Well the brackets are great because now all of a sudden my shadow strikes actually hit for more than 1500 whereas before I couldnt hit a 50 for more than 400-500 and he just laughs while ignoring me completely. Unfortunately other problems remain. Today lost 2 hutball games due to chain stuns/mezes and such even when resolve was full or cooling down. Both times I was basically perma rooted one way or another for at least 20 seconds after using resilience and cc break. On top of that, due to lag issues I can use force push properly because it does not calculate where I am relative to the person I am pushing correctly and I cant seem to force stun anyone. On top of that, i was basically snared about 75% of the entire game no matter where I was and getting hit by missiles from 3 miles away by people who are clearly not in line of sight (not sure if you have to be but whatever). It just isnt any fun. Too many cheap 1 click abilities on the sith side and too many snares/stuns all over. Thanks EA but Ill be looking for the next mmo. Any chance I can get my money back?

I dont like the idea of lightening for Jedi's but I dont like healing abilities for sith either... I can understand self heals but heals for others? Isnt that against the sith belief of the strong survive and the weak die? I think the big mistake was trying too hard to keep a mirror and in the end slight differences made a huge difference in PvP. It would have been much better if they had stuck to lore. The Sith Sorc should have self only heals vs Jedi Sage less damage output and effective group/targeted heals. This way no one would argue about imbalance because it would have been expected from the start and it wouldnt be a surprise in PvP. Yes this would make Sorc better 1 on 1 but that would also make them somewhat useless in groups and that is the trade off. The sage would retain group favor but will not be able to outright out damage a dps class. Which brings me to another big issue with current balance. Sorc/Sages outright out DPS'ing pure DPS classes... this happens much too often and this should never be the case. If anything, healing classes should have the lowest DPS. There is a reason why this is so in most other MMO's and it is to maintain balance and some sort of fun for everyone else not playing an OP class. Sorc (never fought a sage cause im light) are incredibly hard to kill, even harder than tanks and they are able to maintain good damage output while surviving with heals. This should not be the case and is the primary reason why almost everyone plays a sage/sorc. Im not saying nerf, what I am saying is that other classes should be better dps. It should be a 100%/75%/50% scale for DPS/Tanks/Healers respectively with variation for hybrids and CC classes.

Seriously guys... its a huge MMO and only a few weeks old. Need I remind you that the biggest MMO in history launched with NO END GAME CONTENT... WoW on release was still developing their end game stuff when the game launched and told us so at launch. It wasnt a big deal because they released a couple of things a few weeks later but the game was so broken the 1st 3 weeks it didnt matter (lag made it unplayable and you couldnt even loot things during peak hours). Give them a break. The team needs to make money to keep producing. The more the make the better the game will become. That said, the more pressing issue should be economy (we basically dont have 1) and things that factor into it like tradeskills and such. I have no doubt that they will provide more end game content, fix bugs and make the game function better all round but the economy may not be salvageable given the current mechanics.

I have to disagree about commendation vendor removal. I do agree that the economy is broken and so are tradeskills but here are the problems I note. - Its entirely too easy to get materials for crafting - Even if you made trade skill items viable they will be so mass produced that they will be worthless in no time since everyone can craft easily - Tradeskills are way too easy to expect anything from them. WoW had terrible tradeskills too. EQ2 and SWG had it 100000x better. - Commendation vendors do not sell the best gear in game. Just stepping stones. - Best way to make trade skills viable is to give each of them a unique perk like a great bind on pickup item that is self only thus justifying the need for the trade skill. Otherwise they need to redo the trade skill mechanics because as they are now they shouldnt be very powerful.

I used to think this was true but evidence tells us otherwise. I have a pair of pistols on my companion whatshisface (shadow healing companion who annoys the heck out of me). Here is what I did: I find an orange pistol while going through a flashpoint. Orange Pistol had damage of 59-something... lets call it 59-129. I take barrel out of the pistol and move it to whatshisface's pistol cause he needed a barrel. His pistol got damage of 59-99... I couldnt believe it. So I moved the barrel back to the original pistol and the damage was 59-129... Apparently, not all orange items are equal. How one can tell the difference is unknown but I can tell you that the higher damage pistol was won at a higher level. I have not really seen this in anything else so maybe its just a bug but I always compare my gear to that of equal level commendation gear at the fleet.

whacked... seriously? More time in school please and less time in games for you. Good luck finding an MMO that is this good on release. I wont even go into how bad WoW, EQ2, Lotro, Conan and other were on launch and most stunk for more than a year until they started adding and fixing things.

I play a shadow as well and completely disagree. I dont think that people should be able to play two completely different builds because it will make everybody generic because EVERYONE will make 1 left tree build and 1 dps build. I think that the more generic you make a game the less character is has. If you are playing with friends then it shouldnt matter what spec you have anyway. If you are in a hardcore raid guild again it wont matter because only the leader and their buddies will play MT so no point in specking into the left tree too much. When I play casually I simply switch characters to match my friends who also do the same. If I want to tank i play my shadow, if I want to dps I play my gunslinger, if I want to heal I play my scoundrel. My shadows does does not need dual specs to be an effective dps nor does my gunslinger need a dual spec to be better dps. Lets keep each character unique (minus re-specs). PvP is a different beast entirely. I might support a special PvP spec that cannot be used outside of PvP but I still dont think it is 100% needed. Id rather they work on a guild bank and other content.

No offense but even in single player games, you are not expected to do every single quest and sometimes those quests are unavailable depending on how you played the game and/or your class/alignment etc. Look at it from the flip side of the coin. If all the quests were solo-able then what would attract the social customers? Sure it would be great for you but it would be boring for someone else. That said, SW is very solo oriented. You DO NOT NEED TO do the group heroic quests to get equivalent level gear. You have alternative methods of getting that gear. You can get the same equipment (or very similar) three other ways including completing your solo class quests for 1 free piece, via commendations, or by buying it on the market. In my opinion, this is what makes this game great. You can work around things. For me I dont always want to group because most of the time I end up with dolts so instead of grouping I use the other methods. Last night I purchased a nice blue mod for my armor at a super cheap price of 800 credits and I used my Taris commendations on a purple lock-box which got me a purple enhancement that upgraded my light saber. Both items were better than those I found in group quests.

I agree that you should not be forced to group but I disagree that you need a 2nd companion. The game was balanced around 1 companion. You are not supposed to do 4 person quests on your own unless you are significantly higher level than the quest. You can most certainly do 2 person quests with your companion but some are harder than others. You will need high end equipment to take some of them and you will need to control the flow of battle perfectly especially if you are not a healer. If you are having issues, re-roll a healing class and use a tank pet. They are easy mode. My Counselor Shadow is very hard to play and needs top end equipment for most 2 man quests (at level 25), but my Smuggler Scoundrel can sneeze kill most 2-man heroic quests while running around naked. This is by design. That said, to all those saying that MMO is about grouping, you cannot be more wrong. No where in the MMO bible is there a rule that said you must group or guild to enjoy. Its optional. There are other aspects to MMO's including an economy, size of the game, depth, that make MMO's attractive to everyone. Also note, that most MMO's that revolved around required grouping and raids ended up failing. EQ2 is a historic failure for that reason. WoW didnt win the MMO race because it was better, EQ2 shot itself in the foot and many ended up trying WoW instead because it was more 1 player friendly.

World PvP in all MMO's always end up being a gank fest. There is no skill or anything involved thus its not really PvP but just a place to grieve. Like others have said, PvP servers almost always have the lowest population over time for a reason and that reason is that its not fun to not be able to have fun when you want. You can still get PvP on a PvE server so if I were you, I would switch now unless you plan to grieve others like they are doing to you.

Wait are you saying that a huge MMO is buggy on release? No way! Here is some news for you. The only real game breaking bug I have encountered since launch is getting stuck between rocks and having to wait a bit as I get unstuck. Other than that there is an annoying delay when you try to join conversations while grouped with 3-4 people but it always works after a few tries. I also had an email disappear on me once but it came back about 5 hours later so no biggie. All the stuff you mentioned is just preference and its your choice whether or not to work around them until the game gets situated. Instead of nerd raging (though it insults me to call you a nerd), perhaps you should take a little lesson in history. All MMO's are buggy at launch --> ALL of them. WoW was horrible for almost 6 months and had no end game or PvP till the 1st expansion. Tradeskills in WoW remain an afterthought and practically useless aside from being time sink. That said I love tradeskills in EQ2 but most people have never played that and when it launched it was horrible as well. Anyway, this game is about 2 weeks old. They had more subscribers than WoW did at launch. Need I remind you how many times WoW servers crashed back then? Anyway. Be angry all you like but you are not being reasonable or respectful in my view. If none of the issues are addressed by the end of 2012 then you will have a point but right now you are nothing more than an airhead.

You are doing something very wrong. If you are trying to tank while healing yourself then you are not doing it right. If you expect to heal a pet against 2 epic mobs at level 15-25 then you are not playing right (though it is doable in certain spots). If you expect to fully heal your pet in 1 cast then you are not playing right because no MMO healer can do that right off the bat. Last, picking a healer class does not automatically make you a good at healing. If you dont go down the healer tree then you will be very mediocre. Think about it, if it was easy to heal with just 1 skill then every healer would go down the dps tree and they would be just as damaging as any full dps class plus they would get heals. So again, you are not playing right. It sounds like you want to be an one man wrecking crew that can heal. I recommend Skyrim.