I'm not too experienced with PT so I'm not sure how possible it is to mitigate the damage and I can't remember if PT has a knockback, so I'll have to give some more generic suggestions (my PT was abandoned a while ago as just one too many tanks to gear) I accidentally started chapter 2 in master mode after that somehow became my default difficulty but it did have the advantage of levelling acina up to level 40 something. Try that if you want to try and get some more healing out of acina. I believe there is a utility that allows leap more often and leap interrupts a cast. I seem to recall that there is one particularly nasty cast on both bosses that needs to be interrupted and others that are just very helpful to interrupt. If you have done the scoundrel and warrior stories, remember that legacy moment has 2 extra stuns that can be used as interrupts. I can't remember chapter 2 that well as I did it late at night and haven't touched it since then. The horizon guard in chapter 7 is pretty awful and the most common way of dealing with him is to throw him off the cliff. This is why I mentioned the knockback. For the life of me I just can't remember if PT has one. Maybe you can jump off the cliff, pull him with you and then leap to one of the adds (that should be simple, right) Otherwise, you may just have to try and use legacy abilities to stun lock him as much as possible and keep the legacy light V defensive ability (I am just not remembering any names right now) to try and mitigate the first DoT that gets through. If you are tanking, you may also be able to use the aoe taunt shielding to reflect damage when Lana runs headlong into red circles/lines.

I like the idea of a rotating schedule but it would need to have enough encounters to not repeat during the week as they second time it appears there may not be so many people available to do it. On the other hand, it may encourage people to gear up alts and try different roles. Having the event bosses in GF is also a nice touch. The temple of sacrifice style operations route or solo route in the story would be interesting but would possibly defeat the purpose of making production faster. As you say, it would require more dailies to give the solo players something to do. Solo versions of the bosses also seem too painful to script for NPCs. They'd have to be really cut down versions of the boss and probably wouldn't be too fun to repeat. I figure doing the Ravager style side mission should be simple. Alliance alerts or NPCs in quest areas could give missions to help the cause eg Civilians asking for help with a local monster/crime boss/gang etc or resistance members suggesting high value targets. The raiders may have an issue with only 1 boss at a time but, as you pointed out, it's that or wait much longer for a full op. If the bosses are put together into a full op/campaign with shuttles appearing after each boss to quick travel players to the next boss then they would have a full op and around the same time as it would have taken for a full op anyway. They'd just have individual bosses to play with in the waiting period. Also, make the HM (even NiM mode depending on how much time that would take) sufficiently challenging and each one could keep them occupied for a while. If the campaign lockout was kept separate from the individual bosses, it means that players can do all the individual bosses at any time and still be able to do the full operation when it comes up in the rotation. It would allow guilds to do a quick run if they can't get everyone together long enough for a full operation (this seems to be a big issue now) or as a warmup while waiting for everyone to arrive for a scheduled progression run. With the raider community dwindling and many non-raiders hesitant to join a long operation run, having a range of individual bosses available for short groups might get more people into raiding. It seems to work quite well in events as many people who don't usually raid join groups because they are in the area when the call goes out. If the individual bosses are easy to get to through group finder or heroic style priority travel then they might be a great way to get non-raiders who either don't have time or are daunted by a full operation to join in.

Also, on a related sidenote, can I suggest putting a quick travel on TC and HoR weeklies similar to the heroic weeklies?

I'm not sure if this has been suggested at some point but I could only find 1 similar thread with the searches I used (see link towards the end). I'm not sure if this will actually improve things from a design perspective but figure it is worth suggesting. I also want to acknowledge that there is a good chance the team has thought of this but, again, no harm in suggesting it, especially if it was rejected because the players might not go for it. The short version is that the delay inherent in creating a full operation with a large sprawling map, lots of trash mobs, 5 bosses with unique mechanics and environments could be decreased by creating bosses similar to Toborro's courtyard and Colossal monolith and releasing these more regularly. These could be separate to the story but tied together with a theme (eg zakuul - zildrog or other swamp monsters, giant guardian droids, even mentor style military facilities). These could be put into a new group finder queue for all single bosses or, once a few have been released, they could then be tied into a single campaign or tour with teleports to the next boss after each boss. Single bosses have issues currently: 1. A bit of a pain to get to, particularly TC. 2. They take longer to get a group together than they do to actually do the boss. 3. They drop 1 token per 8 players. 4. A single quick boss is anticlimactic after all the effort of putting a group together. You could run both of them together but see point 1. 5. Individual bosses on separate planets need a separate environment designed for each, not really saving time on designing the artwork. This leads to possibly spending an hour of time if you join the group shortly after it starts, just to have a 1 in 8 chance of a drop and for about 10 min of play if you one shot it. This is slightly improved if you do the HM version as well but its still not brilliant. Stringing together multiple bosses into a campaign (eg a zakuul campaign for the examples I mentioned before) allows for: 1. Using teleports or group finder to get people quickly to each. This also cuts down on the clearing trash stages and allows progression groups doing the harder levels to concentrate on clearing the bosses. 2. Groups wanting a full raid can run a full set of 5 bosses. It can then be put into the regular rotation for group finder. 3. The loot should be similar to any current raid (except SNV as it has more bosses). They can be random drops still or follow a set drop table if part of the campaign. 4. The operation should take longer than putting together the group. 5. Using a unifying theme or planet for the operation, or using resources already designed for the chapter content if the bosses are done as side quests to the story chapters cuts down on having to design a full set of art resources for each boss. It should be a similar amount of design work to a full operation but just done and released room by room. Avoiding creating a brand new planet like darvannis, asation, etc could make it easier. These bosses could be included as side quests to the story like the ravagers with cutscenes OUTSIDE of the boss instance giving story and avoiding complaints of skipping cutscenes like what happens in flashpoints. Putting them in group finder would allow them to be done by any character, even if they haven't done any KOTFE chapters if it is linked into that story. A proposal for individual bosses was previously suggested here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=867952 However, this post suggested putting the bosses into the story (all the posts about the dread operations and solo players wanting to see the story show why this would be bad) and compensating for lack of gameplay with more grand design. This would result in little decreased effort but much shorter gameplay (or much more involved and difficult gameplay to draw the encounter out). I think this would still appeal to regular raiders as it gives more regular raiding content with eventually a full operation with multiple bosses but also appeals to more casual raiders who could practice individual bosses or get together groups that would bypass the group finder campaign and skip pug killer bosses if they aren't up to it yet.

1. When you subscribe, you get access to all content up to that point. You should have access to all the expansions and all Fallen Empire chapter up to now. 2. The 60 token can be useful but is probably not the best place to start. The 60 character has all class and companion story and conversations already completed and locked. You will only be able to do non class content and it is designed to begin Fallen Empire straight away. I wouldn't recommend this as it contains spoilers for the Shadow of Revan expansion. Personally, I used mine to quickly get a sorc healer to mirror my sage healer (my inquistor was an assassin) and using the legacy gear mentioned in the last post, am able to send most of my gear between the 2 characters so that I can heal an operation impside if I am already locked out on my operative. 3. Rerolling is personal preference. Levelling is MUCH faster now as you only really have to do the class missions and maybe half of the planet storyline mission (less if you do flashpoints, heroics or other side missions). Be aware that the flashpoints may be a lot harder if you jump in at a low level and get a group of all lower level players. If you want to get back into flashpoints and are still a bit rusty skillwise, doing it at 65 makes it a bit easier. Doing heroics is probably a good way to get used to your characters again. They are all possible to do with just a companion now and you get synced to the max level of the planet they are on so they still provide a bit of a challenge (more than story missions, which are really easy now) and they have really good rewards. The heroics are weekly now rather than daily but you can pick up all the heroics from any planet at a terminal on fleet and they all come with a quick travel item to teleport to the area quickly. 4. Basically, yes. Some gear is still marked as light, med, heavy and some is custom. Make sure you check before binding it to you. Otherwise, if you get a decent bit of gear drop and you don't need it on that character, you can pass it to another. With gear with slots (ie armour/hilt, mod, enhancement), you can pull out the individual components and put them in legacy bound gear (usually gotten from the reputation vendors from the various events but can also be bought from the legacy vendors on capital worlds and the adaptive vendor next to the lowest level gear vendor in the supplies section on fleet). This legacy gear can be mailed to another of your characters or put into a legacy cargo hold to be retrieved by another character. 5. This is now disciplines. There is an abandon button if you have the field respec legacy perk down at the bottom. Just choose a new discipline from the drop down list and you'll be respecced. There are then the utilities on the right hand side. You can also respec just the utilities using the button down the bottom right. 6. For a list of the post class mission content in chronological order, check: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=8326539#post8326539 I recommend going through in order at least once as it's not a bad story. Be aware that the oricon storyline ends with 2 operations that have to be done in order but that content after oricon doesn't really contain any spoilers so you can easily continue on while waiting to finish the operations. It is now possible to get a stronghold to decorate. These also allow you to have legacy storage so that you can easily share loot between your characters. The item limit per slot is now 999 so you may be able to clean up some of your old crafting gear. The cheapest strongholds are coruscant and dromund kaas if you want to check out what they are like before pouring millions into the effort. Crafting has been changed. You need to create generic pieces/components from the raw materials and then these get used in the recipes of the items you can actually use/wear. There is now space PVP in the form of Galactic Starfighter. Pressing H should bring up the hanger. Run through the training mission for it and check out the starfighter section of the forums for an idea on how it works. Have a quick browse through the tutorials if you haven't yet. They give a run down on some of the major additions to the game. 7. Flashpoints are now level 10 - 65 with all levels able to be in the same group and not requiring the tank, healer, dps configuration. You are bolstered to 65 but they get easier at higher levels due to better abilities and a fuller rotation. Some of the flashpoints that were designed for level 50 and above contain spoilers for the story if that bothers you, so you may want to run the story first. Hard Mode flashpoints are technically 50 - 65 but the bolstering is not great. Some of the flashpoints are easily doable without great gear but a few need level 65s with decent gear unless you really know what you are doing. Story mode Operations are 50 - 65 with bolstering to 65. Hard Mode operations are 65 only and require at least 216 gear.

This pack is just subscription time and coins now. It is a bit confusing because all the descriptions for these kind of deals makes it sound like you are actually buying all the expansions. In PREVIOUS packs like this, you WERE buying an expansion and some sub time but with KOTFE, there is no expansion to buy because simply subbing will give you access to all the expansions, including KOTFE. If you have already subbed and gotten access to KOTFE, this pack will just give you subscription time and coins. There is no extra 60.

I've been running around doing dailies and heroics on my sage healer with no issues. Just remember to take the utility for greater quake damage. A DPS comp is pretty easy to keep up between doing damage yourself. Not sure if that approx year break put you before or after 3.0. If it was before, then you'll have to learn the ins and outs of the new discipline through reading/practice etc anyway. The class is probably more mobile than even ops/scoundrels now with the right utilities and salvation doesn't require players to stay in the aoe to heal, so in movement heavy fights you can throw it out where players are likely to run through rather than wait for them to come to a stop. If it was after, just be aware that there was a change to force regen a while ago. Noble sacrifice is now vindicate and will not take any health. It now uses a GCD though, and increases your passive regen for 10(?) seconds after so you will actually need to throw one or two in regularly in most op/fp boss fights.

If you just want to chat to group members while running around, you can group up and stay on totally different planets. You won't get any benefits from grouping but you will be able to chat with group members. Now, if you want to run through content with others, the type of group content will determine if/how you travel. If you want to queue together for any group finder content (ie flashpoints, operations, warzones, GSF battles) then you don't need to be on the same planet/area. Once the group finder completes the group, it will pop up a prompt to transport you to wherever you need to go. If you want to run heroics with others, you will need to be on the same planet. However, each heroic mission now comes with a quick travel built into the quest. If anyone in the group already has the heroic quest in their mission log, they can go into the log, select the quest and click 'share.' This will give everyone in the group the option to accept the mission. If you have the heroic quest in your log and it is displayed on the quest tracker (the active quest list that is by default on the right hand side of the screen), it will have an icon next to it of a ship or something (haven't paid enough attention to really work out and remember what it is). Press this to transport to the quest location. If you want to run any story/solo content with other players, you will again need to be in the quest area with them but there is no quick travel for these missions. You will need to get there by ship, taxi, quick travel point etc OR if you are on the fleet you can grab a heroic on that planet from the heroic terminal and use the quick travel to get quickly to that planet without using your ship. If you want to run story content with someone and the mission is on a special storyline only space station that you can't fly to, you will need to get on their ship. Meet up at fleet or on a planet spaceport/station and the player with the quest will need to enter their hangar first. Then everyone can enter the hangar after them. They will then need to enter their ship and everyone follow them. You can also use this method if you just all want to travel to a normal planet but do it all together in 1 ship for fun or roleplaying. As for missions, you can join and complete any mission if one of the group members has it. However, only group members with that quest will actually complete and get rewarded for the quest. Group members can share any daily/weekly quests as well as heroics and side missions easily using the method I mentioned above for heroics. However, most story (including planet story missions, one time flashpoint introductions etc) missions will require you to pick them up from the NPC quest giver, and if they are part of a planet storyline, you may not be eligible to pick up the quest if you are not up to that part of the story yet.

How does mastery affect endgame gear progression? Sure, you can send legacy gear to other alts but endgame progression involves set bonuses. What's the point of sending a 6pc sage healer bonus to a commando healer? You will still have to gear up all your individual toons separately. Different specs will also still need different ratios of crit, power, acc and alac so you still have to play around to min/max your gear anyway. What will change is the random loot drops. No more will there be willpower tank gear dropping that nobody wants because there is a shadow/sin dps in the group and no shadow/sin tank. No more will someone trying to get gear in a flashpoint get nothing because all the gear was the wrong mainstat (doubly painful if the other players don't need it either because they already have better gear). I can understand those who have played all endgame content to death getting bored. I can understand a bit of annoyance at the crit/surge change because some specs have bonus crit or surge built into the discipline and you mostly want to stack the other stat (though likely this won't make too much difference). What I just don't understand is the hate and anger towards mastery. How is mastery dumbing down the game? Seriously, what difference does it make? I have heard of only one spec that really benefits from using another main stat and that's only at the very top level of gear. It is removing a level of complexity that was totally meaningless to anyone except very new players and reduces the chances of worthless loot drops. I know there are a lot of changes going on and people are worried that the game will be a lot different to what they know but please just think through what actual affect these changes will have. How will they actually change how you play the game?

http://www.swtor.com/user/ce/1yuoy5 And comic con cantina in case all 50 referrals weren't used: http://www.swtor.com/user/ce/1yuoy4

This is probably what you have heard. This is the only official information we have about story so far. If you create a NEW level 60 character, this character will not be able to go back and do the story line for that class, whether you have started the new expansion or not. It is assumed that a character starting at 60 will has already completed the story so that you can jump straight into the xpac. http://www.swtor.com/blog/operations-and-flashpoints-fallen-empire This blog entry shows what they are doing with old flashpoints and operations. These are all being changed so that they can be done up to level 65. Since it is being designed so that you level to 65 through the new expansion, it wouldn't make sense to cut off access to all this content. Since this means that some stories from before the expansion are available after starting it, we can ASSUME that previous planetary content will be available too, especially as most of the 50+ planets/areas have dailies to complete. I can't find the reference at the moment but there was a comment in the official information about the expansion that some of the old content will be reworked as elder game content for the alliances system being introduced for companions. No indication what content this will be but it may be some of the heroics and repeatable content likely to be skipped with the new 'streamlined' and 'faster' levelling experience. They have said that more info about alliances will be released closer to October. Ignore this guy. He has a history of making up 'inside information.'

Stronghold bonus is only on the base points. So the 100% bonus is giving you 250 +250 for the base values. Add this to the 250 + 750 rewards and you get 1500 points all up. The points are correct.

Looking at the original point of the thread, the OP is looking at the issue of restrictions in light of the fact that new sub only content is being added. With the new expansion pack, BW now has more carrot (51 to 65 content, sub only story, wide range of current operations, 3 good looking SHs that can't be bought on a credit cap budget) and maybe they can ease off a bit with the stick. The problem with the restrictions is that they give the appearance that a player is going to be nickel and dimed for nearly everything in the game. A F2P player has reminders EVERYWHERE that stuff is locked from them and constant reminders about the cartel market. It really does appear that the cartel market plays a bigger role in enjoying the game than it actually does. Unfortunately, the realisation that the cartel market doesn't really matter only comes from experience with the game and if the impression that new players get from their 'trial' is that they will have to constantly pay to unlock stuff, they may be turned off before they learn what it is really like. I started as F2P because I had never played an MMO and wasn't sure if I would like it and subbed pretty quickly mainly because I had wanted to try the game for ages and would likely have gotten into it for a storyline or 2 unless I REALLY hated it. However, I have been turned off many other F2P games or F2P trials because I instantly get the impression that it is a money grab. Even the posters who really hate any F2P or preferred players seem to agree that these restrictions are fairly easily circumvented. Why risk turning players away by giving them the impression that they are going to be accosted for payment in every part of the game before they get a chance to get hooked, for a couple of features that don't really matter anyway? Other restrictions are generally OK because they give impression that subbing will get you MORE and they come up later, once the player has played for a while. MORE XP, MORE content like operations, MORE story, MORE credits, CHEAPER vendor prices, MORE rewards, MORE crafting skill, all add value to a sub. Reminders that things are FORBIDDEN that you find on day 1 while looking through your character screen just give the wrong impression, similar to all those 'free' games that are more expensive that most paid games. TL;DR Players should feel like a sub gives them MORE. With so much MORE to offer them with the new expansion, why have obnoxious untickable options to spot straight away?

As others have said, try healing in tacticals first just to get used to the style. Even if no one is really taking much damage, resist the temptation to mostly dps the tactical. Keep up healing even if there isn't much to heal. You want to get used to keeping up a constant heal and managing resources and threat. If you can't keep up because you have to keep regenerating force after each fight, tell them to slow down. Good tanks will make sure their healer has enough force/energy before pulling. Also, remember that sages now need to use vindicate regularly throughout a fight to keep up force thanks to recent changes (don't use it without resplendance either). Anyone who abuses you for bad healing is a jerk and is probably also blaming you for their own mistakes. Don't feel too bad about it. Don't jump into HMs or ops until you feel comfortable keeping up regular healing but you also don't have to be so good that you can keep up a group who can't do their own jobs properly. As has been said, rejuvenate and wandering mend will heal multiple allies within 20m for a large amount. Regular salvation is also useful. Remember that allies only need to be in range to get a HOT and then can still be healed while out of range. In movement heavy fights, put the circle down where most of the group will run past it (useful for the last boss of tython). Sometimes you may also need to sacrifice a dps to keep the tank up if someone makes a mistake. Try to avoid that but generally keep the tank up, yourself and then the dps. If you manage to get all health to close to full, drop force armour on the group rather than overheal. This will give you a bit more time to react if take a big hit from mechanics. Get used to healing with easier group content and then check the guide again. Unfortunately, healing guides can't give a straight rotation or description of what to do in each fight. Healing is all about watching the health bars and the fight, watching where damage is going and mitigating it with protective abilities or reacting quickly with heals. Once you get used to the style, the guide will make more sense. Generally, for a sage especially you want to bind keys for all your moving heals at the least as well as speed and your self heal. Use rejuvenate as much as you can as it improves your other heals and use it on the tank most of the time as it gives a bonus for using it on an ally that still has a previous rejuvenate ticking. Keep any unbound abilities close to the group/raid windows so that you can quickly change targets and cast. Use healing trance regularly to keep up stacks of resplendence. These are necessary for force regen (with vindicate) and to make salvation faster. It is useful to adjust the raid window appearance to increase the size of debuffs that need to be cleansed and to make the health bar prominent enough to easily watch while navigating your own character around circles and such. As a healer you will generate low threat but as has been said, if no one attacks an enemy, you will have the most threat on it. If it is a silver or higher, cc it with your 1 min cc (force lift) or the short cc if someone is likely to attack it soon. If it is weak and likely to die in a few hits, hit it with project and a few attacks between heals. If there are multiple melee enemies after you, run to the tank and stack on him. He will probably get threat off them with a few AOE attacks. Force speed is your friend here. Make sure it is bound somewhere easy (I use X as some fights you will use it on CD). You should also be ready to use a threat dump but this will only work if someone else has actually done some damage to the enemy. I know a lot of this has been said but I hope that I added enough and put it all together clearly enough to make it worth the read. Don't give up on healing, it can be very rewarding in some of the more damage heavy fights when you keep everyone alive.

This is most commonly seen with HK who comes with level 50 gear even if you get him from collections at a low level. Since you are not level 50, he can't use level 50 gear and you get these messages. Now, why that would happen to Khem I am not sure. Likely it is a bug of some kind. If relogging doesn't fix it, open the character window, go to the companion bar and hover the mouse over his gear. Check the description for any red text. Red text on requirements will show you why it is having an issue. The only other thing I can think of is that the gear is badly damaged. Check the durability of it and repair it at a vendor (open the vendor window and repair all or go to the repair tab to select what to repair if you are low on cash). This shouldn't give this message but maybe it is giving you the wrong message for it.