All Jedi carry lightsabers. In fact, the final step to becoming a Jedi is creating and assembling one's own lightsaber. The sabre, with it's powerful crystal, serves to amplify, and even focus the Force. Not sure if the Sith have the same ritual to "graduate" their desciples into the fold, but it would make sense. Maybe I'm a romantic, but I just love the whole idea of a lightsaber and cannot get enough of seeing my sorcerer wielding it. True, I rarely use a move the actually attacks with the saber, but I love to watch how it helps him to cast his spells. Plus it took me a while, and lots of credits, to get the black/red blade that is so cool! Too much Lightsaber is like too much bacon.......no such thing!

I agree that a lot of it is ignorance. Not just for SWTOR, but perhaps for MMO's in general. For me, SWTOR was the first MMO I had ever played. So I was reeeeaaallllly ignorant. I did not know any of the terms such as LOS, AOE, DPS, etc. The concept of tank/damage/heals working together was also brand new to me. I found that the game itself give almost no information on "how to play" beyond the tool tips. Heck even the guides on Dulfy pretty much assume that you understand the lingo. Sure it's elementary for anyone who has played any MMO before, but being my first I felt completely in the dark. It took me forever to level up my first toon (toon" what's a toon?), because I had to lose almost every fight a few times before I figured out what I was doing wrong. I can remember when I hit lvl 10 with my first toon, a Sorcerer. I defeated Kem Val, after about a dozen wipes. The feeling of elation I had when I finally beat him, and then gained him as my awesome companion, was unforgettable. I was whooping and jumping up and down in my home office. It was past Midnight and I woke my wife and daughter. They were like "are you okay?!" Because I was so new, I avoided FPs for a very long time. I just did every mission I could find on every planet, and I think I was at or near max lvl before I did my first GF queue. I was so scared that I would be awful and ruin it for everyone, but It went fine and no one even called me out for being a noob, which I most certainly was. I'm sure that if I had been more courageous and tried the GF before spending about a year learning how to MMO and specifically how to play my Sorcerer, that I would have been yelled at big time..."L2P NOOB", (both terms I had to Google, btw.), etc. Thankfully, during the first few FPs I actually did meet some vets who were happy to offer advice, which I followed of course, and I started picking it up pretty quickly after that. So I suppose some folks might actually be "stupid", but I think a far greater percentage are just ignorant, and maybe even scared to admit it. So be kind to the "less good" among us and offer a helping hand. It makes the game, and the MMO community a better place to play.

But consider that I had not even spent a single "data crystal" (or whatever the new currency is) on all that new fancy gear! In two more days I will hit 65 and my gear will be way better, and the same will happen with most 60's, I'm guessing. Then the FP's will get easier and the SM OPS will be hard, but not impossible.

So far I'm loving 4.0! Logged in last night, and spent about 15 minutes redoing my Utilities for my lvl 60 Corruption Sorc, and trying to comprehend new stat structure, then jumped into GF! Instapop for tactical Attack on Tython. Group included lvl 60 Jugg DPS, 60 Operative (I think) DPS, and a lvl 17 Sorc DPS, who was bolstered to 50K HP. We struggle a bit taking out the towers and we have a few deaths on mobs, in spite of stellar healz from yours truly. These guys, or at least two of them, were new....leading the group all the way around the battle field to take out literally every mob in the process of getting the four towers down. Was weird, like after a tower the group would stand around and I would take off toward the next tower (w/rocket boost) and no one would follow. Then a sec or two later one of the noobs would run the other way and the others would follow him! Okay so I turn around and help them kill a mob that had no business being pulled at all! Whatever, I like fighting and to have challenging heals (cuz two of them seemed to think that red aoe circles were good to stand in. Seriously, you can't even see your toon for all the FLAMES.....wanna move please!) was quite refreshing and pretty fun! We get to first boss, finally, and 60DPS sorc force speeds in while I'm still asking in chat if we are gonna do the "stairs" method. We fail miserably, as you can imagine, with all the aoe red circles. We res and gather at the foot of the stairs and finally the level 17 sorc says he's never done this FP before! Hmmmm, no kidding. So I explain the stairs method and we wiped twice more, but once everyone understood to book it for the stairs immediately when adds arrive, we beat it easily. I even spent most of the time DPSing because they finally understood red=dead. We move on, with at least one member dying (usually poor lowbie sorc) on about every 3rd mob (back to standing in stupid). We kill 2nd and final boss with only one more wipe. Lvl 17 sorc ended the FP at Lvl 19! It was a good run overall, with everyone communicating in chat, and the lowbie sorc showed marked improvement. He followed instructions and was happy to be learning. The most fun I've had in a while, as far as healz go. Had to really work to keep this gang alive and it was exhilarating! All in all the normally 15-20 minute FP took 2 hours and I hope they are all like this in 4.0!!

Excellent post Nieyko, thank you! I hope the devs take this to heart. I totally agree that these "new" mechanics would be great....and also FUN! One of my favorite mechanics is the "shackles" that General Ortol tosses out at the end of Cademinu FP. It is an AOE attack, so the group needs to stay spread out. They can only be broken by your stun break (which you need to save to escape ROCKET FLAMES) or a teammate running over them. And of course the big AOE flames that you hafta run from. All of these require that the whole group remain completely aware. No auto-spamming basic attacks here, or you will die! Heck, it could be an OPS boss fight, just by adding more HP to Ortol and then introducing adds every 30 sec or so. Maybe exploding bots!

This is my point. PUGs certainly CAN do this content. I know it's true because I have only ever done BH HM via GF and I've cleared it 4 times, twice before last update. Even PUGs with not-ideal gear, even with sub-par players. Yes, with some practice and especially with some guidance from more experience players in the group....this FP CAN be done! "Wasted time to get noobs through it"......for me that's the most rewarding part. Helping someone else to improve their game, just like I got help when I was a whelp. And what are you doing with your valuable time? Battle of Rishi? Korriban Incurrsion? Yawn. Are you honestly happier rolling your face back and forth on the keyboard doing those, than actively trying to figure out a way to get your sorry group over the line, by communicating and working together? Just think how great it will feel when you beat the mission, after 6 wipes and working with the group to improve everyone's skill. It's a good feeling, I can tell you. "rack up 50K in repair bills"......really? Be honest, do you even feel the loss of 50K credits? I'll bet your balance is over 1 million credits pretty much all the time.

I have to say that I am flummoxed by the folks who insta-drop as soon as they see "Blood Hunt Hard Mode". Reasons I have seen include "don't want to waste my time" or "other members' gear is not good enough" etc. I think these players have lost site of what they like about this game. Is it not the actual battles and especially boss battles that are the most fun and the reason why we play? I suppose if what you like to do is buy and modify gear, but don't like to actually play with that toon....then yes, playing the game is a "waste" of time. For me, it is the very fact that BH HM is the toughest FP and could actually take some skill and require me to pay attention. I mean all the other FPs are pretty much facerolls anymore, so when BH HM pops I'm like "YES!" and I sit up and crack my knuckles. Let's do this! I enjoy the challenge, and even learn a thing or two sometimes when I am challenged. Also, I find that groups will communicate more when they are faced with a challenge. Well, good groups that is. It's still true that people will drop the group after one wipe, rather than try to talk amongst the group and figure out how they can do better next time. That's the group content that I play this game for. A frustrating BH HM story......Zoned in and both DPS quit instantly, even before the trash pulls. I'm Jugg tank. So healer and I requeue. It takes a few tries, because dopes that just quit got back into queue! LOL! Eventually we get a group and no one is quitting! I pull the first boss.. Not the worst I've seen. We got to about 40% before wipe. There were some positioning issues (electrical fields and rocks) and adds got forgotten. We chat and I decide to grab two of the adds to help out. We get to 25% this time, but I got out of position and got knocked off the world. Wipe. Third try, I grab an add or two each round and keep good position on Boss, while DPS and healz do a great job avoiding AOEs and we wail on the boss to like 8% before...enrage and wipe! Okay gang, this time for sure, right?! Let's really focus on our rotations, our positions, and we can do this!! Nope. One DPS quits, and shortly after the other one quits too!! Whiskey Tango Foxtrot! No chat, nothing, just quit, after spending 30 minutes or so fighting this boss, and racking up repair bills. For sure we would have killed it next time, right? Unfortunately, we got no more replacements and after 20 more minutes healer and I shook hands with a shrug and went out separate ways. What's with people??!!

Could be that you are on one of their ignore lists, or one of them on yours.

This is a great story of someone actually getting their comeupins! Amazed that the Sniper-hole stuck around for 7 deaths and rezes. How many times have I faced a similar knuckle-dragging waste-of-space, tried to retaliate only to have them quit the group?! Wait, where are you going.....don't you want to eat massive damage with no healz? It'll be fun!

Yeah but I wanna see my lightsaber flying around slicing fools!!!

What about making Vicious Throw an AOE effect? It hits your target and any enemies that are within 10 feet of target. So it's not too OP, it could do the same damage divided amongst the damaged targets. For example, if just the boss then does all 4K damage, if there is 1 mob within 10 feet of boss then each takes 2k damage, etc. This would be brilliant for aggroing distant mob packs, without having to leave the boss and jump over there to smack each one individually The animation could be wicked too!

How about a bubble that reflects, instead of absorbing? Or maybe it absorbs half and reflects half? Or static bubble stacks such that every 5th bubble is a reflecting bubble? Reflecting bubble would be red instead of purple. Or what if the bubble only reflects if it is cast on yourself, casting on any ally is just a regular bubble. This would be brilliant when unattended adds focus on me!

This is great, even if it is the zillionth time that someone has set this all out for us. It's always good to have a fresh guide and most if it is right on the money. The one thing that raised the alarm was this statement under the "what DPS should so" section.... [*]Minimize her threat generation by attacking the same target as the tank unless specified otherwise DPS must attack enemies starting from weakest to strongest, and NOT the tanks target, unless there is only one target. While it is ideal for the tank to keep and hold aggro on all enemies all of the time, it's not very realistic. Sure the tank may start the flight with aggro on everything, but soon enough DPS can rip aggro using AOEs and of course healz will pull aggro on enemies that are not being attacked. SWTOR works best if DPS kills weakest mobs first then moves to stronger mobs, and ultimately the boss. The Tank will aggro the boss, or the strongest, then move to weaker enemies in the unlikely event that that she dispatches the boss before DPS is finished mopping up the rest.

I agree with this 100%. While I will mostly spacebar through the convos I already know, I never ask anyone to spacebar, or "SB SB SB Noobs!". I do not berate bad players, or players who are doing bad things, but rather try to help and give tips to improve. If I am struggling I will ask straight out "why am I losing aggro so much?" or "would dps please wait till third gc before jumping in?" etc. In every case I find that working with people, instead of berating them, makes better and happier players, including myself! Of course, there are those who will not take advice,or get mad that you are asking questions. These people are jerks and deserve to be ignored. Just like IRL. >: )

Buh-Bye......Can I haz yer stuff?