I find my shadow about twice as easy. I do find JK's to be on the whole, rather underwhelming. Nothing particularly wrong with them per say. Not exactly sure what it is. My first was a knight and I stopped at mid 20's to level a trooper... like night and day. I haven't sat down to analyse why but my shadow feels much easier, trooper is easier, bounty hunter.... even easier. My Merc BH is just facerolling the pve content.... The most difficult part about playing the merc is spending inordinate amounts of time trying to find gear that doesn't look like it was cobbled together from junk yard parts and painted by crusty the clown in an introspective mood. My wife's sentinel is always getting wrecked and she spends a ton of money to craft new gear for herself and pet(s). I know because I have to finance her with my 50 trooper. She's also about 2-3 levels higher than the world's she quests in (doing a lot of space missions to overlevel). It's doable but it's unncessarily hard at level. The guardian is a hot mess to tank with at lower levels. It evens out much later with the trooper but the trooper still ends up with distinct advantages of being able to weave back in and out of range or stay at range perma if need be. Some elites have constant knockbacks/knockdowns that nearly completely shut down melee while the trooper can stand a safe distance away and nuke him from orbit. I would say, up till 40, it's annoying as hell to level knights. Then after 40, the mob compositions start getting really tough. 2-3 strong mobs in a pack of 3 normal. Doable mind you, but a lot more hassle and teeth gnashign than it really should be.

I can confirm the gloves drop from there as well. I have a couple of them from running that FP. Not sure where the rest drop but if you really want the gloves, you can buy it from the vendor in Corellia. It looks the same as far as I can tell with the low res textures.

did it without too much trouble on my first trooper but on my second, died once. Not sure what the difference was. It's kind of tough but not the toughest you'll have to get through. Wait till later in your quest story...

If you are in a guild that already has a main tank and a backup tank, you can spec for DPS. Just because you rolled a tank doesn't make the other 2 trees useless. Also, most guilds don't have a dedicated tank 24/7 or even a dedicated tank. You need plenty of redundancy in your healer and tank pool. If everyone is DPS, you're going to have problems doing anything once your 1 or 2 tanks log off. If you notice in MMORPG's in general, tanks and healers are the most sought after because there is infinitely more DPS players. In a properly balanced guild, your population of tanks and healers should be high enough to cover activities 24/7 in an ideal scenario. And remember, you also need overlap as not every tank can or will log in at the same time, every time. It's just not realistic. Otherwise you end up in a guild with 100 dps guys standing around twiddling their thumbs because your 1 tank had a wedding to attend or he had to go to the dentist.

The nerf to DFA radius and its mirror will affect me twice since I play both classes for mainly PVE purposes. On both my vanguard trooper and my Merc, I use this GTAOE mainly as openers to clear weaker trash and pick up aggro. I don't and will never use it in Flashpoints/vs elites/champions unless I'm tanking (vanguard). It's a guaranteed insta death (to yourself)otherwise. A 5m raidus is nothing... that'll hit 1 mob, maybe 2, especially since after 40's all the mobs are so widely spaced. basically, the nerfed DFA is going to be severely limited in it's usefulness. You'd use it more as a single target ability that just so happens to have a splash component that will really isn't that useful. If you're going to bother wasting time repositioning mobs for the new DFA AOE, you may as well just kill them 1 by 1... which is just damn pointless for an AOE ability.

in terms of vendor purchasable, you can buy from Nar Shadah with commendation. Otherwise you can try the flashpoint esselle and/or hammer station. In terms of random drops, lvl 17 is the first helm you can get from that. Check Auction house see if anyone is selling. It's not terribly rare as I have found 3 helmets by level 20. Hammerstation is pretty good for gear at lower levels, and it's a much faster run than Esselle.

Could this be due to ability cost difference between the 2 classes? Because I find it easier to maintain ammo at a healhy regen rate than I do with my BH heat. Maybe it's just psychological effect of starting at full and starting on empty.

I think the problem is you don't understand the class at all. You came in thinking it is something it is not, like some guy creating a jedi thinking it's a ranged class that can use dual pistols. Troopers are special forces. We also happen to be the spearhead. Look at our own special forces, they have in dept abilities and gear above and beyond "basic". There's nothing standard about special operations. We're sent in first ahead of other forces and we're expected to survive. Our abilities allow us to engage and approach. What about that is not trooper like? we may not be mobile but we can extracate ourselves while still pushing out damage. In fact, if you want, you can run and gun. Also, we have like 2 melee abilities (3 if you spec it). Yes, they are strong and useful, but the rest are all ranged. And if you cycle hem properly, you can play it completely ranged. Why would you say it is a melee class only? You only need to get into melee if you want to stockstrike and/or use your cone AE. I play my trooper as a mid range toon that allows me to close distance and extracate as necessary. But i have also played at both melee and full range. Not ragging on you but I am not seeing the cause of your dissappointment except that you had expectations not consistent with what the class is. Hell, even the story goes counter to your idea of what a trooper is.

Jorgan, dorne and even Yun are much better companions than the 2 tanks you get. Tank pets don't get proper mitigation and rely on the shields to absorb all their damage. This is barely better mitigation than Jorgan, dorne and Yun. In Jorgan's case, his DPS is high enough that he can burn mobs down to easily negate whatever mitigation a tank pet can absorb. Same with Yun, who seems to be able to mow down just as quickly, but I much prefer Jorgan's AOE capabiltiies. Dorne is a showstopper all by herself. Her DPS is actually decent supplement to your own even in healing stance and she can comfortably tank 3 normal mobs all by herself. Let's put it his way, Dorne can tank better than our 2 tank companions and she'll even throw you a heal every now and then even if she is under pressure herself. I've got Jorgan, Dorne and Tanno geared up pretty closely (although Dorne is a bit better geared) and She and Jorgan outperform X and Tanno every time, support, heal or tank. they just do it similarly or better. Until they give the tank companions proper mitigation options, they will completely be overshadowed by the other companions. When I say proper mitigation, I mean, being able to stance them so their armor increase to at least cap at 40%. At the moment, all your companions mitigate 20-25% depending on gear. The shield your tanks get amount to roughly only 5% extra mitigation over time. Useless in the short term where you really need it. while Jorgan and Yun may lose 5% mitigation over time, they make up for it with about 30% more damage, now, in the immediate. Sorry I didn't answer your original question: Tanno is simply easier to gear up. you can give him your hand-me-down armor pieces or whatever drops you get. Droid parts are expensive and hard to come by at certain levels, and if you're using oranges, you spend most or all of your commendations keeping his parts current. random blues/greens and or quest rewards can't be used for X whereas Tanno can use everything you can.

2. Pulse cannon does seem to have a wider arc but that could be due to the graphics used. BH has a fire stream wheras trooper has a wedge graphic so it's easier to work groups into your firing arc. I usually guestimate on my BH and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. On my trooper, it works and the visible cone makes it easy to reposition after the first firing tic. 3. It feels like the aoe radius is about the same on both. On both my BH and trooper, mobs just outside the visible ground target will all be hit. The biggest problem for me on my trooper is that mortar only works vs static ranged mobs. it will typically completely miss melee mobs. On my BH, it doesn't matter, it fires quick enough that I can leap in the air and hit the group of mobs incoming. ou'll never catch them with mortar. Where this presents itself as a problem most is during encounters when mobs spawn as part of the encounter and you need to pick them up quickly or destroy them quickly due to the power of their combine attacks. Several parts of class quests have senquences like this where you can quickly get overwhelmed if you don't kill the weak adds fast enough (usually accompanied by 1-2 silver/elite). My trooper completely fails here with mortar and instead, I have to rely on a combination of other tools to do the same thing. pop a couple aoe rounds to pick them up, leap in, aoe taunt, reposition and pulse cannon the frakoutta them. It works but it's quite a bit slower than the BH. On my BH, right when the sequence starts, I can straight away eliminate the weak mobs leaving me with plenty of health and ammo left to deal with the silver(s) and elite(s).

I wish Elara were interested in me... she's so ambivilent. I keep reading there's romance in this game...We're level 50 with max affection and the only other person who has made a pass on me is Aric Jorgan! The male cat man! Tales me back to my younger days where all the girls I hung out with just wanted to be friends. In some conversations, I swear, she seems to get soft for my toon, then th edialogue just ends with, Thanks for listening... That's like digital blew bolls.

Elara does a great job of healing. I notice the healing tics she puts out on me and frankly, it's pretty impressive. at higher levels, it's just enough to keep me alive against the horribly tuned mobs but otherwise, she keeps me up and herself up. My trooper is a shield defence spec vanguard. On my Bounty Hunter, Mako seems to heal about the same as Elara. I'm not really sure what the difference is. I put Mako in Slave girl outfit but that doesn't seem to have affected her level of survivability either although I do notice that Elara can tank about 3 normal mobs pretty well. Mako, not so much, even in medium. The only real problems I have with either of them is their CC abilities. on mobs that are un crowd controllable, they will burn through cooldowns attempting to stun/frezze the mob; completely ignoring doing any damage or healing. So I switch those off for both healers.

Have you tried LOTRO F2P model yet? There are limitations that are unlocked by paying, but they also allow you to accumulate in game currency from just playing and you can use that to purchase the unlocks, zone unlocks etc. But by in large, i think where they make their most money is from convenient items and vanity items and costume sets. The system caters to the ultra-cheapskate where even if you really don't want to pay, you can go through the game and even buy expansions with the points you accrue. It's a pretty good system. For people (myself included) who don't like the psychological effect of being locked out of things - even if I haven't yet reached that point, I bought a lifetime membership $199 which allows me access to absolutely everything and I get a monthly lump sum that I can use for anything in the shop. It's pretty signifigant. I've bought all the expacs, many vanity items, stat tomes and skill reset scrolls with the free bundle I receive. Also, I ended up paying a ton of real money on ... more vanity items. go figure. Some systems are pretty mercenary but LOTRO's system is actually pretty good.

Warhammer is not even close to being the worst launched mmorpg. It had its problems as all launch games do. The biggest launch issue that really trully affected people were server imbalances with many more people playing Destruction and severely outnumbering Order side and ridiculous power level scaliing as they added more content and patches in. To see what was the worst mmorpg launch of all time, check out Vanguard Saga of Heroes. By any standards, and I am quite lenient, Vanguard blew chunks the first 1.5 years it was up. As to the OP, SWTOR will NOT go F2P. Not all games do and it doesn't always make sense to. I simply don't think the IP holders will let them (seen as devaluing the brand) just as I am pretty sure that is why Warhammer hasn't gone F2P yet - instead, they went and created an offshoot (Wrath of Heroes) that *is* F2p.

Yes, as long as the heavy armor doesn't specifically state "Trooper" you can move the mod to the storm trooper armor. Luckily most heavy armor found in the world isn't class specific. My own trooper is wearing Jedi boots and I'm going to farm for a white trooper set for my Guardian.

I hear what you are saying but it's hard to sympathise simply because when you make a purchase you weighed the pros and cons of what you could and could not do with it and went with the more expensive option. PC's are just as capable of art and design as the Macs. The programs are the same and available to both excdept for more specific programs, which you could probably find an equivlent of either way. You wouldn't buy a vespa and expect it to participate in motocross anymore than you should be buying a mac expecting it to play games.

what you are suggesting is quite mind bogglingly out there. Mobile game dev and PC and even console development are completely different things. the subject being the same doesnt make it the same market or development the same. Let me know how well you'll be plaing lotro or swtor on your ios devices when even the Mac can barely handle it. You are completely confusing different markets to support your own point that this is why game developers should support mac gaming. I could explain it more but I won't simply because anyone who can't understand the difference isn't going to listen to reason; just as noone listened to reason when anandtech said the PC games better. You're trying to argue that because Honda Civis sell in the multi millions that F1 Racing should support Honda Civic racing and let them drive with the F1 race cars. Ok, while you play your mobile games thinking how awesome and sophisticated and epic it is, I'll continue to play games like SWTOR and LOTRO and Skyrim. The next vector of attack will be "Why won't devs create SWTOR for my iPad and iPod touch!! We're gamers tooooo...".

No HIB is not instant. On my vanguard it has an invisble cast time. Everything else is pretty responsive. HIB is slow as heck for me. Stockstrike is instant but not HIB. Not sure what the problem is but it's not a slight delay. It's very noticably delayed.

that's what I told my wife who died for the 4th time to her class quest on tatooine. She was 3 levels higher than recommended and this mob did this large area PBAOE that basically gibbed her droid with up to date parts, motors etc... then he proceeds to decimate her toon (DW jedi) extremely quickly. She blew everything and still died on a mob lower level than she was. Her gear is pretty up to date and one of the mob pbaoe dropped her to 50% instantly. So I had to log in my 50 to kill him. On my 50 Vanguard as i was leveling her, there were definitely some very strangely tuned mobs. For example, some elites can't be interrupted and they don't even have channel or cast bars but they are obviously channeling/casting. You just have to suck up the damage and hope you don't die. Those giant walker droids in the elite variant tend to be completely uninterruptible when they launch their rather overpowered launchers on you...which surprised me because the Walker droid boss in the flashpoint before you free revan is nearly completely interruptible.

Th eproblem is that the Mac community will always blame Windows and MS; always blame game developers, blame the whole world before they blame themselves for making the decision to buy an expensive system that doesn't do what they want it to do. And of course, they'll never put beloved Apple's feet to the fire and ask for Apple to focus on their 3D graphics/GPU drivers and have better support for it. They just won't. The Macs in its current form simply are no tdesigned or built to play games. Again, I bring up for the 3rd time in this thread, that anandtech has done tests for this that caused quite a big stir with the Mac users who, till this day, still refuse to accept that their $2000 machines aren't as powerful for gaming as its Windows cousin. Hence we have posts like these, blaming and demanding other companies to make their computers viable gaming machines when this is completely up to Apple. They will counter this and a whole slew of excuses will follow. I've seen it too often when it comes to gaming. Apple can do no wrong. It's everyone's fault cool things don't work on my expensive machine.

Yes, and that completely disregards PC gamers own experiences as well as Anadtech who have tested it and bootcamped Macs get outperformed by the same specced PC counterpart. But let's not let facts get in the way of shiny logos, a hip brand and being associated with the most profitable company on the planet. I mean those things = superior performance despite all the info out there? In case anyone actually missed it, my mid 2011 Envy 17 with a 6850M outperforms the recent MBP's by about 15-20+%. But I don't know, information like that gets lost when people justify their very expensive purchases.

I did that too. I got a kick out of it voicing it in my head: Just following orders sir.

We have options that Guardians do not. If we're fair about it, we have the option to move in and back out of melee a short distance in between melee range cooldowns. Obviously this doesn't work with melee specific mobs but seeing as how most mobs and elites are ranged or has ranged abilities, we have quite the distinct advantage of convenience. Also simple things like multiple adds popping, we can easily pull them from range without much hassle. Whether that is a good idea when we're already taking heavy damage is another question entirely, but we have that option when the abilities are on cooldown; which are pretty often.

Actually OP has a point. Invoking mob knockdown doesn't always let you off the hook especially when there are multiple mobs that have those abilities. Last night, my guardian got the crap knocked out of him. knockback and knockdown by mob onem mob 2 then knocks me back while I'm still prone a really darn good distance away. crawl back up and jump in and shortly thereafter get flattened on my back again. On my Vanguard, there is a safe distance where you are still within range of most of your attacks for tanking where you do not invoke mob CC... maybe occassional choke or freeze but not individual knockbacks or knockdowns. It's largely more manageable with the Vanguard. The only attacj my vanguard needs to get into full melee range for is stockstrike. Otherwise there are attacks that you can easily hold aggro from range. And even then, you can approach, use melee limited abilities then backup working through your other attack chains. In terms of effectiveness, the Vanguard is signifigantly less annoying to tank with.

Current top line MBP vs mid 2011 HP Envy 17 where the MBP has a better graphics card and slightly faster proc. The Envy performs a good 15%-20% better than the MBP in 3d gaming. Boot camp is good to get things running from the Windows environment, but the drivers are another issue entirely. You simply will NOT get the same performance. It really isn't a contest. Also, you say it is just software. Yes, it's software. Mac hardware is relatively good but in the PC performance world, it's considered a medium performance machine particularly in gaming. Bioware can optimise the game all they want for the Mac but when the Mac doesn't have proper drivers to make use of the hardware, it's really quite pointless. Macs are well known for trading top end performance for power efficiency. Anything that's going to tax the GPU isn't and hasn't ever been a priority for them. Their focus is on CPU performance, which is where most general users really need the power. There is always a tradeoff.