Hey there, I recently noticed a bunch of posts and the official forums asking for updated builds after 1.2. Fortunately some people already replied to these people in a much more polite way than I would have managed, essentially saying, “The patch has been out for a few hours and you’re already asking other people how you should play the game.” It made me realize that there’s people out there who don’t care for understanding the builds they’re using, but would rather just get told what to put points in and how to play the game. It made me realize that some people don’t have as much fun as I do going through the talent tree picking out skills that work well together, or discussing skills with people. That said, I’m going to attempt to walk through the process I went through creating this build for a PvP Operative/Scoundrel. I have done *some* investigation for builds, but have never come across this exact build (maybe for a reason), and although I’ve heard of some medicine/concealment hybrids, I came up with this on my own based on the following process (forgive me, it’s long): Please note, this build hasn’t been playtested at 50. The point of this post is not providing you with the best Operative build, but rather showing you the process of creating one for playtesting yourself. Step 1: Pick a main goal This is the highest level of build you can get. Is it a DPS, tanking or healing build? What do you want to focus on with this character? When I first conceptualized this build, I decided to make it for healing. My focus was in the medicine tree, and the rest was built upon for utility. Step 2: Pick the environment Simply put, this is where you plan to be using this build. Is this going to be a PvP build, or is it for PvE? Many choices can be resolved by which you would prefer to do. Of course some builds try to encompass both, but if you can easily pick between the intended environments, you will find that you can resolve conflicts in your build pretty easily. I chose to apply my build to the Warzone environment in PvP. The result from this is that the utility I add to the medicine tree (from wherever, we haven’t gotten that far yet) need to apply to PvP. The implications of this mean we need to find out what healers have trouble with in PvP, and then get skills that help with that. Step 3: Pick out your utility/secondary abilities. When traversing vertically in a tree there are undoubtedly some abilities we’re going to avoid. They’re either total crap, or don’t fit our environment or playstyle. These leftover points will likely flow over to another tree, and therefore will have an entirely different theme. When deciding on your utility/secondary, you need to determine what someone in your position, in your environment, might be lacking. PvP healers will generally have trouble with survivability, and therefore my goal with this was to increase it in any way I could. There are quite a few ways to increase survivability, and I found the concealment tree offered up the best of them. Increased healing done and received, increased endurance, increased defense, and a health recovery ability added to stimboost/pugnacity. Another concept to be aware of when considering survival is mobility. As a ranged class having more mobility than an opponent will be the difference between life and death. Sever Tendon has become an ability which I use all the time, and for good reason. This pretty much permanent reduction in speed for as long as you are within range, means that you can save yourself or a teammate, or even prevent a goal in huttball. The two-point skill “Pin Down” in the 4th tier of the concealment tree means that, on top of the 50% reduction in speed, the opponent gets rooted for 2 seconds immediately after application, with absolutely no addition to his resolve bar. To me this made this talent too good to pass up for any PvP build and I consequently started up the concealment tree first (even though it’s a healing spec). That said, let’s move on to sticking points in (For those of you following along for scoundrel, you’ll have to translate yourself, sorry): Survival Training(3/3) is pretty obvious. It improves our healing AND our survivability. It fulfills both roles of our build, and is therefore a no brainer. Concealed Attacks(2/2) is mostly filler. It’s alternative boosted Corrosive Dart and Acid Blade, and we’re not getting up to Acid Blade, so half the talent is wasted. The additional ~18% damage from Corrosive dart might be worth it for heavy users, but I found I used backstab a lot more, even as a healer. Infiltrator (3/3) is helpful in that it increases our mobility while stealthed. It also makes it much easier to sneak around and get into a good healing position without being spotted. Inclement Conditioning (2/2) is a small, but helpful boost to your HP. Compared to a 4% damage increase on shiv/backstab/overload, this is the better choice. Scouting (2/2) complete filler, but the boost to defense is nice. If I could I would save the points, since defense is not very good, even for tanks. The stealth detection is pretty good for PvP though. Flanking (1/1) is kind of a filler, and kind of not. There’s no point in thinking you’re never going to do damage, because you’ll be forced into situations where it’s impossible not to. Reducing backstabs energy cost here seems like the best choice of what’s available. Laceration(1/1), I’d rather not put points into a damaging ability, but I can’t help but feel this would be more helpful than any of the alternatives. With the medicine tree you can build up Tactical Advantages pretty quickly, so if you’re forced into a position where you need to do damage, Laceration provides a constant outlet for the built up TAs. Revitalizers(1/1) Adds a self-hot to stim-boost/pugnacity. You should have this ability up all the time, so it heavily increases your survivability. Pin Down(2/2) The reason we’re here This ability is amazing already, and giving it a root makes it all the better. Energy Screen(1/1) Dodging / Resisting attacks gives you 1 energy. This means that Evasion can become an energy regeneration ability, even if it’s pretty bad at doing it. It also removes the healing done/received penalty after using our Vanish. I will often use this after being ganged up on for a few seconds so people switch targets, and then come out and begin healing again. It also means any HoTs running on you will continue while stealthed. This leaves us with 23 points to put into Medicine; we’re not going to get our 31 point talent (Recuperative Nanotech) with this, but I don’t think we’re losing much from this on a PvP build. I also won’t go through every choice for the Medicine tree. Since it’s our main tree it’s pretty much “Grab everything that heals”. I’ll cover unorthodox choices, and any clarification someone needs I’ll respond to in comments. Precision Instruments(2/2) Debilitate and Sever Tendon are going to get a lot of use for us. Debilitate/Dirty Kick are an instant cast ability which will let us run away from melee characters, or hurt the ball carriers advancement. While the energy savings here isn’t significant, it’s still savings. Chem-resistant Inlays(2/2) Flat 4% damage reduction across the board. Since we’re pushing survivability as our secondary, who could argue with flat damage reduction? Evasive Imperative (2/2) Evasion is a really good ability for Operatives. We get a passive addition to it which removes all hostile removable effects upon its activation. I will usually throw this up right before vanishing, to get dots off, or in other situations. Having the speed bonus is some added **** ability which comes in handy. Tox Screen (1/1) Adds a healing effect to Toxin Scan. With all the stuff that’s going on, removing dots from yourself or teammates can be very helpful. I try to use it whenever I notice debuffs on my teammates, and having that extra heal on it is great for a single talent point. There are a few changes which I might consider after I’ve playtested this a bit. Getting Medical Therapy might be handy because of the really good bonus to healing. I might switch out the Tox Screen point, and one from somewhere else to grab both points in it. SpawnMoreOverlords.org

I doubt it. The other classes usually work closely with their respective faction (smugglers do work for republic, etc). I'm sure at some point their sensitivity would be noticed by their respective force enclave.

Because your arms, and legs, and entire body, are not weightless. I'm sure the lightsaber weighs something, but since the blade had no weight (its just light) it would be only as light as the hilt. That said, you still need to jump around and run and swing. Go do that with empty hands for a while, and see if you get tired. Also, strength is a stat because if a lightsaber comes in contact with something there's still the potential for resistance (usually another saber). The users strength then comes into play on how much force he can apply to that resistance.

I agree with this. I'm generally against BoP things in general, but crafted items make no sense to BOP. If things require some expertise to use (Reusable items), put a skill requirement on their use. The only things I'd agree with for this are the reusable grenades and stimpacks/adrenals though.

Is this confirmed? Screenshot (I'm not at home)?

Make a webapp for it too then. You still need an active subscription to do this. I think it might actually improve the game, since people will log in to actually play instead of sitting in carrick station sending out their pets.

Can you show the force tab in your character sheet?

Do a practical and theory analysis based on the increase. A 30% armor increase should increase your damage reduction by quite a bit, but perhaps not enough to be worthwhile. Combat technique does it by 150% right?

What's your source on this? In most games it's not about being a jack of all trades in PvP, but you pick one thing and you get damned good at it. With my experience in using shadow in pvp, I revel in the burst damage. Taking out 90% of my opponents life in 3 GCDs, and then finishing them off as they run around popping their cooldowns in bewilderment. Good players don't focus on doing multiple different utilities, but instead pick one and have the team fill in the gaps. I'd much rather see people who are absolutely amazing at healing, and bad at tanking and damage, than someone who is *okay* at all three. Let someone else pick up the tanking, and someone else pick up the damage. You can't do things half-heartedly in a game like this.

The reusable is not a problem because it's reusable, but because it heals so much more than the next one down. I don't really care that the biochem only ever needs to make one stim for themselves, I just think it shouldn't be better enough to warrant people to move into that profession for it. The nerf to the amount it heals that's coming up should be interesting.

There are videos of a guy called Oozoo or something who runs with both. He uses the crit bonuses from gut, and loves incendiary round.

Expertise is a terrible idea. It just creates an even further gear gap between people for no reason other than an artificial distance between pve and pvp gear. PvP and PvE gear have their own different requirements for things. PvP requires high crit/surge and medium power for DPS classes, while you should stack power for PvE dps. These differences will become even more apparent once more people gear, and you don't need a fake stat to tell you what to specialize your character in. What if I'm a class that should be specializing in crit, but I want to try a build that require high alacrity? I'm screwed now because none of the gear with expertise has alacrity for my class! This restricts how I choose to play my character in a bad way, and I want to be able to make my own decisions about how I play.

I only had a problem with it until I realized it was the grav round equivalent.

This whole thing should be a self-enforcing fix. If you don't like huttball, make a republic character so you can play the other ones. Yes I know that you're geared out and pwning face on your 50 sith guy, but this is the price you pay for being on the heavier side. Get off your butt and do something yourself instead of making BioWare put arbitrary restrictions in place that could hurt everyone.

No, just one cat that's dead AND alive.

What's your source on this? I'm looking at the patch notes here and don't see anything regarding that change.

Here you go

This. You're getting around 5% shield chance base ( I haven't seen a shield with omre than that ). If you're not in Ion cell, you're hardly ever going to be getting the benefit from it.

Why do you need recognition from a system you declare as a joke? You know you're doing your job right, people in vent will know you're doing your job right. My guildies will announce they're voting for me after a run, even though I'm nowhere near top DPS, and nowhere near top protection (I main a shadow atm, levelling a VG). I still hit the taunt when im in a group, and it helps. MVP votes mean nothing. If they aren't voting for highest damage/healing, they're voting for a friend.

I can only comment on this one as I'm a new vanguard. But I picked vanguard with the intention to PVP. Incendiary round is the PVP master ability. An 18 second DOT? Heck yes. That's 18 seconds that someone is useless for capping a point. Or Out of combat healing. Don't make it burn slower, and I know this ability is not there for its damage output, but rather its utility. Please start seeing the big picture when it comes to abliities. Not everything is there for pure damage. As for Energy Blast. I can't speak to its usefulness yet, but its an instant ability that has zero cost, and actually gains you ammo? It may be very specific in its uses, but consider being stuck at 1 ammo and you lose aggro on a mob. Firing this then taunting is possibly faster than waiting on your second cell to come up. As for gut, I'm really interested in the 25% for a guaranteed crit on HIB. It's an instant ability that does medium instant damage and medium bleed damage. The second talent gives you 15% more bleed, and then the next talent gives you the guaranteed crit chance.

I don't quite understand the OPs issue here. He says there's no DPS meters so people can "get away with it". If they finish the heroic, what's the problem? If they're wiping too much, just tell the guy he doesn't have the gear. If you're that serious about this kind of thing, you'd probably be inspecting people as you get to the heroic. If someone doesn't look like they have the gear, you could either kick them and tell them they need better gear, or give it a try and see how it goes. None of this could be obviously corrected with a dps meter. And that will only serve to aide elitism, which this game can do without for PUGs.

I don't necessarily see a problem with being able to pull enemies friendlies with the ball. It's all part of the tactics of the game. As long as both sides have equal ability to perform their moves, it is "fair". What I will say though, is that if someone's resolve bar is full, they shouldn't be pullable by a friendly either.

Typical whine thread.

Clairvoyant strike

His bottom link goes to youtube.