I know the BH class story gets a lot of grief, but Act 1 of the BH story was one of my favorite acts of all 8 classes. Act 2 was a serious letdown (the Mandalorian angle had so much potential) and Act 3 was one of the worst acts in the game. The BH did have the best group of companions and the best companion side-questline. The trooper story had similar issues. The trooper story was really fun on Ord Mantell, but after that, it was pretty meh until Corellia. It's a bummer when a class's story was only truly entertaining on the 1st and last planet.

I'll echo the sentiments of many before me in this thread. If you're truly playing this game purely for the story in a single player experience (similar to KotOR 1 and 2), you're completely missing out by skipping the side quests, especially the main story arc for each planet, while you're leveling up. And I'd even argue the level appropriate flashpoints as well. All add to the over-arcing story of the game and are what make the game great. Also, I'd wager that 75% of the "kill 10 rats" type quests that you despise are bonus quests that are completely avoidable and don't add any extra story. Honestly, the most time consuming part of working through the content in this game isn't killing trash mobs, it's travelling across big planets. The side quests and class quests progress to the same parts of the maps at the same time which is actually a time saver in the long run to run them concurrently and the rewards for these quests will easily keep you geared up for the content you on each planet. Based on what it looks like you want out of this game, you'd be better off doing the side quests along with the class quests but just ignoring the bonus objectives that pop up. Then you wouldn't have to worry about how to gear up, worry about kill counts, or miss any story. The 12x class quest xp bonus was really a perk for players that had leveled numerous alts but burned out on leveling more because they had seen all of the side quests 5+ times. This allows them to see the NEW content (i.e. class quests they haven't played yet) without having to replay the side quests for the seemingly hundredth time. I play this game primarily for the storylines and I wouldn't dream of skipping the side quests on my 1st playthrough on each side. That'd be like playing KotOR and never engaging a single NPC in dialog that wasn't the main story NPC. You'd miss 80% of those games too.

You're going to the dictionary to try and solve game mechanics. In this game, there are a number of different CC mechanics (interrupt, stun, knockback etc). Whether or not it upsets you, these abilities you mention are meant to be immune to the interrupt abilities, not stuns or knockbacks. These are working as intended. If you're worried about wasting these abilities, just learn to work around this mechanic. If it's PvE that's getting you and mobs are knocking you back and wasting your channel, either wait until the knockback is cast before using your abilily or stun the mob first and then use your channeled ability. If PvP is the concern, learn to pick your moments and be aware of the situation.

I would sure like to see something to that effect. Since it already requires a character on each faction in order to earn the datacron master achievement, I see no issue with providing the datacron stats as a legacy unlock that has a requirement that you have completed the datacron master achievement and that the character that's unlocking the stats has achieved a set minimum level. Once you've found each datacron once, they've served their entertainment purposes fully. Expecting someone to collect them all multiple times is nothing but a time-sink.

I'd imagine the best course of action would be to open a ticket in-game.

This happened to me a couple of times when I'd have a companion mission AND a class mission that both said "travel to planet". What would happen was the class mission would update, but the companion one would not. It sounds like reseting the quest will work, but what I did to fix it was get back on my ship, fly to any other planet and then fly back. The companion quest will then update.

I don't know about you, but I have both rows of my bottom center hotbar full of abilities and I'd say I use 19 out of those 24 abilities in every warzone I'm in and another 2 or 3 when useful. If you are pigeon-holing your gameplay into a few abilities, than you are only leaving yourself open to being useful in a few situations.

If the person you were shooting wasn't allowed to move, the BH rotations would be able to be done by a brain-dead person. The challenge in playing a PvP merc is in finding a way to get through those rotations while also maintaining intelligent positioning on the battlefield with limited mobility. A large percentage of your rotation is filled with abilities that cast. So yes, if you're being ignored as a Merc, it's very easy and effective to become a turret with tracer spam. But what separates the good Mercs from the bad ones is battlefield awareness and taking advantage of cc abilities and insta-cast abilities to be as mobile as you can while still being useful.

It's times like these that make me miss a good old fashioned EQ train. EQ had some excellent tools to police d-bags. Mostly it boiled down to needing a group to level, so if you made a reputation for yourself as a jerk, you couldn't level anymore. Ah the good ole days...

The problem with BioChem is that you have to have skill in BioChem to use the re-usables. If they could sell them to anyone and they were useable even if you're crew skill was something else, this wouldn't even be an issue.

When a companion's crew skill bonus refers to 'research', is this referring to the Investigation skill?

Just got one. Redeemed at 5pm cst on 7/21. Now if only I could play before this evening... arg.