Before the patch they generally sold for the cost of an isotope 5 plus 100-120K. Now, I generally see them listed for the cost of an isotope 5 plus 50K. The patch gave so many easy ways to get basic comms that the price of isotope 5's has also gone down a lot so that's another reason for the lower price. I think it can still be a bit profitable but not as much as before.

I have also noticed a signifcant drop in performance since 2.1. Before that, the game ran pretty well on my 2 year old computer. I have the same Graphic Rendering issue. The first day after 2.1 hit was the most pronounced with the guild bank not rendering at all. It has gotten better but it takes significantly longer to render things than they used to. That however is an annoyance. The more serious issue is I have began to notice ability delays and abilities simply not firing. I know people have complained about this before, but I did not have issues prior to 2.1. Since then, especially on Makeb, I have had those delays.

One other thing to consider is if you have a lot of rested xp, you will likely lose that if you hit 50 but you may be able to carry it over if you wait until 2.0 hits.

I haven't spent anything to buy more cartel coins. However, I think I've spent about 10 million of in game credits to get cartel items. I probably spent about 3 million to get 10 packs, 3 million for pets, mounts, etc. and the rest for various convenience unlocks such as cargo bays, inventory, etc.

From a PVE perspective, just looking at the skill tree it's interesting. They potentially give you a reason to use Lightning Strike with the 35 percent extra damage from Wrath, the Lightning Burns proc and the proc that has the 100 percent change to increase your alacrity if you use lightning strike. There is nothing new in the madness tree that helps with force regen but if you invest 7 points in the lightning tree you can get Subversion which increases your force regen rate for 10 percent and stacks up to three times if you use Lightning Strike. Granted you could do that before, but there was little incentive to use Lightning Strike. If you do that however, then you would have to decide between getting the 3 percent extra crit chance in the corruption tree or the 2 percent extra alacrity and the 1 percent extra crit chance. The main concern is that they eliminated the second tier talent in the lighting tree that extended your affliction by 6 seconds which means you will have to reapply that a lot more. Also, it feels like there are a lot of utility talents in the madness tree that you would need to take to get Creeping Terror that are of questionable utility in PVE.

While not innovative quest design, I'm a fan of the dialogue and response for the Republic Balmora bonus series. I thought it had some amusing self referential dialogue about how useless the quest givers were.

For the droid boss, the key thing for the tank is to interrupt incinerate as quickly as you can. That cast puts a stacking DOT on you, up to 3 stacks which is extremely difficult to heal through. if you don't interrupt it in the first second it will start putting stacks of the DOT on you. Now a competent healer should cleanse it if you miss it. Of the numerous LI groups i've been a part of, missing incinerate causes most of the wipes. The second thing is about positioning the boss. With a group of all ranged dps, you can basically tank it in the middle and the lightning balls are not that big of an issue. With melee, they should be able to move away from the boss to drop the orb but I have only rarely been in groups that will be 100% successful. This means you will have to likely move the boss at some point. This is where you may miss an incinerate since your interrupt is only 4 meters. However, the key thing with the droid is to interrupt incinerate or have the healer cleanse it if you miss one. Outside of that there can be a little bit of positioning.

There's a legacy perk that you can buy to get a ship droid that sells a sensor unit that includes various crafting bonuses. I don't know the legacy level but it costs 1 million credits. See the following http://swtor.wikia.com/wiki/2V-R8

The schematics themselves are bind on equip so some people who stocked up may sell them but I imagine you would have to pay a premium for them.

I got a lvl 21 implant schematic drop from investigation about a week ago so they still do come from investigation.

I have an equally geared sorc dps and operative that I do both with. When doing raid dps, I use the lethality tree and parse about as well with both characters. I do find the lack of a consistent gap closer to be a significant detriment if I use the concealment tree because your hardest hitting ability acid blace/backstab has both a positional and a 4 meter requirement. With lethality if the boss jumps away, I have 2 DOTS that I can apply at 30 meter range, cull and weakening blast with no positional requirements at 10 meter range. I can almost always get back within 10 meters in 2 GCD's. Granted, Powertechs, Marauders, and Snipers can do higher dps and if want to join a group that is focused on progression, you are competing against two melee classes that can easily do higher dps. On my sorc in EC HM Kephess I usually parse between 620K and 640K total damage. I do about the same amount with my operative.

Check this thread http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=542342&page=5 Specifically, this quote Q: Any update on plans to convert the non-HM Flashpoints to HM versions? Will there be more Tier 2 Flashpoints? Jesse: We will be creating Hard Modes for all of the Flashpoints that do not have Hard Modes yet. That's something that I'm personally very excited about. As for Tier 2, the Group Finder categories will be reconfigured with the level cap increase so as not to split the Flashpoint queue into two populations. I think the challenge posed by Lost Island has offered a lot of entertainment, but it's also a PUG-killer that doesn't fit into a random mix very well. The newer Hard Modes will be balanced for a more consistent experience, both in terms of difficulty and length, and that should help keep queue times in check.

What I find amusing are people selling 1 molecular programmer for over 100K, presumably hoping people will think they're buying molecular stabilizers.

For solo PVE and HM FP's, I have run this spec. http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#201MZbsMMdRr0zZcMcRsMz.2 It's great for AOEing stuff down in doing dailies and HM FP's. You also never run out of force. For trash mobs, I do force lightning, then insta proc chain lightning followed by a death field. For boss fights it's simple, affliction, force lightning until wrath and then crushing darkness. The disadvantage to this spec is that it is about 10 percent less dps than a full madness or lightning but for solo pve it doesn't matter. As for HM FP's, they have so nerfed the enrage timers that it also should not matter.

I'm not completely sure but aren't crits not shieldable while the defense roll is only versus accuracy.

Yeah was able to pick it up and do it earlier in the week with a character. Tried to do it on another character today and couldn't see it.

I expect them to balance enrage timers around fully augmented campaign instead of unaugmented Rakata. If TFB is any indication, expect soft enrage mechanics when the bosses get around 10 percent.

If we go by past precedent, they usually deploy major game updates on Thursday. Not sure if it will be same with 1.4.

1) I agree to change creeping terror to a faster acting DOT that does the same amount or slightly more damage. Right now it does damage over 15 seconds and gives you a 2 second root every nine seconds. If you change it to it ticking every second for five or six ticks, it would give madness sorcs some form of burst. Now to balance this the cooldown would be increased to the 12-15 second range. Also the root should be increased by one second. This would also have the advantage of making death field use a bit more strategic to take advantage of a crushing darkness/creeping terror combo. 2) Make Thundering Blast uninterruptable. 3) Rework Sith Defiance. Right now it's two points you can put in to reduce damage by 2 percent. I would suggest that it be talented to reduce the lockout duration of static barrier that is cast on yourself by 1 second per point. With the two piece set bonus, it would allow you to cast static barrier on yourself once every 15 seconds.

Except this ability is instant and on a 30 second cooldown (instead of 3 minutes) A full WH sorc will have about 19K health. 15 percent of that is 2.7K. Even as a dps sorc that puts no talent points to make it better, it should reliably heal you for 15 percent in a warzone with a good chance to crit. I think it's a pretty useful cooldown to have. As for PVE, it seems to be a pretty powerful ability for dps sorcs to be able to use consumption and to have this as an extra medpack every 30 seconds.

From a dps sorc perspective, I would say it is a net positive but not by an overwhelming degree. For full madness, the instant heal and the lower cool down of force speed are awesome when combined with the two second root every nine seconds you get from Creeping Terror. For full lightning, it really was not viable for pvp before and I don't think the changes make it truly viable. The damage from Thundering Blast is still pretty pitiful and the procs from this spec do not occur often enough to deal with the headaches of having to be a turret. For lightning/madnes hybrids, it's a wash. Changing backlash from a three second mezz to a three second stun is good but it doubles the resolve value of that skill. If Lightning Effusion further reduces the cooldown of force speed to 10 seconds then it would be great but my suspicion is that they are going to remove the lower cooldown talent from the lightning effusion skill. Electric bindings is less useful because it's no longer a 360 degree ability. The greatest concern is that it buffs two classes, concealment operatives and dps commandos which were probably even weaker than sorcs and makes them more powerful. Before, it was relatively easy to keep operatives at range because they had no viable gap closer. Now they do. While commandos had greater burst than sorcs, I won most one on one battles with them because I could interrupt their hard hitting skills while they could not interrupt me.

I think you can heal comfortably up to Taral 5. Especially if you lvl in the Telekinetic tree which has great force management, the 20 percent extra absorb by your force armor and kinetic collapse which really helps against the trash mobs. Maelstrom Prison can be a little tricky and is a bit more healing intensive but doable if the group knows what they're doing.

I think you are going to run into significant force issues with that build. If you want to do some off healing, only putting two points into the healing tree to lower your dark infusion to a 2.5 second base is good enough if you're not going to get innervate. I use this hybrid build for both pvp and for Tier 1 flashpoints. Keep in mind I use this build mainly for dps but have main healed hm fp's with it. http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#201MZccMMdRr0zZcMcRsMz.2 It allows you to clear trash really quickly with force storm, followed by chain lightning and deathfield. As for healing, having lightning effusion means I rarely run out of force and the backlash from your static barrier is great for trash. I also find Polarity Shift to be a versatile skill that will lower your dark infusion to around 1.7 to 1.8 seconds or increase the damage of your force lightning.