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Star Wars: The Old Republic |OT| EA: "Let's blow this thing and go home!"

Wallach

Member
Quick question for anyone that's read the patch notes. Did the Consular/Inquisitor classes receive any kind of nerf, or are they still going to be one of the best classes?

The Sorc/Sage side was definitely nerfed, both healing and their hybrid damage spec (their full-tree damage specs look like they'll probably come out at par). Shadow/Assassin look relatively untouched.
 

Moaradin

Member
I don't think swtor was totally bad or anything, but I'm definitely glad I quit when I did. Seems like they're just continuing down the path of Bad. Or am I wrong?

1.2 looks bad to you? Looks like a bigger patch than WoW has put out in years.
 

Draxal

Member
Quick question for anyone that's read the patch notes. Did the Consular/Inquisitor classes receive any kind of nerf, or are they still going to be one of the best classes?

Their aoe damage took a huge hit, and their healer spec force gen is no where near as easy.
 

Anbokr

Bull on a Donut
1.2 looks amazing to me. Ranked pvp--keeps pvpers busy, new tough raids? Keeps PvErs busy. For awhile the class changes overshadow everything, and the people that get the short end of the stick are going to hurt for awhile. This happens in every single MMO. Once the patch has been out for awhile, people get used to their "new" class, things go back to normal and the cycle repeats a month later when the next big balance patch hits.
 

Wallach

Member
1.2 looks amazing to me. Ranked pvp--keeps pvpers busy, new tough raids? Keeps PvErs busy. For awhile the class changes overshadow everything, and the people that get the short end of the stick are going to hurt for awhile. This happens in every single MMO. Once the patch has been out for awhile, people get used to their "new" class, things go back to normal and the cycle repeats a month later when the next big balance patch hits.

To be honest it really looks like a fantastic patch. I haven't seen one this comprehensive for an MMO in years (though admittedly that in itself is not necessarily a great thing). It's unfortunate they failed to get a proper character copy system implemented before this hit the PTR.
 

Draxal

Member
Pet Peeve of mine

Crit Crafted Orange gear shouldn't be the best in game. Have the professions create mods that add augments to the gear as well.
 

Wallach

Member
Pet Peeve of mine

Crit Crafted Orange gear shouldn't be the best in game. Have the professions create mods that add augments to the gear as well.

My guess is that this vague patch note:

The variety of stats and modifications for new endgame items is substantially higher compared to that of older endgame items.

actually means that dropped endgame gear takes into account augment slots - whether they are just built into the pieces or all of them now have augment slots, I don't know (my guess is the former to separate these pieces out from orange pieces still).

Edit - Then again, I guess this:

Players may now reverse engineer many endgame items to research schematics for items and mods. Tier 2 (new) endgame items can be reverse engineered, and players have a chance to learn how to craft these items up on reverse engineering them. Set Armorings do not provide schematics for crafters.

implies that they expect people to either wear endgame gear or have their crafters RE it to make it for their guildmates, as well as create opportunities for that gear to gain augment slots.
 

Milly79

Member
Still, if the heat goes lower it'll just make it easier for me to stay below 50% heat, although I tend to aim for 40% in raids. Should never ever have to blow vent heat unless you really gotta down something quick.

Tracer x5, Unload, HS, RS. Really no specific order in that.
 

StudioTan

Hold on, friend! I'd love to share with you some swell news about the Windows 8 Metro UI! Wait, where are you going?
There are some great changes to Gunslinger. For instance this will be very useful for PVP:

Holed Up is a new 2-point skill located in Tier 6 of the skill tree that reduces damage taken from area attacks by 60% while Hunker Down is active. This change allows the Sharpshooter to remain in cover more often in situations that force other classes to rapidly change locations.
 

Draxal

Member
Still, if the heat goes lower it'll just make it easier for me to stay below 50% heat, although I tend to aim for 40% in raids. Should never ever have to blow vent heat unless you really gotta down something quick.

Tracer x5, Unload, HS, RS. Really no specific order in that.

Unload is always going to be the priority it's amazing for heat management. You will also be using rail shot alot as they haven't changed the %damage increase buff from tracer missle frequency.
 

StudioTan

Hold on, friend! I'd love to share with you some swell news about the Windows 8 Metro UI! Wait, where are you going?
I get such twisted pleasure out of these freaks on the official forums whenever big balance patches happen in MMOs.

Heh, yeah, it's quite funny but sadly not unexpected.

On an unrelated note, some pictures of the new end game armour for the republic side - http://dulfy.net/2012/03/17/1-2-new-armor-models/

A lot of it looks quite hideous, some of it is really cool. Mostly the helmets are the worsts parts and thankfully you can hide those or put the mods for these in orange gear. Also, these will likely look quite different on a male character, especially the Sage PVE set. My gf loves that one though, she's excited.
 

Ken

Member
I hate SWTOR's approach to designing the Trooper helmets; most look like hideous mutated versions of existing helmets in the fiction.
 

Wallach

Member
Just spent a bit of time on the PTR. The UI changes are amazing and on top of the fixed textures make me totally not want to play on the live servers at all.
 

Moaradin

Member
Just spent a bit of time on the PTR. The UI changes are amazing and on top of the fixed textures make me totally not want to play on the live servers at all.

PTR is up? Damn.. Looks like I'm going to have to download it all for the PTR =(

If only I could import my character.
 

Anbokr

Bull on a Donut
Just spent a bit of time on the PTR. The UI changes are amazing and on top of the fixed textures make me totally not want to play on the live servers at all.

What's the empire pvp armor look like (specifically marauder!)? Do we get black robes?
 

StudioTan

Hold on, friend! I'd love to share with you some swell news about the Windows 8 Metro UI! Wait, where are you going?
PTR is up? Damn.. Looks like I'm going to have to download it all for the PTR =(

If only I could import my character.

I've been downloading it for the past 3 hours :( I don't know why they can't just copy most of the data and then patch as opposed to making you download the whole thing.

I don't mind making a new character but it would have been nice to be able to copy my main over.
 

Wallach

Member
PTR is up? Damn.. Looks like I'm going to have to download it all for the PTR =(

If only I could import my character.

Yeah, I only had a level 4 guy from some previous PTR, so I couldn't see any of the good stuff. But take a look at the UI screen:

sfbre.jpg


You can click any one of those parts and get a list of options in the center window specifically modifying that individual piece. For the hotbars, you can move them, rotate their orientation, or even grid them up like 6x2 for 4x3 for that individual bar. Everything is moveable and size-scales individually, and you can save as many whole custom UI profiles as you want.
 

Moaradin

Member
Yeah, I only had a level 4 guy from some previous PTR, so I couldn't see any of the good stuff. But take a look at the UI screen:

sfbre.jpg


You can click any one of those parts and get a list of options in the center window specifically modifying that individual piece. For the hotbars, you can move them, rotate their orientation, or even grid them up like 6x2 for 4x3 for that individual bar. Everything is moveable and size-scales individually, and you can save as many whole custom UI profiles as you want.

goddamn this makes me happy. Can you show the Target of Target stuff? They talked about it a lot but never showed it.
 

StudioTan

Hold on, friend! I'd love to share with you some swell news about the Windows 8 Metro UI! Wait, where are you going?
Yeah, I only had a level 4 guy from some previous PTR, so I couldn't see any of the good stuff. But take a look at the UI screen:

You can click any one of those parts and get a list of options in the center window specifically modifying that individual piece. For the hotbars, you can move them, rotate their orientation, or even grid them up like 6x2 for 4x3 for that individual bar. Everything is moveable and size-scales individually, and you can save as many whole custom UI profiles as you want.

Can you have more than 2 windows open? Can you move them around? My biggest annoyance with the game is having windows close becuase you open another and having only 2 locations on the screen where windows can open and they change sides depending on the order you open them. Ugh. Like browsing a vendor and you want to see what you're wearing but you open the character sheet and the vendor window closes.
 

Wallach

Member
Can you have more than 2 windows open? Can you move them around? My biggest annoyance with the game is having windows close becuase you open another and having only 2 locations on the screen where windows can open and they change sides depending on the order you open them. Ugh. Like browsing a vendor and you want to see what you're wearing but you open the character sheet and the vendor window closes.

If you turn on "moveable secondary windows" in the UI settings, you can have as many windows open simultaneously as you desire now. Twofer!
 

StudioTan

Hold on, friend! I'd love to share with you some swell news about the Windows 8 Metro UI! Wait, where are you going?
If you turn on "moveable secondary windows" in the UI settings, you can have as many windows open simultaneously as you desire now. Twofer!

Awesome!
 
If you turn on "moveable secondary windows" in the UI settings, you can have as many windows open simultaneously as you desire now. Twofer!

Excellent!

So the main special crafting addition for each is being able to make good Augments?

Im going to whip up loads of Willpower ones with my Synth
 

Enosh

Member
yay bloodthirst for the whole raid
everyone is going to love me, not only the dps ^^

edit, read wrong, it's Predation not bloodthirst
 
at first glance the heal nerfs for mercs had really hurt my chances of resubbing (sorry was pretty drunk last night for anyone on mumble lol), I'll wait and see how it all plays out before I make my decision
 

markatisu

Member
Heh, yeah, it's quite funny but sadly not unexpected.

On an unrelated note, some pictures of the new end game armour for the republic side - http://dulfy.net/2012/03/17/1-2-new-armor-models/

A lot of it looks quite hideous, some of it is really cool. Mostly the helmets are the worsts parts and thankfully you can hide those or put the mods for these in orange gear. Also, these will likely look quite different on a male character, especially the Sage PVE set. My gf loves that one though, she's excited.

Yeah I have no issues with the armors but my god does this game have some of the ugliest helmet designs known to man

For 3/4 of my time in this game I have just used the hide helmet option, its a shame because you would think given how cool helmets have been made in the SW Universe over the past 20 years it would be pretty easy to do the same for this game.
 

accx

Member
So what crew skills are recommended as a new player? what's recommended at end game?
Anything i should think about now that i've just started?
Are there any EU gaf guilds and if so, which server? Can you do character transfers atm?

What are considered the most mobile dps (with lots of skills with zero cd)?
Which class would be similar to a Warlock in WoW (dots, debuffing mainly)?

Thanks!
 

Dunlop

Member
lol can't believe merc healing was nerfed AND the big buff to Kolto shell was one extra player..but not a smart heal making it only slightly less useless
 

Zafir

Member
The changes to the Juggernaut tanking tree are meh. Most of it is just reshuffling of locations on the tree. They've actually reduced our AoE damage by making heavy handed a 1 point talent, which is one of the biggest complaints against the class, poor AoE. On the plus side, Crushing Blow is now increased threat.
 

NeoCross

Member
What the hell, first BW nerfs operative burst, now they're nerfing it again AND sustained dps as well? The fuck are we gonna do, rifle shot all day?
 

bjb

Banned
Holy hell the new gear looks absolutely atrocious.

Honestly after reading through all the notes - pretty underwhelming .Perhaps its because we almost knew everything that was coming.

Still almost all of these features are things that should have been available at launch.
 

markatisu

Member
As someone with Armormech I really like the changes they are making in 1.2. Gives me a reason to keep using it to make armor for friends and for the GTN
 

gatti-man

Member
Heartseeker hits way harder than it did before, and Barrage proc is said to be up almost all the time now. Between the two Tracer priority falls significantly below both of them.

Edit - In fact I'm surprised because all told they noticeably buffed Arsenal DPS, which I didn't expect at all (they seemed pretty good on DPS).

This is what was needed. I don't see many mercs out dpsing me and my top is around 350k yet I see other classes posting over 500k in dps. Very happy with all changes. Sages were virtually unkillable in groups.
 
Much of the new gear looks good, but many of them require turning off the helms. Think the helms are the worst part of most of these, but the rest of the body sets are pretty good

The changes to the Juggernaut tanking tree are meh. Most of it is just reshuffling of locations on the tree. They've actually reduced our AoE damage by making heavy handed a 1 point talent, which is one of the biggest complaints against the class, poor AoE. On the plus side, Crushing Blow is now increased threat.

Crushing blow increased threat is very helpful, I never expect them to improve our sole AOE ability, it really doesn't seem right to me. More viability for dealing with ranged I think is more important but that's mostly pvp related. The removal and reduction of rage costs also should give us more sustained dps possibility which also helps hold aggro
 

HBroward

Member
Here is some info someone on the PTS posted:

Current PvE Gear:
Hardmode Flashpoint & Normal Ops Gear (Tionese) is 51
Hardmode Ops (Columi) is 56
Nightmare Ops (Rakata) is 58

1.2 PvE Gear:

"Campaign" hard Raid Gear is Rating 146 (Mod Slot 61)
"Blackhole" Corellia Commendation Gear is Rating 146 (Mod Slot 61)
"Campaign" Nightmare Raid Gear will likely be Mod Slot 63 - but we won't see that for at least a month past 1.2 release
Blackhole Dailies will drop ~2 commendations per quest, pieces ranging between 30 - 60 commendations a piece. Not sure how many quests you can do per day..
Daily Commendations can now be used to buy new Relics and Legacy gear, the relics are better than current, so you need to grind 2 separate sets of dailies for gear

Operations

Story Mode & Hardmodes, 6 bosses.. no NiM on release
Every member of your ops group requires an item that costs 30 Daily Commendations called "Rakata Alphawave Inhibitor" (Buff Mental Protection), which is a 4 hour flask type buff that is required for the final boss of Explosive Conflict. You'll need this weekly to beat the boss as it protects you from "mental attacks"

PvP Gear:

Expertise & primary stats appear to be rebalanced a bit, you'll have much more expertise in 1.2 and a bit less of your primary stats. Full Battlemaster on a Commando went from 700 to 1139, and damage boost to players went up 22% however this comes at a primary stat and endurance loss.
As for ranked PvP nothing is tied to Valor rank item wise, you can basically be in full War Hero gear in 1-2 weeks depending on the speed of your grind. Dependent on how guilds run, unranked PvP matches will likely become far and few between at 50.

Misc Stuff

As for Legacy, the 50 imports to the PTS are currently broken and have no Legacy XP.. you're also unable to recomplete class quests since your character is already flagged as having done them.
Space Mission/Fleet Commendations now have new purchasable "crafting" boxes, biometrics and Alien Data cubes are now obtainable through vendor lock boxes
Medpacs are now only usable once per combat.

Combat Log

Combat log spits out to a .txt file that needs to be turned on and off manually every time you want to use it.
Threat, damage and abilities appear (via assigned ability #), however it is on an individual basis only.. so if you're running a 16 man ops everyone needs to submit their logs to one person to parse through the data.
In reference to the above bullet, no real time combat log parsing. :(
Does not show events as melee, ranged, force or tech just shows as damage.

So, the new raid requires a consumable item that costs 30 daily coms to beat the final boss. I foresee this causing some fun issues come raid nights. Better hope all 8-16 people remember to save enough each week for that. And if you want to do normal and hard, that's at least two days worth of daily missions, if they fix the one bugged Ilum mission. I recommend everyone stock up while you can before the changes to the belsavis ones go live, it'll be so much faster. Not to mention the new Relics and gear you'll be able to buy when not buying these damn consumables.
 

HBroward

Member
Yeah, the medpack change should make healers lives in the SOA fight a lot more... interesting? Something else I just found, warzone commendation cap raised to 2000. Not sure if that applies to Merc coms as well.
 

Zafir

Member
Much of the new gear looks good, but many of them require turning off the helms. Think the helms are the worst part of most of these, but the rest of the body sets are pretty good



Crushing blow increased threat is very helpful, I never expect them to improve our sole AOE ability, it really doesn't seem right to me. More viability for dealing with ranged I think is more important but that's mostly pvp related. The removal and reduction of rage costs also should give us more sustained dps possibility which also helps hold aggro
Perhaps, but I haven't really had any issues with being rage starved before. I guess we'll need to see it in practice before commenting in fully. Eitherway I was expecting bigger changes to the tree, especially when you compare the Immortal tree to Darkness and Shield Tech, it pales in comparison.

Mercenary (Arsenal) changes on the other hand, they don't seem to bad. I was honestly expecting a bigger nerf. Instead they buffed other skills to make up for TM doing less damage, which I think was the right way to go about it.
 

StudioTan

Hold on, friend! I'd love to share with you some swell news about the Windows 8 Metro UI! Wait, where are you going?
Here is some info someone on the PTS posted:



So, the new raid requires a consumable item that costs 30 daily coms to beat the final boss. I foresee this causing some fun issues come raid nights. Better hope all 8-16 people remember to save enough each week for that. And if you want to do normal and hard, that's at least two days worth of daily missions, if they fix the one bugged Ilum mission. I recommend everyone stock up while you can before the changes to the belsavis ones go live, it'll be so much faster. Not to mention the new Relics and gear you'll be able to buy when not buying these damn consumables.

I can see people complaining about this but I think it's a good change. I think they're trying to avoid the situation where people just log in once a week to raid.
 
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