Really the Bloodmark has teeth and it feels more like a timing thing to me. I only have the tier 1 upgrades for most components on my Bloodmark and am having a blast with the Ion Missile. It is amazing how many people seem to see my little scout as nothing more than another kill waiting to happen and fly right at me. I start targeting with my Ion missile and pop distortion field for the extra miss chance as they approach and release just before they hit range for my light lasers. The missile hits and they lose the facing shield and my lasers peel paint and hull. And just in case they go evasive late I pop the crew ability that ticks that small damage for hitting them once within 30 seconds and no shield regen for a while for them. If they don't bug out my allies, the turrets or I kill them. Oh and if they try hiding on the satellite I pop Tensor field so my allies and I can continue to harass and kill them. Could the missile be faster locking or do a little more of something? Yes. Is it going to change my loadout? No. Otherwise I can't laugh at the strike who is suddenly eating lasers and watching his hull change colour thinking I was an easy target. Does it make me any less squishy? Not really though I think I fly better knowing that I can't burst down a target without setting things up to my advantage. Biggest thing I had to change when flying my Bloodmark was to rely/stick with my allies more. Less kills but more assists and it is easier to hold a sat. I use my Blackbolt to take sats and to hunt the unwary gunships. I am curious as to how it would work with Sabotage Probes though...

Just for kicks I picked up the Bloodmark and ran it stock in a few matches this evening. My favourite ship is the Blackbolt followed by the Sting. (What can I say, I love having paper for armour and zipping around the map.) Anyway, I haven't been saving any req as I wasn't even sure I wanted to try the new ships out but I had enough to adjust a few components before taking it out for a few matches. It definitely has a different feel to it but enough that I still felt like my other scouts. (but back when I had no upgrades) I found it more challenging to play but enjoyed the Tensor Field and managed to hit my allies at launch and then any that grouped near the sats I was fighting near and it seemed to make a difference as my allies seemed to be picking up targets a little fast after I hit it. I had a lot of fun and a bit of a challenge to line up targets and hit them with an Ion Missile just in time for me to get into range with my Light lasers and burn through their hull. For the more pesky ones I made sure to have Jaesa's special ready so when I hit with my lasers I hit them with the DOT to keep them for regenerating the shields I dropped while I chased them back into range. I kept power dive to see how it worked and the fact that it has such a short cool down for lock break and I found with a twitch of the controls moments before hitting it I could avoid the missile and be further around in a loop to hit my opponent. I didn't top the charts and I was queing solo but stats were decent with 3-6 kills and 8-15 assists with only 2/3 deaths. I can only imagine how much more fun it will be once I get some upgrades going. This is what I am running: Light Laser Cannon Ion Missile Tensor Field Distortion Power Dive Lightweight Armor Damage Capacitor Large Reactor Dampening Sensors I didn't write down the crew or I would list them, sorry. basically I tried to concentrate on buffing my allies when they were around and dropping the shields and keeping them down of my enemies so my allies could pick them off. I have no clue if this is a good way to go but it seems to work for me and I am loving the fact that I can fly one of the few good looking Empire ships and still contribute well to my team.

It feels like a population imbalance playing on Harbinger. I play primarily Imperial side and the few times when I go over to my Republic pilot I get into matches faster and win a lot more of them. I also see more mirror matches on the republic side. That being said I have seen a bit of a shift in the wins lately as the new batch of players has been added in but I am still winning only about 35% of my matches. I'm not saying that the Imperial side does not have its own share of aces but I see a larger group of names on the Republic side that are really good players in comparison. Nor am I claiming to be one of those good players but it was a refreshing change to be able to hold a satellite all by myself for a match and be fed gunships, strikes and scouts one or two at a time the other day. It was the only time I've felt powerful and strangely sad to be killing the Republic. They were obviously new recruits with no developed tactics. And yes there are times when I fly around with a big hit me sign hanging off my Blackbolt. (mostly because it came with the paint job ^_^)

Wow, a lot of good responses so far. it's great to see I'm not the only one who enjoys the Blackbolt/Novadive scout. It also tells me that I am not that far off from being half decent. I almost always end up with twice as many assists as kills. <-- (based on what I've read with hit and run tactics of softening up enemies you can't blast through.) I think my biggest area of improvement then is going to be trying to recognize when it is time to break off and stop trying to dogfight unless I am keeping them from capping then work on evasion and leave the killing to my teammates. One of my last matches I was one-shot by a Gunship then hunted it down, burned it up and went back to doing what I was doing. They got me again later on while I was working on capping a node but I'd had my revenge. Great! So then that leads me to ask what my fellow Blackbolt/Novadives are running for setups and being sucessful. (I'm going to hold off on revealing what I run for the moment)

Good evening fellow GSF players and aces. I'm not one to really do much more than lurk and read forums and play but I felt that I needed to say a few things. First off I love my little Blackbolt to pieces... Often literally... (Thank you Pubs) The speed and control and lack of killing power makes me have to work hard to down opponents and makes it fun to try and avoid getting turned into tiny bits of shrapnel. Slowly I have learned from my mistakes and worked at being a better player while upgrading my little scout and slowly I have seen some improvement. (Again thank you Pubs on Harbinger for that.) I do have a Sting and I do play it from time to time and yes I find it easier to make things go boom but, well, there is just something about the Blackbolt that I just like more. So I am surprised by how little talk there is about the starting scouts on the boards and things other pilots do to make them work well. Or maybe I am just odd for not jumping on the Sting/Flashfire bandwagon. Anywho I like my little rockets and zippy "I ping you for damage and then try to outrun the return fire" scout. So I invite anyone who wants to say something about the starting scout to post it here. This leads into my next bit and that is a question for those I fight against on the Harbinger server. My pilot character is Valeira (on the Imp side). I know I don't play a lot and my times are erratic but I do see a few familiar names crop up from time to time and was wondering a few things. (In an effort to provide more than a mediocre challenge to you) First, am I enough of a nuisance that you notice when I show up? And secondly for those I fight, what can I do to be more of a challenge? I want to be a better pilot so I can push the other team and though I learn from most deaths, sometimes a different perspective helps. And finally, for the Imps... I am getting tired of the lousy and lazy people who farm the dailies and do nothing more than possibly accidentally blow up and cost a roster spot to our side. (I am really hoping the Devs stop rewarding them for milking the system soon) But that is not in my control. What is in my control is trying to team up with other active players and try to take the fight to the Republic. So I am hoping that there are those on the Harbinger server who would like an extra ACTIVE pilot to help out and work at taking objectives and invite me to their teams. I don't guarantee big numbers but I can and have worked well with other pilots. (I'm just tired of joining as a solo pilot and would rather work with a small unit through the matches than not.) I will even fly the other ships if needed. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

As the title states, is it worth pushing more points into accuracy once you hit 100% or do the other stats such as power and crit and surge do more for us? More than 100% accuracy is suppoed to reduce the armour value of our target but does it do enough to make it worth taking? Those out there with the mad math skills and charts please enlighten me. ^_^

Thanks, I'm not quite at 30 yet in game.

It looks like accuracy for melee is tied in to your Strength primary stat. I haven't seen anything that adds to it directly outside the ability trees yet. ( I could be very wrong here but this is what I've seen so far) The benefit is that strength increases our damage as well so it is doing extra work to have gear with high strength numbers.

My suggestion for you would be to focus on the Watchman tree to get to your Overload Saber as it is an integral damage dealing ability. I personally like the first tier of the combat tree but having to wait 5 more levels to hit Overload Saber is going to make those levels tougher. That said I think if you have Overload Saber before you reach the level 30 range you should be fine. Go for Slash over Riposte. Riposte does ignore GC but Slash does more damage, costs less and is there all the time. Riposte you have to wait for it to pop based on blocking or parrying an attack and with our gear being suited to dealing damage not defence you are not going to get it to come up nearly as often. I keep it to one side in case I hit a rhythm where I have extra focus to spend and it pops. It IS useful just not as useful as it would be to our Guardian friends.

Force leap has a minimum range of 10m and using 2 points in the Watchman tree you can reduce the minimum range to 0m (without changing your max range) and allowing you to damage,interrupt and generate focus without having to move. This helps for tougher fights, not the standard mobs, like bosses and such where you either chase them around and they don't get beyond 5/6m from you or they stand there and your Zealous Strike is on cool down. Properly specced at later levels Force leap is giving you 4 points to spend on other abilities and worth using over your basic attack. It is all about getting the maximum focus in the minimum amount of time so you can unload it through your better point spending moves.

I can see how a faster refresh on Pacify and Force Kick can help for soloing at the earlier levels and the ability to interrupt the really dangerous attacks or make an enemy not hit are good but I just couldn't shake the idea that valor would be a better endgame ability. That said would it be better to spec in the Watchguard until you start in on the Operations? Watchguard only gives you a 25% reduction on cooldown time but with the right gear I am thinking you shouldn't need it too many times in a fight.

Really good thread. I've been looking for something like this. Once question though with regards to the Valor ability: why no points into it? I would think that increasing the rate that centering builds and reducing the cool down on Valorous Call so you can use it sooner to hit Zen or the others (as needed) would be a good thing. Is the extra % to accuracy really that necessary from the Combat tree?