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  New or returning player? Click this link to get a free server transfer and a bundle of goodies to help get you started.Game update 3.0, Shadow of Revan is coming this December, raising the level cap to 60, completely redesigning class progression and customization, introducing new operations and flashpoints, and adding new carrots to hit with sticks. Pre-order the expansion now to get a 12x bonus on story mission XP, which includes the planetary storylines of those planets that occur after the class storylines end (Illum and Makeb, mostly) and be ready to poopsock to 60 come December. Note that anything you read about class builds or balance is likely to change with the expansion. Also recently introduced was the Strongholds expansion, which finally added player and guild housing, in the form of Nar Shadaa floating pleasure dens, well humidified cabins on Dromand Kaas, dirt farms on Tattooine, and I guess there's something on that Republic homeworld, too.  Guild Info“I am incapable of interacting with normal people, where are the goons?” Most goons left the game in the grand exodus a few months after launch. At the moment, That's No Goon on Jedi Covenant Imp side is the only really active, goon run guild. Goon Squad on Rep side exists, but it isn't as active, and doesn't have a regular raiding group. Can you be the one who changes that? Do you dare live the dream? Only you can say for sure. The current guild leader is Nipponophile, who starts all his character names with “Oed”, because of his alcohol problems. He's easily the most cheerful guildleader we've had, and has stuck with the game through thick and thin thanks to his boundless, infectious, optimism. We hardly even mind the mandatory, weekly anime screenings. To get invited, do a whois search in game for “That's No Goon”, and filter by guild name. Contact whoever shows up and ask them to invite you, if they can't, they'll let someone who can know. Alternately, post in the thread and someone will read it and invite you eventually. Maybe. If we don't, it's probably because we hate you, and not because we forgot. Here are some helpful images:  Goons on other servers are lonely refugees, outcasts from society. Maybe you can be outcasts together, I don't know. There is also an irc channel where goons hang out, #torgoons on synirc. If you would rather watch other people play the game than play it yourself, there are a couple LPs for you. Empire Republic Protips You have an interrupt. Use it. If you see an enemy using an ability with a cast or channel time longer than a second, you want to interrupt that. Bind you interrupt button to something easy to hit. Mouse 3, or q if you don't have a fancy mouse. You'll be using it a lot. Get Rocket Boost. It's an indoor speeder on a short cooldown if you get all the upgrades. You can find it in your legacy menu, and it costs some credits, or you can get an unlock off the cartel market, or from the GTN that doesn't have the legacy level requirements. There are a lot of other useful unlocks you can get this way, don't be afraid to drop some credits on them. The way equipment works in this game is that most good pieces you will find (and just about everything from the cartel market) is customizable. This means that the item itself has no stats, and you can simply upgrade the components as you go, essentially making it level with you. You'll find more than enough planetary comms as you level to keep you and a companion or two in level appropriate gear. Make sure you're using the right relics. If you're dps or healing, a serendipitous assault is one of your best relics, the other is one that boosts your main stat. Tanks get tanking relics. PvP relics are cheap and close to best in slot, barring the ones that drop from hard or nightmare mode raids, and you should get them. I don't because I'm bad, but you should. Get augments. Augmenting your gear is important at max level. Do it. If in doubt, go with mainstat ones for your class, but feel free to ask in guild. Annakie made a great post about how to make fat stacks of space money in the game. If you are space poor, consider reading it. Turn off general chat. It is a cesspool.  Resources “Please make my decisions for me.” The best site for information and guides is, without doubt, Dulfy. There is a good parser with raid support at Torparse. You can also upload logs to compare epeens. Want to play pretty princess space dressup? Tor-Fashion has you covered with screenshots of most of the gear in the game. Here is a guide to get all the datacrons Have more? Tell me and maybe I'll put them here. Game Overview “So, this game is about space wizards or something?” Star Wars: The Old Republic is a science fantasy MMORPG set a few hundred years after the events of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, more than 3000 years before the events in the movies. Appearing from outside of known space, the Sith Empire launched an invasion that captured several worlds, including the Sith homeworld of Korriban, and sacked the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, and which ended in a cease-fire that has lasted decades. At the beginning of the game, the two forces are in a stalemate, engaging in covert hostilities, proxy-wars and jockeying for power. As you progress through the story, the galaxy once again breaks out into open war. Expansion spoilers: The expansion, Rise of the Hutt Cartel, explains the ongoing war. The Emperor has fallen silent. Not a living being, he cannot die, but he is no longer in control of the Empire. Infighting, the betrayal of Malgus and the rebellion of the Dread Masters left the Empire too fractured to stand against the Republic, and they are in retreat. The Hutts have seized this opportunity and rushed to fill the power vacuum, taking the planet of Makeb. The Empire manages to capture Makeb and it's supply of precious Isotopes, and powerful Sith are once more beginning to stabilize the government. The balance of power has been more or less restored by the time the Dread Masters are defeated, but a new threat, is, naturally, arising. Revan is stirring, driven mad by the centuries he spent connected to the immortal Emperor, he and his order have infiltrated their way to the very top of the Republic and Empire both, and now stand poised to crush anyone who would stand in the way of their vision of galactic peace and tranquillity. Note: This vision involves a lot of genocide.  What has changed “I heard this game sucks” The game has its issues, it's true. When it launched, the devs drastically underestimated how quickly players would go through the content, the endgame was lacking, and it took a good long while before they added more. The game launched without a number of quality of life features, and even some core features were either absent or half-implemented. SWTOR is still very much a WoW-like, hotkey MMO with an emphasis on raiding to progress, but there have been a number of large improvements since launch. On the other hand, the game's levelling experience is second to none. Bioware spent a ton of money on voice acting, and while it may not have been the best decision for the company, it really does make for the most interesting and engaging MMO stories out there. Housing: You can now buy yourself a nice little house to decorate and call your own. The cheapest digs are on the faction homeworlds of Dromond Kaas and Coruscant, and are relatively inexpensive to fully unlock (Still a couple million credits total), the Nar Shadaa sky palace is a bit pricier, and the dirt farm on dirt world is some kind of scam. You're not limited to just one, though. Collect them all, then fill them all with a million trophies in order to get a bonus to your conquest points. We have a guild ship, too. The Space Bar, which you can use to quick travel to the week's conquest target, or just hang out with the Twilik dancers. We don't judge. Conquest: A new thing to grind. Help expand the guild ship by winning conquest points, if you fill your weekly quota and the guild places in the top 10 of a planet, you get an encryption, which we can use to grow the ship, along with other fabulous rewards. Star Fighter: It's a not-on-rails pvp space shooter. Buy and level up different types of ships, and use them to explode the other team. Opinions on how good this is vary a lot, so give it a try and then decide you hate it for yourself. Just be warned that you'll probably wind up facing an 8-man premade with all ships maxed out, and you'll lose badly.  Catmen: Desperate to keep pace with FFXIV, Bioware has released the Cathar as a playable species, unlockable with Cartel Coins. Feel the Fur. Free to play: The game is free now. Download it, play it. There are a number of restrictions on free accounts, with fewer restrictions on Premium accounts, which is anyone who has spent any money at all on the game. Subscribers have no real restrictions, and get a grant of 500 cartel coins each month, and anyone with a security key gets 100 coins per month. It's also worth noting that the game goes out of its way to make the restrictions seem worse than they are. You'll hear horror stories about locked hotbars and limited quest rewards, but if all you want is to play the stories and don't care about raiding, you get more than enough. On the other hand, the best method is probably to subscribe for a month or two, get a character to max, then let your sub lapse if you don't want to raid. This will get you the first expansion for free, a number of bonuses, and a character to grind credits with at max level. Almost every restriction can be lifted by buying the unlocks off the auction house with game money, and they're mostly pretty cheap. Expansion: The Rise of the Hutt Cartel has arrived, rising the level cap to 55 and granting access to new hardmode flashpoints and level 55 operations, as well as new tiers of loot and crafted items, new dailies and weeklies and the new planet of Makeb, along with the fairly entertaining macrobinocular and seeker droid questlines. Since then, more new planets with daily quests, flashpoints, more operations, and stunning vistas have been added. In a couple months, Shadow of Revan is coming out, and raising the level cap again, re-doing the entire progression system, and who knows what else. Legacy: Perhaps the second biggest thing, and touted as a defining feature of the game, this wasn't even in when the game launched. Your legacy connects all characters on a server, allowing new characters to share some of the benefits of the higher level ones. You can mail items and money to other characters on your legacy, completing chapters in your class story and maxing affection with companions grants boosts to your other characters, reputations and achievements are legacy wide, and there are a number of convenience features such as upgrades to your ship and rocket powered boots that once purchased will apply to all characters on your legacy. The Cartel Market: With free to play came the Cartel Market, allowing you to convert real world money into Cartel Coins, used to buy cosmetic goods, speeders, pets, XP boosts and a number of other unlocks and convenience features. The only thing you can't buy is your dignity. Or power.  Achievements: The game now has a fairly robust selection of basic achievements, tracking everything from how many times you killed a boss, how many jawas you killed while using your party jawa, how many players you killed while using your party jawa, how many players killed you while using your party jawa, and also other non-jawa related things like exploration and collecting speeders. Collections: Once you have bound a cartel market item to yourself, you can make as many bound copies of it as you want. For a fee in Cartel Coins based on the item's rarity, you can unlock this for any character on your account (not legacy, account.) This makes it that much easier to dress you and your companions up like a dance troupe and take over the holo-net. Group Finder: Yes, there is a group finder for flashpoints and story mode operations in the game now. It works, matching you up with 3-7 other people who are probably terrible and will wipe repeatedly on even the easiest content. New Flashpoints: Since launch, there have been quite a few new flashpoints added, along with hardmodes of existing ones. What's more, the story modes of the most recent ones are “tactical”, which is code for “no tactics are needed at all”, because they are role-neutral. You can go in with 4 dps and do just fine. Hardmodes are balanced for having proper role composition. New Operations: Since launch, several new operations have been added to the game, with three difficulty modes (Story, hard, and nightmare, all in either 8 or 16 man group size) The current highest tier content is Dread Fortress and Dread Palace, a pair of operations on the idyllic planet of Oricon, where you come face to face with the Dread Masters. You might remember saving them on Belsavis. New Warzones: New 4v4 ranked arenas have been added to the game, along with competitive ladders for the truly elite MMO PvPers. Earn great, exclusive rewards by being really good at grinding gear and pushing buttons. Or, annoy people who care about that by being really bad at it. It's up to you! New Ranked Arenas: Added in 2.4, ranked warzones have been replaced with ranked, 4vs4 arenas. You can queue for these solo or in a group of 4, and it will set you in a random arena against another team of the same type (solo queued or team queued). Compete for ranked comms and also glory or something.  New Companion: HK-51 and Treek the Ewok are now available to all players, purchasable with either cartel coins or ingame credits, though for HK you need to complete a little questline first. They have dialogue, and Treek has both tanking and healing stances, and is pretty much the best companion. Treek is all you need. 1 million credits if you're legacy 40, or buy her from cartel market. With 600 cartel coins, you can add her contract to your collections system and get her on every character. Events: A couple recurring events such as the Gree Enclave and Rakghoul outbreak briefly transform the planets of Tatooine and Illum from desolate sand/iceballs into places you might actually want to visit. The Bounty Hunter Contract week event also begins on August 14, and will be sending people across the galaxy in search of what people smart enough to roll Bounty Hunters at launch already have. Free to Play “You said this game was free?” Yes, SWTOR went free to play in November of 2012. You can download the client and play through the entire story for any class without paying a cent. There are, of course, some limitations. Many of these can be lifted through regular gameplay by purchasing unlocks from other players or off the GTN, and if you spend any money on the game at all you will be switched to preferred status. Playing as free to play or preferred is not overly onerous if it's your first time through the game on either faction, and later play throughs on alts can be made easier by doing dailies on your main in order to fund XP boosts and legacy unlocks. Access to operations and unlimited flashpoints, warzones and space missions can also be purchased on a weekly basis, but if you plan on doing all of these things every week, you are probably better off subbing. The game does also offer a number of different subscription options, including a 2 month, non-recurring plan, which is helpful for the absent minded goon. The Cartel Market “So, what should I spend this space-money on?” Rocket Boost. By far the best use of your money is rocket boost, which is an indoor speeder that makes getting around in the game a lot easier. The Going Places bundle includes this, along with a number of other travel based unlocks, and along with the levelling bundle is a decent buy for a new player who wants to speed up their first character. Once you get one character to max, you can fund alts with dailies pretty easily. The various cartel packs are only good if you enjoy gambling, you will probably not get what you want out of them, and most of their contents can be bought off the GTN, as can the packs themselves. You'll make more selling unopened packs for 150-250k credits each than you'll get selling their contents unless you get very lucky. There are also a few exclusive speeders and pets if you're a collector, but again, they can often be found on the GTN.  Endgame “I hit max level, now what?” Level an alt. Alternately, there are things to do at max level. You can run hardmode flashpoints and operations, you can pvp, you can do heroic space missions and, of course, you can do dailies and weeklies. All of these activities will award some mix of commendations which can be used to purchase gear, and there is enough variety in the daily and weekly quests at this point that you can do a different planet's quests each day and not really have to repeat the same one over and over. Unless you want to. You can also set your sights on the achievement system, going back to hunt datacrons, kill thousands of enemies with different companions, dance for hours in every cantina in the galaxy and spot spy droids with your macrobinoculars. Gearing up requires a mix of loot drops, crafting and commendations. Because of the way that augment kits work, you are probably going to want to pick a nice social gear set you like the look of, and stick with it, just ripping out the mods from whatever new gear you get and putting them in that. If you're just hitting 55 now, and don't already have a bunch of old raid gear or thousands of classic comms, you'll want to start off running hard mode flashpoints and doing dailies and weeklies on the various planets. Weeklies give more bang for your buck, so rotate around doing those if you can to get comms. You also get 10 basic or elite comms for doing a groupfinder flashpoint each day, in addition to the comms for killing bosses and loot drops. Run through the Oricon questline, it will give you a set of high level armor that will set you right for hardmode flashpoints. Get some Oberon pvp relics, or Arkanian if you don't pvp, a mainhand with basic comms, an offhand with elite or ultimate comms, and crafted implants and an earpiece. Upgrade as you get comms and drops, with offhand, belt and bracer being your priority with ultimate comms, followed by implants and earpieces, and fill in the rest with elite comm gear until you can get set piece stuff from operations. Eventually, you'll just be buying pieces for a single mod or enhancement to optimize your stat distribution, and if you have any questions about how you should be gearing, just ask in guild chat. Someone will lie to you, and we'll all have a good laugh as you load up your tank with alacrity. Finally, augments are important. With the current crop of Mark 9 augments, an advanced one will get you 32 of the main stat on it, plus 18 endurance. This comes to 448 extra stat points, and over 2000 hp from augments alone. The kits are expensive right now, as everyone is rushing to redo all their slots, and the advanced augs are even more so, but you can fill everything up with the blue ones and slowly upgrade to purples as you go. For dps, if you get a skill that gives an extra 9% to your main stat, go with that for augs. Otherwise, main stat, power and possibly accuracy if you're having trouble getting it to 100% are valid choices. For tanks, a mix of defence and absorb, depending on what you already have. Healers are best with main stat or power, again depending on if you have a talent that boosts main stat or not. As a note, due to certain scaling strangeness in the switch to 2.0 and level 55, crit and alacrity scale very poorly at the moment. Accuracy and surge are not in a great place, either, but they're better. The most crit rating you should have is ~350, and only if your class benefits from crit a lot. Otherwise, for dps and healing, go with power.  Classes “So, what class uses the most lightsabres?” SWTOR has 4 base classes, each of which divides into two advanced classes at level 10. Of course, picking an advanced class is completely optional, and those of you who remain Jedi Knights or Sith Inquisitors to max level will meet with endless praise for your good taste and dedication. Classes mirror each other cross faction; a Guardian is mechanically the same as a Juggernaut, just with different animations and names on the skills. Further, Bioware has gone to great lengths to make all classes and specs viable. There have been a few hiccups, and some still perform better than others at certain roles, but on the whole any class in any spec should be able to fill its role if played well and geared properly, so just play what you enjoy and don't worry about people telling you you're suboptimal or other such nonsense.  Jedi Knight/Sith Warrior Melee based class that uses Strength as its primary attribute. They start off in medium armour, and are a very mobile class, getting force leap from an early level. Best played without an advanced class, if you have the GUTS. The Jedi Knight storyline is a classic Star Wars space opera, starring you as Space Jesus. The Sith Warrior storyline deals with the nature of power, strength and honour. Guardian/Juggernaut Guardians gain the ability to wear heavy armour and use a power or shield focus in their offhand along with the option to specialize as a tank. Prior to 2.0, Guardians and Juggernauts were not very effective at either their tanking or dps roles, lacking the ability to do much damage or hold threat, but since the latest patches, they are perfectly capable of holding their own. Marauder/Sentinel Rather than a force focus, Marauders pick up a second glowstick to wave at their enemies, along with three different dps specs to choose from. Each one plays a little differently, focusing on bleeds, burst or aoe damage, and people will debate endlessly about which one is the best. You'll need at least three arms to play this class correctly.  Sith Inquisitor/Jedi Consular They start as a hybrid melee/mid-range class with Willpower as their primary attribute, they focus more on force powers than swordplay, wear light armour and can shift to either a full caster class or a stealth class at level 10. The Inquisitor storyline is a power fantasy, as you uncover forbidden knowledge and zap everyone in the galaxy. The Consular storyline features noble self sacrifice and space-diplomacy, which mostly consists of killing people. Sorcerer/Sage Space wizards, using the force to blast their foes with lightning/pebbles, or to heal their allies with purple/yellow puddles on the ground. They wear dresses and carry a glowing wand. Sorcs make for an almost indispensable healer in operations, given that they have the only aoe heal capable of hitting an entire op group. Their dps specs can be a little lacklustre, but are still perfectly viable. Sorc dps gets a bad reputation mostly because sorcs are the most popular class. Shadow/Assassin Space ninjas, using the force to hide themselves from view, they use a double bladed glowstick that usually winds up clipping through their torso. Able to tank in light armour, they rely more on shield/absorb and cycling buffs and cooldowns, self-healing, and backstabbing things while standing in front of them.  Smuggler/Imperial Agent The sneaky classes use Cunning as their primary attribute, are able to take cover behind things to increase their defence, are stylish dressers on both sides of the war and, accordingly, get the most space-action of any class. They are the best class when it comes to rolling with the punches. The smuggler storyline is a retelling of the classic film, “Dude, Where's My Car.” The agent storyline is a James Bond movie in space, one of the Timothy Dalton ones. Scoundrel/Operative A mostly melee/short range based advanced class with the ability to use stealth and heal people by covering them in green goo. They are very mobile, particularly with the new scamper/exfiltrate ability at level 51, their middle tree grants a bonus to movement speed, and the ability to pop in and out of stealth with annoying frequency. Despite not being a tank, they are very difficult to kill. Most of their heals are hot based, while their burst healing is not as great, they are still a valuable complement to a sorc healer in an operation, and while their dps at endgame used to be poor due to issues with positioning, their new mobility boosts help make them viable again. Sniper/Gunslinger The opposite end of the spectrum, snipers are a long range turret. At 35 meters, they have the longest range in the game, along with a number of tools to keep enemies away and can even detect stealthed opponents trying to sneak up on them if they've been in cover a while. Most of their abilities do rely on the cover system, and all three of their spec lines are dps, but just like the marauder they excel at killing things.  Bounty Hunter/Trooper The best class. Starting in heavy armour and having the most aoe options from an early level, bounty hunters are capable of taking any amount of punishment and dealing it back out again tenfold, and without having to rely on nonsense like the force or dirty tricks. The bounty hunter story revolves around hunting bounties on different planets. They get the best companions. The trooper story is a Tom Clancey novel with a wacky robot sidekick. Mercenary/Commando The best advanced class. Mercenaries get to shoot thousands of missiles at their enemies from long range, and can heal people by shooting them with green bullets and missiles filled with goo. Commandos get to use the biggest guns in the game. And with your heavy armour, you can even sort of tank a lot of fights. Honestly, I don't know why anyone plays anything else. You are, however, not very mobile, since most of your abilities are casted/channeled. Vanguard/Powertech Vanguards trade a commando's range for mobility and instant attacks. In their tank spec, they are the only class that gets both a leap and a pull, while the other specs provide speed boosts, faster interrupts and more ways to break CC, or even attack while being CC'd than anyone else. Smack people with the butt of your rifle, then kick them in the shins with your bootknife. Roles "How do I push buttons?" SWTOR follows the holy trinity of MMOs, with healers, tanks and dps all required in a 1:1:2 ratio for most encounters. There are three tank specs, three healer specs and everything else is a dps spec, though with different specialities. From Medullah on healing: Mercenary/Commando - Good at single target healing with decent AOE heals, super easy to manage heat. Things get rough when aggro gets out of control. Wears heavy armor so takes less of a beating when you have a tank that can't handle things. Capable of doing some serious "OH poo poo" heals with the instant cast heal, and the ability to turn their biggest heal INTO an instant cast and/or heat free one every few minutes. Can DPS a bit too from range, with some big hitters. With recent changes, their AOE jet boost heals friendly targets in range for a moderate amount, and their 4 person instant Kolto Missle/bomb now leaves behind a residue that heals anyone in it's vicinity for a small amount. Has one combat usable 60 second CC. Operative/Scoundrel - Probably the best healer in PVP, and best single-target PVE healer. Requires a bit more forethought and prep than the Merc to heal as they rely heavily on heals over time. Requires a bit more observational skills to make sure 2 stacks of probe are up all the time. Free heal is great, so you rarely run out of energy, but you have to stand still while using it, unlike the Merc/Commando who runs around shooting green bullets. Another advantage of the free heal is that it can actually restore energy when it crits. AOE heal is a bit confusing at first, because it's a Heal Over Time, and figuring out where to target it takes a minute sometimes. Also has some good close range DPS with shotgun blast/backstab. Some heals require upper hand/tactical advantage which is gained several ways, including coming out of stealth. Has an instant small heal that will re-grant UH/TA if used against someone at 30% health or less. Has a 60 second out of combat “sap” CC, as well as a 60 second combat usable droid-only CC. Has an AOE grenade that can stun several targets for a long length of time. Also can use stealth to sneak around, and drop agro in the case of an upcoming party wipe. Sorcerer/Sage - Definitely best raid healer, thanks to AOE heal hitting all 8 members instead of 4. Has a “bubble” which will absorb a large amount of damage that can be put on a target once every 60 seconds. Does not have a “free” heal, acts like a traditional RPG healer with all heals costing mana…er, “Force”. Has some heals which trigger procs to improve others, but are mostly independent of each other. Has the least amount of armor due to wearing light armor, though at 51 they get an “invincible” bubble which protects them for up to 10 seconds from all harm. With recent patches, their cone-shaped AOE heals allies in range of it for a small amount. Has a 60 second combat usable CC. On tanking: Guardians/Juggernauts have the best mitigation and good single target threat, but lack much in the way of aoe control and the ability to work around special boss mechanics and debuffs. They have excellent cooldowns, two gap closers and are fairly straightforward to play, but they're the most prone to losing agro with their lowish threat generation. Powertechs/Vanguards are sort of in the middle. They have probably the best aoe threat, and good single target damage, but the worst cooldowns, and mitigation in general. They're also quite easy to play, and soloing with them is a breeze due to their higher damage output. They also come with a leap and a grapple, like shadows, and have some good aoe debuffs. Shadows/Assassins by default have the lowest damage mitigation, but they come with an excellent selection of self buffs that makes them very effective tanks in the hands of a competent player. They're probably the hardest tank class to play well, since so much depends on maintaining buffs and debuffs and juggling cooldowns, but they also have the best capability to deal with unexpected situations. They have a grapple, but no leap, and a speed boost instead. For dps: Marauders/Sentinels and Gunslingers/Snipers are at the top of the pack by a fair margin, due to the fact that they can't do anything but dps. This is not to say that you should always roll one of these if you want a dps slot in a raid group, since the utility of having an off healer for a quick battle rez, or to help keep the tank up, or someone else with a taunt in case the tank goes down is quite helpful. But you probably won't be topping the charts unless you're one of those two classes. Operatives and Assassins, on the other hand, are in a bit of a bad place as far as damage goes. Not that they're not viable, whatever certain people might say, but they're over-reliant on burst damage and have issues with positioning on a lot of fights, so their sustained damage on longer boss battles can be a bit disappointing. The pvp specs (Lethality/Dirty Tricks and madness/balance) get around this issue somewhat, being less positional and more ranged, but are also fairly aoe or dot based, respectively. Another thing to watch for is that Bounty Hunter/Commando Pyrotech specs for both sets of advanced classes is broken. Don't use it. If you want to dps as one of these classes, go with the middle tree, Arsenal/Gunnery or Tactics/Advanced Prototype. For everything else, it should be fairly viable, just keep in mind that the rightmost tree is always designed around pvp, with a focus on aoe and burst rather than sustained single target damage. Boss fights for dps classes are as much about resource management as anything else, you have to know when to blow your cooldowns, when to save them for burn phases, and how to be disciplined about your resource pool so you can keep a constant stream of numbers going.  Crew Skills “What do I do with all these non-healer companions on my ship?” Put them to work. Crafting in SWTOR isn't something you do yourself, it's something you have your companions do for you. Crew skills are divided into three categories: crafting, gathering and mission skills. The first two are fairly self-explanatory, and mission skills are skills that provide a number of small missions you send your companion on, and hopefully they come back with something nice, this is where you'll get the rare materials you need to make blue or purple recipes. Each crafting skill has an associated gathering and mission skill listed in its codex entry, so you're not reliant on other players for components. What skill should you take? The most useful one is biochem at endgame, since you can craft re-usable medpacks, stims and adrenals that otherwise can be pretty pricey. Cybertech is the most useful for gearing up alts, with artifice also being of some use there, and it can now make dyes for playing pretty princess dressup with. Armstech, Armormech and Synthweaving can make augments of various types, which are useful for endgame gearing, and can also be helpful for gearing alts. If you just want to make money, your best bet is taking Scavenging, Bio-analysis and Slicing, then just gather everything and sell it on the GTN. Low level mats sell for a fair bit, particularly in those weird in-between levels from 25-40. VonLudwig fucked around with this message at 05:05 on Oct 17, 2014 |
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May 14, 2013 15:58
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Medullah posted:Nice OP - you might want to add a section about roles - Healer/Tank/DPS, since we get the question "I want to heal, which class should I pick?" a lot in the thread. I can write up a healer breakdown if you want, and a tank one...but limited experience as DPS. Sure, I'd appreciate it. PM me whatever you can, I can add something about DPS.
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May 14, 2013 18:05
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Just ignore that box.
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May 14, 2013 20:51
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They're planning to expand it, but for now it's just cartel market items.
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May 15, 2013 05:16
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WarLocke posted:I thought the only people who used gear that looked like that were the sad fucks who play a dark side Warrior and put Vette in a metal bikini. You mean goons?
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May 18, 2013 03:40
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Place Ad Here posted:That is the top dog atm but for a few people it just doesn't feel comfortable. You can still run the full 36 in the right tree and put up decent numbers and the 8/7/28 (think that is right) still works. Or you could be a real man and run with this
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May 19, 2013 04:31
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Legacy is server based, unfortunately. The good news for you is that when server transfers open up next month with 2.2, your legacy will transfer over with a character. The way legacy transfers have worked in the past is that the two legacies merge and the higher level one takes priority, so you should be keeping the unlocks you got on Pot5 if you transfer a character from it to JC. The bad news is that until 2.2, no, you won't have those unlocks unless you buy them again on the new server. The game's server architecture and backend is becoming a bit notorious, and while the dev team is obviously doing their best to untangle the horrible mess they were left with and are making new things like the collections system and cartel unlocks account wide, all the older stuff tied to legacy is still server only.
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May 24, 2013 02:24
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Red Crown posted:So, what exactly is the benefit of playing a Warrior/Knight without an advanced class? You seem to miss out on a lot in terms of lacking a skill tree. GUTS.                     
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May 25, 2013 02:18
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Yes, those all stack, but rested XP will not stack with the double XP weekend boost. And your best bet is getting one character to 55 first, so you can take advantage of the credits you can make at max level in order to fund your alts with things like advanced speeder piloting and so on.
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May 25, 2013 03:27
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So yeah, I'm back on the good meds and I did in fact update the OP with a lot of new information, and linked to a few things that have been helpfully posted in the thread over the past few months. Sorry for being a bad OP, I should be able to keep up with things again now that I don't have a 2000 post backlog staring at me. Also playing the game regularly again, and enjoying the new flashpoints and the BHA quest. A tip on that, though, don't take the one at the top of the list. I'm doing Tattoine today, and it's nice and clear. Maybe I'll do Hutta in a few days after the unwashed masses have had their turn. On another note, TNG will be raiding tonight at 8:30 EST. If we have enough people, we'll either do some 16 man stuff, or possibly break into two 8 mans, one for hard mode for those capable, and one for story modes to teach and gear up those not yet capable. What I'd really love is to actually get 24 people, so we can do a 10 stack Dreadtooth, and start getting people the adorable Dweadtoof pet. Since we're actually starting to creep up on the 500 person guild limit, I went ahead and booted everyone who didn't have a member note set and hadn't been online in over a month. If that was you or your alt, just message someone to get back in, and make sure you get that note set. We may have to boot more inactive people in the future, as we've been getting quite a few new goons the past couple months, so again if you come back after a long break and find yourself without a bunch of goons to huddle between, don't panic. Just message someone in the guild and we'll get you sorted out. Finally, as for renaming the guild ranks and bank slots from their current terrible bankerish corporate state, much deliberation has been had and the final outcome should be: CEO (Guildmaster) - Krayt Dragon CFO (Guild leaders) - Sarlacc Officer (Officers) - Thranta Director (raider/inviter) - Orokeet Analyst (plebs) - Tauntaun Intern (people I don't trust with our goods/money) - Nerf Bantha Poodoo (mute/timeout) - Bantha Poodoo With the bank tabs being Slot 1 - TIE Fighter Slot 2 - Lancer Slot 3 - Carrack Slot 4 - Star Destroyer Slot 5 - Death Star All complaints will be ignored.
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Aug 14, 2013 19:38
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Fewd posted:Is there any decent way to get level 50+ purple armorings for orange gear? The crafter top level ones are hideously expensive on gtn, although for a good reason looking at the materials needed... Anyway, I bought a piece of basic commendation armor and tried to take the armoring from that, but the game refused to put it into my orange. Which is pretty hideously dumb design because the commendation jugg armors are ugly as hell and there's literally zero reason to not allow swapping the armoring into orange. Did you try to put it in the corresponding piece? You can absolutely put the armorings, mods and enhancements from the endgame commendation vendors into orange shells. I do it all the time, and because of the way augmentation kits work so should you. However, armorings and barrels/hilts are slot bound, so the armoring from a chestpiece must be placed into another chestpiece, and the barrel from a vibroknife and only be placed into another vibroknife (this one really annoys me, because of how hard it makes it to gear companions.) Mods and enhancements don't share this restriction, and neither do freshly crafted armorings that have never been slotted into anything, but you should be fine buying gear with comms and cramming them into the equivalent orange piece.
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Aug 15, 2013 07:51
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PTS for 2.4 is up, here are some preliminary patch notes. I'm... not super enthused by the 1 heat reduction for flame thrower in exchange for a damage reduction. It looks like they're trying to make pyrotech more useful, though, and those are some decent changes for it, and advanced prototype got some much needed buffs as well.
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Aug 16, 2013 20:33
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I'd go for the new ones. If you had DG, it might be worth waiting until you have enough for a 2 piece Arkanian bonus to break the old one, but the armor rating and endurance is worth more to you as a tank than 2% damage reduction.
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Aug 17, 2013 07:19
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Strategy posted:Powertech Pyro is probably the worst AC in the game for PvP right now. That's not true. Pyro merc is the worst spec in the game for anything, and it was never good, unlike the powertech version. They honestly did need to be nerfed, though, they were drastically outperforming, but the way it was done made the whole spec basically useless. Heck, it even cascaded over into advanced prototype, such that currently a hybrid spec taking tanking talents outperforms going to the top of either dps tree. The devs obviously do realize this, though, and are working on it, as you can see from the 2.4 pts notes. I imagine pyro will become a decent burst class again, while the upper tier AP talents will get some buffs to make it a competitive sustained damage spec. I mean, it's not terrible like operative/assassin dps specs are for raiding, but it's not as good as the other mid tier dps, either. Heck, maybe they'll even make it so someone might spec into pyro merc ever.
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Aug 19, 2013 07:49
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Prism posted:I was going to take Powertech on my BH and do DPS You'll be fine if you go advanced prototype. You can do the levelling content on any class just mashing your auto-attack for the most part, and the only time the dps might be tight enough that you could cause an enrage would be nightmare mode ops. And yeah, overall the changes to PT pyro are a ~12-15% overall damage buff to thermal detonator (and making it much more front loaded), and slight damage and utility nerfs to the other skills. I'm not sure what their spreadsheets say, or if they're confused about what procs what, but just these changes alone aren't going to make the spec playable again. AP changes are good, though, if maybe not quite enough, and might swing people away from the hybrid.
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Aug 19, 2013 19:23
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. Should I be worried about being useless until October? I mean not that it really matters because I'm not going to max level until at least October anyway.
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The Royal Scrub posted:I'm checking this out after finally playing KOTOR 1&2. Can you enjoy a solo play-through on a free account, or is the leveling pack/Rocket Boots really recommended? If I try some Warzones will there be people doing five times my damage with legacy weapons and crap? You can absolutely play through the 1-50 content without paying a cent. The game will shout at you to buy things, but you don't really need any of it, and if it's your first time through on a side, it's worth seeing all the side content anyway. Some of it is really well done. In 1-54 warzones, everyone gets bolstered, and there shouldn't be much in the way of power disparity. F2P is only really restrictive if you want to do endgame stuff or lots of warzones, and many of its restrictions can be lifted by spending ingame credits to buy unlocks off the GTN. That said, it only costs $5 to get a preferred account, which is a good upgrade and well worth it if you enjoy the game. As for story lines, any of the non-force user classes plays best if you go neutral, stick to your own set of principles you decide for a character and turn off those pesky light/dark side indicators. Imperial agent and Smuggler are two of the best stories in the game, and Bounty Hunter and Trooper both have their moments. It's really all a matter of taste, but I prefer them to the Jedi/Sith stories for pretty much the same reasons.
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Aug 19, 2013 22:50
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Medullah posted:Huh, is that new? I remember running BT over and over again with my Mercenary to get the chestpiece (Which she still wears at level 55). It's been there since launch. And there is a republic version as well, I remember it from the beta, he should be one of the vendors under the plaza, but I'm not sure, just keep checking. It's just the weapons, though, as I recall, not armor pieces.
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Aug 20, 2013 18:44
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Patch notes for 2.3.1 are up. New Cartel shipment with a new reputation to grind is out. The old ones are still available, at least for now. I'm only a friend of the contraband resale corp, but I'm sure a few goons are legendary by now. I'm not sure if I envy them or not. Some interesting changes to S&V, mostly nightmare mode, and not just nerfing everything. Perhaps the biggest change is that you will no longer hear tauntauns bleating everywhere, all the time.
VonLudwig fucked around with this message at 00:49 on Aug 21, 2013 |
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Aug 20, 2013 22:40
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I'd be pretty surprised if it wasn't fixed tomorrow. For those wondering, somehow the alignment requirements got turned on for galactic reputation gear (scalene, hyperspace hotstot &c.) I suppose all gear probably has alignment as a field on it, but this is normally ignored, and the requirement for all these pieces is set to neutral. I logged in to check, and both my characters wearing rep gear are not getting the stats from the affected equipment. Right now I'm going to try grinding back to neutral alignment on my merc, who's only dark II, to see if that fixes things. If not, well, maybe I'll slap on my old dreadguard shells for the duration. Edit: confirmed that grinding to neutral will allow me to use my gear again. VonLudwig fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Aug 21, 2013 |
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Aug 21, 2013 20:07
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The trouble with operative and assassins for dps is that essentially all their dps specs are pvp specs. They both have a stealth melee spec and a ranged aoe dot spec, both of which are all well and good for pvp and for levelling where you're fighting packs of weaker mobs. In endgame pve, though, the stealth spec falls apart on sustained dps because it relies heavily on popping in and out of stealth constantly as well as positioning, neither of which can be guaranteed, particularly when you don't have a proper gap closer. Force speed helps a little, but the roll is a gap opener, not a closer. The aoe dot spec just doesn't have the single target or burst damage you need. Sentinels and snipers do on average 200-300 more dps than any of the other good dps specs, and operatives and assassins are a few hundred below them. This isn't to say you shouldn't play them. It really only matters for tight enrage timers in hard/nightmare operations. And assassins make good tanks, and operatives are the best healers at the moment.
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Aug 23, 2013 20:36
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If you're not attached to your old characters or legacy, feel free to start over. You can see a new story and learn to be good at a character from the ground up, instead of being overwealmed with strange abilities.
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Sep 3, 2013 19:17
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Inventory upgrades are super cheap on the GTN, though. The F2P model seems like it tries to make itself look worse than it actually is, which is sort of the opposite of how most models go about it, and most restrictions can be lifted with relatively little ingame money. On that note, patch notes for 2.3.2 are up, and you can now purchase cartel coins in game, without having to go to the website. If you are a subscriber, your first purchase of cartel coins made from the game client is 50% off. That is a good deal to try out their new system. Also xp penalties for F2P players have been pushed back from level 10 to 20, and a few nice upgrades to some legacy unlocks have been made. You can reduce quick travel to 10 minutes, and get a guild bank on your ship, even. Heck, they even did some codex cleanup, which has been needed since launch. A good patch.
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Sep 4, 2013 01:42
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Patch notes are up for 2.3.3. Highlights include no longer being knocked off your speeder when going through bases on Hoth, previews of the new cartel pack coming Sept 26, reduced minor encounters in Explosive Conflict, improvements to the way the seeker droid works and various bug fixes.
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Sep 16, 2013 22:14
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While assassin tanks might have the worst damage mitigation, they're still more than capable of tanking any of the content in the game as long as your healers are competent. What's more, they have better threat, and much better aoe threat, than the other two tanks, and force shroud alone is worth taking an assassin tank along in order to completely ignore some mechanics. Don't let nay-sayers stop you from playing a class you want to play.
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Sep 17, 2013 03:51
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If you want to get into it, I think the best combination would be one assassin tank and one non-assassin tank. That way you can avoid some boss mechanics with the assassin's shroud and stealth, and for the really heavy hitters you have your jugg or powertech who has actual armour. But yes, outside of a very few small, high end cases, sin tanks can do anything just fine.
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Sep 18, 2013 17:51
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A few mechanics spring to mind. In the first boss of Terror from beyond, an assassin tank can shroud (or was it stealth?) in order to remove the debuff the boss puts on them, and so avoid spawning the little adds and needing someone to stand in the purple circle. On the next boss, shroud will also stop them taking damage from force leach, giving them a bit of time to click off any hots on them or get out of any aoe heals. Finally, on the first phase of terror, you can speed up the tentacle phase by just having them shroud the explosion of the big adds that come out, so the dps don't have to spend time burning them down. Make sure they get away from the rest of the group, though, since it is an aoe. In S&V, the second boss does the giant grenade move, which can be shrouded and so you don't have to worry about healing that up. While not strictly a tank mechanic, in Oasis city having a tank that can stealth out of combat after they're done their beacon, mount up and speed to the boss is really helpful for nightmare mode, where the time limit is a lot tighter. Finally, on Styrak, you can abuse the teleport assassins get to glitch out the waves of adds by making sure no one else has threat on the last group, and popping back up to the entrance, restarting the fight (and the enrage timer). There's probably a few more mechanics I'm forgetting, since I don't tank much.
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Sep 18, 2013 20:15
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People still buy and sell MMO accounts, I'm not sure but I think SAmart allows it. It's usually against ToS and so Ebay won't let you do it, but you can probably get decent money for a largely complete account with lots of max level, well geared characters.
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Sep 19, 2013 04:00
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rizzen posted:So how is the PvP in this game now? I bought and played this at release for a few months, up until they took an axe to Ilum and continually failed to fix the bugs in EV. Need a time waster now, and I figured I might as well go back and play out the stories I didn't do before. But is it basically all Imp vs Imp Huttball still? Or do I actually have a chance of running to opposing faction players now? I guess I'll need to buy the expansion for $20 too? Or does it come included in a sub fee for as long as I'm paying? All pvp can now be cross or same faction, so you won't be playing huttball forever, and at least on JC there are more republic pvpers than imp, so you have a good chance of killing some jedi. They've added at least one new warzone since you last played, Ancient Hypergates, and 4vs4 ranked arenas are coming soon. PvP gear is a lot more sane to get now, too. If you sub, you'll be getting the expansion for free now, yes.
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Sep 19, 2013 18:56
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Experience for preferred is about what was normal for subscribers at launch. You'll be fine as long as you do the side quests, or run the occasional flashpoint/space missions/pvp dailies without having to grind anything. XP boosters will also help with this, and are very cheap. You won't be able to just do story missions, but then not even subscribers can get away with that.
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Sep 19, 2013 20:01
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They "fixed" Ilum by just removing all the pvp quests entirely, admitting they had been poorly thought out that just did not work. There is now a free for all pvp zone there which is used during the Gree event to decent effect. PvP gear has progressed quite a bit. Your war hero gear is now useless, the expertise has been removed from it, and due to how bolster works you are better off wearing pve gear until you can replace it with partisan/conqueror gear. Weekly warzones are still capped at 5 for non-subscribers, but you can buy a pretty cheap pass, either from the cartel market or from the GTN for ingame credits to lift it for the week. If you only care about doing pvp, this is cheaper than a sub, or you can run dailies once a week and be set.
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Sep 20, 2013 00:06
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The thinking was that it was level 50 gear, and expertise is only for max level (55) pvp. Your expertise augs and crystals are still fine.
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Sep 20, 2013 01:59
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Rocket boost will change your world, yes. Other things to consider are the various levelling packs, transportation packs (which includes rocket boost) and such which will make getting your first character that much easier, and get you to the point where you have a max level person to do dailies and such, and can fund any alts you make later. The grade 7 ship equipment is also not a bad deal, or you can buy some cartel packs to gamble, or sell them unopened. The older ones actually sell for a higher price, but a bit more slowly. You can also unlock catmen, and various cosmetic options.
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Sep 20, 2013 18:38
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You can purchase them individually from your legacy, character perks screen.
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Sep 21, 2013 16:50
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No, subscribers can use artefact equipment with no extra charge. If you sub and drop back down, any artefact equipment you have equipped will stay on, but I think you don't benefit from the stats. Or maybe you can just never change it.
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Sep 27, 2013 20:34
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Ravenfood posted:Vector's not a bad companion. He's just a weird romance, especially since a good chunk of your exposure to the Killiks is them kidnapping random people and turning them into hivemind bug people and possibly trying to take over Alderaan. You mean reclaim Alderaan from the human invaders, right? It's the Killik homeworld. And heck, if the Imperials were to help the Killiks with that, they'd probably be spectacular allies in the war against the republic despots who waged a war of genocide against them for millennia.
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Sep 30, 2013 18:48
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This isn't the first time this has happened. Sounds like someone got AM and PM mixed up, and patched the client 12 hours early. At least they caught it fast before too many people were affected.
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Oct 1, 2013 01:04
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Pretty sure Bioware servers run on cubic time, so no.
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Oct 1, 2013 03:56
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Patch 2.4 now live, it's about a 100 MB download. Highlights include a new level 55 daily area, two new level 55 operations, 4vs4 ranked arenas that you can solo queue for, a decent reworking of the powertech/vanguard advanced prototype and pyrotech trees, connected Belsavis transporters and being able to shift click items to populate the GTN search window. It'll be nice to have some new operations to do, and to finish off this whole Dread Master storyline. Maybe the next operation can focus on the bad guys of the Republic. A corrupt senator gone rogue, a Jedi who seized power for a planet's "own good". A general accused of war crimes seizes a battlecruiser and plans to smash it into a sun for some reason?
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Oct 1, 2013 15:53
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The new operations are pretty good. Lustre will probably wear off after I've been running them a few months, but for now I am pleased. I hope they can continue the pace of content development they've been doing, it has actually been pretty good lately.
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Oct 3, 2013 04:22
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thegodofchuck posted:OK, theorycrafters / math geeks: now that gear is inflated again, is it still worth it for me to be running around with my assassin tank in a 4-piece of 3 63s and a 61 for the set bonus vs. upgrading to all 72s? I don't raid anymore, obviously, or I wouldn't be stuck with such trash. It was worth it to upgrade to the 72s, as long as you could get the new set bonus. It's super worth it now. The new set bonus really isn't much worse than the old one, and the hp and armour rating you're passing up by not upgrading is actually pretty considerable.
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Oct 3, 2013 15:28
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