You can see the item is unusable on planets your guild hasn't conquered on the tooltip before buying or crafting it, though.

Interesting. Might decide to just respec my Sage to Balance instead of rolling a Shadow or Assassin, depending on the final verdict.

There are a few reasons I can think of. The simplest is that allowing targeted teleportation like that circumvents a lot of platforming challenges and may pose unexpected issues with the environment due to engine limitations. The second is, well, there is a reason why all five classes that get high mobility actions operate at melee range (with the exception of healer Operatives/ Scoundrels). Exfiltrate/Scamper can be used to escape the 10m radius of the enemy you are in melee range of, as well as Phase Walk, but they have their own mitigations. The only this could have some workability is if it simply propelled you backwards a given distance, like a reverse Exfiltrate, but then you would have issues because of not knowing where you are going to end up.

In D&D, though (as far as fourth edition, haven't seen fifth), the fewer empty levels you had, the fewer choices you were given in most circumstances, especially meaningful ones.

You get one from finishing Hutta, and you can also buy one on Balmorra, Taris and Belsavis. Though I don't know why people think it's cute, since that hair is atrocious.

Actually, she got it instead of Power Strikes, since it's a channel. Force Blast is replaced by a melee attack of some sort.

Passing down modifications requires me to either hunt down random customizable heavy armor drops, or farm the comms or credits, as well as put up with the loss of credits necessary to rip them out of my own equipment. resultting in a lot of effort and expense for minimal gain. Once I have a companion I play well with, I'm going to shelf all the others except for conversations anyway. Might as well just give them the random drops I get a thousand of every day (slight hyperbole, but whatever) and not have to put in all that effort.

When you use the kingpin contract authorization item, after a humorous set of casts and channels, you immediately get the quest. It is possible to solo if you are sufficiently geared, but having a group within two levels of you is ideal. Theoretically, you can do as many kingpin contracts as you have characters in a week, but it is kind of time consuming if you don't have leftover contracts and BBA certificates from the previous event.

In real life, the appearance of your uniform is not based on which stat you use, though. That is the main issue with putting in more variety for the trooper companions. They would stop looking like a military unit and start looking like, well, Jedi, Cowboys and mob bosses. And I am continually surprises by people saying they had no difficulty equipping their trooper companions. My trooper was a healer, and his equipment all had alacrity and power, which were only good for Elara, and she was highly redundant to carry around. I equipped Forex with Cybertech, while Tanno and Yuun had only random drops to equip them with. Jorgan was left in the same armor as he wore in early 30s (which was already underleveled by then), and if he was lucky, he'd get a cannon that didn't have Cunning stat drop for him. Most of the gear drops were Cunning, Strength and Willpower, which were sent to alts if Blue and sold to vendors if Green. Not that I ever needed to equip the companions, because Forex was there, but if I ever wanted to, I would have been screwed. In comparison, the easiest companions to equip were the Jedi Sentinel's, because whatever drops I had could be equipped on someone, no problem.

DoTS can no longer be cleansed in 3.0 (but they can be purged by Force Shroud, Dodge and Evade).

Pretty much, yeah.

Weird, my Trooper's companions are consistently undergeared while the less overlap there is, the better I can distribute the random drops I get.

I can't say "ever", but I wouldn't expect it anytime soon, at least.

Never cared about hybrids, which are going away in 3.0 anyway. I'm far more interested in how the two advanced classes fare compared to each other when they take the tree to the cap.

What if you aren't level capped and still want to do arenas?

My Scoundrel can punch people harder than most Jedi can hit with their lightsaber. My Operative can repair SCORPIO by drowning her in kolto. Sending Lord Scourge to intimidate people somehow gives my Guardian light side points.

To be fair, some of my best PvP experiences happened when I was in a handicapped group like that, so I may have an unfair bias towards them, but like I said, I don't want to be forced to play in arenas during a normal queue either, because arena PvP is a completely different beast from the other maps, both in terms of solo skill and mindset, and in teamwork. If all the other maps are within five units of each other. Arenas sit a hundred units away from all of them, and the switch is not easy. I like arenas. But they have their place, and a mixed unbanked queue isn't it.

Disclaimer: 3.0 isn't out yet, not enough information to go on, NDAs, etc. etc. That said, it is appearing highly unlikely either side of the current Balance/Madness tree will see massive nerfs or style changes at this point, so I feel like asking about the current situation will help me gauge the 3.0 situation sufficiently that I won't immediately regret my decision when the time comes.. For RPing purposes, I want to start a Balance specced Consular or Madness specced Inquisitor. The problem is I don't know how the two advanced classes compare in this particular tree. On the one hand, I like the thought of twirling around my suicide stick and I have so far consistently performed better with melee DPS than ranged. On the other hand, I can't help but envy Sages and Sorcerers for their ability to spam TKT/ Force Lightning without any cooldown (even if it isn't efficient in group content, I can get my fill by killing mobs on Act 3 planets), and in fact am saddened my Lightning Sorcerer is worse at throwing endless bolts of lightning than Madness. Currently. all else being equal, I'm leaning towards whichever works better in mobility-intensive situations, but I'm willing to take any advice from both sides of the divide. Thank you all in advance.

The only downside to pairing Slicing with Archeology/Scavenging is the utter lack of companion gifts, meaning you need a constant infusion of those from either the GTN or alts with mission skills to maximize your affection values (you can also farm Heroics and story FPs, but that would take forever, give or take a few centuries).

Why are you discriminating against vibroswords and electrostaves?

You can get both Slicing and Archeology/Scavenging on the same character, you know.

I agree with the content of the suggestion, though not necessarily the tone it is delivered in. I consider myself a casual player when it comes to MMOs. I don't have a single level 55 character, I barely did anything past Corellia, I haven't done any hard mode flashpoints or ops content besides the occasional world boss (which you get missions for from the ops terminal so it totally counts). There is still a lot of content in Act 3 and beyond that I can't steamroll, and I haven't reverse engineered level capped artifact versions of every single thing I might possibly need, or bothered to reverse engineer lower level items for my alts. So far I have mostly enjoyed the story and tried to perfect the looks of my characters that have finished their class stories. That said, I enjoy maximizing my character's potential within reasonable limits so I don't fail despite my personal skill, and if I do fail, I either learn from my mistakes, or don't attempt again until my character is substantially better. What really turns me off from trying more involved content, however, is the immediate hostile or exclusive stance of the so-called "hardcore" players who require an exact set of stats and have calculated their ability rotation down to every single global cooldown, from fight start to finish (I'm not arguing that there aren't optimal and suboptimal builds when it come to certain content, because I don't enjoy being wrong). I enjoy trial and error in games, as well as being guided without feeling like a puppet acting on another's orders. If there are mechanics more complicated than threat levels, timely interrupts/cleanses and staying away from glowy spots in a fight, I expect that first time players can make mistakes, and only the most egregious and/or repeated ones should be punished with immediate removal. ((The only exception is ranked matches, which are less of a game/puzzle and more of a sport, and anyone who fails to compete should be required to get better, and anyone who refuses to compete properly, such as people who only queue for conquest awards or to drive up the opposed team's ratings should be punished accordingly.)) Essentially, I agree that Bioware trying to make high level group content by making them easier / simpler is not a good solution, but the ideal solution for making such content more inclusive is more tolerance and effort from both sides of the player base, which doesn't seem to be forthcoming anytime soon.

Not all non-human species have the vocal capacity requires to speak Basic. As for those who can speak Basic but have unusual sentence construction, some people (especially those in professions that breed succinctness and clarity, such as medicine or military, but not necessarily limited to them) develop sentence patterns that give all the necessary information in as few syllables as possible that can be made out clearly. This is not an impediment, merely personal habit.

Here's what I am guessing would happen if you could choose which map to queue for. 1) Almost no one would play Arena maps, and even assuming they counted as one map instead of the four-five we have right now, queue times for anyone who wanted to play arenas would increase massively. 2) Every map would have people asking only those with the exact right build and gear should be able to queue for them. 3) Each map would have a different kind of build dominate the queues for them (the only real exception I can think of would be Voidstar, due to the need for each player being able to both attack and defend competently). 4) Complaints from both casual and dedicated PvPers would go up due to each side getting annoyed at the other for ruining their enjoyment of the maps (this one already happens, but not nearly to the same degree as I think it would happen then). Now, these are only guesses based on my experiences with warzones in an RP server. Your mileage might vary. That said, I am partially in support of this idea as long as those who select maps are on different queues from those who don't (playing Arsenal in Huttball is already annoying enough without people optimizing their builds for the map), and I never have to play arenas outside of ranked again.

Practicality is cool in modern stories, science fiction and cyberpunk. I don't want practicality in my space fantasy, otherwise I start questioning lightsabers and it all goes to hell.