Yesterday, Austin Peckenpaugh, Senior Designer on Star Wars™: The Old Republic™, gave us a developer blog update with some important info regarding class changes and PvP mechanic changes that will be happening in Game Update 1.4.

We’ll be seeing some changes to Trooper/BH and Inquisitor/Consular crowd control abilities, a new interrupt for Mercenaries and Commandos, a new self-healing ability for Sorcerers and Sages, some adjustments to in-combat stealth abilities, and the following changes to the Resolve system:

We’ve also made adjustments to the Resolve system in Game Update 1.4. We’ve adjusted the gain logic of Resolve such that simultaneous and overlapping control effects no longer linearly add together their Resolve gain values. Instead, using a crowd control ability on an already controlled target now applies reasonable Resolve gain values by comparing the incoming control effect to the greatest of existing control effects.

As a result of these Resolve changes, unorganized teams will no longer pay huge penalties for overlapping control effects at critical moments. For example, it can frustrate players when pickup groups accidentally make a Marauder immune to Control because two or more teammates tried to stun him at once. The resulting unstoppable wrecking ball that the attacker transforms into made for a pretty poor experience for players trying to escape him. Additionally, we don’t like it when a Huttball ball carrier gets “fed” full Resolve by a disorganized pickup group trying to stop him from scoring by simultaneously landing multiple Control effects.

Check out the full Developer Blog for all the details. If you’re interesting in community opinions, also make sure and check out the feedback discussion thread on the official forums.

As more and more MMOs’ release, it is evident that World of Warcraft’s success has been an anomaly. Remember when SWTOR was strutted as the next “WoW killer?” But ultimately a large exodus occurred, and layoffs followed. Many have since begun questioning the success of any subscription based MMO to follow. If Bioware is struggling with a subscription model when they have the biggest IP you can attach to an MMO, what hope is there for any other MMO that follows the same model? Essentially, Bioware needs to convert to the Free-to-Play model if they want to increase their profit and player base.

You are the scum of the Galaxy, a Bounty Hunter. Someone who takes cold credits from the Empire to devastate their enemies and put fear into the hearts of Republic Citizens. Now all Bounty Hunters don’t start we a full arsenal and we’re here to show you the best way to level up your Mercenary Bounty Hunter. We’ll take you from the humble beginnings of level 10 up until level 40.

If we’re focused on a solo PVE playstyle, the most efficient way to level your Mercenary is through the Arsenal (middle) tree while using Mako as your companion. It’s all about high damage missiles and heavy armor while Mako sits back and feeds you Kalto to keep you going. The other option is Bodyguard where you heal yourself and your companion, but Bounty Hunters don’t get a real tanking companion until Hoth (around level 38) and their first Heavy Armor companion that can take some hits is just prior to that. Because of this, you’re better off dishing out the pain while soaking the damage and let Mako do the healing.

FORCE Junkie Basics Series is an effort to help you decide and decipher between all the different Classes in Star Wars: The Old Republic. This series of video guides describes the eight basic classes in the game to help give you an idea of the classes mechanics and root abilities. Each of the eight different classes are broke up into mirrors; for example the Jedi Knight and the Sith Warrior are the two equivalent Imperial and Republic classes. Each of the eight basic classes are divided up into two separate Advanced Classes which are not covered in these guides.

So if you are new to the game and want to see a brief intro into each class, make sure you watch each video to get an idea of what you’re getting yourself into!

Hello all and welcome to another guide by your friendly neighbourhood meatshield, Elicas. This is my updated guide for Powertechs, including tanking, Dps and PvP. I’m hoping to make this guide the ”go to” guide for all things Powertech, from tanking your first instance to DPSing the latest raid boss. This guide will include which companions you can get, what their specialisations are, where to get them and also what crew skills work well for a Bounty Hunter. I will not however, include any hidden companions or anything about the Story Arc. I’m not here to ruin you’re enjoyment of the game, there are no spoilers ahead!

My character, Chanter, is a failure as a bounty hunter. Oh, she has killing power. She’s got monster dps skills. But she has no guile. She has no evil core. She struggles with making dark side choices because she sees the reasonable side to each argument.

How can she get great Empire loot if she’s a pansy?

Hello all, and welcome to another guide by your friendly neighbourhood meatshield. In this guide I’ll be discussing my build of choice and priority lists. In addition, I’ll show you how to calculate your current Effective Health, how to calculate your current Total Mitigation, and how to choose which piece of gear is an upgrade for you. This will all be done from the Bounty Hunter Powertech Tank perspective.

So, you’ve played through a beta weekend or two, you’ve got a good idea on what class you want to play but you’re struggling to make your mind up! Welcome to the club my friend, probably the most asked questions I’ve seen on the official SW:TOR forums are “Which class is the most fun?”, “Which class should I choose?” and “Which class is the best at X,Y or Z?”. In this small editorial, my plan is to give a small appraisal of each class for the Empire, what its strengths and weaknesses are and which roles they can fill.

With last week’s NDA lift, many fan questions can finally be answered!

Jedi Knight Guardian / Sith Warrior Juggernaut
The Guardian and Juggernaut are iconic Star Wars roles. From a high level, they closely resemble tanking classes in other games by force leaping into battle and using melee abilities to gain threat. Feedback from the beta seems to imply that these advanced classes are slightly underpowered. Specific complaints include: limited area of effect damage, low up-front threat generation, low DPS from the non-Defense/Immortal talent trees. This is not to say they are less than capable tanks! Nonetheless, they are slightly more challenging to play in their current state, particularly with large area of effect pulls. The good news is that this minor balance issue is something BioWare can easily tweak in the near future.