I am venturing out into hard modes and finding them well impossible atm. I have a shadow tank with 74k health 900 shield 1100 absorb. I went into a tython hm activated ward force ran into a group of trash and died in 5 seconds. I tried maelstrom as a healer wow I was having to aggressively heal the tank on trash groups and if he missed one of the trash group it would take me out in seconds and we wiped. Funny thing is the elite robots on maelstrom were a joke. Even on one boss I didn't even have to put out more than an occasional heal, but others were wiping us with ease. For example the sith lord with the shyrock was going fine then 20 seconds into the fight he starts one shotting everyone at random starting with me. Is there a guide to these out there or are they horribly out of balance in the damage done atm.

I was doing some testing on scaling and was seeing a real issue with it. Basically it ignores the mastery and endurance on your gear and uses a fixed scale regardless of role or the gear you are wearing. For tacticals, this is not much of an issue but for other content where tanks are needed it is. At least defense, shield, and absorb are unchanged by the scaling which is good. However, if my discipline is tanking or my gear is tanking, it should scale accordingly. Right now , we are all dps when scaled.

I have a few questions about shield vs defense and tanking gear. First are there any points of diminishing returns on defense, shield rating , and absortion? Second is it true that shielding works against all attacks but defense only works against melee and ranged attacks? Is the blue gear from ziost and yavin worth it compared to using the purple for basic comms since the stat balance is very different in the blue gear vs the purple. I notice that they have similar values in endurance and will but the pieces are very different in the balance of defense ,shield, and absorb that they offer. I am concerned that I will need to rebalance my augments or have to wait on augments till I get the elite gear later.

Has anyone noticed a way to somehow break a bad luck streak with re'ing items. I know there has to be a way the issue with streaks is usually a product of how the seed is generated for the rng. For example does logging off or exiting the program seem to change your luck or waiting a certain time frame seem to change the streak. In another game I knew the seed was time based so by waiting a minute or two it changed the seed and improved my chances. Basically same seed value will give the same result so if the seed is the current minute two rolls in the same minute will yield the same result.

As a programmer it has been my experience that 3rd party software is always a 3rd party headache. Design decisions like using a 3rd party engine or writing your own have to be made at the beginning of a project and can;t be changed later without tremendous cost . That said it is always best to write your own but it is obviously too late at this point to even consider that or even a simple sounding upgrade to the 3rd party library's new version. The main reason to avoid 3rd party graphics engines is the level centric scene graphs that they have and the level centric design tools. This leads to the whole loading screens for everything we see in this game which is avoidable if you write your own engine and scene management system. This is especially true also in the world of 64bit where many times more assets can be held in memory than previously possible,

coruscant equipment vendor costs 12 commendations I believe.

I hope they do scale them. This is one planet with one likely daily zone. Unless they plan to make about a half dozen flashpoints and 2-3 ops they will lose a lot of people due to boredom. If they scale everything and update the rewards we will have 3 daily zones to choose from and quite a few FP and ops. Expanding only vertically is pure fail and way more work than scaling old content to compliment the new content and helping to prevent fatigue of doing the same FP or OP over and over till it becomes a choreographed dance routine. I for one never tire of doing the same thing I did months ago but I do get tired of running the same FP 5-10 x's a day.

swg crafting in this game won't work for several reasons. 1. most planets are not open environments so no way to do the swg style mining on most of planets in the game. 2. most craftables parts can be had easily by removing specific parts from end game loot or barter rewards. 3. They would need to overhaul completely their database and code as the data structures for the current system will be completely incompatible with a dynamic output crafting system. 4. They are too busy expanding the game vertically to put resources to expanding the game in a horizontal direction. now for those who don't remember let me list the problem with swg's crafting system. 1. high entry requirements it could take a new player years just to find decent resources let alone great ones. They did not have a system were at least 1 high stat material spawned somewhere for us to find. It was truly random. 2. Spawns were random and had to be hand scanned and the only decent amount of it on the planet could be in a no build zone and often was. 3. critical sections of a planet could become littered with mines because some high quality material spawned. Frankly alot of the habitable planets were littered with ghost towns.

On my lvl 50 healer I have had few fail pugs( all esselles) really doing hard mode. But , I will say the times I have gotten a hit as a dps instead of a healer have been interesting. Almost every one I have had to save the day with emergency heals because the tank hit 15% or lower health or a DPS was ignored in a critical fight where we are focusing on 2 different targets during a boss fight. As a side note 2/5 esselles runs have ended in failure on ironfist. One group I told them through 2 straight wipes to interrupt his head shot and they kept on wiping. I assume the esselles is a more likely to be chosen by some noob looking to dip into the HM pool.

do you know the quests in this zone? are we doing the same series of quests? are you a competent player or an under geared bozo who aggro's everything in sight? I tend to quest at full speed since its not my first time around. Can you keep up with me? for a random invite I really don't know, so why should I accept it? In most games I have played random/unsolicited invites are from weak, inept players looking for a free ride up the leveling chain. Most times I have grouped with someone except in the daily zones have been a waste of time. Now if you need my help I will gladly give it.

I just wish games would expand horizontally instead of vertically. My concern is that raising the cap 5 levels will invalidate all current content. Giving us no choice but to go to 1 new zone and burn out on its limited content then rinse and repeat again a year later. Had the same issue with LOTRO and left. Please scale all the flashpoint, ops, and endgame zones to 55 so we aren't bored within a month of release. If you want to keep subs you should give people more content to do along side the previous by keep the old relevant as well.

I have done all HM's except LI as both DPS or Healer on my sage without respecing. I frankly was an asset as a DPS on many occasions when the healer missed someone , let them get near death, or couldn't keep up with the healing needs. Maybe that is just a unique thing about sages. Though I will say I have all columni parts except some of my enhancements. Really, I have had a few pugs that were challenging but none since my first that I couldn't heal through the weaker players. I just make note of any DPS that needs healing and make sure to stay ahead on force armor on them as well as the tank. So far I havent had a fail pug since my first (yet anyways).

Had a similar issue on my first hm. I was doing esselles and I couldn't heal them through ironfist. So I was kicked. I did some research and found out they weren't interupting his headshot or fighting him away from the heavy hitting adds. I have 2/3 columni at this point and don't believe I would have healed that group even now. As a note every other group I have done esselles with ironfist was a breeze to heal. I encountered something similar on a mailstrom run were we kept wiping on the robot. Figured out it was me not running through him when I got pulled in. I was backing up and taking his blast in the face. Sometimes it is you sometimes its not. Know when its you and figure out what you are doing wrong and be a better pugger.

As a healer my wait times are minimal for sure. Usually insta-pop and never more than a few minutes. I too feel that no one dies on my watch. As a healer it is my job to heal through even the mistakes. I have actually gotten hits DPS role several times. Including one were the healer quit early and I simply took over as healer and finished without issue. The other time I allowed the other healer to be the healer and provided emergency heals, which were needed especially on ironfist. As a side note if a dps quits they can be almost instantly replaced.

Sith inquisitor upon arriving at dromund kas . Soldier - may I beg your assistance. Inquisitor - you may begin groveling Soldier - if that is what it takes to get your help. I don't remember any other line quite so funny in any other story or quest. Trelleg - lvl 50 Sage Jedi Covenant

It was quite a shock for me when I started doing hard modes. It was not the difficulty but the pace most groups run the content at. It was like kill stuff jump on bikes and off to the next spot and pray I can keep up. worst part is as a healer I hardly had time to recharge my force before the next fight. I did notice though that once I got to tionese or equivalent gear they got to be as easy as they were while leveling really. Please guys remember that some people don't have practice blitzing these thing at break neck speed, and you can avoid wipes by giving a healer chance to recharge before the next fight. Frankly though Taral V needs to be fixed badly bosses should not be so easy to skip as that. Perhaps, the quest advancement should be contingent on defeating bosses. Trelleg - lvl 50 Sage Jedi Covenant

I would note that only the columni rewards , Daily , and BH comms are worth doing. The tionese comms drop too slow to be worth the trouble of getting that gear. I already have all purple mods , augments, and purple armour with just a week or so of dailies. I do though prefer to do all the bosses. However, I have yet to do a single HM flashpoint in which the group did not skip all bosses possible. Including the final boss of Taral V which would have dropped a columni piece. I would prefer to do at least the bosses and definitely the final boss on all runs I do. However, I believe a fast run with a group that can do it is better than a slow run in a group that can't, or leaving and rolling the group dice again. I do think BW should make the quest bosses sequenced so you have to kill each boss to unlock the next and have to defeat the last boss to finish the flashpoint. The fact that you can run past the last boss on taral v and go straight to talking to the scientist and your done is very bad design. Also bosses should not leave combat if we run away they should chase us all the way till we or they are dead. Otherwise make a door behind all bosses that you have to unlock by defeating them to continue. There is no logical reason to design things so that a boss can be skipped might as well redesign the flashpoints so they are final boss only.

defeated her on the second try frankly she was harder than vivacar. Big tip don't stand in the cracked earth circle she puts out. I did it as a heal spec sage with quyzen tanking her. I just focused all my effort on healing him till near the end. She does a ton of damage especially that cracked earth circle thing. also keep your distance and kite if you cant interupt the cracked earth thing. If you just stand her up and try to tank and spank the dot will kill you. one way to do it as a shadow is to let quyzen go first then modest ranged dps till he falls, then charge in and finish her ,stun and interrupt liberally. med packs and stims certainly don't hurt.

says level 1 on the bar on the bottom. I assume I am working toward 1 is what it meant.

I have just unlocked legacy on my main. I received only 2500 or so legacy points, despite having 3 other chars at 20. Did i waste 20 levels of leveling on 3 chars because I don't receive legacy points on any leveling done before unlocking it. That seems to encourage leveling 1 char first to legacy then others. Do i need to now start over on the other chars or is there enough legacy points if I level the other 3 that it won't matter.

SWG was my first MMORPG and probably there will be no game quite like it. Here are my thoughts SWG strengths 1. crafting - best gear was crafted by one means or another. 2. combat stats - all stats mattered in someway to all characters. There was a 1000 ways to build your character and many forum threads arguing over how to build a characters gear. 3. every planet had high level and low level sections so no planet was pointless after level 10. 4. twitch space combat with awesome dogfight action at least PVE. 5. immersive worlds with housing and weather. SWG weaknesses 1. heroics were anticlimactic. toughest fights were typically early in the instance making the rest of it feel all downhill. this was especially true on the star destroyer. 2. space pvp was ruined by the ridiculous turning speeds and overpowered weapons. people could easily 1-2 hit you and it seemed to be just 2 people spinning in a circle till 1 got a lucky hit. 3. no global cooldown all attack skills could be fired in a single 1-2 second attack. I remember dueling some guy and knocking him down instantly by just walking my attack skills on the keyboard in rapid succession. 4. class imbalance a medic, officer, and commandos were all you needed to roll an instance. Post nge jedi were a joke defensively till they earned there armor which took a long time to get. Commando's were both great dps and tank, spies ruled PVP, and jedi's were shunned from groups especially those with lightside spec. 5. buff wars no medic buffs , no entertainer buffs, and you fail miserably. especially in PVP. OH yeah and die and you lose them all. Usually meant leaving an instance rebuff and return every wipe with only 2 hours to finish. SWTOR strengths 1. stories lots of stories 2. fairly balanced classes no one is useless or secondary to the point of exclusion from instances. 3. classes for the most part have at least 2 primary roles possible. 4. customizable gear. SWTOR weaknesses 1. ships are glorified transport terminals. they don't feel like a place I should hang out and do stuff.( ie no mail access or gtn terminal.) 2. no truly global chat that I have found so hard to get into groups without using finder or going to a planet . 3. worlds are level ranged so content is for a limit group of players. ie what does tython have for a level 50. 4. space combat is a joke. I don't know why they bothered.