Hi all. After playing since pre-launce, I am finding myself less and less enthused about the current state of crafting. It feels like stuff invented because they just couldn't think up anything better. Now I understand the need for gameplay over immersion since this is a game, but so much about the crafting system just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I've never been a big fan of armor with character stats on it because it seems silly. Willpower or cunning are better because I put on a pair of boots? Armor should have defensive stats. Endurance, Armor rating, Damage absorbtion, Avoidance... These make sense. Weapons should have offensive stats and ratings such as range, damage, rate of fire, Area of effect. I could understand stuff like relics and implants granting stats because it makes sense for them to do so. Although relics should be more geared towards force users and implants towards non-force. (i. e. relic grants force power, willpower, while implants grant cunning, aim, alacrity, crit, dodge...) Now I am mainly playing this game because I love starwars. I really wish that the game systems would fall more inline with what we have seen in movies and read in the novels. Especially crafting abilities. Stuff like artificing should not exist at all. Jedi and Sith make their own lightsabers and the crystals used are normal crystals found in the galaxy; they don't need to be modified at all. Some crystals are better than others for lightsabers, but that is only due to the fact that better crystals improve the stability of the blade. Armormech and armstech: Rarely in the Starwars universe do you ever hear of someone making their own armor or weapons (with the exception of lightsabers). There are enough big corporations out there building stuff in factories that these 2 professions are un-necessary. Now, modifying weapons and armor is a different story. We see that often in the lore. Droid building is seen in canon all over the place, thus cybertech has a place. Slicing is also very comon. Biochem I have no problem with as there is a place for it, even if it is not grandized in the lore, it fills an obvious need. One thing that is common in the Starwars universe is building and modifying vehicles. This is only loosely covered in the game by the cybertech profession with custom speeders (the same generic 3 so I don't see how they are custom) and starship upgrades. So in summary, I wish BW had drawn more from the lore and less from wow and other clones for its crafting system. There are plenty of SWU-based examples to choose from: Modify Armor Modify Blasters Modify Speeders Modify Ships Build Droids Build Speeders Build/Modify Cybernetic Implants Create Health packs Create Stims Create Adrenals

this one is bad ***: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Darksaber_%28lightsaber%29

If you didn't play SWG JTL... here is a taste of what it was like:

Something like Icehud would be awesome: http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/ice-hud I would love to be able to track the following things all in one place (Sith Warrior): Health, Rage, Fury stacks, companion health, cast bar(self), castbar Enemy. A hud style could put all these bars in an easy to see format without filling the screen with stuff that blocks your view of the action. Also an individual font scale for unit frames. I like minimalistic frames, but when I make them smaller, I can't read the text anymore.

They upped the difficulty of this somehow in the last patch. Not sure what they did, but I think it has something to do with the AI pathing. If you notice, the shuttle runs into at least 1 asteroid during the flight. I can still complete this every day, but i had to change tactics. Here's the trick: Always spam missiles on the capitol ships. Ignore the fighters if there is a cap ship availible to shoot. The fighters do significantly less damage to the shuttle than the cap ships turrets do. Also make sure you have (whatever its called that allows you to re-rout power to your cannons) turned on, as there is not much in this mission that is shooting at you. Make sure you have cannons on full through the whole thing. You can use cannons to take out cap ship turrents while you're waiting for the next gcd of missiles. I can always finish the mission using this strat. I have a mix of lvl 2 & 3 upgrades. Hope that helps

There are quite a few cool things that could be done with this profession. 1. Build stationary turrets. - A turret that will fire at hostiles for a short time and then dissappear. 2. Build mountable turrets. - A turrent that you can actually get in and direct the fire at the cost of losing access to your class abilities. It is attackable and once its health is depleted, it blows up. 3. Build custom droids. - To be used as companions or as a temporary damage dealer that only lasts a short time before it goes away. 4. Meta-custom ship upgrades - What I mean by this is the ability to make ship upgrades that are not the cookie-cutter schematics. Want to upgrade cannon speed at the cost of overall damage? Or a huge shield increase, but that is prone to overheating, and can sometimes fail... The possabilities are endless. 5. Meta-custom speeders - The ability to take a bunch of different parts and make a speeder that looks different then the generic ones that everyone has. There are some things that I don't really understand why they fall into cybertech in the first place. Armoring and grenades come to mind...

Thank you all very much. I hadn't realized about the healing debuf. Once I used the los trick, he was easy to beat.

Blizz can hold his threat? I've had a bit of problems with the tanking companions. Seems I throw 3 tracers out and I've already grabbed agro. I have only used skage. Spent 300k+ credits gearing him up because I had to use him for a quest and just barely survived the fight.

Can't remember his name off the top of my head, but there's a quest that's part of the main storyline on Ilum where you have to kill this republic general, and I'm banging my head against a wall in frustration because I can't seem to beat him. He has Boss-level fight mechanics that seem tailor made to thwart a BH merc. First, he has a seemingly unlimited interrupt ability, including stun, grappling hook pull, and pushback. This makes tracer missile very hard to get off. It has even interrupted my healing medpack... I didn't think that was possible. Second, every so often (at least 4 times in the fight) he goes invisible and summons adds. Now, I'm no slouch when it comes to ability. I can usually handle 2 gold elites in 1 fight. My gear is all rated 126. My companion (Mako) is geared to at least 106. Any Arsenal mercs beat this guy? Can you help me out with a good strategy? I am getting out of his white target reticle that he puts on the ground under you, and trying to stun him whenever possible. I just can't seem to get by this guy. Any help appreciated.

Epic post lol. Minsc is the greatest character ever created.

I don't think I've gone 1 day since playing where I haven't had to "/stuck". The zones are not so big that it is difficult to set up walkmeshes properly. In some cases this is actually an exploitable bug that lets you get places you shouldnt be. I have seen many areas that have missing or incomplete graphics. I have also gotten to areas and mysteriously died for some reason as if I had fallen. Now granted, I know this is a common thing that has plagued open area games since games have incorporated a 3rd dimension, but it is also the easiest thing to fix.

Constuctive feedback is the only reason I come to the general forum. The problem is that most of the meaningful posts get buried by the complaint threads. I have a notepad file on my desktop that just keeps track of the useful threads. It would be nice to have somewhere to go to hear peoples ideas and to debate the merits or negatives about them. Thanks for listening.

Bumping to keep this relevant

I agree with this. It would add to the level of immersion if you could see some sort of results for your hard work. Doesn't even have to 'phase' so to speak. They could just change some of the mob flags to neutral instead of hostile.

http://www.swtor-spy.com/datacrons/ for maps, pictures, & walkthroughs.