SW: The Old Republic - Episode VII (J.J. Strikes Back)

[213374U]

Problem with using anything but a tank companion for my smuggler is that I'd never be able to use the Back Blast (backstab) ability, but I did just finish the smuggler storyline (so hard to care about any of it past act 1) so I'll try out the healer companions on the other classes I experiment with. Back when I last played in 2012, I tried all my companions and choosing anyone but the tank just got me killed, but that was a long time ago.

 

Thanks for the offer but I'm on Begeren Colony. I'm reasonably well resourced with about 1m credits, so I'll see what I can buy. I have 500/500 Cybertech so mods and enhancements are doable, but have no Synthweaver or Armormech to make stuff that takes advantage of them. On the other hand, I found out that using the level 60 boost when creating a new character gives them one of those professions (depending on class) at max skill, so that'd save some effort if I can decide what class to boost. Heroic quests seem to take too long and defeat the point of my skip-everything class runs.

 

Yeah, classes that rely on backstab-like abilities got the shaft with tank companions not being able to hold aggro to save their your lives. At 65 it gets better, not only they cannot produce sufficient threat, their mitigation also tanks *cough* so they look like they are made of wet tissue paper. But I digress. If tank companion/backstab isn't doing it for you, maybe respec Hatred as it doesn't depend on being physically behind the target and has better defenses.

 

An insta-60 Inquisitor does indeed come with a maxed Synthweaving skill... which includes a grand total of ~4 schematics learned. The trainer only teaches adaptive blue (non-moddable) schematics post 4.0, and the old orange schematics are only available as world drops, at ridiculous asking prices from GTN, or not at all,  so I wouldn't advise that course of action. You could always buy the absolute cheapest adaptive pieces you can find on GTN and use the appearance designer to avoid looking like a hungover clown late for work. Outside of the level 8 vendor, that's probably the most convenient way to go about it.

Edited December 31, 2015 by 213374U

[Humanoid]

Funnily enough my smuggler has about a dozen synthweaving patterns in the bank (plus one for artificing and nothing for any other profession, odd), and all of them for orange gear. I can't remember how I got them, probably from doing Underworld Trading missions back in the day.

 

 

....though if those patterns are valuable, maybe I should just sell them instead, heh. Most of them are in the 300-400 skill range anyway. The blue stuff seems easy enough to make. Either way though, I've no problem with looking like a clown: I've done a fair few intentionally bad transmogs in WoW over the years.

[Humanoid]

Bought the orange vendor gear and it worked well for a bit, but now the lack of XP is really starting to bite since the double XP event is presumably over. I'm on Hoth at level 35 and the enemies are level 39. Doesn't help that I'm playing a stealth class and sometimes literally fighting one enemy during my entire time on a planet (such as the last one, Quesh). I guess I'll do a few low level heroic quests to fill out XP, I really don't want to start any normal planet arc quests.

 

The enemies aren't killing me yet, but my damage is so low that it's incredibly tedious. You say tank companions can't hold aggro? Hah, my dps is so low I can't pull aggro off my healer companion.

Edited January 1, 2016 by Humanoid

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Thank god bonus XP is over. On lower level toons I would end up hilariously overleveled for whatever planet I was on and the only challenging bits were pvp. Granted I'd usually end up with a meh team in warzones, but at least it wasn't as boring as rolling over mobs and bosses with no trouble.

[Humanoid]

Being overlevelled doesn't really seem much of a problem with the levels being scaled now. Not my character I played "normally", sure, I hit 65 by the end of the level 50 planet, but being clamped to low-50s in terms of power means the combat didn't feel much different to doing it at-level.

 

Also worked in my favour just now, when I did the act 2 boss which is a level 41 quest while I was still level 36. But because it was on the capital planet, both the boss and I were scaled down to level 16 and so the fight wasn't ridiculously long (with my hit chance versus a +5 level target it'd have taken quite a few minutes I suspect).

[marelooke]

Apparently the HK quest got reset at some point so I get to start over...which is pretty darn annoying since I think I only needed one of the operations before I was done (I also get to re-buy some expensive component, not to mention all the fun scanning I get to do once more). I've also still not received any response to the support ticket I made nearly a weak ago, so making a support request for this seems largely pointless.

 

Still haven' t received any better gear from quets so far either (level 59 now and I was running Colunmi level gear) though I seem to have lost an artifact (seems to be the one from the Datacrons, is that gone?)

Edited January 1, 2016 by marelooke

[Gorth]

I don't raid, but from what I understand, parsing on the dummy doesn't translate so well to boss fights, especially with encounter design favoring ranged over melee.

I do. You're right. What looks good on the training dummy doesn't work in "real life". For a long time, progression raiders dropped all melee classes except powertech/vanguard dps (for the hydraulic overrides and sonic rebounder spam). Assassins, Operatives and Maras (plus their pub side counter part) simply didn't stand a chance in the piss poor encounter designs in the SoR operations. Everything was specifically designed to keep melee players away. Mostly of the type involving templates with aoe damage centered on bosses. Sword Squadron, Underlurker (the lurkerlings does more damage to anyone closer than 10m to them) etc. Good luck trying to survive on a melee class. It became a challenge all on its own trying to carry 2 melee characters at one point.

 

- Companion gearing, or lack thereof. Bafflingly all my companions were stripped of their weapons, helmets and ....pants, and those pieces were delivered to my mailbox. Also all of Bowdaar's clothes because I guess nudism is enforced amongst Wookies now.

Bioware and their metrics... when their data analysis showed the majority of players preferred their companions with no pants, they wrote a script to streamline the process for players (j/k)

 

- Companion affection system changes. Well, actually I never knew how it worked, and I know even less now because it looks twice as confusing. Also when I visited my ship for the first time, every companion had about a half-dozen conversations queued up. I levelled twice in my ship from just talking to them repeatedly.

Part of Biowares new grind campaign. Now you can do mindless crate grinding for alliance influence, mindless gift grinding for companions and mindless grinding of old heroics (to make suure your really feel the grind, they removed all the story parts and left just the grind parts) for credits and crystals (and crates).

 

- Removal of the class-specific stats. I have no memory of strength, aim, int, etc being things that were present on gear, I only remembered when I googled what makes Armormech different from Synthweaving.

Having a main stat was too confusing for new players. So it got stream lined away. Same thing with critical and surge stats. You can now play the game from origin world to end of makeb just spamming basic attacks and not worrying about any gear, roles or game mechanics (and it *shows* in the group finder).

 

- All my old gear was pretty much orange modded stuff, which I don't particularly remember going out of my way to get, so I assume I got them as part of normal levelling. But my new character has pretty much no orange gear (aside from the starter lightsabre) so I guess that sort of gear has mostly been removed, as have mods and stuff like that, my old character has a bunch of them in the bank, but my new character has exactly one of them, awarded during the starter planet as part of the "introduction to modifying gear" tutorial.

They have put a lot of effort into removing those vendor. After first removing them from fleet, it looks like they are now going through planets and removing moddable gear there too. You are of course welcome to spend the cartel coins buying a few packs from the cartel market and hope you get some nice moddable gear there.

 

To be fair though, with the new appearance designer, you really only need moddable weapons until you get the level 65 gear from the supplies section on fleet. Appearance designer alters your appearance regardless what gear you are actually wearing. Blue and green gear can be bought and replaced for their stats while your looks stays consistent with the "skin" you slapped on top of yourself.

 

 

As for experience points, the "tactical" flashpoints gives so many, that if you can stomach that Chinese torture, you usually get enough xp for at least 1, sometimes 2 entire levels during a single flashpoint run.

[marelooke]

So figured I'd check the status of my ticket before heading to bed. Now I'm forced to wait for the launcher to be done "Reorganizing data..." or I will "Have to download the entire game again".

 

Giving a heads up before starting such an obnoxiously long process is too 1900s I guess.

 

EDIT: apparently got luck and after 20min the update finished (someone in the forums claimed his took over 2 hours!)

 

As for the ticket I made about the missing Cargo Bays, it has been closed and made into a bug report. Should interpret this as: "We don't care, we tossed it on the pile and nothing is ever going to happen with it, go away" or can I expect the issue to actually get resolved at some point before the heath death of the universe (made that ticket like 20 days ago now...)?

Edited January 14, 2016 by marelooke

[213374U]

As for the ticket I made about the missing Cargo Bays, it has been closed and made into a bug report. Should interpret this as: "We don't care, we tossed it on the pile and nothing is ever going to happen with it, go away" or can I expect the issue to actually get resolved at some point before the heath death of the universe (made that ticket like 20 days ago now...)?

 

AFAIK, bug reports aren't handled by CS, proper. If your ticket was reclassified as a bug report by a CS rep, it's basically CS saying "we can't (be arsed to) fix it, hope for a future patch that addresses the problem".

 

Considering the huge bug backlog, and the conspicuous lack of comment on the matter in yesterday's stream, I wouldn't hold my breath.

 

Sorry.

[Raithe]

Well I finally got around to making sure all my Alliance specialists were at influence rank 20 before the next chapter comes out.

 

Although I have to say, I can't seem to stir up my enthusiasm just yet to actually start any of my other characters onto the Knights of the Fallen Empire content...

[ShadySands]

Ugh, yesterday's stream

 

My wife is quite pissed that the Eternal Championship and Bowdaar won't be in the next chapter but I'm kinda amused that they just swapped the content for Blizz.

 

 

Here's the stream if anyone is curious

Edited January 15, 2016 by ShadySands

[Gromnir]

the only core companions am interested in seeing added is the initial start world companions that benefit from esseles/black talon run influence.  is kinda funny that disapproval responses result in influence rewards, albeit smallish rewards.  as such, maximizing approvals and disapprovals now has us receiving in the neighborhood o' 7300 influence per companion for a esseles or bt run.

 

that being said, blizz> bowdaar.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

[213374U]

Although I have to say, I can't seem to stir up my enthusiasm just yet to actually start any of my other characters onto the Knights of the Fallen Empire content...

 

You aren't alone. And I suspect their "metrics" on the matter are the real reason they are pushing another overhaul of crew skills (and crafting) less than four months after the whole system was revised.

[Raithe]

 

Although I have to say, I can't seem to stir up my enthusiasm just yet to actually start any of my other characters onto the Knights of the Fallen Empire content...

 

You aren't alone. And I suspect their "metrics" on the matter are the real reason they are pushing another overhaul of crew skills (and crafting) less than four months after the whole system was revised.

 

 

The thing is, I did enjoy the first 10 chapters. It was nice, it did put me in mind of Kotor more than anything. Although the fact that it was mostly streamlined flashpoints more than some hub with multiple story related quests to do was disappointing.

 

But yes, that whole end of chapter 10 and the Alliance grind and Star Fortress grind... That puts a distinct damper on it.

[Gorth]

Kotfe was a nice story. Problem (for me) is, it felt like a big QTE with very little player agency.

 

Soloed a few H2 star fortresses before, during and after the companion nerf and reversal. Completed a few "6 packs" with friends, guildies or pugging. Probably wont bother getting an alliance specialist beyond my current highest ranking one which is rank 12 (Admiral Aygor on my Powertech)

 

Simply too much repetitive grind. Did a few of the heroics. Just isn't fun when all the story parts have been removed and only the kill x enemies grind is left.

 

Watching with mild amusement how people are flocking to the way too easy EV HM for the 220/224 gear (and fighting like hyenas, ninja looting, name calling etc. that comes with it), thinking yeah, way too go Bioware, not only no new operations but also making the current oldies completely pointless and obsolete by making top tier gear so easy to get.

 

Mostly just pugging a few sm ops theses days, turning it into a sport getting 6 piece (216 gear) set bonuses for as many alts as possible.

[Raithe]

I still haven't run any operations.

 

I think I've got my main toon on that mix of 208-216 gear, but I don't really get stressed about grinding for it all.

[Gorth]

I still haven't run any operations.

 

I think I've got my main toon on that mix of 208-216 gear, but I don't really get stressed about grinding for it all.

I would recommend trying a few. Even if it's a complete disaster (which does happen in pug groups, especially with too many new people in the group), it's still a fun experience and the older operations has quite a bit of story built in.

 

It does require people to know their class though, as well as more than just the bare bones basics of their role. That being said, they have removed so many mechanics from the SM operations (they are still in the HM ops), that apart from ravagers and temple of sacrifice, it's more tank and spank mixed with the fundamental basics (i.e. don't stand in circles, push appropriate buttons etc.), none of which requires lightning fast reflexes (heck, I'm getting close to the half century mark)

[ShadySands]

[Gorth]

Haven't posted these in a while. A few more show my yours I show you mine

 

I know it's a matter of taste, but I actually like swotors art style. The slightly "cartoonish" look just ages better than attempts at photo realism.

 

Oricon has some really nice vistas, even when visiting it for the 337th time...

 

My sentinel girl watching the lava flow (from Jedi Covenant)...

 

 

It's raining space ships, adding to the already abundant wreckage...

 

 

Lieutenant Hamilcar patrolling the Balmorran grasslands, enjoying getting out of the heavy industry areas (from Harbinger)

 

 

Bormu... I really hate Bormu (the big critters in the background). There is an ingame achievement for killing a gazillion of them. Hands up if anyone ever did that one.

 

[Blarghagh]

Thread closed for length. New part coming up soon.