I know this is a Shadow's gear list, but this is the BiS gear list that Dipstik over on the Tanking Forums lists for Assassins and Shadows: http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/f86459f4-c432-4ad4-b89c-c5fb537676fb Would you say that his list is better or worse than your list?

about the adrenals, I am currently using the Artifice Crew Skill set up on my Assassin (I know, probably not the best crew skill to use on an Assassin, but it gets me the Hilts and Enhancements for a lot cheaper than if I had to buy them). So I was wondering, is it possible to get the adrenals you mentioned without having to have Biochem as a trained crew skill?

You guys do realize that from the perspective of a Time Traveler who is from the time period of Star Wars: The Old Republic, none of the events of the movies have actually happened yet. So technically speaking traveling to that time period is as open ended for said time traveler as would be the Doctor's (Doctor Who) own trips into his universes future. In fact using the Doctor Who analogy, the only things that couldn't be changed in the Original or Prequel Movie Trilogies are things that Doctor Who terms "Fixed Points in Time" such as the Birth of Anakin Skywalker, the Death of Obi Wan, Yoda, and Palpatine. That said, the thing about fixed points in time is that the event happens no matter what occurs around the event, but the circumstances (how it comes to happen) are always in flux. So Anakin Skywalker could have been born to a different member of the Skywalker family, or Obi Wan could end up getting killed by a random storm trooper on the Death Star, or hell Yoda could board the Millenium Falcon and get fried in one of the many malfunctions on that ship. Nothing says that the events have to play out exactly the same once a Time Traveler is involved. And its not like there haven't been games made about the original and prequel Trilogies either, I mean come on, Lego Star Wars anyone? And those aren't the only ones, the X-Wing and Tie Fighter Games both featured the infamous Death Star Trench Run. And there have been an unknown number of Pod Racing Games set during Anakin's childhood. That is idiotic, it takes a few billion years for a system (with planets) to form, and once a planet capable of sustaining life forms it takes another several million years for primitive single celled life forms to evolve, and from there it takes a few more million years for complex life forms to evolve (think on the order of plant matter, insects, and fish), and after that it takes hundreds of millions of years for sentient life to evolve if it ever does. And before anyone says otherwise, the Ewoks were indeed extremely primitive sentient lifeforms. They are no less sentient than primitive man was seeing as how they are capable of making buildings, and using tools.

Just FYI the Inheritance Weapons were intended for level 16 to 25 characters roughly. They will last you about that long. Additionally they now have moddable color crystals so you can fit a level 10 Cartel Color Crystals into the Inheritance Weapons thereby extending the duration over which they will last, because quite honestly, with a +41 Power or Endurance Crystal (depending on your class) these weapons are actually some of the best you will get for quite a while after becoming level 16.

just thought I would mention it... but as of today, Ashara has orange skin when wearing skimpy clothing. Granted it is still a little bit mottled due to rendering issues (at least when viewing her close up) but it is now better than it had been prior to today. Just thought people might find this interesting.

drawing inspiration from Star Trek Online's Subscription Perks I could see the following laid out as possible perks based on the number of days that a person remains subscribed: 100 Days of Subscription Time Unique Title, preferably a Legacy Title as it would apply to all characters on your account Free Adaptable Armor (this would be unique to the Subscription Perk System, probably gloves or a hat or something at this juncture) permanent 1% Experience Boost to all characters on your legacy. This would stack with all other Experience boosts (such as Double XP, Experience Boost Items, Guild Experience Boosts and Future Boosts from the Perks Program. 200 Days of Subscription Time Unique Title Some sort of unique accessory for your ship, either something for the interrior design of the ship, or a weapon or something only available to subscribers. Another minor free adaptable armor piece An additional permanent 2% Experience Boost, this adds itself to the one for the previous perk and is stackable with everything mentioned previously. 300 Days Subscription Time Unique Title Free Character Slot Custom Subscriber Only Emote An additional 3% Experience Boost, Stackable with everything mentioned. 400 Days Subscription Unique Title If implemented by the time this is, perhaps a free use of the ability to change advanced classes, usable only once. Free Access to a Subscriber only Recreational Area. Vanity Pet - Subscribers Only An Additional 4% Experience Boost, Stackable with everything mentioned. Total Subscriber Legacy Boost to Experience = 10%. 500 Day Subscription Most everything beyond this point was Star Trek Specific, but I think there is stuff that can be added to Star Wars the Old Republic past the 500 day point if people thought about it. That said, most of the other lists I looked at were a bit difficult to implement on the massive level that I think they would need to be implemented to be of much if any realistic use. At least the way this is set up a character can be offered a few nice things without breaking the game too much. That said, I would like to point out, the way that Subscriptions are currently tracked in this game does not directly lend itself to a system where we are tracked based on how long we have been subscribed, rather we are tracked based upon how long we have left in our current subscription. So for those of us who currently have been subscribed for a rather long time (some since the beta), I don't know if your subscriptions from that far back would be counted towards a perk system such as this.

The "Cash Shop Madness" that Star Trek Online encountered had absolutely NOTHING to do with Cryptic Studios' original business model. And it was Cryptic Studio's original business model for both Champions Online and Star Trek Online that created their Monthly, Tri-Monthly and Bi-Annual Subscription Plans, as well as their Lifetime Subscription Plans. These subscription plans came into existence while Cryptic Studio's was still owned by Atari. However when Atari decided that they no longer considered Cryptic Studio's profitable, and declared the Studio Bankrupt, Cryptic Studio's looked for new management who could handle their goals better (Allegedly). The company that ended up footing the bill is Perfect World Entertainment. Unfortunately Perfect World Entertainment is a largely Free to Play Game Developer. They do not understand or respect the concept of Subscription based games the way that Bioware does. As such, even though the Subscriptions for Star Trek Online still exist and are being honored and probably will continue to be so honored... Perfect World Entertainment has handed down the management Edict that Cryptic Studio's should redistribute their income goals from subscriptions, to Cash Shops. Thus they are treating subscribers as secondary citizens at best, and focusing their attention on making sure the Cash Shop in their game thrives as best as possible because the Cash Shop is Cryptic Studio's primary income source now. The same is arguably happening to every other game company that is going into the free to play model. It didn't help that Cryptic Studio's had been offering Lifetime Subscriptions for as little as 300 US Dollars. Pay 300 Dollars, never pay again, whats more they give you a lifetime stipend of roughly 5 US Dollars that is only usable in their cash shop, so give or take 5 years you basically end up having paid your own lifetime subscription off. That isn't even including the Veteran Rewards that Lifetime Subscribers automatically get full access to. Those in and of themselves are easily worth a few months off the total price of the Lifetime Membership. In short, if a Lifetime Membership did exist within Star Wars the Old Republic, it would have to be accomplished in a manner different from the way SWTOR Subscriptions currently are being handled, or else Bioware would be losing money on these subscriptions over the long haul. The only reason Subscriptions as they stand don't lose Bioware any money as they stand now, is because the benefits you get for being subscribed are actually worth less than the subscription cost itself. Thus if you could pay a one time fee, and get all the perks you currently have for the rest of your life without having to pay ever again, one day the value of those perks will pay you back for what you spent on that lifetime subscription and then some.

Lag and Latency issues are kind of impossible for Bioware to fix as it is dependent on factors other than Bioware's own servers. You also have to consider servers in between Bioware and your ISP, your ISP's servers, as well as any wires and satellites in-between your ISP's servers and your computer. So really there is a great deal of stuff that could conceivably go wrong to cause Lag and Latency spikes that is not something that Bioware alone has control over. So asking them to fix these issues is kind of futile. You would have better luck asking Microsoft or Apple to Fix THE INTERNET as a whole. I have said it before and I will say it again. This game is not designed to take advantage of flying mounts. This would require a complete reworking of the entire game code which could take months to years to implement, and it is not something that is recommended. This is because flying mounts were not something that was originally included in the game code and as such would have to be added to the game programming on a fundamental level to allow them to exist. There are enough problems with the Static On-Rails Air Speeders that we already have that I do not conceivably see them adding in flying mounts. Additionally this kind of addition would require the removal of exhaustion zones on a global scale. So I don't see this ever happening unless they feel the desire to open those exhaustion zones up to exploration for some reason. This has many of the same issues as flying mounts has. But limiting them to Warzones and Ops could concievably work. But said Warzones and Ops would have to be entirely dependent on Walkers instead of being the usual PvP or PvE experiences. Because otherwise someone in a Walker would just AoE-pwn the entire group of footsoldiers before they were able to swarm the Walker. If you want 3D space combat, play Star Wars Online, EVE Online, or any number of other games with immersive space combat. The Star Wars Universe is not particularly well known for Starship Combat in the way that Star Trek, or the Revived Battlestar Galactica happen to be. When you think of Star Wars Space Combat it is generally a small 1 or 2 man fighter taking on a capital ship. And rarely do the protagonists have the capital ship. This does not lend itself well to 3-Dimensional Space Combat. That said technically speaking our On-Rails Space Combat is 3-D, it just isn't immersive the way you all want it to be. Getting it to that state would require a reworking of the entire starship system, because quite honestly the weapons we are given are geared towards fighting NPC ships, not other players when fighting in space. So Bioware were to allow PvP in Space, they would need to rework the armaments of all the space ships as well as the space combat engine. That said, the Galaxy Map works perfectly well for the Star Wars Universe as it is essentially an Astrogation Chart that you are looking at to determine where you are going, which is canonical. Dude, I don't know where you are getting the concept that "Space Ships need to be aerodynamic" from, but there are scientists on record who cite the fact that the design for the various Starships in Star Trek are more accurate to what would be needed for high speed Space Flight than what our current design for the Space Shuttle would allow for. In otherwords, Aerodynamics mean absolutely nothing in a Zero-G environment. The only instance where an Airfoil would matter at all is when landing on a planet. And in that case the Star Wars Universe answers that problem by having created the Repulsor (Anti-Gravity) Engine. So you want Tanks who dish out the same DPS as DPS classes? That seems fair, since that means the Tanks will be holding as much Aggro as the DPS classes... you want Healers that while healing deal the same DPS as the DPS classes and Tanks... HUH? Ever hear the term Suicide? You want DPS Classes that do the same DPS as Tanks, so that they steal aggro from the tanks on a consistent basis? Yeah that seems like a viable world to exist in. Bravo. Please note that in every other game, with the exception of Perfect World International which has two classes known as the Claw Barbarian and the Claw Blademaster, every class in every game I have ever played in has a defined role. And it is only in Perfect World International where the Claw Blademaster and Claw Barbarian exist in order to serve the role of both Tank and DPS simultaneously. Most other games distinguish the role of Tank as being separate from DPS for a good reason. Tanks don't need to do a ton of damage, so long as they can hold hate consistently. Hell Healers don't need to do any damage to fulfill the obligations of their role (though generally most healers in most games can do as much damage if geared and specced properly as any straight DPS class). Dude, many more expansions, and our characters will skyrocket in power to the point where the only ability that we will still be waiting on learning is Force Storm on the Dark Side and whatever the equivalent power on the Light Side happens to be. We are quickly approaching Palpatine levels of power by the point that we hit level 55 already, much more and we will have exceeded his level of power easily.

It would be nice if there were a translation of those threads into the Powertech forums so that those of us who don't have Troopers at level 55 can actually understand what some of those abilities actually do without having to level a trooper as well as a powertech...

I notice that people only started dying in the last what was it? 10 seconds of the fight?

I generally use the term "Spike" in reference to "Spike Damage" or as it is otherwise known as in most other games. Please note that for the most part Star Wars the Old Republic has nothing even remotely close to a Nuke as it is present in other games. The fact that we are able to get 3,500 or so DPS at the upper limit doesn't even compare to what other MMORPG's are capable of. Some of these games are capable of getting 9,999 damage in a single attack (against any tier of mob). You just don't see that kind of figure in this game. Add to the fact that some of these games are capable of getting 5 attacks per second each doing at least 1,000 damage per attack (if not more), you are quickly looking at a seriously underpowered game in Star Wars the Old Republic. Point is, I don't know how you guys are defining "Spikiness" but I think you are defining it wrong.

Is this from an actual interview or something?

Yes, Assassin has a significantly weaker Damage Per Second rating than alot of those other classes. But you have to realize that what the Assassin lacks in DPS, it more than makes up for in Crowd Control, Stealth, Back Up Tank Capabilities (Main Tank Capabilities in some places), and the ability to back stab enemies for large amounts of spike damage. Basically while the storyline of the Imperial Agent likens it more closely to the Rogue of D&D... the actual game mechanics of the Assassin more closely resemble the game mechanics most closely associated with the Rogue (right down to the fact that the Rogue and Assassin both share the Back Stab mechanic in common).

You realize you are showing that to us in your legacies achievements, while you yourself are on Cerrick Station and not in the Nightmare Mode itself standing over their corpses. So your credibility is a little suspect. Your achievements could have been unlocked using any character on your account. Meaning that you could have done it on a 55 Jedi Sentinel for all the good that screen shot does us.

After some extensive testing on both Balance and TK, I have found that I think I like Balance better than TK. But despite that fact, I think I am going to try to utilize TK some more while leveling (on the advice of a person I spoke to on my server). This way I can get used to using both specs and be capable of fighting using both TK and Balance equally.

I am wondering whether Star Wars the Old Republic (or Star Wars in general) will have a booth or be represented at LoneStarCon 3 (aka the 2013 World Science Fiction Convention, aka the 71st WorldCon). The reason I ask is because I will likely be attending LoneStarCon 3, and would very much like to see a booth or something representing Star Wars the Old Republic at this convention. What would be even cooler is if there was a Cantina Tour event held at the WorldCon. Is any of this possible or happening? P.S. for those who are interested LoneStarCon is occurring at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio TX, USA. It occurs from August 28th through September 2nd, 2013.

I just did some testing on the Telekinetic Spec using my Sage vs. a Training Dummy... and it appears that either the Bug doesn't trigger all that often, or that the Bug has been fixed entirely. Whichever it is, it is enough to make me question whether or not TK might be worth taking now or not. If it is fixed then TK with its higher burst damage may actually be the better spec to take.

Nibbon, given the bug, if you were going to spec an End Game DPS Sage, which spec would you chose? Hypothetically speaking.

I was wondering which Spec would be better to run for a DPS oriented Sage in light of the bug that is currently afflicting the Telekinetics Tree. I ask because someone over on the Sorcerer forums is insisting that even though the Telekinetics/Lightning Tree have a bug that they are still the superior tree to be running and that people should still be running that tree. I play both PvP and PvE. My Sage is currently level 26 (almost level 27, probably will be 27 after I hand in a quest or two, or once 1:00 CDT hits). And I am currently specced in the Balance Tree. I had originally specced that tree because I had heard that it is incredibly good for PvP, but now I am speccing it because it is not afflicted by the Telekinetics Bug. I am wanting to know if this is the correct way to look at things, or whether I should in fact be speccing Telekinetics anyways. If I am supposed to be speccing Telekinetics anyways, I would appreciate it if someone who has more experience with the Telekinetics Tree could offer me a reasonable Rotation to take a look at in light of the bug that is occurring in the Telekinetics Tree at the current time.

really? I thought Ka D'argo was from another universe? This is news to me.... why can't I have a Leviathan for a space ship then? And I will only agree to us getting Togruta as a species, if the developers also fix Ashara's skin issue. Those blemishes are absolutely frightful. I suppose seeing as how she is only a teenager that it is to be expected... but really black splotches on her skin is just not attractive. She really needs to see a dermatologist. P.S. I believe you meant Kel Dorians... and yes, I would love to see them in the game. Nautolan's would be cool, if any of them ever looked as cool as Kit Fisto.

how many times do I have to apologize for saying that?

yes, it is all well and good that you can side step the bug by removing the proc in question before it actually triggers itself. But then again, if your Spec were working as intended you wouldn't have to circumvent that proc, and your total DPS would be significantly higher. Not to mention clicking on that tiny icon every few seconds is an extremely inefficient use of your time and by itself reduces your total APS. The thing that differentiates Madness (Balance) from Lightning (TK) is that Madness has a way superior APS, where Lightning at the moment has a much slower APS. Now you may be confused by my use of the term "APS" in a game that is so often focused on "DPS" But APS is a term that is common in a couple of other MMORPG's. Most recognizably is the Perfect World Entertainment Namesake, Perfect World International. APS basically refers to Attacks or Abilities Per Second. The way the Lightning Spec is currently set up, it would be very limited in the number of attacks it can successfully get off in a given number of seconds. The Madness Tree however can arguably get off way more attacks per second because you aren't fumbling around trying to negate a proc while also attacking. APS is tied to DPS. While it is possible to do more burst damage in a given second with the Lightning Tree, it is not however possible to do more DPS than the Madness Tree is capable of because the Madness Tree is also capable of issuing more attacks per second than the Lightning Tree is currently capable of (continuous rapid fire Force Lightning (Telekinetic Throw) tends to do that). There is nothing similar to the Rapid Fire Force Lightning (TK Throw) in the Lightning Tree, and because of that, there is no way that the Attacks Per Second can ever be matched by the Lightning Tree. P.S. I never thought I would have to explain the concept of Attacks Per Second in a game so heavily reliant on DPS classes. That is like DPS Attack Theory 101.

Unfortunately from what I understand, Lightning is currently bugged (as is TK on the Sage). So actually if you want to play a reliable DPS, you kind of are pigeonholed into playing the Madness (Balance) Spec, because while playing Lightning it is possible to have all your abilities freeze on you at a certain level. I am consistently one of the highest ranking DPS dealers when I play in Huttball, and Voidstar (the two PvP scenario's where I don't have to guard a base). I use Balance. And I have yet to actually encounter a situation in PvP where I have run out of my Force Resources. Of course the fact that I only just hit level 26 today on my sage might have something to do with it, but the point still stands. P.S. I am posting in this thread, because sentiment is something that can easily be applied to both the Sorcerer and the Sage equally.

I would never deign to tell a woman that she cannot work in the sex industry or work as a nude model and also be a feminist. Look, I apologize if I came off negatively. I did not mean to say that there aren't feminists who work in said industry as I know for a fact that there are. What I am trying to convey is that I think it is disrespectful to women in general for guys to go around dressing digital representations of the female form in as skimpy an outfit as they can possibly find with the probable intent to get off to that digital representation of the female form. I highly doubt there is a single male in existence who has not thought of doing such a thing with the avatars in Star Wars, and I find it highly inappropriate. But then again, there are some who would call me a hypocrite since I have one of the Tops from the Relaxed Series of outfits on my Sage and I dressed my Marauders female companions in the Imperial Dancers outfits. But then again I do not view the NPC's in quite the same light as I do the actual Playable Characters. To me a playable character represents you in the game and thus should be treated with the same respect that you would like to receive in the real world. This is why I do not dress my PC's in the skimpiest of the outfits in the game. While my Sage wears a Relaxed Uniform Shirt, She is also wearing the Force Initiate's Lower Robe which is a full length skirt.

I apologize for bringing morality into the discussion. My main issue with the dancer outfits is not when a genuine woman wears them (when that happens I am all for said woman being allowed to do as she pleases). My issue is when a guy puts said outfits on a female character for the sole purpose of objectifying the female character as an object he can get off to. I do not feel that any genuine feminist would appreciate that, and I personally try not to dress my female characters (with the exception of female companions / npc's) in such a manner as I find it disrespectful to my sensibilities. And even in the case of female companions and NPC's, I generally only dress them in the Imperial Dancer outfit which is far less revealing than the other dancer outfits on the market. As I don't have female companions on the Republic Side as yet I have not decided whether or not I will be dressing them in such clothing or not, but I probably won't as there aren't any dancer outfits that are at all similar to the Imperial Dancers Outfit.