I might not have been following the development of these questions as cloesly as I ought (and so missed the reasoning behind it), but I'd consider changing the line: "We still lack the basic ability to heal ourselves with our default heal (Rapid Shots) -- a basic function all the healers have." As someone who has Commando and Operative alts, it's always been a frustration that for an unknown reason Rapid Shots can't be applied to self, but Diagnostic Scan can. However, as someone who Mains a Sage, it is more frustrating that there is no such skill comparable to Diagnostic Scan or Rapid Shots on a sage. Basically, what I'm saying is that I agree with what you're saying and Rapid shots should be usable on yourself, but just tighten up the wording on that. Not 'all' healers have that basic function. You don't want them to give any room to tell you that you're wrong. About anything. Also, making comparrisons to Sage regen is a bit difficult, because it's so different. If you leave it in, I'd fully expect them to respond with answers about how Sages don't have regen tiers because their base regen is slower, instead of getting a helpful acknowledgement of any problems. But on the whole, great questions.

As far as I'm aware, any skill that we have that gets a second attack from a proc will/can use a second charge of Recklessness, as can hitting more than one person with an AoE skill.

What I find even more disturbing is that unless I'm reading it wrong, it looks like players who already own it get a title. Players who don't already own it but get on and buy it before the 12 of Sept get the title AND get a bonus 1050 Cartel Coins. I don't think I have forum-worthy words for that... but if I did, I don't think they'd be complimentary.

Agree with Laiov's post in regards to PvE. You'll put in more effort than many other classes to do similar DPS. Oh, and you'll take more damage than any other class, and so will be a little more of a strain on your healer's resources. That may or may not be a problem depending on your healer's skill. If you are exceptionally skilled or are content not to be parsing at the top of your raid, it isn't a totally unenjoyable experience. Personal PvE advice: If you want to play a ranged character, roll a sniper instead. You will be more likely to be considered for a DPS role in raids on this class. As to PvP... as you've noted, there's a lot of discussion about this due to the recent developer dialog we've had. Again, it's only my opinion, but in PvP they are one of the weaker classes, who's role and play style is self-contradicting. Lightning is a turret spec that, while having good burst, is easy to get to and shut down. They have some kiting utility, but their damage drops off considerably while doing so. If you want to play a turret, Marksman Snipers (see a pattern?) have much better tools to do this. Madness is a DoT spec that just doesn't have the resource management for PvP. With the expectation of having to multi-DoT and having your main resource regen regularly interrupted, you're left with trading life for force as a means to get back your power after your initial pool has been drained. This tends not to work well in PvP. If you want to play a DoT spec, I would suggest that Lethality (in either sniper or operative) plays better for PvP. Ultimately, you might be able to make it work, if you are exceptional. Lightning can provide some excellent burst when you have a group with excellent teamwork. The only question I'd really ask then though, is with the same excellent teamwork, could a Sniper not be even more lethal? TLDR: If you coming to this to choose a new class to level, ask yourself what you want out of it. If you want to be powerful and obviously desirable class, Sorc is probably not the best class to pick. If you specifically want to experience the Sorcerer story and THEN want to carry on with him, with a lot of effort and skill, you can make it work. You will probably have to prove yourself a lot more before you'll get an invite to an arena team, for example.

Whether or not it's a troll post (and the idea to Reroll is probably not far off), he does demonstrate exactly why there are so many "Changes to Sorc" threads, and why they'll almost exclusively not get Dev attention. All the while that the design concept is that "Classes who 'could' heal MUST provide less DPS/Utility or both" persists, Snipers will be the favoured Ranged AC, and Marauders the favoured Melee AC. Even where the other design is contradictory, such as tight enrage timers in the harder operations, it will remain unresolved until.. well, I actually don't know when. Honestly, I think they should just re-work the healing AC's. Take away all baseline heals (except for ones that are supposedly defensives, such as Adrenaline rush and what have you), and make you spec into them ALL in a healing tree. Then they can give you fully capable DPS trees that can be balanced without off-healing being considered a utility, with the option to trade DPS for Healing at the cost of lowering your DPS. Even if healing were to remain more or less the same, they could at least see with their metrics exactly how few people felt taking off-healing would be a worthy trade off.

I think that mechanics wise, madness just doesn't synergize with itself half as well as Lethality (and I'm referring to Operative Lethality as opposed to Sniper Lethality, because BioWare has stated that off-heals vs pure DPS is, in their opinion, an invalid comparison) in terms of PvP performance. Infiltration Operative Lethality has one less DoT, I'll give them that. However, Neither of them being on a cooldwon, DoT protection and the fact that one of them is also an AoE means far better all-round application. Their resource management comes in the form of DoT crits, which free them up to keep mobile and be uninterruptedly topped up on resources. They have Weakening blast, execution enhanced DoTs for low health opponents and Cull to really push single target damage for a meaningful kill. For kiting (or staying in range of an opponent), their AoE DoT has a 6s snare component, their single target snare has a CD and Duration that match, Shiv grants a speed boost, their 4s stun likely has a 30s cooldown, their 8s daze is AoE AND instant-cast AND won't break from damage from their own DoTs. They also have exfiltrate to use on a more regular basis than force speed, because of their superior resource management. While the escape element can be blocked with an appropriate root/slow, it can still in turn proc free, instant case heals. Finally, despite being a short-range class and having the compensatory stealth, medium armour and use of cover when needed, their actual DoT's and many other skills are still 30m ranged. Madness Sorceror Madness Does have three DoTs, although the cooldown on CD means you won't be spreading it, and you need to keep the root element of CT for kiting, so it'll also probably only be on one target, but even if not, two at most. Force management relies on channeling a skill, preventing you from kiting and making your force regeneration vulnerable to interrupts, meaning a high likelihood of getting out of force in any lengthy encounter. We can front some non-execute burst, but it relies on having a a wrath proc, our AoE and Recklessness CD sitting ready to use, and because of the way that AoE skills eat multiple charges of Recklessness, we have to get to extra careful of placement. As for kiting tools, we have force speed on a 20s cd, though it's easily shut down by the plethora of roots. We have a short knockback with no snare attached, and a daze that needs casting and is open to interrupt, beyond which any of our DoTs will break it if currently applied. Our 4s stun has, at best, a 50s cooldown. While it has a longer range, that extra 6m is rarely needed as without it's previous 30m range, our primary use of stun is on a melee offender with their many ways to get quickly into melee range. Our single target snare has a duration half of it's cooldown, meaning 50% uptime at best. We have a 2s root attached to one of our DoTs, so you're either holding off on DoTing to save for the root, or using the root at the wrong time. Likewise with Mental alacrity. You "could" use it as a kiting tool, but then you're yet again losing burst potential because you're moving and not gaining from the alacrity boost/interrupt immunity. Madness does at least get healing in a slow steady trickle from DoT crits, but between the current crit rating and prohibitive resource costs of spamming affliction, the odd 2% here or there will make a marginal difference when you're out of force. Someone said it either earlier in this thread or in another I've read recently. The reason there is such a range of suggestions to help fix Sorcs is because there are so MANY flaws with the class, by direct comparison to others. If I were a Dev, I wouldn't even know where to begin making small tweaks to try and balance that without breaking things.

Equally, Lol @ your bias. Perhaps it had escaped your notice, but there is a world of difference between "up to 10s invulnerability" and "up to 10s invulnerability combined with the inability to do anything during that time". I'm not saying that it doesn't have uses, I'm saying that in an arena, it's use as a DC pales because you don't need to stall for time holding a capture-point. The fewer people on the team, the bigger the impact that your voluntary "time-out" will have on the outcome of the match. Use it in 8 vs 8, and your team is down 12.5% of it's strength. Use it in 4 vs 4, and your team is down 25% strength. The design is that you can't even use it to outlast the opposing team in the acid cloud, should you miraculously survive to a stalemate. Oh, and for the record, I'll do just fine in Arenas. I'll be doing the sensible thing and take my Operative when I want to heal, and bring my Gunslinger when I want to do RDPS. They're both far superior at those roles than a sorc/sage has been in my experience on PTS.

Firstly, mass dispel... what game are you playing? Unless I've missed something huge, you can't dispel any effect (positive or negative) on an enemy player in this game. The only comp I could see it working AT ALL in would be 2 dps 2 heals, because if you had 1 tank, 1 dps and 2 heals you're really going to struggle to kill anything. But if you wanted multiple healers, wouldn't 2 operatives be so much better? So if you can't Force Barrier and get healed by an ally, you can get a good health boost for a full channel with Force Armour and Resurgence also ticking away. However, 10s is an eternity for your team to be without 25% of it's composition. At present, the only really good uses I've been able to make of Force Barrier have been to stop and get healed by another healer, or to buy time so as to be able to prevent a cap just a little bit longer till help arrives. Being that neither of those scenarios are going to be very likely in Arena's (No objectives and limited likelyhood of dual healers), at BEST this will be a second Stun-break with a massive cooldown, not a defensive CD at all.

I would suggest that clearly he doesn't mean that, because he mentions Outlaws Den. That'd be Tatooine, not Hoth.

And I was so nearly ready to agree with you until this paragraph of your post. So, you're saying it's fine for people who solely enjoy one playstyle (PvE) to HAVE to do another (PvP) if it only grants access to what you have branded as "optional" content. Does that mean that it would have been equally fine if, before being able to play Novare Coast or Hypergates (these are new extra warzones, so are totally optional), that you needed to finish TfB and S&V HM to unlock them? Personally, I think the event quests should be tailored to the server type they're on. That aside (Because what PvE'ers chose to do should be irrelevant in a PvP discussion), I don't think we're ever going to see World PvP the likes of which people remember with fond nostalgia. The way that people play MMO's has changed drastically over the years since early MMOs. If we do see it again , it certainly isn't going to be SWTOR. There just isn't enough scope for it here. Organic OWPvP happens when you meet someone who you are capable of attacking (in this game, someone of the opposite faction). But in SWTOR: Faction are kept largely separate during "normal" gameplay on planets. You're less likely to encounter enemies, call in reinforcements and start something naturally. Low-level ganking (which despite being a really jerky thing to do is an excellent way to goad the other faction into defending it's lowbie areas) is impossible before Nar-Shadaa 20+, but more realistically won't start till Tatooine 24+. Flashpoint entrances are all in safe-zones. Travel is not quick or fluid (current location -> taxi -> shuttle -> space station -> ship -> space station -> planet -> taxi -> combat), so people don't bother as much getting to something that could be over before they get there. For all that the onus is on the players to make OWPvP happen, and for all that they could organise it (but because it's so oversubscribed you break the server) or go out actively looking for it (in which case you might not find people interested in staying and fighting), the only OWPvP I've experienced and ever really enjoyed has always happened in an unplanned and organic manner. This game just doesn't have enough opportunities for things to start. Bioware's design choices are as much to blame as the players are in this.

Some interesting ideas in this thread. From a healing standpoint, I've recently been doing the Gree dailies (specifically the heroic) with a couple of my friends who aren't the best players by a long stretch of the imagination, and provided many a missed interrupt. Even on such a small scale environment, the difference between me healing on my Sorc (Sage, actually) and on my worse-geared Operative is really noticeable. The amount of time I spend (both in terms of GCD's and making sure I'm going to get appropriate heals after consumption) makes a big difference to my healing output. My initial suggestion would be to take Consumption off the GCD. We'd still maintain the unique feature of sacrificing health for resources, and we still wouldn't have the effectively "Auto reset" button the other two healers have. It would leave us with a lot of extra time on our hands which would be great if we could fill it with a new no-cost small heal when healing requirements are light, and more big heals for heavy requirements without killing our force pool so thoroughly. My only concern then would be cross-healing sorcs in PvP. This might also help Madness DPS keep on top of their force pool without dropping DPS. For Madness, it just tends to feel like a worse version of other classes. In both PvP and PvE, it would be nice to see some form of execute. I really don't understand why Assassins got the DoT + DF execute in Madness when they already have an execute skill, and sorcs don't have any. Secondly, considering the lack of burst outside of using CDs I think there's a real limit on cost-effective AoE pressure in PvP. You 'could' spam affliction, but it's only 1 of your 3 DoTs, it's easily cleanse-able, and it's pretty costly in terms of resources, especially when you consider Corrosive Grenade. I'm not saying we should get a baseline AoE DoT, but it would be interesting if DF caused our DoTs to splash + refresh on all targets in the area while PS was running. I'm probably not qualified to comment largely on Lightning, because I only really play it as an PvP "off-spec". But when I do play it, it actually feels pretty good. Burst potential, even without an execute, is reasonable given the range. In many ways, it's a shame the Sniper class exists, because the combination of better burst, better CC tools and leap protection make it much harder to appreciate the bubble, self heals, speed etc in turret spec.

Personal advice: Move with the guild. Not because SWTOR is bad or worse, but because trying to enjoy a game that was most fun because of people who have left is hard. Besides, if Marvel is good, it'll be worth staying, and if it's bad, your friends will likely come back, and you with them.

Yes, to the best of my knowledge, Collections are set of Cartel Items only. That being said, you don't need to have had any Cartel Coins yourself. You could Earn in-game Credits and then just buy things from the GTN, although given the prices, you'd never get any decent full sets with the credit cap. Yes, Crystals being referred to here are colour crystals for weapons/off-hands.

I honestly think they've got the prices "more or less" right for some of the crystals. I just finished getting the all 4 Silver-Blue ones, and at 240CC for Hawkeye, Eviscerating and War Hero, and 60CC for Indestructible the only complaint I have is that I think War hero should be 60CC, given that anyone with a PvP weapon gets +41 expertise by default. Moreover, with the prevalence of Legacy weapons and the confirmation that it is NOT an exploit to move crystals around in that manner, I could conceivably pay 240CC for the convenience of a Hawkeye unlock, but anything more than that and I'd just use a legacy weapon to transfer it over and BW get nothing instead of me spending 240 of my Cartel Credits. What bugs me more than anything about the costs is actually the ambiguity with which costs are assigned. The Orange level 35 crystals that you can buy with CC direct from the store cost 450CC to account-unlock. Other crystals, with exactly the same stats but a lower min level requirement cost 240CC, or 60CC, or 600CC (As with the white ones). It's not as if the rarity of these items isn't already accounted for in the availability and cost of acquiring those items to put in your collections listing in the first place.

I used to exclusively use my healer companions on all classes that I played. In the early days, speccing DPS (irrespective of class) and having a healer companion was definitely the best way to do things. However, as you get more legacy perks, the lines blur somewhat. Not because the Tank/DPS companions scale better than healers, but because the combination of More health from Presence unlocks allowing them to survive longer and the ability to reset your companion in the space of 1.5s (Turn on Rocket boots, then cast self buff to dismount) mitigating the long channeled resting times in between pulls. With 500 bonus presence, I tend towards DPS companions for trash (unless I'm playing a Shadow or Scoundrel with positional damage requirements, in which case I occasionally pick a tank if I really like them). But for anything that is above solo difficulty, I always use a healer companion. And with all that being said, I don't really care if it's a problem or not. Whether or not healer companions are "literally" better than DPS ones, it has always frustrated me that each companion is set with one skillset and role (I wouldn't take melee tank in DPS stance if I wanted a DPS companion). I think it would be much better if you could "Train" you companions with different skill sets so you can use the ones you like for the roles you prefer.