your gear, is largely defined by it's i-level. or ilvl if you're level 70 (and a subscriber...which i'll assume since you're posting here) have access to gear up to ilvl 242 but. it's not really worth worrying about that. at level 66 you can equip blue ilvl 220 gear. normally this does not have mods. and can be purchased very cheaply on the GTN. Heroic missions also drop this lvl gear. from lvl 220. there is crafted 228 gear. basically this is the stock crafted gear, reverse engineered to be purple, and is ilvl 228 then you're into galactic command. from T1 you'll get 228 greens, or 230 blues, or 230 purples. you can also get 230 purple crafted items. in T2 it's 236 gear. and can also access ilvl 240 crafted gear. and in T3 it's top end of 242 gear in purple. but can also be 242 in blues i think as well. so what does all this mean. not much, and again, don't stress. in galactic command, you'll fairly quickly get 230 blue gear. this is perfectly fine for most SM Ops. Heroics, Vet uprisings. and any other generic content. like Flashpoints. or whatnot. if you're in 230 blues. set bonus gear is the next logical upgrade. run SM Ops. you'll get gear tokens that can be exchanged for 230 purple set bonus gear. 2pc, 4pc and 6pc grant a bonus aspect. normally more damage, better healing/tanked. etc. if you're in 230 blues/purples. and feel stuck. can buy 240 crafted items. pvp weeklys, and conquest grant some of the harder to get mats. same with Ops ...and i think master FP. 240 crafted items. are great for left side items. ear, implant, relic etc. can also buy item mods. these can be pricey. but often times guildmates, or crafters will trade mats for them. at parity, or cheaper rates. in terms of item mods. depending on the item (armor vs weapon) it'll have a barrel/hilt or an armor plate. then potentially a mod, and enhancement. plus... weapons get crystals. tunings, are purely cosmetic as far as i know. there is some overlap in terms of which mods are actual upgrades. crafted mod. vs enhancements. sometimes there's no improvement in stats. so there's wiggle room to strategically upgrade. like the 240 crafted lethal mod is the same as the 242 crate drop lethal mod (this may be wrong. but there's examples like this. off the top of my head i can't remember them. but if you're close to BiS maybe look into this. if not...don't sweat it) all that being said. which stats you want in your gear, vary by class. or your specific build. you'd have to research your specific class. to get an idea of the best optimized load out of stats. but... unless you're hard core into raiding Ops. it's not worth seriously worrying about this. for dps. 110% accuracy. 40/60 ish on crit. some alacrity is the misc baseline. in pvp. unranked pvp you get bolster. I think it puts you to 230 ilvl. although could be wrong on that. maybe it's 228 ilvl. or 234? not 100% sure. but basically. if you don't have that min lvl of gear it'll boost you up some. but other people can obviously be well beyond that. so. it's entirely possibly you're getting outclassed on gear. PvP enthusiasts often times chase gear hard core. but in pvp. your class spec. and what utilities you have chosen. how quick you are to respond, how knowledgeable you are of your class. and if your team works together make a lot more difference than a bit of gear/stat increase. so again. worry more about learning pvp. than gear. and gear will come in time. if you're dying in groups or Ops. read up on the Op. it's much more likely you're doing something wrong, or not familiar with a Op mechanic or standing in stupid. there are sites with reviews of Op dungeons, and most flashpoints/uprisings. learning the fight mechanics along with your class and what it should be doing in those situations. should alieviate this. I've done every SM Op in 230 blues. several in 220 blues. ...am i doing the most dps possible in that gear. no. but i'm fine. and the Ops are complete-able in those gear ranges. item mods can be removed from most gear. sometimes crafted gear, or loot drops from heroics don't have mods. but anything with mods should be removable. set bonus gear. the bonus part is tied to the armoring. but save the armor shell itself. as you need that to upgrade via the galactic command upgrade dynamics. you can also give mods you've grown out of to your other characters via legacy storage/legacy gear. so... is your main in 230 purples now. could conceivably pass along 230 blues to an alt. moving to 240 gear? get a command crate with a duplicate item... take it anyway. strip the mods. and use them in other gear slots. or for other characters. hope some of that helps

why do people post this crap in the new player's forum? if you sub, contact support. why come here looking for attention

as far as i remember, the current top end crafting mats aren't added to the jawas for several months. like 6-8 seeing as it's only been 2 or so. this is sorta just petulant whining. plenty of things to do with jawa junk. and lots of ways to get crafting mats. if you absolutely abhor having jawa junk laying around. just sell it on the gtn.

I appreciate this post. as a fellow decoration junkie, I too wish there was some better source of cartel certs. that being said. the slot machine, isn't that great of a way to get them... i guess it just remains, a sort of inevitable way to get them.

to answer some of your questions. gearing: don't worry about it. I honestly don't know why so many people freak out about gear in this game. The question is, what do you want to do? if the answer is... stuff other than top ranked PvP and hardcore NiM mode progression gearing is dirt easy. how easy? well. at lvl 66 you gain access to ilvl 220 welfare blues. so all your old gear is outclassed the instant you ding 1 level. once you hit lvl 70. you can partake in galactic command. what's galactic command? 1 menu. 1 exp bar. do stuff, you get cxp. fill up that exp bar you get a loot crate. it will have 3-4 items (5 now with cmd tokens) 1 will guaranteed to be gear. there's 3 tiers. the tiers of gear in crates are determined by your cmd rank. 81 is the threshold from T1 to T2 181 is the threshold from T2 to T3 (or maybe it's 91 & 191 ...i forget) but basically. you get 20 or so cmd ranks. you'll be in a mish mash of 230 blues and purples. at which point 98% of the game is perfectly doable. don't like RNG loot crates. well. Ops drop gear tokens to turn into purple set peice gear. PvP pays out widgets to buy the tokens Ops would drop. every time you fill up that cxp bar. you also get cmd tokens. you get these a lot. These are currency to convert the ops gear token into actual gear. Can also buy cxp boost consumeables with them. Don't like Ops? well. don't sweat it. Can do anything in the game and earn Cxp. Lots of activities pay out cxp in really good amts. PvP, GSF, uprisings, even farming heroics all pay out cxp. How fast you earn it depends on what you're doing... how much you care to "grind" at it. vs. what you really want to spend your time doing in the game. ...people bash their head against a wall moaning about a grind, while they could be playing... hell can redo solo story content for cxp. most anything in game, progresses you along that single cxp bar. to get the crates. sometimes the RNG is annoying. and you'll drive yourself crazy if you stress over ...trying to get a specific item from RNG. just go with it. you'll realize nothing is stopping you from playing the game. And if you're gear is lagging. there's a **** ton of crafted gear that's hella easy to supplement your gear with. as well as the Ops items and PvP gear option. when 5.0 hit. they cashed people out of their crystals. now any vendor that used crystals as currency sells their stuff for credits. there's no pvp gear anymore. and no more Ops gear vendors, like their used to be. there are new token vendors. added back very recently, but they're in a different spot. i don't quite get the back handed complaining about having to subscribe to post on the forums. cause, jutst as a heads up. Ops. and galactic command, are all gated to paying customers. So if you're not planning on staying subscribed. don't really worry about gear anyhow. look into crafting. STAT

normally the regular quest tracker, quest turn in icons light up for mission box turn in areas. (the tracking aspect can be turned on via the L or quests menu. the map/mini map legend markers for stuff on the map. are toggle-able via the map (m) itself) as a general rule, if you're doing heroics, the Heroic terminal is normally near the spaceport. if these are event quests, know that if the time is up on the event, all the event turn in/npcs disappear

Some other misc advice. short names, or anything that even remotely mimics something common will be gone. Some tricks I've used. Foreign language words. the more obscure the language the better. a friend of mine, often makes characters that have names, that are curse words in serbian. I have a flame spec bounty hunter named Aish Tamid, which is a jewish concept of "eternal fire" I have other characters with native american words for things. Or names from the bible... "Jael" is one of my favorites. But if that doesn't work. I tend to go with sounds, that stretch into longer words. My newest bounty hunter, I wanted to make her a cyborg, in robot part armor. I kept thinking of Mechs or mechanical names. But nothing I wanted was available. Then I blended it with a feminine name. that toons name is Meklinora ...but in a certain sense. having a sound you like. just play with that, add some stuff to it, morph it into a name somehow. If you're dead set on a certain name. can do tricks with ascii characters. you'll have to look up the alt code ascii codes for those symbols. but generally speaking.... a fancy squiggly B is avail by holding down alt, and hitting a series of numbers to generate that symbol. this can make it a pain in the *** for people to communicate with you, but if you absolutely have to have a name. it can be an answer. Also. use the random generator. understanding that it only generates random strings, not available names. I've gotten quite a few mmo char names from random gen names i tweaked a little.

Can spend your time whining about a system they aren't going to do away with. Or benefit from many of the new changes to it, that make the system, pretty easy to excel in

it's unlikely the majority of people will go nuts with the bonus. 200 cmd tokens, isn't insignificant. this will prevent that extra 100% from being too prevalent. plus the general ignorance of lots of people not even knowing it's available. I don't see why people need to be paranoid. It is what it is. it's a cxp boost event. meant to help people advance in cmd rank, in advance of the roll out of the new daily area/Op boss.

free 2 play. is the 1-50 story content. nothing else. You'd have access to the story, planet quests, and flashpoints, and some PvP. strongholds and GSF subscribing, even for a single month will grant you access to all expansion content up to date. So... all expansions up through kotet. lvl cap of 70. but no access to galactic command/Ops this is the swtor reddit link for FAQ on f2p vs subscriber ...might be a tiny outdated with 5.0 gating Ops to subscriber only https://www.reddit.com/r/swtor/wiki/f2p

as a general rule. don't listen to people whining and complaining about this or that class. If you've never played that class before, even if it has been changed/nerfed you'd have no way of knowing. And often times, it's tiny changes or max optimization 2nd place over another class. So it's not like any class, can't do what it's supposed to do. If the idea of a class appeals to you try it out. If one class over another feels boring to you. Don't force it. You could also try doing something other than gunnery. Gunnery by and large is the ...simplest of commando specs. but also. not all classes play the same and as others have mentioned, a lot of classes don't really come into their own until they acquire key utilities or spells. I know lightning sorc can be really annoying until you get some of the mana efficiency abilities that make going balls out with lighting more doable... I'd personally recommend the healer comp. what little speed you may gain from running a dps comp. you tend to lose having to stop to heal yourself after every fight, or nearly dying after larger mob pulls.

it's likely the best will still be Vet Uprisings. Vet fractured can be completed in 8-10 minutes. for a base of (i think) 1040 cxp. 250% boost ...if you add onto that. the 100% cmd token boost. legacy boost. dvl victory boost, daily bonus, or whatever else. can be anywhere from 2600-3700+ per run. 15k+ -- 22k+ an hour can be done with as little as 2 people. but prob faster with 3 dps 1 heals If you have a stealth class, or decent companions. Master mode quick runs on (short) story chapters seem to be paying out really high cxp as well. not sure on the time it takes though.

it depends. the 100% is references as the static, default amt. so.. if you did something. and it paid out 1000 cxp. that's the 100% If your cxp boost equation was. 100% + 250% event bonus. then you'd be at 2500 or 250% of normal. now... if you had 100%-base + 250% event + 100% boost thinige. then you'd be at net gain of 350% of "bonus" so... 3500 total cxp. or in a more game centric sense/example every time you do a warzone, you're likely to ding a lvl. (as 1k cxp from a warzone... isn't that uncommon) if it's base +event+ boost+ whatever extra (dvl bonus etc) OR probably similarly. every fractured run will be at cmd rank. ...or at least that's what i'm curious to see if is possible, as that will be *******. dinging a cmd rank every 8 minutes or so. etc

also. as another idea/feedback. if we're going to be netting a cmd crate every 30 minutes or less. Is it possible to bump up the default stash/storage of the cmd stash even at current levels, I horde a little too much in my cmd stash, and often worry about going over the limit. mainly it's schematics, i need to dbl check if i have already, and don't want to waste the time dbl checking it so often.

As just a little shout out. Please add those bundles of unassembled components to the GSF daily and Weekly as well. ps. GSF always appreciates any and all attention you give to it.

in a general sense. this is doable. my very first character, way back when was a sith/sorc healer ..i ran Khem Val as a tank all the way through 1-50 content. That being said, realize this will present some challenges. And also. just because you're "heals" doesn't mean you can't DPS. In fact, it behooves you to learn/practice ways to toss in some DPS or assistance during combat, regardless of whether it's other live players or your companion doing the fighting. As a force healer, you should have CC spells. which you can use to lock down 1 mob, or stuns and interupts to disrupt what any particular mob is doing. --as an additional bit of advice. Focus target is a great feature to learn/use. with it. can be focused on healing your comp or doing other stuff, and still see what a boss or whatever you asign as focus is doing/casting champion/elite mobs sometimes are immune to these. but sometimes even tossing a simple DoT spell, or the ocasional dps spell at something helps. I always tended to use my companion in tanking mode, to keep as many things off me as possible... when things come after you. remember you have those same stuns/CC spells. as well as knockback... and force speed. to get away from things. and bubbles/protection spells to protect yourself with... this is called "kiting" or... making it so something that's after you, can't get at you. if the mob is ranged. this is harder. but if it's ranged. line of sight becomes more useful. where you hide behind something, forcing a ranged attacker to have to move, or come closer to you. all these things that all being said. if you're at some part of the game. where you're denied access to your companion. boss fight, or something. (if your companion is stunned or knocked down or whatever. you have a cleanse spell.. that removed that stun/cc/knockdown usually) but it can be difficult fighting a tough boss without a companion. it's at these times, really using all your available skills is important. using whatever bubble, or defensive spells you have. self heals. positioning. and dps spells. you can solo things, even as heals. but it takes some finese. my advice. ...practice this a little. set your companion to passive. take on weak mobs, then silvers, then a gold, see how it feels to play alone. so you're not shocked or caught off guard on the rare times the game forces it on you. I can remember fights, where all i did was slap DoTs on a boss. run around some object. ...putting a slowing effect on them. and dropping some AOE and instant attacks when possible. The poor stupid boss could only chase after me crippled. as i force sped away. turned around and blasted it. bubbled up. Dot-ed the boss back up, and repeated the process. --the idea i guess is just thinking differently and utilizing anything and everything at your disposal. when in doubt. ask for help. if the content allows a party. even story quests. sometimes allow you to make a group and bring friends.... doesn't do much for them, but they can certainly help you kill something you're having trouble with. medpacs, stims, etc. also can help in a pinch if you're fighting something tough. Or as a last ditch option, can switch out your spec to dps. for a key fight. if need be... then go back to being heals

So for their to be fraud, here's some info from the legal definition of advertising fraud (USA i would presume) To establish that an advertisement is false, a plaintiff must prove five things: (1) a false statement of fact has been made about the advertiser's own or another person's goods, services, or commercial activity; (2) the statement either deceives or has the potential to deceive a substantial portion of its targeted audience; (3) the deception is also likely to affect the purchasing decisions of its audience; (4) the advertising involves goods or services in interstate commerce; and (5) the deception has either resulted in or is likely to result in injury to the plaintiff. The most heavily weighed factor is the advertisement's potential to injure a customer. The injury is usually attributed to money the consumer lost through a purchase that would not have been made had the advertisement not been misleading. False statements can be defined in two ways: those that are false on their face and those that are implicitly false. Types of False Advertising Today's regulations define three main acts that constitute false advertising: failure to disclose, flawed and insignificant research, and product disparagement. The majority of these regulations are outlined in the Lanham Act of 1946 (15 U.S.C.A. § 1051 et seq), which contains the statutes that govern trademark law in the United States. Failure to Disclose: It is considered false advertising under the Lanham Act if a representation is "untrue as a result of the failure to disclose a material fact." Therefore, false advertising can come from both misstatements and partially correct statements that are misleading because they do not disclose something the consumer should know. The Trademark Law Revision Act of 1988, which added several amendments to the Lanham Act, left creation of the line between sufficient and insufficient disclosure to the discretion of the courts. American Home Products Corp. v. Johnson & Johnson, 654 F. Supp. 568, S.D.N.Y. 1987, is an example of how the courts use their discretion in determining when a disclosure is insufficient. In this case, Johnson and Johnson advertised a drug by comparing its side effects to those of a similar American Home Products drug, leaving out a few of its own side effects in the process. Although the Lanham Act does not require full disclosure, the court held the defendant to a higher standard and ruled the advertisement misleading because of the potential health risks it posed to consumers. Flawed and Insignificant Research: Advertisements based on flawed and insignificant research are defined under section 43(a) of the Lanham Act as "representations found to be unsupported by accepted authority or research or which are contradicted by prevailing authority or research." These advertisements are false on their face. Alpo Pet Foods v. Ralston Purina Co., 913 F.2d 958 (D.C. Cir. 1990), shows how basing advertising claims on statistically insignificant test results provides sufficient grounds for a false advertising claim. In this case, the Ralston Purina Company claimed that its dog food was beneficial for dogs with canine hip dysplasia, demonstrating the claims with studies and tests. Alpo Pet Foods brought a claim of false advertising against Purina, saying that the test results could not support the claims made in the advertisements. Upon looking at the evidence and the way the tests were conducted by Purina, the court ruled not only that the test results were insignificant but also that the methods used to conduct the tests were inadequate and the results could therefore not support Purina's claims. Product Disparagement : Product disparagement involves discrediting a competitor's product. The 1988 amendment to the Lanham Act extends claims for false advertising to misrepresentations about another's products. (so we'll set aside for a second, that this scenario really doesn't fall into those 3 main categories ...maybe a stretch for the very first one. but you're already way out on a limb there) So first you'd have to prove that there was advertising. Or what you're claiming is officially or any sort of advertising? Or that there is an implicit guarantee of all things listed being in a pack. I mean if there's just one "may include" or any such language. you're basically screwed. when i looked on swtor's site for the newest cartel pack, there's very few items listed. If the OP is claiming that mouse over tooltips, or ingame info-tip menus constitute "advertising" I dunno how easy a sell that would be. then that the deception was sufficient enough to affect the purchasing decision, ...even further a substantial population of potential buyers. -given that it's fairly known that items sometimes aren't in packs, and data mining, and community info disseminates what is and isn't in packs fairly quickly. this might also be a major hurdle. that the transaction was interstate commerce. which might be hard if cartel coins aren't really money and you're doing so within a game. Buying the cartel coins, is def commerce, but using them ingame? and then that someone was injured or put out by the false advertising? so what is the OP claiming, well wasn't specific, but it's obvious that from time to time some items don't make it into cartel packs. so we'll just go with that being a given. Now... were they advertised? did this affect your decision to buy a cartel pack? the specific advertising promise seems hard to prove. Nothing is "promised" to you in cartel packs. everyone knows they're RNG. You would have to prove that an item was not in a cartel pack with any chance to get it. Even if the item was listed, but never was paid out, they could just claim it's RNG or was an internal error or any number of things that might undermine you right there. then the commerce clause. online and digital currency are murky areas. which i'm sure are bound by eula and tos. the cartel market site has a hefty, warranties section where swtor absolves themselves of all liability for use of the digital currency. and it's safe to assume, you have no real ownership of the cartel coins. and then injury? how do you prove this? Or what injury are you claiming? that you spent money on cartel coins but had no chance to get a digital item with no value? if you used cartel coins to buy a cartel pack. did you get a cartel pack? and get items from it? is that the expectation of doing that activity? was your expectation to a guarantee of a specific item reasonable? i wouldn't be losing sleep over this if I was anyone at bioware.

also, as general advice. this game isn't hard. nothing about it is overly difficult, it's built to be played. when you encounter something you don't understand, or is giving you trouble, this attitude you have to come here and rant and rave at the Devs is also part of your problem. take a little responsibility for your own enjoyment of the game, and the time you spend in it. you could have probably gotten the info on how to best this fight, with a polite and simple question tossed out on fleet chat. or. lead off with asking the question: how do you beat the Vaylin fight? Or what am i doing wrong? don't immediate blame your failings on other people. It just makes you look stupid. Your largest problem in this instance is your attitude. If you can't find anyone ingame to give you a little advice, there are websites, youtube videos and other online resources for any major aspect to the game.

hate to be an ***. but at aprox $40 per hypercrate. could have gone online and bought credits in excess of 200 million. also, i've seen those polesabers for sale much cheaper than that. just because someone lists things on the GTN doesn't mean that's the price. you can either cry and whine about someone with more than you, or find a hustle/angle that gets you what you want

RGB lights. I love having themes for my strongholds. One of the best things for mood is lighting. My yavin IV stronghold, i'm spending a fortune trying to find red/imperial/sith-y lights. And there's actually a decent selection of stuff out there for this. I just wish there were more, Or that these items weren't rare. Or that the "common" lights that you get. maybe had the ability to set the color.

gaining the legacy from your previous "main server" only happens when you transfer from that server to another. if you take a legacy 50 toon from shadowland to harb. harb gets the upgraded legacy. if you haven't done that process for ebon hawk. your ebon hawk toons will just have whatever legacy they naturally have.

how exactly can you solo PvP? suicide yourself over and over again? that being said. GSF has a steep learning curve. but it's not insurmountable, there's lots of really good resources out there, but takes some effort, and patience. GSF daily/weekly pay out fleet coms if you honestly can not stand GSF then yeah. the on rails... space combat missions obtained on your personal starship, are the only other option also. you may want to consider finding a cybertech crafter, or making a cybertech alt. I don't know exactly what ...top end crafted spaceship mods are. vs the fleet com bought ones. but i know i found some 390 recipes from slicing just the other day. So maybe you can save your coms for only the last tier of upgrades for your ship and craft ones that are also pretty good. to let you do most space missions, to earn more fleet coms. faster... etc

might also help to increase the loyalty of your companion. their loyalty rank, or overall presense increases the effectiveness of the companion. ie. if your companion is still lvl 1 but you're on a planet for lvls 35-40 (or whatever Hoth is) it's not surprising it's getting it's *** kicked. can buy companion gifts. the vendor on fleet. the 200credit gift. can buy like 1500 of them for couple 100k. which will bring your companion to lvl 25+ Or. just be sure to have your compaion out when you do conversations and try and gain some loyalty from convos. there's also legacy perks, that increase the loyalty gain from gifts. and i think conversations

it's personal preference. I have a lot of alts. Often time, I make an alt with an outfit in mind. i also have the 50% exp bonus armor from DvL so all my new char wear that. so i'm almost locked into doing modded gear. I like the breaks, it sort of builds into my character. Where I have to go back to fleet. either buy mods, or log on my crafter alt. and make mods/relics etc etc etc but... do you need to play the game this way? no. Can probably get buy on item drops. maybe do a few heroics along the way. the 1-50 content isn't that difficult. and in general it's best to get into the later game content faster if gearing is your concern. So my advice. If you like an outfit, but don't really want to bother with the hassle of mods. look into the costume tab aspect of swtor. If... maybe building in downtime is a healthy thing for you . consider the value of that aspect of moddable gear. If those answers are No... and your impulse is. i'd rather just level without any hurdles as possible. don't do moddable gear.

there's no real difference in servers anymore. player populations are such that dedicated RP servers are sorta a moot point. there's a handful of generally regarded "best" servers. depends if you're north america ...vs europe/anywhere else other threads might be better at answering this. harbinger, generally is regarded as having the highest population in NA. but it's also attracted a lot of toxic people. It's also west coast. If you're easy coast, Ebonhawk, or shadowlands are both really good options. Ebonhawk especially if you like RP EU ... not positive which one (wanna say red esclipse ..but that might be wrong). but i know there is info out there on which is best.