaining technician will not dispell. Then have someone force lift or concussive round the 3rd technician and pull the Hunter-creeper.

OP has a valid point. If some guild wants to run ops every night of the week, why hold them back with artificial barriers? To extend play time or subscription time? Please. If your game is fun, it won't matter and if your game is boring, they'll just unsub anyways. I don't think there's any connection between getting geared up and canceling one's subscription. I've played MMOs even when my character was fully geared in 100% BIS gear and I kept playing and subscribing because I liked the game.