I'm aware and have used that for leveling the companions. That has nothing to do with an in game confirmation that you are in fact getting what you should be as you level the companions. I usually wouldn't care, but seeing as I've experienced discrepancies in companions during combat, I worry that there are companion discrepancies for crafting as well.

Each influence level you companion gets, they receive +50 presence, +1.5% time efficiency for missions, and +0.5% mission critical chance. At level 10 you companion will have the +15% efficiency and +5% critical chance that only (maybe) 1 companion had base (either efficiency or crit, not both) before and you had to pick crew skills based on what companions gave which bonuses. You can get every companion to i10 easily just by buying 70 rank 1 green gifts from the fleet vendor for a total of 14K (more if you don't have the legacy gift perk). I have my slicing companions at 30 and crit pretty often. The new system is designed to be much better than the previous system... I'm surprised people aren't complaining about how broken it is considering the backlash for jawa junk from slots and the "OP companions in combat" issues.

I have all crafting classes maxed and don't find any appeal to the current crafting endgame. The only thing I'm doing is making Aug/Aug Kits for my various alts. Being able to get a companion to i50 makes augs so much easier to make, it's a wonder they are not much cheaper on the GTN. The component aspect makes it easier to level a new craft, but I'm finding it pretty tedious at max, just one more thing you need to make before actually doing what you need to do :/ (I kept an open mind about it before 4.0 thinking it would help consolidate mats, boy was I wrong)

I avoid using HK-51 after getting him to 25 and never getting a heal over 1k...this was right after 4.0 and before the great companion divide of 2015. I haven't really checked him since but am pretty disappointed with the bugs with companions. On another, somewhat related note, I have Torian and Lana at 35 and Lana crits constantly on slicing missions and Torian rarely does. This could be RNG biting my BH in the rear, but after so many times I started to wonder if he was getting the crafting bonus he should have from influence level. I wish there was somewhere in game that told us what the crit/efficiency was per companion. I suppose we can check the time it takes to finish the mission and assume crit is working as intended...

I would love for them to give us a rough estimate of when we can expect to see certain companions. Unfortunately I don't see them doing this because people tend to hold onto "rough estimate" as "set in stone" and if they were off by a month there would be frothing at the mouth by forum trolls...At most, I think we will get teasers in the form of the coming soon scene (like "Firebrand" for Chapter X). As a side note, people like to complain about BWs lack on communication, but every time they have tried in the past the "community" has backlashed over various reasons. Timelines have typically been a focus point of this. Just an observation.

This! My BH wants to find her crew...or at least some of it. Please, please, please let me kill Skadge like I got to kill Tano Vik!!! On a more thread related note, I hope there will be a brief scene with Bowdarr and Qyzen to establish why these mortal enemy races would be down to work together. Even if it is just you walk in with them about to fight and you get the option to calm things down...or let them fight it out and you lose one (preferably of our choosing)

As most have said, you need to be a subscriber for the new chapters anyway so I'm not really getting the point of the OP. Early Access only encourages people to continuously subscribe (if they find the rewards worth it). Personally I will maintain my sub because I would anyway, but I don't think I'll be checking stuff out until others have "tested" the content and have left a list of bugs on the forum for me to see. I learned the hard (and credit costly) way with 3.0 early access that being first is not always advantageous. I was not involved in 4.0 early access due to a break I took, but have heard stories about it, glad I sat it out

I'd like to address two things: Ops and the Livestream. First, I play this game for ops and the story. I was fed up with ops after 3.0 came out and after about 6-ish months, there were still bugs with mechanics/syncing for certain fights. Were there workarounds? Yea, they were doable, but the bugs shouldn't have been around that long...period. I was also pretty pissed that the 4 pc set bonus on my main (commando/merc healer) was still broken. So I left for a while to raid in another game. I came back for 4.0 due to a friends insistence. Pretty happy I did, overall I'm happy with the changes. However, lets compare 3.0 and 4.0 ops. 2 ops that were still bugged 6 months after release vs 9 ops updated for endgame. Bugs still exist, but with 9 ops to comb through and fix, I'm not going to be surprised if it is a lengthy endeavor for devs, is anyone? I believe this is what is pushing back new ops development, not other content likely designed by a separate team. I was just happy they fixed disappearing islands and platforms in EV lol. Bolster/dumbing down of SM mechanics is another matter, but this is something people have been clamoring for I suppose, for SM ops to be "pug friendly". Second, and more specifically targeted at the topic of the thread. They hyped the livestream as subscriber rewards, which in the past have been pretty lackluster imo and based on overall forum feedback. These rewards are pretty cool in comparison, and because of that, people are upset that they need to pay for it. I get the argument that "it's story content that I won't be able to access", but like others have said all the chapters need to be subbed to access. I think the big difference is the time constraint. You need to be subbed by x time to get y, and you need to be subbed from this day to this day to get the play as hk chapter. They mentioned a bonus item per month related to HK, but didn't announce them all, so we still have that to look forward to. People were declaring they were going to unsub till the end and get all the chapters for one month of subbing, you can still do that. This subscriber reward program is targeted to reward the people that remain subbed the whole timeframe. I don't really see how this is a paywall, either decide the rewards are worth it or not, then sub or don't. I personally like them and will probably stay subbed, unless I get fed up for some other reason. I hope they don't add this companion/chapter to the CM later, that would cheapen the reward aspect imo /shrug, we'll see. Sorry for any typos and all the text, just kind of spilled out EDIT: Just wanted to mention that f2p and preferred already have the actual paywall of major restrictions pertaining to wzs, ops, credits, armor, and much more. This is nothing compared to that lol.

This. The bolster is so strong in SM ops. A few things I recommend to give you the strongest boost possible: Augment a set of legacy gear, this way you benefit from the extra stats now and it is a safe investment of augmentation kits. Unless they changed it, bolster does not consider extra stats from augments so these are a cherry on top of bolster. Don't worry about augmenting relic/implant/earpiece until you get the 216 token gear from ops. If you are using com gear or A mods/higher endurance enhancements, you are better off getting lower level unlettered mods and quick savant/adept/initiative enhancements because they will provide much better stats when bolstered than high endurance stuff. Unless bolster was changed since I last looked into it, this should put you at best advantage to start getting gear

I've seen this recommended as something tanks may want to do, but I'm pretty sure the numbers provided are based on the Sturdiness/Immunity enhancements (higher defense). With defense being higher than anything we've ever tried to achieve as optimal, I wonder if it is worth it to go with Bulwork/Bastion instead. In that line of thought, does anyone know if they changed how defense works to make it a better stat for Sin/Shadow and PT/VG tanks? If not this change to force so much defense really sucks...even if it does make it more simple (and cheap) to gear tanks.

Hello and thank you for putting this together and to all the theory crafters involved in making it as accurate as possible, you guys rock! I have a few questions regarding the Unlettered vs B Mod debate. I'm assuming the enhancements are the same and the only thing changed are the mods and one relic. The DtPS is really close, do you think using both tank relics would close that gap? Even if it doesn't, an extra 6k health seems to outweigh the 0.36% difference. I know that currently no 224 B Mods exist, but looking at the numbers for 216 and 220 it looks like the "debate" is pretty much answered: if there is an option, go with B. I may be missing something though, I'm pretty tired right now

I have my regular and shift bar stacked 12 across at the bottom of the screan. Ctrl is 2 rows of 6 just below and to the left of my character portrait. Alt is 2 rows of 6 just below and to the right of my target's portrait. I like having as much room as possible in my screen/field of view, so this works well for me. I also have the global scale of my interface lowered with the ctrl and alt quickbars slightly smaller. Can't remember of the top of my head the number though.

I used to click until about 2 years ago when I got my razer naga. My big complaint with keybinding was eventually the combinations get a bit ridiculous and it is just easier to click. I was still a very good player or so I was told by people I often played with, they couldn't believe it when we talked about click vs keybind and they found out I was a filthy clicker Now that I have a naga I would never be able to play without it. It is so simple to bind a quickbar to 1-12, another with shift+1-12, alt+1-12, and ctrl+1-12. I regularly use 1-12 and shift+1-12 during combat, ctrl is mostly out of combat stuff and very situational use, alt is for my stealth class abilities and pre-combat stuff. Then I have 2 bars of stuff I use so rarely that I don't need them bound, like different mounts, mail droid, heroic moment skills, and QT/fleet pass. (On a side note, can BW please make it possible to use letters in combination with numbers. It would be much easier to hit f+1-12 or v+1-12 than alt and ctrl for me, just throwing that out there) I have also noticed I am much more aware of what is going on. I used to use verbal queues in combat because I really wasn't able to focus on boss/combat animations, now I can use both and I feel like it has made me better. However, I feel like a blanket 'clickers are bad' mentality is a horrible attitude to have. Some people will never be able to keep track of keybinds or even lack the dexterity to hit some of the combinations in a timely matter. Attempting for force players out of their comfort zone will just cause frustration on both sides.

Nope it was combined. I was hitting 4.2k-4.5k ehps and 4.5k-4.8k hps, my healing partner around 3.8k-4.1k through our attempts. I'm a commando and he is a scoundrel.

Did my weekly ToS run last night, with the set group that has been easily downing him well before enrage. I am a healer and I noticed we were taking a ton more damage than usual, so I started paying more attention to adds and timers. Turns out the adds were coming about 5 seconds faster each time, which added up. We were barely getting any time to dps the boss. On top of that, the cross was doing crazy damage, even when it was green. After 6 attempts we decided to leave instance and reset the phase. The adds were still coming about 2 seconds earlier each time but with some pretty good healing (we were easily breaking 8k total ehps) we managed to barely get it done. Barely as in 3/8 people were alive and we were able to use our raid buffs a second time at the end The point being that sometimes things are just out of sync or mechanics are broken to the point that even knowing the mechanics doesn't help much. I could not imagine running into this scenario with a PUG, it would get discouraging very fast. If they are going to 'nerf' Underlurker, they should reduce the health of the adds. That would solve all complaints not related to the cross itself. Adds die faster = more dps on boss (reducing stress of dps check) + less raidwide damage (reducing stress of ehps check). They should not get rid of mechanics because they are fine as is, imo of course