Revan's mind was wiped. Bastila never went full sith - you bring her back before she really falls. I never played KOTOR2. Yes there are numerous examples of people coming back from the dark side, because it makes for interesting storytelling. But put that in perspective - how many people are in the Star Wars universe? How many actually managed to come back without help? Revan and Vader don't count, they needed help, they didn't simply pull themselves out of it through sheer force of will. What makes Vader a special case isn't anything special about him per say, but rather the mere fact he came back. That is very, very rare. But that's beside the point. There's a difference between falling and coming back, and constantly skirting it like the DS jedi and LS sith do. You can't keep tempting it. Bioware gives you the ability to, but in the context of the Star Wars lore, it's impossible. The dark side is too powerful, and it will corrupt you if you try to use it extensively, no matter how strong your will is. Think about it - if it were possible to use the Dark Side and remain a good person, then the jedi wouldn't need their code and training to resist it. The odds of a sith pulling this off is even more astronomical, as they were raised and groomed to fully embrace their hatred and rage. In other words, Bioware giving you the ability out of a necessity to provide LS/DS decisions to everyone, does not equate to it being faithful to the source material. But they did give you the tools, and I did it myself, so enjoy. Your character is the one in a billion capable of playing with the dark side and not falling. There's no shame in taking what the game has given you the ability to do and running with it, especially when the LS warrior/inquisitor stories are as good as they are.

This is the approach the game makes. However, this shouldn't work. The dark side is inherently evil, as are the sith. You can't just focus on the positive emotions, as many of the sith's powers draw from negative ones. Force Lightning in particular is pure hatred given form by the dark side of the force, that's why jedi can't use it. Force Choke is the same - you are focusing on your rage and hatred to use the force to choke somebody to death. There is no way a jedi can use this, as it requires them to focus on hate... and once you've used your anger in such a destructive manner, it's a downwards spiral unless you immediately change your ways. Vader was a special case. Once you've let the dark side take hold, there is no coming back. There is no redemption. This is why the jedi are so strict. Also, the purging of emotions is a short-sighted understanding of what the jedi are. The jedi can still have positive emotions. The key is not to let them take control and drive you.

To be perfectly honest, Bioware has failed with both the sith and the jedi. They've taken them to extremes beyond what they are supposed to represent. The jedi's code of tranquility and purging emotion has been taken to a far extreme. It's left them absent of character and personality. Take into account a few other light-sided jedi, and think for a moment if they behaved like this. Did Luke Skywalker, once he became a jedi, seem like he had lost his emotions and character? Did Obi-wan? Did Kyle Katarn? Each of these characters are jedi, and all of them have clearly defined personalities. They care about their friends, they have moral dilemmas, they have ambitions and character traits. To be honest, I was majorly disappointed until I tried to make a female jedi knight upon learning that her voice actor portrayed Princess Ovelia in the re-make of Final Fantasy Tactics. I was immediately blown away. She delivers the same lines as David Hayter, but she actually makes the female jedi knight feel like she has a personality, where the male does not. I would highly recommend trying out a female JK if you are disappointed with the lack of emotions in jedi. But as bad as I feel Bioware handled the jedi, they handled the sith far worse. The dark-sided sith in this game are monsters, pure and simple. On the D&D alignment chart, their alignment would definitely be Chaotic Evil. They're destructive maniacs with no respect for anyone or anything. Again, looking at other examples of sith, did any of them behave this way? Darth Vader and Palpatine were definitely evil, but they had ambitions. Their alignment was clearly Lawful Evil. They were methodical about their actions, not pointlessly cruel for the sake of being vicious. And then there's the light-sided sith and dark-sided jedi. Neither of these make sense in the context of the Star Wars lore. The dark side is not something you can flirt with and remain pure. It's a cancer, eating away at you until it kills who you were and leaves your body as a vessel for hatred, rage and evil. If you tempt it, it will drag you down, no matter how strong your willpower is. Now, having played a light-sided sith warrior myself, I will say that act 2 and beyond, 'light-side' feels more like lawful evil. I feel as though this is the approach they should have taken. No light-side decisions for sith, and no dark-side decisions for jedi. Instead, when presented with a moral choice, it should be two flavors of the same alignment. For jedi, these two decisions should be Lawful Good and Chaotic Good. For sith, these decisions should be Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil. I will use two points to illustrate what I mean, taken from actual examples in the game. I will attempt to keep them as spoiler free as possible, but I will still use spoiler tags. First, for the Jedi Knight. Now, the Sith Warrior.

This is almost definitely an elaborate troll post. If you played the game you'd know that nothing you do to Vette is sexual torture. You'd also know that males get enslaved and put in shock collars all the time. Also if you played WoW you'd never, ever hold its writing up as an example of anything good, ever. Maybe a long time ago, but it hasn't been that way for years, it's only been getting progressively worse. On the off-chance this is a serious post: the Empire has a very weak narrative outside of the Imperial Agent. Go play Republic for story.

Oh god no, it's the Horde/Alliance crap all over again

Not contesting the group healing, but I dunno about it being their best spec. Combat/Carnage (for marauders) is also really good, and should be comparable to Watchman/Annihilation. Also that group healing is only like 1% of max HP every tic. It's not bad, but it's not super awesome either. Sents/marauders are much more useful for Inspiration/Bloodthirst, which cannot be used at the same time as Zen (has a longer cooldown though, so whatever) and can be used by any of the three specs. Try not to say stuff like that unless there's concrete proof. Without damage meters or combat logs, nobody knows yet.

I'm all for nerfing Tracer Missile/Grav Round if they do something to compensate for it. PVP is only one aspect of the game, you would be badly hurting mercs and commandos by nerfing this without giving anything else. Hell, I'm also for making this ability less crucial to the spec. You people act like all we want to do is spam one button. It's not our choice, Bioware designed the entire spec around spamming tracer/grav. Nearly everything else the spec does is tied to Heat Signature, and you want to use at least three per target to get the most benefit on your abilities. Personally, I wanted to go pyrotech just to avoid the tracer spam monotony, but arsenal is just better for PVE while still being really good at pvp

Pretty easy to say, really. Pretty much depends on how good GW2 is. If GW2 is better, then no. If it's not, then yes. I do think GW2 has more potential than TOR does, just because It seems to be trying to push the envelope of what MMOs can do, rather than just trying to improve on the WoW formula. Problem with innovation is that it can sometimes backfire, so we'll see. I'm optimistic that both GW2 will be good, and TOR will continue to put out content and improve itself. I hope that by the end of 2012, I will be facing a harsh decision for the right reasons, rather than one game simply being better.

I would love it if the animations for these abilities got switched around.

I've had this happen to me with nothing on the GCD. This ability just seems to be all-around buggy right now.

The amount of ignorance in regards to this ability in this thread is staggering, even by MMO PVP forum standards. But the people who actually play mercenary/gunnery have already explained why, so I won't bother going into it again. What's really appalling in this thread is the guys going "HURR HURR I INTERRUPTED AND HE JUST STOOD THERE, I AM AWESOME AND THEY ARE RETARDED." Really, from my personal experience, the arsenal/gunnery spec feels very similar to the Burning Crusade-era elemental shaman from WoW, both in playstyle and in battlefield role. They hit really hard but are a little on the squishy side and are required to be immobile for their best stuff. They're also encouraged to spam one button for most of the fight (tracer/grav around for merc/commando, lightning bolt for the shaman). They're basically artillery. They stand in the back and unload on the enemy for heavy damage, and can be a real problem if no one stops them. You know, kind of like what I would expect from a guy with a laser minigun or a walking missile battery.

Fairly simple question. As a pyrotech, should you take Thermal Detonator, or sub-spec into Arsenal for Tracer Missile? Just looking at the two abilities, it seems like Tracer Missile beats out the pyrotech's own top tier ability for DPS in PVE.

This ability is actually why I am hesitant to make a mercenary. I just don't like the idea of my character becoming a walking missile battery. I mean sure, a couple of missiles are cool, even the tracer missile is a cool idea and I approve of it, but not when it's spammed like it is. Where is your character keeping all those missiles? Does anyone know how Thermal Detonator stacks up against Tracer Missile? I'd roll one if I could go Pyrotech, but if I'm gonna end up spamming tracer missile anyway, I'd rather not. Yes, this ability bugs me that much. I mean seriously, Jango Fett did it one time. I feel like the ability attached to this animation should be heavy hitting and long cooldown, so it's satisfying when you do fire it off. Edit: Well, actually, I wouldn't mind this ability if I looked like this http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_hpnzTY89-tA/TI2wfCoDVYI/AAAAAAAAATE/eOR0ErJnRVU/s1600/Cyclone+Missile+Terminator.JPG Edit 2: Moving my question of thermal detonator vs tracer missile to the mercenary subforum with its own thread

Kind of strange. Doesn't the tooltip say it fills the target with fear? I haven't seen it yet, but it sounds more like they're being electrocuted with sith lightning or something. Though I somehow get the feeling it's not as bad as this thread is making it out to be.

I dunno about that. Mercs seem to spend more time firing off missile barrages from the seemingly infinite supply they have on their suit than they do shooting things with their dual pistols, at least from what I've seen.

The problem is that the primary thing that the operative/scoundrel does isn't heavily advertised. The gunslinger class is much more prolific in the marketing than the scoundrel, and the same goes for the sniper to the operative. The gunslinger and operative also have a clearly defined weapon they use - dual pistols for the slinger, and sniper rifle for the sniper. Both of those weapons are cool and very appealing. But what does the scoundrel/operative do? I picked scoundrel and I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I didn't know I could become a healer, and I didn't know that I used a shotgun to backstab. The fact I had a heal spec shocked the hell out of me, and I basically nerdgasmed the first time I shot my shotgun into someone's back. I fell in love with my class after going into it blind. Hell, it surprised me more when I learned that healing seemed to be what they want me to do as a scoundrel based on the gear itemized for me I've found while leveling. The class description when you get to 10 says they can heal, but it's more of an afterthought. Like 'oh and you can heal too' The class videos did nothing to help with this problem, either. Then there's the other problem with sith, jedi, stormtroopers and boba fett being more interesting to most people than smuggler and agent. Hell, agent doesn't even have a character from the movies to represent him, you have to look outside of star wars to get examples of what the agent is. So when you combine a character archtype that isn't appealing to most people with a class role that wasn't clearly defined by bioware, you get the least played class in the game. edit: removed opening paragraph because I misunderstood the sentence I quoted

What lies? Of all the hype I heard over TOR's development, being a PVP-centric game wasn't part of it. I heard that they wanted story to be a large focus, what with all the voice acting, but I didn't hear anything on PVP except that the game would have it and that they were going to try to make it fun.

You will not be useless on hardmodes or in ops. Your class is built from the ground up to be a damage dealer. Your three trees only dictate how you deal damage, not your role. This isn't a case like with, for example, the Jedi Guardian's damage tree being subpar. The Guardian has a tanking tree and a damage tree, so that is harder for the devs to balance. The sniper's entire job is to kill things. If you cannot fulfill that role, then Bioware will fix you. I also don't think you will be subpar. If you truly think your damage is lacking, try a different spec. You do have three to choose from, and it's entirely possible that the one you picked might be a little underpowered compared to the other two, or even that one tree might outshine the other two.

Do you play both classes? I mean, it sounds like you do, but it's worth asking.

You would rather be a secret agent with a sniper rifle than a brooding sith? Really though, unless there is a serious imbalance, rolling a class based on what is powerful at the moment will always be a bad idea in MMOs. These things don't last. Besides, no one actually knows if the Inquisitor deals more damage or not, it's just speculation at the time. I often hear people say the Sniper/Gunslinger is potentially the game's most damaging class. Who knows for sure until we get combat logs and damage meters? The game is still young and people are still figuring things out. Relax and enjoy the class you love, because it won't stay like this forever.

You know, I haven't heard anyone throw around the term 'WoW-killer' for TOR except WoW fans who use it sarcastically to mock the prospect of any MMO besides WoW succeeding. The only thing that's going to kill WoW is itself, and it's doing a more than fine job of that. TOR will be fine, an MMO doesn't have to kill WoW to do well. Remember that even the embarrassment that was Warhammer Online is still running, with a subscription based system no less, even though there haven't been content updates for it in years. And TOR is a much, much better game than WAR.

Either I'm missing something or you are, because this has nothing to do with his very well written and constructed post. Now this thread is going to become another Ilum whinefest, great. Sadly, OP, this is the nature of gear-based MMO PVP. GW2 has the right idea in assigning you a set of gear when you enter a battleground, because that's the only way I see to ever fix the fundamental issue with giving out PVP-tuned gear for doing PVP.

WoW's issues went far beyond the unexpected flood of players. There were issues at launch that have only just recently been fixed. It's not as if I said WoW had a bad launch, I just said TOR's was smoother. I also said WoW was a bigger improvement over what came before it than TOR was to WoW.

This is the most polished MMO launch I've ever seen. WoW was nowhere near this smooth, it was just so leaps and bounds better than what came before it that people stuck with it. You're never going to see an MMO more refined on release than this one was, not ever. Unfortunately, TOR is not as big of an upgrade over WoW as WoW was to EQ1/DAoC/FFXI. But thankfully, it is an upgrade, which will be its saving grace in the face of issues like this. I don't think 1.1 is going to kill TOR, but they need to fix these PVP issues, and quickly.

Which is best? Probably the sorc/sage as of right now, with scoundrel/operative in a close second. But it's worth noting that classes will fluctuate in power, and so it's a bad idea to roll a class based on what is best right now. You should really pick the one whose style or theme appeals to you most. Thankfully, if you've ever played WoW, the healing classes in this game feel very similar to ones from that game. The sorcerer/sage, and I can attest to this from personal experience, feels almost identicle to a priest in WoW. It's not a direct translation, of course, but having played a healer priest in WoW and a healer sage in TOR, I can honestly tell you I feel like I'm playing the same class sometimes. The scoundrel/operative, again from personal experience, feels very similar to a holy paladin. Once again, the translation isn't perfect, and the scoundrel actually has more tools than the paladin does. I will note, however, that it is more like the holy paladin of Cataclysm, rather than the one from vanilla-WotLK. Finally, the commando/mercenary is the one I have the least experience with. However, I do have a friend who mained a restoration shaman in WoW, and then rolled a commando healer in TOR. He feels similar to how I felt with the sage/priest comparison, and says that commando heals very similarly to the shaman.