Star Wars: The Old Republic

[keg in kc]

Don't believe there's a dedicated thread, and since they're starting to release information now, I figure it's time for one.

[Pants]

Originally Posted by kaplin42

Roll empire, make lightside choices, enjoy the tasty Wookiee Crisps.

The populations are already imba as hell on 80% of the servers. Empire needs to be rerolling Republic, not the other way around.

[Pants]

Got my level 40 speeder last night. Had to go to Quesh for more options than just the ones sold in the Republic Fleet. I saw that Quesh was like a level 37ish planet. Does the story ever take us there or is it just an optional planet?

P.S. 210,000 creds for speeder training + 55,000 creds for the speeder + 37,000 creds for a level 41 skill upgrade = WTF BIOWARE? GAH!

[keg in kc]

Just wait until 50 when you get to drop another 330k on a speeder and then (at least on a sage) more than 100k in skills.

I haven't gotten that far on a knight, but consular and smuggler both did send me to quesh. I think I mentioned earlier, it's probably my least favorite planet in the game. It's very short.

[Pants]

Originally Posted by keg in kc

Just wait until 50 when you get to drop another 330k on a speeder and then (at least on a sage) more than 100k in skills.

I haven't gotten that far on a knight, but consular and smuggler both did send me to quesh. I think I mentioned earlier, it's probably my least favorite planet in the game. It's very short.

Just sucked going from 300,000 creds to being almost broke again. I still have like 60,000 worth of creds sitting on the GTN, I'm hoping they will sell.

Also, just to add, having a healer companion is AMAZING!

[Huffmeister]

Originally Posted by Pants

Also, just to add, having a healer companion is AMAZING!

That's one of the things I love about playing a BH, your first companion is a healer. At the end of just about every fight, your health is at least 95%.

[keg in kc]

Regen time in this game is so short that I've rarely ever used a healer on any character, beta or live. I prefer ending fights quickly to turning them into battles of attrition. Primarily I've used them when I'm grouping and we're short a healer.

[Pants]

Originally Posted by keg in kc

Regen time in this game is so short that I've rarely ever used a healer on any character, beta or live. I prefer ending fights quickly to turning them into battles of attrition. Primarily I've used them when I'm grouping and we're short a healer.

Not only does Doc heal, he can also CC! I do enough DPS to roll through normal/strong mobs and when it comes to elites, healing is just so much better than the buffer that T7 provides, it's not even funny.

[keg in kc]

Originally Posted by Pants

Not only does Doc heal, he can also CC! I do enough DPS to roll through normal/strong mobs and when it comes to elites, healing is just so much better than the buffer that T7 provides, it's not even funny.

I don't use T7, I use Kira. She sometimes dies. I very rarely do. And the situations where I do fall are almost identical on all my characters, whether it's my sage (who can self-heal...), my gunslinger (who doesn't have her healer yet at 42) or my knight: elite fights that come immediately after a cutscene. If I can set up for combat, I can usually win. On my sentinel, my limit seems to be 2 elites, or 1 elite + 2 strongs. I might pull out a healer (once i get one) to try a champion level mob. Although I have been able to drop a few of those, too, with Kira.

However, as you'll discover, elites get more and more complicated the higher level that you get. They start doing a lot of skills in quick succession. Which is good in that it keeps things interesting, but bad in that there isn't always a lot of margin for error. So I may eventually find myself wanting a healer. But for now, I'm good.

[thecoffeeguy]

Originally Posted by kaplin42

Respec your assassin down the Darkness tree and you get Guard.

Kinda funny. I was playing around last night on my Assassin, and I leveled up to get guard and dark charge. I had not really researched the point trees, so I was plugging points in here and there.

Anyway, I did a warzone last night and did some testing with guard. It actually worked amazingly well. Granted, I am level 14, almost 15, but on the warzone I did (Civil War I believe...the turret one) I actually had the most "protection" done in the entire game and ended up MVP. Woot!

It was pretty fun and I am sure it gets better in the higher levels. I put guard on a hot key and when I would run to a battle where a teammate was getting beat on, i popped guard on to him. Kinda funny, because the guy who was beating on him, you could tell was like, wtf, why isnt he dying.

This just opened up a whole new portion of the game to enjoy (Shadow or Assassin).

Now if they would just allow to have multiple roles, so I could have one for DPS, PVP and tanking.

Originally Posted by Pants

The populations are already imba as hell on 80% of the servers. Empire needs to be rerolling Republic, not the other way around.

Ya...empire heavy on all servers it seems.

[Pants]

Originally Posted by keg in kc

I don't use T7, I use Kira. She sometimes dies. I very rarely do. And the situations where I do fall are almost identical on all my characters, whether it's my sage (who can self-heal...), my gunslinger (who doesn't have her healer yet at 42) or my knight: elite fights that come immediately after a cutscene. If I can set up for combat, I can usually win. On my sentinel, my limit seems to be 2 elites, or 1 elite + 2 strongs. I might pull out a healer (once i get one) to try a champion level mob. Although I have been able to drop a few of those, too, with Kira.

However, as you'll discover, elites get more and more complicated the higher level that you get. They start doing a lot of skills in quick succession. Which is good in that it keeps things interesting, but bad in that there isn't always a lot of margin for error. So I may eventually find myself wanting a healer. But for now, I'm good.

I would always aggro when I had Kira out so I would then have to meditate. I didn't even try her on elites because I knew I would just die first (this was before I got Force Camouflage). Eff that noise. With T7, he would take all the damage, I would mount and immediately dismount and T7 is back to full health and ready to pull. If it was an elite, T7 would go down but by the time he did, the elite could be easily dispatched by me without any risk of going down.

I don't like downtime and with DOC, I don't even have to mount/dismount, I just keep rolling. It's amazing.

[keg in kc]

I use Kira like she's a tank in the sense that I send her in first to draw the initial aggro. So let's say I'm fighting two strong mobs and an elite. I launch her against one of the strong mobs, wait a tick, then launch myself at the other strong mob. Usually the strongs go down at about the same time, and since the elite is targetted on her from her initial leap, I usually haven't taken any significant damage. Now we're both on the elite. It dies. Sometimes she dies.

I would postulate that the idea that you're going faster with Doc is largely an illusion, because the fights take longer with a healer. My downtime is actually minimal, generally speaking, especially if I'm dismissing/resummoning Kira instead of meditating and waiting for her to heal. Not that I would ever do something like that. Cough.

"Downtime" for me is usually 2-3 seconds.

It's just a different approach. I found myself playing the same way in beta, dropping Vette (who I like a lot as a companion, personality wise) as soon as I could, and generally turning off her healing skills in favor of dps skills when she was the only one I had.

I think it's actually a valuable way to play in that it forces you to learn all the tricks in your toolbox, and it didn't allow me to be lazy or to rely on healing in long fights of attrition.

But, hey, it's a game; do whatever you enjoy the most...

[Pants]

Originally Posted by keg in kc

I use Kira like she's a tank in the sense that I send her in first to draw the initial aggro. So let's say I'm fighting two strong mobs and an elite. I launch her against one of the strong mobs, wait a tick, then launch myself at the other strong mob. Usually the strongs go down at about the same time, and since the elite is targetted on her from her initial leap, I usually haven't taken any significant damage. Now we're both on the elite. It dies. Sometimes she dies.

I would postulate that the idea that you're going faster with Doc is largely an illusion, because the fights take longer with a healer. My downtime is actually minimal, generally speaking, especially if I'm dismissing/resummoning Kira instead of meditating and waiting for her to heal. Not that I would ever do something like that. Cough.

"Downtime" for me is usually 2-3 seconds.

It's just a different approach. I found myself playing the same way in beta, dropping Vette (who I like a lot as a companion, personality wise) as soon as I could, and generally turning off her healing skills in favor of dps skills when she was the only one I had.

I think it's actually a valuable way to play in that it forces you to learn all the tricks in your toolbox, and it didn't allow me to be lazy or to rely on healing in long fights of attrition.

But, hey, it's a game; do whatever you enjoy the most...

I think I know my class pretty well by now and have used pretty much every trick and skill at my disposal at one time or another (I don't have Pacify, Valorous Call and Dispatch yet, obviously). And it could be true that it's taking me longer to clear an area, but I don't really care about that. I like the feeling of constantly moving on without any breaks in action whether it takes more time in the end or not.

[keg in kc]

Originally Posted by Pants

I think I know my class pretty well by now and have used pretty much every trick and skill at my disposal at one time or another (I don't have Pacify, Valorous Call and Dispatch yet, obviously).

No need to be defensive, I wasn't trying to insinuate that you didn't.

And it could be true that it's taking me longer to clear an area, but I don't really care about that. I like the feeling of constantly moving on without any breaks in action whether it takes more time in the end or not.

I'm the same way. If we're talking normal areas I'll usually fight 4 or 5 groups in a row before I stop for a few seconds to heal up. Usually when I glance down and finally realize Kira only has a few hundred hp left.

If I'm soloing a heroic I'll stop between groups if I need to. But don't get the impression that I sit down between fights or something. This ain't everquest. Although the reality is that downtime in this game is nothing, even if you're level 50 and you can't even fill your companion's health bar in the full 15 seconds of meditation (true story: sometimes happens on Qyzen).

FYI, it also helps that I'm watchman and my bleed ticks are healing me.

Ironically, though, my style of play on my sage seems much more...conservative. I've taken an almost trinity approach with that, using Qyzen (or Iresso) as my tank, and filling the healing and dps roles myself. Sometimes I'll pull out Zenith and just AoE everything, but not very often.

'course I'm also usually running all 5 of my shipboard companions on crew skill missions at all times, so it's not real convenient to switch.

[keg in kc]

I can tell you when I finally play my Shadow, though, I'll be using my healer as soon as I can get him, and will probably go to Nar Shaddaa early specifically to get him.

[Pants]

Originally Posted by keg in kc

No need to be defensive, I wasn't trying to insinuate that you didn't. I'm the same way. If we're talking normal areas I'll usually fight 4 or 5 groups in a row before I stop for a few seconds to heal up. Usually when I glance down and finally realize Kira only has a few hundred hp left.

If I'm soloing a heroic I'll stop between groups if I need to. But don't get the impression that I sit down between fights or something. This ain't everquest. Although the reality is that downtime in this game is nothing, even if you're level 50 and you can't even fill your companion's health bar in the full 15 seconds of meditation (true story: sometimes happens on Qyzen).

FYI, it also helps that I'm watchman and my bleed ticks are healing me.

Ironically, though, my style of play on my sage seems much more...conservative. I've taken an almost trinity approach with that, using Qyzen (or Iresso) as my tank, and filling the healing and dps roles myself. Sometimes I'll pull out Zenith and just AoE everything, but not very often.

'course I'm also usually running all 5 of my shipboard companions on crew skill missions at all times, so it's not real convenient to switch.

Sorry, didn't mean to come off defensive there. I was just saying that I just now got the healer so it's not like I've had that crutch for too long. Although, sometimes I do worry whether it's going to be a huge shock to the system when my level to content level graph starts to flatten out towards 50.