How important are augment slots on Implants? When the game was new, and when we were all hitting 50, those lvl 49 aug slotted implants were top notch. The game has matured some, and those same lvl 49 augment slot implants are not top notch any longer. I'd say that if augment slots from Implants (and ear pieces) were removed, the biggest impact it will have is on being able to craft Columi implants w/aug slots. I guess my point is: Isn't Columi going to be less important after the patch? Also, have they stated that Implants can no longer contain augment slots? (I sure didn't see that in any patch notes). It is hard to imagine though that crit crafting an implant or earpiece has the end result of two augment slotted items. For all we know, that could be the case too. Until it is confirmed by a PTS player or a Dev, we simply don't know.

I agree that +Critical is leaps and bounds better than +Efficiency. I choose my crew skills based on the +Crit modifiers of the companions for that class. However, +Efficiency is useful. Like the above poster said, it can really add up over time. What to do.. hmm.. Off the top of my head I say that each companion should come with a +Crit and a +Efficiency. No companion should have both. My companions with dual +Efficiency are my least favorite. In a perfect SWToR world, we would be able to customize our companions crew bonuses, as well as their skill trees (one of my favorite things in the KoToR games.) With the large scale changes they are making now, we may see this type of companion overhaul some day. Perhaps that will be their next big project? I'm certainly in favor of complete customization of companions. I feel like they are hired henchmen from Guildwars. They are semi-useful and very static. A complete overhaul of companion might bring in more customers too. There's plenty of gamers out there who love that single player RPG stuff where customizing your "party" is part of the game (think of some of the older Final Fantasy games). My 2 cents...

This actually all sounds pretty darn good. I was a Cybertech from day 1 and loved it right up until a month ago when I decided I needed to go Bio to gain that edge in PvP. Looking at the Cybertech update notes it would seem that they didn't get as much "love" as other professions. But, if I were still a Cybertech, I would be dying to get my hands on end game mods to RE. Being able to craft end game mods will be killer. IMO. It looks like Biochem is going to stay roughly the same. Cool. That's what I'm going to stick with on my main (which is now a Trooper on an entirely different server. Too bad legacy levels are server specific). All the other crafters out there who told me to hold out for the 1.2 update before making the decision to drop my Cybertech trade (and lose all of the killer earring schematics that took millions to learn) were right. I shouldn't have. But alas, I decided to switch to a West Coast server for better latency since all my east coast friends have dropped the game. This update will remove a lot of frustration from the crafting side of things. Off topic: The update however is going to be painful for folks who have re-modded their hard earned end game PvP/PvE gear. While that is a downer, I think that the changes that will be made will improve this game a great deal, in all ways. Thanks Bioware. You allowed me to free myself and play the game the way I want to play it.

Since mods for champ armor, and columi armor contain identical stats, will the update know I used Columi mods in my armor, or will it just assume those were the champion version or just upgrade the mods to champion mods because it's a champion item. The mod I mostly used was the Adept Enhancement 24 (I think a lot of us did). The enhancements came on both Enforcer Champion and Columi gloves and helms. I spent extra Columi tokens on the gloves (56 comms) and extra champ tokens (which were more rare for me) on the hats. Since the answer was item X1.1.5 will be replaced with item X.1.2, and since PvE and PvP armor shared the same mods and enhancements, I'm guessing the mods in our champ/BM armor will be upgraded to the BM version. Unless they have some way of telling Adept Enh 24 from PvE apart from Adept Enh 24 from PvP.... which seems unlikely.

Here's a scenario I'd like to run by you folks. I obtained a Rakata main hand weapon (Sorceror). I removed the enhancement and placed an Adept 25 enhancement in it (power/surge). Three questions for the devs: 1. What happens if I over wrote the default Enhancement? 2. What happens if I removed the Enhancement and placed it in my bag/bank or another item? 3. What happens if I find the original Enhancement in my bag and put it back in to the weapon? (Sounds like that was answered) My main concern, like others have expressed, is that we've all invested a lot of time and energy re-modding our gear, and it sounds like those of us who did, will now be at a disadvantage.

Last post... Why did they not roll these changes out incrementally? So many people have left the game because of a lack of anything but occasional bug fixes. Ugh. Rant over.

I still don't understand the rated "thing". I just don't have the time to put into reading the forums thoroughly. But, you have encouraged me to get my BM and some gear as I had planned on. So thank you.

Oh - Thank you. I did not see this posted anywhere. Yes I searched. All I saw was "Youll be able to buy BM gear without being a BM". And to the guy above the helpful one, no, not my first rodeo. EQ1 taught me how gear progression works. Nuff said.

I am totally sad. I love this game. Man.

Wait.... are you saying that I will not need to be valor rank 60 to purchase Battlemaster gear? I just spent the past 1 month working my tail off after work and on the weekends trying to get rank 60. I am rank 59 now. Can someone please tell me why... why I should continue.... I worked so hard, dealt with being outgunner by BM players for weeks and weeks, just so I could get these myself and compete. And now I'm being told that BM gear is obtainable without valor rank 60. I love(d) this game. But this breaks my heart. Can a dev please tell me that all of the effort I've put in counts for something? I've remodded all of my champ gear (and columi/rakata) with (IA champ/columi glove/hat) Adept Enhancments and the BH (champ/columi glove/hat) Enhancements. I've put so much work in to my char. If I don't get feedback telling me my efforts mean something, I'm done. I'm sorry to be a whiner. I thought this patch was supposed to be a content thing. I led a guild of about 15 players. Close friends. They all quit the game several weeks ago after we repeatedly ran HM's. Now I find out BM gear can be bought without valor 60.

We started with False Emp and BT when we started HM's. I would try those if I were you guys. Get a feel for HM's and get some cleared to get the bad taste out. My 2 cents..

We tend to mostly run with: 1 BH Tank, 3x Inquisitors 85% or so of the drops are BH. The tank has his tanking set, dps set, and his companions are all geared out. I rolled a BH. Gonna start leveling like mad!

All great info. Thanks guys! My guildies will definitely appreciate it!

1 week per piece if the player runs every single HM FP per day? Or 1 week per piece if the player only runs 2 HM's per day? Edit: Personally, I like the idea of rewarding Columi comms based on the difficulty of each encounter. We all know which encounters are difficult and which are easy. Mini-bosses that currently drop tionese crystals only should not drop Columi tokens. However, I think Bonus bosses should definitely drop them in this kind of system. Then there are the other non-bonus bosses that are difficult. Bulwark for example has become a challenge after the changes made to him. The hard boss in Ilum with all the adds should drop comms as well. Maybe the HK fight in FE should drop comms. As far as BT goes, maybe only the last boss drops a token? Or the droid boss and the last boss drop 1 each? You get the idea. I think it should be reward based on difficulty. Like others have said, it would make people seek out these challenges and want to run HM's all the time. IMO. (End Edit) Whatever the case, I think this kind of decision would ultimately be something BioWare will not let the customers dictate. We can give them our opinions though. That's for certain. I'm sure they want to know what we want to keep our subscriptions active. That's really the beating heart of this entire mass of digital goodness.

Very true and I agree. However, even though we are mostly complaining about gearing slowly, the reverse is also true. If the tank and healer gears up in their first few HM runs, then that's a problem also. The idea here is to balance things out and make progression clearly defined. I agree that it should not be a fast process. It should take some time. How much time though? Technically, we would all need to come to some sort of conclusion on the time it should take for an individual to obtain X amount of Columi items. 1 week per piece? 2 weeks for 3 pieces? 1 month for 4? I don't know... I just want some kind of indicator. That's what my initial idea was really all about.

Hah! I'm a very optimistic person. Somewhere in my head a voice is telling me to just let it all out on the forums so "they" can see it, and hopefully "make it happen".

We need to compile the ideas we've got. I'm strapped on time right now, but it looks like most of us like these ideas. So... - HM FP's drop more Columi tokens (How many? Hard bosses drop more?) - HM end bosses still drop a Columi piece - You can purchase Columi items with a piece + comms (less comms required) - (Are Columi pieces generalized? Like a helm = a helm for any class?) What am I missing? I'm at work and "sneaking" on the forums.

Again, I'm not saying you should be able to get a Columi chest after 5 days of running BT. What is it that you're after here? I have a guild of mostly Inquisitors and we've gotten 3 Columi pieces the past 3 weeks and they are split between 3 players, and we've been hitting Hard Mode FP's as much as possible. Meanwhile, our PT tank has 4 pieces (and 3 pieces for his DPS set - making that 7 total - and he's geared out his companions in Columi). We're looking for an alternative.

I have a question for you experienced Ops folks. So, we took a group of 7 into Normal Mode EV and dropped the first boss the other day. - When will that boss respawn in our Normal Mode Op? - Is that same boss available in Hard Mode 8 man currently if he died in Normal Mode? Thanks in advance!

I think his point is that he received an excessive amount of items that could not be rolled on. I agree with him. Ever since we learned about that mechanic we kind of lost interest in normal mode ops. That's discouraging because we're a small guild and have to try to drop bosses with less than 8 players who aren't extremely well geared (not a lot of columi).

Ok buddy. Points taken. I'm glad for you and your guild. My guild doesn't have enough people on after working hours to run the operations consistently. We are very, very casual, but we like the challenge of HM FP's in the evenings. Obviously, HM FP difficulty would need to be taken into consideration when shelling out comms. In fact, each boss fight should reward comms based on their perceived difficulty. That would make the system perfect. IMO. My idea was a very general and broad idea. If BioWare even considers doing something like this, which I believe is unlikely, then they'd have the burden of figuring out all the fine details such as not allowing people to farm BT for the better pieces. (Even though you can only run it 1x per day! - Hmmm...)

I understand the concern, but you have to understand that there are plenty of smaller guilds out there who can't run EV, even the 8 man, consistently. Where as running HM FP's only requires 4 players. I don't think it would break anything. EV/KP bosses still drop more stuff than HM FP bosses. So that extra reward is still present. We're not talking about making it easier - well I'm not - I just want a clear path to my objective. We can reward ourselves with a Columi piece every X number of HM FP runs.

What about simply having the end bosses drop several Columi commendations instead of a set piece? Maybe they could drop 4, and other bosses could drop 1. I think that would be better and it would "fit" into how non HM comms already work. As it stands right now, some folks get geared up extremely fast which can allow fast progression if that person is a tank or healer. Most other folks get the shaft though. If commendations were used to buy Columi gear instead, it would allow a very static and clear path for progression. Just throwing ideas around...

So, what's the deal with the 4 piece set bonus for healers? +50 force? Hmm. That's pretty bad if you ask me. As a sorc healer I've changed my spec up a bit to include Lightning Strike w/force regen. It has really been excellent for helping force regen and tossing DPS in fights. Anyhow, has any Sorc/Cons healers gotten 2 pieces of the DPS gear and 2 pieces of the healer gear? If so, do you like it? I'm worried that the 4 piece healer bonus may change some day and I'd regret not getting all healing columi gear.

We ran HM Kaon and D7 last night. Kaon: 1x BH Hat / 1x SI Hat (wow - our 2nd piece of SI columi in nearly 3 weeks!) D7: 1x BH Columi legs So, we went 2 for 3 on getting repeat BH drops. We were quite excited to get the Columi hat. We're rotating Columi drops between our inquisitors because they are so rare. We had one heck of a time with the Kaon Bonus boss. Fun fight. Our strategy seems solid now. Bulwark in D7... whoa. This fight sure is different. In our case, the healer had to DPS like a mad man to beat the timer. Oh, he dropped BH loot btw.