You get commendations regardless of which side of the match you are on - and there's generally some 50s on each team.

Actually, you're the one that's wrong. If you are initiating a damage spell on someone behind you, you get a red message along the lines of "not facing that target". You can cast at 90-degree angles, and possibly a little further. Heals don't seem to have the same behavior, they generally autoface regardless, and I'm not sure about debuffs.

I can't stand what you call PvP - but warzones in TOR are great. It addresses most of what's horrible about MMO PvP in other games. No one gets one-shot, not even level 10s against valor 60 level 50s. No one gets ganked doing non-PvP activities. These games require actual strategy and teamwork, rather than an in-depth knowledge of the enemy's cooldown timers (though that certainly doesn't hurt). There's no character cost to death and thus no griefing - and yet there is still a penalty to the team's success for dying.

Agree completely. Huttball is awesome fun. I think a lot of the people upset don't realize the chain CC isn't coming from just one opponent. My level 50 has no CC abilities I didn't have by level 10. CC is the level equalizer in the warzones, not a sign of the level disparity. Chain CC is just good strategy and teamwork. It may be true that a level 50 has more experience to know when not to use their CC (and when not to use their CC-breaker) than a level 17, but that's part of the fun of it. You can't learn unless you play. The real issue is pre-mades versus not. However, even against some uber pre-made, it's still kind of fun to work to make it a 0-5 game instead of 0-6 ... or maybe you can even aspire to the heights of 1-6. It's a lot sweeter than it sounds!

A primary healer can, and darn well should, fire attacks at anyone capping objectives in Alderaan or Voidstar. With free respawns, losing the tank doesn't = wipe. Losing enough objectives does. A primary healer can, and should, spot that player down to 3% health kiting your melee heal target. What is more effective? An instant cast ranged attack to bring the enemy down, or healing the melee? A primary healer can, and should, stand near objectives. That gets them a medal (or two if they do it long enough) even without firing a single attack. A primary healer can, and should, use any AOEs when the enemy clumps up. Feel free to interrupt them if emergency healing is necessary ... but don't just refuse to use them at all.

The post is incomplete. The healing medals parallel the damage ones. 2.5k single shot, 5k single shot, 75k total healing in the zone, 300k total in the zone. It is true that firing a medpak can't trivialize the 2.5k damage medal like the Medic medal.

Everyone starts with a level range of +3 to -3. Every minute they're in the queue the range expands one level up to five minutes (+/-8), then 2 levels/minute up to 10 (+/- 18), then 4 levels/minute to 15 (+/- 38). After minute 15 everyone qualifies. You can even give people an interface where they can set their maximum opponent level, with a warning that it may mean longer queue times. No setting lower than +10, however, or half the people will set their own level as max and defeat the system.

For many people, that's the problem with add-ons. If enough people perfect their rotation easily, game difficulty has to be scaled up for those people. In turn, this forces people who don't want to use add-ons to do so - simply in order to keep up with your efficient rotations that the difficulty has now been scaled to. I don't mind as much because I can't stand playing DPS roles, but it's not hard to see where they are coming from.

You don't have to play exclusively for warzones in order to end up playing a lot of warzones at 50. Most of the other things available for 50s to do on demand are tedious and far less efficient at producing quality gear than warzones. 10 commendations per day, when upgrades cost 100+ commendations? It'd take something like 24 hours of playing time, spread over 10-12 real life days to get one piece - and that piece isn't a massive upgrade, just typical next tier gear. On the other hand, 3 successful warzones a day for 4 real life days is likely to result in at least two similar upgrades for PvE. And yes, that gear also has Expertise on it, improving PvP as well. A 50 can craft - except that the companion system doesn't require much player time spent crafting. Even a casual crafter probably hit 400 skill before making it to level 50. They can grind reverse engineering - but the companion system means the only time spent is clicking 15-20 times every 30-60 minutes. The PvP daily/weekly on Ilum is quite efficient when available, but it requires the other faction to have come in and taken objectives of their own before you can capture them back. If the other faction just doesn't bother, it's possible to spend hours unable to progress the quest as your faction controls all the objectives. This is being adjusted in 1.1, so hopefully will be better. The hard mode flashpoint difficulty is set assuming at least some 50+ gear ... and by far the best way to get that gear is warzones. They are also multiple hour commits, which is good for the weekend - not so great other times. I'll put it to you this way. I have never PvP'd in an MMO - ever - before hitting 50 on SWTOR. Now it's about 75% of my time. It's not because I want to faceroll people, it's because I've upgraded 5 gear slots to post-50 purples in 4 days.

What do you mean, your "heal button"? Dark Infusion? Dark Heal? Resurgence? Innervate? Static Barrier?

Officially, his Sith name is Vitiate, and his birth name is Tenebrae.

My Inquisitor healer isn't evil at all. All it takes is breaking the ingrained Republic = good, Sith = bad mindset. Both are tyrannies, though only one is honest about it. Both violently suppress rebellions and succession efforts. Both are willing to use manipulation and deception. Both are even willing to use deadly force against agents of the other faction that they are ostensibly at peace with. A Senator can almost never be held accountable for their rulings. Certainly 50% of Senators can't be. On the other hand, if a Sith can gain enough power, they can hold anyone they want accountable ... for any reason they want. Open bald-faced assassination of Darths and Moffs is frowned upon - but if you're powerful enough and have the decency to not get caught, no one's going to launch a galactic manhunt looking for the perpetrator. Even Mace Windu ultimately succumbs to this way of thinking, when he self-justifies murdering the lawfully elected supreme executive of the Republic because he might get found innocent by the courts. If one of the two top leaders of the Jedi Order (albeit 3600 years in the future) can think that way, you can bet your Sith Inquisitor is allowed to, as well.

Umm, they are.

I don't follow your logic. If you interrupt a big damage ability, he does no damage with it. Conversely, if you try to heal through it, he comes close to outdamaging your heal and you end up back where you started, just down a little force and with a heal on cooldown. Something I like to do against mobs with big attacks is wait for an enemy to take out Khem's bubble (not long!) and start casting his big hit. Interrupt with Jolt. Wait for him to start casting it again - interrupt with Electrocute. This also lets you get in a Dark Transfusion while the enemy is stunned. Wait for him to start casting the big hit again - interrupt with Jolt (which is off cooldown by now). Channel the Force to refresh Electrocute's cooldown (and start a heal-over-time on Khem) ... then Electrocute him again with the next big hit. Which of course means Jolt is available the next time around. That's 5 straight interrupts. If you can't keep Khem alive through that, you need to check Khem's gear or your spec. I got through it with Ashara at 43 - though it was close. Another mob in that mission was much harder (she had a heal) and got me 4 times. Also, don't forget you can get a med unit that heals both you and Khem. Even better, it will revive a defeated companion when used - so if Khem does go down, aggro transfers to you ... you get in a few hits until your bubble is broken and your health is down, use the med-unit to revive Khem (and heal yourself in the process), wait a few secs and then hit the aggro-dumper to turn the mob back to your companion. You've just added 10-15 seconds to the fight - as a healer spec, drawing out the fight wins as long as you can outdamage the other's heal/regen.

I've also noticed REing stacks seems to help greatly with recipe chances. I've never failed to get a recipe when breaking down a stack of 10. It might be subject to small sample size, though, as you don't do this very often. I just wish you could stack implants!

Odd, I have exactly the opposite problem. The starbase defense is more about timing - ignore everything but the Corellian Defender and the bombers once things start getting hectic. The groups of 3 bombers can each be taken out with Power-converted blasters before they ever get to you. The bigger clumps, especially the waves after the first, are going to do their damage ... particularly with the Defender in there. You can jam one of them, though. Neither should be taking out your shields and half your armor in any case. Remember, you can't regen shields when firing anyhow, so you might as well be on overcharged blasters when behind the bomber waves. Sullust Interception I've not completed at all, which is odd because I thought it's base mission (Nez Peron Sweep) was the easiest in the game. I've beaten every other mission fairly handily - though I expect there's an upgraded minefield I haven't unlocked yet.

I avoid training skills I don't use. 30-40k for a 8% upgrade in damage on a conditional skill that I rarely meet the conditions for? 210k for the option to spend another 25k to get a 5.3% out-of-combat speed boost? That's helped a lot, and post-35 or so, credit drops seem to get a lot more plentiful. Even keeping gathering missions going full time, I find myself roughly breaking even while out doing quests - pulling modestly ahead when the quest rewards are factored in.

Never mind.

I agree. At the moment, you can't sell bio items except at a paper loss versus the theoretical value of the mats ... an actual loss if running gathering missions (versus in-field gathering) past grade 2 or so. However, of all the professions, biochem is the one it's easiest to see eventually working as the market evolves.

My hope is when more people start hitting 50, the devs will eventually realize it's not working. It's easy enough to fix, as long as they accept the fundamental concept - for crafting to be of value, someone, somewhere has to need crafted goods. No matter how much they say it will ruin their game experience ... not having that need ruins the game experience for the crafters. Assuming the devs come to that realization, they just add a couple recipes and problem solved. In the mean time, my main is biochem.

Diplomacy missions or buy them from a diplomat.

Crafters can't buy stuff off the GTN. They're bankrupt as it is - not counting the ones with pre-nerf slicing stashes. Lowbie gathering stuff might sell well to people who haven't realized this yet, though. I'm sure there's people who think if they can just powerlevel their crafting, they can sell stuff for big bucks. They'll wake up somewhere around the top of grade 2, bottom of grade 3 crafting. There might also be some trade from crafters offering "mat deals" to their customers. If you just want one of XYZ item, you're a lot more likely to run to the GTN for the mats.

Gathering professions to sell to crafters. Make money in your sleep from the space station? Yeah, that sounds bankish to me. Substitute slicing or underworld trading for whatever gathering prof your main already has.

I think everyone can agree that top-of-grade crafting should never be equal or worse than commendation gear - at least any gear that costs fewer commendations that you get from just your class quest + the main planet quest. That's basically free gear. Free should never compete with crafted.

Aren't you biochem? Haven't you noticed your blue and purple implants can have augment slots? I haven't found a single augment over level 9 on the GTN.