Sage/Sorc is still very good for PVE if you put in the time and effort like any other spec. Aim for 1900 alac or 2300 alac (little over/under is fine) 1590 acc and rest into crit. Then its just down to your rotation and operation experience. DPS between the two alacrity is basically the same, it comes down to what feels better for you at that point. Like in the video below, he's just over 2200 and explains why. I recommend this guide if you need some help jumping back into it. He goes over openers and rotations if you want to skip to that part, but its only 15min long regardless. Quite a decent watch. As far as madness/balance, alac 1400 rest into crit and of course 1590 acc. You can look up a guide on vulkk or merlyn has a decent guide as well which is what I used and went with the simple rotation he has layed out. https://sites.google.com/view/merlyn-swtor/imperial/sith-inquisitor/sorcerer/madness-sorcerer?authuser=0 ---------------------Rambling below with my personal experience recently-------------------- No idea for pvp tbh, but its quite good for pve at least. The class is going to be as good as you spec it and as well as you do your rotation like anything else. I'm not very good in terms of APM, but even with purple augs and a decent build I can parse 21.5k if I stick to my rotation good on the parse dummy. This is looking at it from an uncapped content perspective. I haven't done dxun operation in over 2 months, but I was getting 20k at the time and I've only gotten better since. I can only mostly share about capped hard mode/vet content since that's mostly what I do right now. Its going to depend on the operation and your class abilities. Like with balance (I mostly play pub side) on master/blaster hard mode I can parse 14k pretty steady, but that's just standing around mostly if you're lucky enough to get the right position. If you have to move, then its a toss up on ability timing and such. Telekenetics plays better with mobility while maintaining combat - sometimes. It just depends since you can still have some mobility while using balance/madness. Still can pull 12k to 14k depending on how much I don't mess up on some fights. But other bosses require a lot more movement and mechanics, but I never feel myself lagging behind any of the other classes unless I just don't know the fight well. One dude I raid with does 16k with telekinetics so it goes back to how well you are with executing your rotation and how well you know the fights. I click the buttons on the toolbar and not using hotkeys, so I'd probably be better if I used hotkeys. Same for multi-button mice being able to increase APMs if you get good with them since you don't waste time moving your mouse around the toolbar. Optimizing your toolbars with ability placement helps too. I'm still learning ways to increase my APMs which just takes time and practice. And knowing the fight. Like with master blaster that fight had been so long I was only doing 9k, but after a few weeks (since we're progging it) I'm up to where I mentioned above pulling 14k until we have to wipe for one reason or another. Doing the temple of sacrifice revan fight, I was low 6k and now I'm up around 9k after a week. But again I'm no worse than anyone else. Its just a lot of pausing dps to move, pushing sabers off the side, breaking the beam, etc. But the better at the mechanics you get then the higher your dps overall. There are some other specs that can do higher dps, but the rotation isn't as straight forward, or they have a trade off in some way. Either its melee vs ranged, survivability, or sacrificing movement. In the end it comes down to what you're good with. Like with doing balance in master/blaster and pulling 14k, maybe I could do better with another spec, but I'm also fully sustained on my sage. Timing my DCDs along with self heal and balance/madness heals, the healers never have to heal me during the fight and I can still maintain high dps.

I understand not wearing helmets on some species due to clipping or for realism, but there are some head slot items that should be viewable. Not being able to use the toothpick makes me sad. https://i.imgur.com/SeZk5uw.png Unlikely to get implemented this late in the game, and its probably been mentioned, but worth a shot I guess. Does anyone know if this has been addressed in any QA? Side note: Sorry for link, unsure how to post an image so its viewable.

[*]Were you able to easily locate the Login Reward system? -----Yes [*]Do you feel the addition of the Subscriber Weekly Bonus provides additional value to your subscription? -----Not really. [*]Does the reward structure feel good? Do you feel that items near the end of a calendar are of higher value? -----Not really, except for the cartel certificate. [*]In general, which rewards are the most/least valuable to you? -----Cartel Certificate most, credits/stims/xp boosts least [*]After spending some time with Login Rewards, are there any aspects of the system which remain unclear to you? -----All of my claimed rewards that came in a yellow-ish crate disappear on use. So I'm unclear as to why this happens. [*]There are 3 Login Reward calendars to go through. In general, how do you feel about this? Do you feel it will help in keeping the Login Reward system fresh and exciting? -----Since I've gotten nothing via rewards except for some valor, prefabs that came in a unique case, and some standard gifts which were low grade 3, I'd say the reward system seems to be useless. Anything claimed with "claim all" comes in a bundle case or something and they disappear on use without giving anything. I don't pvp so valor is useless to me, though it did give me skirmisher achievement so that was something I guess. The credits are useless. One flashpoint grants far more than what all of the login credit reward tokens would give. Assorted scrap parts are fairly easy to get with slicing and deconstruction. So much so that between me and my wife we have multiple 9k stacks. XP boosts are given via quest frequent enough that you don't need them from login rewards until you level through flashpoints only. All the stims are trash quality. I have no comment on the bag of dyes and artifact bag since like I mentioned, anything that I got through "claim all" turned into a yellow crate which gave me nothing. If you want to give xp boosts, make them unique login reward xp boosts that can be used along side regular xp boosts so they stack. Otherwise they aren't worth much. Find the most expensive dyes on the GTN and make then login rewards randomly. Login for a month straight (or a month accumulated) and get a character transfer, character login or auto-applied/character bound commander token/master datacron. Yeah this cuts into cartel market sales or gtn sales to an extent, but that's a benefit of logging in and actually player for something. Counter balance this by making it so you need to be logged in for an hour daily to get a login reward to encourage being active only as opposed to logging in and not playing. The login rewards are already trash, so might as well make them good, but require people to actually play. It'll be more accepted. Give certificates that will allow buying from kai zykken at a discounted rate, or buy from him when its not the weekend. I get wanting to make login rewards useful, but limited, but you have to keep in mind that most useless/semi useful things are already easy to get. This isn't a free to play game designed to choke resource access to force longer gameplay (apart from armor farming) So most things people can get if they want them en masse. So you have to give hard to get or unique items for login rewards. That's why the dyes, prefab collection, embers, light/dark side tokens, solid resources matrix's, flagship plans and cartel certificate are the only real useful bits I can think of right now - unless you pvp which would make valor useful. I don't know how useful each tier's end reward chests are since like I mentioned, it all bugged and I got nothing from those claim-all crates. So maybe they were useful, but I've no idea.

too bad no +1 option without haven't to quote you lol this made me chuckle though

thanks, I couldn't figure out how to move it lol it was just stuck in the middle off the side of the screen. I was just trying to drag it from the wrong spot.

You can confirm which does not work? Two potential solutions were proposed. I did the second which is to switch to a non-streaming launcher using the instructions on the second link provided. I can confirm this 100% worked for me. Apart from being annoyed by their new gui addition, I'm happy to be back in game

you rock! I'm back up and going in game. I passed this along on twitter in case it helps anyone else. Edit: I used the second one which was to switch to non streaming launcher

These were put in our guild bank then pull into my inventory. I put them in my implant slots and compared how much the stats went up. I swapped them around quite a few times for comparing stats. The vendor implants I already had and were augmented alacrity, and I was about to use the crafted ones for DPS augmented accuracy. When I noticed the vendor implants were granting more damage increase (despite the crafted ones having a higher power stat and the same amount of willpower), I removed the augments for testing. The point is that the willpower went up less than +222 on the crafted ones and went up more than +222 on the vendor implants even though both claim to raise it by +222 This applied in the same manner for the power stats, but in a much worse way. The vendor claimed to add +80-ish and the crafted claimed to add just over +100 when looking at the implant details. But the actual numbers showed the vendor giving more power. Just sucks that its so off. Some people use this stuff and don't know its giving bad stats. Again the only exact numbers I recorded in terms of specific gain were on the willpower and they were very off.

I have 2 implants here, one from the basic comms vendor and the other made by my wife's character. Both say they give +222 willpower, but the comms vendor is granting +233 to willpower and the crafted is granting +181 Willpower Basic Comms vendor Item: Yavin Force-lord's MK-1 System Crafted Item: Hawkeye Anodyne Awareness Motivator MK-2 Notes: -All augments were removed from items during number testing -Crafted Item had an augment slot on creation -I had 2 sets of each for testing and all numbers are the same so these don't appear to be randomly bugged items These items are also giving the incorrect amount of power stat, but I didn't record the specific numbers on that part. Anyone else know of items not crafting correct stats? Hoping to avoid this without having to eye ball stats so closely >.<

Kind of surprised no one knows this. I suppose I'll have to fork out a nasty bit of change to test it personally. Poop for money wasted. Hopefully someone answers tomorrow lol

Rant ahead - skip to the end in bold for summary No this is hard mode mechanics. Drop the add health by 20% and you're on sm - enough to get through it smoothly if you know how the fight runs, but if people aren't paying attention then you die. It gets easier the better gear you have and becomes butter. That is how ravagers is, and that's how this should be. If the mechanics are so messed up that the average guild can't get through it, then its a bit too difficult. Its supposed to be a cruise type of OPs for people that want end game, not hard for people that want more of a challenge - its not hard mode. From there is NiM if you want something harder. Getting 2.7k dps isn't the issue on the other fights since you can maintain LoS fairly easy and in a fight like Bulo, you can take adds out with a neat mechanic like the barrels. This fight on the other hand requires the team to fight the adds entirely and ignore the boss while the adds do stupid aoe damage unless the ranged stack with the melee - which defeats the purpose of choosing ranged. The majority of the videos on youtube show teams barely passing by ignoring adds and letting them stack up to 3 duplicates of adds - that's a broken game mechanic if this is how people are passing with 192 w/ 186 augs and 4set pieces from ravagers. The times I see underlurker get passed is with 16m, ironically, or when the 8man has a couple of overly geared people - meaning they have set peices from beyond lurker or 198 comms gear. Although according to the devs, 192 is overgeared since 186 is their recommendation. The odd bit is that the off-tank is useless. People are using a 5th dps. That's not what the devs had in mind - clearly defined by the second shield behind the underlurker. Except the off-tank can't grab the adds and taunting the boss is about useless since he doesn't apply any measurable dangerous debuff/dot. Not to mention the requirement they recommend for equipment transitions from SM (186) goes straight to HM(198). That shows a good unbalance in the mechanics. The actual ToS requirements are SM(192) as any OPs runner knows and that's after many deaths in practice and hoping for luck on your side to give you a point of view to dps the last add from behind a rock - assuming no set pieces from ravagers on any of this btw. The dps check is 2.5k if I remember correctly if you have 5dps and higher if you have 4. You can not get that with 186 w/ 186 augs due to having to move around to maintain group heals and getting to the cross. The adds won't die quick enough. SM ops should be something for the average gamer. If you want something harder, do HM and eventually NiM if you want an achievement to show off that no one will look at. Its bad enough with the enrage on the walkers being less than 10seconds if downed one before the other so you have to down them same time, but underlurker is just retarded. Mechanics are decent, but adds just bit too much for a SM OP which, keep in mind, should be done in 186 gear according to the devs - not sure they even include 186 augs in that since 192 gear is hm ravagers and there isn't 192 augs. Bottom line, can it be passed with 192s + augs? Yes. Can it be passed with entire team of 186 comms gear w/ 186 Augs? Probably not unless you're a hardcore gamer. Is it too much for SM? Yes. How do I know? Majority of the people geared above the recommended gear level can't pass it even after trying with their guild for some time, but can proceed on post-lurker lock outs to finish ToS and complete ravagers start to finish. Suggestion: Have a Dev team go to each server and make characters, set level to 60, equip 186 comms gear with 186 augs and pass underlurker to show them how retarded it is right now. In case some people don't know, there are sometimes variations in the OPs from one server to the next. Probably not intended, but it happens. Then after they get frustrated from failure, they raise the recommended rating to 192s and lower the add hp pools by 20% so the average player can run progression in OPs with their guild. If you have to practice and practice and practice like some hardcore gamer to get that extra 200-400dps in hopes of passing since you can't gear anymore upgrades without getting ultimate 198 comm stuff, then you're doing HM or NiM mechanics.

From digging around articles and threads I know there is diminishing returns on stats. From threads that I found in 2012, main stat gives a consistent stat increase to power, but diminishing effective return on crit since crit has a ceiling cap - depending on how you look at it. Meaning adding a second main stat won't increase crit the same amount, or it will lower after the third or forth depending on the amount of crit you have already. Does power give a consistent power boost? Meaning if I put in 1 aug and it gives +13 to dmg, will it still give me +13 to dmg for each aug when I put in 14 augs? Also, is the info I've seen from 2012/2011 still viable? I know there has been numerous tweaks since then so just wondering.

Seems I found the answer, my own laziness for not checking FAQs. I know the answer was previously missing, but it seems they updated it some time ago. If my guild becomes a Free-to-Play guild, what will happen to the items in our guild bank? The items in your guild bank remain as before, and will be accessible to all guild members who have used Cartel Coins to unlock guild bank access for their character(s), and who have the correct rank to withdraw items according to the permissions set by the guild leader. Yay!

Thats a mix of good and bad news XD If something glitches - I mean we know glitches don't exist in mmos - but I would hate to return to sub status and banks be empty lols. Oh well, thank you for the info. Feel a bit better about it being locked until I return as opposed to everything being removes :-p Hopefully same goes for stronghold.

Currently going to drop my Sub status for 2 months while focusing on study. I'm wondering how that will affect my 2 family guilds (one imp and one pub) Currently I'm the guild master due to me and my wife being the only ones with Sub status. My pops, mom, brother and sister play as well, but they've gone f2p due to infrequency of playing. When that happened the leadership went to my character from my pops. As I said, I will be dropping sub, along with my wife, while we study for up coming exams. What will happen to our guild banks, guild funds and the items held within since no one else in the guild will be Subscriber? Thank in advance for the info.

My wife found this today, and from trial and error, it looks like I'm on a decent track with my guardian. I'm a fan of building on profession strengths. Current: Defense Shield Absorb 1448 1051 804 However, I've noticed at times that certain bosses eat through defense regardless. Usually due to debuffs, but not always. Would it be a good idea to have 2 suits: 1 defense focused for most situations and 1 that's mostly absorb/shield that's good for specific bosses? Just swap them before/after boss fight. Thank you for everyone's effort that went into making this. Will be using it for my shadow tank that I'm about to slot out ^_^

Okay, So I heard this from my Dad whom has been playing much longer than me (Only a few weeks, lot of changes since I did beta lol) and I found some old articles that seem to back this up, but I wanted to know if this is still the way it happens. Now my follow up - If there is no way around it and I decide to not finish his question line, then what will the repercussions be? I know I won't be able to unlock any more main companions - Although I like treek well enough anyways. But what else will be hindered? Can I still do 55, or even 50? Will I be excluded from certain in-game content? Etc. Thank you for any assistance and info P.S. Before anyone flames me for my personal choice. Please keep in mind that I'm not attacking the system story, I'm just asking if its avoidable since I'd rather not play that part of the story line.