Hmm, one thing is my main is the powertech (tank/dps). While there are some obvious differences between that and a shadow, there are some similarities in that both have tanking/dps roles, and both are a mix of melee and mid range abilities. Both have grapple/force pull too. I think sentinel would give me a much different playstyle experience. I really liked the jumping around they can do lol. Like leap frogger. Besides the stealth, I worry the shadow experience would be all too similar to my powertechs in many ways. Besides, I'm going pure evil, and sentinels get a sith tank as a companion later on right? /drool

I have two level 50's (powertech and commando), and now I'd like to dabble in lightsaber type melee dps. I think I've narrowed it down to sentinel and shadow DPS, but I'm not sure which I'd prefer. I've created both, but it's hard to tell from low level abilities. Can anyone give their two cents on which you think would be more fun and/or how their playstyle/skills differ?

I have two level 50's (powertech and commando), and now I'd like to dabble in lightsaber type melee dps. I think I've narrowed it down to sentinel and shadow DPS, but I'm not sure which I'd prefer. I've created both, but it's hard to tell from low level abilities. Can anyone give their two cents on which you think would be more fun and/or how their playstyle/skills differ?

Yeah I would just find an armstech. I got a purp lvl 50 one with an augment slot from one for pretty cheap.

Hmm, here's what happened to me. Hit 50 doing belsavis dailies. Then went to corellia to finish my class storyline. (I was like halfway done there). I remember killing that annoying JEDI dude in the green area that had been trying to get me killed since that ambush on Quesh. Then I remember helping the Darth guy fight off a JEDI attack. He laughed at how weak they were. I told him I kill that Jedi. Then he sent me to steal a ship to fly to the Chancellors ship. I think I ended up shooting the chancellor, and then freezing him for transport. Then I remember some scene on my ship showing all my companions. I think I was done with the class story at that point. Then I had to report to the fleet I think. Once there it gave me a mission to go to ILUM. I've been doing the +2 daily on ilum every day for a few days, but not much else. Some quest to "protect two supply crates" won't work. It says the crate is already in use or something. So I assumed I'm done with everything, however two things got me thinking. 1) why does my load screen still say I'm in chapter 3-take care of the chancellor. I was looking forward to what it would say upon login after that. instead its stuck 2) was I not supposed to get a title for finishing my class story line? I mean the story was cool and all, but I sort of expected a title at the least, if not some other reward. I also thought for sure mandalore would make another appearance in my story. haven't seen him since I won the great hunt.

I'm currently on VOSS, and pretty much between those commendations and armormech should have some half decent stuff for when I ding 50 soon. My question is, what do I do upon hitting 50 to gear out to prepare for hardmodes/operations? There are a couple 47-50 flashpoints (non hardmode) that I could run for some stuff right? Also, is the best place to start by doing dailies on Ilum & Belsavus for daily comms to get armoring/mods/enhancements/barrel of level 50 blue/purp quality? Just trying to figure out the best place to start. Thanks!

Which ones do you see over and over again? For me, it's... "we should settle up"

My main's a powertech tank, and I've only gotten my sniper to 12, but from everything I've READ and guildmates I've spoken to... snipers sound great in pve (assuming you like the playstyle) do excellent dps I think most of the complaining I've seen is due to low mobility AND low survivability, when compared to other dps classes that do just as much dps, but have more mobility and more survivability. So if you could do the same dps, and have more survivability AND mobility, why wouldn't you reroll? LOL I personally agree with a few posts I've seen about how 5 more range (40 instead of 35) would make a world of difference. Honestly I think 45 makes more sense though. I don't really think that's game breaking or anything, as 10 yards more range isn't that huge a distance. It's just, if you're supposed to be the long range sniping AC, you should be able to. Not have pretty much the same range (5 yards is like nothing), and do the same amount of dps, with less survivability. Right now the cons way outweigh the pros. There's a bunch of cons, and the pros they think they gave the class to make up for them don't even come close at the moment. I think 45 yard range would solve a lot, but it wouldn't fix everything.

Actually you CAN use a blaster RIFLE in one hand, and a shield/genorator in the other. My agents first pet does that. Plus on republic troopers, I think at 10 commandos get assault cannon, but the tank ac (vanguard?) use rifle/shield. I agree whole heartedly with BH's having access to blaster rifles. Obviously mercs shouldn't be able to dual wield them, but it makes a lot more sense on powertechs (either tank or dps). You don't graphically see the shield or power generator, so why not use a blaster rifle? Just make it an option to use either, and have the difference be more aesthetic. HOWEVER I think one raeson they may have done this is to set bounty hunters / troopers apart more. We're more unique from eachother this way.

Good god no, please don't add more abilities. I use 1-9,0,-,= main bar, Shift 1-9,0,-,=, CTRL 1-9, and ALT 1-9. That's four full bars of stuff I need quick access to while tanking. A lot of it's situational, and as the tank I need to respond quickly or people die. It's already a lot. Don't need to add more. I already hear about some dps classes just spamming 2 or 3 abilities, along with 2 or 3 cooldown abilities, and I'm like wow that's so easy. Tanking is hard enough as is, with situational awareness, assisting correctly, knowing the fight mechanics... plus 4 bars worth of stuff I use frequently. Don't need to complicate it further for us. If anything, I think tanks should have it the easiest, and make dps rotations harder. For some reason that's never the case though lol.

I still have almost everything on my bars, and all 4 bars are pretty full. I like to keep the range attacks on my bar for rare occassions that I can't jet charge or grapple my target into melee range. I find shoulder slam to be the least useful though. I guess it's a free no heat attack on occassion, but I gotta watch the long cooldown and a target that's susceptable. It's kind of a wierd attack. It's not that strong, and annoying to use.

Currently my powertech is level 40, and shield spec tank. I go for tanky stats when I can (endurance/shield/absorb/defense). I'm at work, but I think my... mitigation is around 50% shield chance around 32% absorb rate on shield around 35% Defense chance around 11% A lot of times on mods, I have to choose between shield/absorb or defense, and I'm kind of curious which is better. 32% of the time absorbing 35%, or 11% of the time avoiding 100%. 32% x 35% = 12% effective 11% x 100% = 11% effective WIth shield spec powertech, you get heat venting from shielding, but I think only once every 6 seconds. I guess the more often you shield, the sooner after that ability comes off CD will you shield again to proc it. Also shielding has a chance to refresh rocket punch CD, so more threat generation. Saying all that, I think another factor may be ease of healing. To me a 11% chance of avoiding 100% damage means the other 89% the time you take full damage. With 32% chance of 35% reduction, while effectively over time its 12%, its more spread out damage. I think you'll get more spikey damage on defense, which is harder to predict for a healer. All told a balance of the two is probably best, but I think when I have small choices to make, it seems at least for powertech, shield/absorb is the way to go. Any other thoughts?

The helms get a lot better around 35+... More mandalorian/fett looking. I really like the HOTH one a lot, but I'm using an orange one that looks like a mandalorian helm I found as a drop on quesh. Also flashpoints starting around 35 drop a lot better looking helms. FYI though, for you younger level bounty hunters... get the sith juggernaut helm from commendations on nar shada. It's orange, so you can swap out the STR mods for AIM ones, and it looks 300% better than any BH helm until 35ish.

our guild has 15-20 people on at any given time, so it's a fairly large guild I believe I'm one of only two powertechs... and I'm 40, he's 16 or something. I think we're both shield spec. Decent number of mercs. Lots of sorcs, assassins, juggernauts, marauders. Pretty low numbers on the sniper/operatives too. Like maybe 1 or 2 of each. So I'd say the rarest are powertech operative sniper At least in our guild. I personally love that powertech is so rare. It makes me so unique. And everyone loves a tank, and they are often surprised at how good a tank I am (and I don't feel like I'm the bomb or anything). Also, sometimes groups will do 1 healer, two tanks, 1 dps and we do great. Maybe in hardmodes that's not enough dps, but for pre-50 flashpoints it makes it super easy on the healer. If its me and a juggernaut, we got a good combo of abilities too. I love being so resilient though, having strong short range moves, but still being able to do range damage if needed (missles/railshot/unload). Also taunts/guard are great in pve and pvp.

most planets I've been to so far have been green but I'm doing every mission/heroic/bonus series on every planet plus space missions frequently, and flashpoints when I have time haven't really gotten into pvp much yet though However to my surprise, when I hit 39 and went to Hoth (and I havent completely finished quesh yet), everything on Hoth was yellow to me starting out. The starting stuff may turn green at 40 I'm not sure, but the later stuff on the planet will still be yellow probably. I find the mobs aren't as much pushovers as I'd experienced to this point pre 40. Two ore more strong mobs, or one elite and one strong put up much more of a challenge to me now. ON a side note, It's funny I've heard people in general chat on planets complaining that they are UNDER leveled for the planets they're on. I think it's just some people have raced through their class missions, and others have done everything they could get their hands on. I think a good amount of us are somewhere in between. I think it's a good balance.

Talk about a dying game, orgimmar was ghost town every night before I stopped playing. So far in SWTOR my server has been slammed since release. The only difference I've noticed now is people are more spread out in level. A few in their 40's, most in the 20's/30's, and people who thought another class/ac looked cool rerolled and are in their teens. I find 2-3 people for heroic missions/flashpoints instantly when I ask in general chat. Never really have to wait very long for groups. My guild has around 10-20 on most times. Everything seems on the up and up. I think it's just naysayers seeing what they want to see, not reality.

Are you kidding? people aren't even doing Ilum yet because most are in their 20's/30's. Once a lot of players get to 50, many will reroll alts to experience the other stories (8 stories, not to mention 16 different advanced classes, each with 3 different skill lines), and for the ones that want to stick to their 50's more.... I'm sure we'll start to see expansions of space combat/travel and more max level worlds to explore. They could make entire planets of group/raid content to explore. I'm sure once a lot are 50 too, they'll add more fluff content. That's how wow has done it, a lot of this fluffy stuff in wow has only been in the last few years to appease all the max level masses. Man the first few years were pretty bland, hence the term vanilla wow lol. Not to mention I'm curious to see how they flesh out the legacy system. There's a lot else I've heard talk of that I can't recall atm.

A lot of scenery in ALL mmo's is to "simulate" large/grand scale. A lot of the areas in SWTOR they did this with great artistry and scenic views (like big buildings in cities you can't get to like in dromund kaas and nar shada). Also they did their best simulation of a space galaxy, with the galaxy map, and the current way you travel between worlds. I like that you can walk around your ship and see your crew, and the hold you can store stuff in. However I think a lot of mmoer's want to be able to interact with that grand scale. I like how they did it in SWTOR in some ways, but my imagination makes me want to imagine if they had done some of the below. Rather than the current way you travel between planets of going to the hanger, loading into your ship, clicking on the map, and "traveling" to the other planet, and then clicking exit your ship.... I think a lot of people wish they could actually get in their ship, and steer it to the other planet. I wonder if that's even possible in this game. Maybe some kind of transition between the normal world environment and the space minigame environment. So you walk into your ship, and actually pilot it away into space... the trick is, then how do you navigate between worlds? without that galaxy map it would be confusing I think. Think about space for a moment. It's pure 3d. You could fly in infinite directions, and it all looks the same LOL. Maybe there would be some creative way to travel yourself between the worlds. How long would it take though? and would it be any more immersive than the way it is now? I mean there's nothing in space between planets, so it would probably just feel like a big time drain. Plus you'd have to know what direction to go. A 3d map in game would be hard to implement. Plus everyone else would be flying around out there. What kind of travel times should be implemented, and what kind of interaction between players would be allowed. Could you dock with other people's ships and walk around? LOL This would all make the space stuff way more than minigame, and almost the focus of the game. This is an mmo, not a space-shooter type game. I mean they could invest all that time/energy into developing that side of the game, but it would take time away from development of the actual mmo gameplay we're all here for. In terms of planetary scale/size, I'm happy with the size of the planets we can explore so far, but I see what you mean about feeling boxed in, and wow feels more open. However wow is the same way, you just don't realize it. Each continent is surrounded by "water" instead of impassable mountains. Is that really any different except in your mind? Maybe those are the same mountains, and the ones you see in the west are the same ones you see in the east, its just the map is 2d and you're not thinking in 3d. I mean with my example above about what if you could travel manually yourself from planet to planet through space, theoretically you could land anywhere on a planet, so they would have to have content on the whole planet. Obviously these game designers aren't god, and they aren't going to create an entire galaxy of fully populated planets for us to explore. Maybe in 50 years in this industry LOL. If they were to try to do something like this now, my guess is there'd be a lot of empty space/terrain on each planet, with faster travel around. So really it would be a lot of empty feeling worlds because there's so much space between players. Right now you bump into other players and feel the world is populated because you're doing quests in close proximity. In a real massive planetary system, if quests are all over the planet, you'd have to get extremely lucky and be doing the same quest at the same time, and be at the same location to bump into another player. I dunno, I think there are some cool ways they could make you feel more immersed in a galaxy of planets, and I see what you mean about feeling like you just click, cinematic, click, cinematic, and you don't actually do anything. You want to feel like you actually piloted a ship, took off, landed, on static planets in a galaxy. It sounds cool, but is a lot harder to implement. I think they did a great job of simulating that, without taking away too much from the actual play experience.

I am in fairly good gear. I'm an armormech, and am pretty much always in blues/purps. I don't let any of my gear get 5 levels below my player level. So if I have a lvl 25 purple, at player level 30 I will upgrade it. Even if I wasn't armormech though, you can use orange armor/weapons, and just upgrade the armoring/barrel every 5 levels or so with a blue/purp. Armormech/underworld trading has been a huge money sink for me, but I've still managed to get my mount training at 25, and at 30 I have 85k credits. I'm def. not rich like some other players, but I've trained all my skills, and trained all the armormech recipes so I'm doing alright. A lot of that will probably start going towards leveling underworld trading again though. blegh

Wow I notice a huge difference if I switch to ion and a shield... I'm more survivable, but my dps goes down the drain. High energy doesn't just give you the base 5% or whatever dps increase (plus I think another 3 to 5% from the AP talent). That in of itself is an extra 8 to 10% damage straight up. Add in there the talent that's statically venting head every 6 seconds or so. This allows you to use a lot more abilities and not go over 40-50 heat. Also my dps offhand has almost twice as much tech power as my shield offhand. I'd say it's a choice between 15-20% mitigation in ion/shield mode or 15-20% damage in high energy/pwr genorator if I had to guess. On harder mobs by myself I'd choose the mitigation, so make can just keep me going forever. On easy stuff, or if I have a tank I'd much rather do the extra damage (plus I do a lot less threat) But honestly I like that flexibility. As to whether or not Ap needs a buff or not, that's hard for me to say. Until we get into more endgame stuff, and start to see some damage meters, I really can't say. If other powertech dps lines, or merc, or other classes entirely are doing way more dps, then sure I'd say buff AP. I definately don't have any trouble soloing though, so I don't see a problem at the moment with AP.

powertech/shield - tank powertech/advanced prototype - short/mid range dps ( I wouldn't exactly say they're melee dps)

I've been BH-PT advanced prototype DPS on my bounty hunter since level 10, and I'm level 30 now. I LOVE my dps output, and my range flexibility. I do have to get in close for rocket punch, but a lot of other abilities are medium range, and rocket punch is on a timer anyway. So I can stay at medium range, and just run in occasionally for a punch. I love the "flame" theme of the dps from this tree. I do wish we could move while channeling the 3 second flame thrower though. I use high energy canister for the heat dissapation when doing heroics/flashpoints. It's a significant dps increase. As long as the tank knows what he's doing, I can do massive dps and not worry about aggro. When soloing, if I'm facing normal/strong mobs, I use dps canister. However for elite mobs, I usually throw on the ion /tank cylinder and a offhand shield to help out. I have to use my zero heat attack a lot cause I build heat faster, but my survivability with mako is insanely higher. I sometimes wonder if I would have enjoyed merc-arsenal range dps more, but honestly, I love the powertech/advanced prototype in your face with the fire a lot. Also I see a MILLION merc/arsenal running around, and hardly any powertech. Also I feel even more unique, because the majority of powertech are shield spec for tanky, not dps like me. One caveat is I don't really pvp. I think merc/arsenal may be more fun for that due to the range and all the knockbacks and snares this game has. As short range dps with low survivability, I could see pvp being a death fest for me lol.

Swoh-Tore

wow +1 this big time. it's easy to see if an item is an upgrade for me but it's a pain to check companions gear how about if I have the companion screen open, and hover over a piece of gear in inventory, it compares to their gear if I have MY character screen open, it compares to mine?

Maybe they'll add these after the prelaunch/launch stuff is sorted out. We absolutely need server forums though, because that's a big part of building community on a server level. Guild's could be posting about themselves, crafters could be hooking up, etc... There's so many good reasons for server forums. I guess they want to finalize the server list before doing that though.