Like they tell us in advance when the transfer system is going to be down for maintenance?

I concur. Bioware should institute a lock on the players in groupfinder that prevents them from logging out during an Op. I had NO idea this had been allowed in 2.0. Shameful. Lock those people in until the last boss is down, like before! Because... That IS what you're saying, right?

"...or look thru hundreds of silly combinations till he finds one." Yeah. I think he covered that.

TL-DR=If I can't roll anyone else 1v1 with minimal effort and only half my cooldowns, class is broken and my dollars walk. Lemme guess, WoW got your business as you played your pally/DK in Season 5? Ah, the good ol' days...

Hm. I've Sacrificed and then Sith-racial Punished Khem Val for hours on end whenever he's disapproved of my light-side decisions. He truly loves it. Well, big guy, looks like 1.2 puts an end to all that! Damn you, BioWare! (I, for one, am OK. It's the unfortunate legacy of MMO forums past that people feel the need to fight tooth and nail for every perceived bit of "unfairness" they see coming down the pipe. Inq/Con are still plenty strong.)

You don't "crouch," you use" take cover." You missed your place in the DPS pecking order and forgot about those poor, poor Sentinels. You think you have no way to control a melee that is on you. You seem to think that being a "sniper" should mean you can kill someone before they complete the run to you (and you often can, if you pick better spots)... As regards your quoted assertion, no, you don't, and no, I wouldn't. Your mistake is in thinking, "I can't imagine there being anything about Gunslingers that I don't already know!" instead of realizing that the amount of info you don't even know that you don't know far outweighs what you do. If you just don't like the playstyle (cover mechanic, whatever), go Commando/Merc. Otherwise, spend some time getting to know your Gunslinger better, with an open mind, and don't assume that you've got it all "figured out." None of us are where we can learn nothing more.

No, they don't. All crafting skills POSSESS a supporting gathering and mission skill, and you can't take more than one crafting skill, but there the restrictions end.

=/... SWTOR hasn't been out for three years. Do you mean to say that, in your mind, you've just lumped SWTOR into WoW (or whatever MMO you're coming from... sounds like WoW) and are thinking that lightsabers got added into the mix somewhere along the way? New game, new game developers. If you want to do your rant, fine. That's probably in large part why designers provide these forums - to give folks a place where they can let off steam without disrupting the game as a whole - but try to at least contain your comments and observations to the game you're currently playing. Bioware doesn't know and to a large extent likely doesn't care what the folks in Irvine or wherever did 3 years ago. They have a plan to implement in, oh lessee, their SECOND CONTENT PATCH EVER, and it may work or it may not. Prolly not, but still, too many people predicting Armageddon are less likely to be listened to, not more likely.

That would be great, except it's wrong. When you state that offhand accuracy is main hand accuracy minus 33%, what you're saying is that offhand accuracy is 33% less than main hand accuracy. That is NOT the same as main hand accuracy minus .33. .33 is one third (rounded down) of 1. You are subtracting a fraction of one. I'm sure I'd be real impressed that you were speccing engineer IRL, if I wasn't speccing physicist. What you're studying to be doesn't make the math right. If it's not your math, stop defending it. If it is your math, look at it and fix it. THAT'S what an engineer would do when presented with a problem in their calculations. You do know you'll be working in teams, right? If offhand accuracy is 67% of mainhand accuracy, then it is mainhand accuracy times 2/3, ROUNDED UP (so it's not 66.666666666...). And if you're a STEM student and don't just intuitively see that... Well, wow. Where you're going wrong is in this "at soft cap" thing. You seem to be interested in an equation where a=1.0, or 100%, and then subtracting .33 from that. The problem with that is twofold. First, while .33 of 1.0 may be a third of that value, it is NOT a third of any other value of a. Which brings us to the second problem. In that situation, you are treating a as a CONSTANT (1.0), NOT a variable. If you were treating it as a variable, you would multiply it by 2/3 so that it winds up being 67% (rounded up) of ANY value a. And the only way you're gonna differentiate in terms of a and get anything that means anything is if a is a variable. Do you see? 'Cuz if you don't, PLEASE consider liberal arts. =P

This is 100% (That's times 1.0) correct. If you're going to set up an equation and say there is a 2/3 modifier to a variable, you would NEVER simply subtract an approximated value for 1/3. You're subtracting 1/3 of 1! What if it isn't 1 that you need to modify? Plus, when you differentiate, that subtracted value GOES TO ZERO, while when you are multiplying by 2/3 the a goes to 1 and you are left with 2/3... That is simply gone done the first way. Also, it will affect the final answer as when you distribute your .3 you're not multiplying into a term that is then multiplied, you are multiplying into a term that is subtracted... and that disappears when it shouldn't in the derivative. This reduces your eventual final answer significantly... by a factor of .1, as it turns out. Look, it's natural to feel the grass is greener on the other side. There are legitimate gripes GS can have about their Imp counterpart's abilities. Instant EP and a non-stop-us-in-our-tracks-while-the-kick-goes-off stun are real downers when you don't have them. Also, as there is greater spikiness to the GS damage (individual hits will be greater or lesser depending on off-hand hits/crits), it may seem unimportant to realize that they will average out over time. But, please, don't quote bad math and say "This proves it!" There may be a few of us on these forums who can set up a differentiation to determine rate of change with respect to accuracy. And as smart players choose GS... =P

I wondered how his ability would stack up. Oh, well. Creepy Dr. Jekyll it is, then... =P

THIS!!! Oh, GAWD please tell me that he doesn't do this running around... Because, to be honest, Dr. Lokin kinda creeps me out... So, I've been thinking of dragging the droid out of the yacht to play.

At some point they must have changed the way Accuracy works. In beta it was hit rating to 100% and spell pen where it lowered resistances after 100%. Now it seems to be armor pen over 100%. So, maybe they altered the stat but haven't updated the gear to reflect it?

Handlebars. She's a Twi'lek. My sniper is Ranged. Go figure.

To put this into simple math terms, if you build up by only choosing one side's points, we'll say light, it will take you a time period to reach 10,000 points. To switch to the other extreme, you must first build the other side, dark side, to 10,000 points. Now you're neutral again. Then, you have to chew through all 10,000 of those light side points you still have (by getting "more" dark side points, which just removes light side points) until, in essence, you've gotten 20,000 dark side points. So, from a pure ratio, you'll do twice as much to get to the other side as you did getting where you are. In a practical sense it will be harder than that, because you were were probably running lots of missions as you leveled the first time around and you won't be able to do that as you change sides. Have fun!

There are 3 specs for Gunslinger, and it's worth pointing out that there are vast differences between the three. As a sharpshooter you will nuke like no tomorrow but you are a slave to cover. You will be more mobile with Saboteur and do crazy AOE damage. Dirty Fighting is DOTs DOTs DOTs with some melee buffs tossed in so you can get your "Dang I wish I could stealth!" scoundrel on. There are specs and discussion in the GS forums. The main thing, and I could catch some heat for this but momma I ain't a-skeered... The main thing is that GS takes a bit more work to get the most out of than commando. With the trooper you have some wonky cooldowns to deal with, but that's kind of it. With GS it's dealing with cover; are my damage reducing buffs still up, or should I re-cover? Wait, before I uncover, did I actually fire my insta-Charged Burst? 'Cuz I'll lose it if I move first! With GS you find that you are actually LOOKING for logs/tables/stationary cantina girls in-game so you can hit crouch behind them (thus not rolling into cover, rolling through the world and falling to your death). Depending on how much you want to have to put into your character, it's either challenging and fun or too tedious to bother with. And that's honestly what should determine this for you. Do you WANT to have to deal with the cover mechanic and it's good and bad points, do you want to be useless without the stealth opener and be whacked by the nerf bat every time it's swung, or do you want to be a heavy armored melee/range armored destructo-bot, with all the good and bad points that do into that? Search your heart.

Shouldn't it be "respesh" then, phonetically? THIS DISTINCITION IS IMPORTANT! GR!

Oh, just go on and count rakghouls with Corso for a while. Daddy needs to get his frakk on.

This IS the way MMOs CLAIM to be balanced. Pure DPS classes should out-DPS hybrids. To be balanced any other way is to risk being slightly outgunned by them with a new gear/spec change and wind up being shut out of raids completely. Who's going to bring a sub-par DPS who can't even off-heal or off-tank (or, in our case, who can't even CC or provide a unique buff that a sawbones can't also provide). Seeing them actually balanced this way in practice, that is another story...

OP is right on. I have more fun (purely my opinion) playing smuggler; the animations and moves are certainly a big part of that. But it comes at a cost that it really shouldn't in terms of ability delay. It's a situation that's comparable to the animation-and-activation speed disparity in Project/Shock, another one where the Republic comes up short... or rather long. I suppose if there were examples where the imbalance went against the Empire things might even out in the long run... Can anyone think of any?

Seemed to make perfect sense before you hit "enter," didn't it? Don't worry, there's an edit button for that.

Reroll and join the 10% of us who don't feel a Freudian need to be clutching a large, glowing phallus ingame. That will solve your issue, guaranteed.

Apparently, troopers engaging in forum warfare have very high defensiveness ratings...

The problem I think the other poster was alluding to is that in SWTOR there is far less class differentiation than there was in WoW. A double Operative/Smuggler team gives you a pair of the sneakiest, burstiest class in the game... AND they bring heals? You can talk about skill all you want, but it will be season 5 (DK/Pally, dual DK, dual Pally) all over again. WoW claimed to not be balanced 1v1, but I guess to be balanced 2v2 and up? SWTOR doesn't make that claim, and can't. Might as well name the 2s bracket Operatarena if it happens.

Well, going back to the original films, the Empire's uniforms and the name "stormtrooper" have Nazi German influences, but giving the characters a German accent would have been over the top. Going British gave the analogy with another empire and didn't single out the Germans any more than had already been done. Believe it or not, we are over the whole Stamp Act thing and have moved on. I imagine it's more that Britain actually HAD an empire, so the accent was used. Own your history with pride, Brits. It's certainly worthy of it. Don't push Lucas' use of the comparison off on the "spiteful colonials."