"Taaa, Yezzz, Daaa!" "Taaa, Yezzz, Daaa!" "Taaa, Yezzz, Daaa!" "Taaa, Yezzz, Daaa!" "Taaa, Yezzz, Daaa!" "Taaa, Yezzz, Daaa!" "Taaa, Yezzz, Daaa!" "Taaa, Yezzz, Daaa!" "Taaa, Yezzz, Daaa!" ... ad infinitum during combat. (Republic character).

Isn't this the same as when a Sorc/Sage throws a bubble on you, you automatically target that caster unless you were targetting something else? Are these companions set to Heal as per default in the Alliance screen?

Yes... and it wants 3 of the Personal Conquest material to make it.

I got it with a rank 11 C2-N2 healer while in tank spec with a mix of 208 and 216. I did not kill any Named Paladins. However, C2-N2 did die when the boss was at about 8%, so I had to finish her off solo. Maybe that made a difference...

Regarding Taral V: - Lord Hasper is definitely broken. 42k Shock every few seconds is not at all reasonable. - General Edikar is overtuned. I had to respec to tank and use tank gear in order to finish the instance, after a couple of people quit the group.

This is also my impression -- that the levelling process has been not merely streamlined but rocket powered -- and any subscriber can hit max level within a couple of days.

You can also buy rank 6 companion gifts for 30 Common Data Crystals, or you can buy the Alliance Supplies for 50 and get a companion gift and a piece of legacy gear and a chance at some other stuff too. Also, each old Treasure Hunting companion gift fragments buys one rank 5 gift of the same rarity -- what a bargain!

If you're referring to Conquests, actually, for this week, PVP hasn't been needed. IMO the best way to get this done has been with the weekly Heroics. With the Stronghold decoration bonus, and a Guild Invasion bonus, I've been able to hammer out almost all the points needed to hit the 20k total just by doing the Nar Shadda weekly heroics. Those, plus the big increases in XP, meant that my Sentinel that was level 56 on Friday, doing 1 HM FP, 1 Tactical FP, and a group finder operation, plus about 6 of the Nar Shadda weekly heroics, took me to 65... (Oh, and you probably don't remember the time when, hilariously, you could get the end-game operations crafting mats by reverse-engineering PVP gear. How the PVPer laughed and cried as the warzones filled up with people in full PVE gear and no clue what to do, just came in for the wz comms....).

I think this is the key gain and advantage of the process: far less unwanted stuff being crafted and reverse-engineered or vendored or dumped on GTN to just level the skill. Now, you no longer need to make random stuff to level up, and the stuff you make has a direct use -- if not to you, to another crafter. So, for the record, I'm strongly in favor of the subcomponent approach. Having said that, the amount of gear given out from mission rewards and from flashpoint bosses, combined with the huge XP gains, makes crafted gear somewhat redundant except toward the level cap... (I was pleasantly surprised to discover that just doing the heroics on Ord Mantell gave (neutral!) relics, implants and earpieces to my lowbie vanguard -- a very nice change from having to wait till 21 for implants and 25 for the gsi relics).

As mentioned in another thread, apparently the shady looking guy on Odessen near the market area sells these for 25 glowing data crystals apiece (and someone else was complaining they had nothing to spend their excess glowing, so all seems good.... )

Actually... with the nature of the gear revamp, you only need 3 legacy sets of "commendation" (data crystals) gear now -- one for DPS, one for Healers, and one for Tank, since they have no set bonus and the mastery works for all. ( So, yes, while you CAN get gear for alts, there's not really much point in getting vast numbers of those, and once you've sorted out some legacy OH/MH as well, this appears to be the only way to convert them into something that is at all useful. (It's better than what we were doing before 4.0 with elite comms, which was to buy an offhand and put a CM crystal to bind it, then vendoring it for a pretty small cash sum).

Actually, this applies to Artificer-created Lightsabers too, so it isn't about interdependence. I had assumed that this was to make the new weapons match the Zakuul look (yellow sabers, like the ones held by Arkann and Vaylin in the load screen, and the one Thexan used too) -- but is this the case for ALL crafted weapons? The offhand (shield generator) I created for my Shadow Tank does have a crystal slot, despite those never being "visible". The old weapons used to be created with a crystal that had either no stats or just level 10ish stats, and gave you the option of having the color of your choice -- these seem a retrograde step, or a plain bug.

I have absolute mountains of the blue slicing components that were only used for augments, perhaps Bioware have actually decided to make these useful? I am not ruling out it being a bug, as I think the business of Artifice using Armstech-created components to make wielded items, but just saying there may be a legitimate reason for it. Also, I had mountains of the blue investigation materials left, so having it actually used for more things with Armstech actually makes sense to me. As for the level gap, levelling is now ridiculously fast, so I'd say 4 levels vs 2 levels is perfectly acceptable, and it matches what you can get from the common data crystal vendors.

I would say you've been unlucky. I've had reasonable crit rates with my old rank 10 affection companions. For my Artificer, this is great, because Artifice has never had a historical crit bonus beyond the Legacy of Crafting and the +1 from Treek/HK-51. However, I haven't done any systematic tests of crafting rates, maybe I'll just stack up all my 10k/rank 10 companions with the stuff you make with grade 1 mats and see what actual crit rates I get.

Yes, there are "cowboy hats", but with the exception of the one worn by Nico Okarr, they are all ridiculous because they wrap around the head to disguise the fact that the game engine generally replaces your hair with your hat. (Exceptions - the sith partial masks e.g. malgus, and the jedi circlets -- because in the former case they are big enough to cover any facial hair, and in the latter case clipping doesn't matter).

The patchnotes seem rather underwhelming. I have a nasty feeling they'll be doing 4.0b/c/d/e/f each day from now till the 27th, when the expansion "officially" launches.

Unless Valkorion is Palpatine, he's been dead or at least out of action for thousands of years by the time Ep1 (The Phantom Menace) rolls around. So clearly his immortality schtick has its' limits. This should probably be in Story and Lore forum though.

And please don't tell me they were having a party during the Patch....

On a related note, Akaavi Spar has been saying "My guns itch" since launch (while wielding a Techstaff) so I was looking forward to seeing her dual-wielding blasters, Mercenary-style (she uses a blaster pistol in her story cutscenes on Balmorra) -- but no, she's still only got Tech Staff skill. Fail...

Just for a test, I grabbed the old easiest H2 from Coruscant "Republic's Most Wanted" on a level 60 Commando, and being level 18 on Coruscant, it was indeed as easy as expected. During this I got several companion gifts including, I think, a rank 5 purple. Given that this was only an area with maybe 20 mobs, I think companion gifts will be ultra-common -- as they will need to be, if we are going to reach 250k influence.

Yes -- because you now get blue or higher, unmoddable gear for each person in a FP from each boss. If all you wanted was a shell to put modifications in, that's now on the level 8 vendor (formerly the level 7 vendor). (Oddly, my scoundrel got a purple vibroknife.... or perhaps not so oddly given the known preference of the Dev team to Imperial characters). I'm actually more annoyed that they yanked the vendors that sold companion weapons, because I'm now having to use my Armstech to craft a bunch of Techblades and such for companions whose weapon skills changed in 4.0. On the other hand, that's a nice little short-term market too. Regarding the schematics, I have 2 Armormechs and a Synthweaver, and I spent several thousand basic comms learning some of the old Campaign armor shell schematics, and used up some old Arkanian tokens to get some schematics too, on my Imperial armormech -- but there should still have been a way to buy those armor shells even if the stats were being stripped.

About half the problem is people reading "[TACTICAL]" as "[switch off brain and tunnel strongest mob]". This was the case with a Red Reaper I got, 3 of the 4 of us had Slice Droid and a lot of the fights there are against droids -- but only I ever bothered Ccing them. The guardian in tank spec (and tank stance, with some tank gear) died in practically every pull, because even before I could tranq dart a single elite he'd jump in, or even if I did manage to CC, he or the sentinel would jump on that or AE it. The other half genuinely seems to be bugs: On Taral V, I warned the group about the bonus boss (Lord Hasper) and his pull-and-lightning, but he was hitting people at random with a Shock for 42 K. Usually, that was an instant kill. I think the General Edikar fight is also bugged, despite cleansing his DoT I was still getting killed in short order. Oh yes, and the XP is insane. I got 2 levels during Red Reaper (2nd after accepting the Daily reward) and dinged during Taral 5 as well.

I have a concern regarding some pieces of gear from specific heroic missions. For example, the "Enemies of the Republic" H4 inside the instance at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant awards, for Commandos, an Autocannon with an awesome sound, and for Vanguards, a very compact blaster rifle that looks like a modern Spec Ops SMG. If the rewards are now made generic, will it be possible to obtain these rewards some other way, e.g. from a Basic Comms vendor on the planet?

So: At present, at least for Shadows and Assassins, we only need a small amount of Defense for most fights, and we instead stack Absorb and Shield (and similarly, but I believe to a lesser extent, Vanguards/Powertechs stack shield rating). So, any of the theorycrafters care to run the numbers on what happens when us light-armor (formerly Willpower) tanks are forced to take on so much defense at the expense of shield+absorb?

Now you need to completely revisit all tank balance, because Shadow/Sin tanks will effectively lose big amounts of mitigation from this. Or, did you, as usual, only test with Guardian/Juggernaut tanks?