I am not against commendations, but in my experience, at the speed I went through content, my guess is that I only got enough commendations to get me up to 40-50% max rating. You typically get enough for blue mods that are 1-2 levels behind, and even then it is not enough to cover all of your mod slots. You would need to fill 15+ slots per planet, which, depending on the number of armor slots you have to fill requires something close to 60+ commendations, which I have never had when leaving a planet.

This is where I need more of a math whiz. The problem seems to stated in terms of growth or tolerances. I would want to think of my Average Armor Rating Level in terms of % of max possible level. If I want my armor rating level to be 100% of max all of the time I would need to buy 10 new pieces of purple armor every level. Unless you are creating all of your own gear, this is probably nearly impossible on most servers, by simply sourcing from the GTN. But if I was okay with a level of 90% of max this would look closer to having mostly purple and some blue armor within 1 level of your current level every level. Blue gear is approximately 15%-20% 'weaker' than purple gear at the same level. My guess is that most people hover closer to 60%-70% of max level. So at level 30, max level gear has an average armor rating of around 84-85. This could be anything from: A) somebody who crafted a full set of purples at level 21, B) someone with all level 24-25 blue gear, C) or all green gear at 28-30, or D) obviously a mixture of all of the above. All of their stats would be roughly equal. What I think this shows is that purple gear should be 'worth' no more than 2-3 times green gear at the same level, because that is the upper limit of its 'life cycle value' to the customer. So if you get green drops from the NPCs and are curious how much you should list them for on the GTN you can get your sign from the average value of other items at that rating level. Another way armor suppliers could work, would be through collecting and delivering a whole package of 1-49 armor that would guarantee a ~75% max armor rating level regardless of your level. This could come through a series of CoD mail packages.

Right. It gives the same xp, but it is a little harder to do. The question I am trying to answer is, "How often should I buy the best armor I can?" I hope end result would ideally end up making the player crafted armor supply and demand more transparent. On one extreme you could have those OCD people who have to get a purple for every level they advance for all 10 armor pieces. They are getting the least "use" from every purchase. On the other extreme you could have those people who level content in groups, have high skill, and require less stats to finish content enabling their average armor level to be much further behind content.

This is for those folks who want to get to lvl 50 ASAP and do it on a budget. If you have millions upon millions of credits, this isn't for you. If you LOVE content and playing every bonus mission, this isn't for you. No offense, but yeah... Please discuss these principles below as you may or may not disagree with them. Laws of Leveling: So the goal is to optimize your gear level with the content you are most comfortable completing at the cost that you prefer. Keeping too high of a gear level will cost too much, over leveling on content means inefficient time spent on grinding. Keeping too low level of gear may mean more spent on repairs or too much time spent killing. So this requires awareness of the cost associated with keeping gear at content parity. So how does gear scale? This informs us of how to stay at parity. 5) The relationship between armor rating and stats is What I am suggesting, and maybe it is common knowledge for veteran MMOers (which I am not one) is to think in terms of average Armor Rating Level.

I should clarify. When you were leveling 1-49 and couldn't get the lvl 50 stuff did you but the <50 gear?

Do/did you use it?

It also prevents rapid relisting for price changes by +1 credit. Otherwise you could just eat the small listing fee, and buy your own stuff with an alt and instantly get it and relist it at below the lowest sell order. This way the escrow fee keeps its utility.

WTB- Want to buy WTS- Want to sell Are there any other acronymns specifically related to trade or economy that I don't know about?

1) Depending on your class that is about the time where cc'ing becomes more necessary. 2) Also, if you are regularly spending that money on repairs, it may seem counter intuitive, but it would be smart to go to an easier planet, make that money back, and then level up your gear. Also, make sure your companion is geared. 2.1) Don't forget about relics. They give a pretty significant boost. 3) Your crew skills should be making you some money or at least saving you a significant amount back. It shouldn't be much of a sink at all. Biochem for example can yeild reusable medpacks that will regularly at least give you enough life to sustain an evasive 'escape'. 4) PvP for cash. This will help you get better, and you don't pay for repairs. 5) Travel with a group. You get more experience, better drops, and more survivability. 6) Try to sell your blue and purple drops you get from questing on the GTN. On the perception issue too. You shouldn't feel like you are losing money when you buy that new ability upgrade. Think of it like your toon is a house and you are adding on a room. It increases the value of the toon. Often times your new abilities are some of the cheapest form of stat increases in the game. When the average attack of a move is 200-250 damage and you are increasing that by 25 pts, for 1500 credits or so, that is more than a 10% increase in damage-forever! At your level you can buy stimpacks that do an increase of about +10 to +15 damage, but they cost nearly the same amount per damage point, and are removed when you die, and they expire after 60 min. Your abilities are investments which get large returns.

Have many people messed with this? Does it serve a purpose beyond a pseudo social fight?

One thing that would make the end game seem more 'open world' would be the possibility of ownership of property outside of just your toon. If there was a sort of idea of territory that player 'guilds' or 'houses' could own, I think this would bring people together and spur economic development if executed well. Core idea: Enable a Guild Owned Customs Terminal in each relevant map section of a planet. There would be Republic only, Imperial Only, and then neutral terminals. This system would be completely player driven and a planet would only be as developed as players are willing to invest. Customs terminals would bring benefits to guilds that own them, and depending on their settings, to whoever had access. DEVELOPMENT:Guilds could develop the terminal through different specializations by collecting crafting material that could then be paid to it to upgrade it to provide a variety of advantages. DEVELOPMENT BONUSES: Depending on how developed the terminal is they would grant significant unique bonuses such as drop customs only loot, buff guild members farming in local areas, auto-flag for pvp opponent faction players who come too close, improve crafting scavenging returns performed in that area, and collect tariffs on things bought/sold locally. ACCESS: They would act like cargo holds, guild banks, and tariff controlled storefronts for the Hutt GTN. REINFORCING: Nearby PvE NPC Guards could be 'reinforced' incrementally raising their reinforcement level which would upgrade their DPS and defense and respawn time. Killing them would lower the reinforcement rate. You would raise the rating by giving pieces of armor and weapons to the NPC. The higher the rating of the NPC the higher the rating level of the gear piece would need to be to raise the reinforcement rating level. Each NPC would have a stat specific type of armor (jedi=synth, ranged=aim/medium, droid=droid etc). When you could click an NPC you would see a reinforcement buff stack on them showing their level. These would be used to guard customs territory. OWNERSHIP: To run a customs office you would need a customs office voucher purchased at the fleet or capitol. Each terminal would also pay a weekly maintenance fee depending on the total planetary development level (the sum of development of all terminals). Planets would start with 1 terminal for each faction and then more would spawn as each terminal is upgraded. Each guild could only own no more than 3 terminals. RAIDING/CAPTURE: Guards would range in difficulty (reinforcement level) to normal regional BOSS (level 1) level to Nightmare OPS level (level 10). Terminals would be captured like Warzone objectives, but with a significantly longer timer making it necessary to completely eliminate nearby forces. Once raided, Guards would respawn with a temporary enraged level 10 buff to force the raiders to retreat. Terminals could be 'RAIDED' by having all guards eliminated temporarily. However the higher the reinforcement level of a guard the sooner it will respawn at the next lower reinforcement level, making heavily reinforced terminals much more difficult to raid. If successfully raided, the terminal will drop a small %age credits and random loot directly from the guild bank along with significant quantities of PvP commendations and daily commendations. They could be 'CAPTURED' by the appropriate faction if the guards are reduced to reinforcement level 0, and all killed, while a guild member captures the terminal while carrying a customs office voucher.

Here is another question then: I'm guessing healing doesn't mechanically mean negative damage? Should taunt work to reduce the healing of a healer? Are there debuffs out there to reduce the ability of healers? Maybe this could be a good utility for some DPSers that are undervalued (*cough* Ops/scoundrel)

Yeah I was just confused about exphryl's comment about the 'benefit' of taunt to you. In reality when you taunt someone, it really benefits everyone but you.

Wait so taunts are directional? As in if I taunt player x they do 30% less damage to me only? That doesn't make sense...

other things stack, like bleeds. I've posed the question whether accuracy debuffs stack, but haven't gotten a straight answer. I also wonder what secondary debuffs from incapacitating abilities do on bosses that resist the abilities? Just because they resist the movement debuff should it also affect the stat debuff?

I'm rolling a tank now and am curious about this question now too. Does anyone know?

Are you talking about 10% of secondary stat points or 10% of all stat points or what?

I don't know if there are other MMOs out there that do this, but I think it would add an effective and interesting 'combined arms' effect where the sum of a team would be a lot more than the sum of the parts of a team. The idea would be that each AC has a 'receiving' buff and a 'class multiplier'. The multiplier would have a different effect on each AC it would land on, but would only take effect when stacked on the receiving buff and maybe even have an extra bonus with an additional multiplier is present. They could only target single players also. So the intent would be instead of generic minor AoE group buffs, a team would optimize the targeted buffs. If extra significant bonuses could come from 2-4 stacks of different target buffs there could be as many as 512 different combinations of stacked effects. With one or two of 512 combinations being really powerful for each advanced class, guilds could eventually build 8 man teams around these mechanics to make 2 or 3 hyper-classes on the field at any one time.

If you can stealth it is a lot easier to do. You can do at lease 1 on most planets. I can stealth the Belsavis daily missions solo. I don't kill anyone, just sneak by.

So I have heard that the stealthing classes can farm some flashpoints for the chests. Apparently False Emporer is pretty doable. I tried a couple of times a Hardmode False Emporer instance and couldn't even get the large chest before the first boss. I was a scrapper scoundrel and couldn't tank the 3-4 strongs near the chest. So I wanted to poll the audience: Is this acceptable or is it an exploit? Apparently people can make 200k+ an hour doing it, resetting the FP, and doing it over and over. If it is acceptable, does anyone know of the best flashpoints to do it in and whether its worth doing HM?

Disagree. Because 1.2 will somewhat resolve this. You will not be able to be biochem and have your toon able to craft augment-critted armor/weapons/mods. You can have an alt do it, but you could also have an alt craft biochem consumables. I haven't done the math, but I think you may be right in that the singular benefit of the biochem craft will be the best, with the benefit of reusables being a cheap bonus. But I think they are supposedly being phased out. All other crafting professions require an additional profession to give their Best in Slot benefits.

I am hoping for a Dance Dance Revolution mini game where the icons for your abilities float down your screen in concert with efficient rotations and their cooldown times. This would take place on your ship as you danced around your training dummy singing your light saber and blasting lighting at it.

Wikipedia Stag Hunt Explanation: In PvP, the scoundrel/ops strength lies in its burst and its tactical maneuvering. Its burst puts it on par with the best dpsers when the defense of its target is relying on defense stat and armor. The scrapper's flachette round and back blast hits hard 100% of the time and its follow up melee attacks are then compounded because of the armor penetrating debuff. I wish I had a better grasp at the damage distribution of the different dps classes, but my prediction is that there are ideal dps's that are defensible (Strike), and then those that hit best through armor (Anti-Armor(AA)) since more of their damage comes from force/tech attacks and debuffs reducing the target's effectiveness (stunlock?) and minimizing the effectiveness of armor. Then with regard to tank we have the tactical tank (skirmisher) that gets its utility through situational buffs and to a lesser extent, the ability to self heal and can also be regarded as an off/tank. The skirmisher does not have the natural ability to mitigate damage like the (heavy) tank which gets the majority of its defense potential from armor rating, mitigating a greater amount of the damage against it. It is generally easier to heal the damage a heavy tank is taking since it will be more steady. See my categories by class (healers excluded): So I think George Zoeller has spelled this out before, but essentially the balance in classes hangs on the relationship between these classes and their natural use of stats. So far in pre-1.2 I believe many tanks have relied more upon endurance, expertise, and healers, to provide a large chunk of their defensive potential. This raises the amount of HP these tanks have, without maximizing the "Hard HP" out on the field. It seems that tanks are favoring more conservative builds which has enabled them to do more dps, but it has also required an environment where more healers need to do more healing on them. I call this "Hunting the Hare." Tanks were the ones that have abandoned their team roll in favor of hunting for their own gain (medals). So now in 1.2 healing is going to be more scarce and we will want to maximize the benefit of healing. This will be compounded in the fact that expertise's marginal return rate will be smaller as well. So in other words, tanks will not be able to rely as much on expertise to give as much defensive potential. So Expertise has led to the prevalence of the skirmisher tank/strike dps/healer teams. This is because the DPS output of the AA DPS just doesn't hit through expertise as well. With expertise scaled down, tanks will have to choose to continue putting stats in expertise, (which will probably burn out healers faster) or in other secondary stats like absorption and defense. The less useful expertise is and the more points tanks put into defensive stats the more sage/sorc/scoundrel/ops will benefit. This is because strike DPSers rely more on accuracy than AA DPSers. Seeing as how imperials have so many sorcs across a lot of servers vs. republic having fewer sages and scoundrels, if imperials are the first to make the switch to more defense stats post 1.2 they will maintain their superiority.

Do accuracy debuffs (smoke grenade, flash powder, diversion, dust storm) work on these bosses and do they always hit for 100%? If they can be affected by these things then your melee dps may have a mechanic that can make them more survivable.

What this could potentially look like is you having to be a lvl 400 biochem to get the reusables benefit regularly and cheaply and then getting the pvp war hero armor sets (assuming it binds), and then switching to armormech and training that to lvl400, getting the augment slot, and then switching back to biochem so that you can keep your advantage. Do many people forsee this? I'd like to see what the crafting professions of the top rated people will be.