That's great news, the blocky shadows were the one thing that really bothered me about the graphics whenever I took screenshots.

Going Commando is my personal little SWTOR fan blog where I share general thoughts on and opinions about the game with the world. I started it shortly after the game's launch and have been updating it every couple of days or so since then. Why not stop by and say hello? http://swtorcommando.blogspot.com

1. How do you think your Commando spec is perceived by other classes? I believe that the vast majority of the time, people are happy to have a healer at all and don't care about which class said healer plays. They are more likely to be worried about whether the character is sporting an adequate level of gear than whether his or her class is the current flavour of the month. However, there are some trends. In operations, I get the impression that Combat Medics are considered adequate, but people would probably be a bit weary of a raid in which all the healers were Commandos. We have good synergy with the other healing classes, but nothing about our advanced class screams "I'm awesome no matter what" like a Sage's floor heals for example. (Full disclosure: I play a max level healing Sage as well, so it's not like I'm hating on the competition here or anything.) In high end PvP, Commando healers are definitely less popular than other advanced classes, as LFM requests for ranked warzones always seem to specify that they want a Scoundrel, or maybe a Sage. In random warzones, I wouldn't be surprised if many players found our kind a bit of a nuisance to kill. This might be true for any well-geared healer though. 2. How do you perceive your own spec? I'm not a hardmode raider really (though I have done some), but as it stands I haven't run into any content that made me feel like my class's performance was inadequate. Ammo management is challenging sometimes, but I also enjoy it. In heavy AoE situations I eye the Sages somewhat jealously, considering how hard I have to work to keep people alive while they can just dump their floor heal and call it a day, but it doesn't feel truly bothersome. In PvP I only do random warzones, and there I feel that Combat Medics have both pronounced strengths and weaknesses which pretty much balance each other out. Our main strength is our heavy armour and survivability, which can make a world of a difference in an environment where you can't necessarily count on other players to help a healer that is under attack. Our burst healing is also quite good, which works like a charm to bring people back from the brink of death when an enemy tries to burst them down in turn. Kolto Bomb as a short-cooldown AoE that can be cast on the move is quite powerful as well, even if it doesn't heal for much. Our main weaknesses are a lack of mobility and being very obvious targets. We can do a little bit of healing while on the move, but unless we can knock our pursuers off a handy cliff, we have no way of escaping an enemy without help, as we have no speed boost, charge or counter to snares, knockbacks and stuns. We just have to sit there or walk along really slowly and take it. Even with heavy armour that rarely works well. As far as being an obvious target goes, the fact that all our main abilities have a cast time means that any enemy can immediately identify us as healers. Worse, trying to do any healing with Hammer Shot is like painting a giant target over your head. While I kind of love the green beam in PvE for its sheer weirdness, I think that this is the only thing that I truly find unbalanced in Combat Medic PvP, as our Mercenary counterparts don't have a visual equivalent and can heal from the back without announcing their presence quite so loudly.

I know it's not mentioned over the comm because Cole Cantarus also only talks about the right hand man, but Serevin's name might have come up during Malgus' "declaration of independence", hmm. Will have to pay close attention next time I get to redo that quest.

When you encounter Darth Serevin during the battle for Ilum, you get the option to say something like "Darth Serevin, I presume". However, despite of having levelled multiple Republic characters by now, I don't remember ever meeting him before that flashpoint. Where would my character know him from? Sorry if this is a silly question but it's been bugging me and I haven't been able to find an answer with Google. I only know that Imperial characters interact with him on Voss.

Personally I love the fact that exiting a flashpoint with a group finder group takes you to the actual instance entrance. Makes it easy to hand in the FP quest as a group, and then visit some vendors, trainers and maybe the GTN on the fleet. I hope that if they add a "return to where you were" option, it doesn't become automatic and mandatory. Handing in the FP quests together would pretty much be off the table if that were to happen. I liked the idea that was mentioned on the first page, to give people a temporary pass back to their previous location which they can then decide to use... or not.

Do you have any of the prequests to talk to Satele Shan? If not, try picking them up, or if you do already have them, make sure that you complete the talky bits before trying to queue up. I was unable to queue for Colicoid War Game on my agent today while I had the "talk to Malgus" step of the prequest in my log, but once I completed it, the flashpoint became available for me to select.

I would recommend that you all pick your favourite characters of the lot from both factions (depending on how much you play them, whether you use their crew skills a lot etc.) and transfer them to the Shadowlands. Right now, you won't be able to transfer more than eight. However, presumably more transfer options will be introduced over time, such as paid transfers to any destination where you have room, so you could then take the remaining characters to another server. They might also add more character slots per realm in the future, allowing you to move more chars onto Shadowlands. We don't really know yet what will happen to the servers that are being transferred from; presumably they will get closed down eventually. I would be surprised if Bioware didn't give people another chance to get their characters off before they do that though.

A very thoughtful post, but like RLWalker above I have to disagree with the suggestion that healers need more cooldowns. The limited toolbox is actually the main reason I enjoy healing in this game so much. It shifts the focus towards smart resource management and allows some compensating for mistakes without putting the healers into the position of being expected to "just heal through it" whenever someone else messes up. If you make healing more powerful, everyone has to take more damage, and you eventually end up with fights where someone inevitably dies within a GCD if nobody hits the right cooldown, or where people just chain their biggest heals non-stop because nothing else will suffice. Same with dispel... yes, sometimes it also annoys me that it has a cooldown, but at the same time I appreciate that as long as that cooldown is there, I never have to worry about Bioware making a fight where I'm expected to do nothing but spam dispels instead of healing.

Interesting, I think that's the first story I've encountered in the game where this kind of mental adjustment is necessary. It seems kind of weird too, as they easily could have maintained coherence by simply having Dracen interfere before you can kill Broga (because he wants to keep him for interrogation or whatever). Where else do you get the option to do things which are then ignored in the official canon?

I just did Quesh on Imperial side for the first time and I don't see how the planetary storylines for both sides are supposed to add up on this planet. How does this work? All I see is contradictions.

I agree that this boss is overtuned, but you can use his staying rooted in place to your advantage by running out of his range as soon as the adds spawn, so you can CC/nuke them away from the boss without him interfering or doing any damage to your party once his shield goes down. Your tank can just help with nuking the droids, as the boss will patiently stand around and twiddle his thumbs while you wait. Then charge back in as soon as the adds are dead, CC the second set of adds as well as you can and blow your cooldowns to get him down before he enrages.

I realise that it's still in development, but can you tell us a little bit about the group finder that you're planning to introduce in 1.3? I'm sure you're aware that there's been some heated discussion on the forums about how such a tool should be done "right" (e.g. whether group formation should be automated or driven by players), based on people's experiences in other games. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks!

Personally I loved the event. Specifically, I loved that: - it came as a surprise - it lasted long enough that you could take part in everything without playing every day, but not so long that you burned out on it - it brought people back to a levelling planet - it got people interacting with each other, whether in "plague parties" on the station or by encouraging ad hoc world PvP with the enemy - it felt like there was some content for everyone: exploration, dailies, pets, world bosses etc. (pugging the world bosses was really exciting!) If I had to criticise anything it would be that: - the personal gating for the daily quests felt unnecessary. It was annoying to miss a day early on (like I did) and then be forever out of the loop as your friends go on about the newest daily (which you can't get yet). People should be allowed to "catch up" to a certain extent. - the random customisation boxes giving duplicates. Unlike others I didn't mind the randomness in principle, but when you only have enough currency to buy five of them and you get two different ones and three doubles that you can't use or trade... that kind of sucks. I do hope that there will be more events like this in the future and that they'll continue to come as a surprise. However, at the same time I'd like it if they didn't all follow the exact same pattern (just grinding whatever currency for the newest pet/crystal etc.) as this carries the risk of making things feel same-y and bland.

Do you mean quests as in missions away from the ship, or simply cues to talk? If it's the former, she's not supposed to give any. If it's the latter... well, unless you only just got her (you didn't say what level you are), it might be the "silent companion bug" still?

So I wasn't particularly keen on him when he first became my companion. I remember a [Flirt] option coming up fairly early on, something about cleaning my equipment - which made me chuckle, but I didn't pick it. Over time however he's really grown on me and I quite would have liked to romance him... but got no more chances? I've been keeping an eye out for at least the last 20 levels or so and there just wasn't a single option anymore, ever. All he ever wanted to talk about were his former squad mates! Sometimes I just wanted to shake him and yell, "Do you ever think about anything else?!" I swear I've had more chances to hit on Jonas, and he's just someone I run into occasionally! Anyway, now I'm 50, haven't finished my class quest yet, but I have finished Aric's companion quest (assuming the bit on Hoth is the end). My affection is at 9800+... but our relationship remains strictly platonic, sigh. Am I doomed to be friend-zoned forever due to my character's inability to flirt?

So I actually read the mission text before sending my companions out to be diplomatic, and I keep seeing things like this, as a Republic player: The governor of a Republic moon has hinted at Imperial sympathies. He would make a useful Imperial ally; your companion might convince him to defect. Why would I encourage people to defect to the enemy? Is this a bug or am I missing something here...

There should be an "Exit Area" button above your mini-map after finishing a flashpoint, which takes you straight back to the fleet. I didn't notice it at first either; it's very handy.