Ultimately it comes down to this: Do you want the option to tank, or the option to heal? Once you figure that out, or don't care either way, then it basically comes down to melee and mid range DPS vs. long-range DPS. The Merc's Arsenal spec for example is long range. Though it doesn't really get a lot of the passives, procs, or abilities that really allow it to have a smooth rotation until the early 50's. In fact it doesn't get it's main filler, Blazing Bolts, until 57. Until then, the dps rotation feels pretty clunky. I've always primarily played a tank in games, but I love my Merc. I'd give it some time to flourish.

Hey all, I bought the game on launch, played each class story and then quit. I've recently come back for the new expansion, and have caught the bug that is SWTOR. I've leveled both a Sith Juggernaught and a Bounty Hunter Mercenary to 55+, and am in the process of gearing them up with 192 gear. I'm not new to MMO's in general, and have over 15 years of GM and raid tanking/healing experience in other MMO's ranging from EQ to WoW to TOR. I'm quick to pick up on boss mechanics, and always try my hardest to help others out. I do have a small caveat in the sense that my internet data cap omits me from using voice chat very often, but I've always managed to do well enough without it. I'm not really looking to get back into hard core progression raiding or ops. But I do really enjoy smaller group content like flashpoints.

Well, since I made this thread, I've leveled a Bounty Hunter and Sith Juggernaught to max level. Working on an assassin. Thanks for the help guys.

So, I bought SWTOR when it originally released, and played a few of the empire classes, the Warrior, the BH, and the Inquisitor, to around the mid 50's, and quit because there wasn't much content beyond the class stories, and I got what I wanted from the game at the time. But I just recently heard about the class story EXP boost for subscribers lasting into the next expansion in a month or 2, so I thought I'd jump back in, resub for a month or two, and finish up where I left off. I'm not asking which classes have the best stories. There are plenty of threads on that already. But I would like to know roughly what the class balance, at least Empire Side, is right now. I'll mostly be soloing stuff on a PvE server, as I'm really only in it for the story. But I'd like to make the best use of the limited time I expect to have. So which empire class is doing the best right now in terms of soloing?

The planets of the same level range of the flashpoint. LOTS of people are eager there.

I was arsenal spec when I met them.

Dude, if you're waiting that long for a group, you're doing it wrong. When you learn when and where to look for groups for a specific dungeon, you can get in there in minutes. My server has floods of people trying to dungeon at all level ranges.

In the last few days, I've met and friended more awesome people on SWTOR than in the 2 YEARS post LFD WoW. People on my server (Wound in the Force) already have reputations, and I myself have become "The amazing Merc healer", as general chat has called me more than once. Going back to single servers was the best possible thing to ever happen to the MMO community. And of course I have my own circle of real life friends that play.

Sigh. Dohdoh, this wasn't supposed to be a Mac vs. Windows thread. It was simply to educate people that Mac OS X isn't the dinosaur people think it is.

Thanks. If you have any more questions, don't hesitate to ask. All I wanted from posting this was for people to stop and actually start questioning "why?" and "how does it really work?"

True. But I did mention this...

bump.

Now I want to start this off by being clear here. This is NOT a troll thread. I am an active developer for BOTH Windows 7 and Mac OS X. I have a lot of years under my belt for both systems. I'm not here to outright bash Windows. The simple truth is that most every cliche constantly repeated on the internet today about Mac OS X is either outdated, or was never true in the first place. Let's look at the one most people on this forum would think: "OS X is behind Windows in gaming." While this one still holds some validity, it's not so clear cut anymore. The current version of Mac OS X comes with the OpenGL 3.2 rendering engine. This is what every OS (including Linux) besides Windows uses to render their 3D games. And OS X's OpenGL 3.2 is the equivalent of Direct X 10.1. To further this argument, Mac OS X will have OpenGL 4.2, the Direct X 11 equivalent BEFORE the next OS ships. And since Macs run the exact same Intel, AMD, and nVidia chips now, OS X isn't so far behind anymore. While not directly connected, I feel I should point out that the iOS used on the iPad and iPhone is a stripped, cut-down version of OS X, and it's gaming scene is in full gear. "Windows is better at 64-bit stuff than OS X." I don't even know where this one came from. This one was never true. I'll start by describing what exactly going 64-bit means. Going 64-bit DOESN'T means applications are faster. In fact the vast majority of 64-bit apps are SLOWER than their 32-bit cousins. The transition from 32-bit just added more lanes to the proverbial highway. The speed limit didn't change. There's just more lanes for all the traffic at the cost of requiring more memory to handle it. But that also means developers now have to work harder at threading their apps. One of the biggest performance bottlenecks in computing today is that apps that aren't threaded to use all the lanes a 64-bit computer offers often all try for the same lane. This is what causes the vast majority of the hiccups and hangs we experience when we click on things. the processes get backed up because they aren't smart enough to realize the lane next to them is empty. But anyway, enough with the explanation. To be blunt, Mac OS X had 64-bit support first. The IBM PowerPC G5's in the Power Mac and iMacs were released in 2002. The only competing chip Intel had at the time was the short lived server-grade Itanium. AMD was the second to get consumer-level 64-bit chips on the floor with it's Opteron and Athlon 64 CPUs. It wasn't until 2004 that Intel jury-rigged the Pentium 4 with a 64-bit instruction set, and later released the Core series (which is an evolution of the Pentium 3, not the Pentium 4) in January of 2006. The PowerPC G5 in the iMacs went pretty much unchallenged in terms of 64-bit competition for close to 5 years. However that was as far as IBM got for a long time, and the G5 stagnated. The 32-bit competitors had passed it in raw performance long before Apple finally decided to switch to intel in 2006. _________ As far as the OS side of things, while it's true that Windows XP 64-bit was released in 2001, it ran 99.9% of everything in a 32-bit execution layer. It didn't even have a 64-bit kernel, and it only ran on the server-grade Itanium chips at the time. Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, released in 2003 was the first consumer grade OS on the market to truly support a 64-bit instruction set. Later versions of OS X gained more and more 64-bit support over time, gaining basic 64-bit application support in Tiger, complete 64-bit app support in Leopard, and finally achieving full 64-bit support with 10.6 Snow Leopard's 64-bit kernel. Windows Vista was Microsoft's first real foray into true 64-bit support on the consumer level, and Vista flopped because of a universal lack of 64-bit drivers to carry it, among other annoyances. To be fair, most all of Vista's failings were fixed, but it was a major blow that kept 64-bit Windows out of the majority of the consumer market until Windows 7 showed up. The truth is OS X was running a more diverse range of 64-bit apps long before Windows. And 64-bit apps on OS X are quite a bit more evolved on OS X because of it. Because OS X was running a 64-bit execution layer on top of it's 32-bit kernel with next to zero overhead, OS X was making full use of the PowerPC G5, and later the Intel Core series chips for years before Windows 7 got a decent hold of the 64-bit market. Developers were used to writing 64-bit apps by the time OS X finally got it's 64-bit kernel in 2009, the same year Windows 7 launched, and thus never had the set back Vista had. Development on OS X is a lot more refined compared to Windows 7. Especially when it comes to the multi-threaded apps of the 64-bit era. OS X has a threading library called Grand Central Dispatch. http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6.ars/12 Currently, Windows 7 developers have to either manually thread their apps for the added lanes, or use the threading tools supplied with the game's engine. Mac OS X's GCD brings multi-threading to the OS level. Developers no longer have to manually thread their apps. At least not to that degree. On OS X, Developers only have to tell the process what to do, not where to go. The OS can automatically decide where the process is going based on how many lanes are already active. It's a monumental leap, And Windows 7 has nothing like this, currently. Though very little of this matters to SWTOR. The HeroEngine that SWTOR uses is single-threaded. It doesn't support multi-threading, let alone 64-bit capabilities. OS X also boasts better memory handling. While it's true that OS X has a habit of needing slightly more RAM than Windows, OS X is much, much better about giving back the RAM it takes when an application is closed or left idle. Windows is notorious for "eating" RAM. Failing to recycle RAM after a program is closed. And this RAM is lost until the next reboot. This rarely happens on OS X for the most part. _________ "Windows is easier to make games for" If you read the full OS X review posted above, along with its predecessor OS X 10.5 review, you'd see that OS X actually has a whole lot of things under the hood such as Grand Central Dispatch, DTrace, a kernel debugger much more advanced than the debugger used for the Windows 7 kernel, and a host of other things that make OS X a net gain over Windows in terms of developing tools. OS X is just plain easier to develop for because the tools are straight up nicer. Anyone who's tinkered with iPhone development will tell you that with all the App Store restrictions aside, the iPhone is FUN to develop for. Well, the iOS is a stripped down OS X. All the tools you know and love are right here. It's not easier. Windows just happens to be the dominant OS, but if you haven't noticed, it's market share is rapidly decreasing. There's a reason for that. ________ Now, I'm not here to say "Windows 7 sux!". In fact, I LIKE the new development tools they're previewing for Windows 8, and the Windows 7 APIs are a lot, lot nicer than they have been in the past. Windows 7 is a decent OS. But it's not the best. Not anymore. All I ask is that you give this a proper read before you start trolling. Further Reading: http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2007/10/mac-os-x-10-5.ars http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6.ars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit

Wrong. http://wiki.heroengine.com/wiki/HeroEngine_Roadmap

OS X 10.7 Lion uses OpenGL 3.2. And will be using OpenGL 4.1 soon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL#OpenGL_3.2