I have run into some similar matches. Most of the time I am in a warzone, I do quite well and am at the top of the scoreboard if not towards the top, and the matches seem 'fair'. However every now and then I would come up with against a premade where we would get slaughtered. I have had a few instances of the civil war where the match ended in 600-0 where the other team capped all 3 nodes and kept it for the entire game. Furthermore, looking at the scoreboard, our team had a total death toll in the 30-50 range while the other team had 1-2 deaths total. I even checked my teammates, and they seemed to have reasonable gear/expertise. But this kind of slaughter just seems insane when the kill to death score was ~30-2.

Don't get depressed by a few losses. It's all a learning experience. Last season when I first went into Ranked Warzone, I had a bad start. Admittedly, my gear wasn't the best, but I had very close to full expertise and about 12/14 gear augmented. Needless to say, the preliminary 10 matches did not go too well for me and I came out with 3-7, which placed me at 1000 rating. Not understanding the ELO system properly, I thought the earlier matches did not matter as much and that I would use the early matches to learn as I geared up fully. At the end of season 1 I came out with about 900 rating on that toon (I did reach like 1100 at some point). I used Season 1 as a learning experience and to understand strategies and how Ranked WZ works. Season 2, Day 2 - Using my experience from Season 1, I have already passed 1500 rating and climbing. So my point being, keep trying and keep learning. Sometimes you have to sacrifice one toon to get better rating on another toon. Use one toon as a way to learn strategies, then gear up a second toon and use that toon to kick butt and enjoy.

I think I lucked out on Ebon Hawk. I did 10 matches just to get my rating and both side seemed to have competent players for most of the matches. Some of the rounds even went to sudden death when time ran out. Overall 7 win, 3 loss, came out with 1330 ELO. This should get me to at least the middle tier (hopefully). Now just need to work up from here.

I recently started using 162 rating gear (Black market/Arkanian) for my bracer/belt and 5th armor piece and it has been working out well. The expertise drop is minimal (1-3 I think), and it has increased my willpower/damage output. So it seems that you can walk into a warzone with full 162 rating gear, and be competitive. For MH/OH, you can go with the 168/162/156 combo if weapon damage is important. For people like me who love to raid as well as PvP, it should be easy to pick up Arkanian drops along with 168 MH/OH. Furthermore, this gives you the option of using the PvE set bonus instead of the PvP bonus if it is more suitable (still waiting to test this). I have been testing this on my dps Assassin, using the new bolster buff from Ziost Shadow that was added at 2.7.1. I am almost contemplating going for the 4 piece PvE set bonus instead of the PvP (15% crit chance increase to voltaic slash VS reduce cooldown on recklessness by 15 sec and increase recklessness charge by 1).

This is great! I no longer have to go into Warzone and take multiple screenshots as I switch between gear.

Here are some things I would LOVE to see related to guild flagships. Could you hint if any of these may be or will be possible? 1) Have a legacy perk to travel to Guild Ship. 2) Officers will have 'special' officer room. 3) Able to travel to any planet from the guild ship as a group or alone (perhaps a deployment ship from the guild ship). 4) Have a specific wing in the guild ship through which we are able to board Operations (or take a whole group directly to the entrance of an operation). 5) Guild battle? (Perhaps Galactic Starfighter mode between guilds). 6) Open contest area within the guild ship that will allow for friendly duels and/or practice. Thanks for all the info so far! I hope Some or most of these features will be available!

L-Randle, could you explain why we are using this combination? Wouldn't it be more favorable to use the 78 hilt/barrel now that it is craftable? Or does that lower expertise too much and give diminishing return?

Okay good, so it wasn't just me. I was healing yesterday on my operative and I noticed that people were dropping waayyy too fast. I could drop 1-2 heals before they went down because each tick they were losing like 30-50% health. It felt like whoever jumped first, had the upper hand.

The rancor skin may be rare, but rancor mount in itself won't be, which is what I was getting at. At the end of the day, the skin on the mount is not going to make much of a difference. They are going to have some alternate cool skin on the CM anyway.

I agree that the rancor shouldn't be to just the PvP players, however I was hoping that it wouldn't be on the CM. NiM operations and PvP would have been sufficient. If it shows up on CM, almost everyone is going to be running around on one. Iconic features such as this 'should' be somewhat rare making them more valuable. There are already some items in the game that are rare and exclusive (such as the new dread master mask from the bonus boss on SnV, or mounts from NiM operation). I would like to see more items such as this in the game. I myself am a collector of rare items and enjoy the aspect of collecting such items (revan mask, hamster ball from gree event, rare weapons, mounts etc).

I don't care if it's for PvE or PvP. I just want there to be some exclusive items, so only those dedicated and are willing to work for it deserves to attain it. If I am going to work hard to attain 1500 ranking, I want it to be worth my time and not have a better version show up on the CM. This is coming from a person who is heavily into PvE and have recently gotten into ranked PvP. /signed

Okay, so I spent a while playing around with different armorings/mods and these are the results that I got. Now note that I read the numbers of the character sheet after bolster. I don't know how reflective this is of the actual damage. Although I 'felt' while playing that it was quite reflective. This was done on on an Assassin playing deception spec. My base was a full conqueror set with an Obroan main hand, and 2 Obroan relics along with 13 gear augmented (missing one). In my experiment I played around with my wrist, belt, headpiece, mainhand and offhand. Here are various combinations. No stims were used. Experiment 1: Base test. All conqueror with 2 Obroan relic and Obroan mainhand. Willpower: 2158 Bonus Melee Damage: 698.6 Bonus Force Damage: 1091.2 (This may be lower then expected as my headpiece had alacrity, what came with conqueror) Crit: 22.31 Crit Bonus (surge): 75.09 Experiment 2: 46/46/46 blue on Headpiece, wrist, belt, MH, OH. The rest of the pieces were unchanged and still had the same conqueror pieces. Still using 2 obroan relic. Willpower: 2165 Bonus Melee Damage: (Forgot to check) Bonus Force Damage: 1255 Crit: 22.63 Crit Bonus (surge): 75.35 Experiment 3: head/wrist/waist - All 58 purp. Mainhand - 66/69/58 Offhand - 69/61/58 Willpower - 2098 Bonus Melee - 725.9 Bonus Force Damage - 1254 Crit: 21.32 Crit Bonus (surge): 75.55 Experiment 4: wrist/waist/MH/OF - All 46 Blue Head: - 61/61/61 purp. Willpower: 2174 Bonus Melee: 733.0 Bonus Force: 1261.8 Crit: 22.99 Crit Bonus (surge): 75.63 For me this last combination worked the best. I also tried replacing single enhancements from 46 blue -> 61 purp for wrist and OH from Experiment 4 but that did worse. I also tried a full 46 gear (even replacing chest/hand/leg/feet), but that also made it worse. I encourage people to try out different scenarios and see what they get and figure out what's best. It's possible that I did not stumble upon the best combination yet. I will try some other combinations later to see if I can improve on it.

I think a very cool thing to have will be to have the rocket boost come out of the back of the pilot suit when you use rocket boost similar to some of the bounty hunter armor. Some of the suits (such as the experimental pilot suit) already has nozzle at the back. It shouldn't be too hard to add an animation there instead of underneath your boots.

My toon Ryakiri/Azanaki (both imps) can now craft Elusive Mod 31b free with mats.

My both Imperial toons Ryakiri/Azanaki can now also craft Advanced Vigilant Enhancement 31

I can now craft Advanced Force Wielder Armoring 31 free with mats. You can contact either of my Imperial toon Ryakiri or Azanaki.

My toon Ryakiri (Artifice)/Azanaki(Cybertech) (both on Imperial side) can craft Advanced Skill Armoring 31, Advanced Artful Mod 31 and Advanced Efficient Enhancement 31. All free with mats. Tips are obviously appreciated.

Does anyone know what the name of the Pistol (or closest resemblance to it) that Agent's use in cut scene is? I haven't found a picture of it yet, but I will link it once I do.

If you are against leveling and want to hit insta-55, can't you just go play on the PTS server? If I am not mistaken, you can do it somewhere on the fleet.

I checked in game and it doesn't seem to be either the Makeb reputation boots or the Conservator boots (although the conservator comes pretty close). After doing a little more searching, the closest I could find is the Tier 1 Jedi Knight boots. http://www.trippintheforce.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Jedi-Knight-Gear-Tier-1-477x800.jpg I believe these boots may not be available anymore (I will try to confirm it).

Wow thanks guys! I will try to search for it next time, what are the odds that someone asked the same question with the same exact picture, lol.

I have been looking for these boots ever since I saw the picture. Could someone guide me to what the name of these boots are? http://cdn-www.swtor.com/sites/all/files/en/cb/2013_thumbs/archon_blog/port_relax_unit_854x480.jpg

It's not for crafting crystals. I know couple of guys that have the schematics for black-blue and black-red crystals and they don't need it.

Not sure if there will be a new post or not, but I can now craft the following items on my imperial toon Azanaki. Advanced Armoring 30: Advanced Resolve Armoring 30 Advanced Armoring 28: Advanced Force Wielder Armoring 28 Advanced Guardian Armoring 28 Advanced Reflex Armoring 28 Advanced Resolve Armoring 28 Advanced Skill Armoring 28 Advanced Mod 28: Advanced Agile Mod 28A Advanced Aptitude Mod 28A Advanced Robust Mod 28B