Some snips there and this post is aimed at the whole of the thread, not this poster in particular. Couple things re:Scoundrels. Scoundrels, like Commandos and Sages, have an in combat rez. I interpret you as saying they don't since you ended the sentence with the exclusion rather than continuing with a comma or semicolon. Yes I'm a turd like that. Additionally, Stealth classes have the ability, but not always the capability, to in combat stealth and out of combat rez. Still, not that big of a deal (used it 2x myself). Mainly I wanted to counter that "scoundrel dps can off heal instantly" part on the OP, since it's a lie. No dps scoundrel has an instant cast heal. The instant cast is half way up the heal tree, and the base scoundrel heals are all cast times. At any rate, I stand with the "L2P" crowd, though no one's said that yet, because my guild and allies run with commando dps and mando healers all the time in 8 man and 16man, story and hard mode ops (up to and including HM EC). The dps mandos have been both gunny and assault spec'd. Just because you're not viable, doesn't mean the class isn't. Just the combination of your chosen rotation/reactions and gear and possibly actions taken by your group mates (I suppose). Additionally, with regards to sents/funslingers, mando's can cc out of combat, which while not as cool (apparently) as a no-CD droid only cc (given to dps only classes), is more and less useful depending on the situation as it is in and out of combat and droid / humanoid / animal useable. Maybe that sucks because of the CD, or maybe a group who is affected by that should 1) stop breaking cc, 2) take 20 seconds between fights for it to come off CD.

It appears that nowadays, you can pick up all 6? Ilum quests w/o doing any other part of the story line.

The last several years of its life, swg had downtime tuesday, thursday, and saturday mornings. I believe it was the same downtime for EU as it was NA, effectively 2-6am central time I think. Personally, I'm just glad they don't have scheduled weekend downtime I know it happens and screws over EU / non-NA when it does occcur, but it's not a regular occurrence these days. If you really don't think you're getting your money's worth, then you should quit playing. If you're not getting $0.50 / day of fun (USD), then you're not getting much enjoyment at all.

Welcome to every other tank spec prior to 1.3.

Definitely a case of poor equipment or poor play. I've beaten this on 3 characters, none higher than 43. It was harder than I expected on the first toon, but come on people. If you can't do it, either check yourself, your gear, or ask a guildie for help. FWIW, I did it on my watchmen sent yesterday, at 42 or 43, with doc, who is wearing level 40 gear at best, and didn't pop guarded by the force. I did use a med pac and do have all 4 buffs unlocked, but I doubt those buffs were the key. My gear was all stuff that was as is from upgrades available on Belsavis. Didn't even use heroic moment and I have no idea what it does on my jk cause I haven't yet needed it. I have used it in the past while leveling my bh to provide the crucial edge I needed as an eternally underleveled toon doing content 3-4 levels early. You do realize that some fights are especially hard near the end of the game because they're trying to make you use all of your skills. It's a way to prep you for end game without coming out and saying so. Use all your tricks, because at end game, face rolling isn't/shouldn't be enough.

Isn't it too late to get your character copied to PTS?

Lag is not client side unless you have an issue with your internet connection. Abilities taking .5-1 second or longer to fire off is server side, not client. Delayed movement is server side, not client. That's kind of the definition of lag. I experience ability delays in pvp on the new server and not my old. What changed? The server, not my pc. They really need to work on optimizing the client / server communication and server processing. I don't mind going from 25 fps in the fleet to 9, but ability delays in pvp are not fun.

Pyro is generally acknowledged to be the pvp build. There's a stickied guide that should have an end game build, or you can look at the post above me. FYI, as powertech, it's all melee range, though pyro has a slight edge on being able to also go ranged. The con would be that it's heat intensive, but it just gets better with age (talent points). AP has a speed boost that can be useful in pvp, but lacks the overall damage potential (that line stolen from another post) of pyro and I sigh when my guildies use AP I could be wrong, but I don't think 1.3 is impacting PT much. TBH I haven't looked too closely at the PTS notes, so I could be mistaken. There's not much qq on this board about it (at first glance anyways), so I'm assuming that's the case.

Lost my main's name, and on top of it, I lost it to someone who's not subbed (can't receive in game mail). That's pretty cool. Also lost my legacy, but no way to know if that person is still subbed. Luckily I don't RP, so I got a somewhat similar last name that works with my first names. Of course I still haven't transferred over 4 toons on my main server and 6 on other servers, so there may be more to come.

Thanks for the reply. With that kind of consistent crit, I'll look at moving some of my crit into power. Can you let us know what gear level you have? Columi? Rakata, Black Hole?

I have a guildie who has quit playing his sorc until this is fixed, but it doesn't affect his sage or other characters. It's not a class thing as far as I know.

Personally, I go for the extra energy restored by Adrenaline Probe over reduced damage taken, otherwise identical to the spec posted above. As far as stats, I stacked crit/surge prior to getting full columi. Alacrity will come with the gear sets and end game, and prior to doing HM's and ops, there's no real need for the urgency (cuts your 2sec cast heal to 1.8 when you're in 10-12% activation speed). Some people do advise stacking power, but for smug/op, I do fine without it. Cast heal hits for 2.7-3k and crits for 5k+, EMP/Surgical Prob hits for 1.5k and crits for 3k. Can anyone who stacks power weigh in on their heals at end game in purple mod to columi gear? My theory (untested and unresearched) is that power would be better for mercs/mandos as they use their basic attack as a heal at times. FWIW, my crit sits around 34%? and surge around 72% currently. It was actually higher in purple mod gear loaded for crit/surge, but you lose a little to alacrity on the columi gear. Hasn't seemed to affect me personally. Also fwiw, I found that leveling as heal spec felt too slow, so I didn't spec into it until mid 40's (voss maybe or corellia). That's just my opinion though. If you're having fun, keep at it. *edit* I hit submit this morning but it apparently didn't take and I just saw this entry while at home on lunch.

Another SWG collection that was cool was the GCW (Galactic Civil War aka factional pve and pvp) section. There was a collection to defeat x number of privates, sgts, master sgts, col, gen, etc. Then again, open world pvp in SWG, whether the TEF system pre-cu which was unique, or the Restuss and city invasions that the NGE had at that end, was pretty much superior to that of TOR's.

Or the 63+ people, since it's doubtful each toon represents 1 distinct person. That's still a pretty good sized roster, so grats on that, assuming all 63+ are actually active. At any rate, you obviously went into the cast with your mind made up and didn't watch very long. It's pretty apparent that the 3 panel members have their own viewpoints and things they care about.

Does it have target of target? Honestly, I don't know. Are you able to move the UI around to your liking or are the mini map and action bar locked where the devs decided you should have them?

It had taken way longer than necessary. It lacked features and it's the players who expected too much? Brain hurts. Cannot reconcile those statements.

Yeah, because a UI where you can move more than the chat box is too much. So is target of target. So is the ability for a guild master to contact his guild with more than 120 characters (I don't know the exact MOTD limit) aka email, or have a guild bank. So is including a feature that you hyped since day 1 and reference as being one of the major cornerstones of the game when the idea for tor first came up (Legacy). One feature that was definitely in on launch was apologists.

Actually I mentioned it on the first page. IMO, the UI was not nearly as good as wow's achievement UI. It was a decent system. For those that don't know, depending on the type of collection, you might get dna for completing creature kill collections, that can be used to create rare pets. For completing heroic boss collections, you got a stat buff. For other force-y collections, you unlocked schematics for better (higher dmg ceiling) lightsabers, or cloaks (the bane of many jedi's existence). A BH fugitive one unlocked a carbine and rifle schem and could be completed multiple times for multiple schems. All of them rewarded xp which meant they could be useful while you leveled to cap. Most were combat related, but some weren't. One involved visiting "panoramic vistas" on a planet. One involved getting a camera from a npc and capturing "photos" of different durnis (think star wars bunny) in the wild. Both of those rewarded paintings which could be used as decoration in player and city housing. Some collections unlocked decorating abilities. Prior to that, you could move items up/down/left/right, but with the collections you unlocked the ability to rotate about axes (spelling?). TBH I don't know what rewards wow has besides a glowing panel in their ui, but swg had some great collections and rewards. It had a lot to love and learn from, but it doesn't seem that any other mmo developers wish to learn those lessons.

Seriously, it's not their job to make tor out to be the be all end all. It's clear they want the game to succeed, but they're not happy about the way things are going. Listen to Taugrim. He thought that they were on the right path with pvp pre 1.2. Every patch had an incremental change (or ridiculous nerf to op/scoundrel). With 1.2 they changed too much at once. You may consider saying that to be negative, but it IS constructive criticism. Larry said that, essentially, once 1.3 hits, and then later when RWZ's come (because I think we can all agree they are likely not to make it in 1.3), that the game will be where it should have been at launch. Obviously, they launched too early, but with 1.3 and RWZ, the game will have features (thanks to 1.2 before it) that most players on the boards here, think should be in a modern (not 7 year ago) mmo at launch. JLowe doesn't feel that Legacy provides anything useful. Besides buff unlocking, and adding races that should have been available to both sides at launch (excepting let's say sith and chiss), he's right. Many of us don't find anything besides the above to be features we care about or desire. No one I've spoken with, in my guild, in pugs, or in multiguild ops, cares about anything Legacy besides the 2 features I mentioned. They shared their thoughts, provided reasoning, and you're not happy because they didn't lead with the positive. Sorry, but again, it's clear they want the game to succeed. If folks can't see that (not necessarily you JC), then they need to move on from this thread, because they're just causing themselves stress to think about someone not praising the current situation and direction. And anyone who takes Gary Gannon seriously, doesn't get GG. Try watching the Gameplay playthroughs of D3 and Magicka, and you'll get a better feel for him. He's having fun and poking his guests, but he doesn't hate dev companies, and he doesn't want games to fail. If he did, he wouldn't base his income around them. Their responsibility is to produce shows that get watched, so they can get paid. They've clearly succeeded. I still find them entertaining, and in the case of the panel on TR, insightful, even if I sometimes disagree with their evaluations.

Sad panda is sad that the entire point of "why did you leave out artificers?" was missed and bypassed. Sorry artificers. The community wants you to be as valued as armstech. It makes sense.

You can have an achievement system that has an in game UI as nice as wow's without it being a raid gate. Let's be honest, your hp and/or gear is already a raid gate. No link to cheevos needed. If you're a tank and have 13k health, no one wants you until you put in the effort to get some better gear. You can get intro op/hm fp gear without doing ops and hm fp's. For that matter, no one in this thread (I don't think) has requested a web interface to the achievement system. Considering they haven't even mentioned having a wow armory type of system in the works, no one needs to freak out and start saying "no 'cause wow has it." Furthermore, besides the achievement of having run a raid, what achievements can be lorded over someone and used to prevent them from raiding? No one is going to disallow someone into group content because they haven't caught 200 pets (or whatever). Relax. Go to it. Most achievements are not about raid content. Considering the percentage of content that end game pve is in the context of the entire game, it would be pretty hard to make ONLY end game pve related achievements.

Agree that the current codex does not qualify as an achievement system. I really like WoW's achievement UI, and I'm just talking about the one in game for yourself, not any web interface or what have you that might be out there. In order to be an achievement system, there has to be some way of knowing how close you are to achieving. SWG had collections and while you didn't know about collections before unlocking them, once you did, you had an easy to tell way to see how far you were and what you needed to do. The codex functions great as a lore repository, but the Bioware person who thought it qualified as an achievement system was being overly generous (IMO). Personally, I would vote for keeping codex as is, and implementing a new tab or UI element for achievement tracking. Implementing a new one (whether tab or new ui window) would lower the chance of a bug causing issues with the existing codex/mission log/lock out/etc ui elements. As an fyi to anyone who isn't sure that achievements would generate much interest, I encourage you to check out wow insider's achiever column. That may not be the exact title, but it's a good example of how a simple feature can spur enthusiasm and interest.

Actually he said, "so and so says the game's not fun." Get it right Some people need to realize that others can be disheartened with this game while they still want it to succeed (I'm one). Please let us use our thread where we originally wanted to discuss what taugrim thinks about current and past pvp and what it means for long term and short term health, what Larry thinks the current main audience is, etc etc. Please take your "see no problems" posts to the completely positive threads. Clarification: I still play most days, and will likely re-up my sub after the 30 free days given to 50's runs out. I do enjoy group content and I don't dig trolls and goblins. I cancelled because of the stability issues in 1.2, but due to the 30 free days coming out after most of us were charged for another month, my sub is good through mid June. At any rate, I do have concerns about the direction that the game has taken and the way common features (like say, guild master emailing all guild) are blown off as unneeded by the designers/whoever said "guild email would lead to spam, use our MOTD which doesn't even have a high character limit to have your members go outside the game when other games provide sufficient tools." As a guild master, that one irked me. I want more honesty, fewer soons, and the willingness to instead say, "I can't give a yes or no on that feature being in by x time."

Casual players DON'T DO fp's or wz's. Trust me, my guild is a relatively good mix. Somehow, I'm one of 3 (out of 20+) who checks the forums and knew about the layoffs. There are about half of us who are forming our own groups for fp/op's, and the other half still log in, but either haven't hit 50 once, or did and started an alt without doing any Ilum/Belsavis/(or now) Corellia dailies. Based off this purely anecdotal evidence, I'd say there's a decent chance the casuals will keep paying until they learn that they don't have to and the game has gone f2p. For hard cores, they need to add (two d's) something besides daily repeatable quests designed only for gear/credit grinds to have an easier place to start besides hm fp's. Something besides an op that drops campaign gear and requires campaign gear to do. Mostly, cross server ranked wz, or mega servers (no specific your definition) will give them time to add things like open world pvp, per server and overall leader boards, casual time killers (pazaak, swoop racing), or an actual space game worth playing.

Sometimes it's hard to tell the excuse makers from those of us who don't view development as magic. Well played sir.