I hate arenas. I love huttball. I have an abundance of warzone comms and now that the price of Dark Reaver gear is so cheap I am wanting to gear a jugg tank for warzones. I run with a premade occasionally but also solo queue. Note: I HAVE NO INTENTION OF BRINGING MY JUGGERNAUT TO RANKED. I want to know if I should max out on Shield/Absorb or if I will have better results stacking endurance and power/surge/alacrity to threaten and assist my DPSers and so I can better whump an enemy when I end up solo defending a point. Note that I want to have high HP and be in Immortal, regardless of how I spec my secondary and tertiary stats, mostly because I observe that it's what really makes the difference in survivability. Note that having high numbers on the end-match leaderboard does not make a difference to me. I want to be as effective as I can be FOR MY TEAM even if it means standing around being a meatshield and doing no damage... but if it means doing my job better I will happily pony up the comms to buy a full set of power/surge/alacrity enhancements and mods. I do not want to roll a full DPS (Rage/Venge) build: I have other characters to do that with.

Before I continue, I should qualify that I really really hate EA as a publisher. They are a bunch of money grubbers. But even I think that this tirade is idiotic.

Sorry about a second post right after my last one, but I cannot access the transfer page for some reason. Maybe the issue was addressed in an earlier post, but it's a really really long thread. I'm getting a 500 error. Is this a problem on my end or is the page down right now?

Go back just one page. He posted an update. They are.

Why do people insist that every MMO must compete with each other? Not every MMO player prowls MMO news waiting for the next game. Every time a decent MMO is being developed there are people posting on the forums of older MMOs saying "That new MMO will kill this one!" Do you think every SWTOR player came from another MMO? Do you think the goal of every MMO is to grab all the customers in the entire market? Do you think that the market will never grow or shrink? At the time of WoW's release, there were likely less than 2 million MMO players (not counting asia, where the subscription system is entirely diferent). WoW peaked at arond 13 million subscribers. Where do you think those extra 11 million came from, never mind that otherMMOs were also being introduced in the meantime? Do you think every new MMO since then has been taking new subs solely from WoW? TSW is completely different setting. Setting matters. Without ANY setting at all, MMOs would be nothing but blank numbers and statistics. Would you play this game if every enemy was a nondescript block? Clearly not, otherwise you'd be armpit deep in Minecraft right now (It's a great game, I'm told). I play this game because it's futuristic. I gave up on WoW not because it was a bad game (I still think it's pretty well done, despite the insistence of detractors) but because I have long ago grown weary of the tolkien-style fantasy genre (I mean, if you have something really wildly different, like a setting based on indian mythology or at least very very unique races, I might be interested). I play ToR and CoH for exactly that reason. Yes, I sub to more than one MMO. Heavn forbid! I like more than one MMO! No, I don't treat MMOs like damn football teams. If I support one, I'm damn well allowed to support another. So no, there's no "Conflict of interest" or "competing with itself" unless Funcom decides to suddenly make another Star Wars MMO and EA magically decides to publish it!

I think honestly, that RP reasons for disallowing changes are stupid. If he wants to change his character looks, he ought to be allowed to. The most likely reason Bioware hasn't already allowed this is because they would need to code in some kind of interface. And that they have better things to do right now, like fixing bugs and developing new content. Creators mess with their own work all the time. In comics it's called a "retcon". In Star Wars it's called "releasing a re-mastered edition". At the rate we're going, by 2030 Luke will be a twi'lek and Han a Chiss with tear tattoos. And Greedo will have a whole army of bounty hunters opening fire at Chiss Han before Han fries him.

I think that, like every single line where he says it never happens, he was speaking sarcastically.

Here's some advice I can give: Even if you get hold of Imperial gear, the pieces have different graphics for Republic players. Certain specific armor is the same for both factions, but a LOT of generic gear (oranges) are rigged to have different graphics depending on who is viewing/wearing it. What you CAN do is possibly reroll to a Jedi Guardian and wear the Trooper heavy armor.This is not ideal, but it's certainly better looking than most of the awful smuggler and Sentinel options. And you can stll get a relatively slick battlesuit look. Unfotunately, it is probably not gray. Alternativey, you can try rerolling marauder and wear the Agent gear, which will indeed let you do what you want. Also, marauders get several headgear options that I can only describe as "totally b****in' helmets", along with quite a lot of metallic slender armor. But that would involve playing icky Imperialside. On the bright side, your class quest lets you kill Darth Fatass, a job so amusing I have done it twice. As for PVP: the best advice I can give as far as your commedations is to spend them on the lowbie gear. Bioware put in level requirements to purchase likely to prevent people from walking into their first lvl 50 warzone in full battlemaster (Granted, I don't exactly see anything wrong with this). You are kinda meant to use em to buy lowbie gear. If you can't stand the idea, and want to ensure that you have exactly 2000 commendations when you ding 50, just ignore them. You're PVPing for the love of PVP, not for gear, are you? edit: Oh hey, I forgot. you can use your comms to buy PVP medpacks and expertise adrenals. These are awesome, buyable right away, hoardable, and you'll love having a giant supply of them at 50. As far as efficiency goes, however, there is no necessity to PVP at any time before 50 any more except to wear crafted PVP oranges (Very few thngs, mostly cosmetic, have PVP rank requirements any more). I can understand wanting to avoid doing non-class quests I myself have levelled 5 50s doing the planet quests and frankly they are wearing thin even for my tolerance for boredom. If I have to kill Boris Uglo one more time I feel I will go nuts. If you like PVP and its relatively slow levelling speed, good for you.

Hi, I'm an APAC player, and I have access to the free character transfers offered. When the APAC servers were launched in March, I made a new character on Dalborra and have been playing there almost exclusively for a month. When 1.2 went live, I made a new character on my old servr using the unlocks from my old legacy (Because the unlocks are obviously only available after 1.2 went live, and they were only available on my old server). Now I cannot transfer my new main. By the way Bioware, it totally sucks that I have effectively wasted the 11 odd levels of Legacy on Dalborra when I transfer my lvl 27 legacy over. Please reconsider, and let us add the legacy XP from both servers together. Did you really expect us all not to create any new characters for 1 1/2 months (The only way to avoid wasting any legacy XP or having a character stuck on your old server!!) Now, I'm not happy about the way the free transfer is implemented, but I'm going to try to work with what I've got. I understand my new trooper is not eligible for a free transfer, but I would really like to be able to play my new main on the APAC servers. Will there be paid transfers made avaiable anytime soon so that I can move her over to the APAC servers also?

I rolled a commando right after the patch (mostly because I wanted a pink twi'lek trooper. Blew 1.5 mil to unlock it). As a frame of reference I have a 50 Powertech, Marauder, Sage and Shadow. I PVP extensively. I am now 27 on my commando and spamming grav round. I don't have the 31 pt talent yet. I weave in High impact Shot and the 3sec channel. I am still getting top 3 DPS in every WZ, if not top DPS. Playing on my marauder, I am still consistently seeing Commandos and Mercenaries doing very well in overall DPS. (I assume they are decent mirrors of each other) If you are worried about survivability, everyone is feeling the expertise changes. We all die faster. As a matter of fact, on my marauder Cloak of Pain no longer feels like it makes a significant change to my survivability (I still use it nevertheless). I do get my 5sec invulnerability power, but often die seconds after it expires, if my vanish is not up (and often die right after vanish expires 4 seconds later even if it is) On my trooper, if I get huttball, I laugh in the face of marauders. Phooey to the marauder buffs, having two knockbacks compensates for a lot. I'm not feeling weak in the least. If you tell me grav round used to hit for 10% more damage (11%, if it was a 10% reduction from the original) I can tell you I'm not even caring. For those of you complaining about the reduced radius of Mortar Volley, after playing a balance Shadow and a annihilation Marauder, I am telling you I am using it happily. Pfft to your whining. Don't even compare Lightning storm/Forcequake. There is a reason people hardly ever use it at battlemaster WZs. I channel Mortar Volley in Voidstar and still get multiple kills. I can feel the difference in radius compared to my Powertech's pre-nerf DFA, but calling it a single target power is largely overreacting. I intend my trooper as my new main now that I'm moving back to republic side. I'm having tons of fun and enjoying it, nerf or no. Am looking forward to my 31 point talent, if you are telling me it was buffed. Maybe things are different at 50. Pre-1.2, commandos would persistently do better than my marauder in DPS, especially in voidstar. I'm quite well aware a marauder's single target DPS is the best in PVP. I'm also aware that they get relatively less hits in because they are pure melee with no snare/root immunity and few decent closing powers. I am also aware that the Commando had and still has the best AoE capability in the game, so voidstar is not necessarily a good comparison. I am still telling you I am not feeling one whit of sorry for you.

I don't think I can add much more that others have not already. My personal preference on gear is the awesome-looking robe that Sith Juggernauts are rockin' from the Corellia vendor. I'm sad as heck that my Powertech is wearing that while my Marauder languishes in the Black Talon bathrobe. Please give us more robes, Bioware. And less stupid-looking shoulders. (No seriously, I don't mean to be rude, but your Imperial Guard outfit is kinda silly. The Imperial Guard in the movies were awesome-looking. They didn't have stupid shoulders and wore FULL ROBES.) Every time I look at the Imperial Guard in SWTOR I suddenly understand why the Empire always has such wide doors. *AHEM. THIS IS A DIRECT ORDER FROM THE EMPEROR. FROM NOW ON ALL DOORS MUST BE AT LEAST SIX FEET WIDE SO THE IMPERIAL GUARD DO NOT HAVE TO TURN SIDEWAYS TO GET INTO YOUR HOUSES TO TORTURE YOU. HAIL SITH! GRRR!* Also, if you're gonna force us to wear identical-looking gear to Juggs at 50, please let us have their pre-50 robes also. Alternatively, please turn some of those green/blue robes that drop all over the place into orange gear. And this is me asking reeeeeal nice to bring us hood up/hood down options asap. *ahem* *PLEEEEEEEEASE make hood up/hood down options soon! Like, reeeeeeal soon!* I'm gonna be real sad if I have to wait till July for it

Thank you so much for the Predation/Undying Rage idea. I never thought of that, and can't wait to try it out. FYI, I do have the sense to try to keep either an obstacle or something else between myself and the edge, but my opponents, as I mentioned, are not stupid either. They know to maneuver before knocking me. I have a 50 Sage, and have done the exact same thing. I'm not griping about it. I'm just looking for ideas from those very experienced Marauders who have played Huttball to death and back, hoping for some tricks like that awesome idea above. Sadly, my new server is full of new players, since I suspect a lot of the experienced PVPers are still on their old servers until they open up server transfers.

Can someone explain to me if I'm mistaken about how Ravage works? Let me explain what I think I know. -The GCD is 1.5sec -Ravage is a 3sec channel. -The first two hits occur in the first 1.5sec (when the GCD is going on) which means you cannot cancel into anything else until that 1.5sec is up. (Am I wrong at this?) -This means that whatever the third hit deals effectively costs you one GCD and nothing else (let's ignore that stupid bug where you perform the animation but do no damage, that sucks, yes I know, I hope they fix it too.) -I know Annihilate deals more damage than the last hit of Ravage, but what about other abilities? Annihilate still has a pretty long coodown, so I'm not sure I feel justified losing that last hit just to pop Annihilate one GCD earlier, especially since that last hit exceeds some of my other powers. -Does Annihilate somehow interact differently with Ravage than other powers? -I often use Ravage as a sort of finisher, if the enemy looks likely to get out of my range (say I'm immob'ed) I know Ravage's last hit has around a 10m range. Am I wrong in any of my assumptions or should I move around Ravage from its current spot on my toolbar in favor of another power?

I'm PVPing with my marauder, an just hit 40. I love it so far, and it's piles of fun. Here's my problem. I still suck a little. Not in PVP in general, just in Huttball. I say this because I'm not quite figuring out how to properly do this. On my server and at the times I play Aussie PVE server, primetime Perth time), Republic is pretty organized and Huttball does not pop up all the darn time. So when it does, I'm not as well versed as you guys are. Help me get better at it! I keep getting kicked off ledges and when I meet a ball carrier, I don't have any options to kick him into the pit (Please tell me I get one later on ). Now if I get the opportunity to hammer him for a few seconds I'm gold, since I can kill just about anyone 1v1, but I can't do much if he keeps running away or kicks me into the darn pit. Damn, I hate that pit. It's my new nemesis.

I would like to point out that I did ask if there was anything I was doing wrong. I've followed the suggestions everyone has told me, barring a serious problem with gearing Theran up from nothing at Correllia (at that point, he was still in his default gear from Nar Shadaa), and it's not worked. The only suggestion I did not try was kiting mobs, that came a little late, after I respecced. The problem was never my DPS. While I can't measure it with no DPSmeters I note that whenever I am grouped I seem to kill much faster than other DPS'ers (This is not entirely fair of course, since Infiltration is heavily burst-based). The main problem was survivability, and frankly Theran cannot keep you alive indefinitely against an elite (The main problem I had was that after I run out of force and have used blackout, my DPS drops significantly, making it hard to win a straight DPS race.) The good news is that drakhri, above, has given me some nice hints, like kiting, and using low blow to recover force when soloing (Obviously these tactics will not work very well in a group). Which is frankly more than I can say for your post, being devoid of any constructive information whatsoever.

Just a little update on what I've done since. It turns out what I'm doing wrong is being Infiltration. I've finally gotten used to Balance's cast cycles and the abilities, and its like a whole different world. No longer am I slave to uncloaking to boost my force regen. No longer does my DPS become crap once I run out of force. I now solo all the 50 elites I'm supposed to with little trouble. I can imagine Infiltration does a lot better in teams where you're not likely to be hit and where you can actually use force cloak to reset your force regen buff (can't use it while soloing since it'll reset the mob) but for 50+ soloing, it's an uphill battle with little payoff. I'm planing to keep Balance at least until I start the lvl 50 instances. I love Infiltration so I'll return to it once I start teaming. IMHO, the problem with the spec is being a melee cloth wearer, having no inherent defensive powers, being massively reliant on burst damage and not being able to use your tank companions post-45ish. If Iresso could survive for more than just a few seconds against the enemies it'd make a whole world of difference. But as long as I'm forced to use Theran (I hate him soooooo much. Why can't they give us a less obnoxious healer?) Infiltration is more trouble than it is worth. Also it sees that people on Ilum tell me Lord Loyat is indeed a bit harder than other bosses. The funny thing is that I killed the final Ilum boss solo with no trouble.

See I understand this. I do get help; it's how I managed to get through Corellia. But I'm frustrated because I'm not capable of doing it without bothering other people; I'm starting to think my guildies are losing patience with me asking for assistance every half hour or so. I make use of force cloak to retry bosses, but the problem is that I often have no choice but to face them head on! there's plenty of bosses on Ilum who spawn adds only after being engaged and many, many cutscenes that stick you in combat RIGHT AWAY. One minor complaint I do have is that after a ****** cutscene where the bad guy and I have a standoff and wapons are unsheathed... the very first thing I do is to run away.

There were no relevant spoilers in my post. The only boss mentioned is a throwaway who is not relevant to any story before she is introduced. As for the class story, it should be no surprise to anyone that there's a boss at the end. (I mean seriously, there are threads all about him all over this forum) I'd like to point out that I do indeed blow all my cooldowns and eat medpacks to survive: in fact, I have to eat a medpack at practically every single elite. I buy medpacks in stacks of 10 at a time and go through them like candy; since I have to make multiple tries on most elites right now I end up eating about three or so. I do have Theran, and I do use him. I'm struggling to get gear for him because quite simply, I'm broke. I'm not sure if it's the case throughout the game, but on my server, decent cunning gear is either relatively rare on the GTN or hideously expensive. Funnily enough, there's giant flaming truckloads of sentinel gear going at next to nothing. What's even more annoying is that virtually every damn Strong mob on Ilum has an instacast mez that they can spam on my healer. The problem is that if I use my 20min cooldown and make even the slightest mistake (occasionally happens on lvl 50 bosses who, if they land even one cast on me will put me far behind the damage race) I'm screwed for 20 minutes. And on Ilum there seems to be a ton of mobs that can scan through invis, even though I literally live or die on the basis of starting with that 6 second buff to force regen after unstealthing. Using a healer companin also means I cannot backstab; and Theran is almost mandatory for highlevel content soloing. It's almost as if the Infiltrator's design is oriented entirely towards group/PVP. I've tried respeccing balance, but frankly it's not working out as well as it should because I'm having serious trouble adjusting to the cast cycle, not having had the benefit of learning it gradually while levelling. I can in fact feel the difference in survivability when I have the luxury of using the AoE. But I'm still dying to tough elites. It may get better, but frankly I'm frustrated as heck that the spec I'd been using just fine for 45 levels suddenly loses a whole mess of it's viability just as I reach the endgame.

I've levelled to 50 as Infiltrator Shadow. Let me be honest. I suck. I'm not sure exactly where I'm going wrong, but about half the elites in the game right now are too hard for me to solo. I had absolutely no trouble all the way till 45. Owned everything hard except the occasional story boss (Like Stark, whom I had to try a few times on). But once I hit Voss, the occasional elite became simply too hard to kill because of straight frontal damage: They hammer my tank to death with half health remaining and then kill me in about ten seconds. Before you ask if I'm using my interrupts, I use them without fail. Any mob that depends solely on casting is cake. But right now on Ilum even the melee attacks in between casts are too much to take. So far I've spent the last three hours vainly hammering Lord Loyat in Ilum, and she kills me every time. I've spent my last thin credit on repairs and still cannot win. I had to ask for help on almost every single class quest boss on Corellia. I've tried everything I can think of. I blew a fortune getting three companion's gear up to 50. I've read up on my rotations, and I do not think my damage is the problem. What exactly am I doing wrong? Do I really have to go respec to tank after 45 levels (50 now) just to be able to solo? All the reports I am hearing about a Shadow's soloing ability is about doing so in tank mode. Frankly I'm on the verge of quitting this character, because I hate the look of the gear, hate the companions, and even though I have finished the story I frankly hated it (Go heal 4 jedi masters on 4 planets! Go find evil boss on 4 planets! Kill evil boss! Seriously, what the hell?). The only thing keeping me at this is the vain hope that I'm doing something wrong that can be rectified. Because I am resolutely NOT going tank on this character. I already have a Juggernaut who honestly has piles less trouble doing content amd I want the Shadow for damage.

You'll find in my earlier post that I also think questing and grinding give way too many credits! But here's the thing: you can actually do both. This is part of the problem: if questing inflates the economy, you should only put in stuff that can further inflate the economy if it forces you to take time away from questing.

Totally true! This is why I maintain that slicing as a skill honestly doesn't actually help the game in the long run. All it really does is accelerate the rate of inflation and raise prices. It's not even good for slicers, because frankly at that stage the return for slicing will be pitiful compared to the prices of gathered materials (It was already starting to get to that point back before the nerf!) This is why I think slicing missions should not reward ANY credits at all, and instead force you to play the GTN minigame by handing you useful items/recieps instead. To those people who hate the GTN minigame, I sympathize, I really do. But either way, you're screwed. Either you lose out now, or later on when prices are high and your skill is worthless.

The difference is that you get that kind of cash from your fellow players rather than thin air.

I admit to not having examined post-nerf slicing to the same extent you have. If it is indeed profitable, that's all good and fine. I'm quite fine with a gathering skill not having stupidly profitable missions, or requiring that you use your brain a little to get it. Regardless, I'm still not entirely pleased about the idea of a skill that pulls money out of thin air while you go run around doing whatever else you do in an MMO. But as I said before, the inflatory effect of slicing in its current form and endgame quests giving pure cash for doing dailies, is not so easy to examine without data-farming that can only be done by Bioware. So I'll reserve judgement on this till later. I'm knee-deep in my new character and he doesn't have slicing; I'll have to try out an extended run on my old character to work it out.

The short answer is that it is because slicing rewards come in pure, magic-out-of-thin air credits. The long answer is that you're sorta-correct: Slicing "sucks" now because the missions don't give out rewards unless what you're after is skillups or augments. But they can't you cash. This is because of inflation. See what other people posted earlier about why inflation is bad. See, my suggestion is to remove cash rewards from the missions altogether. Replace them with something else. Maybe a random equivalent-level reward from on of the other gathering skill missions (Note: I said gathering skill missions, not mission skill missions.) or perhaps some new item type. What they should not have given us is raw cash or vendor trash.

As I mentioned, the nerf was, in my opinion, stupid. A skill like slicing should never have made it out the door of beta. I cannot comment on the endgame economy's input/output. That'll be something we'll have to judge in a few months. I do not after all, have the power to look at game economy magic numbers like Bioware does. What I can say is that a system that makes a constant, large infusion of cash into the game is stupid as heck. All that does is make things cost more. The only positive result, from a player viewpoint, is that vendor sales will be considered "cheap". Yay, we can buy our lvl 50 speeder right away. Was the nerf excessive? Yes. It makes slicing definitely weaker than other skills. If they want to rebalance that, I suggest maybe giving slicing missions item rewards, rather than cash. You can still loot boxes from nodes, of course. Am I sad I don't get to use my 400 skill any more? Yes. I've rerolled a new character and this time I do not have slicing. At lvl 41 now, I have 250ish-300ish in two gathering skills. I had capped Slicing on my first character at lvl 35ish, prolly lower, because there was literally no downside to sending a companion (especially the undergeared ones) out to mish. There was no need to sell anything on the AH except the occasional "mission recipe". On my new character I still have enough to get my first and second speeders, with training, and this is without selling any of the stuff I gather (My third skill is a mission skill that I have yet to use). Yet to ding 50 on this new character though. In short, I know that slicing was overpowered. I don't have any qualms about ruthlessly milking everything I can about it. The difference is that when Bioware caught on, I moved on. Suck it up. Lastly, if you are the sort who cancels their sub over a tradeskill nerf, you should not say so. I cannot imagine a dev team that would think it a good idea to pander to a playerbase that will ragequit over such a trivial detail. You can whine and say that Bioware are liars, traitors, and baby-eating bishops, but frankly, were I a dev, I'd be a lot more concerned about pandering to a playerbase that will quit only over major issues, like not actually being able to play the game (something I think there are actually a small but significant number of people experiencing!)