Star Wars: The Old Republic: Episode II

[Kosciuszko]

Kosciuszko, if sniper and marauder are on par with dps I think they are pretty balanced overall too. Sniper is squishy too, even tho you have a surprising amount of defensive mechanics. Most of them are either very short or hard to use. I played marauder in beta and it didn't struck me as a squishy class - to the contrary I soloed Black Talon at lvl10. I tried it with sniper on release and couldn't come close to killing even the first boss. I guess that changes on later levels, but I find it hard to believe a melee class would be squishier than a sniper. Saber Ward alone provides 50% dmg reduction for 12sec.

When it comes to end game, ranged often beat melee in PvE because of positioning. However, the bulk of sniper's abilities are only usable from cover and have casting time, making any movement a dps loss. Marauders on the other hand can deliver most of their attacks while moving. I guess it's a trade off between range and movement.

Saber Ward isn't 50% damage reduction. It's a 50% defense boost and Marauder's typically aren't working from that high a defense to begin with. It does provide 25% damage reduction against certain types of abilities, though. It's still an awesome cooldown and the best in terms of not having any crazy side-effect or condition.

Basically, Marauders are in trouble against groups of enemies, but not against an elite of the same level (or even a bit higher). Their DPS requires a few seconds of set-up due to building Fury and applying bleeds and they lack AoE. Worst place I ever quested were the rakghoul tunnels on Taris. Hordes of tiny, easy to kill enemies, that I had no reason to use DoTs on but still couldn't gun down in one blow or meaningfully CC.

I'm not saying they're underpowered or anything. A lot of people think this, from what I've read elsewhere, but I don't. They're just squishy while questing or if taken unawares. I can't comment on PvP, though.

Also, I'm about 85% sure Marauder is the most mobile class in the game. The improved Force Charge skills are absurd and awesome. Need a distance closer? Every 11 seconds there's one that has no minimum distance, interrupts, does damage, and stuns for the GCD. Shit like this makes me love the class so much.

ETA:

I have a question for you guys. I do not like MMOs. I have given a couple of them shots including WoW, and found myself quickly bored after a week or so of play. I also never play any multiplayer functions of any of the games I have. The most important thing to me is story and world immersion.

Now, I am a HUGE Star Wars fan. I absolutely loved KOTOR. Is this games story good enough to justify spending the money on it. or would I be missing too much by vehemently refusing the co op?

Class stories are pretty awesome, at least a good chunk are. The MMO aspect isn't really necessary to enjoy the game, I guess, but it is an MMO. I'd suggest wait for them to start doing a free trial like WoW does and try that. Or maybe watch some videos of the game and decide. It does a lot of cool stuff that is very Bioware and KOTOR, but it plays like WoW.

[VarysTheSpider]

Now, I am a HUGE Star Wars fan. I absolutely loved KOTOR. Is this games story good enough to justify spending the money on it. or would I be missing too much by vehemently refusing the co op?

I'm not a big MMO fan either, but speaking as a mighty level 4, I've been impressed so far. The story and conversation choices is definitely something that I didn't realise was missing when I tried WoW previously, now I doubt I'll ever bother playing one that doesn't have it.

I'm still a total noob though, but trying to read up so I know how to improve, especially for when I do some group/PVP stuff and I'm surrounded by people who have been playing MMOs for years and have a notorious impatience for people who only recently learnt what AoE means. Getting my head around all this MMO-jargon will be one of the biggest challenges for me, but I'm looking forward to it.

[Relic]

Kos, anniannihilation seems like a boss burning raid spec to me. I've been leveling and pvping with a 0/3/20+ Rage spec. Have you read anything about marauders and pvp?

[Kosciuszko]

Kos, anniannihilation seems like a boss burning raid spec to me. I've been leveling and pvping with a 0/3/20+ Rage spec. Have you read anything about marauders and pvp?

Only stuff I've read suggests trying to take on no more than one at a time and usual people complaining about how they feel underpowered.

[Relic]

you might find this thread useful

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=47978&page=7

[Kosciuszko]

I'll look into Rage at 50 but I doubt this guys numbers. I know for a fact his Annihilation numbers are vastly off (look into your own tree- Annihilate alone is listed for twice the damage on Torhead). He later states that they're right for Rage, so w/o combat logs or DPS meters I'm skeptical of most everything that I've not noticed myself.

[paddington]

Finished downloading yesterday, was a really hefty d/l on my broadband.

Rolled a jedi sage on one of the EU rp servers. So far upto lvl 10 anyways it looks good. Runs smooth with everything maxed. I did quite enjoy the voice acted quest, though I would be worried that the fully voiced quests will slowdown future content.

I am not overly sure what class I want to play, usually play a healer in MMO's so I might try out the Imp agent or smuggler later on.

I've not tried the pvp an probably wont until I am a little higher. So far it pretty entertaining.

[KiDisaster]

After trying out a few different classes (Sith Inquisitor, Jedi Knight, Smuggler and Bounty Hunter) and leveling each to 10 I decided to focus on my inquisitor first and level him to 50.

Picked sorcerer as my advanced class and I'm currently enjoying the hell out of killing things with force lighting. Also being able to respec to healing for dungeons and heroic quests is nice.

I'm playing on Fikraan Crystal (Not sure if that's the right spelling but it's something like that)

[Tyrellius]

3 different Marauders, 3 different opinions.

I'm leaning toward Carnage at the moment. Rage reads too much like a pvp tree to me. I'm having a lot of fun as Carnage but will hold saying that with any conviction till I've messed around with all 3 specs at 50. Got my legacy name y'day. Someone already took the surname Stark, so I had to settle on Starke. Immediately logged out and try to make a BH called Tony, but that was already take so it looks like I'm going for a female bounty hunter called Toni.

[Max the Mostly Mediocre]

So far, playability is the same

Absolutely not. The lack of a LFG tool is an enormous difference, and has a significant negative impact on the experience of anyone who wants to run Heroics and Flashpoints and doesn't have a group of similarly-leveled players to pester for groups.

Prior to the game's release I read a bunch of posts by folks who thought the LFG tool was the worst thing that happened to WoW. I disagreed but, hey, I wasn't there before the tool was, maybe they were right. Having played a few weeks of TOR I'm confident stating that those people are out of their goddamn minds.

[Kosciuszko]

Just bothered to do a heroic solo for the first time (since like level 8 on Korriban at least) on my character. Pretty fun; did encounter one glitch where my companion insisted he had to keep hitting a CCed droid. Damn you, Quinn, heal me instead!

Force Camouflage is really fucking great for just getting around a group of enemies that may be a bit tough for you to kill, or just don't want to deal with.

ETA: I've encountered several aSoIaF references in the player characters names, including the aforementioned Stark legacy title. It's pretty awesome to see the popularity.

[haLobEnder]

Finally got my own spaceship today, playing as a lv. 16 Bounty Hunter. Still only have one companion though -- Mako is pretty cool, but 3 worlds into the game I feel like I should have more options. Hopefully this is indicative of how much content is in each class story itself, because at this point the game is working much better as a single player experience for me than a multiplayer.

[Kosciuszko]

Finally got my own spaceship today, playing as a lv. 16 Bounty Hunter. Still only have one companion though -- Mako is pretty cool, but 3 worlds into the game I feel like I should have more options. Hopefully this is indicative of how much content is in each class story itself, because at this point the game is working much better as a single player experience for me than a multiplayer.

I'm pretty sure you got a new companion droid with your ship (least Warrior did). He kinda sucks though, so don't bother.

[TrueMetis]

The companion droid is a crafter only, maybe a healer if your in a serious pinch and have the money to get him some serious cunning gear. And yes there is some serious content, I just finished act 1 on my bounty hunter. Playing every day basically, I had KoTOR done in less time.

[haLobEnder]

I'm pretty sure you got a new companion droid with your ship (least Warrior did). He kinda sucks though, so don't bother.

I was under the impression he stays on the ship, and thus wasn't really counting him as a companion. All I'm saying, is that by level 17 in most other RPGs my party is pretty much formed; Here, I've yet to even get the smallest of hints as to who or where they might be.

For those of you who have multiple characters on the go, what is your favourite class so far? I've only got one character past level 8 and I'm looking to build up a second --probably Republic aligned-- character, but for various reasons have yet to figure out what other class I want to continue on as. For some it's because I've yet to be sucked into the storyline --Jedi Councillor is by far the most boring opening-- while others I've enjoyed quite a bit, but don't want to retread quests/locations I've already done.

Any favourite companion characters?

[Shryke]

Really? For me it's the absolute opposite, at least for the Inquisitor. You're a whole lot more mobile and less static and have a much more natural set of chains than in WOW.

What you are talking about here seems to be more about class design and skill design and such. Which I'm not a huge fan of (I'd say the classes are bloated and unfocused sometimes and the skill trees aren't great) but the overall design for "epic combat" makes up for alot of it.

What I'm talking about is the responsiveness of the game. How quickly I can press a button and have the game react and such. And it's definitely not as smooth as WoW, although it seems to be more or less noticeable depending on what class you are looking it. I felt the same thing with LOTRO (although worse there) and it drove me nuts.

[Kosciuszko]

Just got Annihilate. It feels weird but I think a lot of that is the muscle memory. Not really been in a fight long enough to see how it fares for a long time but, theoretically, it should feel much more natural after three stacks of Annihilator. Only gotten to that point once against an elite I soloed, and I did like actually having a window to build rage for it at that point.

My big issue is learning to not just spam Vicious Slash and keep an eye on the cooldown on Annihilate popping. It's a great attack though, doing lots of damage. It's like having a Pommel Hit that you can use on any enemy.

ETA: I really do want a training dummy to hit for awhile, just to get it down.

[Slurktan]

Just got the game today and played as a Knight for about twenty minutes and ran into presumably a bug:

Master Shan (Jedi Leader called me up to her room for a little meet and greet before I meet the rest of the council so I go. I find that she literally comes up to my character's ankle in the dialog scenes. Looks like the Atom dude from the comics. After I finish the dialog she is regular sized again. So I go to the council meeting and sure enough, she seems to be miniature again, every dialog scene with her shows an empty chair with presumably her tiny ass sitting below the table. Anyone else encounter this silliness?

[Kosciuszko]

Yeah, I've seen it on other sites, but never encountered it myself. I say roll with it- probably worth some laughs.

ETA: Also been soloing a lot of 2 person heroics, including a couple that were about 3 levels higher than my level. Lots of fun, level 44 atm.

[Solmyr]

Field report: lvl50 for 4 days now, running hard modes like crazy.

Hard modes are truly hard, full of glitches and (nearly) unbeatable bugged mechanics. Only makes them more challenging.

2/3 epic gear, tho that doesn't say much, as epic gear varies a lot.

Going to drop all 3 of my professions (Slicing, Scavenging, Cybertech) and pick Bioanalysis, Biochem and Diplomacy. Crafted my epic, eternal grenades from cybertech, I think they will remain usable after i discard the profession.

Absolutely not. The lack of a LFG tool is an enormous difference, and has a significant negative impact on the experience of anyone who wants to run Heroics and Flashpoints and doesn't have a group of similarly-leveled players to pester for groups.

Prior to the game's release I read a bunch of posts by folks who thought the LFG tool was the worst thing that happened to WoW. I disagreed but, hey, I wasn't there before the tool was, maybe they were right. Having played a few weeks of TOR I'm confident stating that those people are out of their goddamn minds.

Well I guess it all depends on what your priorities are in an MMO. I love that swtor has no active LFG tool and I hope it is never introduced. I can see how anyone who has played WoW and gotten used to the Dungeon Finder would be annoyed at how hard and time consuming forming a group is. Like going from piped hot water to a water-heater that runs on firewood. Well guess what - it's intended to run on wood. You are supposed to work to make a group, to find the right people, to travel to the flashpoint, to assist anyone who can't find it, to be patient with other people. If you cannot do that don't play MMOs, you lack the social skills required.

I've made more friends in a week of doing flashpoints than I did in the entire lifespan of post-dungeon finder WoW. Most of them are former WoW players too, but you should see the joy in their faces when we complete a 3h hard mode flashpoint against all odds. When we defeat Revan hard mode (who is bugged and 1-shots everyone), after 15 wipes, despite countless forum posts advising everyone to just give up until fix. You cannot experience this in WoW any longer, this distinct form of pleasure was only in stock in until wotlk, before the dungeon finder came around.

People who are aware that there is no fast and easy way to rush through the content and get their loot are so much more polite and inclined to compromise and spend time for the sake of the group and the group achievement. For if they misbehave, leave without warning and reason, ninja loot or make any form of bad impression they will not be called again by the other group members.

But don't just take my word for it, here are some statistics - I've done over 70 flashpoints through all levels up to hard modes. I've had zero people suddenly leaving, zero ninja looters, a high amount of people who are willing to make multiple runs with the same group (provided they have time), a high amount of people who put each other on their friend lists. After spending spending 1h30min in a hard mode flashpoint and wiping endlessly on the last boss, I had the tank offering to respec so he can get a talent that might help us beat the fight. And many more examples of selflessness.

You can't find such people or such game experience in WoW.