You confuse me for someone upset. People just need to know that these threads are garbage and I, for one, don't want ours to be the Mage Forum of WoW. Stand for a better community.

"It's pretty obvious" doesn't hold up in scientific/mathematical debates, sorry. And I've already gone over the whole warzone leaderboards being utter crap at depicting anything of relevancy. Ranged classes padding leaderboards. This is new, exciting, and completely useful information as it's totally depicting efficiency of said damage and it's totally accounting for skill/gear levels of everyone involved and it's totally accounting for the undefinable variables such as pocket healers and team strategic play. Do you even know what a strawman argument or ad hominem attack are? Because clearly you don't. I haven't refuted any claims in this thread because that is the foundation of my argument. You, nor I, have any sort of empirical evidence for or against any sort of class balance. That does not constitute a strawman argument. That's a "we have no data" argument. And at what point was there an ad hominem? I haven't addressed you directly at all in this thread. I've only addressed the thread itself. The man behind the curtain has all the answers. They aren't purposefully holding anyone down. They aren't neglecting anything, as they haven't had time to neglect anything. As we move forward things will inevitably change, as is the nature of MMOs. The 30 posts a day on the perceived class imbalance on the Guardian forum alone is tired and pointless as there are two positive options to choose from and neither of them demand a vocal response. 1) Reroll to a class that you perceive as better (and for humor's sake, take note of how they aren't as super duper awesome as you initially thought) or 2) Wait it out. Threads like these spread negatively throughout the community and being as how this game is 2 weeks old that is detrimental to said community. All the doomsday naysayers portray the JK/SWs as unplayable and curious people who find themselves looking for guidance find themselves on this forum, only to be affronted by the mass "THIS CLASS SUCKS" hysteria, which is blatantly untrue and it only stems from unscientific direct comparisons to other classes and not judging the class on its own merit. Are there problems that this, and every other, class is facing? Absolutely. This game is brand new. What do you expect? Is it enjoyable and playable? Absolutely. Will it only get better? 8-ball says, "Odds are in your favor".

I don't think any of you understand how class balance works. Developers don't read the forums and go by whiny anecdotal evidence posts. They have hard numbers that they look at across the ENTIRE sample size, as opposed to a select few warfronts/operations. And then they tweak accordingly. All you guys are doing is creating a toxic environment that will turn players away and have barely a minimal, if any, effect on the development process. Edit: Not to mention none of you have any sort of relevant evidence to back up your claims that the Almighty Vanguards/PTs are so much better other than a few leader board screenshots that have absolutely no scientific relevancy at all as they don't even tell half of the picture.

No your point doesn't stand. If you prefer the Vanguard.. play the Vanguard and stop whining. Really your thread does nothing to better this class. All you are doing is complaining about class balance for a game that hasn't even been released for 2 full weeks yet. Nevermind the holidays, which I'm sure some of the guys rightfully had off. If there is any tweaking to be done, it will be done. You aren't enlightening anyone.

So play a Vanguard/Powertech. They need more people playing them anyway.

.... Everything shadows/assassins get puts them on par with us so that they CAN tank. Would you want a tank that can only wear light armor and has no defensive ability whatsoever? No. Everything is fine.

There is no reliable metric to judge class balance so why anyone is even complaining is beyond me. PvP leaderboards? Do you know what the highest damage normally means? It means that the top people are the ones spreading around small damage to a lot of people that generally means little in the outcome as it's being mitigated/healed through. Operatives and Scoundrels right now are utterly amazing at killing people, but they are terrible at padding the boards. Are they gimp? Not in the least. As far as PvE goes no one knows anything other than "well...it FEELS good/bad/ugly". I personally have a 30+ of 3 classes. Sniper/Assassin/JG. The Assassin and JG are about the same in almost everything with the assassin getting the edge in ease of leveling due to stealth. Damage is about the same and tanking is about the same with the edge going to the JG for ease of use due to not having to spam a defensive ability every 12 seconds or get your face melted off. The sniper does "feel" more effective at leveling, but only due to the fact that things are generally dead before they get to me. Companion dies more than Assassin/JG companion though. This is my anecdotal evidence. No I'm not 50. No it probably isn't much different at 50. Yes there is probably some discrepancies, but who cares at this point? It's nothing major and all content is playable regardless of comps. Give it time for BW to work out the kinks of all classes and stop crying about being less effective than the other guy because you honestly can't know that right now.

Operatives are the Vanilla Rogues of this game. They kind of hit stupidly hard.

Tanking is an acquired taste. Many people love it or hate it and both for good reason. Haters note the frustrating extra work of having to deal with less-than-competent groupmates and the subsequent increase in leadership responsibilities as a result of. If you're more of a follower this can become a strain. Also, to some the role feels less than heroic. DPSers and Healers are dropping bombs and saving groups from the clutches of disaster on a frequent basis while tanks are busy herding cats and hoping the rest of the group can do their job adequately enough before the tank dies. Also tanks are socially required to be as geared and versed in their class at all times. A PhD in tanking is entry-level stuff. Anything short and you're not getting invited. Lovers of the role enjoy the leadership role, the hyper-vigilant approach to gearing/playing, and often relish in the spotlight of the aforementioned (Side-note: This is often taken too far and communally we recognize this player as the Prima Donna Tank). Another boon to the role is you can easily notice your character's progression. A good tank is the cornerstone of any successful group experience. Personally, I can take it or leave it. I'm a healer at my core as well, but often find myself tanking as a result of there being a lack of interest in it among my social circle. I don't enjoy small scale (flashpoint) pug tanking, but raid tanking has always been pretty fun for me as I play at that hyper-vigilant level anyway, but I really don't enjoy herding cats. Your mileage may vary.

I don't understand the anti-JK/SW hype. I have a 34 assassin, 32 sniper, and a 31 JG and whenever I read the "JG's suck!" I'm like "...?" and then I see "..well when I was watching my friend's/roommate's/neighbor's ex's dog play a trooper/bounty hunter they were so much better!" and I'm having to conclude that either every JG on this forum is terrible, which is an inherent possibility given who this class appeals to, or the more likely, troopers/BHs are simply beastmode for leveling and people need to stop comparing to that class.

The only people that don't want some sort of metric are either too lazy and have no interest in excelling and are hoping to be carried based on the fact that they can't be bothered to learn their class properly (most opponents fall into this category) or the people that are just absolutely terrible at doing well regardless of how hard they try. And truth be told I'd rather take the second person when we actually get said metric. Quit being a burden to those around you. Yes it's a game and shouldn't be taken too seriously but some modicum of effort is required. Is it okay for 1 guy on a basketball team to not hustle and try his or her best?? No. Same applies to cooperative gaming.

WoW was absolutely terrible at launch and honestly the game wasn't that high polish that everyone attributes to the game for almost 2 full years. TOR has had an amazing launch. The game is great right now. I'd give it a 7-7.5 as it stands right now with the very real possibility of a 9-9.5 after the first year if Bioware steers the ship correctly. But does that matter? No. Not all games are for everyone. This game, for one, is challenging. A lot of people hate challenging. I personally love it.

Hi, My computer is a bit dated and I was wondering what the best single upgrade for my machine would be for this game? Right now I'm getting decent FPS (30-40) in most places, but sometimes it will stutter down to 20 or so and I'm just trying to avoid that. Right now I've got a Q6600 2.4ghz core 2 quad, 4gb DDR2 800mhz RAM, and a HD Radeon 5750. Yes I know running an i-7 with SLI'd $500 video cards and 32 gigs of RAM runs this game like a champ, but that's not helpful. I'm stuck on an old DDR2 mobo for awhile and so that's our parameters. I'm personally wondering if going to a dual core with a higher clock would be best, but I'm not sure.

There's one in the fleet.

I think Madness is more fun. You get more spells and flashy stuff and it's a little better AoE DPS, which seems to be the theme while leveling.

I've been playing the early access since Wednesday and I've since leveled 3 characters to levels 24, 19, and 14 respectively and have been enjoying myself very very much. I've been playing MMORPGs since EQ1 in '99 at the hardcore level and TOR does not disappoint my seasoned palette in the least. I've come to the following conclusions, however, that would just greatly increase the general qualify of life in this game: Quest items should be usable in the quest tracker Maybe a shift/alt modifier for equipping your companion instead of having to switch tabs Target marking icons need to be possible to keybind (Probably a bug, but worth mentioning nonetheless) Companion ability keybinds 5-0 should actually work when the companion ability bar is minimized. A follow-up prompt for when your crew finishes working on a crew skill order Ctrl+A (Toggle Ambiance) needs to be possible to unkeybind. Every other sound feature is. Multiple keybind modifiers (ie: CTRL+ALT+SHIFT). Some of us use peripherals that allow us to program in these keypresses so that we can use single modifiers for other things Scaleable/moveable UI. Not asking for third-party mods. I'm totally fine with working with the stock UI. I'd just like to be able to move certain things What else can you all think of? I'd like to note that I want this thread to be about minor QoL ideas and not major features/balance issues/content issues. Combat logs, third party UI, etc has no business here.

So ultimately it sounds like we just have to pick a side and go with it all out. That's unfortunate. I don't mind the concept of "this ancient sith artifact only works for those attuned to the darkest of the dark side", but I'd like to play it out to 50 and then farm one way or the other for the min/max once the story part was less important.

That's not really what I'm asking.

I know you can only wear LS1-5 and DS1-5 gear with said restrictions on it, but how abundant is this gear? And is there alternative options? Is most gear unrestricted? Specifically I want to play through to 50 and answer as I feel is appropriate and not feel pigeonholed into decisions based on the assumption that I will be royally screwed out of gear later.