from the devs: Okay, new player poll! Which of the following three races would you rather have in the game? ☼ Ewok ☼ Gungan ☼ Protocol Droid We are weighing heavily in player's opinions on this, as a way of showing respect and appreciation to our Player base!

frankly, I prefer purples with augment slots edit- gods, I hate this forum software. it sucks.

I generally sell the things the minute i get them. not worth hinging onto something worth 100k to someone else. next time I get one, I will screenshot it.

No, I said you should be underpowered because your underwear is two sizes too small. geez. reading comprehension fail. In small words. "Scounrels are kin of gud at lots of stuff so dey is not best at anyting like class dat only do one ting well."

"Due to class Balance Issues, we have again slightly lowered operative and scoundrel burst damage. Now, in order to get acid blade to work, you have to chant the alphabet backwards into your microphone while spending 4 tactical advantage points."

really? and does your excellent healing somehow help you avoid aggro when stealthing 2+ heroics solo? Or does sprint? oh wait, you live in magic land where you spend 24-7 in a group. good for you. I think that, in this case, you are missing what is important. You don't have to be a healing primary to level up fast, pvp well, or be a valuable addition to a team. I won't argue that sawbones is the worst healer in the game. On the other hand, even specced as 'pure healer' sawbones can still get from 1-50 easily without a team's help. It can outdps a pure healing sage any day of the week, and is better able to both survive and kill stray adds. Yes, sages are awesome with their invulnerability shield, but if that champion turns on YOU, you better hope you haven't used it in the last 20 seconds. Not to mention that, in pvp, healspecced sorcs are what are often referred to as 'speedbumps', that are easily cleared before you get down to the serious business of killing sith warriors and bounty hunters. sorcs/sages are good, but despite all the publicity they are very much specialists.

you guys completely miss my point. scoundrels are not the worst class in the game at everything. They are the best in versatility. sorcerers/sages may be better dps/healers, but the aggro from a pissed off champion can take them down quicker, especially since champs seems to be almost completely immune to several of sorc's CC abilities. Also, sorcs CANNOT stealth through irritating junk. our closest approximate, the shadow/assassin, can stealth through trash mobs, and tanks better, but has no ability to pinch-hit as a healer. Jedi knights and sith warriors have no heal/stealth ability whatsoever, and frankly aren't even that good at tanking, while their DPS is only similar, not clearly superior. Now, if you want to say that commandos are better at the general infield utility that is the scoundrel's specialty, I won't argue with you... I think that scoundrels should have higher dps/burst than commandos and mercenaries, because com/mercs have better aoe and utility infielder heals... but as far as being 'worst class in the game at everything' I disagree, they are exactly the sort of utility infielder that they are designed to be. Good at levelling, soloing, solid team utility, and even excellent at PVP if you are into that sort of thing. Heck, they are SO good at PvP that it apparently required a nerf. In fact, i would call them one of the better classes to have around in those occasions where everything starts to go pear-shaped. Everyone has been in that kind of situation... The Jedi wasn't paying attention and aggroed a second group while the gunslinger sniped a third, the main healer got taken out by an unlucky set of boss CC's, the sorcerer accidentally managed to get too much aggro too quickly and now you need some serious dps before the team faceplants... My basic point is that the whole OP title is dramatically wrong, and inflammatory, and basically managed to troll 26 pages worth of posters. Scoundrel is a good generalist, and while there is a class in the game that is better at each specific thing they do, there are also classes that are worse at each specific thing they do, or cannot do it altogether. And, as a matter of fact I do have a 50 operative, and a 36 scoundrel. but I get tired of people acting like you have to have a 50 everything in the game in order to have a right to have an informed opinion. I have seen and played the end game, I am totally unimpressed, and I am playing through the eight storylines as light and dark alignment on each side.... once I have finished those, if there is nothing else out, I plan on expiring my account for a year and letting the game mature. right now the 'raiding and pvp' post 50 game is less exciting than replaying mass effect 1 or learning to play some crappy Korean MMO.

actually, the above poster is right and wrong. 2+ missions he is right, only do abundant yield lockboxes and above. rank 1 though, always run rank 1 missions at moderate.... sooner or later you are gonna crit orange bracers and/or orange belts worth scads of money.

you are right, the mediums are very carefully specified as jedi knight/smuggler only, and smuggler only, while the heavies can be specified as jedi knight only, troper only, or jedi knight trooper only. so, while you are not left out in the cold, you DO have to compete with smugglers for the same bracers. unless, of course, I simply haven't found a jedi knight only medium bracer, which is entirely possible.

can a tank in dps spec heal better than you? can a sorc take more damage? Or is this another pvp whine?

That's actually the argument I give when people say that gunners should have the highest DPS in the game. Sure, they are glass cannons, but at LEAST they have range. truly I think that the melee-range only classes, because of the HUGE handicap to survivability and aggro management, should be doing at LEAST 30% more damage than their ranged equivalent. Jugg should be a perfectly viable class when you are not looking for a pure tank, but rather a tank/dps hybrid. Their toughness should be top-tier, and their DPS should only be overcome by that of their more aggressive advanced alternative, and perhaps operatives (who also mostly have to work in melee range, and have slightly less armor balanced by heals and emergency escapes)

errr, actually it's no more different than driving a helicopter. But, if that's what it's like for you to drive a car, perhaps YOU are the one that should not be on the road. I suppose it could be like driving one of those 1870's steam cars, with dozens of dials and guages and constant steam pressure to keep topped, coal to shovel, engine pressure and heat to monitor with occasional steam venting when it overpressurized or overheated. but do you know what? those cars sucked. they did like 6 miles an hour and were too damned complex, smelly, noisy, and dirty for anyone to want to drive, when a nice, clean horse could do just as well or better. Modern cars are much easier and a smoother, better ride. More fun, in fact, unless you like steam burns. Note the parallels?

Please bear in mind that SWTOR derives just as much from the comic books, cartoon series, books, and computer games as it does from the movies. Believe me, a two-saber swinging defensive jedi is iconic as hell.

This frankly, the guys revelling in complexity for the sake of complexity are patting themselves on the back for being able to play paddleball with both hands while standing on their head and whistling yankee doodle. Is it too much to ask that the whole standing on your head thing be done away with? For the fatbeards that like it the way it is, absolutely... they are already masters of the headstand paddleball whistle thing, and taking away even the slightest bit of difficulty to make playing paddleball easier will make things more approachable and thus reduce their 'status' as masters of a stupidly overcomplicated system of playing. In short, every time you see someone say "Lern2play" or something similarly derogatory about those having trouble with an overly complex system, simply remember that they are proud of their headstand paddleball whistling, and thus have to diminish those that don't like headstanding in order to validate themselves and forget the fact that what they are doing, in the end, looks pretty silly. Me, I am going to play my powertech till it's fixed. and laugh as I watch light-armored shadow jedi outdamage, out-aggro, and out-survive even the most masterfully played jedi 'tank'. And if I am advertising for a tank, believe me, I won't be looking for a jedi knight. tanking is a very hard job, and if someone is staring at their defensive CD's and juggling survival tools, They don't have the time or the attention to spare for being a REAL meatshield.

I hate to say this, but the 'blue gear' that I have found for purchase on planets is generally considerably below my level. Not to mention extraordinarily expensive in terms of credits. (7000 cr for level 17 chestpiece on Taris?) just for self-gearing, I can easily RE to a purple piece of armor close to my level, make it exceptional, and slot in an augment with ease. This creates a piece of armor cheaper than the vendors, better than even the best orange slotted item, and usually much closer to my particular level range. Oranges are cool, I will not deny it, but even with all purple enhancements they generally don't quite meet the standards of a good purple item that has what _I_ want on it. Good luck finding a way to slot oranges that allows your gloves to give you +18 crit at level 21. Yes, armormech is a money sink, but it is scarcely the kind of money sink that buying all new world vendor blues every couple of levels is. Plus, i get to save my commendations for buying much cooler stuff, like weapon upgrades. My only wish is that they would merge synthweaving with armormech, as well as armstech with artificing. Sure, keeping them separate is logical according to the story, but it is impractical from a game balance point of view.

If you noticed, the core color and the aura color are often different. You could, quite literally, create hundreds of different combinations. Not to mention changing color depth and vibrancy of each color.

investigation seems to be the biggest source of armstech patterns, and few people are taking the investigation crew skill any more due to it's total lack of secondary usefulness. thus, fewer patterns.

actually you don't really need a third skill. treasure hunting for quests will keep all your guys busy while you slice nodes in the open world. UWT is nice, but it's an alternative to treasure hunting, not an addition to it. The only improvement I could see would be like scavenging or bioanalysis just for collecting sellable mats. They don't sell for great prices, but it IS an additional source of income, and every little bit helps, right? although, i think you might be surprised at how useful a craft skill is with treasure hunting, just for tearing down the components of appropriate greens and blues you pick up. The sad reality is, at level 50, if you can get a blue and tear it into it's component parts, often the components are worth considerably more than the actual item.

I agree, there should be dozens of different colors.

I am not really trying to hold up CoH as 'better'. sheer sales numbers, and the cold hard fact that the game was struggling to make ends meet through nearly it's entire history, would make such an attempt the height of foolishness. but, there were lessons that could have been learned from CoH, and many many mistakes that could have been learned from as well. Synergy is key. having players be each other's force multipliers is a lot more fun than playing a team full of soloists. Meaningful difficulty sliders (Let the people that are into true challenge have that opportunity from the beginning... if you are that tough, filling BT with champions at level 12 could be an option) Gear is seriously overrated, and in fact making SWTOR gear-driven I think was a huge mistake. Luke Skywalker wasn't wearing magic robes of willpower, Han Solo wasn't wearing magical pants (although apparently Leia was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt). Some people thought Princess Leia's slave outfit multiplied her charisma, but it WAS an enhancement, it didn't contain them. Roles were only loosely defined, but you could build to be supreme within those roles. Virtually any group of 3-5 characters could work out tactics to be wildly successful. Don't get me wrong, I think SWTOR is a decent game. or I wouldn't be throwing money at EA, but I would have thrown the same money at Mass Effect Online, and I would have felt the universe suited the game mechanics much better. SWTOR bears the same relationship to the 'Star Wars' universe that the most recent three musketeers movie (with Mila Jovovich) bears to the original Dumas novel.

I keep hearing this whole thing about 'tell your team to lay off the dps until you get aggro' and similar stuff. The question is, why? why should the rest of the team have to gimp their damage or play careful aggro games just to give a tank a chance to do their job? There's no LOGICAL REASON you should have to tell players to lay off their attacks. Only the requirements of a distinctly odd aggro mechanic, where someone shooting at you from behind cover 30 meters away is somehow more important than the guy sticking a lightsaber in your FACE, make this neccessary. Bear in mind, I come from a city of heroes background. To me, a tank should be able to hold 100% aggro, all the time. You would have to do something astonishingly stupid to steal aggro from a true tank, something like aggroing another mob far away from the ones the tank is controlling. I say, Juggs (and all tank classes, for that matter!) should have their aoe aggro generation cranked through the roof. Let a tank actually INCREASE your team's dps generation instead of decreasing it due to weird aggro mechanics and counterintuitive tactical requirements.

don't let the door hit you in the butt on the way out. I hope they change the mechanics. I spend way way too much time staring at my cooldowns, and a lot of the time I never get to really enjoy a fight because I can hardly even tell what a boss actually looks like. I think that the mechanics need to be hugely streamlined so that we can feel more like a jedi and less like someone playing Tetris. Sorry, 'challenge' guys, but you are serious dorks. try playing a wii for a while.

How about, instead of talking about how people need to 'lern2play', you try giving a bit of useful advice? I know there are a couple of other dipspits around backing you up, but as far as anyone knows, you were pvp-power-levelled to 50 in a weekend. Your arrogant lines about how this game is 'easy' and how you won't offer anyone who asks you for strategy any tips, simply confirms that you don't have a damned clue what you are talking about. this game was designed to be 'casual friendly'. That means that many people that are playing are playing because they love star wars, not because it is 'mmo easy mode'. That means, in many cases, brand new MMO players, or even players that are older, maybe even those who were teenagers or adults when the first star wars movie came out. Grunting about how they need to 'learn skills to progress' without offering even a slightly useful bit of advice for what you find as 'easy mode' when many of them just want to slow down and enjoy an engrossing storyline or play with a few friends, is grossly insulting. So, instead of coming back and stroking your e-peen for an audience, how about you just stay the hell out of this thread, or offer useful suggestions on how to build/play a reasonably survivable toon, for someone that maybe works a day job instead of going to school or pays rent to someone other than their parents? Let's put it this way... when people get a character to 50 under their own power, they usually want to talk about it, that includes tips and advice. Your unwillingness to do anything other than criticize those that are having trouble with the class simply ensures that everyone here realized that someone PL'ed you to 50

Basically it comes down to what you want in a companion for soloing. If you want your companion to play tank and distraction while you slaughter things, you play scoundrel. If you want to BE the tough as nails and share DPS with your companion, play a gunslinger. unlike many classes, which tree you play as seems to have a lot more profound effect than some realize. sharpshooters are very, very range dependent and tend to be the hardest initial hitters, saboteurs seem to be a brutal longrange with a lot more up-close punch (from grenade spam.) and dirty fighters seem to be made for picking off low levels while they are incoming, and then engaging the biggest in the group in hand-to-hand. As a soloist, sab seems to have the greatest synergy for gunslingers, for normal missioning (not for clearing out 4 mans solo). It also seems to be the strongest for combo pve/pvp, although pure pvp seems a lot more the realm of dirty tricks, and sharpshooter seems to be the best option for a frequent team player. as a soloist, dirty fighter seems to have the greatest synergy for scoundrels, for normal missioning. stealth seems to be the best for pvp and for pvp/missioning hybrid, although I could not tell you which has the highest synergy for the teamer.

yes, but 5 minutes soloing as a guardian without my companion makes me realize just how good my shooter has it