I can't tell if you're just dense and can't comprehend the pages full of posts answering your "so what?" question, or if you're trolling. Either way, you're repeating yourself with your fingers in your ears, refusing to try and understand WHY the high point gain from crafting is a problem. Maybe saying "i told you so" gets you off, but I'd rather see this game thrive.

The "beef" is that while conquest was advertised to be this huge deal where guilds could play to their strengths in their game playstyle, it instead boils down to players rich in mats and creds crafting their way to the top of the leaderboard, with the underlying "theme" of each week being nothing more than an afterthought. That is bad for the longevity of the game and serves to disillusion guilds with players that simply don't have the resources to compete like this.

You have a valid point, insofar as the larger guilds do not themselves take advantage of crafting. Conquest in its entirety is already skewed towards larger guilds. I know from personal experience that a smaller focused guild can beat a larger disorganized one. However, if a large guild decides to get organized and begins crafting meticulously, no smaller guild will be able to match that scale of point generation. Instead of depending on crafting as a "maybe" solution against larger guilds, we need a retuned conquest system that levels the playing field for all guilds.

This is very very important. The primary appeal of conquest was touted to be the ability for various guilds to play to their strengths during certain themes to compete for the title. During a PvP week, the PvP guilds should have an innate benefit. During PvE/GSF, the respective progression/starfighter guilds should have an innate benefit. As the system stands right now, regardless of guild size, players completing conquest goals, etc. A handful of VERY rich players with several alts can sink a LOT of money and mats into crafting which, along with the stronghold bonuses, nets them a vastly disproportionate amount of points per unit time invested into conquest when compared with other means of earning points. While conquest and GSH brought a lot of revitalization to crafting, it also hamstrung non-conquest crafters by disrupting prices and supply of mats in the market mainly because of how powerful crafting is in EVERY conquest week. In order to rectify this, BW seriously needs to revamp conquest goals and how crafting ties into them. Every single other repeatable objective requires the player to be actively doing something in-game: PvP/Operations/GSF/etc EXCEPT crafting, which by design can be done offline. A player with 10 alts can only do PvP matches one at a time on a single character. A crafter with 10 alts can craft 5 war supplies on each alt every 50 mins while doing something else. Crafting should not be a repeatable goal every week. Certainly not on weeks like Flashpoint Havoc, where the namesake goals are once-per-legacy. Having crafting be the core focus during the Trade Emporium or Titans of Industry makes sense. Having crafting be a huge point source during weeks that focus on other aspects of the game unbalances conquest and renders the theme of the week a moot point for guilds that are aggressively competing for #1.

1. Togruta 2. Voss 3. Zeltron Seriously though, Togrutas are the coolest looking alien species after the Chiss, IMO. I'm a little surprised they weren't introduced already.

Guild Website: http://fromashestc.swtornow.com/ We're a relatively small and close-knit group of players who primarily do PvE progression, with several of our players also very interested in PvP and Starfighter. This first week of conquests, we finished 3rd place on Makeb, beating out a few larger guilds by being organized and committed, but this will not hold as competition increases and gets more conquest focused unless we expand. In addition to conquest requirements, we had recently fallen behind on progression because several players from our core team decided to take a break from the game, and we wish to reinstate a regular progression team, and also set up 16 man operations. If you're looking for a fun group of people who will be willing to help you in all aspects of the game, From Ashes is the place for you. Please head over to our guild website and put in an application, and contact me in game via whisper or mail on my main: Dionysius. There are no gear/progression requirements. We would prefer, however, that you make a sincere attempt to integrate with the guild, get to know us, and help us get to know you.

wrong forum, please delete.

If you have a full set of PvP tank gear and a good healer buddy, you can handle the current HM 55 FPs just fine. When I switched to PvE tanking on my Shadow, that's what I did. Then the gear drops from FPs + stuff I bought with comms helped me build a decent PvE tank set very quickly. Also helps if you have alts to grind comms on so you can transfer mods through Legacy items to speed up gearing/itemization.

Well you have only one point left, so I'd say take Lightning Spire for improved range on LS and CL. But honestly, Lightning does best with the Thundering Blast auto-crit and cheap LS spam. In my opinion, you'd be better off going full Lightning for maximum damage. But of course, there's no harm in wanting to change it up a little. Let us know how this hybrid works out.

People choose what class to play based on either how much fun they have with it, or how much ACTIVE utility they bring to a raid. Nobody is going to set up a raid team based on buffs. Before the legacy buff system, there were many times when my raid team was missing a Consular buff because we didn't have one on our team. Didn't stop us from doing the content anyway. And really, its not anyone's concern how raid teams manage their comp. If a raid team wants to stack 4 Sents, 2 Juggs and 2 Sages, that's their prerogative. Trying to force variety by limiting buffs is nobody's call.

Really? Did you even read the dev response? Read properly before you start your QQ. They very clearly state that they agree that Shadows aren't balanced. Their rationale for the mitigation buff at the expense of self-healing is very explicitly stated. And their comments about reducing healer effectiveness are also valid. Maybe stop and think for a minute. But that would take away your opportunity to ***** at BW. Force forbid that...

This isn't a bad idea. The only outcome of this is that the level at which you acquire Salvation will be pushed back from 45 to about 49/50 or so. However, if you plan to heal often in PvP and PvE, getting the heal cost reductions and force pool increase will give you a better feel for how to manage your resource at max level, so you can keep doing what you're doing now. I haven't tried leveling in heal spec on any of my healing toons. Aside from HK (and possibly Treek, IDK) all my other comps take much longer than I would to kill mobs. But if you'd prefer leveling in heal spec, I'd suggest taking a melee DPS comp who has AoEs, or a melee tank comp. I just finish off with Project or TKT. IMO, the saber abilities for Sages are worthless if you have enough Force to cast ANY of your force attacks. If you're at 0 force, then I could see how the basic attack would come in handy. My saber strikes are on my quickbar, but I'm never in a position where I NEED to use them.

I too have recently started tanking on the Shadow, and its my first tank so far. I've played literally every spec but a tank, and I feel it's time to diversify so I hopped onto Shadow tanking despite all the issues it has. Loving it. But this question by OP is one I share as well. I'm generally good at figuring out when to use Deflection or Battle Readiness, based on outgoing damage I've seen tanks eat when I run stuff on my healers, but since Resilience only works on tech/force attacks, I have to currently wait till I eat a tech/force attack to know that's probably where Resilience comes in. Any insights into this would be great.

Scrapper DPS in PvP is kind of a joke, honestly. I feel weak when I play it as I'm rarely able to burst down players 1v1 due to unreliable crits. Dirty Fighting, however, is my favorite DPS spec after Infiltration. It has tremendous back-loaded burst and melts tanks fairly quickly. Your survivability is a bit better than in Scrapper, but not good enough to take on more than one player alone. I haven't tried the DPS specs in PvE so I can't comment on the applicability of Scoundrel DPS there.

Forctis Latin for 'power'.