I can solo any solo content in 208 on the ACs I play well so the most challenging would be all 10 rounds of the EC. On other ACs, I can't do it unless I'm in higher level gear; especially those ACs that require I use my comp as a tank or I can't do my job properly. There are ACs that I wouldn't be able to do the "One and Only" achievement for SF and hence can't earn the title for. In addition to this, I like to solo TPFs for fun and mounts/decos etc which I can do on the ACs I feel I can play very well and in better than 216 gear. Even if all of this was possible for every character I play in 208, I'd still rather have better gear so I can take it a little easier in such content and not have to micromanage my comp. I want to earn the gear now so I can take it just a little easier later. You might thinks this is a L2P issue but really it's just a quality of life issue and we still don't know just how hard Master level chapters and Uprisings will be. TBH, I might be aiming for BiS with Set Bonus but I'll probably settle for whatever the equivalent of 220 will be and I want to be able to optimise. When I augment all my gear with crit and alacrity, I end up with a ton of endurance I don't need so the last thing I want is lettered mods and endurance heavy enhancements/ears/implants etc. And even if none of the above applied, what does it matter if top gear is a goal of mine? It's my game and it's what I want to work towards. I just don't want to repeat the very long process 20+ times just so I can enjoy playing all my characters.

This is a mistake. 1) Once again, you're locking exotic mats behind content that not everyone enjoys doing which goes against your goal of letting us play the way we want. I PVP casually; don't really do ops at all. I'm not grinding that content for mats, it would drive me nuts. I realise that the most difficult content should give the best rewards but crating mats should be available in all types of content, including difficult solo content. This was a mistake in 4.0 and it's a mistake now. 2) You're not letting us craft at the same rating as whatever we just RE'd which means eventually all alts will have to do the CXP grind to get to whatever gear goal the player wants for their characters. 3) Assuming we take this route to gear alts, the only way to speed the process up is to craft the left side (assuming you share amour sets, MH/OH in legacy gear) which means taking at least a cybertech, artificer and biochem through the slow way so that can get the high level gear to RE and craft (by grinding one of two types of content whether you enjoy it or not or by spending a fortune on the GTN) and only once you have these three crafters at a high command level and then they have been lucky enough to get the right piece at least twice (one to wear the other to RE) can your other alts start disintegrating their crates to speed through the GC levels. If you want to gear up disciplines other than DPS or want a separate PVP set (and you should if you play it seriously), you'll have to open twice or three times as many crates to get all the different pieces you want and farm or purchase three times as many units of exotic mats to craft everything. My suggestion would be make crates BoL or add them to the item stash so low GC level crafters can RE the left side and also make exotic mats obtainable in many different ways as long as the content is difficult. You said that Master level story content was going to be really hard, beating the 10th boss in the EC is hard if you're still in tier 0 gear. It's definitely more difficult than storymode EV/KP with bolster which DOES drop the mats so add it to either of them or Veteran level Uprisings or HMFPs. Secondly I suggest that the RE'd mods and schematics are at the exact same rating as the gear that dropped from the crates. Some of us have 20+ characters and this all too much. I'm fine grinding up say one shadow and one mara to kit out 80% of my characters and having the rest in non-bonus gear supplemented with crafting but as it stands I'll probably just leave them on the shelf which is a shame because I liked a lot of those characters.

Eh, I'm gonna try it. It only takes a couple of hours to get to 60 and the character won't be wasted because it's one of my favourite ACs to play. I can still use him to do extra heroics and whatnot to bring some money in to my fledgling new server. At some point or another I will transfer over a character from my main server and all of this will be moot anyway. I'm just waiting for a cheaper transfer fee and I also want to finish off some reputations.

So two conflicting answers. I guess I'll just have to try it. It might sound like I'm being lazy but I have over 20 characters on my first server and I'll probably fill up this one as well. I don't really mind putting in the work but doing class stories is one of my favourite things to do but I also keep looking at my empty buff tray and thinking about doing EC without the presence bonus and I know I'll feel the need to rush through the content just to get all the benefits which will spoil it for when I'm ready to sit down and take my time with them. I will be so fed up with them that I won't create any new characters for ages.

Thanks for replying but I know all that. I should probably have been clearer but I wanted to know if you get credit for completing the chapters as if you did them. The thing I'm interested in is the companion buffs and class buffs. I know I could quickly whizz through the stories but I actually like to cycle through story content so it is always fresh. If I did the knight story to completion really fast and spacebar everything, it would still be fresh in my mind and I wouldn't fancy playing the story again for a while if that makes sense so I don't really want to do that. If no-one has the answer then I guess I'll just have to try it and see.

So I decided to start on up a new legacy on a new server and I'm playing through some classe stories while 2XP is happening and I wondered what happens when I ding 60 and start playing KOTFE. When the original chapters complete, do you get achievements and, more importantly, the class buffs, heroic abilities and companion bonuses to presence and such as if you did all the story content? I like all the class stories but there are some I don't really feel like playing through right now and as I am hitting 65 on Balmorra/Taris I wondered if I could just jump straight to KOTFE and give my legacy a jump start.

Finally one person agrees with me! I litterally just made a knight and I wanted to do a DPS Guardian for a change but I keep thinking about that stupid baseball bat saber on my tank guardian and I know I'm going to end up with another sentinel instead.

To answer the OP, it depends on what your definition of "casual" is. If you mean a player who only does solo story content (and plays on storymode with the upcoming difficulty tiers) and a few easy heroics for a couple of hours a week, then they don't need BiS gear and they are unlikely to get a full set for many months, if ever, before 6.0 drops in presumably a year's time. If by "casuals" you mean anyone who isn't a progression raider or anyone that is a solo-only player, then there are absolutely those that would benefit from playing in BiS gear. People who grind out EC and SFs or really challenge themselves with solo Tacticals and HMFPs would, in the first two examples be able to do these a lot quicker and with fewer headaches in BiS gear and in the case of the last two examples, a very high level of gear is needed to even get past the first set of trash, let alone complete the entire FP. BiS is basically required to even consider solo-ing a HMFP for all but the most exceptional 1% of players. I've never been able to solo a HMFP in my mix of 216/220 crystal and crafted gear but I have done a quite a few tacticals solo (with no extra reward, just for the fun of it). We also don't know how hard the highest difficulty level of story content is going to be. My guess is that it won't require BiS gear but will still be very challenging and so reward plenty of CXP so solo payers can get the best gear to make the job easier on future runs. And that's the point of Galactic Command from what I can tell. You do the hardest content you can to gear up as quickly as you can to make that content less of a slog so you can grind out even more CXP and get access to even more rewards. The gear isn't the end-goal, it's a means-to-an-end to either be able to do content that you wanted to do but were previously unable to or to grind out content quicker so you can get access to the other loot that drops in the crates. I haven't formed an opinion about the RNG aspect yet (I can't predict the future and neither can anyone else) but to me, GC feels fresh and interesting at a time when the game was growing a little stale so I'm looking forward to it. I'm not discounting the chance it could be an unmitigated disaster as all change comes with risk but we'll just have to wait and see.

Basically what I was going to type. Thanks

"Exalted..." Seriously though, what's the point? They all look exactly the same with slight variations of skin colour. They would have like 3 sliders.

I sold one a month ago for 25-ish mil. Can't remember exactly. I really wanted to keep it but I'm always broke in this game and selling it meant I could buy an armour set that I thought I'd never be able to afford. I was competing with a couple of sellers at the time because they were one of the items in the CM DvL packs. If you're patient and wait for them to go off direct sale, you could probably get a lot more.

The current XP boost (double) is only until the launch of 5.0 which starts at the very end of November. They had a couple shorter time periods of double XP since the 12 x XP boost they had before 4.0 launched. Saying that, there IS a permanent boost to purple missions (class and planet story arcs) so that you can level 1-65 just by doing those missions and nothing else although I don't know what the exact number is. In PVP, sorcs and sages are unanimously seen as OP by the community but as the poster stated above, they are about to be nerfed in 5.0 although probably will still be a top class with all their utility. At the moment though they are definitely FOTM. I hate playing them though so I use sins/shadows for PVP. They have great CC, mobility and stealth which is getting a big buff in 5.0 if rumours are to be believed. This all might just be my personal preferences talking though.

TOR Fashion has a helpful page that shows how the different ACs can be identified by how they hold their weapon: http://torf.mmo-fashion.com/advanced-class-visual-recognition/#Guardian Juggs hold their sabers similarly to (but slightly differently from) sorcs/sages. Guardians hold the blade upright with both hands. I think it looks dumb hence the thread.

You are correct that I have never wielded a sword before in my life. I trust you know what you are talking about. I only really care because I think it looks cooler but if you want a semi-technical reason why they might keep one hand free, then it's because they channel force powers through their hands. Their free hand is like their shield hand. Also, a lightsaber is more of a rapier than a longsword (or even a classical sabre) which is a cut-and-thrust, lightweight duelling sword. That's another thing that bugs me about the stance. It makes the the lightsaber seem really heavy but they are not as the hilt is the only part that weighs anything and it's not like it's made of iron. Most of it seems like circuity and a crystal in some space age (presumably lightweight) metal casing. Many casings are little more than frames holding the various bits and bobs together.

In my opinion it looks like they don't know what to do with the weapon as if someone just gave it to them and said "Fight!". The way they hold it out in front of them it looks like they're scared it's about to explode. I know there will be people who would be upset with the change so even if it was a 50/50 split, you probably wouldn't change something that has been this way since launch but I'm on a suggestion roll (not really, I just made a CM armour suggestion) so I thought I'd give it a shot

Nomar Organa's armour please. The chest piece is unique as far as I can tell from searching (and others helping me search) TOR Fashion and Collections and I'm not the first to ask in the general section whether it's available in the game. Here's a screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/g6gWzmx.jpg

Gah, this is so annoying. I'm sitting here deciding whether to spend real money on something that isn't what I really want and what I really want is just sitting there is the game but I can't buy it I'm going to make a suggestion in the CM thread.

I was just looking at the sanctified caretaker set and decided I would use that instead if I couldn't find anything closer. Unfortunately no-one is selling it so I'll have to spend real money to get it but at least I CAN get it straight away if I want unlike some of the other sets I have my eye on which are selling for 65 mil just for the chest. I didn't realise that belt had the butt pillow. Might have to see how that turns out. Oh and lol at "barf bucket"

No that's great! It's basically everything but the chest piece although they are similar. Edit: I'm gonna trawl Collections in a bit but after striking out on TOR Fashion I'm not holding out much hope.

So I feel like creating a new knight and I am playing through the inquisitor story now and I basically want to recreate the same look as of one of the characters, Nomar Organa. Warning 4K pic. Link: http://i.imgur.com/g6gWzmx.jpg I've seen the boots drop before at late levels but I'm not sure I've seen that chest piece without a hood. I'm not sure about the gloves or belt at all. Would any eagle-eyed player be able to help me out? Thanks if you can

If I choose to take part in the war (and I want to) will fighting for either side affect my character's personal alignment? I've seen the question pop up a number of times and I watched the stream but it doesn't seem to be clear. The reason I ask is my favourite Pub character to play is my DS1 shadow. I love the story beats where characters mention the darkness in him and I could be wrong but from playing many different characters there does seem to be times when DS5 or LS5 have different dialogue compared to DS1 or LS1. I also love the fact that he has sith-like eyes at DS1 but is not completely corrupted. If I take part in fighting for the dark side with him, he'll be DS5 in no time and I don't want that. I would have to turn the corruption off which is an important part of his character or let him show DS5 level corruption which doesn't really represent who he is. I also don't want NPCs calling him out for being completely taken over by the dark side when he isn't although to be fair I don't know for sure if there are dialogue flags that check the alignment level rather than the binary DS/LS check. My only option to keep him at DS1 would be to constantly switch which side I am fighting for which means I am contributing nothing to the war and the whole exercise becomes pointless and a bit annoying to be frank. It took me three tries to get a consular that I really wanted to play but when I found the perfect race, look and started making choices that really fleshed out his story, I was really glad that I persevered. If there are no dialogue checks beyond simple DS/LS, then I don't really care what the number says on my character sheet but then I'm still left with the sith eyes issue which I'm not willing to give up so my suggestion would be that either fighting for either side does not affect alignment or that an addition is added to the outfit designer slot that lets you choose the level of corruption shown, which to be honest would be a good inclusion to the game anyway. If neither of these happen, I guess I won't really be taking part in this new feature which is a shame because it looks like lot of fun.

It's actually not my main server. I'm just trying to get eternal level on DVL again so I can have two sets of the levelling armour because I'm greedy. People seem nice though.

Me too and I also made a pointless thread at the same time So annoying.

Title says it all. Why this one server?

As Mubrak said, I can confirm there is no level sync in SM. I did it yesterday and the whole FP was a walk in the park even though I purposely aggro'd enemies that were ignoring me. I had the same problem with the final boss and my comp standing in the goo so I had to set him on passive a couple of times to get him out but apart from that it was easy.