that may very well be, but even with settings at low, I still only squeak above 30fps, whereas low settings outside of bonethrasher's pit will pretty much keep me at 60fps (again with vsync on). so basically they can kill the stupid bloom effects on the ring of acid to at least not make it unplayable without changing our settings, and then figure out where we are losing the remaining 33-50% of our framerate to. I get that this is an art thing and not a programmer thing... I just can't believe that no one tested the area with high settings on and didn't come away with "wow! I just lost half of my framerate!"

Wow... so I play the game with vsync on and high settings on everything, and maintain around 45-60fps in the entire game. like everywhere. It might go down to 30fps or a little less in fleet. But for the most part I am very happy with my performance. I have a Core i5-750, 8GB, and a 5770 1GB. But man, as soon as you are dropped into Bonethrasher's pit, my poor computer struggles to even hit 15fps, most of the time landing between 10-12fps. I look around and for the life of me can't figure out why, in an 8man raid in an enclosed space, I get a worse framerate than on like correlia or fleet! So come on guys. fix whatever it is in bonethrasher's pit that's killing our computers (another guild member with a high end system get 80-100 everywhere, and it drops to under 40fps in the pit, and he's on an nvidia card)

I used to be on the "no add ons" crowd. Then again I play naked WoW with the exception of DBM. but man... this game needs add ons. There are so many deficiencies in this game's engine and UI that if they just opened the UI to mods, at least then the community could fix some of this crap. no /roll or /random the GCD visual that they seem to be pissing off one side or the other with every change they make the stupid little bugs in there like sprint defaulting to off when you die (I know this has been changed) or your companion not summoning sometimes when you get off a speeder or flight path. or lag causing your distance to not bring abilities now in range inside of range, etc. I get people who don't want healbot or an easy button... that's fine and all (though nothing is forcing you to use it, just like I'm not forced to use it in wow). but man... there are so many things wrong with this ui that we need to be able to mod it just to fix the serious issues.

So what the heck? Guild is trying not to implement DKP, EPGP, loot council. Most of the time this is working great. But yeah, there are times that 2-3 people want a single drop. All are fine with a random roll. OH WAIT! No random rolls in this game! But hold on, there is a random function on the master looter function. Random................. nice smuggler offhand there going to the trooper. come on bioware. /roll. who gives a **** if it's in other MMOs. Who cares if it's not original. Who cares if it "facilitates casinos". Give us a god damn /roll. And I'm sorry for being so pissed off about this... but the above story is true. three smugglers all willing to take their chances, master looter (against our better judgment with this game's track record) selects random on the god damn Rakata scattergun, and a trooper gets it. hope he likes the Enhancement on there at least.........

possibly the most insane thread ever. I have three republic characters level 30 or higher with one 50. I have two sith characters both under 10. I simply can't motivate myself to play empire or be interested in playing it. omg I'm an anomaly. :\ some people like to play good guys. some people like to play losers enjoy.

there's a very specific reason for this. Boss A has an enrage timer of 5 minutes and health of 2M hit points. This means that to kill the boss, the group has to be doing 6.666K dps. Now the problem is, when a change goes in for PvP and carries over to PvE, these stats on the boss don't change. The raid still needs 6.666K dps to down the boss. Now if the raid was at say 6.8K dps, and a class takes a 30% hit to dps on one ability that does 30% of their total damage, and there are say two raid members of that class, these two members have now seen a 9% reduction in their DPS. assuming two tanks, two healers and 4 DPS, the RAID has now seen a decrease of 4.5% taking it down to 6.5K dps, or, not enough to beat the enrage timer. and there it is in a nutshell guys. PvP changes suck for PvE, because PvE is tuned for x dps, and when that dps drops the PvE content isn't re-tuned for the new amount.

I'm fine with the new one, and IMHO is the best GCD effect they've had, EXCEPT that the icons underneath are too dark, so I can't see what's off of CD during the GCD refresh. If they take off the darkening of the icons during the GCD reveal this IMHO would be the best bar yet for the game.

I see complaints about the new ability bar. IMHO it's almost perfect, and even though there's a huge glaring flaw, it's still better than previously (which is saying a lot). The huge flaw is that the icons are now so dark during GCD that you can't see what WILL be available off of GCD. I personally do like the new effect. I'm not saying it's perfect and I get some of the complaints, but I think the contrast works well for the GCD. What I am simply asking for is essentially don't darken the icons underneath while GCD scrolls down. Then I can see what's off of CD, what's proced, and what's neither. Close guys... just a little bit more and you'll have it.

craftable implants are BOE. it provides no advantage to biochems. craftable rakata gear is BOP meaning only the crafter can use it. and I covered that the ear piece for cybertech was only one. but they also get grenades... cybertech is basically like engineering in WoW.. very tough to take 1:1 against the other professions because of all of the non-stat perks. vanity vehicles, grenades, etc. I'm a scrapper smuggler, and honestly, you are throwing money away. If your op is only getting a boss down to 60%, your adrenal was wasted. If your op wiped during the first burn phase, your adrenal was wasted. If you can't be near guaranteed to make it to the second burn phase of a boss, using an adrenal on the first burn phase is a waste. and any raid leader who "requires" adrenals to be used every burn phase and pre-potted on every pull is a moron if the boss hasn't been downed and isn't near being downed. look at it this way.. adrenals (or pots.. this is OLD math) basically contribute around 2-5% DPS PER PERSON on CD. This means if every DPS pre-pots and pots for burn perfectly, raid DPS goes up 5%. It also means if you are the only one doing it in a fight, raid DPS goes up only 1.25%. Are you 5% away from killing the boss? are you 1.25% away from killing the boss? If you guys aren't close in killing the boss, you are wasting them. Now it's your money to waste... and you certainly saw this in wow. I mean why wouldn't an alchemist pot up when they are cheap as hell relatively? but honestly... this emphasis being placed on adrenals for PVE ops is hilarious. they are potions people, to be used during the burn phases on fights that are close. no different mechanic than wow. now pvp might be a different story... and if biochem is "required" for PVP, that is a whole other issue. but for PVE, biochem is hardly required. if you want cheap adrenals and stims, have a blast... but some of the BIS gear comes from synthweaving, armormech and cybertech (and supposedly armstech schematics are now dropping in hard ops as well) and currently the BIS gear is pretty much near a wash with the rakata stims and adrenals.

unless of course you are trying to, you know, gear your guild up. or want to make a boat load of cash selling columi gear with augment slots on the GTN. and even though the rakta pieces don't require the crew skill to wear, you still have to have the crew skill to make them, and these patterns aren't frequent drops in raid. so what, are you going to roll on the pattern in raid and tell everyone "oh I rolled because I want to take armormech and get it back up to 400!!" Schematics are BOP drops so you can't sell them or, more importantly, buy them.

but again, coming from a STAT argument, which is where everyone was throwing around adrenals, armormech/cybertech/synthweave will currently give you better STATS with BIS bracers and belts (and for cybertech, BIS ear and BOP grenades) the main argument I'm hearing time and time and time again for biochem simply comes down to the cost of adrenals.. because really, the reusable rakata stims is what we've already gone over as far as the stat boost goes. The reusable rakata stims over the level 48 non-BOP stims is a +24 stat boost. so if it comes down to cost for adrenals... a few things to remember.. running all of the SOLO dailies will net you around 160K credits a day. running ALL of the dailies will net you around 275K per day. also the people suggesting 10-15 adrenals per raid night are going REALLY high frankly. you use adrenals during burn phases, and I would go so far as to say I only personally use adrenals during fights where we look like we have a chance. if we are still learning mechanics and likely to wipe on a mechanic, I'm not spending an adrenal on that fight. If we have the DPS without me using an adrenal to beat enrage, I'm not using an adrenal. basically I am only using an adrenal if beating enrage is going to be close and everyone using an adrenal or not using an adrenal will make the difference. and that 20-25 adrenal number... ummm.. whoever said that, you're just throwing money out the window, seriously. What, are you using adrenals on EVERY wipe? We have 2 down in hard EV in our first two days of raiding, and I haven't gone through even 10 adrenals.. according to some of your crazy math I should have expected to go through 40-50 adrenals by now!!!! no thanks.. I'll keep my cybertech and craftable columi ear pieces for now, and throw my buddy 100K every once in a while (half a day's dailies.. oh noes..) to get some persistent stims and +crit adrenals.

armormech, synthweaving and cybertech all have recipe drops from raids. Hard raids can give Columi BOP recipes, and Nightmare can give Rakata BOP recipes. Note that I said BOP RECIPES. You will not see these schematics on the GTN as a result of them being BOP. The Columi recipes craft the same as the token/crystal gear but can have crit for an augment slot. The Rakata pieces can be BOP bracers and belts that can also crit for aug slots.

three words. 10 point bonus. (565/12 vs. 450/12) so now you are only 10 points under with rakata stims and adrenals vs. two BOP rakata pieces with augs. I don't mean to pick you out in this thread. honestly. but really.. biochem is fairly on par with synthweave and armormech thanks to those two skills' BOP rakata mastercraft items, and cybertech gets the BOP mastercraft rakata ear not to mention all of the BOP cybertech only grenades and such (vanity vehicles, etc)

you only get +24 stat +13 secondary for the rakata vs. the non-biochem stim. you get +26 stat with the 23 augment, +31 with the 24 augment, and +34 with the 25 augment. this means at the moment, with the commendations 23 augment, you come out 2 ahead compared to the rakata stim, 4 if you have both BOP bracers and belt both mastercraft. obvious advantage of the rakata stim over that is still cost. you only need one augment and one stim. however, by going with the non-biochem stim you can end up with +20 in your primary stat over the rakata stim by using a BOP rakata gear with augments in them.

well, there can never be a "ton" of metal missions at tier 6. there are only three. the moderate mission, the "rich" missions (but really moderate), and the abundant mission. sad that I know this without ever having read a faq... god I've run too many missions.

no, the only beneficial one isn't biochem. for the purpose of the raid/guild, cybertech, armortech and synthweave all have columi (boe) and rakata (bop) recipe drops from hard/nightmare ops. as recipes, obviously they have the ability to crit for mastercraft with an aug slot making them BIS for their tier. now that we are starting to see these columi/rakata recipe drops, all of those people who gave up crafting skills for biochem are looking kind of knee jerked. purple reusbale stims = really nice. bop rakata bracers with an augment slot = really nice.

meh.... you guys are a bunch of complainers. it's a bit rare to have no metal missions.. when I do I can run 2-3 companion gift missions and at least one will pop up. to me the bigger bug is the "rich" metal mission for 1700 is obviously a moderate mission as it only comes back with 2 ciridium usually.. leaving just the one abundant mission to get mando iron from. but really.. mando iron goes for 15K per iron on my server, and rank 5 blue gifts go for 1-3K while rank 5 purples go for closer to 5-8K. run the companion gift missions and make a few credits on those while cycling for metal missions. EVERY class needs companion affection for augments and crits.. make some money off of it.

my 0/100 gear costs around 70K to repair, and I only have 2/7 columi and and 5/7 tionese or higher and a 126 barrel. all of my pets are 10000/10000 so all that's left really is sending them out scavenging every great onec in a while, and then UT missions for mando iron.

as stated, synthweavers get belt/bracer rakata gear BIS. now that recipes are dropping from hard and nightmare, armstech and artifice seem like they're currently the only screwed crafting skills... unless by amazing coincidence those recipes simply haven't dropped yet in any HM/NM op.

my character just got the Columi Combat Medic ear recipe drop last night from the first EV hard boss. Rakata recipe drops are likewise available from nightmare mode. in both cases (columi and nightmare) a crafter can crit on the item giving it an augment slot thus making it better than the token/commendation piece. in either case, the mat requirements are pretty low.. the columi simply requires some durasteel, zel alloy, 2 mando irons, and an Alien Data Cube which drops from the bosses. not expensive at all. tl;dr recipe drops from hard (columi) and nightmare (rakata) are BIS for that tier simply because they can go mastercraft with an aug slot. we had around 5 guys in raid last night slap their foreheads because they all dropped the "other worthless skills" for biochem, leaving three of us (two cybertechs and one synthweave) grinning ear to ear with our new columi recipes.

as said, crafting (at least armormech, synthweaving and cybertech) are not dead end. the columi patterns for these give you relatively cheap-ish columi patterns (alien data cube being the only non-gathering/mission mat) and the ability to get augments. rakata likewise, while bop, are bop gear with an augment slot. the mastercraft rakata BOP gear is BIS and only comes from crafting. the mastercraft columi boe gear should sell for decent on the AH and isn't ridiculously expensive and should be significantly better (with the augment) than anything you can get besides rakata.

calling hard enrage timers a form of difficulty, or the ONLY form of difficulty, is a bit disingenuous. hard enrage timers are necessary. bottom line. without them (on hard mode at least) you would have relatively undergeared players go into content over their head, and spend 2 hours on the boss. it gives no incentive to gear up, as you just go in undergeared and spend an insane amount of time. however, even more importantly is it prevents SLOPPY players from stumbling through an instance/flashpoint. I mean geared out 50s should be able to do 150K in damage eventually, right? By putting a hard enrage, the enrage is just a tool to facilitate difficulty. the REAL difficulty is doing everything the players need to do to make the fight work, while dealing enough damage to beat the timer. the reason you NEED enrage timers.. quite simply put? healers. in a normal style game, difficulty can be implemented by diminishing a non-replenishable resource. Health, lives, etc. But because there is no non-replenishable resource in SWTOR (or any other MMORPG) there is no way to limit the fight. You can try to overwhelm the players, but they will always only be the most overwhelmed the first time in 50 greens.. as they gear up it will become less overwhelming. I disagree that hard enrage timers are sloppy or lazy. I also disagree with the blanket categorization of anything that "times" a fight as an enrage timer. a REAL enrage timer is the classic. after x minutes, he starts one shotting people and there is nothing that can be done to prevent or mitigate it. In SWTOR HMs, there are a number of instances where there are simply overwhelming mechanics, but they are not unpreventable or impossible to overcome.

hmmm.. people don't understand why servers were queued at launch it seems. it wasn't that they were "full". they were "full" based on where BW had their caps set. They did this to try and distribute population. So that when someone came in, saw a Full or Heavy server, instead they went to a normal or Low server. Now that the game is outside of launch, they have caps raised. thus fewer queues and more Standard pops. leveling planets seem to have the same numbers listed on our server as around launch.. with fleet, ilum and belsavis growing.

those who say crafting shouldn't be BiS (in certain cases) are simply wrong. That's the point of crafting!!! Seriously, the leveling portion of this game is trivial... I have one 50 and one 44 and a bunch of toons under 30. people say armormech or armstech are "leveling professions". I've never needed EITHER for leveling. About the only thing I've ever "needed" crafting for is if I get orange gear that I like the look of, I need to keep it modded to keep its stats up. not to compare it to wow, but just in my own belief, the entire point of putting the time into any crafting profession is so that when you hit the end game, that profession can either craft gear that is helpful at the start of end game, can provide consumables that are needed at end game, and every profession is capable of at least one BiS (or near BiS) slot except for maybe the highest two tiers available, and every profession provides a BOP boost to the character. Because IF a profession doesn't provide a benefit to carry the character through the end game...... whytf would anyone take it? If someone can't sell their crafting at the end game, why would someone take it? So let's look at what we have. artifice - better hilts and gems from dailies and hard modes armstech - better barrels and gear from hard modes and dailies armormech - better enhancements and gear from hard modes and dailies cybertech - better armoring and mods and ears from hard modes. do have starship upgrades, but wait, grade 5 upgrades are enough to beat toughest space missions in the game.... synthweaving - better gear from hard modes and dailies biochem - great self buffs and best medpacks and stims in the game so there you have it folks... ZERO reason to choose anything but biochem.. note however, I AM NOT CALLING FOR A NERF TO BIOCHEM!! I think its purpose PERFECTLY falls in line with what an endgame crafting skill should be!!!! Instead, give us schematics in the other skills to make them worth it. Give us a BIS armoring in cybertech, and make a BOP version that is significantly cheaper. on the actual item professions, give BIS stuff, or better yet, give orange "social" gear based on classic visuals from the movies and games. Right now you are an idiot if you choose any profession but biochem.. and it's not because biochem is overpowered, it's that there's no reason to take any of the others. they provide nothing! biochem is the only one that actually gives you stuff you can use in the end game. and this isn't about "profit". I'm sure all of these can make profit by looking at the GTN, looking to see what armoring is currently missing, and crafting a bunch and putting it up for sale. this is about end game viability and demand. For raiders, they need a good assortment of classes and archetypes to raid successfully. One would think you need a good assortment of crafting skills likewise to be successful.. oh wait, "you can't join our raiding guild because you don't have biochem. moron."

I disagree completely. LFD is far from a general quality of life thing. LFD is NECESSARY when a game is aged and trying to put together groups for older content is a near futile act. However LFD for current and active content basically turns the game into even more of a single player game. I mean come on guys.. they put all instances right in the same frickin spot. The EXACT same spot. Are you really that lazy or impatient that you can't spend 10-15 minutes on fleet looking for a group? Because let's not kid ourselves... LFD doesn't change that 15 minutes... it just let's you quest or do whatever instead of actually socializing.