Greetings from Oakwood Village, right between Solon and Bedford, and about 20 minutes from downtown Cleveland. Nice little spot, and cheap rent. Can't argue with that.

I've posted this in another thread, but I'll type it up again for this discussion. I'm on my second dead server in a row. I started my subscription in early January, and made a Gunslinger on Hedarr Soongh. I had fun leveling it, but after I finally reached 50, I realized there was literally nothing to do. Not enough people for endgame Operations or Flashpoints, and WZ queues were few and far between, and usually during hours while I was at work. All I could really do was send my companions on endless gathering and crafting missions, or do space missions. As much as I hated wasting a month of effort in building up that character, I abandoned that server and did some research to avoid making the same mistake. I settled on the Infinite Empire server, which was one of the top five most populated PvP servers, IIRC. I also chose it because it was West Coast, even though I live in Ohio, because I work second shift (3 to 11PM Eastern), and I figured the time that I normally play would be more normal hours on the west coast. For a while, it was everything I had hoped for. The server was much busier than Hedarr Soongh ever was; over 70 people on the Republic Fleet, and over 20 on the starter planets and Coruscant. I made a Jedi Consular, and got my girlfriend to buy the game and play with me; she made a Jedi Knight, and we've been leveling up together ever since. Since we don't always have the same schedule, though, our leveling has been going much slower than my old Gunslinger. By the time we got to Alderaan, the server was noticeably less busy. At prime time on weekends, there would be maybe 50 people on the Fleet. Still busy enough, though, we could usually find a group for Flashpoints. Since then, it's been downhill. The Australia transfer in particular gutted our population. It hasn't been above "Light" in weeks. The Fleet rarely has over 20 people on weekends, and I haven't been able to get a Flashpoint group in weeks. My girlfriend and I are often the only people on planets while leveling. Now we're at level 47, and I know as soon as we hit 50, there will be nothing to do. According the global /who search, there are rarely more than 70 people on the Republic side in the entire server. So, for sh*ts and giggles, I rolled a Jedi Knight on The Fatman, to see exactly how different it was on a "Very Heavy" server...all I can say is HOLY CRAP. 125 people on Tython...that's one of the two starter planets, and it's got almost twice as many people as my whole freaking server. I could actually see other players! There were people talking in general chat! For the first time since January, I actually felt like I was playing an MMO. According to /who, there were over 100 on the Republic Fleet, over 100 on Coruscant, 80 on Tatooine...hell, even Voss and Corellia had over 10. I was so tempted to just abandon all my other characters and start yet again. But for now, I'll wait to see how the transfer system works out...but it's so depressing now going back to work on my Sage after seeing how this game should be. BioWare...you need to consolidate. Your population is spread way too thin over way too many servers. I think your shareholders would much rather admit that you made too many servers and merge them than see all the subscriptions that will inevitably be cancelled by people tired of their dead servers.

Fatman is pretty much the only choice. I'm on my second dead server in a row now. I got a Gunslinger to 50 on Hedarr Soongh, and abandoned that because there were literally not enough people for endgame content. I started a Jedi Sage on Infinite Empire, which was one of the most populated PvP servers at the time. Now, at level 47, it's just as dead as my last server, after the Australia transfers and general population decline, there's rarely more than 15 on the Fleet, and I've been the only one there late at night. On leveling planets, my questing partner and I are often the only ones there all day. The global /who search usually shows less than 70 people on the Republic side in the entire server. For sh*ts and giggles I rolled a Jedi Knight on The Fatman, to see just how big the difference in population was on this Very Heavy server, from Infinite Empire (which hasn't even been at "Standard" in weeks)...all I can say is, holy crap. On Tython, there were 125 people. I could actually see other players, and people were talking in general chat! For the first time since I started playing in January, for those 15 minutes I spent fooling around on Fatman, it felt more like an MMO than any of the months I've invested in fully leveling two characters on other servers. 125 on Tython, 100+ on the Fleet and on Coruscant, 80 on Tatooine...hell, even Voss and Corellia had over 10. So please, don't make the same mistake I did. Don't join a server that's reasonably populated but not quite full, because odds are it will eventually empty out just like Infinite Empire did.

I'm on my second dead server in a row now...I leveled a Gunslinger to 50 on Hedarr Soongh, which I abandoned shortly after hitting 50 because there was literally no endgame because there was nobody to do it with. I rolled some new characters on Infinite Empire, which, at the time, was one of the most populated west coast PvP servers. Much more people, and leveling was pretty fun, until I got to Alderaan, and the Australia transfers gutted the server's population and it's never recovered. Now I have a Jedi Sage almost at 50 and a couple other characters, and I've been the only person on the Republic Fleet, and it's rare that my questing partner and I aren't the only people on a leveling planet. I can honestly say I haven't seen double digits in any planet population in weeks. The global /who usually lists around 60 people in total for the Republic in the entire server. So for sh*ts and giggles, I rolled a new character on The Fatman (which was the only server at "Very Heavy") last night, just to see how it compares. Holy crap. 125 people on Tython...I could actually see other players, and there were people talking in global chat. I did a few more /who searches...over 100 at the Fleet, over 100 on Coruscant, 80+ on Tatooine...hell, even Voss and Corellia had over 10. THIS is what the game should have been all along, on every server. I can honestly say those 15 minutes I spent fooling around on The Fatman felt more like an MMO than the months I've spent in my two other servers. It felt so depressing going back to Infinite Empire to work on my Sage. I was so tempted to just abandon this character and start it from scratch on Fatman...but I really want to be able to transfer. BioWare, clearly you have an issue. You literally have ONE server in this game that has a consistently healthy population. I would not mind waiting in queue to log in every day if it meant I would have people to play with. I understand there was demand for more servers at launch, but face it - this isn't launch anymore. Populations have plummetted, and you need to consolidate.

I would personally sacrifice one point of Jedi Resistance and both points of Concentration to allow you to get Salvation in the Seer tree. It seems kinda silly to get to the second highest tier in that tree and then not finish it. Salvation isn't perfect, but if your primary goal is healing, it's a must-have. Even in PvP, it's literally a lifesaver when you have allies clustered around an objective.

Ord Mantell is by far the longest starting planet. I'd say Tython is next, with Hutta not too far behind. Korriban was very short.

Signahead's right; the entire Techblade/Techstaff category was made so that certain companions could use melee weapons while maintaining Aim as a primary stat, because for characters like Tanno, Qyzen, Akaavi, Yuun and so on, they would be very out of place in Strength-based gear, which is usually Jedi robes.

The Sage is pretty much 100% ranged Force power combat; the lightsaber is basically ceremonial and is almost never used after Tython. The same Force powers have triple the range with the Sage compared to the Shadow. The healing is quite nice, though, and you will make lots of friends as a Seer Sage. Shadow is a close-range class, with mixed focus on double-blade lightsaber combat and Force powers. Having rolled both, I greatly prefer my Sage. I do sometimes wish I got to use my lightsaber more, but it's also nice being to hang back at 30 meters with the Commandos and Gunslingers, healing everyone and throwing rocks, droids, pebblestorms and Force disturbances at the enemy.

With all due respect, Dyvim is right. You might be comparing a Jedi Sage to a Sith Assassin, but Shock and Project have the same range and Force cost with the equivalent mirror class (i.e. Sage vs. Sorceror, Shadow vs. Assassin). And for gameplay purposes, there has to be mirroring. Obviously there will be style differences, enough to set two mirror classes apart far enough while retaining functional equvalency. For example, the Consular's Telekinetic Throw vs. the Inquisitor's Force Lightning, or the Trooper's Mortar Volley vs. the Bounty Hunter's Death from Above. But stuff where functionality is fundamentally altered between two mirror classes (such as the case with Project vs. Shock), it creates a gameplay imbalance that clearly favors one side.

I prefer Sage. You get long-range attacks, and healing is definitely nice. The Shadow gets some of the same Force powers, but they're restricted to 10-meter range, which is barely outside of Melee. The Sage's range is 30 meters. The double-bladed lightsaber is definitely cool as hell though. As for armor sets, they use the same gear. They both use light armor with Willpower.

Expertise is a stat, just like Endurance or Crit Rating, but it's only for PvP. Expertise simultaneously boosts your damage, reduction of incoming damage, and healing in PvP. Prior to the 1.2 update, Expertise gave a more even bonus to all three of these things. 1.2 changed it to give much more bonus to damage dealing and damage reduction, and much less bonus to healing.

Hey, first time I've seen one of my own on the forum. Yeah, our server got annihilated by the Australia transfer. I used to play on Hedarr Soongh, got a Gunslinger up to 50 and realized there was literally nothing to do since the server was empty. Re-rolled on Infinite Empire, which, at the time, was one of the highest population West Coast PvP servers. I live in Ohio, but I went West Coast because I work til really late at night, by which time East Coast servers are already emptied out. Anyway, it was way better than Hedarr Soongh, and for the most part I've been able to find groups for flashpoints, never had to wait too long for a WZ queue...but now it seems 2/3 of our population is gone instantly, there's rarely more than 20 people on the fleet and 4 or 5 on a planet, and I haven't been able to get a Flashpoint group together in 10 levels.

I've got a nice white and gold chest piece called Muse Vestments. I forget where I originally found it, but it's been with me for quite a while, probably found it in the 20's or 30's. According to TORhead, people are getting it lots of different places. Most of my other gear is the usual brown-tone Consular stuff, but when I use the "unify colors" feature, it looks really cool. This is what my current set looks like with all of the colors at default, no matching. http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/6666/screenshot2012050621105.jpg This is when I unify colors: http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/2706/screenshot2012050621110.jpg As a full-time healer with maxed out Seer tree, I think it actually makes sense to wear all white, and I wish there were more options for that.

Your characters and everything about them are all stored on the game servers.

Same place you get all the other endgame PvP gear; in the Combat Training sector of your faction's Fleet.

Yep, that's pretty much it. The Sage is a long-range class. If you want lightsaber combat, there's the Jedi Sentinel, Guardian and Shadow.

The AoE heal is quite useful. It has a relatively high Force cost compared to your other heals (100 Force, the others are between 40 and 55), but it's the only way to heal multiple allies at once. It can be cast anywhere on the ground that you choose, within 30 meters of yourself. Once you set your target location, it has a brief activation timer, and then every ally standing within the circle gets a pretty good amount of healing over 10 seconds. It's pretty useful in PvP, because there are a lot of situations in which you have multiple allies clustered around an objective. The skills that you buy from your trainer are class skills. Your skill tree skills cost no money; only skill points that you get every time you level up.

No. Aggro drop is one of those abilities that all classes have their own identical version of. Aggro drop, 4-second stun, Heroic Moment, stun/CC break, basic attack, etc.

I'm sort of in the same boat; I like the mechanics of the Commando spec more than Vanguard, but I want a rifle more than a giant underslung Nerf gun. Using a rifle as Commando isn't too bad. You lose out on an AoE and a few other abilities, but there are ways to play around it. The biggest loss is Grav Round, but you'll just have to rely more on your grenades and Full Auto. I'd say you can pretty easily get by most of your actual leveling content with a rifle, but you'll still want an assault cannon if you do flashpoints, PvP or operations.

I've maxed out my Seer tree (the healing skill tree for the Sage), and spent only 4 points total so far in the other two trees...you still have a handful of good combat skills. Project, Telekinetic Throw, Disturbance, Mind Crush, Weaken Mind, and Forcequake let you deal decent damage. You're not going to be getting many solo kills in PvP, but it's enough for you to defend yourself or help an ally finish off an enemy. As a healer, you pretty much have to invest fully into healing. There are too many skills at higher levels of the Seer tree to justify sacrificing those skill points to a damage tree. The very top Seer tree ability is a very nice AoE heal. If you invest all your points into the Seer tree at first, the very earliest you can get this ability is level 40, which leaves you 10 more skill points to spread out wherever you like.

The Marauder, Sniper and Gunslinger are all pure DPS classes, and the Assassin is DPS/tanking. None of those have any healing capability. The Operative is a healer class, but I have no idea whether or not it has a finisher...frankly, I doubt it.

They do; it's for the Jedi Guardian class. It's just that Trooper-style characters like Tanno don't look right wearing Jedi robes. Trooper armor carries the Aim stat instead of Strength, so they made the Techblade weapon category to go with it.

I know it doesn't make a whole lot of logical sense, but techblades and techstaves use Aim instead of Strength for their primary stat. Look at it from an aesthetic point of view; Tanno (and Qyzen, and other melee tanks that use techblades) wouldn't make any sense wearing Jedi Knight armor, which is the only kind of armor that uses Strength. So, they made techblades that use Aim so that troopers like Tanno can wear appropriate gear instead of Jedi robes.

She's the very last companion you get, on Belsavis.

Hey, we all had to start somewhere. And yeah, all the terminology can get a bit overwhelming if you're not used to it. Yep, Willpower is the primary stat of all Jedi Consular characters, whether Sage or Shadow. Critical Rating directly affects your chance to cast a critical hit, whether via damaging the enemy or healing an ally. This is personally my favorite stat to stack up on, as that extra 50% healing with a crit is invaluable. I'm level 42, and my crit chance is almost 33%, up from the default of 15% or something like that. Power basically directly improves your damage and healing on every cast, but obviously it's not going to be nearly the +50% of a critical hit. Also not a bad stat to stack. Other stats to consider are Surge Rating and Alacrity. Surge is sort of a counterpart to Critical Rating; while Crit affects how likely you are to crit, Surge affects how much extra that crit will do. Default bonus damage/healing is an extra 50%, but you can go significantly higher with a good Surge Rating. Alacrity affects how fast you cast things. It reduces channel times and activation times, basically making all of your abilities faster. Faster casts mean less time waiting for that little bar to fill up, more effective healing on demand, and less opportunity to be interrupted. Deliverance and Benevolence are your two basic channeled, single-target burst heals. Sounds like you're doing a good job with using your party bars and keybinding...one thing, though, you definitely want to get the Conveyance skill from the Seer tree as soon as you can, and make good use of Rejuvenate. Rejuvenate is your instant-cast heal-over-time ability. It's the one heal you have that cannot be interrupted, and that you can cast on the move. It's not immediately as good as the other two channeled heals, but over 15 seconds or whatever it is, it heals a fair amount. And with Conveyance, using it will trigger a bonus effect on the next heal you cast. If the next heal you use after Rejuvenate is Benevolence, it dramatically boosts its crit chance by 60%, which means almost a guaranteed crit with a decent Critical Rating. If you use Deliverance, it reduces the Force cost from 55 to 39, meaning it costs less for a greater heal, but it still has a longer cast time by one second. It also affects your other healing abilities that you'll get later. Also, if a DPS class walks away from your healing and breaks line of sight, it's their own fault if that gets them killed. I just mentioned Rejuvenate in the last paragraph. It's very useful and low Force cost, especially when you have both ranks of Conveyance in your skill tree. Noble Sacrifice basically lets you trade away health for Force. Every time you use it, you lose 15% of your maximum health to gain 8% of your maximum Force instantly. This also nerfs your natural Force self-regeneration by 25% for 10 seconds, so if you cast it 4 times in a row within 10 seconds of each other, your regen basically stops. So, avoid using it more than twice in a row, and only if you're absolutely running out of Force. As for aggro, healing does generate a fair bit of threat. If you're not playing with any tank players, use your tank companion Qyzen and make sure he's in "Trandoshan Regeneration" mode, and he should hold most of the aggro. If any of the players in your group are a tank and you're still taking aggro, they're not doing their job right. Also, pretty soon you'll be able to learn an ability that instantly drops your own threat level to help remove aggro. You've pretty much hit the nail on the head. Being a full-time healer makes you pretty much the most useful part of any group, but also the most thankless, and the easiest to blame if anything goes wrong. That said, don't be afraid to point out to others if they're doing something obviously wrong that negatively affects the team. For example, pretty much every time I do a Flashpoint or Heroic 4 with strangers, somebody will ALWAYS break my CC. I'll Force Lift the gold mob in a group of a gold and three silvers, and inevitably, a Sentinel or someone will always choose that particular mob to Force Leap on, or someone will use an AoE that catches my CC'd target right in the middle of it. I sure as hell don't let them go without knowing what they did wrong after the fight. Enjoy healing!