No doubt.. Been a while since we have seen "force speed is OP" threads, just wait till everyone is getting 3s stun off the bubble you are casting on anything that moves in your team. Forums will be drowning in QQ. Just a shame we need to get "buffed" by stupid changes that aren't well thought through. The worst thing is it will be pointless QQ still - "that sorc annoyed me for an extra 5 seconds since their buffs before I could kill it!!!" I actually laughed out loud.

Excellent summary, thanks for posting. Pretty much confirms my initial thoughts when I read the blog and looked at the positioning in the skill trees of changes. Of course, they MAY change the skill trees but I doubt it very much. I'm fairly baffled by what appears to be the developers wish to get us all playing lightning when the tree is garbage for actual burst in competitive PVP. The game since 1.2 is ALL about who can burst who the quickest, any pretense that it isn't is simply window dressing a burnt out building. These changes seem aimed at the incoming influx of casual players and pugs who aren't going to be bothered to fully learn their class much less any other class. It is the only possible reasoning for the resolve changes and basically making PVP sorcs turrets in the lightning tree - because lightning you can only get away with against an un-organised pug.

Fadeout is currently 16 points in to the healing tree, polarity shift is currently 21 points in to the lightning tree. In order to take both a healing sorc would need to do without innervate and the AoE heal. I suspect that isn't going to be a route most healing sorcs take. I'd go further and say it isn't a route most DPS sorcs will take either. Depends really, as anyone will tell you force speed is not a get out of jail free card. You may think a boost of 8 to 15 meters is a "huge" boost, but actually of any sorc I played with we would all have taken just instant activation quite happily. Actually not much wrong with overload other than the animation time, it is hardly game breaking as the commando I believe has instant KB right now. The free heal is nice, but can't really see any reason to re-sub to play my sorc in 1.4. Probably reserve judgement mind you till the full patch notes and any skill tree changes, but it isn't particularly appealing (although admittedly better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick). The core issue will be clueless idiots who think everything is possible on every build and we will no doubt at least see a resurgance of "force speed is OP" threads within a week of it going live. Assasins with force speed on 5s CD? That will be fun. Excellent summary of what Sorc/Sage changes mean IN REALITY here - http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5119977

Well they say they are on a 6 week release schedule for "content". So at some point (soon!) they will release the new OP or whatever the damn thing is (Terror from Beyond). Then 6 weeks later the new warzone I suspect. So at least 12 weeks would be my guess, unless they release the new OP and FP at the same time because people are complaining too much.

I can't find anything to back that up from the devs. The only reference to Illum lately has been Gabe putting his foot in it. You can forget any meaningful open world PVP unless and until they can do something with the engine SWTOR runs on. Quesh, Ilum, Hoth, Tattione... doesn't matter because the engine can't handle more than 16 players at a time.

While I'm a massive cynic - and we don't really know much about this new heal yet - you still have Rejuvination, so you can now cast two heals back to back while on the move. It doesn't take much, from nothing and depending on the order you cast them (e.g. rejuvination, bubble, instant heal) you can mitigate a lot of damage on the move. What did you expect, a 6k instant heal?

I did the daily four times I think (might have been 5 times with Ilum but honestly can't remember) and the weekly TWICE, usually with at least one or two guild members but sometimes in a pug. I cashed in all my ranked which probably isn't the best idea if you are seriously going for WH but I wasn't bothered. The reason I managed to do the weekly twice is my friend had the old Ilum collect boxes quests. That probably took an hour which I haven't included in the playing time and is something that not everyone could do so that helped a great deal. To be fair through what I didn't mention is that I queued from Outlaws den and collected chests pretty much all of the time as I bought the legacy travel to that area. But that is something anyone can do and actually I don't think it really accounted for a lot of comms (4 chests each with 20 wz comms, I think the respawn time on them is an hour but I'm not honestly sure about that). Also it is a tank class I'm playing with DPS gear, so medals aren't really an issue even if I get stomped - would have been a lot harder on a healer or some other classes I'm sure. I can't honestly remember how long it took to gear my heal operative to BM but it probably was about the same with my op even though I was already prepared and had full wz and ranked comms stored when I hit 50! I didn't time it or anything, I wasn't running with a stopwatch - but I played over the course of 4 days for at least a couple of hours per night mostly peak or late night.. Not saying it was easy, it was painful stuff for the vast majority of it. But really it isn't that hard a grind when you already have a couple of 50s and know the other classes mechanic - and ultimately compared to RNG for champ gear and a valor restriction on BM gear it was a breeze compared to my first char at 50.

Exactly. A lot of people liked the idea of shooting lightning our of their fingers. Sorc is good pre 50 before it starts to scale really badly due to the way weapon damage is calculated. Plus the bubble is relatively strong sub 50 before you have WH augmented gear etc. The game was also full of carebear PVPers with no skill that let Sorcs turret their way through an entire warzone.

Good point, I'd forgotten about the bombing ones.

I know Hickman tries to explain the thinking behind it but personally I don't get it. Simply put - the subs they have lost came and played the story, tried the rest and left. So now we have a situation where all the story stuff is free and the other elements - that are largely found lacking for one reason or another by the players - is the paid for part?

No hate, I just see this misconception or urban myth that once you hit 50 you are completely useless for along time in end game PVP repeated endlessly. The facts don't back it up. Sure if you are going to run a couple of warzones a week then yes, it is going to be a long time till you get competitive. Anyway, back on topic. The new weapon/off hand is just going to be the start. It will not take long before the vast majority of people still actively PVPing as their main focus will be looking for more significant gear upgrades and not just the cosmetics that ranked gear brings. Officially the line will be to stop people ripping out mods from the highest end PVE gear. Realistically, if you have 1200 expertise there isn't that much point going further, so chances are you already running some PVE stuff in your gear if you are full augmented WH and min/maxed already.

I can see a couple of issues with it, first DPS will end up in the Q longer than healers (like they do for PVE group Q). Second I doubt there is any real way to say what group make up should be for PVP - 2 tanks, 2 healers, 6 DPS? Maybe, but chances are everyone has a different opinion... do you even need tanks for a start? And as has been proved recently, 8 maras can do just fine in Huttball

Shouldn't be that hard no, but lots of healers are only spec'd part way in to their heal trees especially for PVP (I'm thinking sorc/sage especially). I mean they WOULD have spec'd all the way up to the AOE heal if that didn't mean they folded in 3 GCDs to virtually every class except another sage/sorc Been so long since I played my Operative but fairly sure most of them would be spec'd all the way up the heal tree. No idea on mercs, do mercs actually still play the game?

Wishful thinking. Even in the LFG PVE tool the game can't tell if you are heals or DPS.

- Free roam space flight Maybe, if the money from F2P and existing subs ever repays the $300 development cost - Guild ships See answer to first question - A paid character transfer service. This one is imminent, they have the tech and they will have the cash shop. It will happen. - Free roam Guild vs Guild space pvp with guild ships. See answer to first question - A game that is only offline to do maintenance 1 night a week. (time pending where you live) When the game hits "maintenance mode", sure. - Optimization of the Hero Engine. Never. Can't polish a turd. - Be considered a successful MMORPG by all or most of the community. Never. Can't polish a turd. - Massive expansions that can be bought in a store. (example: World of Warcraft expansions) LOL