Not really. If cxp is your goal, you just repeat the shortest story chapter ad naseum if you have nothing else to do and want to subject yourself to that pain. They are not engaging, they are stupid. Half the time you trying to manage your companion ai, while the other you pray your toon parries that one shot. And if your preferred spec is heals, well... forget about some of the chapters as they REALLY weren't made with you in mind. So, I agree. They were an easy to do thing that devs slapped a stamp of 'look! we do content! We are so awsome!'

All you people throwing out those jokes... you have no idea, do you? Heh. Hey KB, thanks for making me a better tank... back in a day when I alted one, your theory crafting was what I spent a lot of time pouring over. But I guess there is little need for theory-crafting now, is there? Raid content and game difficulty that required that kind of precision isn't really there anymore. Take care, whatever game community you end up after this, if any, will be super lucky to have you.

Speaking of 'why it was patched' ... in 1.1 they got rid of RNG battlemaster tokens that dropped in battlemaster bags in PVP, replacing them with commodations to purchase the gear. in 1.2 they removed the "pre-destined loot" system from Story difficulty (used to be random assignment of gear pieces in story mode ops based on base class). Stepping on the same rake, anyone?

Play a smuggler. Funny story, and in vanilla chapters plenty of opportunity to put your own interests first

I had it happen once (getting a crate with full inventory) and the crate was then found in the mail.

Heh. Thing is, when landscape stuff and normal flashpoints were challenging and there was no stupid bolster, people actually bothered to learn their classes, rotations and fight mechanics. Now? a 3 year old can mash his face on the keyboard and beat most of the content, and if they ran into slightest bit of trouble, or can't function in a group, it's obviously because 'THIS GAME IS TOO HARD AND NEEDS NERF!" It's a travesty, but I guess that's the way most of the existing mmos are going. Sorry, OP. I really do sympathize.

Take your time and play through the base story, and all planetary arcs, and enable side missions in the corner of your map menu. Enjoy it and don't rush. Kotfe+Kotet does not hold the candle to the old stories.

Don't mind Lana's change... but Senya's face is horrible now. It isn't that they made her look more aged, it's that it looks like they took a blur tool, massacred the texture with no regards to the face mesh and saved it in low res. It's jarring, especially when she is in the cut-scenes next to just about anyone.

That was my impression as well. SOME of them aren't, but pure LS agent feels just... wierd. It's one of the classes that plays really different if you make a couple key choices light though.

Many of the DS agent choices (mix in a little light, because even agent doesn't escape some of the chaotic stupid stuff) are very well done. A lot of them feel justified and pragmatic, especially if you go pro-empire, but not sith lackey. Give it a go

Have you looked at Secret World? Not a lot in common with Star Wars, I am afraid, but I find the scenery, animations and characters a lot more palatable than wow. It's also a lot more niche. -modern setting -amazing story -interesting and involving quests -have to buy, but has a free trial -perks for subscription, but no obligation to do it -earn currency in various ways to get (most) of your endgame stuff from vendor . Also has an interesting take on character progression (you can learn every skill available on one character, but have 'loadouts' you can set up for different roles.

You know, all the people who talk about RNG system as a new vision, need to take a good, long look at the past of the game first. It has been tried about 5 years ago. It failed. They got rid of it. Now they doing it again. Why? Is it because WOW does it? If so, they are copying the wrong thing. Yeah, WOW has RNG. But their expansion has new proper dungeons, new raids, new strongholds, new factions, and a much longer story. And they talking about adding more raids, more new events, celebrations, etc. They pack more content in one expansion than SWTOR released in years of 'updates'. And all SWTOR team decides to adopt is RNG system? Or maybe it isn't because of WOW. After their recent communication, I am beginning to think someone out there WANTS the game to shut down. So they can repackage it and re- sell it again as a single player.

No worries. As soon as this gets shut down, they will repackage classic SWTOR minus ops and sell it as single player game for 50$ + 10$-30$ a pop for Makeb, Oricon, SOR, KOTFE and KOTET.

I put in the 1.x history because I felt it was relevant. They did not introduce the new bugs on purpose, but RNG? They had full intent to do it. It just boggles my mind how back when the system was on a drawing board nobody thought to look back a few years and say "Hey, guys. We tried a similar system before, and it wasn't well received. Maybe we need to rethink this."

-From the interview with Ben Irving and Charles Boyd But is it really? Let's take a walk down a memory lane, shall we? Those of you guys who were around at the game's launch will remember how gearing worked at some point in normal operations and pvp. To those who weren't: normal mode operations loot was auto-assigned to a random person based on their class. That often lead to the cases where someone received a columi gear token for the x time, while someone of the same class in the raid never got one. i.g. RNG at work. In pvp, around 1.0 time we had 3 tiers of gear. centurion, which were upgraded by champion, which then was upgraded by battlemaster. You found battlemaster gear tokens (at random, and not guaranteed) in the loot bags. Which meant someone could keep on getting battlemaster bracers ad naseum, and, like one of my friends, never completed their battlemaster set (until they changed the system). So what did Bioware do then? -From Game Update 1.1 – Rise of the Rakghouls. They scrapped the RNG system from PVP in 1.1! And as for random autoassignment of loot in OPS? -by DavidBass They scrapped the RNG from ops in 1.2! In that light, how is reintroducing the the system they scrapped to make people happier, and in much more severe form, can be considered "learning from mistakes"?

That's my sentiment exactly! I don't begrudge anyone their faster xp gain, but would love the optional item to set xp gain to classic! ....along with an option to turn in the heroics instead of autocomplete and return on the flashpoint couriers... pipe dream, I guess :/

It's not just the Harbinger. I've yet to see Dark Side move beyond a single increment, let alone win on Progenitor . Silly mechanic in the first place. The characters I've kept neutral through the game now have to switch back and forth :/.

Little trivia, back in 1.x the operation loot was assigned randomly to random persons based on their base class. in pvp we had bags with a random chance at the gear too. They got rid of that system. RNG sucked then. it sucks now. Whomever thought up this bright idea to reintroduce the system they SCRAPPED a very long time ago is an idiot and a moron. Or a group of idiots and morons.

It's a Rare-ish drop from the bonus boss in the flashpoint (HM only I believe). Not sure if it can also drop from the last boss, I've never seen him drop it. When I farmed them for our guildship, I recall it was something like 1 drop out of 5-6 HM runs? Get some friends and dedicate an evening to it, or que solo specifically for hm korriban, and you will see it eventually, just never skip the bonus boss.

At the risk of sounding jaded, why care? It's going to be yet another generic 'pet' aka Nico, Akk Dog, etc... Anyone who is hoping that it will come with more than a token two line of dialogue is very likely deluding themselves

You know what's funny? Back when pts changes feedback thread was up, I very explicitly stated that nerfing our hots will never make up for their *significant* (rofl) buff to UM, but guess what? There was nearly ZERO protest to the changes on the thread, maybe one or two pvp operatives/scoundrels who smelled the nerf, few more got up in arms about diagnostic scan. The vast majority pretty much said "Take a walk, you are stupid, those are all nice buffs, nice burst change!" Reap what you sow, guys. Heh.

You know what else would be a real QoL change? Fixing our 6 piece set bonus that we don't have to wear 2 old 186 pieces to perform at our best. Ticks me off every time I see the hard earned 198 armorings sitting in my inventory, because hey, the stuff I got when I was 55 is better.

Hey, HM bulo is tough on scoundrel due to sudden spiky damage, but it is manageable, IF people understand when and where from damage coming from and do their best to mitigate it. During that first phase where your stacked your raid is taking damage from barrel throw and carts, and it really should not be happening. Things to work on: Your raid can spread out from stacking the moment your second tank drops the purple circle upstairs. The whole purpose of stackign up is for that tank to get the circle upstairs so he can murder the adds. You can zoom out a bit and the moment you see purple drop, call for spread out. Make sure you are not standing on top of your co-healer and any dps at that point. Healers space is generally to the middle, close to tanks, but with enough space between each other so barrel throw doesn't drop on more than one of you. Ranged spread dps towards the back, melee dps, towards middle at max possible distance to still dps. The tank who is not upstairs should be one taking all the extra carts damage by stepping back a fair bit, and melee dps obviously should be at max reach to the opposite direction, so they don't eat it. In general you want to get Bulo to 75% before the first barrage hits so it can deal with second wave of adds, so dps away like a madperson for a few seconds before the second tank runs to get barrel. (you can slow release the barrel runner tank and kolto wave the group before the second tank runs off for incoming healing buff tho) After that start hotting people (as you moving back from stacking already), especially melee who may or may not move out of lifters/unlucky barrel on time, because the moment you see purple circle drop up top, you know there will be a lot of spike damage coming on very fast and very soon, so make sure tank has double stacks of slow release, pop pugnacity, precast kolto pack on main tank, kolto cloud, and pray your raid mates are doing everything they can not to take unnecessary damage. Kolto waves is nice in that fight in moderation, especially if you running heavy melee but you will need to triage on tanks a lot still, and hot+emergency medpack the person who just took the barrel throw asap. About barrage phase: you can drop 3 blue circles on top of each other before they activate and start doing damage ( I generally drop 2 by inherent need to move to stay in range of tanks who are moving the most in the phase too). But your dps should not be running like headless chickens dropping barrage circles everywhere and cutting off healers from tank range. Try not to panic and don't cancel casts when barrage starts, it really helps when everyone handles that stage in a more controlled manner. Best of luck PS. Your healing numbers are fine, as a display of your ability, as are your co-healer's. My co-healer is a sage, and our numbers are generally quite a bit lower, when people do their thing right, and don't put themselves in the position where they take unnecessary damage or splash the damage intended for them only onto the nearby people. On the other hand, I also spiked over 5.5K ehps on my mercenary the other day on an alt run taking some new people in who were just learning the fight. So, a lot of it depends on practice. Pure healing numbers really do not tell the whole story, take a look at it in conjunction with incoming damage numbers, and try to determine why those people took so much, and what can THEY do to avoid it.

You can try to farm your own Venderra pieces through bonus series Hoth heroics, choosing a lockbox reward and hoping for the best. Though, now the loot table is diluted by datacron decorations, so it may be harder to get. Around 1 mil for Vendetta pieces is fair, considering the rarity.

Sweeping Blasters, suppresive fire and their mirror counterparts are not spammabe because of shorter channel time a energy cost stacking up, force storm is, outside of prolonged fights. Healer sorc/sage uses storm on single target simply because its their highest hitting attack, there is nothing that comes close to that damage in the healer arsenal. And force storm problem is not just its damage and slow component, which may be slightly overtuned, I am not arguing that. Its the cooldown that makes it crit every tick, AND the fact that it procs chain lightening.