who ever you do get to replace him is going to have a really tough time carrying vindrik. so keep that in mind

.....

i should never have told mokey how to use the forums...

next time more than 1-days notice would be excellent

OR you gear your operative and we get noodle to start pvping again!

what i did with my UI was make it as small and as transparent as possible and then hid it behind my character portrait, unless yours is to small to hide it it works perfectly, cant see it at all

i also got the helmet sometime last week, completed the whole set sometime last week as well

its my opinion that by playing on an APAC server we have come to expect a lower pop than any US/EU server, a merge between the 3 servers would not yield enough players to compete with any of the US mega servers, but we were not asking for a merge to be able to compete, a merge was a quality of life improvement. centralising all of the APAC players gives us a greater population, while we still get our ping our sense of community and an all round better game. the merge between APAC servers and US servers will have a negative effect on the APAC players that remain, we lose our character names and our community, we do not get the full benefit of the high pop servers because of the time zone difference, yes we will have all the late night americans playing but that would be comparable to a merge of the APAC servers. on top of that we lose our ping, giving us a disadvantage in both pve and pvp. this will lead to a majority of APAC players leaving the game, which means Bioware loses subs and the remaining players lose friends and will lead to more un subs for various reasons. while i understand the argument that there are 3 different servers and a merge of all 3 is undesirable for an incredibly small group of players. opening up transfers between APAC servers or only to Dalborra would prove extremely beneficial. Players from the other 2 servers will be able to transfer to dalborra. once that happens the numbers that want to stay will be clear to you and then appropriate action can be taken, which could be the closure of the two empty servers. in this way no one is forced onto a server type they dont want to be on, its up to the individual player. forced transfers can then be put in place for the dead servers while one can still be maintained.

I never played on the NA servers to start with i went straight to APAC so im not sure how much the change in ping will really affect me, i don't see playing a deception sin in pvp being a good idea though, with that said there are a lot of people on Dalborra with pings around 200 ms and while not ideal they still do fine. what erks me the most about this merge is that i lose character names and that we will all lose APAC players in the process. this has not been one of biowares best decisions, its a pretty bad decision but the fact we are moving to a NA server wont cause me to quit, but if enough of the people i know leave the game, that will probably lead to me leaving.

stats seem fine there pretty irrelevant at that level anyway, during pvp pre 50 just guard and taunt pretty much, who you guard is up to you, but a good tank will switch it between who is getting focused at that time, you want no critical chance or surge on a tank they are pointless and offer no survivability what so ever. and finally guard doesnt re direct 50% of damage in PVE only PVP, which even some experienced tanks dont know, guard in pve is used to reduce threat, so generally in a flashpoint/operation during boss fights dps should have a guard to help with agro and healers can have a guard during trash if you are a little worried about tanking a lot of mobs or the dps you are with dont feel like taking out the weaker mobs first

people need to also get out of the frame of mind that they need to be arsenal, pyro is a great spec, while not as powerful as the powertech version we have range, heals and a cleanse, while some of the guilds that freak out about losing a few rating points wont take you if you're actually good you shouldnt have a problem getting into a rated team

the only casts/channeled abilities are tracer/power shot only one of which is used by each spec, unload doesnt need to be instant the only other channel is fusion missile and i still think rocket punch need the knock back, we need another slow/root on its own ability and power shots damage slightly buffed increase the chance for CGC snare to be applied and move the healing talent which makes energy shield make you immune to interrupt on to a merc base ability or lower in the tree

i was talking about pyro having instant abilities not arsenal, you can LOS in most maps very well except voidstar, most good players wont forget objectives to get you unless you are heals, making it instant would un-balance us, we are a caster we cast things having tracer, heat seeker, railshot, power shot as instants at 30m range is op,

a lot of you're ideas are stupid, instant TM is a horrible idea, we are not meant to be able to do the majority of our damage moving while in arsenal spec, most of this thread is also based around arsenal while your sig says you are a pyro merc... so what are you complaining about, pyro is a great spec, sure we will be out dps'd by powertechs and maras, but we have a cleanse for roots/slows (all be it not all of them) we can LOS and heal our selves a bit and can do all of our rotation bar unload while moving) if you want to give mercs a bit more changing how abilities work is not the way to go about it, and only giving big changes to arsenal is not the way to do it, i PVE and PvP but i do it with 2 different specs because thats whats viable at the moment, if you want to PvP go pyro or combat medic or arsenal if you dont mind its weaknesses, but back on topic as to what can be done IMO they need to give arsenal the rocket punch knock back, as a seperate ability give mercs a root (like leg shot, pyro needs that too) or a slow both universal to the merc AC, maybe a slight buff to power shot damage, although i rarely use it because of heat management and trying to stay mobile, but if it had a bit more of a punch to it, powertech and merc pyro wouldnt be that far off, and the only other thing would be to make the merc snare from CGC a bit more reliable, while they add an extra ability some of them, over all they brings us more in line with other ranged classes and they dont change the class dramatically like the OP's suggestions if you want all instant abilities roll a powertech

the power barrier idea would be good, but theres a simpler solution spec pyro, i both PVE and PVP so i just stuck with arsenal to save my self from re-speccing for each raid, but about a week ago just after i got full war hero i specced pyro to try it out and it is so so so so much better in pvp, while there have been people on the forums posting big numbers with arsenal the spec lacks a lot, and imo pyro is very good in pvp, while it lacks an equivalent to flame burst i find that i only ever use power shot a couple of times each wz and its only used if everything is on cooldown my heat is low and i need an extra railshot, otherwise running around rapid shotting is fine, people complain about how immobile mercs are but its only arsenal really, pyro is incredibly mobile the only thing you need to cast/channel is unload and on the odd occasion power shot, otherwise you just keep moving imo its also a really fun spec to play since i kind of went on a rant there i think what mercs do need is a ranged root, rocketpunch need the knockback back and we need something like a snipers legshot, and maybe make energy shield make us immune to interrupts (like in the healing tree but for all specs) the power barrier idea would mean we would always be immune to interrupts pretty much

i was thinking about augmenting for endurance but not modding for it so i get a bit of both like the last poster, that's great to know about war hero relics definitely being the best choice, with two of those it should be pretty easy to get roughly the stats i want 25% defense 45% shield 50-55% absorb there all just rounded numbers for simplicity, i guess once i get around those numbers ill add more endurance

i didnt mean to sell it short, i do love my merc, and yes there usually are marauders juggs snipers in the raid aswell to interrupt so its not game breaking but i would like to be able interrupt as well, thats changing now which i am very happy about, when i said we don't bring a buff to our raid, again its not a huge issue but having a couple of marauders with bloodthirst and predation is always nice and we can't offer anything like that, its not something that would want to make me play another class though, Kript 790k is pretty beast. im not completely sure but i would say its the top merc dps on dalborra for pvp

yeah it is still frustrating not being able to interrupt in raids but its usually not an issue, it means we have less to worry about

its not as bad as some people make it out to be, as far as dps goes ours is great! we do great in end game pve, most people will be complaining because we lack a lot of utility, the lack of an interrupt is a big thing we also bring no boost to our raid. in pre 50 pvp we do awesome but once you hit 50 we are pretty bad, our damage can be good but no where near as high as a PT or a Mara, they also have to work less to get those numbers, my main is a merc and i love it but when i pvp i get really frustrated not having an interrupt to help shut down healers or when i see an agent/smuggler casting there aoe over a node and i cant do anything. all in all i dont think its as broken as people say but definitely needs some love

im still not decided about whether it is bis or not, but from experience and others comments on the amount of damage that can be shielded i think that getting the absolute most out of our self heals would be very important, although im happy to have someone prove me wrong would make it easier for me. Whats your stat allocations?

i am gearing in campaign/black hole my main has got EC HM on farm so I've just been collecting what loot i can get and now im looking at itemising a set and sending it over, http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/ddcb2cde-1834-409c-a5bc-8ec295f932be that link was posted in a couple of different posts and it was what i was loosely basing my itemisation off, using a War hero with defense rating makes more sense now that I've put a bit more thought in to it. as far a using 2 war hero relics, i can definitely see a benefit based on the above itemisation but just based on speculation (havent done the math) i see the absorb proc relic being very useful.

Pyro isnt that great on a merc damage isnt that good and heat is a lot harder to manage (for me anyway) as far as Arsenal is concerned we do good damage can get within 400-500k BUT thats not as good as what other classes can easily get which is understandable in a way but those other classes also have some great CD's and interrupts, us not having one is just stupid! Undying rage + force camo is ridiculous for mara's, along with the leap, where as for us mercs we dont really bring anything to the group except for stealth scan which powertechs also have, to the poster who said hang in the background spamming tracer No just no! the only thing that will do is get you some mediocre damage numbers, except for certain situations its not going to do you team any good either, my main is a merc and i pve and pvp with him a lot, and for the most part i enjoy it but lately ive been so much more aware with the fact that im almost useless, i cant even shut down a decent healer without filling their resolve and hoping their CC breaker is on cooldown. to be honest its not as bad as some people make it out to be, our survivability isn't to bad, not great but not awful, with a medpac and stim + instant rapid scan and kolto overload we can take a while to mow down, we just dont have the utility that other classes have and that just sucks!

i'm just gearing up my assassin as a tank and i have been thinking about relics, i planned to use the War Hero relic with shield rating and the Campaign relic with boosted absorb after shielding an attack, the main reason for these choices was im not a fan of using a clicky relic and its quicker to get one war hero relic and one campaign then to get 2 of each, my question is mainly about what everyone else is using and if this really is a poor choice of relics

i for one am really looking forward to getting HK, having to do something challenging will be a nice change from running dailies all the time. Although i am not a huge fan of the republic, i will roll a toon to be able to get him but I'm not particularly excited about it. i enjoy the Empire more and my friends and guild are on the Empire side so having to spend some time levelling a toon on the republic. and its not that i don't want to do the work to get him but i would like to be able to do it without a toon on each faction.

As a whole i think there isn't much difference between the Sith and the Jedi, the original "sith" discovered things that were considered dark by the "jedi" they then both fought to beat the other the jedi won and the with were exiled then when the with come back to take revenge they are considered evil for trying to destroy the jedi and the republic, but the jedi did the same thing to them at an earlier time, in my opinion the sith in general aren't evil more so unconventional while the jedi are just plain ignorant