My sub ended on the 13'th, but I had received an email on the 12'th indicating I would have 30 days added to my account by April 24'th. I was a little surprised when I tried to login on the 13'th, and couldn't, because I was under the impression the 30 free days would be added "at the end of my billing cycle," but figured I'd give it at least until the 24'th before crying foul. Sure enough, I was finally able to login today and begin enjoying my free time.

Double post

I've also had my fair share of challenges since hitting the 50 PvP bracket. I don't think it's entirely a L2P issue, because I was dominating in the 1-49 bracket from level 40 onwards. I've had matches where I had 63-3 k/d AND one of, if not the highest objective scores in that same match (I have a screenshot of that too at home). A matches like this weren't a one time fluke, they were the vast majority. Even matches I lost my scores would be fairly impressive. I wonder if my server (Helm of Graush) is one that was seriously effected by the Ilum fiasco, and the Imp side significantly outmatches us Pubs in full BM gear. I've currently got 6 pieces of cent gear, 1 champ relic, both sabers have 41 exp crystals, and sometimes I feel like I'm swinging wet towels and wearing paper bags for armor. One thing that's frustrating is that I've opened over 20 champ bags, and never once gotten a piece of gear in one. Getting better gear is helping though. I'm hoping as I start getting more champ gear, and the playing level becomes a bit more even, that I'll go back to feeling like a wrecking ball.

I dunno how much I care about this "buff" because I haven't found Dispatch to consistently kill even with people/mobs at 20%. After hearing people rave so much about this skill, I admittedly found it overwhelmingly weak. Maybe I'm missing something. :/

Hey guys, I just got through reading through the proposed changes to our class in the patch notes, and I dare say, most of it sounds like we're getting some decent buffs! At least most of it seems that way for the Watchman tree. I can't say for certain the other trees, because I've never tried them, but from what I've read some of the stuff seems ok for them too. Here are the details from the patch notes (sorry that the formatting didn't come through properly, and I'm a bit too lazy to edit it up myself right now ): Jedi Knight General Awe no longer costs Focus to activate. Dispatch can now be used on targets at or below 30% of maximum health (up from 20%). Force Kick no longer costs Focus to activate. Master Strike can no longer be interrupted. Sentinel Due to changes in the Sentinel skill trees, Sentinels have had their skill points refunded. Crippling Throw's "Trauma" effect can no longer be cleansed. Force Camouflage now additionally reduces all damage taken by 50% while active. Pacify no longer has a Focus cost and is no longer limited by the global cooldown. Transcendence now affects all Operation Group members. Zen (while in Ataru Form) now additionally reduces the Focus cost and global cooldown of Cyclone Slash. Watchman Focused Pursuit has been replaced by Focused Leap, which increases the Focus generated by Force Leap. Force Fade no longer grants damage reduction while Force Camouflage is active. It now increases the duration of Force Camouflage by 1 second per point and increases the movement speed bonus of Force Camouflage by 10% per point. Inflammation now applies a 50% movement speed reduction (up from 30%). Valor is now located in Tier 1 of the skill tree. Combat Ataru Form damage effects (procs) now deal weapon-based damage instead of Force-based damage. The overall damage of these effects has been increased by approximately 10%. Ataru Form now correctly triggers when fighting very large targets. Fleetfooted now additionally increases the movement speed bonus granted by Transcendence by 15% per point. Temperance has been replaced by Stagger, which increases Force Leap's immobilize effect. Focus (Sentinel) Felling Blow is now a 3-point skill with the same overall effect. The effect now lasts 20 seconds (up from 15). Force Exhaustion's cooldown has been reduced to 18 seconds. Its overall effect is unchanged. Gravity now specifically affects Leg Slash and Force Exhaustion. Inner Focus has been redesigned. It now requires 2 points in Singularity and causes Zen (while in Shii-Cho Form) to immediately grant 2 stacks of Singularity per point. Master Focus now increases the damage of Master Strike instead of affecting Force Stasis. Singularity's buff effects now last 20 seconds (up from 15). Swelling Winds is now located in Tier 1 of the Focus skill tree. It increases the damage dealt by Force Sweep and Cyclone Slash and reduces the cooldown of Force Sweep. Unwavering Focus has been removed from the game. Zealous Leap now immobilizes the target for 1 second. Zephyr has been replaced by Zephyrean Slash, which allows Slash critical hits to have a chance to refund 2 points of Focus while the Sentinel is in Shii-Cho Form. Definitely nice to see certain abilities lose their focus costs. For the Watchman changes, looking forward to the increased length of camouflage, and even having focused leap as part of the primary tree, although sad to see focused pursuit gone (hopefully Fleetfooted is basically in the same tier as focused leap was, though, so it'll still be obtainable) and the 100% damage reduction gone from Force Fade (although getting a built in 50% is better than nothing... I think I'll respec to that now to get used to the effect). For the combat sents, I'm a little worried for you guys that the Artaru damage has been changed from force damage to weapon damage... I'm guessing that makes it more mitagatable. At least it seems like your abilities to stun/root have received some minor buffs. So what do you guys all think of this?

Pretty sure they are referring to the daily mission terminals on the fleet. There's a PvP daily terminal in the middle of the south west quadrant of the main hub ship in the fleet (forget the name of it), and there's a flashpoint/PVE based daily terminal in the middle of the south east quadrant of that same ship. They look just like the types of terminals that distribute heroic missions on the actual planets. Here's a somewhat related question: Does anyone know exactly when the terminals reset with new missions? And/or how long beforehand do you have to complete the current daily mission and turn it in to be eligible for the next? Also, thanks for the comments in here so far.

After 2 long months, I've finally hit 50. I made sure to have 1 champ bag purchased & 1000/1000 merc/wz commendations saved up to get more. I probably should have asked this question beforehand, but I went ahead and spent my centurion commendations on a pair of bracers, a belt, and an earpiece, since those were the pieces of my gear most lacking (everything else being oranges), and my champ comms on a relic. I then went and dropped 125k on a cyan crystal with 41 expertise, and spent my remaining $ on the new worthwhile skill upgrades. Were those good first moves, or should I have focused on getting anything else instead (eg. went for a mainhand weapon), or was it not a good move to spend my champ comms yet? Any other relevant advice for a brand new, first-time lvl 50 sent?

Can anyone confirm if power affects the damage of the DOT ticks? Specifically, if I wait until I get 3 stacks of OS + Cauterize, and pop a power adrenal&relic (and Zen, of course) that those DOT ticks will do more damage as a result?

I'm not trying to sound like a jerk by saying this, but I'm not sure many people understood the question I was asking, or the point I was trying to make in the OP (I think the thread title I chose is to blame). Surely yes, if you don't use a skill at all, you shouldn't waste any $ on it. I'm talking about skills that ARE used, but just aren't worth upgrading past their lower ranks. Again, I think the skill I mentioned in my OP, Leg Slash, is the perfect example: it's a weak attack (currently hits for 225-250) that slows the target by 50% for 12 seconds. I use this all the time in PvP, but not for it's damage output, rather to snare my target so I can unload my big hitters. Spending 20K on the next rank adds 20 points to the min/max of the skill, but absolutely no upgrade to the slowing effect. Sure, you might look at that and think that is nearly a 10% increase of damage for that skill, but that is one of my weakest skills damage wise, so in actuality, I'd say that increase really equates to being around <=1% of my total DPS. Sure, every bit helps, especially since I am a DPS class, so I will eventually get it, but it's about the lowest thing on my priority list. TL;DR If you need to be smart with your spending, don't just blindly upgrade your skills. Odds are if the skill has utility to it, and isn't purely damage based, you most likely get 95% of the benefit of the skill from rank 1.

That's the thing, I AM crafting, and yes, that is eating up all my $, along with gearing up my companions. Like I said, when I'm no longer strapped for cash, then I'll get these upgrades, but for the time being, I don't see it worthwhile to spend 20K to increase a utility skill's DPS by 20 points (I crit for over 2.5K points on my actual damaging attacks, in comparison. Those skills I DO upgrade at every rank I can, and their upgrades usually increase by 100-200 points per rank). Now does that make any more sense?

I find that there are certain skills that I'm not finding it worthwhile to throw down the $ to upgrade to the higher ranks. I'm not talking about skills that I don't use at all, but rather as a Sentinel, I've got certain skills like Leg Slash, that the importance of using it is for the snare effect, and not so much the damage, and it looks like you get the entire effect of the snare right from the first rank. I wasn't really paying attention at first, and I did upgrade from rank 1 to rank 2, but then I noticed the upgrade to rank 3 would have cost me nearly 20K, for no increase in the utility, and an upgrade of a measly 20 points of damage. Definitely didn't seem worth it. I noticed a similarity with my Force Leap ability, which again, I use for the utility (charge attack and/or interrupt), and the latest (expensive) upgrade will only increase the damage by 20 points (less than 5% damage increase). The way I figure it, when I've got more credits than I know what to do with it, I'll upgrade these, but in the meantime, is it safe to say I'm being smart to pass these for now, and only buy the upgraded ranks for my skills that actually do solid DPS?

As the topic suggests, all this time while leveling I've been using surge based adrenals and relics at the same time as popping Zen, because I figured that Zen is causing the autocrits on my burns, so I wanted to add to the crit damage, but after the surge nerf, and as I'm starting to get closer to the optimal crit/surge amounts before DR with my gear, I'm wondering if I should maybe switch these to power based adrenals/relics. Currently I'm lvl 42, with a 18.43% crit rate, and 59.37% crit damage. Should I stick it out with surge a lil bit longer, or make the switch the power now? I'm assuming yes, but does power even affect the damage of the burns?

I was wondering what kinds of keyboard and/or Razer Naga keybinding schemes that some of you guys are using? I'm not necessarily asking for anyone to list EVERY single key they have bound, but rather I assume that some of you actually have certain groupings of keys (eg. focus builders, focus spenders, defensive cooldowns, etc), and some logical placement of them, and wondering if anyone might wanna share these general specifics. I'll start with myself, to provide an example (but I'm definitely no expert on this, which is why I'm creating this dicussion). My Sentinel spec is Watchman, lvl 30 btw. Setup wise, I currently have a SteelSeries Merc Stealth keyboard, and a Logitech G3 mouse (I'm actually about to pick up a Razer Naga on my way home tonight, though). With the Merc Stealth keyboard, I am using the "gaming keys" arrangement on the left side, which as you can see from pictures, has all the # keys placed so they can all be reached, by having them in 2 rows above the QWEASD section, first row being 1-6, and 2nd row being 7-12. The only change/addition I've made to the mouse bindings is binding "select next enemy target" to the side mouse button for easy targetting. For the keyboard: 1) Q and E I've assigned Force Kick and Zen, respectively, since I know they are to be used frequently, and are key aspects to the class. I have these in the #11 & 12 slots on my quickbar 2) #'s 1-3 are the 3 focus builders 3) #'s 4-6 are some of my defensive cooldowns and "free" attacks 4) #'s 7-10 are my primary focus spenders (OS, Cauterize, slash, blade storm) That's about as far as I've gotten. I do have my bottom row set up with medpacks, stims, other CC's, etc, but I'm not really comfortable using modifier keys in the heat of battle with this keyboard. Although using the gaming keys on the left side is nice for having the # keys in 2 rows, I find that it's difficult to use the shift/ctrl/alt keys without looking. Anyways, I'll leave it at that, and hopefully some of you guys will be willing to discuss.

Just to make sure to cover all bases, I KNOW Jedi Outcast had the console command, but I assume Jedi Academy had it (not 100% certain on it). So you might want to get Jedi Outcast downloading too (both great games)

Beat me to it. I know Jedi Outcast (and I assume Jedi Academy too, but I don't recall) had a console command, I think it was "realisticsabercombat" or something like that, which allowed dismemberment, but it also determined how powerful the saber was (so you could put a high # for instant death/dismemberment), and turned the collision detection on completely, so you didn't even have to press the attack button, if anything came into contact with the saber, it would take damage, so you could kinda "swing" your saber manually just by moving your mouse around. Made for some really awesome slow-mo death & dismemberment sequences when saber dueling, and you could literally hack them into pieces. That was the epitomy of lightsaber ******ery!