Actually... Qyzen originally *was* a blaster user. See, for example, this screenshot from the beta, taken from IGN (scroll down a bit): Qyzen Blaster When the decision was made to make every class have a ranged and melee tank, ranged and melee DPS and a healer for companions, Qyzen was the one repurposed to be melee instead of Iresso. Luck of the draw, I suppose. What they should have done is change Qyzen's code to be a melee strength-based tank, but they didn't do that, so they slapped in a class of item called a "techblade" at the last minute. That's why they don't drop - at all - because they weren't designed into the loot tables.

That's why they're being removed. These abilities can't be used in ops against most trash, in PVP, or against bosses. You can use it in dailies and while leveling, that's pretty much it. With the other abilities every class is getting that are ACTUALLY USEFUL, you won't miss these at all. As to the poster who said they needed these abilities to clear Hoth.. all I can say is you should reexamine your spec and gear, and maybe examine which companion you're using and their gear, because you really don't *need* these abilties if you're playing correctly. At all.

When I ttransferred my char over, there wasn't a set bonus on my Tionese gear, fwiw.

I played through a bit on my merc on PTS this morning. "Bringing the Hammer Down" is the achievement list for the Hammer Station flashpoint.

Why? Because the three primary obstacles to clearing NmP are: (1) Griefing by taunting the boss/coming into range when there's a raid going on. (2) Lag due to rendering with poor graphics cards, since Voss is very graphics and shadow-intensive. (3) Lack of gear/skill. If you gate it into a mini-op or an instance, you remove 1 and can remove 2, and make the fight based solely on player skill and gear.

If they were smart, they'd instance Nightmare Pilgrim and turn him into a mini-raid, just like Xeno, and have him drop Voss tokens as well.

You are aware that this is a huge necro, and the OP was made before the groupfinder tool went live.

Since you aren't familiar with the concept of progression or progression raiding, I'll give you a few pieces of information. This "recent" change you refer to has been in place since the 1.2 patch happened in April 2012. The set bonus being bound to armoring instead of shell has been the "new" direction of the game for ten months now. It's not new. Any launch-day gear tiers had the bonus bound to shell, however, players complained that it made all 50s look like carbon-copies of each other instead of having individuality. The change was made to provide players with the ability to wear multiple armor sets. It's implausible to go back into the game and re-itemize existing gear. This would require going into each and every character and account's inventory and swapping out the items one for one, or creating a mechanic to do so. It's simply easier to do what they (and all other modern MMOs) did, which is require you to run content multiple times to acquire the "best" gear. Therefore, if you want the best stats, you have to raid consistently, or you have to buy the gear yourself. This is not new. Itemizing your gear in this game for best stats has existed since it launched. When the 1.2 patch changed the way crit rate and surge were calculated and the rate of diminishing returns occurred, the "best" gear was changed, and pretty quickly. None of the Tionese, Columi or Rakata gear tiers were reitemized at that time because of the aforementioned problem. What you're suggesting - getting the best possible gear as drops from running an operation once - would quickly invalidate the purpose of progression raiding and guilds. People would sub for a month, clear content once or twice, then vanish until the next expansion or update creates more gear. If you feel that HMEC is a worthless operation, you probably shouldn't be worrying about progression-style raiding. You don't need the best stats on gear to be able to clear story mode content - stock pieces are generally quite acceptable.

You don't get it. You can buy a SEPARATE, CORRECTLY STAT ALLOCATED Might-armoring Campaign Weaponmaster Armoring for your leg from the BH/Campaign vendor. It's a SINGLE armoring piece. It carries the correct set bonus. It costs 40 BH comms at the BH/Campaign Vendor on the fleet. You can put that in ANY shell and retain the set bonus - including the weaponmaster leggings you earn from ECHM. Just strip out the CURRENT Weaponmaster armoring and slot in the correctly statted one. Again - the armorings that come in the Weaponmaster gear are POORLY ITEMIZED and you, if you want the best 61+ stats, will have to buy the armorings separately for the hat, chest, and leg pieces armorings separately from the vendor.

So, again, earn the gear from ECHM, then buy the correct armoring and itemize the shell. It's not as if it's the only piece of gear you'll get in ECHM whose armoring/mod/enhancement isn't the one you should be using.

Or you can just buy the Campaign Weaponmaster Leggings armoring available from the BH vendor, and which is properly itemized.

Holy crap, I just figured it all out. The armoring, mod, or enhancement never needs to be repaired, just the shell. This is nothing more than BW's attempt to get us to buy more cartel market and orange shells while leveling. Run your gear down to the red, then rip the mods out and slot 'em into new gear. Even with cost of ripping, it's still cheaper than repairs ... Well played, BW. Well played. (removes tongue from cheek)

Pre-patch, the phantom repair (cost to repair even though you haven't run content, bc it highlights the button sometimes, and I click repair out of habit) cost for my 50 guardian tank was about 230-250 credits. Post-patch, it was 4k. I'm wearing the full Jedi Battlelord set with 61-63 mods. Pre-patch, my cost to repair gear on my lowbie shadow was about 1900 per wipe. Post-patch, it's been 8k per wipe. He's level 34, purple and blue mods in orange shells.

I'd love to play Trade Wars (2002). Anyone have a telnet link anywhere? But, in reality, agreed.

Considering being right behind you. When the game is no longer fun, it's time to move on - and if I have to grind for 3 hours a day to be able to raid, that isn't fun.

First pull in EV hardmode. 13k repair bill, no wipe, no piece of gear took more than 3 points of damage. This is effing ridiculous. Bring the repair costs back down to where they were.

Say you draw ... 100 threat bc you did a 200 point heal. No one else has added threat to that mob, so its total threat of 100 is on you. Dump aggro by 50% - you still have 50 threat, which is *still more* than the 0 threat anyone else has if they haven't put damage on the mob. Aggro dump is *not* useful unless tank and/or DPS is not doing their jobs. Period. DPS need to follow kill order. Tanks need to tank more than one mob at a time. Without those two things, a healer *will* have mobs after them, and quickly. The response of "stealth or LOS" that I replied to initially, well, if you're LoS to the other mobs, 90% of the time you have to LoS to your group as well, so that's not a good idea.. Best bet: If you're an op/smugg healer, use your flash grenade when you get aggro, then hit threat dump. If you're a commando/merc, cryo then threat dump. If you're a sage/sorc, force wave/kb, force stun the biggest, then threat dump.. but it's still not a perfect solution for bad dps and bad tanks.

Exactly how many dread guard relics can you buy with BH comms again? Oh yeah, that's right. Zero. No, the other weekly's pretty important too.

And I'll reply inline with Healer 201. Always let the others go first. Of course. However, dropping an aoe heal on the enemies when there are 3 melee on the mob isn't a bad idea to start out. It won't aggro anything, and it'll get healing going right away. Use your lower agro skill on yourself if applicable, Only lowers aggro from one mob at a time, long cooldown. Doesn't help much. if they are not using CC's ***** at them + make sure you are using them to cut down on overall dmg to your grp. And bad tanks will sit and wait for a healer to CC, thus causing you to get all the aggro right off. Be ready for that. Connsider each pull a cc pull! Which is why you shouldn't CC first. Hide/stealth if you get agro ( if applicable) And then they'll votekick you for not healing bc you LoS yourself from the group. Bad idea. If you draw aggro, call out for help, or just DPS the mobs killing you till they "get it" ... Blast mobs off edges if applicable. Should be the job of everyone, not just the healer. Shield your groupmates who are taking dmg if applicable. Standard Sage tactic. Mitigation = preventive healing. If you have players who are not the tank but who are taking as much dmg as your tank on a regular basis. you should talk to them and have them chill and let the tank take most of the dmg. It could be because of a bad tank. It's not always the DPS' fault. Healing a grp in swtor is prety easy, just use comon sense, inspect players, if they are wearing recruit, drop and save urself some time. Never mind, of course, that tionese/recruit mix is the best gear you can get when you first hit 50. So what you're saying is be elitist here.

They do not, in fact, drop from Ops bosses, in my experience. Destroyer/Pilgrim/Gargath and random drops in BH/SecX have been the only places I've seen 'em. All I've ever seen schem-wise from Ops are: EV/KP Story: Bosses: Tionese/equiv. synthweave/armormech, earpiece and implant schems Trash mobs: Lv 24 mod and enhancement schems EV/KP Hard/Nightmare: Bosses: Columi/equiv of same. Trash: Lv 25 mod and enhancement schems, Exo stim and adrenal patterns.

He can. There's a part you can buy that grants him crafting proficiencies.

Only crafted armorings that provide schematics, such as 26 and 27 level armorings. Furthermore, it doesn't need to be a BTL item, it can be any bound item.

Most of the mods in-game available through gear or commendations vendors (pre-50) can't be learned as schematics.

In other words, it makes us Gunnery spec Commandos.

And they already have. Working as intended, they said, over a year ago. However, people won't bother to use the search function, and they keep making the same thread over and over again.