SW: The Old Republic - Episode VI (The Old Menace)

[Gorth]

@Raithe: I'm only halfway through upgrading the old 66 mods to 69 mods, nevermind anything that starts with the number '7'

 

I think my Powertech may have run his course (for now). Finished the Ilum story, such as it was. A very disjointed impression. Going from a struggle over some crystals (whose purpose I must have missed in the convos) to the final bit:

 

 

Darth Malgus appearing out of nowhere proclaiming himself the new emperor, promoting peace love and happiness, even aliens are to be loved and be cherished. Just like that, out of the blue with only a line or two of advance notice that he had slightly heretical thoughts.

 

 

Just felt so detached from the rest of the Ilum story.

 

Then I went on to Makeb and I suppose boredom set in. Endless hordes of high hp mobs packed so densely you can't kick your way through them. Even full speed on a speeder trying to ignore them is a chore.

 

A shame, as the setting is drop dead gorgeous and I enjoyed the visuals, but the encounter "designs" just aren't my cup of tea. What's the point of endless grind? It's not like people go there to hunt XP???

 

Not to mention silly respawn rates, sometimes getting attacked from the rear by new spawns that you had just killed. I wish they had just added a handful of unique encounters and put in effort to make them memorable instead.

 

I suppose I had a bit of the same feeling way back when playing the BG2 expansion, maybe "high level" play just isn't for me. Putting him on the back burner (in the moth ball bag), I think I'll finish chapter 3 of my Commando and then focus a bit on my Smuggler and Sith Warrior (level 47 and 45 respectively). I.e. just play through their 3 main story chapters. The old guy can come out an play whenever I need a new batch of armour and modification mods

[NOK222]

Got a bit annoyed with the Corrupted Bothrium Beast after giving it a go, logged off for a break.

It's got a super powerful life-draining "Extract" power that you have to disrupt, but somehow it can kick it back in quicker then your disrupt power becomes available. Combine that with the summoning tentacles which it can then zap to self-heal makes it rather annoying.

 

I'd hit it once, it would start the Extract.. I'd disrupt it, hit it a 2nd time, have to run over to kill a tentacle it summoned before it could use it to self-heal, start to run back, and it would startup Extracting again, which kills me before my Jolt to disrupt it became active again.

 

Edit:

And then of course, after I've bitched about it, I go back and it dies within moments. Oy vey.

 

Kill the tentacle before it can be extracted and interrupt the heal. 

[entrerix]

Alderaan is worst planet. 

 

must be why they blew it up

[NOK222]

 

Alderaan is worst planet. 

 

must be why they blew it up

 

To be fair, the last area where "Kingmaker" takes place is fun. 

[Gorth]

 

 

Alderaan is worst planet. 

 

must be why they blew it up

 

To be fair, the last area where "Kingmaker" takes place is fun. 

 

 

I still like it better blown up

 

I'm not really into the entire list thing, but if I had to mention a planet or two I could have done without, Alderaan and Balmorra (both Republic and Imperial versions) would be on the list. Something about those places just makes them feel "too long".

 

Just wishing loudly a bit, but I do/did wish they would drop doing more planetary stories in future additions and add more companion quests instead. It seems each class gets exactly one companion that has a quest line that is bit more involved than two dialogues, fade to black then two more dialogues and done (simplified version). Trooper gets the hunt for Arics old squad mates, Bounty Hunter digs into Mako's mysterious past etc. But all the other companions gets nada, rien, nothing, garnichts. Besides, it would be a good excuse for Bioware to actually legitimately recycle assets (well, apart from story, scripting and new VO's) and create news stories in some of the unused places on existing planets. Unlikely to happen, but then sometimes you get surprised.

 

Speaking of surprises, just as I was about to "pickle" my Bounty Hunter indeterminately, I ran into a fun experience. Being just me and one other person in The Black Hole, I was checking if the weekly had reset. It hadn't, but the other person asked if I wanted to team up for the weekly. I couldn't do the weekly of course, but offered to just pitch in and give a hand with heroics. Before long, two "guildies" had joined the group and we went on a Bonnie & Clyde type killing spree, visitng CZ-197 (or whatever it's number was) for the HM flashpoint, getting wiped badly in the process (no healer in group, 3 tanks and a dps I think), doing the Section X stuff and just having fun. Ending with a suicidal frontal attack against the world boss there

 

Got a guild invite, accepted and much to my surprise it was a mostly Apac based guild with a number of people from the old Apac servers. Who knows. I might have fun still

[Guest Slinky]

Got a guild invite, accepted and much to my surprise it was a mostly Apac based guild with a number of people from the old Apac servers. Who knows. I might have fun still

Congratulations! Hopefully the guild is drama free and you find like minded people there, a good guild makes the game about ten times more fun.

 

And a bad one makes it about six billion times worse 

[Gorth]

 

Got a guild invite, accepted and much to my surprise it was a mostly Apac based guild with a number of people from the old Apac servers. Who knows. I might have fun still

Congratulations! Hopefully the guild is drama free and you find like minded people there, a good guild makes the game about ten times more fun.

 

And a bad one makes it about six billion times worse 

 

He was member of a guild for a short while, but being mainly a US guild, it meant that despite having a few hundred members, it was rare for me to see anyone else online at the same time. Didn't feel like staying up at 3:00am regularly to say 'Hi!', so left that one again after short while

 

Following a tip, I tried to check out my old names from the Apac server. Using friend twice will show the level and location of that name (if same faction). I should probably not have done that, because now my nerd rage know no bounds. In fact, I'm fuming mad. The 3 highest level characters I had was the ones that lost their names. Guess what?...

 

On the default destination server, I found all 3 character names as an *exact* snapshot of those characters at a point in time on the Apac servers. Same levels, same factions, same class and for two of them the same advanced class on planets they were on at those levels. Looks for all intent and purposes like somebody had run a test migration script and not cleaned up their mess before forcing people to move and so doubly screwing over their Apac customers by having automated the process of depriving their names. With my luck, they are probably assigned to some internal account instead of F2P and so will never be relinquished. Jury is out on that until I test availability of those 3 names in the middle of the night tonight (none of them being above level 25)

[Gorth]

Well, whatever account Bioware used for bulk copying copies of my characters without my knowledge didn't hang on to them and I can now graciously pay real world dollars through the nose to buy renames and get the old names back that they helped me to get rid of in the first place, buy automatically hijacking them before announcing the server moves and destinations. Questionable business ethics if you ask me.

 

Anyway, hurried up and created a handful of "dummies" to make sure my old Apac names didn't go anywhere again while turning my back on them for a moment.

 

Completely unrelated, did they recently gimp commando healers completely? I'm fairly sure in the past, getting 30 support cells and activating supercharged cell (right name?), you could spam Advanced Medical Probe for a number of seconds with no energy cost. You can't any more. Only thing you can use it for now is as DPS boost, because Charged Burst and Full Auto is correctly as in the past not costing energy while active. Anybody notice anything in recent patch notes about gimping commando healer ability to heal?

[Humanoid]

Couldn't get any of my names back onto any of my transferred characters back. Ah well, might log back on in a year or whenever they have the next name purge to try again.

 

 

P.S. Windows gained the ability to put spaces in filenames in 1995. Catch up dammit, EA! I can stomach giving my characters middle names, but no way am I hyphenating them or, god-forbid, throw arbitrary apostrophes in them.

 

EDIT: Hmm, available on Begeren Colony though. One perk of being the less popular playstyle I guess. In hindsight it would have been smart to opt for a manual transfer instead of ignoring the information and letting them do the auto-transfer.

Edited November 13, 2013 by Humanoid

[Gorth]

Hey, join us on the dark side

 

Still considering transferring a semi high level, (35-45) character or two to Harbinger though, just to spread out a bit and "finish" their levelling up there. The population numbers are "huge" by comparison. Besides, who knows? I might get to harass Gromnir a bit

 

Didn't get all of my old names, some were quite visibly in use by other people at some point (being level 45 and above), but I got those that mattered to me, including 'Gorth'. Currently a level 1 smuggler with a completely random look and just saved in a hurry to put my foot down and keep the name safe for the time being. Since I've spent so much time with my main under a different name, I think I'll let him keep and then just create a new character that I can give the name and level up. Got a level 20 smuggler guy which I can hand it over to (still got that free rename we got after the forced exodus).

 

Having a f2p account on a laptop next to my desktop, I only need to drop the name for half a second at a time (prepare a character on the other pc, only need to hit 'play', delete charater on first pc, then reverse the process), so it should be a safe thing to do.

 

Searching a bit on the swtor forums, couldn't find any mention of the Commando change at first glance, so if it's a WAD change, then I think I'll respec and replace alacrity with accuracy and use him as DPS instead.

[Humanoid]

I gave most of my characters conventional (though 'foreign', as in Italian or Spanish, etcetera) real world names, so it's not surprising that I couldn't get them here (or in any other MMO that's not been freshly launched). So I've got seven characters just sitting there on the character select screen for Harbinger, none of which are playable because they need renames. If I needed to I'd be happy deleting all but two or three though.

 

Just made a placeholder on Dalborra with the same look as my old primary character (level 43 smuggler, all the others are sub-20), but there's no chance of me suffering through that painful time levelling it ever again. Characterisation was good, but the scoundrel playstyle was excruciating to me. And that's from someone who's levelled a pre-Mutilate daggers rogue through to max level in WoW. (And I'm not giving them any money to transfer me either)

Edited November 13, 2013 by Humanoid

[Spider]

Completely unrelated, did they recently gimp commando healers completely? I'm fairly sure in the past, getting 30 support cells and activating supercharged cell (right name?), you could spam Advanced Medical Probe for a number of seconds with no energy cost. You can't any more. Only thing you can use it for now is as DPS boost, because Charged Burst and Full Auto is correctly as in the past not costing energy while active. Anybody notice anything in recent patch notes about gimping commando healer ability to heal?

 

No, not recently. Maybe a year and a half ago. Not sure how supercharged gas (mercenary name) worked before then, but that's when it was changed the last time.

 

SCG is still a core mechanic of mercenary healing since it boosts some of your better healing abilities and vents some heat. So while the only heat free options you get are dps related, the healing boost it provides is still significant.

[Gorth]

 

Completely unrelated, did they recently gimp commando healers completely? I'm fairly sure in the past, getting 30 support cells and activating supercharged cell (right name?), you could spam Advanced Medical Probe for a number of seconds with no energy cost. You can't any more. Only thing you can use it for now is as DPS boost, because Charged Burst and Full Auto is correctly as in the past not costing energy while active. Anybody notice anything in recent patch notes about gimping commando healer ability to heal?

 

No, not recently. Maybe a year and a half ago. Not sure how supercharged gas (mercenary name) worked before then, but that's when it was changed the last time.

 

SCG is still a core mechanic of mercenary healing since it boosts some of your better healing abilities and vents some heat. So while the only heat free options you get are dps related, the healing boost it provides is still significant.

 

I'm fairly sure until a few weeks ago, it meant Advanced Medical Probe (Medical Probe always costs a truckload of energy) didn't cost any energy and the cooldown was the limiting factor during the seconds while the supercharge buff was active. You could usually fire off 4 in a row. Best used after depleting your energy (IMHO) and then activate the supercharge, so you could continue overdosing tanks on Kolto when taking high damage (or as preparation for expected high damage any moment). At least I'm fairly sure it worked that way the last 25-30 levels or so I played him. Currently it (support cell) doesn't seem to provide any benefits for a healer.

[Spider]

I don't want to be rude, but I'm pretty sure you remember it wrong.

 

SCG removes the cooldown on healing scan (the short cast heal), makes Kolto Bomb (aoe) apply the armor buff, vents 10 heat and increases healing by 5% ( think that's the percentage at least).

 

I know it's worked like this since the expansion and don't recall any changes being made to it when the expansion landed either (but didn't heal enough before expansion to tell for sure).

 

I know SCG was nerfed back in patch 1.3, before then it was supposedly god mode, but since then it's been left alone afaik.

 

It's primarily used whenever you hit 30 stacks these days, not as a super burst enabler.

[Gorth]

I probably remember it wrong then (using mostly Trauma Probe on myself and Adrenaline Rush after gearing up companions)... I need more coffee I think

[Gromnir]

during first server merger, we lost 'bout half our pub-side toon names. one o' the drawbacks o' playing so much pvp back then with a group that literal never lost in ranked pvp were that we managed to makes some imp guilds kinda unhappy. so first merger results in all our pub-side pvp toon names being taken by time we log on to jump through the merger hoops.  the imps who cloned our names thought this were very funny. unfortunately, the imp pranksters is clear all subscribers 'cause none o' our old names were available yesterday.

 

also, the 1 kinda heals we don't play is merc/commando.  level 55 heals we current gots on jedi covenant is as follows: 1 sorc, 1 sage, 1 scoundrel. we does have a merc and a commando, but they is both dps... though we has genuine considered making the merc a heals for no other reason than that we thinks the jawa tank is the bestest companion available-- not necessarily most efficacious companion, but best. commando healers has had a reputation for being sucky for a long time... and we don't particular know why that is the case. am knowing any number o' commando and merc heals that do very well in pvp and pve, so am s'posing that whatever numerical disadvantages they suffer from is small enough that experience reduces the impact o' their handicaps to near nil.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps we tried to use blizz as a comp for our powertech dps and sadly we cannot solo many o' the level 55 heroics that is seeming easy with mako. *sigh*

Edited November 13, 2013 by Gromnir

[Spider]

Mercenary healers suffer in high end (ranked) pvp because they're fairly easy to shut down by a coordinated team. This is an issue the class has in general though, not only healers.

 

They lack good defenses and escape abilities.

 

In PvE they get a bad reputation because they don't have the flashy AoE heal that sorcs do and because they can't put up fluffed healing numbers like operatives can (although if a LOT of raid damage is going out, the operative numbers aren't fluff I suppose). Also their healing recieved buff and armor buff doesn't show up in parses.

 

In PvE mercenaries are the strongest single target healer, but lack a bit in the raid hhealing department. I raid regularly with a mercenary and he's awesome, so I know they can get the job done. With him on his mercenary and me on my operative I haven't encountered a fight yet where we felt healing was an issue. So I know that in PvE mercenaries are excellent. They do have a higher skill cap than the otehr two, so a poorly played mercenary will fall behind by a lot compared to operatives and sorcerers.

[Gorth]

I often use Blizz. Completely redundant for a tank Powertech. but just his starting line of "Blizz brings lots of everything!" or something to that effect makes him an endearing character, so he gets pulled out and work together with "New Boss" regularly, even if Mako would make life easier (using Hk every now and then for kicks and Mako if survivability in prolonged fights become an issue). Speaking of easier, tried Hassats suggestion for the GSI heroics and the one on Alderaan turned out to be very easy. Almost killed me (did kill Mako) the first week I tried it. Then I noticed that what was killing me was the Snipe that the boss seemed able to fire every 6 seconds or so and just focused on interrupting that one (ignoring Ambush and what else he threw my way) and can bring him down while still having max health. Such a little change in tactics, such a large effect. Oh, and considered the skill points invested in reducing my interrupt cooldown one of the better skill point investments.

 

Respecced my Commando to DPS and took a look at the basic com gear vendor. That stuff must have been designed in a different era, because the "boltblaster" stuff if just chock full of Alacrity. I'm fairly sure somebody told me it's not so useful for DPS these days.

[Spider]

It never was. In the expansion they buffed alacrity so it became better for dps, but it's still undesirable. The set gear is very poorly itemized unfortunately.

 

Even worse is the tank gear that have a fair amount of both alacrity and accuracy on them, stats tank have no interest in at all.

[Gorth]

I know. I skipped those pieces for my Powertech and will save up some elite commendations instead, skipping the "basic com" step for those body parts.

[Raithe]

I haven't been able to solo that Tattooine GSI Heroic (2+). Every time I get that droid down to nearly dead he manages to wipe me out at the last moment before I can land a killing hit.

[Hassat Hunter]

Didn't read most posts (will do once I got time next logon), just replying to above.

 

Do you use Heroic Moment? What gear do you have?

[Raithe]

Well, the standard 55th level Inquisitor Assassin with a mix of 58-66 level gear. Using Heroic Moment, I've been trying out various different companions to see if that has an effect. But everytime I'm just about to land that killing blow..  my healer seems to stop healing and I get killed, or the droid ignores my tank companion and blows the crap out of me..or..

[Gorth]

Is your assassin playing as tank or dps?

 

Edit: You might find the Alderaan one easier if you got an interrupt with no more than 6 second cooldown. He's quite manageable if you consistently prevent him from using 'snipe' (need to read the fine print fast sometimes though).

[Gromnir]

Mercenary healers suffer in high end (ranked) pvp because they're fairly easy to shut down by a coordinated team. This is an issue the class has in general though, not only healers.

 

They lack good defenses and escape abilities.

 

 

as we said, we don't know "why" folks say such stuff. sure, dps merc commando is serious glass cannons w/o the advantages o' gunslinger/sniper defense, but competent commando Heals does well enough in ranked pvp. am agreeing that the Belief that commando heals is ez targets is widespread, but their self heals is excellent and they don't seem to go down any easier than other classes. admittedly, inexperienced commando heals on an uncoordinated team is gonna be at a greater disadvantage than a marginal sage or scoundrel in the same situation as the commando not have the desperation abilities such as force speed, stealth or force barrier.  

 

is not the what, but the why we questioned.

 

HA! Good Fun!