I don't meet many weird people in the GF, sadly. I'd love to meet people who are actually *weird* and not just scummy dirtbags. I meet a heck of a lot of ninjas for example, and the thing that bothers me the most about this is that it now seems to be the norm that you roll need if you want something for whatever reason. I've seen discussions on these forums with people actually willing to defend rolling need on things you don't need (even when it's not for your companion, not that I'm OK with NEEDing for comps). Don't get me started on BioWare making it worse by not allowing F2P players to trade. Sigh! I like the game, but it continues to disappoint me how selfish many players really are. Still, I had one nice run tonight where people weren't scum and we all succeeded despite people being extremely undergeared. As long as some good things happen, I suppose I'll keep playing.

Female scoundrel has the best voice acting in the game IMO. Male scoundrel is good too. Otherwise I prefer the imps (male SW and female SI, but saying the republic get nothing but "boring wannabe rambo voices" is perhaps going a bit too far.

Well for healing there is no problem whatsoever switching to Corruption early. Resurgence and Force Bending do a lot more for your healing than people here are making it sound like. I've been leveling a sorc recently. I'm now at 46 and have been healing (everything except Foundry which I got to join as DPS) since about 20 with no problems whatsoever. I wasn't even close to running out of force without the force cost reduction talents from the Lightning tree. It is most definitely *not* needed. On the other hand, you want to get Resurgence, Force Bending and Innervate ASAP. In a lot of early instances, I was actually able to keep up the group using mainly bubble and Resurgence and only an occasional DI. Lots of time to apply DoTs or just stand around looking busy. If you don't have field respec and also want a decent leveling experience, well, that's a different story. Then you should probably switch to healing when you get Force Storm.

As soon as you get Resurgence and Force Bending. They make a massive difference and are much more important than the cost reduction in the Lightning tree. I'd honestly wait with the other trees until reaching the end of the Corruption tree.

This is the PvE side of things (since I never do PvP): - Spend any planetary comms on upgrades from the new Makeb planetary comm gear (far right of the supplies section) if you don't already have better. - Don't bother too much with classic comms, go gather some basic comms while you level up. Just leveling on Makeb gets you plenty. - If you have a bit of cash, you can already at 53 start wearing some entry level gear. Most of it is Bind on Equip and is dirt cheap on the GTN. - At 55, start gearing up in the new Czerka FPs. They are super easy (on SM anyway) and they drop entry-level gear much quicker than you can get it from comms. - When you have a nice-looking set of entry-level gear, augment it. I hope you are rich Probably a good idea for the OP to read a guide. I remember seeing one on the sage forum.

It was harder, but not how you might think. The game was just less generous somehow. The players simply weren't as powerful compared to the average monsters in the world. For example, my mage still had to sit and drink quite often to regain mana. Just the way it was because you couldn't expect the game to provide a regen mechanic for you. Feels like in later MMOs (WoW included) you can just faceroll through hundreds of enemies without ever stopping. You're a bit more of a superhero. There were no dailies either. Getting enough cash was hard for a lot of people. Before even raiding, you had to go through an attunement process, and to be considered for a couple of the raids you needed to gather fire resistance gear as well. Getting 40 people together was also a huge task, and to me that seemed like the biggest challenge in vanilla WoW raiding. Tactics however were pretty simple and rotations were mindnumbingly basic. Enough about WoW, probably. I'm getting nostalgic here.

The knockback is an AoE and they get that before level 10. It does terrible damage though. The first good one comes at level 20 in the form of Force in Balance or Telekinetic Wave. I think the BH / Commando is the best solo class. Tons of AoE even from low levels as well as one CC that works on anything and heals.

I think the game has a lot of classes already, and I would prefer it if they focused on solving current issues and polishing the current classes first.

Actually the "old" 55 HMs seem like they are significantly easier than the new ones to me.

That's good to know, mustopak. I shall keep this in mind next time

Agree about healing. I am worried about an overreaction followed by a long period of poor performance. It's the cycle of nerfs and buffs seen so commonly in MMOs. Rather than making very gradual adjustments, some MMO developers seem to prefer to leave class balance issues alone for ages until they finally come in and "fix" it in one fell swoop, replacing old imbalances with new ones. BioWare can still rise above this, however. As for Scrapper not being a PvE spec. I've seen this argument before and it makes no sense to me. Why is it not supposed to be a PvE spec? Because Dirty Fighting does more sustained damage? That just sounds like a balance issue to me.

This has happened to me several times, and each time I was allowed to roll on both healing and DPS gear. I think that's fair. However, each time that was agreed upon in advance. The rule I wrote above is one that I've seen enforced in-game for years (mainly other MMOs, for some reason SWTOR is different). There are situations (like the above) that it doesn't mention. I don't know what the normal way of doing it is. But I see lots clear-cut cases all the time where people roll need for something they can't use, something their comps need, or something for an off-spec I've never seen them use. I know I'm not in charge of this game, but let me just say that I consider it very greedy and a sign that it's a person I don't care to play with. I've won loads and loads of offspec gear while only playing as DPS or healer. How? I simply ask, can I roll need on that if nobody needs it for their main spec? People never say no, I don't screw over someone who needs a main spec upgrade, and everybody is happy. I remember one ninja-looter in particular. When asked why he needed on something he couldn't use, he said something like "IM EVIL SITH LOL" (sorry, don't remember the exact wording but there was poor spelling involved). Yeah... what a nice guy

I've been one-shotted outside a circle as well. Then again, I've been hit by other AoEs while clearly standing outside their circles. The graphics are incredibly misleading and now I just run like crazy. I also think they should increase the time before it hits. It's too unforgiving for an otherwise not very difficult instance. As people here have said you can get killed by just a little bit of poor latency.

I am now starting to see why there's so much ninja-looting around. Everyone can use an item somehow. You could even extract mods and armorings. These are the ninja-looting rules that usually apply in the MMOs I've played: If the item is an upgrade for the character you brought, in the role you used during the FP/op, you can roll need. Otherwise, make sure you agree beforehand on special rules before needing. Let me tell you why you don't need for comps, alts or other roles: - they didn't help you during the FP/op - it creates an absurd situation where most people can roll need, and where it gets too hard for people who desperately need those upgrades to get them (everyone has *many* comps, most people have offspecs) For example, the situation where you sign up as a DPS, perform only DPS and then roll need on healing gear: that's ninja-looting in my book. I see people defending that kind of thing with "but I have an offspec, I can use it". Often it's an offspec they rarely use, but more importantly, what about the healers who were actually there and need that item for the spec they are using right now? In SWTOR, it seems that it's OK to be selfish. Who cares about those other people who put in actual time to make all this work! If you have space in your backpack, you need stuff. All the stuff.

I actually found merc healing very easy once I got Kolto Missile (level 20). I find it worth it even while leveling to go 2 points into Arsenal to get +20% healing on it.

This is why I worry. If they end up nerfing the class too much, we're going to be waiting another year for a possible fix. I like SWTOR and I don't mean to turn this into a TOR bashing thread, I just *really* hope they know what they're doing with the upcoming changes.

I have a lot of characters by now and keep going back and forth, having a lot of trouble trying to figure out what to max out next. Mainly playing juggernaut/merc these days. However, my first character and the one I am most interested in is still the scoundrel/op. However, due to the overwhelming negativity I've not really leveled it completely yet. It started out with all the Hidden Strike PvP whining and the nerf that followed, and now I'm seeing that same disturbing whining about the healing. I only reached 41, but I found healing to be *extremely* easy so far in the sense that I am not really able to run out of energy (and I don't even have all the talents yet). I guess maybe this is why people are calling for nerfs, I'm not really sure because 41 is too low to tell. The thing is, I'm worried about the future. I'm worried that we'll see kneejerk healing nerfs that'll make the class go from overpowered to underpowered (this isn't my first MMO you see!). We *know* that Flyby/OS is getting nerfed, and if you look at the top parses that "prove" that it's a good DPS class, that one ability is a big chunk of DPS. Moreover, I actually really like Scrapper/Concealment, and that's already mediocre from what I can tell before nerfing Flyby. How will it fare after? From the recent answers, it doesn't look like Scrapper PvE damage is something they really think about. Maybe they'll change a filler ability a bit, big whoop. Looks like it'll actually get *worse* when Flyby is nerfed. Maybe I should stop worrying and finally get either my scoundrel or my op maxed, geared and auged, but I just hate wasting my time, and I really, really hate the eternal balance circus of MMOs.

Just don't say it 5 times in front of a mirror and you'll be fine

So true it almost hurts to hear it. Time is so precious

This is from the official answers to the juggernaut questions: So there you go, if there's a difference, they claim it's not intentional. Wasn't that the difference between any DPS classes? It certainly makes no sense in light of the comment I quoted above.

Keybindings are my best friend. I only click abilities that I very rarely use or only use out of combat. You have to get used to keybindings, but if you still don't like them after giving them an honest chance, I don't really know what to say. Be a clicker, I guess, but I don't really understand it. It feels stressful to me. The bad thing about SWTOR is that it has ability bloat to the point where I've struggled to find new keys for my keybindings.

From the what you are writing, OP, it seems like it's the "lonely and depressed" part you want to do something about. You clearly do not have any kind of video game addiction. I don't know why you would even describe it that way. Please don't take advice from a TV show. Please... just don't This is the very problem for people who are lonely and depressed. How many lonely and depressed people do think want to meet new people? Telling them to go do that isn't helping anyone. This is like telling an alcoholic not to drink. It would work, objectively, but it's not that simple. It just looks like it to someone who doesn't have that problem. I know you are trying to be helpful, and I don't mean to sound angry, but I've heard my fair share of well-meaning but ultimately zero percent understanding advice and it just annoys me a bit by now. The rest of your advice to explore other interests, well, that's solid. Unlike the OP, I still love gaming more than anything, which sucks because programming and gaming for long hours is a recipe for tendon injuries as I've now learned the hard way.

I agree that healing is *sometimes* the most difficult role simply because in actual difficult fights it can require split-second reactions all the way through where you cause a wipe if you fail just once, and at the same time you still have to manage your resources and follow mechanics. Still, if you're having trouble, maybe it's best to try to check if you're doing everything you possibly could before blaming the class. I have been trying out all the healing classes recently. My favorite is either sorc/sage or merc/commando healing, I can't really decide between the two. I know that ops are probably the best right now, but... well, I get tired of pushing the Kolto Probe button (my op is only 41, maybe it gets better when I get my AoE heal).

Small correction: Healing Touch was used but only as an emergency heal. I think most of us had our NS+HT macro for that purpose. Regrowth was both direct heal and a HoT and was also used (I often had to use this for tank healing). Finally, Swiftmend was an instant direct heal you could use on HoTed targets. Still, the vast majority of healing came from HoTs. When you overgeared things, you could often heal just by lazily throwing your HoTs around while your mind was elsewhere.

Ortolan!