I really don't know what is wrong with you. Main headings are red, sub-headings are blue and topic specific titles are green. Three colors man come on, how do you even play swtor if these colors are hurting your eyes? Plus, I would rather hurting the eyes of the devs at this point, since my post is around 5300 words. Otherwise they may fall asleep.

Contents Introduction Mirror classes for new people (Republic – Empire) The Logic Behind Survival ..........• Type-1: Brute Defense ..........• Type-2: Agility and Evasion ..........• Type-3: Pushback, Speed, and Kite ..........• Type-4: Vanish ..........• The Logic Behind Survival – Summary The Problems with Jedi Guardians ..........• Controllability ..........• What Jedi Guardians Can’t Do ..........• Wrongly Designed Abilities for Jedi Guardian Class ....................→ Focused Defense – Enraged Defense ....................→ Saber Ward ..........• The Problems with Jedi Guardians – Summary What Could be Done and What I Suggest ..........• My Prototypes for Focused Defense Ability ....................→ Focused Defense (The Original) ....................→ Something I have Noticed About Focused Defense ....................→ Focused Defense Design – 1 ....................→ Focused Defense Design – 2 ....................→ Focused Defense Design – 3 ..........• My Prototypes for Saber Ward Ability ....................→ Saber Ward (The Original) ....................→ Saber Ward Design – 1 ....................→ Saber Ward Design – 2 My Thoughts About the New Idea in PTS Introduction Hello everyone, I am a player, who started to play SWTOR in 2013. This game always had class imbalances, bugs, and many different problems. However, saying: "This update sucks, fix it!" or "You are ruining everything!" or "What do you think you are doing!?" after checking out the PTS is easy, and since it is not a good feedback, it also is not helpful for the game developers. This just won’t work, unless the game developers understand what, why, and how they need to fix. Therefore, in this article, I am going to try to explain what the game needs, to the game developers. I know that they are the ones who created and programmed this game, but I am the one who has played this game for more than 6000 hours, and I am the one who perfectly knows the game and class mechanics, just like any other experienced player. In this article, I am going to focus more on the current state of Jedi guardian class, why it is below average compared to many other classes, and what needs to be done to fix this class. This is going to be a very long article. So, if my intro was able to grab your attention, lay back on your seat and hear me out. I am also going to mainly focus on PvP situations in this article since PvE does not heavily rely on defensive cooldowns. I mean: you will usually be fine if you attack to same level enemies 95%, no defensive ability can really save you if you are not using the right tactic in a master mode flashpoint or operation. Mirror classes for new people (Republic – Empire) Jedi Guardian – Sith Juggernaut Jedi Sentinel – Sith Marauder Jedi Shadow – Sith Assassin Jedi Sage – Sith Sorcerer Commando – Mercenary Vanguard – Powertech Gunslinger – Sniper Scoundrel - Operative The Logic Behind Survival First of all, I need to explain how different types of characters survive in a fight. There are mainly four types of effective defense style which I could think of: Type-1: Brute Defense Type-2: Agility and Evasion Type-3: Pushback, Speed, and Kite Type-4: Vanish I know that it is very important to gain health in a fight, but if you don’t have a healer or don’t have a specific ability can do that, you are only left with one thing which is protecting your remaining or restored health as much as possible. Therefore, gaining health in a fight is not really important, if you are not able to protect it afterward. This can be done in three ways: Type-1: Brute Defense When you cannot stealth out and also have no dodge or resist abilities, this means that you have to stand there and take the hits from your enemy. Your only chance to protect your remaining health and therefore survive is by toughening yourself up and making yourself more resistant to damage. A lot more resistant. Therefore, this type uses active and passive abilities, to make themselves resistant against damage by giving themselves shields, more armor, more damage reduction, and damage reflection. Heavy armor classes and tank classes usually use this type of survival mechanic. Jedi guardians, mercenaries, and powertechs are (supposed to be) examples of this type. Type-2: Agility and Evasion Toughening up and withstanding the attack is not a good way of protecting the health of the classes which have lower max health and lighter armor. Therefore, lighter classes usually have active and passive abilities, which either make them dodge the attacks or make the enemies miss their hits. Operatives, snipers, and Sith marauders are examples of this type. Type-3: Pushback, Speed, and Kite If you are playing with a ranged class (this also usually means light-medium armor) that cannot restore health or dodge well enough, the only way to protect your health is by keeping your distance to your enemies. Therefore, ranged classes usually have active and passive abilities which push the other players away, prevent the melee classes to get close, and mezz/slow down nearby enemies. Sith sorcerers, snipers, mercenaries, and operatives are examples of this type. Type-4: Vanish This type is also known as “stealth classes”. Staying alive for a long period in combat is of course important for this type as well, otherwise, their DPS outcome would be too low. However, talking in terms of survivability, unless they are stunned or hindered or being exposed to an enormous amount of damage, getting low is not extremely dangerous for them, since they can stealth out, heal up, and rejoin the fight. Sith Assassins, Operatives, Sith Marauders (a little bit, since they have force camouflage), and Sith Sorcerers (a little bit, since they have phase walk) are examples of this type. The Logic Behind Survival – Summary In PvP being able to survive is the most important thing. At this point, I can even say that survivability is a lot more effective and important than DPS for player kills. This is the only reason why operatives and mercenaries can take out the monstrous burst DPS class, advanced prototype powertechs, in a one versus one fight. It is also the only reason why specific classes, like powertechs, gunslingers, and Jedi guardians are usually the mainly focused targets in 4v4 arena matches. The order of survivability of classes (with DPS specs) are given: ..........1- Scoundrel – Operative ..........2- Commando – Mercenary ..........3- Jedi Shadow – Sith Assassin ..........4- Jedi Sage – Sith Sorcerer ..........5- Jedi Sentinel – Sith Marauder ..........6- Gunslinger - Sniper ..........7- Vanguard – Powertech ..........8- Jedi Guardian – Sith Juggernaut This is the order which I formed with my personal opinion. Green classes are the classes with the best survivability, orange classes have somehow decent defensive abilities, and red classes are the classes that have the worst survivability in the game. This order of colors may be different for everyone, but I guess everyone will agree about operatives and the mercenaries being at the top of the list, while Jedi guardians, powertechs, and snipers being at the bottom of the list. Please also note that the classes which are at the higher ranks of my list also have multiple types of defense styles (Jedi Shadows are an exception): Scoundrel – Operative (Rank – 1): Type-2, Type-3, and Type-4 → 3 styles Commando – Mercenary (Rank – 2): Type-1, Type-3 → 2 styles Vanguard – Powertech & Jedi Guardian – Sith Juggernaut (Rank – 7 and 8): Type-1 → 1 style The Problems with Jedi Guardians In this part, I am going to try to explain why the Jedi guardian class has the most issues with survivability. But before we dive in, I want to explain to you what I mean by “controllability”, since it is a term that I am going to use frequently. Controllability Being able to manipulate a defensive ability as desired by the opposing player means that the ability is controllable. In PvE, the controllability of an ability is not so important since the NPCs are not smart. But in PvP it means almost everything because when an ability can be controlled by your opponent and not you, it means that your opponent will take the upper hand of the fight. You are now bound to him, and what he does next will determine the outcome of the fight. Too bad he wants to kill you. Examples of controllable abilities: Reflect. Your opponent is not an NPC and is not stupid enough to shoot direct attacks while knowing that they will only damage him back. He will instead use AoE attacks, or will just stun you and wait for the reflect ability to come to an end. You couldn’t benefit from your defense, because it was controllable. Dodge. Your opponent is not an NPC and is not stupid enough to shoot direct attacks while knowing that they are not going to hit you. Instead, he will just use AoE attacks or force & tech single target attacks, or he may just stun you and wait for the dodge ability to come to an end. Examples of non-controllable abilities: Adrenaline Rush. No matter what your opponent does, you are going to start to heal yourself rapidly until your health reaches a certain percentage. He also won’t be able to reduce your health for the next 10 seconds. Force Barrier. As you use your force barrier, there is nothing which your opponent can do except charging his attacks and thinking about what your next move can be. You are safe under your barrier for 8 seconds no matter what he does, and you also have the time to plan how you are going to off heal yourself. He is now bound to the next move which you are going to make, and that is the reason why this ability is not controllable. What Jedi Guardians Can’t Do Jedi guardians cannot off heal themselves whenever they want like mercenaries, Sith sorcerers and operatives can. They don’t have the option of damaging their opponents while kiting, since they are a melee class. They cannot run away from danger as easily as other classes can. What I mean here, is blade blitz and focused freedom are abilities that are not half bad for running away if they are combined with force leap or guardian leap. However, these abilities have cooldowns around 30 – 40 seconds. Therefore, they are not so effective since they are not abilities that could be cycled throughout the fight. With “cycling the abilities”, I mean the ‘Exfiltrate’ of operatives, ‘Propulsion’ of mercenaries, and ‘force camouflage’ of Sith marauders (when used with defel spliced genes tactical). These abilities are pretty much ready for their save any time. However, in the Jedi guardian class, escaping danger depends on many different factors being applied at the right time. Combat focus has to be ready, blade blitz has to be ready, either awe or guardian leap has to be ready because otherwise you will be pulled back or netted or get caught by your follower opponents. The more complex the plan, the more difficult it is to be implemented, and this is the reason why running away from the chaos is not always possible for Jedi guardians. They cannot stealth out, like marauders, Sith assassins and operatives can. They don’t have very good stun resistance like fury marauders do. To be fair, vigilance spec has 4 seconds of stun resistance after force leap, which is somehow decent. However, I don’t find this property very effective against experienced players since it is easy to notice because a shield animation appears on the attacker immediately after the force leap ability is used. They have zero agility and evasion. The fact that the obligation of using special tactical items (throwing arm) and armor sets (force bound) which focuses on supporting this feature to have the best play experience with this class, is the proof. With all these defensive properties being weak at Jedi guardian class, they are only left with one defensive mechanic to depend on, which is type-1; the brute defense. Unfortunately, this also is not strong enough at Jedi guardian class, and this is the main reason why Jedi guardian class is having problems with survivability, especially in arena matches. Let’s go over the stuff which I think is designed in the wrong way. Wrongly Designed Abilities for Jedi Guardian Class Focused Defense – Enraged Defense This is the biggest defensive ability of Jedi Guardians. When used, it gives 12 stacks of enraged defense, which converts into health when damage is taken. The stacks stay active for 15 seconds. Pretty cool right? Well, this ability unfortunately is not as strong as it seems. Here is the reason why. First of all, this defensive ability is controllable. In duels, if your opponent knows what he is doing, he is going to stun you immediately after you use this defensive ability, and then will start to kite you until the active time of your stacks come to an end. In the end, in many 1v1 scenarios, you aren’t even going to be able to benefit from your biggest defensive ability, and will not gain even a single health point. Second of all, it has no consistency. For instance, when I use the ability force cloak while I am playing with my Jedi shadow, I know that I will be safe unless I step on a stealth scan. Another example is, when I use the undying rage ability while I am playing with my Sith marauder, I know that I will be perfectly safe for at least 6 more seconds (I am using the utility for that) even if I am standing in the middle of chaos. On the other hand, focused defense requires too many conditions for effective use: You have to be taking damage. If you are not taking any damage from an enemy, you are not going to be able to recover your health. I know this sounds a little bit absurd, but it sometimes happens; in the middle of chaos, for 15 seconds, you just end up not being hit even for a single time. Just like that, your strongest defense just gave you +0 health! I of course, immediately guard an ally or walk on acid (in huttball map) in that case, but please note that everyone is not experienced enough to immediately think that. You have to be taking damage, but the damage you take shouldn’t be a burst. When focused defense ability is active, you take the damage first, and then get healed. This means that if you use the ability too late, you can get one-shotted before the ability finds the possibility to heal you. In order to avoid this, I use my focused defense ability when I have 25-30% health left. This, however, is not always the solution. One stack of enraged defense heals around 18k health, 30k when it critically heals. Considering that the average critical big hit deals around 40-45k damage, losing health while Focused Defense is active is possible. This may also sound a little bit absurd, but experienced players will immediately try to go for the kill with their biggest hitting burst abilities after their Jedi guardian opponent activates the focused defense ability. I know this from myself because I have done it too many times, a kill trough focused defense which is used around 25% health is perfectly possible with double cell burst (the burst vanguard – powertech ability). You have to be taking damage, but the damage you take shouldn’t be frequent. Especially when there is someone who is playing damage over time spec in the opposing team, your focused defense stacks will burn out in light speed. As a result, you will immediately recover a massive amount of health in only one or two seconds. This may sound like something very good but it is not. When you use the focused defense ability, what protects you is not the life you have gained, but the life you know you will gain. Replenishing your health by instantly spending your entire stack during the fight means your health will only and only decrease continuously from then on. Therefore, having unused focused defense stacks on the buff tray is what’s protecting you, since they kind of represent the number of hits that you can take without being harmed during the rest of the fight. Since focused defense does not provide any buffs which help to temporarily protect the user’s health, the ability loses its effectiveness quickly, unless a second ability is used which temporarily increases damage reduction or defense chance. In conclusion, for the optimal use of focused defense, you need to be taking damage, but the damage taken should neither be too frequent nor a burst. There are too many factors that need to be provided, and failing to provide even one of these factors converts the Jedi guardian class's most important defensive ability into a mere damage farming tool for opposing players. Also, how the ability is currently designed requires the use of a second defensive ability, which means that Jedi guardians have to use their defensives in pairs and therefore will burn their defensive abilities faster than other classes. Saber Ward An important defensive ability of Jedi knight class. When activated, it increases the defense chance by 50% and reduces the force and tech damage taken by 25% for 12 seconds. Therefore, with some quick math, in a scenario in which the user is taking equal amounts of white and yellow damage, we can calculate the theoretical maximum protection percentage of this ability as: maximum defense percentage = ((white damage defense percentage) + (yellow damage defense percentage))/2 maximum defense percentage = (50%+25%)/2 = (75%)/2 = 37.5%, which looks pretty decent. However, practical protection efficiency is much lower than its theoretical value in PvP, since this ability is also controllable. An experienced opponent will immediately stun you as you use this ability, which means that you are not going to be able to benefit from the 50% increase in your defense chance at all. In addition, in case you break free from the stun or have full resolve, your opponent will just carry on the fight by hitting you only and only his with yellow damage abilities until the active time of your saber ward comes to an end. As a result, the practical defense percentage of saber ward is always going to be lower than 25% when a Jedi guardian is fighting against experienced players. The Problems With Jedi Guardians – Summary Jedi guardians cannot stealth out, it is so hard for them to run away without using specific gear sets and tactical items, they cannot kite their enemies, most of the time they cannot resist stuns, and they cannot dodge attacks or make their opponents miss their attacks without using specific gear sets or tactical items. Therefore, they cannot escape from taking damage most of the time, which means that they should have defensive abilities which should also focus on temporarily toughening them up, besides healing them. The two best defensive abilities of the Jedi guardian class can't only do this, but they're also controllable, which causes their opponents to take the advantage in combat. For this reason, these features of the Jedi guardian class should be replaced with more consistent and slightly stronger features that cannot be controlled by opposing players. With all due respect, if you've designed a class in such a way that it needs to withstand attacks directly, you should have also given it appropriate defensive features. Now that I have finished the stage of explaining the problem, I can talk about what the solution should be like. What Could be Done and What I Suggest This problem which I have just explained doesn’t necessarily require the addition of a brand-new defensive to Jedi guardian class. However, I really think that these 2 defensive abilities of Jedi guardians, especially focused defense, should be re-designed. For this reason, in case a game developer checks out my post, I redesigned the focused defense and saber ward ability in several ways and quickly analyzed their pros and cons. My Prototypes for Focused Defense Ability Focused Defense (The Original) Explanation: Using the focused defense ability gives you 12 charges of focused defense. Each charge activates and heals you for 19618 base health every time you take damage. The charges stay active for 15 seconds. Cannot be used over 70% health. Evaluation: As I already said, you may get stunned by your opponent and end up not getting healed at all, or you may immediately burn all your stacks in 1 second and immediately lose massive amounts of health afterward (in crowded fights) since it gives you no protective buffs. Therefore, it has no consistency and is not an ability which you can depend on in many situations. Something I have Noticed About Focused Defense For me, the healing which each charge of focused defense used to do in SWTOR 5.0 was 10.8k base health, while I had total health of around 132k with my Jedi guardian. Now, in SWTOR 6.0, the health of my Jedi guardian is 283k, which means that the amount of health has increased more than twice with the latest level expansion. However, the amount of healing that each charge of focused defense does right now is not even twice the older base health amount; they all heal for 19.6k base health. In other words: → Health in SWTOR 5.0: 132k → Health in SWTOR 6.0: 283k → Base health recovered with 1 charge of focused defense in SWTOR 5.0: 10.8k → What base health recovered with 1 charge of focused defense in SWTOR 6.0 supposed to be according to SWTOR 5.0 and SWTOR 6.0 health ratios: 23.1k → Actual base health recovered with 1 charge of focused defense in SWTOR 6.0: 19.6k This is no small difference. As if focused defense ability isn't weak enough anyway, I have noticed that sometimes I can't even fill my health to maximum(when only a very small of my stacks critically heal), which has never happened back in SWTOR 5.0. So please, if you know or even have an idea about why focused defense is getting weaker and weaker with every level expansion, reply the post and let me know. Focused Defense Design – 1 Explanation: Using the focused defense ability gives you 12 charges of focused defense. Each charge activates and heals you for 23150 base health every time you take damage. If your health is at maximum when a focused defense charge is consumed, the charges start to increase your maximum health from then on. The maximum health cannot exceed 135%. The charges and maximum health effect stay active for 15 seconds. The ability can only be used under 70% health. Evaluation: In this design, the base health recovery amount of each charge is increased to 23.1k health, which is the amount that should already be. With this design, focused defense can also heal even when the user is at 100% health, which aims to: reduce the number of wasted charges make the ability a little bit more protective I, however, still don’t think that this ability can be protective enough in crowded areas since it is still only trying to protect the user with pure health and is not toughening him up. Focused defense design – 2 is better for that purpose, let’s check it out. Focused Defense Design – 2 Explanation: Using the focused defense ability gives you 12 charges of focused defense, which stay active for 15 seconds. Every time you take damage a charge activates and: heals you for 23150 base health gives you 1 charge of focused protection As soon as the last focused defense charge is used, or otherwise as soon as the active duration of remaining (unused) focused defense charges expire, focused protection charges become active, which increases the damage reduction by 3% each. The damage reduction effect lasts 10 seconds. Evaluation: In this design, the base health recovery amount of each focused defense charge is increased to 23.1k health, which is the amount that should already be. The Jedi guardian class is most vulnerable right after his last focused defense stack is used because from then on, everyone will start attacking him, knowing that he has no proper defense to rely on and at the same can't escape or run away. Therefore, with focused protection stacks, this design aims to increase the Jedi guardian class's defense in a way to ensure that they survive long enough before their teammates come to their aid. A balanced design of abilities that aim to protect the users by giving health or increasing their defense is very difficult because they give the users different advantages in every different situation. For example, stealth doesn't give its user any more advantage against 8 people than when he is against 1 person. It is stable and simple. You use your stealth and exit the fight. It does not matter how many people are standing in front of you, and it does not give you an unfair advantage in any scenario. However, it is very difficult for a game developer to design an ability that applies the user a specific amount of damage reduction. For example, if the damage reduction provided by the ability is 50%, it would be balanced against 4 people, however, it would create an unfair advantage in a 1v1 scenario. If the damage reduction is 20%, then it would be balanced in a 1v1 scenario as a defensive ability, while wouldn’t be so effective in crowded fights. Therefore, I perfectly understand the hesitation of game developers when developing such a defensive buff. That is why I made a final focused defense design which is effective in many scenarios while paying extra attention to make it balanced in every situation. The solution I came up with, was using the number of targeted enemies as a changing defensive buff factor. Focused Defense Design – 3 Explanation: Using the focused defense ability immediately heals you for 20% of your health, and gives you 12 charges of focused defense. Three seconds after the focused defense ability is used, the focused protection buff automatically gets enabled and is added to the buff tray. Focused defense charges: Every time you take damage a charge activates and heals you for 23150 base health. The charges last 15 seconds. As the active time of the focused defense charges come to an end, the unused charges automatically convert into health points (maximum 3 charges). Focused protection: Increases your damage reduction for 12 seconds. The damage reduction provided always changes according to the number of enemies which are targeting you. When targeted by 1 enemy: +20% damage reduction When targeted by 2 enemies: +30% damage reduction When targeted by 3 enemies: +35% damage reduction When targeted by 4 or more enemies: +40% damage reduction Evaluation: In this design, the base health recovery amount of each focused defense charge is increased to 23.1k health, which is the amount that should already be. The ability now also immediately heals the user for 20% health, which aims to fix the issue of dying through focused defense. The focused protection buff is designed in a way that gives the user different amounts of damage reduction in different conditions. By this, giving the user a balanced amount of protection against any number of enemies is aimed; it doesn’t give any unfair advantage when used against 1 person, and it also gives the required amount of protection in crowded fights. I also aimed to reduce the controllability of the ability, by automatically converting the unused focused defense charges (maximum 3 charges) into health. The ability is still quite controllable if the opponent manages to kite the user, however, with this design, the problem of sometimes not even making the slightest use of the most important defense is aimed to be solved by boosting the user a little bit before the fight carries on face to face. As I already said, if you've designed a class in a way that it needs to withstand attacks directly, you should have also given it appropriate survival features. I am extremely confident in my SWTOR experience. I also find my game analysis correct and logical. I know that this is what Jedi guardian class needs. It is the only reason why there is a colossal difference between tank Jedi guardians (tanks are PvP meta in general) and DPS Jedi guardians. Gaining pure health is nothing; damage reduction boosted by gained health, however, is everything. Note: I am also aware of the fact that these focused defense designs would rip off the in-game class balances for tank Jedi guardians. Therefore, if a game developer decides to pick up one of my designs or design something similar to these, I would strongly recommend him/her to give these focused defense designs only to DPS specs of Jedi guardian class. Tank spec doesn’t have an issue with survivability and these focused defense designs are exclusively designed for Jedi guardians with DPS spec. My Prototypes for Saber Ward Ability Saber Ward (The Original) Explanation: Activating saber ward increases melee and ranged defense chance by 50%, and reduces force and tech damage taken by 25%. Lasts 12 seconds. Evaluation: It is a nice defensive ability for PvE with a 37.5% theoretical defense percentage. However, it is, unfortunately, a controllable ability, since it doesn’t give any stun resistance to the user as it does in the Sith marauder class. Therefore, in PvP, 100% of this ability's potential is never achieved. That is the reason why my redesigns are focused solely on making this ability less controllable, in no way increasing its strength. Saber Ward Design – 1 Explanation: Activating saber ward grants immunity to stun, sleep, lift, and incapacitating effects for 6 seconds. It also increases melee and ranged defense chance by 50%, and reduces force and tech damage taken by 25%. Lasts 12 seconds. Evaluation: In this design, I aimed to increase the effective use and therefore consistency of saber ward, by making it resist stuns for the first six seconds of its duration. As a result, it can now benefit more from its increased defense chance effect. However, the stun resistance feature is already being used by Sith marauders. Therefore, in order not to mix the gameplay styles of in-game classes, I made a second design, which serves the same purpose (reducing the controllability of the ability) while also protecting the uniqueness of the class’ playstyle. Saber Ward Design – 2 Explanation: Activating saber ward increases defense chance by 40%, reduces force and tech damage taken by 25%, and reduces all damage taken by 15% while stunned. Lasts 12 seconds. Evaluation: By making the assumption that the damage reduction effects get stacked, with this design, the theoretical maximum protection when the user takes equal amounts of white and yellow damage is reduced from 37.5% to 30%, so I actually nerfed the ability with this design: A = white damage defense percentage while not stunned B = yellow damage defense percentage while not stunned C = white damage defense percentage while stunned D = yellow damage defense percentage while stunned maximum defense percentage = (A+B+C+D)/4 = (40%+25%+15%+40%)/4 = 30% The fact that the design is more consistent because it provides the user some protection in any scenario, is the reason why it has better practical protection for PvP. My Thoughts About the New Idea in PTS If you've read my long post up to this point, then I think you have also understood that defensive abilities are a lot more important than offensive abilities in combat. In a game in which many classes are suffering from survivability issues, forcing people to only use one part of the defensive and offensive abilities at a time is just not a good idea. I think the underlying thought might be to make the game easier for people who are just getting started (which has increased considerably since the game was added to Steam). If that's the reason, I should say that the more complex a game is, the more experienced players can separate themselves from new players. I'm not saying that combat in SWTOR is complicated in its current form, but a move to simplifying the game further at this stage will limit the advantages that experienced players can bring to the fight with their gameplay experience. As a result, it will make less difference how well you play the game and the gap between experienced and novice players will close, which will annoy a large audience of longtime players (including myself). This is the end of my post. If you have read it till the end, I love you and you are very cool. :D Please also subscribe to my post, so that this article will have a higher chance of getting checked out by a game developer. May the force be with you.

Hello, could you please quickly check my post about Vigilance Guardian burn damages? As far as I see, burn damage functions are not working as it is shown in tooltips. I explained everything in detail in my post below, and also included pictures to make you perfectly understand what I mean. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=9933037#post9933037

Probably you: "What do you mean you crazy dude!?" Well here is what I mean: I am writing down the explanation of the attack "Plasma Brand". "Enguffs your lightsaber in fiery plasma, INSTANTLY dealing 8988 - 9575 (this may be different according to your primary damage) elemental damage, with a FURTHER 30755 elemental damage over 12 seconds." Now, we know that these numbers in the explanations are the NON CRIT damages of attacks. Considering my stats, if my plasma brand hits a normal hit, it will do somewhere between 8988 - 9575 damage, and it will do a further damage which is around 30755. This number of course is going to be higher than 30755, considering that DoT s have more than 50 percent chance to crit hit. Now here comes the part which I am confused. When I parsed my plasma brand, I found out that the additional (burn) damage was not even close to 30k. I even cheated to justify the game, I parsed the attack even on the weakest target dummy to get higher damage, but no. The maximum damage I got from burns are 27k, when all the burn ticks crittically hit, and while both relics were activated on the process. First damage range is correct, my plasma brand hits a non crit between 8988 - 9575 damage to dummies, but non crit burn damage can not even pass 18k damage in total. At least 12k base damage from burn is missing. I even thought that they may have written it by a mistake, and assumed that 30755 damage was the sum of main hit + burn damage. But even that couldnt reach to 30k, the sum of biggest non crits made a maximum of 27.5k damage. Either dot guardians were doing lover damage than they should have been doing for this whole time, or the value with further burn damage is wrong. :mad: I am also adding pictures, perhaps they will help you understand what I mean. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1FRpXm-y6gqaGaFopO1DeJvzH7RXg0g5E?usp=sharing Note: The measurements are maden on the weakest target dummy (the lvl 10 one on the fleet). Note2: I did not check the burn damages of blade storm and overhead slash, they may also be wrong. Edit: I also checked the burn damage of overhead slash now, it also is performing about half of the damage which it should deal according to the tooltip. Please tell me what you think about this! If you also think that I am right please help me with reaching this post to a game developer cuz I have no idea how I can do that!

I am going to answer your question as simple as I can. If you are doing PvE, mitigation tank is the way to go. If you are doing PvP, skank tank is the way to go. But why? --------------------------------------------------------PvE--------------------------------------------------------------- In PvE, your main objective as a tank is to take the damage from the boss. You will taunt him and it will attack you, therefore you need mitigation gear. --------------------------------------------------------PvP--------------------------------------------------------------- In PvP, your main objective as a tank is to protect your allies. Now think, you cannot force enemy players to attack you, they are not stupid. Many players who slightly understands whats going on in PvP will stop hitting you immediately after they notice that you are a tank, since tanks are hard to kill + a healer can easily ruin their dozens of seconds of hardwork with just a few heals on the tank. Since the most effective method is to lower the number of enemies, they would go for vulnerable targets for kills which are dps and healers. This is when you use your ability: "guard" as a tank. However, this is also something which does not require mitigation gear. First of all, you will be taking only half of the damage from your guarded target. Second of all, and more importantly, (as I just said) people are smarter than operation bosses. If they really know how to play, they will immediately swap their target to another one of your allies, and will keep doing this untill they kill your allies one by one. Eventually, you are going to be the last one standing while all your teammates are busy with respawn stuff, and you are going to get globalled by 3-4 people. At this point, even mitigation gear cant save you. So as a result, if you do PvP as a mitigation tank, you will just run around while taking the least focus with most protective armor, and doing attacks to enemies which is literally going to do nothing more than tickleing them. That is why people are running as skank tanks. Summary: Skank tanks have the same exact armor rating, same tactical items and most importantly, the same defensive abilities which is enough to survive 4 PvP. And since PvP is about killing the enemy before they kill you, they wear dps gear to assist their teammates as much as possible. Maybe this shouldnt be like this, but the game mechanics require this. And, the results are outstanding, skanks are OP in literally every SWTOR version, while mitigation tanks are nothing but memes. I know I said simple answer, sorry if I wrote too much

Thank you all for your advices. I was also considering to go with the AMD, but I just wanted to be sure if the max turbo boost frequency is a factor which I should pay extra attention. Apparently it is not as important as the general performance of the CPU itself. Thank you very much.

Hello, I am going to try to keep it short for you guys. My gaming laptop is 5 years old now and as you can imagine it needs to be repaced with a new one. SWTOR is a cpu bound (single threaded) game, therefore I want the CPU which can achieve the highest performance in this game. Here is what I know about CPUs while trying to get the highest performance in SWTOR: The higher the clockspeed, the better. The faster the single-core performance, the better. At this point, I am basically trying to choose between 2 CPUs, one of them has a higher average single and double core performance, meanwhile the other one has a higher maximum clockspeed. Here are the links to their comparisons: https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-10750H-vs-AMD-Ryzen-7-5800H/m1053158vsm1442974 https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/intel-core-i7-10750h-vs-amd-ryzen-7-5800h I also kindly request you: Please do not reflect your brand advocacy in your answer, and give me your solid thoughts about the performance. Thanks!

Hello, I just wonder if these following augments got fixed by the developers: Critical Armormech – Increases Armormech crafting critical success chance. Critical Armstech – Increases Armstech crafting critical success chance. Critical Artifice – Increases Artifice crafting critical success chance. Critical Biochem – Increases Biochem crafting critical success chance. Critical Cybertech – Increases Cybertech crafting critical success chance. Critical Synthweaving – Increases Synthweave crafting critical success chance. I have read the 2019 forums and have found that they do more harm than good (since they are broken). Is it still like that, after almost 2 years?

I mean yeah, it actually could be good but dudes would go and put the converance holocom in toilet or sth so it also could kill the serious environment of class stories which is probably why they did not come up with that idea. But personally I like your idea

Oke so here is what I am trying to do. I was just wondering the usage % of my abilities in a regular warzone. Like for example as a shadow, it would really help me to see the amount (in percentage) of my shadow strike, CS, vaulting slash and PB etc... I thought this could be useful for me to set an optimal stat build, for example if I am using more than 20% of my attacks as shadow strike, then I could adjust a higher crit and power build to make profit from it. Or, for instance, if it is below 10% I could come up with something which includes high alacrity and mastery with relatively lower crit... I have seen a guy in youtube who was using a program that allows every ability it uses to appear on the screen with its quickbar image and name. (I scanned youtube quickly before writing this post but could not find him, thats why I am not able to link you a video). I don't know if that program has any feature which allows the user to record the attacks though... Anyway, I hope I have managed to make you understand the idea that is on my mind, and sorry if I confused you while trying to do so Thank you for your time!

:rak_02: I love it when people are so "specific". Can someone please explain me the percentage of reduced accuracy when someone has their accuracy "greatly reduced" ?

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Hello everyone! So I was just trying to figure out the targeting keybind: Target Previous Enemy. My aim (as a healer) was to: 1- Force stun a dps player 2- Swap to my teammate and do some healing on him for 3-4 seconds 3- Return back to previous enemy (by using TPE keybind) and use a foce lift 4- Keep healing the low HP teammate So this way I was hoping to heal my low HP teammate while keeping a dangerous enemy dps out from the game for 11 seconds. However target previous enemy is not working as it should. Instead of targeting previous enemy, it sometimes targets another enemy which I did not target previously. I tried this keybind on bot enemies as well, instead of targeting the previous enemy, it acts like a Target Next Enemy keybind. For example when there are 3 enemies, I target enemy-1 and lift him, then I target enemy-2 and stun him, and when I press target previous enemy my character targets enemy-3 instead of enemy-1. When I click continuosly on that keybind, it cycles between enemy-1, enemy-2 and enemy-3 and so on. HELP! Thx :D

Alright, before we start, please be aware that the questions I want to get answers here do not belong only to me, but belong to thousands of people who love the "Jedi Guardian" class and pity its current situation in PvP matches. Therefore, I kindly ask and recommend you to read everything I'm going to talk about in this discussion one by one. First of all, I want to explain why Jedi Guardian/Sith Juggernaut class is so weak in PvP. Well, the main reason lies in its design. The defense of this class is based on health restoration, which can actually seem strong in the first look, and I must say that it is pretty handy in PvE. However, things are not so simple in PvP ladies and gentlemen. Unlike flashpoints, enemies in warzones are quite smart since they are players as well :) . Therefore, they usually choose targets who are likely to go down fast. Jedi Guardian class is NUMBER ONE in the list of classes that become targets in PvP. Here is why: It takes around 10 to 15 seconds for two DPS players to get a Jedi Guardian below 30% health. After that point, Jedi Guardian uses its biggest defensive ability which is "Focused Defense" to max out his health points. Then, the fight continues around for another 10 to 15 seconds and Jedi Guardian sees that his health is below 30% again and he also sees that he needs to wait for 100 more seconds to use its "Focused Defense" ability. Result: fight takes around 25-30 seconds and Guardian dies. Things are even worse in Ranked Arenas. People in ranked warzones are usually experienced players who know how to damage a target. In a 4v4 DPS match, the situation of Jedi Guardians is just desperate. Even with a guard on them, people still focus the guardian because they know that after wasting its "Focused Defense", a Jedi Guardian is completely defenseless. That is why in 4v4 ranked arenas, the average combat time of a Jedi Guardian DPS does not exceed 15 seconds. I felt compelled to explain the whole situation one by one because I just don't think BioWare (employees) has the SLIGHTEST idea about how the situation is in the arenas. Here is a conclusion if you don't want to read everything written above: Defense of Jedi Guardians are based on health restore but when the damage they take is massive, they just melt like ice on lava since restoring health won't have any defensive effect anymore. Even with all that disadvantage, we are not completely desperate. When BioWare announced that there were going to be new tactical items in SWTOR 6.0, two tacticals drew my attention: "The Grid Teeth" and "Embrace The Pain" tacticals. As I already said a few times, defense of Jedi Guardians is based on health restore and therefore these tacticals seemed like the best game-balancing item for Jedi Guardians. Unfortunately, I don't know why but Bioware suddenly decided not to add these tacticals to the game when "Onslaught" expansion came out. Personally, I am just disgruntled about our most important tacticals being locked behind ridiculous RNG on Kai Zykken. Every weekend he rolls an invisible dice on what his next inventory will be and people are just desperately watching it. :mad: Therefore, to put an end to this deadlock, I want a Bioware employee to clarify this situation by answering my questions below if it is possible: Are you even considering bringing those tacticals to the game? If you are willing to bring them to the game, can you please tell me when is this going to happen? (they are needed ASAP for PvP) Are you considering to take people's complaints about RNG serious? Are you considering to revive Team Ranked warzones which you killed? (so that guardians can at least enjoy some ranked matches) Are you considering to bring PvP gear back? (which at least could be used to balance the classes in PvP a little) Thank you all for your time, and please make sure that you comment below your thoughts as well about this situation. :rak_03:

Yeah I just replaced my windows key far away from my left hand, I faced no problems since then :) Unlike beoware, swtor community is paying attention to people's problems and questions. Thx