Darth Baras is the reason the dark council cantina no longer features a buffet.

And the empire subsequentely isolates corellia, making the win practically meaningless (black hole questline) and shutting down their ability to contribute to the war. Furthermore, the empire is in a situation where they are about to unify, and its quite clear that the reason the republic is winning is due to how divided the empire has been lately; A truly unified empire would be a completely different matter, which the ending cinematic of Makeb insinuates. It is likely that we will see the republic suffer some truly major blows in the next expansion. Right now, the alliance is set to be on the offensive, and not expecting that they are about to throw their forces against ready and fully armed isotope-5 defenses instead of the disorganized empire they are used to, and it seems Marr is planning some major counterattacks to exploit the chaos that will ensue once the republic attack falters and begins disintegrating. I am also confused by the entire talk of hutt-republic; Empire had the option to negotiate with the hutts, and the empire forged strong tied with some hutts during the agent storyline, and really, since when was an alliance with a hutt a good thing? According to the jedi path, the war after the treaty of coruscant lasted a thousand years, so we can pretty much confirm that our characters will not see the end of the war in their lifetime (convenient for bioware ), and we still have not reached some of the major turning points of the war, which apparently did a complete 180 several times.

So, what would happen if you were to pack up said sith in a torpedo and shoot her into a star? And, while the person can be shielded, it seems like dealing the amount of damage usually needed to kill said person would be enough to at least put them out of action for a while? Or are we just assuming that every SI in swtor is a god that cannot be defeated without knowing the counteritual?

Hey, I would gladly trade! I couldn't get my collectors with all the awesome physical extras because they were completely sold out!

Just got out of a match with 5-6 healers, they won purely by being immortal. The main problem of healing in pvp right now are not the healing quantities, but the fact that you cannot shut it down effectively in any way. Unlike other MMO's, interrupts in swtor do not shut down the entire healing school, but only the specific heal in question, which in turn means that a healer who is interrupted simply casts another heal without actually losing any healing as such. In other games, a succesfull interrupt sets a healer back by at least 2 seconds. This in turns means that currently a lone healer can be focused on by two dpsers bursting their all on him, and he can simply heal his way through it, which is not the way it should be. Yes, he should be able to outheal or at least match the dps of a single person, but 2 people should be able to overtake him and it should never be impossible for a person to kill another. Another problem is the lack of in-combat CC on some classes. Most all CC breaks on dmg which again prevents you CCing and nuking down a healer, and the unleash+knockback+shields of some healers mean they can keep countering you to infinity, especially as I have yet to meet a class with knockback that did not take the talent to root on said knockback. So, either reduce amount of healing done, or at least give dpsers some actual options for countering healers, beyond just reducing said healing by a measly 20%. Of course, healing is far from being as big a problem for the pvp in this game as the disproportionate distribution of CC and CC countering, but that is an entirely different discussion.

I get where you are coming from, but the problem here is that it makes NO sense in terms of the story being told and the developement of the character. If it was a natural consequence of the choises, sure, it would be understandable. However, light side Jaesa finds herself in a spot where she has found the groun beneath her crumble and the reality she thought she had, revealed as lies and people just trying to use her. The way the story develops, you become her new foundation and help her find her way again, she goes from serving you as your apprentice, to eventually warming up more and more and going from respect into proper friendship and creating a bond of trust with the sith. Just take the scene where Pierce walks in on them, i found that to be one of the most telling moments in terms of the relationship between the characters, and the way the characters move closer and closer, not beng able to romance her actually felt waaaay more out of character as the story had been following a natural developement in that direction. Some people say "jedi dont date", but she is NOT a jedi, and there is not at any point given any indication that she hasn't potentially developed feelings beyond merely being close friends. Again, if the story supported it, like them having a heartfelt talk about why they should just be friends, or hell, even a throwaway line with her smiling and going "you know, if love wasn't forbidden, i might fall for you." would have been all that was needed to have the story make sense. Right now, it just ends in the middle of it all and without a proper resolution. By contrast, the actual only romance option for light-side SW's is one that ends up feeling forced and fake and where the story more supports the "friends" direction that gets forced down our throats with Jaesa. Interestingly, in discussing romances, it is insanely common to hear people describe vette as "more like a little sister", and the story is kept at a distance where you dont see the feelings develop, they just suddenly pop up because the story demands at least one romance option, and the logical one isn't available. In short, the problem isn't the story, but that IT MAKES NO SENSE IN TERMS OF THE STORY BEING TOLD.

Well, Marauder DID use heavy armour originally, which is why most of the preview material for the game feaures marauders in gear they can never wear and up until 1.2 almost all NPC marauders wore armour that was impossible for actual marauders to wear. Hell, why you think marauders dont get LS/DS items? This was effectively a last minute change, although not sure why they did it as most initial marauder concerns would have been solved by it, and to this day our aestetics suffer due to that change. So I'll re-pose the original question, as it is something that baffles me: Why did they change it so marauders cant use heavy armour?

Hmm, WoW, wasn't that the game that lost around 1.8 MILLION players (1 in 6 players!) last year and is expected to face even bigger losses ths year? The game that last i heard got evicted from MLG due to pvp imbalance and whose main pvp was a glorified duel, in spite them in 2005 explaining why that very pvp system would never work in an mmo? Seriously, look up the blizzcon where the original wow dev team explain why deathmatches don't work in an mmo and why they decided to not include gurubashi arena. Now, returning to the discussion at hand, the entire situation is sadly also a bit of a catch 22: - You need some form of progression in order to give people an incentive to play said content and feel like they are getting somewhere. - But you cannot allow progression to be too high, or we get what we had in wow where it becomes impregnable to new players simply due to the gear gap. - But if you base it purely on stats, pve gear will be more powerfull and make the rewards from pvp pointless, and likewise if you make pvp gear too good for pvp, it becomes a way to skip pve progression. -So, to ensure that pvp gear is more viable than pve gear, you include expertise, which then means that anyone without it ends up being kinda screwed. So, you either sacrifice a sense of progression and reward, or you wind up in a situation where gear becomes the center of balance rather than skill. Personally, I would prefer a system where gear would be purely cosmetic (let's ignore that the cosmetics for marauders are a cesspit in this game ), however from a Dev's point of view, i can see why it would take away incentive to actually do the pvp. Although as pointed out by others, MOBA games have had no progression as such for years and still work, however they also provide a more varied experience. I love myself some akali, but having to play only her would get old after a while and it would certainly lead to a faster burnout. In an mmo, you typically have 1 main, and that means that you cannot rely on the same variation as MOBA's to keep interest going. Ideally, they should leave normal pvp where it is, but at least make all stats equal in ranked pvp, as the entire model of competitive gaming based on gear just screams frustations and fail, especially as the gear gap will increase drammatically over time. We are looking at this from the point of view of a 4 month old game, but we also need to consider the effects of the current model a year or two from now. In my opinion, the outlook is not so good.

So, uhm, why is this an issue? Battlemaster was purely timerelated. Not only that, but due to the way items worked, there was a huge gap between attaining your champion gear and up to battlemaster that just felt like a huge grind that wasn't related to individual skill. As others have noted, it is not that huge a speed boost, and the little it is just helps to reduce the amount of time spent grinding levels instead of grinding to get the gear (which feels a lot more rewarding than just playing warzones to get that level you need in order to buy the gear in the first place)

I have run battles with HOUNDREDS of people on screen on an old trash computer back in the Tarren mill vs Southshore back in the day, and you are saying that modern computers shouldn't be able to run 30 players on illum? Hell, a game like WAR again we needed to get into the houndreds of people before getting huge slowdowns. While I don't claim that they are the same engines, or directly comparable graphics wise (swtor has had art direction of it for once, something which WAR never seemed to have ><) it doesn't make up for why there should be such a huge discrepancy in what the games can run before lagging, especially when those two games were running on computers that nowadays wouldnt work as trash compactors. Being able to play stuff like witcher 2, Crysis 2, and Shogun 2 flawlessly, yet even loading a single republic player on illum causes the game to stutter and almost fall over dead. Once we get to several players, its unplayable, and 10+ republic players it just goes into stupid territory. Most of the time the only thing i can do is: Target one guy in the middle of them, charge, smash, pop camouflage and run like hell, hoping i tagged someone who is about to die, why, because i cant actually play when the game drops to a 3-4 FPS slideshow. Notable moments of slowdown: - Capturing points, almost causes the game to have an instant heartstroke, prolly from updating quests and buffs all over the place if i was to give an unqualified guess? - Loading any republic players. It loads imperial players just fine though. But even a single republic player causes major slowdowns. - Whenever a kill is made. Might be related to the damn thing insisting on printing on screen how much valour you get, as well as put it in the chat log, whatever the reason, killing people also cuases major slowdowns and FPS drops. Now, I will be the first to say that I am no expert on programming, but at first glance it seems that the engine has issues loading enemy players and it seems like both objective capture and killing awards are simply doing too much stuff at the same time. Clean up the damn place. We dont need the chatlog or the floating text to tell us how much valour we get. And while it looks fancy when a point is captured and im sure oyu love the quest log, both are unneccesary. Get rid of having to update quests each time it changes hands, we can look at the map. And pretty animations for captures are pointless if they mean that the place becomes unplayable. [rage mode] I hear that WAR employees will work for food, hire some of them and get them to tell you how to put a world pvp engine together already!

And you don't have any problems with how SI's can use their sprint to JUMP THE BRIDGE gap, thus allowing them to cap the 2nd set of doors without defenders being abel to do anything about it because they are unable to reach the zone and defend it because bridges are not up yet?!

Since almost everything that needed to be said has been said, but Bioware as a rule don't consider sith warriors worthy of their time: /Signed.

Keep in mind that if you are a lightside sith warrior, you can ONLY romance Vette (yes, i know there is a way around it, but that would be a spoiler ^^). Anyway, so far I have put all interaction with Vette on hold, in the hope that they may implement a Jaesa romance later.

A major issue for Marauders is how NONE of their gear looks like; the progression video, the trailers, screenshots, NPC marauders, or even what most asociate with sith. Are there any plans to adress this, what was the thought process behind the change in marauder looks?

Simply revert us to the beta with heavy armour and give us force pull back. Force pull would give us the ability to get targets to us and help control the battlefield without simply being yet another knockback, hell, it might even make us usefull in huttball, and allow us to counter CC spam: Initiate with charge, they blow one CC, we can break it and pull, they block their next CC which knocks us back and roots us, at least now we have the option to charge and stay in contact rather than merely stand around looking like fools getting shot in the face while waiting for the root to end because unleash is on 2 minute CD ><. It would also mean that we got a little more to do in huttball than simply get knocked down and be unable to do anything but stand and watch while ranged classes can still contribute even if knocked down. As for heavy armour, said it before, will say it again, it will both solve our item issues in hardmodes, give us our looks back that some of us rolled this class for in the first place, and give us a little more survivability without going over the top.

I found that the SW story was just overall incredibly well done, although it does have it's low points. I played through it as a lightside sith warrior and I just plain love how even as lightside you are a bastard, just a manipulative bastard instead of a mindles murder machine. And while the story is pretty much classic star wars sith story, I think that is in part what makes it work, even if it is predictable at times. However that also means that it becomes incredibly satisfying when you get to detour from the "classic" story arc or get the chills as the realisation of others. Yes the final confrontation is something you know will happen before you even complete a single quest, but they still build it up to make it satisfying when it happens. More than anything, i found that once you get to tattooine the story for lightside sith goes from good to outright amazing, and most of the satisfaction also comes from how the rest of the galaxy reacts to youl. Then came the end of act 1 and the character developements there for lightside easily made it one of my favorite RP videogame moments ever! Chapter 2 got pretty slow and felt more like an interlude than anything, especially towards the end, however chapter 3 brought it all nicely together and tied all the loose ends, especially since by the time you get to the third act you are still dealing with character you have known for a long time and it feels like a personal story rather than simply "bad guy needs to be stopped.", you have a personal investement in seeing bad or good things happen to these people, including your crew members. So far, from what I have seen only the trooper story act 1 (not through it yet) managed to tell a story that got me as hooked on what would happen next, whereas the consular story was just blah, and while the smuggler story is good fun, i don't feel an investement in the characters there, and the same thing goes for the IA so far, you do it because you are told, not because it carries significance for your character whereas the SW story is all about your character and his story.

Actually, if only we looked like sauron, towering black metal, that would be frigging awesome for final set, the problem is, we don't. We got a Red/Grey hood, and shoulders that look like a badly made cosplay, hell, we got a frikking spine sticking out, it doesn't look menacing, it just looks silly! I can understand that they were going for a "war mode" looks for us in lategame gear, as this is not during a period where the Sith need to keep themselves undercover or hidden, but problem is that the gear we are given doesn't even quite work under those premises. An example what does work are the sets ive seen Jedi guardians run around in, basically a combination of the normal robes with armoured plating underneath, like a robe over what Obi-wan was wearing during the clone wars and I kinda like that look, it goes for a more war-feel while keeping it familiar, and likewise the warriors in the CGI trailers look absolutely awesome, however for some reason, that very look is not available to us, and I think the designers simply went over the top when if fact they could easily have gotten away with a more simplistic look. Right now our gear progression starts with a normal suit, then add in the cloak and increase from there, moving up to imperial guard look, but problem is, those are GUARDS and the only thing I have not seen them use are dual lightsabers! So it makes no sense whatsoever, not to mention the imperial guard is made up of people who aren't force wielders. Want a progression for the marauder? Here, i'll cook one up with 30 seconds of thought: Training outfit Simple robe and hood Robe and hood with armour under it Final extreme "all out war" stage, maybe then shed the armour but have us look big, black, and unstoppable, and still keep the cape! There, easily done, so I really wonder why they insist on having us run around in outfits that look waaay too busy and colourfull, I just hope that they are reading this and that the next set of gear we will get will try to make us look like, you know, sith.

You.Have.Got.To.Be.Kidding.Me! Directive 7 spoiler. Are they making a sport of it by now? ><

Wow, someone in this thread decided to take a base for a good discussion and spam it with "you lose!" without giving any constructive reasoning to it. Anyway, the reason why going for a single tree is usually preferable is because it specializes in a single aspect and thus the talents synergize with each other, the whole becomes greater than the sum of it's parts so to speak, and the top end of each talent tier also tends to be more powerfull than the mid or lower end talents, so going for a hybrid build can lock you out of some of your trademark, more powerfull, moves. Although, I could see how a carnage crossed with annihilation build might work well as carnage gives you more hits, stronger rage powers and force scream, while from annihilation you could grab the selfheal and dots from deadly saber. Deadly saber combined with Ataru form, hm.... Anyway, one cannot simply dismiss hybrid builds, during vanilla wow i created a hybrid shaman build that combined restoration and elemental to DEMOLISH anything in pvp, to the point where I got whispers after games asking me to stop killing so much, and in terms of swtor i have seen at least one hybrid SI build that got absolutely obscene. So, I'd say try it out, mix and see if there is a build buried in there that people just aren't noticing due to fixating on one tree.

Actually, those are the opposites of my impressions so far. Mostly regarding the survivability i still find that even pulling off all my moves correctly by now, the anni marauder is WAAAAAAY more squishy than Carnage ever was, mostly due to the heals being too little too slow. It's a lot better when beserk finally starts kicking in, however the biggest problem there is that it requires you to use 8 rage abilities to get it activated, which with the already abyssmal rage use to gain ratio for annihilation seems to more often than not result in your being dead before finally getting there. As for healing, so far ive seen that you are absolutely correct, if you are punching a healer, but if you are attacking someone with a healer nearby (like punching a healer with another healer) it seems to be the exact opposite, that they apparently have an easier time healing the slow damage of annihilation than the bursts I can throw at them with carnage, mostly because the target can still move as opposed to being permarooted and because I can't spam my abilities for constant damage the same way I can with carnage, the dps also suffers from enemy damage reduction meaning that most dots seem to tick for a measly 2-300, while annihilate only deals around 3000 damage, which is aprox the same damage i can pump out with my force scream on carnage, only on a lower cooldown and with more damage in between to back it up. By the way, "not able to do anything productive" you seem to forget about the enemy CC Or you have been lucky enough to meet enemies that aren't as intelligent as mine, as they always seem to have a flashbag, a root, or a knockdown ready to use, especially right after unleash. Well timed CC can easily break up the rythm of the annihilation rotation from what ive experienced so far. Losing GCD and rage to deadly saber is also a problem in terms of how fluid the build feels so far but one which I imagine you would get used to over time, so far my main gripes with the playstyle are still the same: squishy, slow, and lacks any CC compared to carnage, which is especially a problem in huttball where you cannot afford to wait for your abilities to all go off and where i find that i miss being able to root my target for up to 10 seconds without giving them any resolve from it, especially during the final stretch to your finish line. As another note, being used to the passive +15% movement speed buff carnage has also makes moving around with the class feeling a bit cumbersome, but in return charge is so much better 5th game so far, slow queue this morning.

Because it's written for people who think before they reply. By giving both a first impression as well as an impression of how things are later on when you have gotten a better hold of it allows for comparison and thus a clearer picture of whether enjoyment anf effectivenesss of a build is connected to the build itself or to the player simply not being used to it. "Before: its crap, After: its going better now" gives more info than "midway: meh, it's average". Also, maybe there was quite a clear reason as to why i noted TWICE that it was an absolute first impression, and noting that I have played carnage for over a month? Maybe next time you want to actually read the post before simply jumping to conclusions and calling someone lame for it? So far im on my third warzone, handling of the rotation has gotten better, but not to the point where I am ready to write a followup yet, although I am still baffled by what you guys see in it, still waaaaay too slow in dmg for me.

Ok, after all this discussion, I decided to give annihilation a try. Note that this is an absolute first pvp impression, and I have been playing carnage since day 1. So far annihilation seems like an absolutely HORRIBLE specc in pvp. - So rage-starved its not even funny, I canhardly ever use my abilities at all, whereas as carnage, i go in and throw nonstop attacks for easily up to 3-5 mins in large fights without interruption, in part thanks to ravage which i wont even consider using as annihililation as annihilitation's only root is charge. - No CC, charge stops the enemy for a bit sure, force choke doesnt count as you cant attack in the meantime, but it is increadibly frustrating not being able to keep your enemy standing still while you carve their face in. As Carnage i can keep an enemy fixed in place for most of the fight through a combo of Charge, Saber throw, and ravage, here they just CC me and run away. - No burst, all of Annihilation's attacks are based around dots, this means that you dont see an immidieate return on your abilities but have to wait until the damage manifests, this means that the enemy have time to attack you back and dont have to deal with the psychological aspect of seeing your health bar bursted. Some will point to how annihilate has large burst, but here is the catch: you can't use it! Force charge in itself does NOT give enough rage to use annihilate and so it's delegated to being your third attack at earliest, which in many pvp fights is just too late, whereas as mentioned above, once you start a fight with carnage you burst all the time and right from the start. - No survivability! This is my biggest gripe with annihilation, you go into a fight and instantly blow up, so far I seem to be dying more than twice as fast as I would with carnage, which is probably caused by a mix of the enemy running around as much as they damn please and a reliable on aoe damage since they don't have to actually target us with aoe, which if it is the case also means that they deal a 30% less damage against a carnage marauder most of the time due to defensive roll. Yes annihilation has force camouflage (which cant be used while stunned, so once every 2 mins especially if you blow your unleash early, oh and attacking breaks the immunity) and in theory heals from dots, but the problem is that 1% unreliable heal from a dot that needs time to actually work simply isn't a viable counter for the insane burst put out by enemies and so ends up not even being a factor most of the time! Beserk would help, but beserk requires you to throw out 8 rage-use abilities before it can be accessed. Again, in pvp this almost never comes into play, and in pve you aren't supposed to be taking damage anyway except from aoe, which, surprise, is reduced by defensive roll. This was a completely first impression, but so far i HATE this build and it seems to be weaker in every regard (including fun) compared to carnage. Will update later when I have gotten into the rythm of it, but i doubt i will be able to last until tonight without going back to Carnage.

Any update on this?

Sith warrior and JK spoiler: in short: see you on the dark side, suckers!

Bioware said it best themselves why respecc is necessary. Check the video on the very first page: "It's a huge decision and we don't want you to make the wrong one and end up being stuck with it." Even they recognised that you could not at level 10 know 100% which pick was the right one for you, and they also had the best solution back then: First time you respecc, it's not overly expensive. After that, costs a helluva lot of money. This in turn keeps you from swapping on the fly and limits it to only cases where you really have ended up picking the wrong sub-class for your character. Also, there is a reason talent trees can be changed, say you rolled a juggernaught and picked vengeance tree because you wanted to DPS rather than tank, and couldn't respecc at all, would you be equally happy with that? Because that is exactly the same thing as picking if you want to go Tanking or healing with your trooper for instance.