Dark Empire I and II and the so called Tales of the Jedi Trilogy (Golden Age of the Sith, Tales of the Jedi, and Sith War) are all good bets if you can find them.

I very much enjoyed TCW and wish it had gone on for longer (or at the very least replaced the unnecessary R2 arc with something more interesting). That said I also like Rebels and relish the chance to see how Vader fights. Up to this point the only time we've seen Vader fight in his relative physical prime (before a combination of age, Dark Side degradation, and injury have taken their toll) is in some of the EU books and comics. This will be the first time we see Vader at his prime in an animated form.

If I had to hazard a guess: Announcement of a new expansion involving the Rakatan's getting uppity again. Announcement of a massive expansion to the Cartel Market offerings. Level limit expanded to 65 Announcement of a boost my character to max level service for $60. Possibly a new unlockable companion.

How dare this little twerp refuse kill his own father and become my apprentice! I'll kill him nice and slow in front of the guy to show that his foolish attempt to redeem my apprentice is pointless and get my rocks off on his suffering. Sure I turned the guy by playing on his attachments to those he cared about such that he was willing to sacrifice anything to save them, but he will never turn on me for I believe he can never be turned from the Dark Side of the Force and I can never be wrong! "Wait, what are you doing Vader!? Let me go! No, no ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

To put it simply yes. To elaborate Anakin is a deconstruction of the classic hero archetype. Like most heroes he cares about and wants to help others and is willing to make sacrifices of himself to make that happen. Where the deconstruction comes in is that Anakin shows what happens when this self sacrificing nature is taken too far. Anakin has a serious martyr complex to the point that he sees the deaths of those close to him as personal failures regardless of the circumstances. This just pushes him to make greater sacrifices to the point that he gives up his integrity and succumbs to the Dark Side.

Note: In any instance where a player would lose recipes due to changes they would be awarded a number of RE points per recipe lost based on the rating of the recipe. Artifice: Allow all color crystals to be crafted for all levels with the possible exceptions of black and white which would be found as drops from FPs or possibly craft specific quests on each planet. I'm a firm believer in giving people options and as far as saber/blaster bolt color is concerned I see no reason to say one is any more special than the other. Also move generators and foci to Cybertech. Armstech: As with Artifice let them craft all the colors of the rainbow at any given level. Biochem: Put implants into Cybertech and replace them with special party medpacks. The medpacks will have their own longer cooldown and when one is used the cooldown will be triggered for the whole party (When a party forms the highest cooldown in effect at the time takes precedence). The medpacks will restore 70 -> 80 -> 90% of what a normal single target medpack would heal. The idea is to give parties a second oh crap group heal without making one so good that the raid crazies will start demanding it be used on all raids. Cybertech: Loses mods and grenades but now is the one stop shop for earpieces, implants, shields, and foci. Also allow for some BoE speeders that crafters can pass around.

Here's some of the things I would do: 1. Make it so that craft skills can make every moddable piece for their specific specialty. This means that artifice would be able to make hilts, enhancements, mods, and color crystals for lightsabers only while armstech would be able to make barrels, mods, enhancements, and color crystals for blasters and rifles. I know the idea was to have people with different craft skills work together, but right now it just comes off as annoying that I need two skills to fully upgrade my weapon/armor. Furthermore make it so that these skills can make the highest level of hilt, barrel, etc to allow for end game usefulness (To balance have the best of these require ingredients from HM FPs so the raid and PVP heads don't cry foul). 2. Remove the duplicate enhancements and replace them with special effect enhancements such as X% to do Y damage of type Z when attacked by this weapon or X% added resistance to damage type Y for armor. Make certain effects specific to the items such as X added shield chance for shields only. 3. Completely re-engineer (no pun intended) the RE system. Allow for crafting to give crafters RE points that they can put to various upgrades with each base recipe having its own RE options. This gives people an incentive to make duplicates beyond the need for selling and ensures that each piece crafted contributes in some way to helping the crafter become better at his/her craft. 4. Allow synthweaving and armormech to create entire craft only sets at high level whose stats are on par with end game commendation/PVP pieces and make them look unique and cool too. This would also help to end the whole craft skills are useless for end game debate. 5. Similar to #4 allow artifice and armstech to create unique looking lightsabers/blasters with special abilities that can't be found anywhere else, perhaps enhancements to tree specific abilities such as Force Crush. See my next post for specific changes.

You get new artifice recipes every 20 points in the craft skill. Once you hit about 100 you're going to want to invest in those archaeolgy missions that give you fluxes and the like as new recipes will require them. You shouldn't really need anything more than the level 15 - 17 recipes until you hit your third planet around level 20. The basic idea is harvest every node you can to get a stockpile of the basics (crystals and artifact fragments for artifice), use missions from one of your gathering skills to stockpile things like the fluxes (and the blue and purple materials if you're heavily REing), and craft a bunch at once. Also keep in mind that hte higher versions you get from using RE have higher difficulties and thus will keep you gaining skill longer but you'll need special materials to make them.

They're ingredients for certain high level crew skill creations such as the Defender's Mettle lightsaber from artificing.

I'd have to say Exar Kun for the following reasons: 1. Kun was a master lightsaber duelist and the first to use the double-bladed variant. In fact his lightsaber was barely longer that a regular lightsaber. Despite the problems that would cause Kun was able to wield it with enough skill to kill Jedi Masters. 2. Kun was a master of Sith Alchemy and other dark arts. Kun usually did things for one of two reasons: to prove a point, or to grab some bit of knowledge that would make him more powerful. If not for the Jedi he would have unleashed his spirit upon the galaxy and wreaked havoc. 3. Unlike most Sith Lords who let their emotions, arrogance, or lust for power get the better of them Kun was patient and devious much like Palpatine four millenia later. He destroyed an entire star cluster in order to grab as much knowledge from a Jedi library while they were busy escaping. He also warned Ulic Qel-Droma against attacking Coruscant. Kun isn't likely to enter a battle without having a decisive advantage. The only reason he was beaten was because Ulic couldn't hack it as a Sith and betrayed his location to the Jedi.

Ok I finally beat Baras at 48. Here's my observations for the second fight: 1. Prioritize endurance over strength. This fight is about being able to survive chipping away at his life long enough to take him down. 2. He has both a force push and a force pull and loves to use the latter right before beginning to cast Voice of the Emperor. Use that as a que to be ready to interrupt. 3. Regardless of whether he Force pulls you or not if you see him stand there with his hands glowing red you need to interrupt him immediately. Any hard stun move will do but I find Backhand and Force Choke to be the most effective. However Voice of the Emperor is broken he will usually not cast it again for another 15 - 25 seconds. After stunning him punish him him with Ravage, your pinnacle skill tree move, or Smash. 4. Baras often stupidly sets himself up for lightsaber throws so be prepared to take advantage of any opportunity he gives you. Als ofollow every Force Push with a lightsaber throw followed by a Force Charge if you can to keep your rage up. It helps make the most of your offensive moments. 5. Reserve Call on the Force for about 3/4s of the way through the fight. You want it more for refreshing Saber Ward than anything else so you can give a concentrated beat down to him for a few seconds. Do your best to stun lock him, but keep at least one interrupt in reserve in case he's able to start casting. 6. If you're Immortal specced then Sonic Barrier is a godsend. It helps you survive a bit to deal some serious damage via Ravage or Crushing Blow. Use it every chance you get unless you need to interrupt Voice of the Emperor.

Draagh is definitely beatable at 47. I managed to do it, but barely. To understand the last few major fights you have to realize that they are meant to teach you important pvp techniques for use on Ilum. It starts with Darth Ekkage who has that AOE lightning storm attack. It's meant to teach you how to use your interrupts. The Emperor's Voice battle is meant to teach you effective crowd control (and healing/preparing in between battles) and Lord Draagh serves to teach proper kiting techniques by preventing stuns (and thus preventing you from stun locking him as a viable alternative). Baras is meant to teach you how to use more than one of these techniques in conjunction with one another.

Vaapaad is actually a prototype lightsaber form that was being developed by Mace Windu and was actually based off of Juyo which is a Sith form. Of the fully established Jedi lightsaber forms Djem So/Shien is the most aggressive as its basis to overwhelm the opponent by countering their attacks with sheer strength i.e. knocking away the opponent's blade and quickly countering. All of the established forms have a kind of specialty of sorts. Form I Shi-icho: Ease of use as it focuses on basic strikes and guards and doesn't go out of its way to be fancy. Form II Makashi: Finesse based combat focusing on minimalist effort to execute parries, deflections, disarms, and striking at openings. It's good against Soresu because Soresu relys on tiring out the opponent/forcing them to overextend themselves which is the opposite of the Makashi philosophy. Form III Soresu: A defensive form wherein users rely on technique, situational/environmental awareness and agility to tire the opponent out or force them to reveal a weakness to strike at. It's very good against brute force but not against finesse and usually requires the user to have some ground for strategic retreats. Form IV Ataru: An acrobatic form that places emphasis on flashy moves to distract an opponent and attacking from odd angles such as with mid-air strikes to catch an opponent off guard. It's main flaw is that you need a fair bit of room to perform all of those mid-air/sweeping maneuvers but to someone like Yoda who is a master of this form that's easy to come by. Form V Djem So/Shien: An aggressive style that focuses on reprisals. Users become masters of counterattacks both against saber strikes and blaster shots. The style's main weakness is that the user often has to fully commit themselves to offense leaving them with exploitable openings. Form VI Niman: A balanced jack of all trades style whose focus is that it really has no focus. Against a user of a style with a focus Niman users often get overwhelmed when that area of expertise comes into play. Niman's strength is that it can a variety of situations and it's near impossible to really surprise the few masters of the style unless their opponent gets lucky/extermely creative.

Wait didn't Lucas later retcon Padme's death to being that the Polis Masa droids were idiots when it came to human medical knowledge and that she actually died due to tracheal damage? It's still stupid to an extent in that there's little evidence to justify it i.e. her struggling to breathe but it's still better than "she lost the will to live". As for Anakin being good yes, he started out that way. He was a little boy who only wanted to help people. The problem is that due to Palpatine's influence and Kenobi being an idiot mentor Anakin grew arrogant. His need to help people developed into a martyr complex where he would throw himself into danger rather than let others get hurt. It eventually also expresses in a refusal to let go of his attachments and that's what Sidious uses as the hook to bait him. Really when you look at it if Anakin had just taken a second to think about the situation after agreeing to help Sidious he would have realized that the Sith Lord needed to die. Hell if someone had just pointed out at that point that Padme would eventually chase him down to try to turn him away from the Dark Side and thus lead to her being away from the competent doctors on Coruscant making it much more likely that she would die from complications he probably would have changed his decision immediately.

Obi-Wan basically played Anakin through most of that fight. The whole philosophy behind form 3 is the block, deflect, and give ground until the opponent slips up and presents an opportunity. There's another aspect to it though that Kenobi effectively uses on Anakin at Mustafar and that is to exploit the opponent's aggression in subtle but advantageous ways. Notice how Kenobi knocks Anakin's saber into the control that opens the door to the outside of the mining facility giving Obi-Wan more ground to retreat to? How he uses Anakin's aggressive drive in trying to push his lightsaber into Obi-Wan's face as momentum to flip Anakin and thus get out of the hold? Kenobi uses the environment and his opponent's state of mind against him and Anakin in his all consuming rage didn't see it until it was too late.