I play both an operative and sorcerer healer, but in rakata or better. I'm not claiming to be an expert, but I do have a decent understanding of both classes. I think the advice you've been given thus far is almost spot on. One thing about operatives is they benefit more from crit in particular than other healers, particularly sorcerers as the base heal for Kolto Injection is quite a bit lower than the sorcerer "equivalent" big heal dark infusion. However, the operative skill tree has "accomplished doctor" which, when kolto injection crits brings it ~inline with the sorcerer big crit heal. Additionally, my personal belief is Cunning > power in a 1:1 comparison. Including the sorcerer +5% buff to cunning and the +9% you gain from your skill tree, it brings the bonus healing for cunning to 0.16 vs. power's 0.17 while power is still a greater healing bonus directly, you do gain additional bonus crit for cunning, albeit at a much slower rate than power. Note: this is only a 1:1 comparison on mods where you have the option of +68 cunning/+12 power vs. +53 cunning/+41 power I would choose the latter one.

Tier 1 and Tier 2 flashpoints have a shared daily. So it's 5 black hole coms per day from flashpoints (regardless of tier). To my understanding, the operations have their own daily separate from the flashpoints, but I haven't done those yet through group finder, so i'm not 100% on this.

I think this was a poorly thought our change from Bioware. Not only are the War hero relics substantially better than even campaign counterparts, but the RECRUIT relics are substantially better than the campaign relics and matrix cubes. If the changes were reversed where campaign relics gave static stat increases and PvP relics gave on use but with less burst, I think these changes would have been much better. However, with the stat levels where they're at, matrix cubes still would be obsolete, even with the increased stats.

So here's an idea I got while reading the forums today. I know that in the past people have discussed the idea of using their other characters as companions. What if bioware added the planet Kamino in as a special quest. From what I've read on the star wars lore (which I freely admit is limited to what's written on wookipedia), millennia before (19,000 BBY) the old republic is set, the planet Kamino suffered a global catastrophe (ice caps melting) which resulted in the development of their cloning technology (as well as genetic manipulation and selective breeding). As the existence of this planet is known to very few throughout history (as evidenced in Episode II which was at 22 BBY), this could require a quest where the character gets a whisper of the planet's existence and then embarks on a journey throughout the galaxy in order to gather clues to the location, route to get there, and puzzles, special conditions, and fights along the way). Upon discovering the planet, players would be required to earn the Kaminoans' trust and convince them to commission a clone for them. The clone would then be available for alts on the same account pick up once they too gain the trust of the Kaminoans themselves. In order to avoid redundancy, each advanced class could have their own quest to discover and reach Kamino. Beyond the "cool" factor of having your own characters as companions, this could allow (but does not require) bioware to introduce perks such as "allows additional gathering skill" or "can now send 6 companions on missions" or customizable crafting bonuses for the player companions. Additionally, the options for such a system could be directly related to the status a character holds with the Kaminoans. Obviously this is just how I envision such an idea and it could be adapted however desired.

So here's an idea I got while reading the forums today. I know that in the past people have discussed the idea of using their other characters as companions. What if bioware added the planet Kamino in as a special quest. From what I've read on the star wars lore (which I freely admit is limited to what's written on wookipedia), millennia before (19,000 BBY) the old republic is set, the planet Kamino suffered a global catastrophe (ice caps melting) which resulted in the development of their cloning technology (as well as genetic manipulation and selective breeding). As the existence of this planet is known to very few throughout history (as evidenced in Episode II which was at 22 BBY), this could require a quest where the character gets a whisper of the planet's existence and then embarks on a journey throughout the galaxy in order to gather clues to the location, route to get there, and puzzles, special conditions, and fights along the way). Upon discovering the planet, players would be required to earn the Kaminoans' trust and convince them to commission a clone for them. The clone would then be available for alts on the same account pick up once they too gain the trust of the Kaminoans themselves. In order to avoid redundancy, each advanced class could have their own quest to discover and reach Kamino. Beyond the "cool" factor of having your own characters as companions, this could allow (but does not require) bioware to introduce perks such as "allows additional gathering skill" or "can now send 6 companions on missions" or customizable crafting bonuses for the player companions. Additionally, the options for such a system could be directly related to the status a character holds with the Kaminoans. Obviously this is just how I envision such an idea and it could be adapted however desired. Before I post this in the suggestions box, I was hoping to get some thoughts and ideas from the community.

All of the whining in this thread is ridiculous. People keep saying, "4 servers to start with is completely unreasonable, they could at least do 10" and other such ridiculous claims. Honestly, it is completely irrelevant how many servers bioware posted at the beginning, this forum thread would look almost exactly the same. "What?! Bioware only opened up 10 servers for transfer?! there's over 120 US servers!!! /ragequit" Or, what if Bioware gave the from --> to and allowed (even flawless) transfers of 1/2 of the servers. Guess what, players from every single server NOT on that list would flock here and flame away. Bioware has 3 options: 1) Start small, find errors (like the one encountered today), fix them so they affect the minimum # of players, and get a smooth transfer process, while getting bashed by everyone not allowed to transfer immediately in a "gradual over time" system. 2) Enable large numbers of server transfers and deal with the fallout of problems from large populations. 3) Immediately allow all servers to transfer resulting in population imbalances, large numbers of problems, and possible database crashes/losses. Even if THIS went smoothly, they'd have 1000s of players complaining they're not on the server they WANT to be on. What exactly would you have Bioware do?! My server (Belgoth's Beacon) which averages maybe 50 people on empire side at peak was not allotted transfers today, nor were they promised them. I will be looking forward to transfers in the coming days when they're made available.

Thanks, that's exactly what I needed (and was guessing).

Have a quick question about the warlord Kephess fight from story mode EC. The group that I was running with does ~47% dmg to the walker during each of the first 2 burn phases. If we can increase our output a little more and down the walker before the pulsar droids spawn, how does that affect the remainder of the fight? If the walker is downed in 2 phases, does kephess just drop down and you skip the pulsar droids? does kephess drop down, but the pulsar droids still spawn, making it more difficult to deal with these mobs (for example if kephess were to jump and then land where the group is stacked)? Do the pulsar droids spawn as usual and kephess only appears following the defeat of them? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

First off, I'll admit that I'm not on the PTS, so I'm not trying to disprove anyone, just wanting some clarification of a couple points. Darth Hater's article on the group finder says: This seemed to imply for me you could get 5-15 (depending on how they handle lockouts) black hole commodations for doing the group finder story mode operations each week (despite the icon in the picture looking like black hole comms for the flashpoints). If this is the case, I think the group finder function is fine. If, however, the flashpoint DAILY is providing 5 black hole comms, I agree with many posters that this change is over the top. In the current system, the best source for black hole comms is EC, the most accessible version (Story Mode) rewards 20 black hole comms + 8 for the weekly and still has not been cleared by likely the majority of the player base. In the current system being presented, running black talon or the other easy (and now faster with reduced trash) flahpoints would allow players to get 35 black hole comms weekly from this function alone-substantially more than SM EC. Now, I have no issues with casuals gearing up (I myself am one and am greatly looking forward to expanding my black hole gear), but this is practically handing gear away at (in my opinion) and unreasonable pace. In the current system, players unable to complete SM EC can still gain 14 black hole comms from the rakghoul weekly and black hole dailys (maybe 3 hours of play time total) which will allow them to purchase black hole gear at a slow and steady rate, the trade off for not completing the harder content, which I think is very reasonable. If the rewards are how they're being presented, I would propose changing the dungeon finder dailys to drop 5 daily comms and then make a weekly where "complete 3 group finder dailys" would provide 5-10 black hole comms.

I also really hope to get the answer to this question...i've got around 1000 of each of these lvl 5 mats that I use when needed for crafting stims. If these are no longer needed for any endgame item, i'll craft these into stims now.

The experience buffs are actually 30% at rank 5. as the 2,4,6,8, and 10% bonuses are cumulative.

Thanks for putting this together Dulfy, great as always. Honestly, if everything is as I read, I'm kind of disappointed. Questions I'd like answered 1) Class quest bonus is specific for the class quests (so 5-6 quests per planet?) or all storyline quests (class and planet) or all quests? (If this is only for class quests, I think it's highly overpriced as you can get similar exp with larger bonuses from PvP) 2) For Legacy of crafting, this only applies to crit crafting? or does this improve the chances to crit on crew missions as well? 3) What are the cool downs for the travel and repair droids at the different levels. Thanks.

As you said, you need 10,000 affection and you need to then go onto your ship and do all of the conversations with said companion. If it's your first companion you'll need to complete the necessary quest. If your character was a human, you get the presence bonus the moment you ding 50.

In story mode, what I've normally done is have a healer on the ground rather than a dps. I've done it with the healer on both the firebrand and stormcaller sides dodging the lightning orbs and dodging the missiles and never had a problem. ideally this would be a operative/scoundrel healer as they have the best ability to heal when forced to move, but I've had no problems doing it on either side as a sorc. This will allow your dps more up-time and increase overall dps (though, not nearly enough to contribute 15%)

I've played a sorc healer since the day i started. Reading the 1.2 patch notes, i was ready to just give up on the class altogether. I did, however, give healing a chance once I was able to get onto 1.2 and found it still perfectly viable. As was stated above, getting higher into the healing tree makes all the difference. Dark heal/benevolence is terribly force inefficient, and dark infusion/deliverence is quite a slow cast and without the skills from the first tier of the lightning/telekinetic (?) tree not amazing for efficiency either. Getting innervate/healing trance improves healing on a sorc/sage immeasurably. Honestly, the force regen/management issue remains throughout, but a good way to restore force in many fights is to drop a revivification/benevolence on yourself and others in need of healing and double tap consumption/noble sacrifice (ideally on debuff-free proc). In 1.2 I still think that sorcs/sages are the best healers, mostly due to their AoE heal, but the healing became much slower and less dynamic than it was in the past.

I'll preface by saying that this is all conjecture on my part as (as you're all aware) there has been very little specific information provided about the upcoming transfer system. My assumption is, EA and BW simply are scared to use the term "Serve Merge" based on past history with for example Warhammer. The way I've been reading what is presented is they're going to use the transfers to artificially do server mergers without ever using the term. If, for example, they "allow" transfers from 10 different servers to 1 specific server (rather than saying "anyone on a light server and transfer to servers a,b,c,d,...etc"), the end result is the 1 transfer to server will fill up with nearly all the players from the 10 light servers as there would be almost no reason to stay as the populations would simply get worse as people transfer off. This would result in a much smaller number of servers with larger populations and a large number of servers essentially (even more so than now) empty. Then they can come back through in a couple months and "close extra servers no longer needed after casual gamers have left" and the end result is identical to having merged the 11 servers into 1. Again, purely my theory, but the above is what I hope they'er intending to do.

So, this dropped off this first page before another person even looked at it. I would really like to hear other peoples' thoughts on this. I was going to post it for the Q&A but that thread appears to be gone, I'm guessing to avoid questions about the layoffs.

Does anyone understand why the legacy perks are being done on a per-character basis? Is this just meant to be a larger credit sink hidden behind smaller per-character costs? I'll admit, my question here could be due to ignorance about how exactly these will work as the preview tab we have only gives general concepts. But, i can't think of any reason why I would say "Yeah, i really want increased sprint speed on my sorcerer....by my operative, no way!" IMHO it's like this for most of the legacy perks...even if I likely wouldn't ever use the field respec on my marauder, it would in no way detract from playing him to have it if this perk were tied to legacy. The only ones I could possibly see detracting from play experience are the experience increasing ones (uless of course these come with a trade-off. ie: more exp from pvp, but less from quests/mobs). This is only if the player actually doesn't want to risk outleveling content. For those of us who are making many alts, I'm under the impression that few people actually enjoy doing the same planet quests over and over again. Don't get me wrong, I think the stories are great and enjoyable, but apart from the class quests, I'm mostly just trying to get to 50 as quickly as possible on all of my alts. Thoughts? Am I missing something?

You can start with the level 50 flashpoints on regular, but if you're able to, it's better to just begin in on hard mode flashpoints such as Black Talon, boarding party, foundry. Once you've got the gear from these you can progress on to battle of ilum, false emperor, etc. The hardest flashpoints are probably Kaon Under seige and of course, lost island (the latter of which I wouldn't attempt until you're at least nearly full columi geared). For any of the operations (Eternity Vault, Karagga's Palace, and Denova) you'll need either 8 or 16 people. Once you've got moderate gear from flashpoints (mostly tionese and columi gear) you can group up and start normal mode EV and KP though I think EV is easier to gear up in columi gear. Once you have full or nearly full columi gear you can start in on the hard mode operations (which really don't differ substantially from normal mode in application) and Hard Mode lost island to begin gearing up Rakata. Story Mode Denova is probably equal to if not harder than Hard Mode for EV and KP, which is why the drops are all Rakata and the black hole commodations are provided. While doing all of this, I would be sure your guild members are doing dailys when possible (in particular the dailys in the Black Hole for the 6 weekly black hole commodations) for rakata implants/earpiece, and campaign relics.

I honestly don't understand the point of this post. There's this great aspect of this game you seem to be missing-Choice. If you're not enjoying this flashpoint, then don't do it. As you've stated, you can get every piece of gear elsewhere. Even the black hole commendations are easy enough to get, it'll just take you longer to get them if you don't do the weekly. There are many of us who enjoy the challenge and/or can make use of the rewards. It's far from impossible...I pugged this FP the other day and cleared it in 40 mins with 3 randoms who had each done it once before. Yes, i'm in nearly full rakata, but I can still use the rakata chest. Or, maybe I want to farm this to get crit/surge mods from agent gear (as the difference between columi and rakata is small). I do agree the tionese crystals are silly, but i'm not going into LI in order to get the drops from the first 2 main bosses, just like when i take an alt through HM BT/BP/Foundry/etc it's not about anything but the columi drop at the end. By your argument, once you have full rakata gear, there is no reason to do anything other than explosive conflict and NiM KP since well, you already have the gear, so running something from which you'd get more is pointless.

I don't understand the point of this post...just search google and dozens of sites pop up. For example: http://www.swtor-spy.com/datacrons/

Simply put, this morning's patch broke a ton of things. Guild banks disappeared, Zoist shadow reverted, black hole disappeared (kind ironic on this one), etc. They need to fix everything and hopefully restore all items in guild banks and such. as stated above, no ETA on when it'll be up, i'm just hoping it will be by the time i'm off of work.

That was actually my original idea, but posted this as it seemed that one of the major reasons for the change was to promote the use of dark heal.

I originally posted this in the "1.2 sorc nerfs" thread, but i was almost immediately lost in the dozens of posts. So, I'm posting it again here to get feedback. While I don't like the change to Dark Infusion, it seems the biggest complaint is the change to force surge. Even if sorcs can "heal forever" I never really understood why that's a problem as there's plenty of notes in the BH and Op forums describing how with such and such rotation, energy never falls below maximum regen (indefinitely). Sorcerer's still needed to waste a global cooldown to cast consumption off the proc. Even if this was not working as intended, what I don't understand is why corruption sorcs are the only type of this class to have no real method of managing force. Lightning has lightning effusion Madness has Sith Efficacy As the skills routinely used by the corruption tree cost just as much, if not more force power than the skills in these other trees wouldn't it make sense to have something similar? (it's not like consumption isn't available to these trees in a force emergency situation.) What I'd propose is to replace Force Surge completely with something like Lightning effusion. If, as the patch notes seem to imply, they want sorcs to use dark heal more, they could even make it something specific like "dark heal critical hits have a 50/100% chance to reduce the force cost of your next 2 heals by 50%." This would both allow some sort of force management as well as promote use of dark heal. While not very good as an emergency heal, it could certainly be slipped into most fights to top players or the tank off. Additionally, this would work pretty nicely with the change to force bending's effect to Dark Heal.

does anyone know the answer to this?