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10/22 Update Added a section on Gearing for fresh 55s. 10/23 Update Added info on Bolster and "Hacking" to PvP section

Added info on PvE Loot Etiquette to PvE section 10/26 Update Added UI section 11/01 Update Added Stealth Notes to Class seciton 11/08 Update Minor addition to Mercs after seeing a rash of this in warzones





About Classes

Spoiler BH/Trooper

Powertechs and Vangaurds ARE NOT RANGED CLASSES. They may have ranged abilities and a gun, but they are melee and should be in melee range using melee abilities. If youre using Unload/Full Auto and Missile Blast/Explosive Round, you should have made a Merc or a Commando.

Missile Blast and Explosive Round are terrible abilities that have almost no practical use once you are level 15 or 20. Once you are level 20, there isnt much reason for them to be on your action bar. The only time they have a real use is in pvp when you need to stop multiple people from capping a node and dont have access or the ability to use anything better (which would be just about anything else).

Merc/Commando Cylinders/Cells: Left tree (Bodyguard/Combat Medic) - Combat Support, Mid tree (Arsenal, Gunnery) - High Velocity, Right tree (Pyro, Assault Specialist) Combustible. Anything else and youre doing it wrong.

Inquisitor/Consular

Sorcs/Sages are Ranged, Assassins/Shadows are Melee. Seriously.

The only Assassin/Shadow spec that should ever use Crushing Darkness/Mind Crush is the Madness/Balance spec. If you are not Madness/Balance take it off your bar . If you are Madness/Balance, NEVER, EVER HARD CAST IT. EVER. INSTANT CAST WITH PROC, ONLY !!!!

. If you are Madness/Balance, NEVER, EVER HARD CAST IT. EVER. INSTANT CAST WITH PROC, !!!! The only Assassin/Shadow spec that should be making regular use of Force Lightning/Telekinetic Throw is the tanking spec. This is because this ability directly figures in to your damage mitigation. Other specs have no use for it outside of using Recklessness or Force Potency for the extra range when you can't move.

Spamming Force Storm/Forcequake may look cool, but if you are using it on a single target because you are lazy, you dont look cool. You look like a tool.

Spamming Overload/Force Wave is also a bad idea. As far as dps goes, its a waste of a GCD. It also tends to completely upset position, interrupt Ravages, break CC's. Its a situation skill, not rotational. -MillionsKNives

Agent/Smuggler

Operatives/Scoundrels are MELEE. Yes, like Powertechs and Vanguards they have a couple ranged abilities. But they are NOT ranged.

If youre a sniper/gunslinger and facing stealth/jumpers in a warzone, standing around not in cover is like an early birthday present for the enemy team.

Warrior/Knight

Just because a Marauder/Sentinel has two lightsabers does NOT mean they are god's gift to mmo players.

If youre Annihilation/Watchman, stop using Force Scream/Blade Storm rotationally.

A Note on Stealth Classes



Classes with stealth abilities are designed to be popping in and out of stealth frequently. For example, all 'specs of both Assassin/Shadow, and Operative/Scoundrel get significant bonuses starting combat from stealth. DPS specs use their ability to return to stealth in combat and re-open as an integral part of their DPS routines. (obviously, if youre a tank, and you vanish, guess who the boss is going to go beat on....)



Outside of combat, they have access to the only Crowd Control abilities that do not initiate combat. This is an incredibly useful tool for bypassing entire groups of enemies but is only effective on organics who are not already immune to CC.



One thing to be aware of, some enemies have a special Stealth Detection buff. This is so effective at finding stealthed characters that you can actually aggro things while stealthed at distances that an unstealthed person can stand completely unnoticed. Typically, this is on Elite(gold) Droids and Turrets but can probably be on anything (I cant think of anything else that has it off the top of my head, but there are sure to be others).

Classes with stealth abilities are designed to be popping in and out of stealth frequently. For example, all 'specs of both Assassin/Shadow, and Operative/Scoundrel get significant bonuses starting combat from stealth. DPS specs use their ability to return to stealth in combat and re-open as an integral part of their DPS routines. (obviously, if youre a tank, and you vanish, guess who the boss is going to go beat on....)Outside of combat, they have access to the only Crowd Control abilities that do not initiate combat. This is an incredibly useful tool for bypassing entire groups of enemies but is only effective on organics who are not already immune to CC.One thing to be aware of, some enemies have a special Stealth Detection buff. This is so effective at finding stealthed characters that you can actually aggro things while stealthed at distances that an unstealthed person can stand completely unnoticed. Typically, this is on Elite(gold) Droids and Turrets but can probably be on anything (I cant think of anything else that has it off the top of my head, but there are sure to be others).



About Roles



Spoiler Tanks

Stop guarding the healer . The only things that will ever even think about attacking the healer are stuff that the threat reduction from the guard does not affect. In other words, it is completely USELESS to guard them. Put it on a dps.



. The only things that will ever even think about attacking the healer are stuff that the threat reduction from the guard affect. In other words, it is completely USELESS to guard them. Put it on a dps. Tanking does not mean attacking one target at a time. All three tanking classes have the tools to grab the attention of most if not all of the enemies in any given pack. Plus, if your DPS are doing their jobs appropriately, any 'escapees' will be focused out first.



Stop starting combat with taunt. Its a total waste of taunt.



Learn to plan ahead the usage of your cooldowns.



Dont try and stare down the trash. It doesnt work. Standing around without a good reason (Ex. an important CD for a difficult trash pack) is wasteful, silly, and somewhat rude. General rule, if everyones at full health, and nothings happening, thats bad.

DPS

Focus on the weakest enemies in any particular group first. Yes, its less "glorious" to have your Ravage interrupted mid cast cause you already killed 'it' but it benefits the group more to reduce the size of a group as fast as possible.



Seriously, stop breaking CC.



Trust me, you DO have an interrupt.

Healers

Stop asking for guard . Having guard on you will not prevent the stuff that has been running at your face from doing so. A 25% reduction in functionally infinite threat is still infinite. If you still dont agree, scroll down and read the section in Mechanics entitled Aggro.



. Having guard on you will not prevent the stuff that has been running at your face from doing so. A 25% reduction in functionally infinite threat is still infinite. If you still dont agree, scroll down and read the section in Mechanics entitled Aggro. If you do have things attacking you, do not run away from the tank, especially if the adds are melee. This only makes it more difficult for the tank to acquire threat on them and, depending on the situation, can result in even more aggro problems (if they are chasing after you, they arent building threat on anything else). Instead, run the adds closer to the tank (so they can pick them up with aoe) or, at the very least stand still and dont make their job any more difficult that necessary.



run away from the tank, especially if the adds are melee. This only makes it more difficult for the tank to acquire threat on them and, depending on the situation, can result in even more aggro problems (if they are chasing after you, they arent building threat on anything else). Instead, run the adds closer to the tank (so they can pick them up with aoe) or, at the very least stand still and dont make their job any more difficult that necessary. Cleanse the Mining Laser debuff in Hammer. Im serious. Actually, understand that you can cleanse period. There are a lot of "healers" out there that dont seem to understand this.







About Combat Mechanics



Spoiler Threat



First off: when you deal damage or heal hp, you also "deal threat." Enemies have an "Aggro Table," a list of all the players they are threatened by. Say a DPS Player A does 1k damage to some NPC, some other DPS Player B does 1.2K to the same NPC, and a healer heals 500 damage from one of the two dps players in combat with that same NPC. The NPC now has a list of:



Player B - 1.2k Threat

Player A - 1k Threat

Healer - 500 Threat.



Because Player B is higher on the table, the NPC attacks Player B.



Lets say that over the next few seconds, Player A really turns on the gas, puts on their Big Boy Pants, and deals another 1k Damage. Now the table is:



Player A - 2k Threat

Player B - 1.2k Threat

Healer - 500 Threat.



Because Player A has manned up and is now higher on the table, the NPC shifts their attention to Player A.



Threat Modifiers



Tanks throw a few more elements into the equation. For starters, their tanking stance doubles the threat that their abilities generate. IE, Tank does 1k damage to an NPC but does 2k threat to said NPC. They also have abilities which naturally deal more threat than their basic damage would otherwise generate.



Healers on the other hand, assuming they have the talent (which should be absolutely impossible to miss) generate 55% less threat than the amount of HP their heals regen. Futhermore, they only generate aggro based on actual healing DONE. IE, They may hit you with a 14k which you would expect to generate a little less than 6.3k threat, but if you were only missing 10k hp at the time, then that 14k heal only generates 4.5k threat.



The caveat to this is that healers generate this aggro on ALL enemies they are in combat with.



This brings us nicely to a more detailed discussion of why putting a guard on a healer is completely retarded.



Aggro



The Guard ability that tanks have reduce the threat that the affected player generates by 25%. IE, you deal 1k damage, but generate only 750 threat on the NPC. This also applies to healers. IE, they heal for 1k but generate only approximately 350 threat, instead of the expected value of 450 due to their talents.



So why not guard the healer then? As noted above, whenever they heal, they generate aggro on EVERYTHING they are in combat with. That sounds like a lot of aggro, no? So why not?



Because, A: Its stupid. B: Its STUPID, and C: Healers generate VERY little aggro. The ONLY reason that stray adds start attacking the healer is because no one hit them. Quite often, its perfectly possible for the tank to get aggro on everything and corral everything nicely. But sometimes, its not and there are a couple enemies spread out all over creation being a giant nuisance. Well, if no one else hits them, guess who they will aggro onto, even though the actual number value of that threat may be small, if you compare a small number to 0, that small number is still infinitely larger.



This is why guarding a healer is one of the biggest Noob-Flags a tank can raise. That 25% reduction will reduce the aggro that the healer generates on mobs the rest of the party hasnt touched, but since you dont have ANY threat on them at all, a 25% reduction of Infinity is still Infinity and those mobs are going to attack the healer anyway. And, to correct the problem, someone is going to have to do exactly what they should have done to begin with. Attack them. Realistically speaking, the DPS in the party should be taking care of it (whether those stray weaker mobs are a problem or not) as their kill order is *supposed* to be Weakest to Strongest.



The final bit of wisdom necessary on this subject is a discussion of how Taunts and Threat Drops work.



Aggro Management



Taunts



In other games, a taunt forces the Taunt-ee to attack the Taunt-er for some determined amount of time but has no other effect. Not so in TOR. Taunts in this game actually increase your threat, in addition to forcing the target to attack you for 6 seconds. Every time a tank taunts, their threat value with the NPC they taunted is set to 10% above the highest value on the table at the time of the taunt, even if they have the highest threat on the enemy at that time.



This is why starting combat with Taunt is such a terrible idea. It actually makes it HARDER to hold aggro on an NPC. If you start combat with taunt, your threat on that NPC will be 1. This might as well be 0 for all the good it will do you. It also puts your taunt on cooldown for 15 seconds. Meaning that, the overgeared Mega-DPS in your party that pulled aggro off of you 6 seconds into the fight? Well, it means hes keeping it for a while. Yes, you could use your AOE taunt to regain threat, but that has a much longer cool down of 45 seconds, and you may need that for other situations, depending on the fight.



Threat Drops



As for threat drops, there are three different kinds. Moves that apply a percent reduction to threat, moves that drop combat and erase all threat, and some weird thing that marauders and sentinels have.



The first type are the moves like Chaff Flare or Cloud Mind. They take whatever value of threat you have, apply a percentage multiplier to that value, and set your threat to that new value. The most effective way to use these moves is to either anticipate moving ahead of the tank on the table (or see that its going to happen on Parsec or a simliar program) and preemptively use the ability, OR, if you do pull ahead of the tank, WAIT to use the threat drop until AFTER the tank taunts the Boss or whatever back off of you. Yes, you may take some damage, but overall youll help the tank out more. If you drop threat before they taunt it back, then the highest value on the table will be cut significantly, resulting in a smaller boost for the tanks on threat. If you wait, and drop threat after the tank taunts back, it allows their taunt to use your higher threat value for its base figure maximizing the possible threat that the tank could have at that point and then minimising your own immediately afterword giving them a much larger cushion to work with.



The second type are the Assassin/Shadow and Operative/Scoundrel Vanish ability. By dropping combat entirely, they reset your threat back to zero. Again, its best if you wait until after the tank has taunted to maximise their threat gain but the vanish ability has an important place in the damage dealing rotations of each class, so you shouldnt be using it to help the tank (this is more true for more serious content, if youre in some podunk flashpoint, its fine, its not going to matter anyway).



The third type takes all of the concepts behind the first two, dances around them a bit and then defenestrates them entirely. Marauder's and Sentinel's Force Camouflage only actually helps if you use it after taking damage, of any kind and from any source.



About PVP



Spoiler Warzones



Warzones are not about fighting, doing damage and getting kills, they are about coordinated objective play. Quite often, fighting helps your team meet those objectives. But focusing too much on fighting, doing damage, and getting kills can just as easily lose you a match as it can win it.



Bolster



All brackets of unranked warzones (including level 55) have a bolster system that attempts to bring people to a standardised amount of effective gear and Expertise.



The bolster system works on a slot by slot basis. IE, the bolstering you may or may not receive for your Headpiece is unaffected by the bolstering for any other slot.

If a slot is empty, you receive no bolster for that slot.

If a slot has any Expertise at all (IE, mixing PvP and PvE mods in a customisable item) you receive no bolster for that slot.

If you are using PvE gear rated higher than the current highest level of PvP gear, (IE, a Rating 180 gear with higher stats than a Rating 162 PvP gear) you receive LESS bolster, especially in the area of Expertise.

Expertise has a multiplicative effect on your existing stat bonuses. This makes it the single most important stat you can have in PvP.

Expertise also has a hard cap of 2018. You want to have 2018 expertise in PvP. If you have less, you are gimping yourself and by extension you team. If you have more (outlaw's den buffs or something....) it doesnt matter, has no effect.

Augments do not factor into bolster calculations in any way. They neither increase or decrease the amount you get bolstered. They simply add a flat bonus to you stats that then gets modified by your Expertise modifiers.

There are some ways to "game" the system, special tricks that sacrifice a few points of expertise to gain a slightly more significant amount of power or weapon damage, but they are more advanced that the purview of this thread and Bioware keeps saying that they are going to remove them (which, eventually, they may actually manage to do, who knows?).



For the fresh 55 just starting to pvp, here are some tips:

Low level gear bolsters rather well, especially gear using mods from the level 40 to 45 Planetary comm vendors.

As part of their effort to reduce the ability of players to use the bolster system to get more powerful than Bioware intends, Mainhand weapons have a bolster penalty. IE, if youre using a PvE Mainhand of any kind, you will NOT reach 2018 expertise. As such, the first piece of PvP gear you buy should be a Mainhand weapon.

After a weapon, you should purchase in this order: an Offhand, both Relics, enough armour to get a set bonus, and then fill out the rest of your slots.

DPS and Healers both get the Relics of Focused Retribution and Serendipitous Assault. None of the others are worth anything.

Tanks should get the Relics of Reactive Warding and Shield Amplification. Virtually every player source of damage will bypass defense chance making Fortunate Redoubt less useful.

Augmenting your gear as soon as you can will make quite a difference. Just DONT augment the PvP gear itself. You will have to use those shells to purchase the Ranked gear. (IE, buying the Ranked Mainhand costs 3500 Ranked Comms and the Unranked Mainhand).

In line with the previous point, dont get rid of the Unranked gear shells. Hold on to them, you will need them later to upgrade.



Nodes



When guarding nodes. DONT chase the enemy off the node. They WANT YOU TO DO THAT. Guarding the node is the priority. If the other team wants to sit out of range staring at you for the entire warzone thats just fine and dandy. Force them to come to you, do not make their job easier by running after them and giving up the node to the stealther who snuck up behind you.



Conversely, if youre trying to take a node, fighting 50 meters away from it isnt helping anything. If you dont fight on the node. You literally cannot ever take the thing. Unless the enemy is totally stupid and all runs out to fight you way out of range to do anything, fighting away from the node is a total waste of time.



Communication



COMMUNICATION WINS WARZONES! Its true. It does. Communicating information is almost always the single most important thing you can do. If you see people running towards the node youre guarding all by yourself, your most important job is to tell your team about it as soon as you possibly can. If this means that you have to sit their typing while youre getting killed, THEN DO IT. If you fight, die, and then decide to let people know, all you have managed to do is give your team NO CHANCE to respond and defend the node in time to prevent a cap.



COMMUNICATION IS A TWO-WAY STREET! Part of being a good communicator is paying attention to what others are communicating to you. If you dont notice the repeated calls of "2 inc west!" or "Stealth in Mid" or "PYLON NOW! and so forth because you are too busy derping at the enemy, you are not doing your part.



SPECIFICITY IN COMMUNICATION IS PARAMOUNT! One of the more annoying things that still crops up now and then is someone using subjective directional indicators rather than the definite cardinal direction directly from the minimap. IE, they say Left. Well, there are two lefts. Theres the left to your left, and then theres the other left to your other left if you turn around. Be specific and use the minimap. Dont assume a universal orientation based on which starting gate you come out of. --Sullster-



Situational Awareness



SITUATIONAL AWARENESS SAVES WARZONES! The leading cause of the word 'DEFEAT' popping up on the warzone scorecard at the end of a match is people not being aware of their surroundings. Quite often, it boils down to them not looking at a node. If the point of the match is to control or guard some node, guess what is more important? Guarding the node or watching some random punk dancing off in the distance? Its the first one. PAY ATTENTION TO WHATS GOING ON AROUND YOU!.



SITUATIONAL AWARENESS DOES NOT SOLELY CONCERN THE ENEMY! Part of being a good pvper is the ability to use your awareness of your surroundings to make intelligent inferences in the absence of direct information. As should be obvious to all, you can rarely count on the random pug guarding the other node to let people know about the legion of bad guys that showed up in time for you to do anything about it. If there is only one enemy at the node youre at but six of your teammates and you cant see anyone else, you might want to check the other node. This is also known as COMMON SENSE.



Warzone Evaluation



The Scorecard is not objectively correct. One of the more common mistakes I see people make is taking the information off the scorecard at face value. Just because you are higher up the table on the default ordering than someone else does not mean that you did better than them or had a bigger effect. Occasionally, it can be a direct indication that you did worse. Quite often its totally meaningless and has no bearing on anything at all. There are so many things that the score card does not track that have enormous import in determining a win or a loss. There is also no way for the card to directly show the context that resulted in the numbers the score card displays.



Arenas (Ranked)



Basically, Dont suck.



Oh, and if you dont have at least a full set of the basic WZ commendation PVP gear. STAY OUT.



"Hacking"



Stop blaming losses (whether entire matches or individual duels) on the the opponent "hacking."



Virtually every single case of "hacking" alleged is simply lag, errors involving unoptimised maps (Huttball, Im looking at you...), or merely a case of you not knowing what another class is capable of.



Back when Annihilation was the big pvp FOTM, I was still running around in Carnage. I got tons of nasty whispers, comments in /say, or in the warzone General chat accusing me of being a filthy hacker because I was moving or attacking too quickly. Thats just what Carnage does. Its perfectly legitimate. Much laughter was had at these people's expense.



The only real "hacks" that are still in the game that Im aware of are the occasional speed hacker.



Furthermore, they arent actually hacking, anyway. Stop giving these people so much credit. They are just using some illegal program they downloaded to mess with packets. Theres no skill there.. Warzones are not about fighting, doing damage and getting kills, they are about coordinated objective play. Quite often, fighting helps your team meet those objectives. But focusing too much on fighting, doing damage, and getting kills can just as easily lose you a match as it can win it.All brackets of unranked warzones (including level 55) have a bolster system that attempts to bring people to a standardised amount of effective gear and Expertise.The bolster system works on a slot by slot basis. IE, the bolstering you may or may not receive for your Headpiece is unaffected by the bolstering for any other slot.There are some ways to "game" the system, special tricks that sacrifice a few points of expertise to gain a slightly more significant amount of power or weapon damage, but they are more advanced that the purview of this thread and Bioware keeps saying that they are going to remove them (which, eventually, they may actually manage to do, who knows?).For the fresh 55 just starting to pvp, here are some tips:When guarding nodes. DONT chase the enemy off the node. They WANT YOU TO DO THAT. Guarding the node is the priority. If the other team wants to sit out of range staring at you for the entire warzone thats just fine and dandy. Force them to come to you, do not make their job easier by running after them and giving up the node to the stealther who snuck up behind you.Conversely, if youre trying to take a node, fighting 50 meters away from it isnt helping anything. If you dont fight on the node. You literally cannot ever take the thing. Unless the enemy is totally stupid and all runs out to fight you way out of range to do anything, fighting away from the node is a total waste of time.COMMUNICATION WINS WARZONES! Its true. It does. Communicating information is almost always the single most important thing you can do. If you see people running towards the node youre guarding all by yourself, your most important job is to tell your team about it as soon as you possibly can. If this means that you have to sit their typing while youre getting killed, THEN DO IT. If you fight, die, and then decide to let people know, all you have managed to do is give your team NO CHANCE to respond and defend the node in time to prevent a cap.COMMUNICATION IS A TWO-WAY STREET! Part of being a good communicator is paying attention to what others are communicating to you. If you dont notice the repeated calls of "2 inc west!" or "Stealth in Mid" or "PYLON NOW! and so forth because you are too busy derping at the enemy, you are not doing your part.SPECIFICITY IN COMMUNICATION IS PARAMOUNT! One of the more annoying things that still crops up now and then is someone using subjective directional indicators rather than the definite cardinal direction directly from the minimap. IE, they say Left. Well, there are two lefts. Theres the left to your left, and then theres the other left to your other left if you turn around. Be specific and use the minimap. Dont assume a universal orientation based on which starting gate you come out of. --Sullster-SITUATIONAL AWARENESS SAVES WARZONES! The leading cause of the word 'DEFEAT' popping up on the warzone scorecard at the end of a match is people not being aware of their surroundings. Quite often, it boils down to them not looking at a node. If the point of the match is to control or guard some node, guess what is more important? Guarding the node or watching some random punk dancing off in the distance? Its the first one. PAY ATTENTION TO WHATS GOING ON AROUND YOU!.SITUATIONAL AWARENESS DOES NOT SOLELY CONCERN THE ENEMY! Part of being a good pvper is the ability to use your awareness of your surroundings to make intelligent inferences in the absence of direct information. As should be obvious to all, you can rarely count on the random pug guarding the other node to let people know about the legion of bad guys that showed up in time for you to do anything about it. If there is only one enemy at the node youre at but six of your teammates and you cant see anyone else, you might want to check the other node. This is also known as COMMON SENSE.The Scorecard is not objectively correct. One of the more common mistakes I see people make is taking the information off the scorecard at face value. Just because you are higher up the table on the default ordering than someone else does not mean that you did better than them or had a bigger effect. Occasionally, it can be a direct indication that you did worse. Quite often its totally meaningless and has no bearing on anything at all. There are so many things that the score card does not track that have enormous import in determining a win or a loss. There is also no way for the card to directly show the context that resulted in the numbers the score card displays.Basically, Dont suck.Oh, and if you dont have at least a full set of the basic WZ commendation PVP gear. STAY OUT.Stop blaming losses (whether entire matches or individual duels) on the the opponent "hacking."Virtually every single case of "hacking" alleged is simply lag, errors involving unoptimised maps (Huttball, Im looking at you...), or merely a case of you not knowing what another class is capable of.Back when Annihilation was the big pvp FOTM, I was still running around in Carnage. I got tons of nasty whispers, comments in /say, or in the warzone General chat accusing me of being a filthy hacker because I was moving or attacking too quickly. Thats just what Carnage does. Its perfectly legitimate. Much laughter was had at these people's expense.The only real "hacks" that are still in the game that Im aware of are the occasional speed hacker.Furthermore, they arent actually hacking, anyway. Stop giving these people so much credit. They are just using some illegal program they downloaded to mess with packets. Theres no skill there..



About PVE



Spoiler Gear



You can get a free set of 156 gear from just doing the Oricon story missions, a free level 148 weapon from doing the CZ-198 story missions. There is all this obnoxiously free gear out there. You dont need to show up to an HM 55 wearing the crap you got back on Voss.



Loot and Etiquette



There are no loot restrictions in this game. That means that it is possible to roll on ANYTHING that drops, regardless of whether you or even one of your companions can use it or not. Rolling on stuff just because you can, however, is considered extremely bad manners and can very easily get you kicked from a group for being a "ninja." (IE, 'stealing' loot that should reasonably go to someone else).



Even though there are no definite rules for what you can and cannot roll on, there are informal conventions that the community will expect you to follow.

If the item is appropriate for your class and spec you have priority.

If you already have the item (or equivalent) or have significantly better gear, and there is someone else in the group who it would actually be an upgrade for, they have priority.

If you want the piece of gear for an Offspec (if someone else who could use it for the spec they are in currently is in the group) or for a companion, just ask. Quite often people will not mind. If you dont ask and just roll, you may get away with it, or you may be branded and ninja and kicked.

If/when special loot drops, things become more situational. There is a decently large following of people who want everyone to select Greed on special loot (like crafting mats, speeders, pets and the like) as one can argue that no one really "needs" this stuff. There is also another decently large following of people who think that everyone should just roll Need, because then its totally fair and one person cant just wait till everyone else has selected Greed and take it for themselves.



Personally, Im with the second group. Need vs. Greed is a flawed system. It only works when only certain people are allowed to roll for certain kinds of loot, and it still falls apart completely when you get to 'special' drops. But its something you have to handle as it comes up.



Group Finder



Regular Flashpoints



Because it is possible for your class to queue for a role does NOT mean you have the right to queue as it to get a faster pop. If you are unprepared to fulfill a role but you select it anyway to save time you are screwing over your entire group. DONT DO IT.



Dont queue for hardmode flashpoints immediately after hitting 55. They are NOT a beginner level 55 activity. Youre supposed to have an average Item level of 148 before you do HM FPs.



By extension, "Average Item Level of 148" means that the AVERAGE of your item levels is 148. If you take the item level for each item youre wearing, and divide that by 14 (the number of items you should be wearing) and you dont get at least 146 you are NOT prepared and you wont be able to contribute what you are supposed to be able to to the group.



If you are completely new to flashpoints, its better to bring it up at the start rather than waiting. You may sometimes get instantly kicked before the first trash pack, but a group like this would kick you eventually anyway. At least this way you waste less time. More often that that, though, your group will be understanding and tell you the things you need to know to be successful. They will typically also be more forgiving of the mistakes are almost guaranteed to make due to unfamiliarity.



Tacticals



Minor, but seriously, STOP FREAKING OUT when I have a tank icon next to my name but Im in a dps spec. Its a tactical flashpoint. Its not like youre pulling aggro off me anyway, and Im not giving up 3 or 4k dps just so I can "tank." Im making this go twice as fast as it otherwise would have and youre complaining?



Operations



Realistically, if youre reading this post and learning things, you might not be ready for ops. Yes, there are plenty of people who can go into an operation half asleep and completely drunk and do just fine and dandy but that is a result of gear, familiarity, and hours of practice.



If youre just starting operations here are some things you should know:



Operations are a tier above Flashpoints. Fights are rarely "run in, attack boss, kill boss, loot corpse." Bosses have mechanics, things you have to pay attention to, watch out for, avoid, take care of.



When the person leading the raid gives instructions PAY ATTENTION. As mentioned above, there are things you need to know. Some fights, all it takes is one person not doing their job and you can kill your entire team.



Operations are also more demanding than flashpoints. In KDY, you can get away with doing almost everything wrong while wearing no gear. Operations hold you to a higher standard. Even if you think you know how to play your class, check out a guide or do some parsing. You may be in for a rude awakening, but better that way than being kicked from an ops because you cant pull your weight.



Most of all, calm down and dont freak out. Pay attention to what youre doing and whats going on around you. You can get a free set of 156 gear from just doing the Oricon story missions, a free level 148 weapon from doing the CZ-198 story missions. There is all this obnoxiously free gear out there. You dont need to show up to an HM 55 wearing the crap you got back on Voss.There are no loot restrictions in this game. That means that it is possible to roll on ANYTHING that drops, regardless of whether you or even one of your companions can use it or not. Rolling on stuff just because you can, however, is considered extremely bad manners and can very easily get you kicked from a group for being a "ninja." (IE, 'stealing' loot that should reasonably go to someone else).Even though there are no definite rules for what you can and cannot roll on, there are informal conventions that the community will expect you to follow.If/when special loot drops, things become more situational. There is a decently large following of people who want everyone to select Greed on special loot (like crafting mats, speeders, pets and the like) as one can argue that no one really "needs" this stuff. There is also another decently large following of people who think that everyone should just roll Need, because then its totally fair and one person cant just wait till everyone else has selected Greed and take it for themselves.Personally, Im with the second group. Need vs. Greed is a flawed system. It only works when only certain people are allowed to roll for certain kinds of loot, and it still falls apart completely when you get to 'special' drops. But its something you have to handle as it comes up.Because it is possible for your class to queue for a role does NOT mean you have the right to queue as it to get a faster pop. If you are unprepared to fulfill a role but you select it anyway to save time you are screwing over your entire group. DONT DO IT.Dont queue for hardmode flashpoints immediately after hitting 55. They are NOT a beginner level 55 activity. Youre supposed to have an average Item level of 148 before you do HM FPs.By extension, "Average Item Level of 148" means that the AVERAGE of your item levels is 148. If you take the item level for each item youre wearing, and divide that by 14 (the number of items you should be wearing) and you dont get at least 146 you are NOT prepared and you wont be able to contribute what you are supposed to be able to to the group.If you are completely new to flashpoints, its better to bring it up at the start rather than waiting. You may sometimes get instantly kicked before the first trash pack, but a group like this would kick you eventually anyway. At least this way you waste less time. More often that that, though, your group will be understanding and tell you the things you need to know to be successful. They will typically also be more forgiving of the mistakes are almost guaranteed to make due to unfamiliarity.Minor, but seriously, STOP FREAKING OUT when I have a tank icon next to my name but Im in a dps spec. Its a tactical flashpoint. Its not like youre pulling aggro off me anyway, and Im not giving up 3 or 4k dps just so I can "tank." Im making this go twice as fast as it otherwise would have and youre complaining?Realistically, if youre reading this post and learning things, you might not be ready for ops. Yes, there are plenty of people who can go into an operation half asleep and completely drunk and do just fine and dandy but that is a result of gear, familiarity, and hours of practice.If youre just starting operations here are some things you should know:Operations are a tier above Flashpoints. Fights are rarely "run in, attack boss, kill boss, loot corpse." Bosses have mechanics, things you have to pay attention to, watch out for, avoid, take care of.When the person leading the raid gives instructions PAY ATTENTION. As mentioned above, there are things you need to know. Some fights, all it takes is one person not doing their job and you can kill your entire team.Operations are also more demanding than flashpoints. In KDY, you can get away with doing almost everything wrong while wearing no gear. Operations hold you to a higher standard. Even if you think you know how to play your class, check out a guide or do some parsing. You may be in for a rude awakening, but better that way than being kicked from an ops because you cant pull your weight.Most of all, calm down and dont freak out. Pay attention to what youre doing and whats going on around you.



About Gearing



Spoiler One of the design flaws in this game is that the group finder system does not enforce any sort of item level requirements. No content is gated. The second you have met the Character level requirement, you are automatically eligible for the instance as far as the system is concerned. Whether you actually have the gear necessary to do it is immaterial.



The other side of the problem is how de-emphasized "gearing up" is while leveling. You can go from 10 to 55 without ever getting anything more than what was handed out on your starter planet.



The end result is a ton of people ending up in content they arent ready for making things more difficult for everyone.



So, how can you avoid being *that* person?





A Lesson on Comm storage



A while back, Bioware introduced a system that allowed people to sell back certain types of items for full purchase price. IE, you purchase a weapon from the PvP vendor for 900 Warzone Commendations. You have a two hour grace period in which to sell the weapon back and get back your 900 Wz Comms.



The clincher is, this timer does NOT count down while offline it only counts ingame playtime. The second clincher is, you can sell back an item and then immediately repurchase it and you get a new, full 2 hour timer.



This makes it possible for us to store commendations far in excess of the cap listed on our currency page.



Example: You have 2732 warzone commendations. If you do another warzone, most of the commendations you get will be wasted as you can only have a max of 2750. So, instead, you can purchase 3 of the 900 comm pvp weapons from the vendor next to the mission terminal. Now, you have 32 comms (and room for 2718 more) and 3 items in your inventory that for the next two hours of play time can be resold for 900 comms each.



As the timer gets close to running out, you can sell back the weapons (being careful not to go over 2750) and then purchase them right back.



As long as you make sure to refresh the timer before the two hours are up, you can store as many comms as you have inventory space to hold items.



This "trick" works for anything you buy with commendations. IE, Storage boxes from the Planetary commendation vendors, and there is absolutely nothing against the rules about it.



Just make sure you DONT FORGET TO REFRESH THE TIMER. IF you do, youll be very pissed off.





Pre-50



By storing commendations, you can get a head start on the gearing process.



For example, if you store 12500 wz comms (approx 14 weapons), the second you hit level 55 you can purchase a full set of pvp gear. Armour, weapons and offhand, Earpiece, implants, and both relics. Right off the bat. If pvp isnt your thing (or even if it is), you can store planetary comms to purchase the grade 25 item mods from the makeb vendor on fleet as soon as you hit level 50.



Around level 47 dailies start opening up on Ilum and Belsavis. These give credits, some basic level 50 item mods as well as classic commendations, which can be used to purchase levle 50 gear from vendors on fleet and in some of the daily areas.





At Level 50



Once you are level 50, the old level 50 Hard Mode flashpoints become available. Bosses in these instances drop the old Black Hole (146 rating) gear as well as classic commendations that can be used to purchase Campaign from the vendors on fleet. Black Hole and Campaign are both good enough to serve as entry level gear for HM 55s



Dailies open up in the Black Hole (on Corellia) and Section X (on Belsavis). They give credits as well as classic commendations.



You can also begin to do the classic operations (Eternity Vault, Karagga's Palace, and Explosive Conflict) at level 50. These drop Hazmat (grade 150) gear as well as Dread Guard tokens (grade 150 w/ set bonus). [Story mode may drop Black Hole, I dont know, just about no one did story mode of these even when level 50 was the cap, let alone now]





At Level 55



The real gear grind begins here.



But to start, you want to get yourself the rest of the way ready for Level 55 HMs.



Two new daily areas open up once youre are 55, CZ-198 and Oricon. Both have storyline quests attached that give you very decent gear for a starting 55. Technically, you can start doing Czerka Dailies at level 50, but you wont be able to do them by yourself until about level 52 or 53 (depending on the kind of gear you have). Oricon requires level 55 to start.



The easiest place to start the story line quests are on CZ-198 itself. There are two droids in on the landing platfrom, one sends you to fleet and starts the quest for Czerka. The other sends you to Oricon for the culmination of the Dread Master story line that began back on good ol' Belsavis.



Round about now would be a good point to start thinking about getting a permanent armour set. The way gearing and itemisation works in TOR, alot of the mods that come in the gear you get will be somewhat useless. And so, when you get a new peice of gear, its quite likely youll only want one or two of the mods it contains. So, its better to have one set that you augment and then upgrade piecemeal as you can.





Post-55



You can continue the gear grind without doing operations purchasing vendor gear using Elite and Ultimate comms you get from weeklies and flashpoints, but that stuff is almost all suboptimal. Only the power and crit mods are halfway decent. The enhancements, and all of the tank gear is ultimately, trash. However, this "trash" is probably still better than the flash point gear youre wearing.



As far as fine-tuning your stats, consult a guide/website devoted to that sort of thing.



User Interface and Menu Options



Spoiler



UI



Initially you have only a single action bar and twelves slots to bind keys or key combos. As many classes require as many as 20 or 30 different abilities in regular use to play properly (especially when you consider more PvP focused abilities like trauma debuffs and slows/roots), the default set up is not going to cut it for long.



To begin modifying your UI you can either select the Interface Editor from the Game Options menu (press the ESC key or click on the gear icon in the game toolbar) or you can press the crossed arrows button on the top left of the main action bar.



This puts you into Editor Mode. All UI elements will show up as Green (primary), Blue (secondary), or Red (disabled) boxes. There will also be a control window in the center of the screen. The control window can be moved by clicking and dragging it to reposition. If the control window is on top of an UI element, you will have to click and drag in the black area beneath the window header.



Select a box by clicking on the box or on the tag (if there are overlapping boxes). The box can be repositioned by dragging. Selecting the box also brings it up in the Interface Editor Control window. This allows you to enable or disable the box and gives you a number of options depending on the box you have selected.



As far as how to set up your UI, that is something you have to experiment with until you find something that works for you. You can also input swtorui into any search engine to bring up a site with a number of examples you can either download or use to spark your own ideas.



There are however a number of changes I would definitely make:

Enable Target of Target. Being able to know exactly who your target is targeting is absolutely invaluable information.

Select Show Information Text on your target windows. As above, knowing exactly your targets hp and resources is similarly invaluable.

Increase Debuff scale and decrease Buff scale. Especially Ops Frames. By default, the buffs display in the individual frames can take up a lot of room and make debuffs very difficult to see.

Create UI's customised for various roles or situations to maximise utility.

If you create a UI for Healing or PvP Tanking, try placing the Ops/Group Frames in a more central location for faster access.



Menu Options



From the Game Options Menu open the Preferences Window. This contains all of the gameplay customisation options from graphics to keybindings.



Suggestions:



Control tab: Increase Camera Max Distance. Increasing your field of view allows you to see more of whatever battlefield youre on. Its important.

If you increase the Camera Max Distance, it would also be a good idea to uncheck Enable Camera Pivot. If you zoom the camera out, it can very easily get caught on terrain, especially in enclosed areas.

Chat tab: The Profanity filter can be disabled here.

The two bottom options in this tab make the chat box transparent to mouse clicks instead of blocking them. If you have the chat box in the default position (top left corner) this can be fairly useful.

User Interface tab: Check Show Detailed Item Tooltips in the Tooltip section. This option displays automatically exactly the stats you get from each item mod in a customisable item.

Check Show Cooldown Text in the Cooldown Settings section. Instead of only having a decaying gray overlay, this gives you an exact timer till your skills are available.

Nameplates tab: Check Nameplate on Enemy NPCs. This will reduce immersion but allow you to tell at a glance exactly what it is you are fighting.



Menu Options to Improve Game Performance



There are ways to reduce the graphical burden on your system without completely compromising the way the game looks.

Turning off or lowering Anti Aliasing and Texture Anisotropy can, even singly, greatly increase performance without sabotaging the look too badly.

Lowering the Shadow Map Resolution and Cascasdes will keep the enhanced shadows, but reduce the burden on your GPU. Placing Shadow Quality on low will totally remove the enhance effects.

Lower Grass and Tree quality alone can have an enormous impact on framerate, especially on very poorly occluded and optimised planets like Alderaan or Quesh.

In addition to lowering graphics settings, there are some things you can do to increase performance (especially when doing large group format content). Disable Flytext (the first option in the FlyText tab). It sucks not being able to see the awesome numbers pop up on your screen, but turning this off can make for a surprising boost in graphical performance.

Disable Nameplates on Friendly Players. This is especially useful in 16 man operations if your computer is not so great. The Basic User Interface and default set up of TOR is alright for the begining levels of the game but leaves many key features disabled by default.Initially you have only a single action bar and twelves slots to bind keys or key combos. As many classes require as many as 20 or 30 different abilities in regular use to play properly (especially when you consider more PvP focused abilities like trauma debuffs and slows/roots), the default set up is not going to cut it for long.To begin modifying your UI you can either select thefrom themenu (press the ESC key or click on the gear icon in the game toolbar) or you can press the crossed arrows button on the top left of the main action bar.This puts you into Editor Mode. All UI elements will show up as Green (primary), Blue (secondary), or Red (disabled) boxes. There will also be a control window in the center of the screen. The control window can be moved by clicking and dragging it to reposition. If the control window is on top of an UI element, you will have to click and drag in the black area beneath the window header.Select a box by clicking on the box or on the tag (if there are overlapping boxes). The box can be repositioned by dragging. Selecting the box also brings it up in the Interface Editor Control window. This allows you to enable or disable the box and gives you a number of options depending on the box you have selected.As far as how to set up your UI, that is something you have to experiment with until you find something that works for you. You can also input swtorui into any search engine to bring up a site with a number of examples you can either download or use to spark your own ideas.There are however a number of changes I would definitely make:From the Game Options Menu open the Preferences Window. This contains all of the gameplay customisation options from graphics to keybindings.Suggestions:Control tab:Chat tab:User Interface tab:Nameplates tab:There are ways to reduce the graphical burden on your system without completely compromising the way the game looks.In addition to lowering graphics settings, there are some things you can do to increase performance (especially when doing large group format content). With how fast people are leveling and consequently how much game experience they are skipping entirely, then you factor in the legions of derps making threads like "The Weird people you meet in Group Finder" possible, Ive been wishing there was a thread like this (and that bioware would somehow force people to read it...). So:10/22 Update10/23 Update10/26 Update11/01 Update11/08 Update