I'm not sure if this has been covered before, or even if the exact idea has been given. Here we go in either case. We all know that companions at level 50 and maxed affection are bland. There is nothing carrying their personality into absolutely anything we go on to do in any end game content we may try. I suggest random daily conversations and/or missions for a random single companion that you have (even C2-N2 and V2-R8). The same can be done as a weekly conversation/mission that would involve all companions in some way. So you would have daily convo/missions with a random companion and a weekly convo/mission that involves them all. I know there are pros and cons to this idea. Here are a few I can think of. Pros: 1. Another way besides gifts and non-communicative dailies on belsavis/ilum to gain affection. 2. Give our companions something more than 'pet' status. 3. Releases a bit of the staleness of the companions as a whole. 4. Gives a way to increase content through patches. Cons: 1. Of course, with all content: There is a limit to this. At some point you will have experienced all of the missions/conversations. 2. A continuation of 1, but deserving of its own number: People will again find this as old. 3. The content released could be bland itself despite what it was trying to achieve.

I don't think I'd bother augmenting until at least Rakata tier gear. You'll replace your Tionese with Columi/Rakata pretty quick through daily flashpoints and weekly Ops, and tanks are always one of the most needed classes for EC/TFB hardmodes, so the Campaign and Dreadguard wouldn't be too far behind.

Flipping awesome.

Inquisitor story, Lord Zash says she has a surprise for the inquisitor. You need to choose the 3rd option. Best line in the game for me imo.

It came as a slight shock to me that I can't RE just any Dread Guard quality Mod, Enhancement, Etc. to get my own schematic of it. It has to be specifically from your own Dread Guard gear. I mean I guess it's a good stop to crew skills getting too flooded with all the BiS stuff, but it does suck if your Ops group isn't specifically running TFB HM or NiM EC like mine. As well as most guilds/groups that are doing those runs don't need to pug a member outside their guild or group anyways. So the moral of this little rant is that they shouldn't limit a persons crafting because of their progression. Where will this moral get me? Nowhere unless I /gquit my guild or get lucky in a pug, then win the dread guard gear, then RE it, then get lucky again and learn the schematic. (run-on sentence; go!) As well as hoping the pug group downs a boss. See, ranting. Also, whether someone says those are easy or not, I absolutely do not care. It isn't where my guild is at so have fun with that. /friendlyrant

They offer bonus series on many planets to get a different progression path through leveling if you would like. You don't just have to stay on the same planet as your story missions the whole time. Granted that would be the faster way, but you can mix it up a little if you so choose.

I love this idea. Still allowing companions weapons I hope, or this would seem impossible.

I did actually drop Vigor yesterday for another point in Jedi Resistance. I haven't really felt like I needed the extra armor from Shadowy Veil, I was pretty much happy that we even got Kinetic Field recently. I like just the 2 points in Upheaval that you have. It isn't so much an ego issue as it just irritates me that a near 50% proc chance doesn't proc anywhere near as much as I would expect it to.

My spec is primarily PvE. The story was given because a shadow tank in the FP thought infiltration was nothing but pvp. Couple reasons why I don't use upheaval are as follows. 1. That extra rock uses up a charge of force potency when I'd rather save the potency for my Force Breach in those burst phases (I know I could activate Breach first and forgo that whole issue, but I don't usually bother if Breach is still on c/d ) 2. Personal preference. I personally hate every time I do not get the upheaval proc compared to the extra 3% armor pen and extra damage added to clairvoyant strike (and whirling blow for what it's worth). 3. I haven't seen any clear numbers stating one way or the other on the 5/31/3(+2) spec and the 2/31/8 spec for which pulls higher dps. My own observations on my Mox Parser have been leading me to the non upheaval spec. Again, that may just be personal preference/playstyle. I also prefer the 6% overall damage reduction compared to the 30% armor within the infiltration tree. If the extra points are there, I'd still rather put them into the 2% overall damage reduction in the balance tree. Onto the aoe portion. We had a bad operation composition. 3 melee, 2 of them being watchman sentinels, and 1 gunslinger. 1 sentinel will go burst down the Warrior in the adds phase while the tank pulls the adds out of the purple shields and we aoe them down. When I have the 2nd highest aoe damage of the group at that point... There isn't much to say about it. Was just one operation, not saying I do that full time.

/agree

It's amazing what you can come across in FP's. Was fervently told yesterday that I was in a pure pvp spec in a HM False Emp. because the Shadow Tank sees me use clairvoyant strike. I know he is trying to be helpful... I also find there is a point where trying to be helpful and talking out of your *** are two different things. Of all the information he tried to give me that FP, the best I read was "Shadow Tank has disconnected." K, done with the short story. I do have a real question to ask, and that is a question between 2 infiltration specs. I particularly use http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#601bcZfhrRkfbRroZs.2 I know there is a variant that uses upheaval, and my spec in particular could probably be improved anywhere between 1-5 points difference (no way in hell will I waste points on expertise, though). I went after full technique mastery over trying to get upheaval. I haven't tested any of these numbers to know which one will put up better numbers (hoping someone here has done that). I also tend to like the small gain to my aoe damage (amazingly enough, I have to pull aoe duty on HM Kephess with the one other gunslinger compared to the 2 watchmen sents in there.) Any help is appreciated, thanks for reading my wall of text.

Well, kinetic is tank, so that is pretty much the opposite of squishy. Infiltration also has another talent that reduces all damage taken by 1/2% and stacks up to 3 times for a total of 3/6%. I never had an issue leveling as infiltration shadow. Pretty much just kept Tharan (Theran?) out to heal me full time. We get an aoe taunt so it helps to use that when enemies are too spread out.

The changing light colors has to do with SWTOR as well as the razer synapse. If one isn't updated to cover the other in terms of changing lights when you do specific things within the game. It'll just stay the default color you have set up. I hope that was understandable, I could go into more detail if that didn't explain it. (afaik, it's actually on the swtor side of things that isn't functioning properly with the headset. The synapse is keeping pretty up to date with the stuff.) I could be speaking out of my butt right now though as this is something I looked up about a month ago to see if I should purchase this headset for myself. (Still haven't yet, but I plan on it at some point.)

It's almost weird that this hasn't happened yet considering the amount of people I seem to be seeing absolutely willing to pay money to transfer servers.

Thus is the life of a pvp'er in MMO's.

I only read TC's post (meaning this may have already been said), but if my original name is taken, I just put an alt code letter in there somewhere. Never had an issue with it. Now I do have issues with that name being taken by an alt character that the player never uses. Especially when the alt is never used. Even with that, it isn't hard to settle for a name with an accented letter in it considering you're playing this game with many different people.

Only thing that has been annoying me about the ftpers is the amount of them that decide their spacebar is broken. Other than that, it's been fun killing the crap out of them in sub 50 WZ's, not sure if I've met any in lvl 50 wz's yet to comment on that.

You could've just clarified that it was the defense chance instead of armor pen. Other than that, I made a mistake in saying armor pen. I did mean Defense as a whole, not just the defense chance. So I was apparently wrong in either case, and I'll leave it at that. I drop my curiosity towards this question now, and my want to test it out.

Still seems like the consensus is to not go above the 100% melee cap, then. I dropped my accuracy down to 100.8%, and my dps has increased. More-so just because I'm upgrading 58 mods to 61 mods than the accuracy issue, but I think that the 105% accuracy could show decent numbers for armor piercing against op bosses for pve. Possibly comparative to 100% accuracy with same gear level. Sucks I don't just have the bh comms or a group that can clear EC/TFB HM to be able to test all this easier, and answer my own question, lol.

I'll help clarify, I'm currently at 102.10% melee accuracy, 112.10% force accuracy, I'm wondering if I should raise that to 105% melee accuracy as it apparently negates a good portion of raid boss defense.

I'm getting mixed signals on the accuracy I would like to target on my infiltration shadow. I'm currently going for 100% accuracy for melee, but I'm hearing that 105% accuracy will actually be a large dps gain for me since most of my hits are weapon damage. The exceptions being Force Breach and Project. What say you fellow shadows, where does your opinion sit?

I like the campaign consular pve set and the battlemaster pvp set for consulars; yep, pretty much hate the rest. I'll be loading up on a lot of legacy stuff before I start looking at the vanity stuff.

I may not be putting 2 and 2 together exactly right here... I've been wondering for a long while if the Expertise skill will also buff the damage that you do when you use Force Breach as well as your technique's damage. Seems like an obvious answer and it probably is, but I would just like a bit of clarification on it. (My guess would say no.)

At least we do get to see the resolve bar of people we target if you have the bars over their heads turned on. After the patch, it would be nice if we could make it an actual bar instead of a curve around our portrait and move that bar around to a more noticable area.