I gotta know, what makes this pack "50% off", exactly? At $20, it seems like the same old offers for $5 MORE than usual. It seems like the same "Outlander Token" offered upon first subscription, along with the typical pet/mount offered upon subscription depending on where you may have purchased from, along with the same 500 Cartel Coins offered for a month of subscription, the "5-pack Major Exp boosts" are the same found in the Origin bundle, and even the "Thermal Retention Suit" just seems like one of the bonuses provided when you subscribe during a specific timeframe. Can someone run down the specific pricing comparisons for me so I can understand where the savings actually lie in this bundle? EDIT: Link, for reference http://www.swtor.com/buy?intcmp=sor_bwa-mkt-t-us-lp-210

way I see it: this game wants everyone to be within certain range of others. what do the devs call it? the 5%? this means that if any one person is able to crush other people (or in the case of Sentinels/Marauders, 3 or so people at a time) with any kind of regularity, it's a problem and needs to be fixed. even if it's only one person, the possibility should not exist for him to have such a huge advantage over others. even if 99% of sents/marauders are putting out average stats, if that 1% exists that can regularly solo 3 other players and win, then it's a problem. The solution, however, is not to just nerf the class across the boards. The solution is to find whatever mechanic this person is exploiting and make it less powerful, so that the 99% does not lose anything, but the 1% also becomes more normalized.

I know people say that alacrity just makes you burn through resources, but if you're keeping Consumption in your rotation (which ops healers should), then it doesn't matter at all. You're still using the same use:gain ratio for your force pool, you're just doing it more efficiently. And the rate at which you use your heal rotation is limited by circumstance, too. So basically all alacrity does is give you the option to burn through your force quicker if you need to. If you don't need to, then don't. It's that simple.

if you evened out your stats (drop about 475 or so power and put it into crit/alacrity) you could fairly easily give yourself another 5% crit and 10% alacrity for a loss of only 10% of your total bonus healing.. while the idea of "not needing to crit so often" is great in theory, in practice you'll find that beefing your bonus healing enough to outweigh the benefits of crit and alacrity isn't possible. At the risk of doing math, a 5% increase to crit with your surge rating is around 4% (varying based on chance) total heals, and i'm pretty sure the 26 bonus healing you'd lose transferring power to crit is worth a lot less than that 4% (can't confirm because i don't have an equation for factoring bonus healing into total heals per second). Personally I'd suggest trading around 325 power or so for alacrity, giving you another 10% alacrity. I know people tend to look down on alacrity, and obviously you don't want to go overboard with it, but that 10% does help, imo. For example, 10% alacrity reduces Dark Infusion's cast time by .3 seconds, which is more than having a talent point in Dark Mending. As for surge, well, you probably don't want to move any more than 25 points out of surge rating (if any at all), or it will drop you below 75%. Because it takes so little to reach optimal surge, though, it's really more a matter of preference. The difference you'll see moving points from surge is minimal. Also, for reference: increasing your Willpower to 2200 will only increase your crit chance by a little over 1%, so don't count on just your primary stat for getting 30% unbuffed chance

I played Fallen Earth for a time and they had something like this. You could control certain aspects of the game from your phone. You could view mail, buy and sell on the auction house, and more, if I'm remembering correctly. Galactic Market would be a nice feature as well, but what would be really nice to have is the ability to conduct Crew Skill missions while we're not logged into the game. Would this be possible/sensible? Is it already planned? Other thoughts?

eh... i'm kinda hoping they're too busy working on fixing some real issues... if that "special stuff" means bug fixes or "event" means class balancing (or healing mechanics reversion to pre-1.2), then i'm all for it, but more fluff should be at the bottom of Bioware's priorities right now

lotta people like to treat this game (or at least the leveling 1-50 bits) as single-player. I'm one of them. you can skip all the heroics on every planet and still level to 50 just fine on your own schedule, so why bother with other people when they always seem to take half an hour after you form the group to decide they're ready to start? it's a sad truth, but pugs tend to suck. so unless you have a group of friends you like to play with, the majority of multiplayer content in this game just isn't worth doing.

lol for clarification i made this thread because tracking down futurama clips seemed like a good cure for boredom. but if i was "crying for validation," i would have to thank you for giving me the attention i apparently crave so desperately. though since this is keeping me entertained i suppose i should thank you anyway.

you read the post. you responded. facts imply you care. it's touching, really

Haven't been able to force myself to play in two weeks now... I have 4 months left on a 6-month prepaid subscription, and am deeply regretting spending the money. I'm out all. Professor, if you'll do the honors? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35TbGjt-weA

accuracy over boredom

actually i don't know how i got 900 earlier on my tank. just went back to the dummy to try again and best i could do was 775 edit: that's best as in i hammered away at the dummy for 10 minutes straight and that's the number i ended up with when i was finished, meaning sustained dps

is that sustained dps or burst? by sustained i mean at least 3 minutes, without risk of burning out your force. because if that's sustained dps, then that's really high. from what i gather so far the average for dps specs is around 1200-1300. then there's your tank spec dps, which seems really low. my juggernaut tank can sustain 900 easily.

i think either the black hole or campaign set have crit/surge instead of alacrity. can't remember 100% though so don't take my word for it