I know - in this area my opinion doesn't really matter as I am not a hardcore pvp'er, but I wanted to add +1 vote to buff sorc heals and to remove guard from dps (which never made sense). For me, the numbers are pretty simple. Granted, I do not have MK-11 augments and not every single amplifier is tuned towards healing. In MK-10 augmented 306 gear hear are my current maxed crit heals: Healing Trance around 45K, Deliverance around 30K, Benevolence around 21K. Compare these to the crit hits of 40 - 80K. And this is before one has to worry about normal pvp stun lock or having to deal with multiple dps or the poorer resource management, etc. If a healer can't even keep up against one average level dps (nevermind top level dps), then why even bother with pvp? Which, I think, is the whole point. IMO Bioware wants to get healers out of pvp and this is just their back-handed method of doing this - so while I hope for a buff (as I think this is a PVE issue as well) I am not expecting one (especially anytime before end of the year). Just my two cents, I will now return to my PVE centered world...

You didn't mention if you had a stealth character for the ultimate way to gear: Stealth Toon Gearing System™ http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=971299 - basically run stealth veteran Red Reaper. The bosses can be easily solo-ed even in 276 gear and if nothing else you can complete the veteran fp weekly for some more equpment crates and tech fragments. Although there may have been a Stealth Nerf™ to this system it does (or did) work at lower iRating to level up. Without that method, overall, expect a slower gear grind - it took over 20 solo flashpoints, some Mek-sha heroics and a few Onderon weeklies and I had only improved from 276 to 286. But I would say that anything that rewards a loot crate is your best chance - Onderon dailies/weeklies, Mek-sha heroics, completing Conquest. Then do solo flashpoints as your time allows. I also personally found gearing upwards impossible without spending tech fragments. For me, gearing seemed to get stuck at times. I would often have to buy gear from the Evil RNG vendor to complete an iRating level - i.e. if you have one piece currently at 270 but everything else is 276, buy the one piece for tech fragments to get all your gear at 276 or higher. Sometimes I would need to buy more than one piece to complete a level or to get it to tick upwards one level. For me this seemed to happen more at odd iRating levels (especially 279, 289, 299). Once all gear is the same iRating level and/or once the iRating level ticks from say 279 to 280 the gear wheel would start back up and loot would get better. So you may just have to spend tech fragments to buy some gear to make sure all items are rated at 276 (or higher) or to tick the level to 277 to get that gear wheel moving. I will say that once all gear is at iRating level 300, things do seem to change a bit - there seems to be an uptick in the chance to acquire tacticals and set bonus pieces from all sources. So if nothing else it helps to push the gear to 300 if you are hoping to get these as loot drops. Sadly, at this time heroics and non-Onderon weeklies do not drop gear that will help your iRating - they just drop junk gear to deconstruct. And I cannot even remember the last time I got a Renown crate that was actually an upgrade - so gearing wise, these activities will not help. Maybe we will all get lucky and Bioware will add some kind of equipment crate to weeklies/heroics but until then unless you just want an achievement or possibly credits you are better off doing other activities if you want to gear. Thanks to RNG experiences may vary wildly though. Good luck and as always just my two cents on the matter.

I know, yet another pointless opinion thread on 6.0. But I am hoping if enough people say something/anything that maybe Bioware will actually comment or make changes. I did testing on PTS and provided some feedback there and this is my feedback having playing a couple weekends on Live. What I did: Gearing: Crafting Story: Overall, as a mostly solo player, I have a like/hate relationship with this expansion. Like the new planets and story. Hate the slow gear grind up to the 306 level and crafting is an unholy abomination. Undecided about Amps but so far. It feels like there needs to be some class balancing relatively soon (i.e. not after the new year, dear "Let's take the last two months of the year off" Bioware). It feels like the solo gearing experience can be improved without it being a detriment to the game or Bioware. It feels like the crafting changes failed and need to be totally re-done. It feels like this could ultimately be the start to a good re-vamp of the game, if issues actually get fixed, if gearing improves for even for the "anti-social" solo player, and if Bioware would indicate that something more is to come in a timely manner (even the infamous "soon" or "Spring of next year" would be something). Of course, this is all just my opinion, just my lowly anti-social two cents. Thanks for listening!

Caveat: I am a casual PVP'er and a mediocre PVP'er but I have played a sorc/sage healer since 1.0, so I would say I am (was?) a good PVE sorc/sage healer. But as a sorc healer in PVP the heals just did not keep up with the damage. I could prevent someone from dying if they were in a one-on-one fight but could not heal them upwards while the battle continued. I could not heal the person or myself if two dps were focused on a single target. The only time I could do well was if I was not focused on or could use the environment sufficitently to survive - but not heal my teammates - or if I was just ignored due to the healing being poor anyway. The only time a dps/tank would heal to full was when they used their own DCD, not due to any heals from me. There are so many mobility options that kiting and using the environment is harder or non-existent. The only real DCD a sorc healer has is the bubble and it is on a 3 min cooldown with no utility or tactical that reduces this timer. Resource management is terrible especially compared to Live - even if I did well and healed for a million my resources would be 50% or less constantly. And if I had to heal to survive they would just basically drain down to nothing, so even if I survived a concentrated attack I would no longer have the resources to be effective. Innervate becomes so critical to the sorc healer that you are basically forced to used the Revitalized Mystic set, and if a smart PVP'er interrupts your Innervate constantly then the sorc healer is practically neutralized. The sorc heal tacticals and set bonuses don't give enough of a boost to compensate for what you lose on Live plus the additional dps that DPS/tanks are doing. So, in short, I died a lot and the heals could not keep up, making for a miserable experience. One other note: so with higher alacrity (like the usual 15.5%) pvp did get better, but this can only be obtained once you are in higher gear (I could not augment my gear on PTS, so I do not know the effects of augments), but I was under the (probably mistaken) impression that gear was not supposed to matter in 6.0 pvp? Anyway, unless something changes I will not be pvping as a sage sorc unless or until I am in top, augmented gear. Even then I have my doubts as to the viability of the sorc healer in pvp if there are no changes. Also note that not all my matches were losses, but we certainly did not win due to healing - it was more to how the dps performed and if there was an elite dps (usually a sin, sniper or op) on your team or if the team just seemed to be more coordinated. This overall probably makes for better pvp, unless you are the poor soul trying to play the healer. As always, just my two cents.

Because there are so many scattered threads with feedback and because some threads have been buried underneath circular debate I think it would be a good idea to have one thread where people post a concise list of changes they hope are made by the time 6.0 releases. No debating the actual suggestions or the merits of the various 6.0 systems, just a list of requested changes. Here is my list: - When modded gear is dropped or bought the mods within should all be the same Item Rating level - The Recalibrate screen should show the min and max potential of the amplifier you are rolling on - Recalibration should have a max cost - There should be no blue/purple mats required for green gear crafted below 285 Item Rating - There should be no Premium Data Spikes (sliced tech item) required for Bioanalysis - No matter the level, 20% should be the lowest chance to RE for a schematic - Sorc/Sage healers should get a min +10% buff to heals and a -10% to resource cost - The clicky items for Onderon daily quests need an amazingly fast respawn rate - The ability to change font size on the new character window - Codex should be added that describes all possible amplifiers and to what gear pieces they are attached to

I would like to confirm this. The corruption sorc healing seems to have been decimated in 6.0 and the variety of tacticals and set bonuses do not do enough to make up for this (the new ability has zero uses for a corruption sorc and is not even on my ability bar). In PVP the heals I cast would be barely enough or not even enough to keep a person from sliding downwards if they were in a 1v1 fight. Anytime a person went from 35% health to 70% health it had zero to do with my healing and was all about them using their DCDs. An average heal for me was around 15K-17K, maybe 25-28K with crits and if relics proc, etc; I've been hit by a 38K attack. If a dps is doing 20K per hit and I'm only healing 16K, how can I be viable in pvp? I can barely "survive" a 1v1 encounter - even if I managed to heal enough to live, my resources would drain to basically nothing - so either I would run out of heals to cast or now that someone has peeled the dps or skank tank off of me I no longer have the resources to effectively heal or help the group anyway. Needless to say, a 2v1 would just melt me with no chance of survival. And this is all without worrying about the normal stun lock side of pvp... Standard heals < standard dps plus poor resource management in a world of skank tanks and dps with OP DCDs (or at least DCDs better than what the sorc healer has) pretty much rules out this class for pvp and makes me question the viability of sorc heals in level 75 content. In fact, I offer this suggestion: at this point, just go ahead and bar any/all healing specs from PVP. At the very least do this on PTS and with only tanks, skanks and dps running around it will help highlight which classes have the best or OP DCDs and self-heals (especially when combined with a 20-30% life steal amps). One other suggestion: tacticals should be like utilities - once you queue for a pvp match, you should not be able to change or remove the tactical until you are back on fleet. Just my two cents.

PVP Feedback of sorts, this concerning bolster, just for information: Bolster stats for Corruption sorc: Bolster stats for Arsenal Merc: From these numbers: The bonus damage and healing seemed consistent, with apparent goals of 6700 for damage and 5000 for healing with only minor differences, although minor differences can add up in PVP. But the crit and alacrity varied and it seemed like one got a better bonus in lower IR gear (maybe save a lower tier set for PVP?) and it seemed like dps is getting a slightly different bolster versus heals (I don't play tanks so can't speak to that). Notice the ability for a dps to still get an alacrity boost at high alacrity whereas the healer spec seemed to top out and got an extremely minor boost. In this particular scenario the healer even had a +2% alacrity set bonus where the merc had a +2% mastery bonus. Only the weapons had augments, carryover 238 augments from Live. No other gear was augmented. Good? Bad? Indifferent? Working as intended? I will let others decide.

Some feedback on the Amplifier UI after the latest PTS patch: The tooltips in the calibrate window still do not work properly. When I click on Update there is still no indication that anything has happened - the type/value showing in the Amplifier window will not change until said window is closed out and re-opened. There is no indication/message in the Recalibrate window that the update has occurred - i.e. if I change a 3.5% Life Steal to 4% the header will still read "3.5% Life Steal" even if the recalibrate window is closed out and re-opened. The header in the Recalibrate window will not change until the Amplifier window is closed out and re-opened. There is still no real way to tell what you can possibly get - please put a min and max value in the recalibrate window. For example, if I click on a 4% life steal amp, when the recalibrate pops up under the "4% Life Steal" header put Min: 1% Max: 6% (or whatever the values are). Still no way to sort Amplifiers on the Amp window. Still no way to see Amp totals anywhere that I can find. Still no Codex for Amplifiers. Thanks for listening!

Some feedback regarding the new Character display: Do you know where everything is located (in relation to the previous character sheet) Yes, no issues here. Do you understand your stats display? Yes, except Amplifiers do not seem to show up. For example, my Merc currently has +55 Presence but there is nothing on the character sheet itself that indicates this - if I hover on the Presence stat and look at the bonus the Amp bonus is not reflected here. I suspect this will be true for multiple types of Amps. Is there anything you feel is missing, or not needed? Technically, no. But here are some wish list items: I would prefer if Amplifiers were on their own tab and actually had some sort features (sort by type, by gear, by amount, etc). I would prefer if there was some way to see a total for the Amplifiers - i.e if I have a total of 8% lifesteal, I would like to be able to see that somewhere on the character sheet and/or Amplifier window. Maybe instead of Ranged/Tech/Defense dropboxes maybe add something like Offensive Amps, Defensive Amps, Crafting Amps, General AMPs, etc to list the totals of the Amps the character currently has. I would like to have the character sheet have some edit features in the UI editor - the ability to size the window to my liking, the ability to change the font size, and the ability to enable/disable tabs (i.e. I never us the Ship tab so I'd rather just disable it and have it disappear and/or replace it with an Amps tab). Of all these, the most important would be the ability to size the text (and in general I would like this ability for a variety of UI elements). Thanks for listening!

Impressions from the latest PTS patch concerning loot acquisition: TL;DR: Either I am not understanding how the loot works or it is one step forward and two steps backwards. The good: What I did: Bugs/Issues: Suggestions: Thanks for listening, as always just my two cents.

My two cents: Using the current PTS framework, what would be ideal loot for me: Just my two cents.

Hello, just to clarify: This is actually not implemented yet. Despite another patch with some improvements my Merc dps still got Tank gear from flashpoint bosses and tank pistol from the evil RNG vendor. The toggle is not yet implemented. Eventually it will be a huge improvement, but it's not there right now. Tech fragments are slow to come by - around 10 solo veteran flashpoints and I might have had enough tech fragments to get one Kai piece, except I needed them instead to buy from the evil RNG vendor so I could boost my Item Rating so I could get better loot from the flashpoint. Eventually one will be able to comfortably use Kai, but right now most people can only use this vendor via the Tech Fragment exploit, which I got to believe will not make it to Live. Also, per Bioware: This sounds like only tacticals and set bonus shells will be sold and for an even higher price than Kai - or in other words, if you need say a 280 chest piece to get the Item Rating boost to keep the gear wheel turning, this vendor is not going to do that. You will still be dependent on the random boss drops, renown drops and the evil RNG vendor to get the gear to keep the Item Rating level churning upwards. But I guess eventually one will be able to use this vendor, when one is already at max gear level and has accumulated a ton of tech fragments... P.S. It's not the RNG that bothers me so much - it's that my level 75 has to go through 19 levels of gear advancement whether using rng or tokens or whatnot so that at the end of that journey my 75 character can have the same stats that the character currently has at level 70 in 252 gear (and actually, it will probably be a slightly less than the level 70 252 geared toon because I don't think I will be able to reach the same crit level). And then I can begin trying to accumulate different set bonus gear and tacticals and start fine tuning the amps, etc. (start "playing my way"). At the end of the day, I think it is this reality that has people upset and wondering why Bioware is so interested in putting in roadblocks (like the evil RNG vendor) to slow this process down. Just my two cents.

Did some testing after today's patch and the short story is that mixing modded gear and non-modded gear while churning through the 19 levels is just a bad idea and does not work. Most mods that are dropped are still for tanks, only one piece of modded gear drops vs four pieces when non-modded gear drops and apparently modded gear is considered an upgrade even if it's item level is the same as your item level. This means that one cannot equip a modded piece of gear and know that it can be upgraded by swapping out the mods within it; it is more likely that to keep the Item Rating wheel turning upwards the modded piece will have to be replaced by a non-modde piece - so there is no real point in trying to keep modded gear equipped. Please choose one way or the other and sitck with it: either all gear is modded, or all gear below 307 is not modded (unless it is a set bonus piece - the mods may not be worth keeping, but the shell will be). As previously stated, due to wanting to use my Cartel Coin bought weapon, I would prefer all gear be modded. Also, the RNG vendor is still broken. Bought a MH pistol on my Merc dps and got one with tank stats. Bought an offhand pistol and got one of the same value but was modded (but modded weird, like 280 barrel but 272 mod and 274 enhancement - why aren't they all the same Item Rating level?). Wanted to upgrade a 274 accuracy piece and - using the tech fragment exploit - bought 20 chest pieces and every single one of them was technically an upgrade - a 280 piece, but every single one was crit. And I needed an accuracy one. Bad RNG or bug - either way, the RNG vendor is more useless than useful. Maybe just add this to it: All personal loot will now look only at your Discipline.. But it needs further work. Finally, please consider adding the new loot tables to more stuff in the next PTS patch. Running Hammer Station over an over and over is getting to be very old and usually there aren't enough players on PTS to do a KP OPs run. Anyway, just my two cents but doesn't seem worth to test loot acquisition until there are more changes put into the system. Thanks for listening!

Impressions from the improved loot acquisition: TL;DR: There is tremendous improvement but some areas still need work. Summary: Ran solo verteran Hammer Station a total of 7 times - 5 times on Merc dps, once on Sorc healer, once on Operative dps. Started with Merc DPS with an Item Rating of 268, ended up with IR of 273. Started Operative DPS with IR 243, ended with IR 267. Started with Sorc heals with IR 252 ended with 270 or 273 (see section on Relics). This is a huge improvement over the gear acquisition from the last PTS. The good: What I did: The problem with Relics: Bugs/Issues: Suggestions:

Thank you for your response, it is at least a step in the right direction. I have concerns but will wait for the next round of PTS to test. However, I currently do not understand the 6.0 philosophy concerning augments. At what point does BW think characters should augment their gear? And what do you see as the typical cost for doing so? Some of the main complaints against having non-modded gear and so many tiers to levelling gear is going to be the cost and frequency of keeping your gear fully augmented. If 6.0 were to introduce a vendor that sold MK-11 kits for cheap, like 10K a piece or if crafting MK-11 kits becomes so easy one can predict extremely cheap prices on the GTN then this might alleviate this concern. But neither of these seems likely at this point. Can you please address how BW sees the augrmenting gear process in 6.0? As always, just my two cents and thanks for listening!

Loot Feedback, Part 2: So I did solo veteran Hammer Station 5 times and I did enough stuff to finally get Conquest. The one almost positive: I did like having a gear loot box tied in with the Conquest reward, if the reward would have matched my class. I got a nice 276 polesaber for a Merc dps. Conquest is much slower now (higher cost plus with running around in lower gear with lower stats killing stuff for weeklies or Conquest is a slower process) and it would have been much nicer at completion to actually get something I could use. Bugs: When I bought the box that specifically stated it would give me gear for my current discipline, one time I got nothing and another tank gear on a Merc dps. Just doesn't work at all. When I ran Hammer Station I got some random level 16 loot from the mobs - even if it is weak loot, shouldn't everything that drops technically be level 75 loot? Bug or working as intended? So on one of my Hammer Station runs I got a Tactical! Yay! Except it was for a Sin and I was on a Merc dps. Nor do I have a Sin as a toon. Nor could I trade it to someone which also means I would not be able to put it on the GTN. 100% totally worthless. Aren't the loot tables supposed to look at my gear and "know" what I need? And does this mean that all loot is bound to my characters or is this a bug? - i.e. if I did not equip the tactical should I have been able to trade or sell it? Suggestions: Tech Fragments drops from bosses should be more like 100 per boss than 10. Tech Fragments should be added to Heroic completions, weeklies completion, Renown drops, etc. Points needed to complete a Renown level should be reduced by at least 25%. Renown loot just doesn't feel satisfying, probably because GC dropped more items like scraps or maybe a pet, etc. Maybe add these kind of things into the Renown crates? Also, disintegrating items rather than claiming them seemed rather pointless - either the point value needs to be vastly increased or just get rid of the option to disintegrate entirely. Get rid of the non-modded gear. All gear that drops should be modded. If you don't do the above then at the very least get rid of the slot requirement for mods. Example: Say I have a 252 chest piece with an accuracy enhancement but then get a non-modded 272 chest piece with alacrity. I would like to have the option to equip the 272 chest piece and then move the 252 accuracy piece to another piece of gear - but currently since it is forever a chest enhancement, that option is not available. This limits what I can do with my gear for no particular good reason at all. Gear, whether from Renown, Tech Fragment Vendor, Conquest, etc should match my Class. No more opening something on my Merc dps to get a tank piece or a force focus or a polesaber, etc. Overall, loot is just abysmal and is a huge drop-off from the loot acquisition of Ossus. Please rework and fix this.

Armstech feedback: Do you feel like the time investment for harvesting is worth it? It will be once the number of nodes on Ossus is dramatically increased and nodes are added to the new areas. It is certainly way, way better than trying to get materials by sending out low level companions (an hour or so per mission). Do you feel the time and cost for crew skill missions are worth it? Cost is not bad and not a factor. Time is bad for low level companions and only feels right for level 40+ companions. As a crafter, do you feel like you have a place in Spoils of War? I'm not a serious crafter, but the answer is a clear NO. I've levelled Biochem and Armstech and taken a peek at Cybertech - once levelled there is not a single useful item I can craft for any of my characters. How do you feel about deconstruction and its contribution to crafting? I like it. Do you feel the inflow of Jawa Junk from deconstruction helps to supplement harvesting and missions? Yes, every bit helps. How do you feel about the new materials window? I like it. Would like to able to put Jawa scraps in here. Would like to be able to show only a certain grade of material (i.e. show only all Grade 11 materials). Possible Bug: When running Armstech on Ossus 95% of nodes and all scavenged robots there was nothing to indicate I had acquired any material at all - no loot box popped up and nothing showed in chat. I had to manually check numbers in the material inventory to make sure I was indeed acquiring them. Also, I am not sure how to acquire Augmentation Slot components. Nothing I've deconstructed so far has dropped any - do they only come from deconstructed crafted items? I cannot currently craft any green items due to the insipid Conquest requirement. Plus, previously it would take 10 green items to craft one MK-10 kit. If this pattern holds true then this would require 200 Solid Resource Matrix - something I can only personally acquire 2/week and is not sold by Jawa vendors - to make one MK-11 kit? And each character needs 14 of them (2,800 SRMs??)? And I am not much of an alt-a-holic but even I would need at least 5 complete sets.. so 70 kits (14,000 SRMS??). I refuse to believe that this is intentional so I am going to call the procurement of Augmentation Slots and the crafting of green equipment a bug. Please fix. Suggestion: I do not like the fact that the MK-11 kit and augment require Slicing components while everything else (barrels, weapons, etc) requires Scavenged materials. Clearly one Armstech character cannot have both Slicing and Scavenging to get materials. Can you please add a variation of MK-11 kits and augments that require Scavenged materials? i.e. let the crafter choose if the kits would be crafted via the Slicing route or via the Scavenged route.

Feedback on Biochem: Do you feel like the time investment for harvesting is worth it? (please check harvesting only on Ossus for Grade 11) Not in this case - Ossus is not exactly Yavin 4 when it comes to nodes. The only reason why it was bearable was extreme low volume of players (my instance rarely had more than 5), so no real competition for the nodes. I actually levelled Bioanalysis be going to Ondarin and farming the level 75 strong creatures - got no materials but it levelled way faster. Then it was a combo of sending crew members out and harvesting Ossus for materials. Do you feel the time and cost for crew skill missions are worth it? Time was on the slow end - a level 50 would take 15 minutes or so and a standard comp would be 35 minutes to an hour. Granted, most serious crafters probably have 5 or 10 level 50 comps but I usually only have one or two per toon. Having said that, it took my only 6 hours of game time to level Bioanalysis and Biochem to level 700 and Diplomacy to 650. This did not feel excessive (felt standard for an expansion tbh). Cost is really a non factor. I think overall it was around 2-3 mil credits to level up but I expected this. So not bad, but worth it? Not really, see below. As a crafter, do you feel like you have a place in Spoils of War? I am not a serious crafter and will often buy items from the GTN to bypass the tedium of crafting, but I'm going to have to say no. As Biochem, there were no reusables to craft and if the tooltips are correct then I would be better off using my current resusables then taking the time & money upgrading to the next tier as the small difference in healing or power won't be noticeable. Also, if the tooltips are correct, the Stims would only last 60 minutes? - but I am hoping this is a display issue or bug (for reference, non resuable stims currently last 480 minutes). On both Biochem and my Cybertech, I could not craft anything basic to get my accuracy up to 110% (neither implants nor enhanements) for my dps. I ended buying 220 accuracy enhancements from the level 70 vendor on fleet to accomplish this. So in other words, despite spending the time and money to level Biochem, I've found zero use for it. I can't imagine other crew skills will be much better (although I am very curious how hard it will be to craft the new augments and augment kits). How do you feel about deconstruction and its contribution to crafting? I liked it. Ultimately the Jawa scraps would give me another avenue to get the special materials to craft, so it's a good thing. Do you feel the inflow of Jawa Junk from deconstruction helps to supplement harvesting and missions? (reminder: Jawa junk is not meant to be a primary source of materials by itself). Yes, I think it helps. I also liked that failed crew missions returned Jawa sraps. How do you feel about the new materials window? Aside from it being slightly buggy (once open, spacebar would open it unless I did a reloadui), I liked it. More convenient than putting items in the legacy bank. Wasn't clear what or if there are limits to how much can go in there. Suggestions: For Biochem, put back the reusables. Allow Jawa scraps to go into the material crafting bag. Triple the number of nodes on Ossus, even when nodes/crafting are added to Onderan. Make it so that basic level gear can be crafted without having to use special materials.

Quick impression on running about 4 hours tonight - I ran Czerka weekly, Oricon weekly, some dailies in the new area, and Depths of Manaan solo flashpoint on a Virulence Sniper. I did not receive a basic set of gear so I started with 252 gear on MH, OH, Armor and 230 gear on relics, implants and ear piece. Does acquiring gear feel too fast? Too slow? Too slow and limited. I did get some random drops from the mobs and bosses I killed although I was disappointed that in the solo mode flashpoint each boss did not give me a piece of random loot. I will say that each gear I did get technically was higher rated (270 and above), but I did wind up with tanking pieces which seemed odd considering I was playing a Sniper. Anything that I did not consider usable I disintegrated but the awards for this were meager. At the end of my time I had 68 tech fragments and it takes at least 250 to get a random piece of gear from a vendor and 1500 to buy a specific gear from Kaizen. I did not receive any tacticals nor did I see a vendor where I could buy any (hugely disappointing). Nor did I get any set bonus pieces. With a booster I got three renown levels and each renown drop was one random item. So with about four hours of game time, I managed to get five pieces of upgraded but non moddable gear (OH, Head, Implant, Boots, Legs, highest value was 276 Legs), no tacticals and no set pieces. Outside of OPs, it feels like getting multiple set bonus armor sets and tacticals will be really slow. Do you understand what to do to get gear? It seems like the only real way to get gear will be to run OPs, as they have the best rewards and offer the most tech fragments. How do you feel about the primary sources of getting gear? (playing content and Missions) It doesn't feel like "Play my way" at all as getting gear/tacticals of any type (never mind min/maxing) via other methods other than running OPs is probably technically doable but will be extremely slow. How do you feel about the contribution of the supplementary systems? (vendors, crafting, Renown) Not really helpful. Vendors rely on tech fragments which are not easy to get unless you are running OPs. Crafting relies on drops from Conquest - Solid Resource Matrix and you only get two of these for completing the personal conquest. Most items on my cybertech Sniper it took 20 of these to craft a single 274 enhancement or 268 ear piece; so without a GTN it will take 10 weeks of completing the personal conquest to craft one item (not even remotely feasible or helpful). Renown is OK since it is not considered a primary source for gear. It's not fast but if I can get a few pieces of gear just from doing weeklies then I will call it good enough. Suggestions: Add Tech Fragrments to all weeklies. Add basic gear (266? 268?) that doesn't require special materials if it is crafted and/or add a merchant to sell for credits. Please make sure the loot dropped in Renown crates is applicable to your current class/spec. Add a merchant to sell at least a couple of general tacticals so when we all turn 75 we can fill that slot with something. Not related to this particular topic but I am not sure where else to mention it: it would be really nice if we could buy augments and augment kits for credits from a vendor as well. As always, just my two cents.

Quick impression from about 4 hours of testing, with only four pieces of gear having an amp, and none of these gear were actually modded (I don't know if that makes a difference or not; maybe I had issue because only mod items should have amps and these should not have had any amps? Bug? Intended?) Were you able to easily understand what amplifiers you have and what they do? (from the UI only) No, not at all. The tooltip UI did not work properly and would get stuck on one amp description - i.e. it would give the description say for Medtech no matter what amp was actually present in the recalibrate box. One could mostly guess from the names what it would do but the ony way to be sure was to update the amp and look at the tooltip. It was also not clear what amps I could possibly get from any given slot. It appears the implant amp I had would only affect crafting - ok, didn't take too long to figure out. But the head piece amp I have no real idea what it is cycling through as I got everything from aural defense to first strike to medtech etc. Suggestion: A comprehensive of amps and what slots they are tied should be in the Codex (in game) and/or the recalibrate box should list or have a tooltip that would show you what type of amps can be rolled when you recalibrate. Do you understand how to reroll/change an amplifier? Yes and no. It was clear to click on Recalibrate to make it reroll. However, when I clicked on Update there was no UI affect to show that it had actually updated the amp. I would normally have to close the window and look at the item tooltip to verify that the update had actually applied. Does the cost for changing amplifiers feel right? Too high or too low? Ultimately way too high and the whole process felt like a scam. Suggestions: I would like to suggest a way to lock an amp, even if it cost credits. Basically a locked amp would go no lower than it's current value or thereabouts - i.e. I managed to roll a 6.6% on first strike, if I locked this amp and then recalibrated then I would get 6.6% on whatever pops up (or at least something close to it, like 6%). The cost of locking the amp would scale with the value of the amp (i.e. to lock a 6% amp would be way more than locking a 2% amp). Just as a test I tried recalibrating to see if I could get the 6.6% on a different type of amp. I was up to 100K a click and I think the highest value I saw was 3.9%. So my choice would seem to either be to settle with the higher percent with something I may not necessarily desire or to settle with a lower percent when I finally roll an amp I do desire to have. This doesn't at all feel like "play my way"; it feels entirely like a credit-burning trap that will ultimately frustrate many players. Alternative: if locking the amps seems too strong or not feasible, then I would suggest that rerolling should have a fixed cost for each and every roll (something low, like 1 or 5K). Then you would pay extra when you actually updated the amp - and this cost would again scale with the value of the amp. Just my two cents on the matter.

"Meaningful feedback" is subjective. There is another Sniper feedback thread about 6 pages back. Part of the problem is that Bioware needs to Sticky the relevant feedback threads (one for each class , one for Known Issues and the Tactical List) to make it easier to find/read/respond. Part of the problem is that with the lower population playing there is fewer players on PTS, fewer theorycrafters, etc to report. Part of the problem might be that the PTS is incomplete until PTS 2.0. Not that this has stopped rampant speculation about Amps but maybe some people are waiting until the full PTS release with character copy, full legacy, etc before playing and providing feedback. As for the second question, Bioware has been mostly silent, even to the point of making minor changes with no Patch Notes or Dev Tracker statements to go with them in between PTS resets. Maybe this will change with PTS 2.0? But they have clearly responded to feedback, notice the set bonus change (4 pieces now give a bonus instead of a stat boost), the change to berserker, etc. So communication has not been great, but it is clear that they are reading the reports.

Hello, quick impressions for Arsenal Merc: So I tried the Power Set (Notorious Set Bonus plus Power Override Utility). Both Fusion Missile and Concussion Missile went on cooldown on the second use. Both Tracer Missile and Rapid Scan could be activated instantly four times in a row. Intended? Bug? As it stands, this might be used in PVP to get more than one instant CC but most likely I think it would used by Bodyguard (healing) as a way to possibly burst heal. As Arsenal DPS, it might be a little burst with the four TM (and the heat wasn't so bad), but I honestly don't know how useful this kind of burst will be in either PVP or PVE. Maybe if higher mobility is needed then this will allow a more controlled way to fire instant TM and move about. So I'm undecided on this set, as it's usefulness seems highly situational and the (4) bonus - 10% armor penetration for a measly 6 seconds that can only happen once per minute - is very weak. [side note for the curious: any other ability that was used, such as Death from Above or Blazing Bolts, etc did go on cooldown as expected - these sets only affected cast time abilities]. So it appears that alacrity and/or any other bonuses do not apply to the time of a Recharge. i.e. if you use both charges of rocket out, it is 20 seconds (and not the 17 second cooldown I had showing) to gain a charge back. If you use both charges of Power Surge it is a full minute to gain a charge back. If this is Working As Intended, it will be a bit confusing to some players to see a cooldown listed for an ability but the recharge time is different. Maybe add recharge time to the description of the ability? Otherwise this bug still exists. Why can't an Arsenal Merc use Energized Charges Tactical? Especially as this would seem to have good synergy with the Concentrated Fire bonus set? Both the Concentrated Fire and Notorious sets have lackluster (6) bonuses. For each of these as Arsenal DPS if I picked them I would take the (4) bonus and then take a (2) bonus that had +2% accuracy. Speaking of which, why are there no bonuses to accuracy in the merc sets? Concentrated Fire set: when watching my stats my crit chance went up by only 2% but my crit multiplier did go up by 10%. This may be just a display bug. I couldn't tell if the Hunter Killer (4) piece bonus was actually working or how large an area it covered, as there was no animation or tooltip to indicate the size of the personal stealth protection. Turns out I loved the Thermal Nuclear Fusion. But it was not consistent - the signature would spread fine but the heatseeker missiles seem to need to hit targets in front of you (not one that may be burning to your side or behind you) and there seemed to be a distance limit to them as well (and not just hit any burning target). On the plus side, if the targets were grouped together enough you can just fire TM at each target and the HM will still duplicate to multiple targets - i.e. it is not necessarily dependent on the Fusion Missile. I don't know if this is intended or not but I liked this. I also liked the tacticals Burning Bright and Primed Ignition - both a nice little boost to DPS, although I am not sure that the Primed Ignition is scaling correctly (seemed less effective on Ossus than on Czerka). But combined with the bonus sets I think this will be a small improvement in Arsenal DPS, although I am not sure it will be enough to boost the class up from the bottom of the heap. I'll leave that to the theory crafters, number crunchers and players that actively parse all the time (there are a lot of choices to go through when including General Sets, so I don't envy the person who wants to figure out BiS). If for some reason you struggle with heat issues or just don't like using Vent Heat every so often, you can use the A Breath of Fresh Air and weave some Hammer Shots into your rotation (at the cost of some dps I'm sure) and never have to use it or you can use Cool Your Jets (vent 20 heat every 20 seconds); that is, if you don't mind flinging all over the map. I do think this can be a good escape measure, though, for both IO and Bodyguard if you find yourself overheated with Vent Heat on cooldown. Also, shouldn't Kolto Missile count towards A Breath of Fresh Air? Anyway, overall I enjoyed//liked the tacticals but I think the set bonuses need to be modified. As always, just my two cents. Thanks for listening!

This was the very first thing I wanted to test on the PTS, so sad Bioware could not get the PTS ready in time for the weekend. I especially wanted to test this with the Power Overrides Utility, which gives Power Surge an extra charge. Meaning potentially up to four abilities with no cooldown. But I cannot imagine that Bioware would knowingly allow mercs to start using Blazing Bolts four/five times in a row. Even if it is just abilities with cast time, though, this could potentially still mean up to four Concussion Missiles with zero activation time and zero heat (Heat Damping Utility) with maybe a fifth normal Concussion Missile waiting to be used. And this could happen every 38.3 seconds (on Live 16% alacrity and Power Overrides Utility reduces the cooldown on both Power Surge and Concussion Missile to 38.3). I can't see Bioware knowingly this either - the salty tears of PVPers would turn Ossus into Waterworld. So, in short, no matter how we use it in PTS I think the fun will be short-lived as I can in no way foresee this Power Surge thing making it to Live as currently presented - I expect both the Utility and the Tactical to be reworked. As always, just my two cents.

As someone that complains all the time about ability bloat I'm not going to complain about the lack of a new ability, but two charges on Rocket Out is just puzzling. Currently on Live my Rocket Out has a 17 second cooldown, when will you ever need to use it twice in PVE within 17 seconds? As for PVP, the Smoke Scren utility states "these effects cannot occur more than once every 40 seconds" combined with the fact that Rocket Out doesn't purge movement impairing effects - how effective is that second rocket out going to be? I can understand not wanting to add another ability or another DCD, but this is just a permanent not-so-useful tactical. The least they could have done is had an Improved Explosive Dart, one that doesn't knockback, maybe does more damage and stuns a strong as well as standard or weak. You know - something to help PVE adds at least, but won't affect PVP, doesn't make the merc more OP, and really doesn't affect OPs. As of 5.10 Arsenal was dead last in DPS, 10% behind the top class. Considering the self heals, DCDs, etc I get they don't want it to even be in the top 5, but it seems like maybe a minor bump in a DPS ability would have been better than a two-charge Rocket Out. And if their goal was to improve mobility, wouldn't a two charge Hydraulic Overrides be better? Or one with a higher speed boost, longer duration and/or shorter cooldown? This "new ability" just seems confusing and off to me. I can also tell already that I would rather have sweeping blasters spread the heat signature rather than fusion missile, even if it took a tactical to do this and even if this was banned in PVP. Still, I am also eager to test out Bounty Hunter on PTS and try various set bonus/tacticals. So it's not all bad. Just my two cents...

Helllo, I am going to toss my two cents in here and say I somewhat agree with the OP but with one or two possible caveats. I was under the original impression that Tacticals would be, well, more tactical. I am going to give an example: (not necessarily suggestions for real Tacticals, but just an example) Imagine these kind of tacticals; example is for a corruption (healing) sorc: (Mobility) Dark Infusion can be cast while moving (Mobility Two) Rocket Boost now has a 0.5 sec cooldown. (Resource) Force Regen is increased by 1 (Healing) While in an operation or flashpoint bonus healing is increased by 5% (Healing Two) Roaming Mend auto crits on the first target it hits (Healing Three) Unnatural Preservation also affects the person Guarding you (Defensive) Roaming Mend increase damage reduction by x% for x seconds for each target it hits (Purge) Roaming Mend purges each target it hits (Levelling) You gain (or lose, for those that want to slow things down) +25% xp from all sources (PVP) You are immune to CC but take 5% more damage from all sources Now imagine these two (6) piece set bonuses (usually the [2] and [4] are just stat increases): (Healing) Roaming Mend and any Roaming Mend Tactical affects 1 additional target (PVP) You are immune to all Stuns but take an additional 5% extra damage from all sources Now my healing sorc is choosing set bonuses and tacticals based on what I want to boost: a specific key ability in the rotation, (in this case, Roaming Mend), PVP performance (No stun lock , yay! But at a cost), more purges (certain OP bosses), more mobility (in or out of combat), a general boost in OPs or FPs, levelling, etc. Instead it feels like I (and everyone else) will just end up settling on one set bonus (either a 6 or a 4+2) and one maybe two tacticals for each possible role they intend to play. Having said all that, I do like some tacticals - OP healing and Sorc Lightning so far, so it's not all bad. Caveat 1: I am not sure what the Amplifiiers are or will do - maybe people will be swapping sets based on Amps? Or to min/max one will grind for particular Amp sets and not the tacticals and set bonuses? Caveat 2: It's unclear how fast one will be able to accumulate multiple sets. A slow grind will push people to having only one set/tactical while a fast grind will encourage people to have and use multiple sets/tacticals. I am hoping Tacticals will be very easy to come by (maybe even some purchasable by credits or craftable), set bonus slightly less so but not too bad and then a decent grind for the mods/amps for the min/max people. For those that don't know, unoptimized mods were present on PTS; could just be a PTS thing or you can add in the grind for optimized mods along with the possible grind for set bonus gear, tacticals, and amps. Maybe PTS 2.0 will shed some light on this. Anyways, just my opinion. Thanks for listening!