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 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

Posted: 2012-01-10 12:43pm 

Hey I love Force Lightning, it's our signature attack. It does not stun, but via talents we can use it to regen force, get it's crit rate pretty high and gives us the best continuous damage in the game. But you have Snipers and Knights who can throw out 4k crits.

 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

Posted: 2012-01-10 01:02pm 

Yeah, four abilities that all chain together and keep you stunlocked/faceplanted for the duration. From stealth.

 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

Posted: 2012-01-10 01:12pm 

Except on Alderann, Grapple and Force-push are the two key powers being able to shove people off railings for easy kills.

 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

Posted: 2012-01-10 01:52pm 

It's usually too laggy to line up an accurate Force Push off the edges of Voidstar. Half the time they go flying in a completely nonsensical direction and end up fine, with full resolve to boot.

Extra fail when you Push the ball carrier on Huttball and instead of back into the fire they go flying into the endzone instead.

 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

Posted: 2012-01-10 08:18pm 

Assuming that if I wanted to play at the same time as my wife, we'd need two games with two different accounts, right?

 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

Posted: 2012-01-10 09:20pm 

Yup.

 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

Posted: 2012-01-10 10:23pm 

And pick complementing classes. Two Jedi Sentinels are booh.

 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

Posted: 2012-01-11 03:48am 

I'd suggest one of you tank while the other heals and you both bring DPS companions along.

 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

Posted: 2012-01-12 01:38am 

Did Hard Mode Esseles today.

Egads, fuck Ironfist. We wiped at least 20 times. Compared to 3 on Isric and once on Vokk.

 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

Posted: 2012-01-12 01:45am 

fuck ironfist is an evilly hard mo-fo the onlything harder than him for his level is well I'm not sure....

 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

Posted: 2012-01-12 12:24pm 

The PvP equipment system is so idiotically designed, I barely know where to begin.

You do Warzones to earn Warzone Commendations (WC), but the only gear you can buy with WC is level 20 and 40 gear. The level 50 gear is broken into 3 basic tiers:
Centurion (Lowest)
Champion (Middle)
Battlemaster (Highest)

But to get any of this gear, you have to buy Champion bags with 200 WC and 200 Mercenary Comendations (MC). MCs are acquired by trading in 30 WC for 10 MC at a PvP vendors, rather than just spending 800 WC.... Now, the bags drop either 3 Centurian Commendations (CC, obviously for buying Centurian Gear), or one CC and a token to trade in for a piece of Champion gear. You get Battlemaster bags for doing weeklys, but you have to be valor 60 to open them anyway.

My first bag netted me a token to get a chest piece and this is where it gets hella stupid. My current PvE chest piece has 3 level 50 mods (2 of them epic). The stats on the Champion piece cream them on all fronts (I bought the tanking piece) and has the added benefit of having Expertise on it.

It lacks the normal 3 mods and only has two: the armoring is set in stone, only allowing you to change the Mod and Enhancement (both are the exact types I need for tanking, but are epics 56s). I could pull both the mods (for 37k a piece), but the armor is also loads better than my guardian armoring and since the Expertise seems to be built into the armor (rather than replacing a PvE stat): there is no logical reason to.

So.... I'm going to get me and my buddies geared to sail through hardmodes by.... buying PvP gear. Good call Bioware.

Also, tanking stats (Defense Rating, Absorbtion, Shield Chance) do not work against 99% of player abilities. The exceptions are a few attacks done with lightsabers. So, if you're wondering why you're decked out in tanking gear and your health still melts away in 3 seconds flat, it's because Bioware hates you. You should have rolled Scroundrel.

 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

Posted: 2012-01-12 12:51pm 

FYI one of the 1.1 changes will be to let you yank the armoring mods from PVP gear so you don't have to keep the PVP look which is mostly frankly stupid as is the multi-level marketing approach to getting pvp gear in the first place. The entire 50s gear is a bit borked to begin with as is 50s crafting. From 9-49 everything works fine then when you hit 50 the stupid happens.

Thankfully they will be changing this as the current system used today is what they implemented about 70% of the way through Beta. What we will be changing back to is the old system which was used before it and everyone liked.

 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

Posted: 2012-01-12 02:07pm 

Hopefully it will fix the fact that grinding PvP gear, while annoying, is no where near as difficult as grinding gear from hardmodes or ops. You can lose 10 warfronts (provided you get a few medals and increase your valor for the match) and get gear that, from what I can tell, is >= what you would get for beating hardmodes and normal mode ops. Granted it's random so you might be in for the long-haul. But the progression is guaranteed unlike hardmodes where 4 (or 8 or 16) people have to be on the ball to complete and take a step in the right direction.

We can beat Taral V and possibly a few others, but why bother spending hours in a dungeon and paying massive repair bills when I can spend that same amount of time doing PvP and almost certainly have better gear to show for it? Gear that will let me Tank and PvP more effectively? And it's not like I'm walking around in quest greens. Besides like 2 mods and an implant, I'm in all level 50 rares and epics (All my armoring is epic 22, or whatever the best cybertech can craft right now). I just wish I knew about this earlier: I would have been doing PvP dailies from level 10 on.

On the crafting front, Synthweaving (and by extension Armormech) is fucking worthless. All the gear you can craft is hideous and worthless outside equipping a companion. I'm pissed I wasted so many credits leveling it when I could have just gone with speeder piloting 3. Cybertech gets the armoring and mods, artifice gets all the enhancements. Biochem blows everything away with actual profession specific bonuses like reusable medpacks. The only craftable that would be worth money is orange Bracers and Belts, which I haven't even been able to find the possibility of crafting. But hey, I've got a bunch of bounty hunter gear I can craft.....

 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

Posted: 2012-01-12 04:07pm 

Well, this is a bit of an exaggeration, but sadly a little too true. Deflection (which is, at base, strangely piss-poor for a Guardian of all classes) only actually deflects Ranged and Melee abilities (capital R and M, respectively). It does not work against Tech attacks, of which there are a great many. Note that most non-lightsaber melee attacks are actually Tech! Blaster Whip, Stockstrike, etc. Add in things like Sabotage Charge and various other "ranged" attacks which are actually Tech, and yeah, your lightsaber isn't deflecting much - and of those you actually can deflect, you're looking at about 20% at best outside of Saber Ward!

To further add insult to injury, half of these Tech attacks do Internal or Elemental damage, which completely bypasses armor...

 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

Posted: 2012-01-12 07:55pm 

Indeed. As much as I like to tank, I'm thinking of rolling a Vanguard instead of my Guard.

 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

Posted: 2012-01-12 10:45pm 

Bought the game today, rolled on Ebon Hawk. Stevano the Smuggler and Nidaelle the Jedi Knight so far, but alas, I must go to bed for work.

 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

Posted: 2012-01-13 02:34pm 

Upon further research, the anguish disparity of getting gear is becoming more and more evident.

To Preface, the gear and it's PvE/PvP equivalent
Tionese (PvE: Hard Mode Flashpoints (FP) and Normal Mode Mode EV (Eternity Vault) (Op/Raid) - Centurion (PvP: Champion Bags drop Commendations)
Columni (PvE: Hard Mode EV (Op/Raid) and Normal Mode Karagga (Op/Raid) - Champion (Champion Bags or Battlemaster Bags)
Rakata (PvE: Hard Mode Karagga (Op/Raid) - BattleMaster (PvP BattleMaster Bags)

I've heard Eternity Vault is easier than any hardmode, but getting 8 people to try it without being in a guild that raids, having a good DPS specs, and having max biochem (holy fuck this game is already WoW): good luck.

So, as noted in my other post: I can spend 2 hours to try and complete a hardmode Flashpoint to try and get Tionese gear with 51 epic mods/armoring (you can get 50 rares by questing and 50 epics via Cybertech and Artifice). This is usually a 1% (like 3-10 points per primary/secondary stat) gain. Centurion gear isn't really any better than questing rares with the exception of Expertise.

OR, I can take that 2 hours, do the PvP dailies on Illum and Warfronts, netting me 2 Champion Bags for 5 minutes on Illum and winning 3 warfronts (may take a while depending on your PvP population). Then you can get 6 more bags by doing the 15 points/9 wins for Illum/Warfront dailies. Then you can take all the Warfront Commendations (you need 800) and buy more Champion Bags. Now, to be fair, Centurion gear isn't that great but commendations are a given. And there's only a chance of getting Champion Gear (the stuff you really want) out of each bag. I got lucky: 7 bags so far, 3 pieces of gear (Chest, Gloves, Belt). This gear will result in ~4-5% stat boost over your old stuff if you were keeping up and had level 50 mods. So, a large gain per piece. I don't know how the healing/DPS gear stacks up, but for tanks: this is no doubt the best way to get geared without being carried through ops/FPs. The PvP Tank armor has the exact mods/enhancements a Guardian tank needs (Elusive Mods/Immunity Enhancements).

Now, the expertise on this gear isn't free. You lose from your core stats in the armoring. For me, I'm losing 19End and 11Str for 36 expertise. But that's comparing to the Columni gear (which is Raid gear and even harder to get). Champion gear still blows away the PvE hardmode (Tionese) gear and is easier to get (even if luck based). Conclusion: fuck Tionese/Centurion gear. Also, Synthweaving makes running hardmodes worthwhile as you can make Rakata level belts and bracers, but you need the Chaos Orb from the last boss.

There's talk of the PvE and (from this thread) PvP gear system being completely revamped in the next big patch. So, I'm getting while the getting is good. The more Champion gear I get now, the better off I'll be. And since there's no actual PvP going on in the PvP area of Illum, it's pretty easy, if not frustrating to get gear. If you're Imperial, congrats on your easy mode, enjoy your fast dailies.

On another note: if they try and "fix" Illum by forcing PvP via kills, Illum dies on my server. We had like 5 guys total doing Illum dailies yesterday. There were probably 10 imps just outside our base. Only 2 were trying to kill us, the rest were just blowing up turrets and waiting for us to repair. But had they tried, Republic isn't going to bother with Illum at those odds. They'll just have to start up a kill trading system.

 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

Posted: 2012-01-13 03:24pm 

We have the opposite problem on our server. Like clockwork, 9pm EST there's fifty Imperials on Illium as 2-3 Rebels destroy the south defense point. And since you can simply stand there and take credit it literally is a crowd of people getting together while one or two people rocket the points, ten minutes and everyone is done and out of there like clockwork. Run the dalies, run the weeklies and we ignore Illium except for the other dalies.

 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

Posted: 2012-01-14 10:32am 

Well, so far I can see where the "WoW clone" stuff comes from, but I find the game to be a fun experience. The dialogue system is the most unique, and enjoyable, part so far. Well, until my Jedi get frickin' lightsabers anyway.

The intro FMVs, though? Made of pure epic. If they made an actual movie using those videos as a basis for the fight scenes and space action scenes? I'd pay for opening night tickets.

 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

Posted: 2012-01-14 10:41pm 

Bioware invested a hefty amount of their time developing RPG stories so it is no surprise they delivered on that front for the most part. The gameplay is where it really starts to lag with basic functionality features missing or severely underdeveloped compared to what past, present and upcoming games are using.

Done the Sage to 50
Done the Sorc to 50

Overall, both have been rather unique but after playing the same class on both sides of the fence the generic copy / paste mirroring becomes extremely obvious. The repetative audio dialogue being used again and again because the Devs clearly couldnt or wouldnt splurge on more audio work while the only unqiue things really come from the railroaded quest progression. The game has a good base but with the massive part of that being the story element which actually finishes when you reach 50... expansions end up needing to continue an EU type development or move away from the story element.

Once you have played all 8 classes to 50 you are effectively done and seen all of the story. The endgame is not going to compensate very well to retain people in it's current state. It will be interesting to see how BW intend to handle expansions. Either its going to be more story based quest stuff that continues your personal character's progression or they will drop the stories and simply focus on gameplay. The latter has more utility but BW are weaker in that department.

 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

Posted: 2012-01-18 05:18am 

Finally got my fucking speeder. You really need one on Tatooine. A desolate backwater of a planet where every single fucking SW character of import has either been to or been from. Really.

 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

Posted: 2012-01-18 08:58am 

Yeah, as Tag and Bink say "Let's go to Tatooine - nothing ever happens there! Into obscurity we go!"

I'm very much enjoying the game so far, though I don't really have the time to commit to it any more. I think my favourite part was enticing a Dark Lady of the Sith to have sex with my Sith Warrior after murdering her husband, then forcing Vette to watch, all of it making perfect storyline sense. That was just too hilarious to pass up on.

 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

Posted: 2012-01-18 12:26pm 

Supposedly this is Ilum right now.

For those who can't watch video:
It's like 30-50 Imps camping inside the Republic base and spawn-camping the med center. Republic players can't even leave the area, they are literally stuck there until the Imps leave (fat chance). I was going to take a look at Ilum myself today, glad I checked around online first. On the plus side, for the 3 seconds the character is alive, he's getting credit for the turrets killing imps.

There are two possible explanations for whatever dickheads released this patch:
1. Bioware actually does have a huge hard-on for Imps (like Bliz and Horde) and doesn't care that this would happen.
2. Bioware is so woefully incompetent, they actually though this would be a good idea or didn't bother testing it.

Also, 50 brackets came out today. Low population servers (like the ones they opened up during the initial release and people got suckered into) have PvP queue times (both Imp and Rep) of over 2 hours. PvP is effectively dead right now, even more so than before. If you're Imperial, you can whore kills with the rest of the zerg swarm. If you're Republic, get the lube because you're getting fucked hard and fast.

I'm glad I got my welfare PvP gear when the getting was good (5 pieces of Champion gear and a few Centurion).

 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

Posted: 2012-01-18 01:25pm 

More likely flying chainsaw dicks came and brainfucked them via the ear, thus making them worse than usual. *partial seriousness*

But really, I think that's put me off thinking about trying SW:TOR. I didn't like it in the first place, but wow. Just wow.

 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

Posted: 2012-01-18 01:32pm 

Look SWTOR is not a perfect game, at the moment the PVE is lightyears (Pun intended) beyond the PVP or Space combat. It's clear their internal pvp testers were either idiots or not consulted. As soon as I saw the mainbases on Illium and where the made center was I said "you know this could be easily camped, good thing no one cares about Illium".

The PVP designers were amateur league at best. They got three maps done plus two outdoor maps which are not exactly wonderfully balanced and called it a day. Illium for example is terrible about this. There are plenty of sniper nests where a ranged call can set up and bounce any melee's who jump their way up to them. Two of them have nice LoS breaking items near them letting people abuse the heck out of them.