Try switching back to the original load out. Doing this brought back a lost of pair of boots on a scoundrel alt of mine three weeks ago. I had spent at least 20 minutes looking for the missing boots but they immediately appeared when I switched back to the load out I was originally in.

As someone who plays between 11 characters I'm genuinely loving the mods and enhancemments from Hyde and Zeek. Because of this I'm in full 330 gear for all toons already with only the sharing of a relic here or there. It almost seems too easy. The only downside is that I will have to do R4 to get better gear should I want it and I rarely am able to play for more than 90 minutes at a time.

Bioware has been and currently still is hiring for SWTOR-specific jobs. They've posted a number of positions over the past few months including level designers, which suggests more content is forthcoming. They announced all their open positions just last week. I don't follow EA too much, so I could be off, but I certainly know big company culture and corporations try to piece together existing assets within their company to support a product that is scheduled to be phased out rather than to hire. And if they must "hire" for expiring products they try to go down the 1099 path instead. Hiring, particularly in large companies, is expensive and justifications for new hires and even replacements almost always have to be tied to the overall long-term strategic plan. While the first release of 7.0 was greatly disappointing to me, I'd say Bioware is looking to support this game for at least the next few years.

It's not the difficulty that's the problem, it's the fact that the gear we worked hard to get becomes useless on so many planets. I don't mind them increasing the difficulty of mobs and bosses, in fact I would welcome it, but just give me the stats I spent hours earning. Moreover, highest-tier PVP gear is also now outclassed by higher-tier PVE gear in PVP. In short, these are serious problems that mess with the core mechanics that underpin this game. One gets the sense there are new developers working on this game and what ones they have are overwhelmed.

Boy did I pick the wrong time to try SWTOR again. I've been gone for years. I should've read more about 7.0's changes and the inability to mod gear en masse before resubscribing. I absolutely would not have resubscribed if I had understood this. When I used to play regularly I was majorly into modding gear--like majorly. I had gear pieces not only for healing/damage/tanking but different specs and even for specific situations or bosses. I was drowning in modded gear and I loved it. I often tinkered with this mod or that enhancement and shared that info. with my guidmates at the time and they did the same. Was there a community outcry for this change? Are today's players, in general, mod-averse? If so, I don't see much hope and will abandon this game.

The 55/45 in Reps favor on the Ebon Hawk is probably true now, if not actually 50/50. Just two weeks ago and through all of summer the Rep % win was way higher. Now most of the better Pubs do ranked at night, not regs. Because the population of the EH is pretty low, this leads to more Imp victories in regs as Imps rarely do ranked on the EH. And, yeah, Pubs on Harb are in sad shape. There was a bit of a comeback for awhile but...gone. People may not realize this, but in the first few years of Harb's existence Pubs were very, very strong there, if not the dominant faction (most of 2013 for example). Now there's not enough good players on at once there to really change this. Fleet size is getting really low there, and that can't be good for the game.

You saw a Powertech in PVP? You sure?

Solo ranked as a DPS Sorc is frustrating. Against a competent team we're always target #1. The scenario usually plays out like this: the healer is cc'd, they break it, they are cc'd again when their resolve bar drops. Meanwhile, all of the opposing DPS are on the DPS Sorc, who has to use Phasewalk to escape. By the time the Sorc returns, one of his teammates is down, leading to inevitable defeat. Sorcs can certainly be the last one alive by rooting, kiting and hiding but damage is bad and the team goes down to defeat because they didn't contribute much. Sorcs seem to only do well in two situations: 1. When their teammates peel for them AND can dish out significant damage and heals, and/or 2. The opposing team is bad. There's a third scenario and that's called win-trading but that's irrelevant for this discussion. I've seen many players on other classes still do really well even when their team is trash (mostly maras, sins and mercs) but I just don't see Sorcs doing it. Like I said, they can hide and kite but their damage is nowhere near the top. With all that said, how do you guys do well in ranked when up against a good team and you get no love from your teammates? Looking for pointers.

How OPG is "fixed" is by dropping it altogether.

In PVP they're in a really bad spot. Read the many posts in this section about it. I play all 8 ACs with a Sorc as my main and find this class the squishiest by far. Yes burst is great, but survivability is just awful.

This kind of soft matchmaking could definitely work and really wouldn't take too much effort to implement as the structure is basically already in the game. This is a great idea. Either it should be implemented after server merges (assuming this happens) or the matchmaking system is suspended when there aren't enough people in queue to fully fill out teams. I have no idea how often the latter would happen as I only play in the evenings on more populated servers (the Harbinger and the Ebon Hawk) when it's not hard to get a WZ pop, but from general comments on these forums it seems like a number of servers are either dead or on their way.

I can't hide, kite or escape on my Merc or Sniper like I can on my Sorc. We have the best mobility in the game; Phasewalk (which seems so underutilized by Sorcs in WZs); better AOE than Mercs; and, when used properly, good self-heals. Is the class where it should be? Absolutely not! We need a 3-4% buff to damage, but it's certainly not unplayable or pointless. It just can't be played like it once was. Now, with that said, I would definitely not classify it as a leading AC right now, except in heals. Now, if you want to try a true pointless class, try DPS Powertech. I picked mine back up last week and it's way worse than where Sorcs are. It's just awful. That class has great burst but just awful defensives.

The video-game industry is extremely unforgiving. EA will put its resources in titles and activities that deliver the most profit while either shutting down unprofitable titles or use skeleton crews for everything else, and all in rapid fashion. There's little doubt that this game is no longer a priority for EA. It's clearly still profitable, or else it would have been shuttered, but what resources are put towards this game are aimed at the cartel market and new content, because that's what's delivering the money. Furthermore, MMOs in the West are on the decline. They will eventually reach a baseline where things ebb and flow, but the future isn't bright for titles that don't have a strong audience in Asia. As such, EA will not invest in this game again.

I have all 8 ACs, and play all but two of them regularly. I decided to play my DPS PT again this week after not having played him since leveling him to 70 (and not having PVPd on him in a very long time). All I can say is: DPS spec'd PTs are, without a doubt, the squishiest class in the game, and by a significant margin. I main a Sorc and Sage and have been a relentless champion for that class but came to admit this week that they're far more robust and resilient than DPS PTs, especially in PVP. I kept reading through my PT abilities and utilities thinking I was doing something wrong, only to finally realize that this is currently how it's intended to be. The difference between this class and snipers and mercs is almost mind-blowing. As others have said in this thread, this class needs more defensives to make it competitive. It doesn't need merc-or sniper-level defensives, because we can put out significant damage when not targeted, but enough to bring this class back to life.

I have opened 85 post-300 GC packs and have not received a single piece of 248 gear and only two pieces of 246s. I've had terrible RNG luck. Because I don't currently do ops, unassembled components via PVP are my only way of obtaining 248s. This is a very disappointing change. Did your "influencers" tell you we wanted this? Where did you get that this was a good idea? What world do you guys live in? Simply put: you're turning this game into a chore. I know a great deal about motivation theory because of what I did in a consulting job for 10 years. It's been proven time and time again in academic publications that people are motivated by challenging yet obtainable goals. It has also been repeatedly proven that people become deflated and give up when goals are perceived as too challenging (unobtainable). Yes, people don't need 248s, and, yes, things are getting bolstered in PVP, but this is an MMO and people always strive for BiS. When BiS gear is extremely difficult to get for all of our characters (and most players have multiple alts), people give up, hence your falling subscriber numbers and nearly dead servers. You need to turn this ship around.

This is likely just one of their many methods for gathering feedback. EA is too big to likely not follow what a lot of organizations see as best practice: gathering a combination of both qualitative feedback (these influencers, our comments on the forum, twitter, reddit, etc.) and quantitative feedback (e.g., surveys that are statistically significant, subscriber numbers, content played, etc.). My guess is that the numbers they see in-game drive the questions they ask of the influencers as well as others.

Using your extended universe interpretation of the Sith, then, yes, a lot of people probably would. However, using the current canon definition of the Sith and the dark side, no way. Motivation theory (i.e., what motivates people) is generally recognized as one of the most researched topics in the social sciences and it pretty much comes down to one word: happiness. Don't get me wrong, fear, greed and manipulation have been proven to be effective short-term motivators, but are absolutely terrible ones in the long-term as they don't evoke sustainble happiness. No one wants to be miserable. If following the darkside makes one miserable, as Lucas said it does, then why on earth would anyone go down that route?

This is a debate you will not win. I'm an attorney and copyrights, trademarks and patents are my thing. People are free to interpret anything the way they want, but you used the word 'authority' and the artist always has authority insofar as they protect and use it (at least in the U.S.), and Lucas clearly did both. His expositions of Star Wars hold infinitely greater weight than any of our comments and interpretations simply because he's the creator of this whole thing. If he said the dark side makes dark users completely miserable, then it does. End of story. The only thing that could counter this is another statement by Lucas that contradicts his comments in the video or contradictory text from post-Disney acquisition canon publications. In any case, Disney is likely to move away from this absolute good vs. absolute evil thing. And, I completely agree with you that Lucas really misunderstood the force. He doesn't understood yin and yang and "balance." He backed himself into a corner with that word as it doesn't jibe with his comments in the video I posted.

I think we need to understand that the Sith and the Sith Empire in this non-canon story are not at all the same as what George Lucas envisioned. It's well-known that he modeled the Galactic Empire after Nazi Germany. The Sith Empire is not Nazi Germany in this story. If they were, few of us would want to play them (and thank goodness for that). And, in one of the making of DVDs Lucas pretty much defines the dark side and how awful it is and how miserable it makes one feel ( ). There's none of this "peace is a lie," "my chains are broken" stuff. In Lucas' mind Sith are miserable and do terrible things. And, as the creator of Star Wars, it's pretty hard to argue that he's wrong (except on maybe who shot first) .

I do a lot of healing on my Sage and Sorc. As others have said, your numbers are actually great and will only get better with gear improvements. The other issue might simply be, and probably is, who you're playing with. You're playing Republic and, to be honest, except for on the Ebon Hawk and apparently some German server, chances are your teammates aren't matching the DPS of the opposing team. That puts more pressure on you (sometimes a lot more pressure). Because a single Sage healer is rarely sufficient anymore, do what themachinemann recommended: prioritze. Obviously try and keep everyone up, but if the pressure is too much, heal those you either know have the highest DPS or those you perceive to (and, of course, your guard, if you have one). Highest DPS or your tank being out for 20 or more seconds is more detrimental than losing the braindead player with a variation of the name Luke, Obi Wan or Anakin who does maybe 400k damage the whole match. Also, don't worry about abandoning teammates who aren't trying to win, even if they make up the larger group. Personally, I prefer winning over posting big numbers when the two become mutually exclusive.

Like you, I returned to the game in June, but after a 3+ year break. I was surprised to see what had happened to this class. Bioware has most definitely abandoned its original "glass cannon" design for this class. It's now very much a DPS support role with only Lightning having any burst, and even that's kind of meh. I feel I make more of a meaningful contribution on my other DPS classes to winning than on my DPS Sorc and Sage. I can often bring someone to 1/2 to 3/5 of their total health on my Scrapper Scoundrel in 3, sometimes 2, GCDs, making it that much more difficult for my opponent to respond and/or putting pressure on healers to have to use their interruptible big heals. On my Sorc and Sage I can certainly put out high numbers, and do, but I rarely feel I can change the course of a match on my Sorc that I can on my other DPS classes, even if the numbers are comparable.

As has been posted many times, Bioware gave us their class balancing roadmap. It doesn't matter if people aren't playing Sorcs up to some people's standards. What matters is if in the aggregate their DPS is where it should be according to the "How Class Balance Happens" post the devs supposedly balance classes by. And in that post the devs told us that Madness is supposed to be at target DPS and Lightning at -5% of target DPS. Since you used Parsley, I will too. Madness/Balance is currently performing at the "Ranged Burst Damage Dealers (down to -5% of target DPS)" category with even lightning parsing higher than it right now (at 2.5M). If these parses represent reality, and they're the only real piece of data we as players have outside of our own experience (which almost certainly doesn't represent the full picture), then Madness (as well as a few others) likely needs a small 3-4% overall DPS buff to bring it to target DPS (which is probably around the 9250-9300 DPS range at 2.5M). I certainly don't want it OP as I got tired of those days when 15 out of 16 players in a WZ were Sorcs and Sages. Lightning, I'm sorry to say fellow sorcs, is probably where it needs to be (at around -5% of target DPS). And, yes, I'm extremely aware of the limitations of Parsley but it's more objective than each of our own experiences.

Yeah. They did add one too many zeros on that page because the leaderboards are the numbers you quote above. I should've put 2+2 together there So the average right now between all 8 specs is 9247 (using Hichitsuki-hime's numbers). The % difference between the 8 specs compared to the average goes from +2.24% (Assault Specialist) to -5.10% (Madness). Who knows what the population margin of error is with this because we don't know the target DPS. Now that I'm following the right parse info, I don't see any rhyme or reason to 5.4 class changes because Carnage (9279.75) and Concealment (9388.22) are pretty close to the 9247 average (given the fact that there is very likely a MOE here). I guess we'll know more when they announce whether Carnage and Concealment are getting nerfed or buffed but even then it leaves a lot of questions due to other over performing or under performing classes. Either Parsley is WAY off the mystical target DPS, or class balance will take a long time, or that "How Class Balance Happens" post was just a PR post.

Unless I'm completely reading Parsley's stats page wrong, the numbers across the top are: 5,000,000; 15,000,000; 25,000,000; and 40,000,000. They don't put any decimal points in these numbers (or commas) so the categories seem to be clearly: 5M, 15M, 25M and 40M. Is that not right? Have they added one too many zeros? If the numbers across the top are correct, then the 5M parses, which is where I got my numbers from, represent something closer to the all important 5 minute parse the devs say is important in that "How Class Balance Happens" post, and even that duration is about 2x as long as it should be. If they do have one to too many zeros then, yeah, the 25000000 is the right one to look at.

As you may have read, Bioware released an overview of what changes to expect in 5.4 yesterday. They said that the following disciplines will be addressed for balancing: Lethality / Ruffian Concealment / Scrapper Medicine / Sawbones Fury / Concentration Carnage / Combat In the "How Class Balance Happens" post, the devs placed Madness in the "Melee Burst/Ranged Sustained Damage Dealers (at the target DPS)" category and Lightning in the "Ranged Burst Damage Dealers (down to -5% of target DPS)" category. Of the eight disciplines in the "Melee Burst/Ranged Sustained Damage Dealers" category (which, again, includes Madness), 5.4 is addressing two: Concealment Operative / Scrapper Scoundrel and Carnage Marauder / Combat Sentinel. Of the three disciplines in the "Ranged Burst Damage Dealers" category (which, again, includes Lightning), 5.4 is addressing 0. Here are today's current Parsley DPS values for the "Melee Burst/Ranged Sustained Damage Dealers" category (the ones in red will be addressed with 5.4) (and, yes, I know that Parsley is not perfect, but it is the best objective source of info. we as players have): Melee Burst/Ranged Sustained Damage Dealers (at the target DPS) Advanced Prototype Powertech / Tactics Vanguard (10226.75) Deception Assassin / Infiltration Shadow (10058.46) Carnage Marauder / Combat Sentinel (9889.71) Concealment Operative / Scrapper Scoundrel (9815.26) Engineering Sniper / Saboteur Gunslinger (9696.52) Innovative Ordnance Mercenary / Assault Specialist Commando (9672.18) Madness Sorcerer / Balance Sage (9317.79) Rage Juggernaut / Focus Guardian (9289.71) If Carnage and Concealment are nerfed in 5.4 (and we'll know soon if this is the case), then we can probably expect a nerf to Advanced Prototype and Deception in 5.5 or beyond as that would probably mean the 9300-9700 DPS values are the target DPS. This probably also explains why Lightning is once again not being addressed (because it's currently about 5% less than target DPS of 9300-9700 range). If Carnage and Concealment are not nerfed, however, it will mean the whole "How Class Balance Happens" post was PR fluff.