It's an MMO culture thing; depends on how long you've been playing, which games you used to play, etc. In older class-based games, healing classes couldn't do much EXCEPT heal and it was honestly a sacrifice (your personal fun for the team's success) vs. playing a DPS and getting to sneak around/melt face/use a lot more abilities/solo (yes, in older games some classes could not solo even garbage mobs their level). Nowadays healing classes always have tons of utility outside of just making other players' red bars get bigger, so they're not really any more or less played than other classes. But the "MVP Entitlement Brigade", I think, is healers that still remember the old days and think people should respect them more just for playing a particular role. In this game, I don't agree, but I do empathize with how they came to that mistaken conclusion. (Sage healer here.)

The OP's presumption is that everyone who plays BH/Commando doesn't want TM/Grav nerfed and everyone who doesn't play one does want it nerfed. If I played a BH/Commando, you're damn right I'd want it nerfed! Nerf that ****! Give me something else to do! Make my spec a real spec! As a Sage main, I have no desire for them to nerf Tracer Missile. With castbars only on targeted players, keeping situational awareness up is a tough job for me personally in SWTOR. I can just remove arsenal mercs from the equation and make everything easier for myself. Arsenal merc? He's either TMing or interrupted.

In order to answer this logically, we'd need to have statistics on current RNG champ piece drops and post-patch RNG champ piece drops, which AFAIK no one outside of BW has. What we can say for sure is that IF opening bags pre-patch rather than post-patch is a good idea, it is an even better idea for a new 50 (less chance of duplicate items).

TYVM. That is both awesome and terrible.

When Kinetic Collapse mentions "your" shield, does it mean Force Armor cast on you, or Force Armor that you cast (on yourself or others)? I'm considering hybridizing my Seer spec for the control advantages in telekinetics, but I'd want to know ahead of time if I'm going to fill up the ball carrier's Resolve bar for no gain in the first 15s of a Huttball match in which I have shielded my teammates =P

One thing I'll second is the value of drawing out the interrupt with ye olde channeled heal. I cannot tell you how often someone interrupts the last tick of my channeled heal and I get to cast the big one while they either helplessly watch or peg my Resolve with the stun they were saving.

/signed with respect to: chat bubbles, cross-faction comms, and empty instances only.

dey tuk r jerbs

This is wrong and bad. If people are going to look at crafting as just another grind to make them more superpowered, just remove the combat perks entirely instead of hopping on the Nerf X, Now Nerf Y, Now Nerf Z train. If crafting is put into the hands of people who actually want to craft (and don't just see it as an additional spec tree) it will be healthy for the game in the long run.

Poor form to bump my own post, I know. But it's better than creating a new thread, and I'm not sure where else to ask! This is the "Crew Skills" forum, even if it's been the Slicing Nerf Forum lately.

Hi all, My question's in the subject. It is an important question IMHO because at least some crafting skills DO produce BOP results, so if there are no BOP Gathering or Mission Skill results then I am a fool for having gathering skills on my main (combat) character when I could load him with 3 crafting skills and do all the gathering/mission-ing on mule alts.

Right. MMOs that follow a traditional "all consumables are made by the (al)chemist and all weapons are made by the pewpew master" model end up with consistently profitable alchemists and pewpew masters that do really well while people are still leveling and really poorly once everyone has the 1-2 weapons they will keep until the next content expansion.

Each crafting skill should be the sole source of at least one meta-consumable. By "meta-consumable" I mean consumables but also anything else that can be destroyed, used up, etc. An irreparable piece of gear, for example, would qualify; if a repair kit could be crafted for that gear, the gear would no longer qualify but the repair kit would!

Hi folks, Some good, reasoned arguments here. I agree with the OP that crafting could be improved, but I also really like the point about Synthweaving yielding so many best-in-slot items at the (current) endgame. Orange moddable gear is an attractive feature of TOR. It does present some problems for crafters, but these are not problems that other games have not run into and solved before. There are SO many possible solutions to the economic problems being faced by crafters right now, and most of them would be easy to implement! Any of these could be enacted separately or together. 1) Make orange gear lose durability FAST. Then make it reparable only by a one-use item produced by players with the corresponding craft skill. 2) Give each crafting profession a mod recipe or two. Reserve the majority for Cybertech (unless its role is changed also). 2a) Make mods lose durability, and make them irreparable. Commendations are easy to come by when leveling, but even assuming no changes to the broken commendation system, at 50 the GTN will likely be more convenient. 3) Provide each crafting skill with one or two consumable recipes. Armor buffs for synth/mech, damage buffs for art/weapons, etc. Reserve the vast majority for Biochem. The fact is, even if these are only a minor advantage relative to stims, if they stack with other things PvPers will buy them. The main economic issue for crafters that I can't come up with a solution to (or rationale as to why it is the way it is) is that there's not much of a disincentive to create a closed-loop system of alts that have 400'ed every craft skill just so you won't have to buy anything from other players, even if you don't like crafting. They're way too easy to raise. I appreciate the accessibility of a system So Easy, Even Raiders Can Do It, but I'm worried, too.

Please, if you have something to say about slicing, please consider adding a post to one of the many pre-existing threads that are probably already covering whatever you're going to say. If you have something to say to BioWare (about -anything-) rather than to your fellow players, my earnest advice would be to send them an email. I've gotten responses from game companies within 24 hours to things that they never would even have seen on a forum.