**OFFICIAL** Star Wars: The Old Republic Thread

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KIAman

Diamond Member
Mar 7, 2001
3,342
23
81
Looks like I am pre-ordering. Over the past several betas, I got a BH-Merc to 22, Inquisitor-Assassin to lvl 18 and Infiltrator-Sniper to lvl 20.

The Sniper is a solo PvE/PvP machine. The amount of burst dmg he can put out is amazing but the cover mechanic makes group PvE kinda worthless as most groups mop up enemies before you can really benefit. I ended up close range shot gunning most mobs just to keep up with the group. The no healing talents hurts when bad pulls happen.
In PvP, playing against baddies, I score top dmg and kills regardless of levels. If people are dumb enough to let me sit there and ambush and snipe all day long, then it was easy. Playing against good players was a different story as they would never allow you to get cover and with no healing talents and little CC, it was hard to manage.
The Sniper didn't seem so suited for group play either PvE or PvP. The range is nice but you don't get much group synergy when you are trying to be 25m away from the fight.

I just didn't get the point of the inquisitor-assassin. I mean, a light armor wearing cloaking tank? The double bladed sword and the armor looks amazing but the play style was confusing. The backstab does not do a lot of damage for the positional requirement. In groups, I wasn't sure if I was the tank or the dps because I was not good at either. I could not hold aggro, did not have much mitigation, not enough evasion and not much HP. As a dps, I had several normal melee attacks and some force attacks.
Not sure but probably one of those classes that develop slow but completely dominate in end-game.
I'm not going to roll an inquisitor-assassin during launch.

The BH-Merc is very interesting. I specced mostly in arsenal and a little in bodyguard but the idea of a ranged tank is interesting. I got very intimate with the heat mechanics and learned to pace my game but once I got used to that, the merc was unstoppable in solo or group pvp/pve. Not as good solo as the Sniper but great in groups. The only weakness is the lack of CCs so far. With the Merc, I solod (with my companion) every heroic quest until the 2nd heroic quest in Balmora. Some of these were heroic-4!!! Anyways, having one of the best companions in the game and having class heals makes the Merc very powerful in the beginning game. I hope this synergy lasts till end game because I plan to roll a Merc.

See everyone on the 15th (hopefully)!!!
 

Merad

Platinum Member
May 31, 2010
2,586
19
81
Got an email just now advising to totally uninstall the beta client and reinstall at launch. I was expecting as much - looked like there were a lot of beta specific files in the client.
 

CVSiN

Diamond Member
Jul 19, 2004
9,289
0
0
Looks like I am pre-ordering. Over the past several betas, I got a BH-Merc to 22, Inquisitor-Assassin to lvl 18 and Infiltrator-Sniper to lvl 20.

The Sniper is a solo PvE/PvP machine. The amount of burst dmg he can put out is amazing but the cover mechanic makes group PvE kinda worthless as most groups mop up enemies before you can really benefit. I ended up close range shot gunning most mobs just to keep up with the group. The no healing talents hurts when bad pulls happen.
In PvP, playing against baddies, I score top dmg and kills regardless of levels. If people are dumb enough to let me sit there and ambush and snipe all day long, then it was easy. Playing against good players was a different story as they would never allow you to get cover and with no healing talents and little CC, it was hard to manage.
The Sniper didn't seem so suited for group play either PvE or PvP. The range is nice but you don't get much group synergy when you are trying to be 25m away from the fight.

I just didn't get the point of the inquisitor-assassin. I mean, a light armor wearing cloaking tank? The double bladed sword and the armor looks amazing but the play style was confusing. The backstab does not do a lot of damage for the positional requirement. In groups, I wasn't sure if I was the tank or the dps because I was not good at either. I could not hold aggro, did not have much mitigation, not enough evasion and not much HP. As a dps, I had several normal melee attacks and some force attacks.
Not sure but probably one of those classes that develop slow but completely dominate in end-game.
I'm not going to roll an inquisitor-assassin during launch.

The BH-Merc is very interesting. I specced mostly in arsenal and a little in bodyguard but the idea of a ranged tank is interesting. I got very intimate with the heat mechanics and learned to pace my game but once I got used to that, the merc was unstoppable in solo or group pvp/pve. Not as good solo as the Sniper but great in groups. The only weakness is the lack of CCs so far. With the Merc, I solod (with my companion) every heroic quest until the 2nd heroic quest in Balmora. Some of these were heroic-4!!! Anyways, having one of the best companions in the game and having class heals makes the Merc very powerful in the beginning game. I hope this synergy lasts till end game because I plan to roll a Merc.

See everyone on the 15th (hopefully)!!!


Asssassins are more a DPS class than a tank.. they are a offtank and do it VERY well however they will throw down top DPS number in raids and PVP when played well.. and if speced can offtank VERY well once at 50.

the Backstab in PVP will literally take half a lifebar instantly.. and if speced you get them with 50% armor ignore and half price cost as well making a Backstab Stun Backstab target dead situation VERY possible.

the spells are useful when your target is out of melee range or when you are closing in you can cast several of them on the run which makes them amazing.
 

IndyColtsFan

Lifer
Sep 22, 2007
33,655
687
126
Got an email just now advising to totally uninstall the beta client and reinstall at launch. I was expecting as much - looked like there were a lot of beta specific files in the client.

Any idea when the launch client will be available for download for those with preorders?
 

Dahak

Diamond Member
Mar 2, 2000
3,752
25
91
Any idea when the launch client will be available for download for those with preorders?

Have not seen anything official yet, but probably next week. as its being released on the 20th 2 weeks from tomorrow, and they have said upto 5 days for the early access which would make it the 15th you could start, so i could see it late this week or Monday next.

And yes, if you where in the beta at anytime, you have to uninstall the client
 

Dahak

Diamond Member
Mar 2, 2000
3,752
25
91
I'll probably take the same server i was on in beta., drexol(sp?) i think it was,
 

KeithTalent

Elite Member | Administrator | No Lifer
Administrator
Nov 30, 2005
50,231
117
116
I think I played on Nagato Road, or something like that? I have no attachment though, so I'll probably just find a decently populated non-PvP server.

KT
 

HumblePie

Lifer
Oct 30, 2000
14,665
440
126
Asssassins are more a DPS class than a tank.. they are a offtank and do it VERY well however they will throw down top DPS number in raids and PVP when played well.. and if speced can offtank VERY well once at 50.

the Backstab in PVP will literally take half a lifebar instantly.. and if speced you get them with 50% armor ignore and half price cost as well making a Backstab Stun Backstab target dead situation VERY possible.

the spells are useful when your target is out of melee range or when you are closing in you can cast several of them on the run which makes them amazing.

Here is a bit where I disagree with CVsin after I had finally leveled up to 40 finally this weekend.

As a Jedi Shadow, the mirror of the Sith assassin, I can honestly say that a tank specced shadow/assassin is just as good as any other tank in the game. The amount of CC, mitigation, and dps make for a very nasty tank. As far as holding agro goes, were you using your Tank Stance? Assassins and Shadows get three different stances to do different things. Basically they get a Tank Stance, Stealth Stance, and DPS stance. You change stances based on what role you are trying accomplish. If you want to be the tank for a group you MUST have your Tank Stance toggled on. It makes it so you generate tons of threat, gain access to tank abilities that provide more mitigation and reduce threat generated by party members. If you are using the default DPS stance you get at level 10 then you aren't going to tank very well as an Assassin.

As far as DPS, the DPS is nice, and one of the best if specced that way. But backstab isn't all that great. Even with full spec into stealth I was hitting for 3K crits with backstab in PVP and that was with the 50% armor penetration. The thing is, that penentration is NOT something you can do with every backstab. You have to spend talent points, up to a max of 3, to get up to a 30% chance to have any of your melee attacks to give you a backstab "buff" that can only occur every 10 seconds. So you can't just stealth up to someone and just backstab them once for major damage. You have to hit them with a melee attack first to get a chance to have the buff for your backstab to ignore 50% of their armor. Even then you only HOPE you can crit when you do a backstab using that buff which lasts only about 5 seconds. It's a royal pain in the ass. Not to mention there are animation bugs with backstab. You can get into position, start the backstab, but if the person turns or moves a little too much while your character is doing the animation "windup" then your character will cancel the backstab. Talk about another major pain in the ass. Sure if you do it right you can get 2 backstabs off, with one of them possibly being 50% armor pen. Possibly have both be criticals. Possibly do a potential of 4.5K~ish damage. 3K for the crit 50% armor pen stab and 1.5K for a normal crit backstab. Pretty much everyone has 11K-13K hitpoints in PVP warzones. Which means that you can knock off a decent chunk of their health pretty quickly. But then you are out of force points for more damage, and most characters then have either CC escape mechanisms or can heal off what you just did. It's best to use that combo on someone already a bit low on health and possibly on their own.

I find I do WAY more damage with the Force Potency -> Telekinetic Throw -> Project -> Breach -> Telekinetic Throw combo. That still leaves me with a decent amount of force left as well. It can all be done from range as well. With Potency it can be done from caster range. The only problem is if someone interrupts your Telekinetic Throw. If not, the damage you dish out doing that was insane. I was doing something like 8K to 9K damage in about 9 seconds. Without heals it would damn near kill most people. Of course then you have to wait a couple minutes for Force Potency to refresh. In which case you stealth, and find someone to backstab :p

From reading KIAMan's post, it seems as if he didn't really pick up all the abilities of his class to try out. I'm pretty sure he didn't use the actual advanced class abilities too much and was probably only using the base class abilities. This was because the VAST majority of people for some reason never seemed to notice the tabs at the bottom of most of the HUD windows. I was still running into people at the level 30+ range that didn't realize they could equip items on their companions because they never noticed the companion tab at the bottom of the Character info screen. Many didn't realize there was a whole separate tab to purchase advanced class skills versus the normal skills. My guess is KIAman was one of those that didn't notice them.
 
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HumblePie

Lifer
Oct 30, 2000
14,665
440
126
As far as early start. Early start with begin on the 15th, but it will be a rolling start. The first 20% to register their pre-orders (roughly 20%) will be able to start on the 15th. They will then stagger the rest of the pre-orders for starts over the next 4 days up until release. Assuming their servers are not completely overloaded, they'll let everyone else on correctly on the release date. If not there will be a possibly of rolling starts for normal purchasers. That won't cut into your 30 day time trial, but you may not be able to play exactly on the day you purchase the game if you didn't pre-order.


All that was from my crystal ball a couple of weeks ago :)
 
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paperfist

Diamond Member
Nov 30, 2000
6,521
280
126
www.the-teh.com
Whichever one my guild gets assigned to (I believe we chose a PvE/EST server), don't have any specifics yet.

You don't get to pick?

I live on the east coast so I was thinking of going that route with no PVP or role playing. I tend to play either in the day (I work at night) or late at night around 11PM+ so I'm wondering if a west coast server would be better...
 

jlarsson

Golden Member
Jul 31, 2001
1,050
0
76
You don't get to pick?

I live on the east coast so I was thinking of going that route with no PVP or role playing. I tend to play either in the day (I work at night) or late at night around 11PM+ so I'm wondering if a west coast server would be better...

I believe if you did the early-deployment option (basically creating your guild on their website), they assign the guild to a server (to ensure relatively even distribution).
 

s44

Diamond Member
Oct 13, 2006
9,427
16
81
Yeah, I wonder if they're going to tell guilds the server name beforehand. Would be nice to let the rest of us know if, e.g., some huge chain of foreign-language speakers is going to end up on the server we're considering.
 

KIAman

Diamond Member
Mar 7, 2001
3,342
23
81
From reading KIAMan's post, it seems as if he didn't really pick up all the abilities of his class to try out. I'm pretty sure he didn't use the actual advanced class abilities too much and was probably only using the base class abilities. This was because the VAST majority of people for some reason never seemed to notice the tabs at the bottom of most of the HUD windows. I was still running into people at the level 30+ range that didn't realize they could equip items on their companions because they never noticed the companion tab at the bottom of the Character info screen. Many didn't realize there was a whole separate tab to purchase advanced class skills versus the normal skills. My guess is KIAman was one of those that didn't notice them.

Nope, I used normal and advanced class abilities for every class I made. I also made sure I equipped all my companions.

The assassin doesn't have stances. They have charges which work similar to stances but it didn't help with aggro at all. Remember, I only played it to 18.
 

CVSiN

Diamond Member
Jul 19, 2004
9,289
0
0
As far as early start. Early start with begin on the 15th, but it will be a rolling start. The first 20% to register their pre-orders (roughly 20%) will be able to start on the 15th. They will then stagger the rest of the pre-orders for starts over the next 4 days up until release. Assuming their servers are completely overloaded, they'll let everyone else on correctly on the release date. If not there will be a possibly of rolling starts for normal purchasers. That won't cut into your 30 day time trial, but you may not be able to play exactly on the day you purchase the game if you didn't pre-order.


All that was from my crystal ball a couple of weeks ago :)

Wow if that is true this will be total and EPIC fail..

if they stagger not only early access but LAUNCH? fuck them I will send them their 4 CE's back to ram up their ass..


Staggering early access is epic fail enough... but to even CONSIDER a stagger launch...

screw them..
Poeple are TAKING VACATION for this launch.. and people want to play with thier FRIENDS AND FAMILY this being an MMO and all..

this is total horseshit..

right now as it is only 1 of my 4 accounts will get in on the first day.. the rest were bought months later so the rest of my family including my GF will be getting in late.. meaning I will most likely have to start an ALT first or not play at all.. being that myself and my GF play as a team all the way to 50..

These people have NO clue about how to launch an MMO..
 

CVSiN

Diamond Member
Jul 19, 2004
9,289
0
0
Nope, I used normal and advanced class abilities for every class I made. I also made sure I equipped all my companions.

The assassin doesn't have stances. They have charges which work similar to stances but it didn't help with aggro at all. Remember, I only played it to 18.

at 18 you had the tanking charge.. on ther Shadow they are STANCES... on the SIN they are Charges.. so he is correct... and yes it does help aggro and threat... as well as having a taunt by then..

it works hell I tanked even as a DPS spec Sin and it works well..
 

paperfist

Diamond Member
Nov 30, 2000
6,521
280
126
www.the-teh.com
Wow if that is true this will be total and EPIC fail..

if they stagger not only early access but LAUNCH? fuck them I will send them their 4 CE's back to ram up their ass..


Staggering early access is epic fail enough... but to even CONSIDER a stagger launch...

screw them..
Poeple are TAKING VACATION for this launch.. and people want to play with thier FRIENDS AND FAMILY this being an MMO and all..

this is total horseshit..

right now as it is only 1 of my 4 accounts will get in on the first day.. the rest were bought months later so the rest of my family including my GF will be getting in late.. meaning I will most likely have to start an ALT first or not play at all.. being that myself and my GF play as a team all the way to 50..

These people have NO clue about how to launch an MMO..

Wow no kidding, what's the point of per-order with early access.