If I had to choose one class to play, and I tank mostly mind you, I would be hard pressed to not choose the Advanced Class Sorcerer. The potential for controlling the field of battle is unmatched for Sorcerers in PvE content. It’s this control, and damage potential, that would have me pause if made to choose only one class.

!Note: Sages have the mirror abilities and talents, what Sorcerers can do, so can Sages. Only with rocks, not Force Lightning. This build is amazing for everything but bleeding edge Operations.

At level 50 you have 41 talent points to utilize. Let’s get started.

(It’s been recently announced the level cap will be raised to 55. Will we get 5 more talent points? If we do, prepare for most classes to break hard. That will be a roller coaster, but I hope the Devs lock all the builds down before then.)

The Build : Control Talents

Oppressing Force – Madness tree. This talent lets you Crowd Control multiple targets and stun more often.

Haunted Dreams – Madness tree. Choosing this talent makes your Crowd Control, Whirlwind, instant. Instant control is a good thing. When things go wrong, there’s no waiting to lock down of enemies.

Suppression – Lightning tree. With this talent your Crowd Control has a much shorter cool down. A must have when soloing Heroic missions.

The Build : Damage Talents

Calcify – Madness tree. In one talent you can augment your two main damage abilities. You want this.

Chain Shock – Madness tree. Modifying your Shock spell isn’t mandatory, but it’s a great bonus to your instant damage spell.

Death Field – Madness tree. If you want to wipe out enemies instantly, this ability is for you. It’s also a must have in this build.

Disintegration – Madness tree. A must have for this build. More crits when casting Force Lightning makes your rotation smoother.

Madness – Madness tree. Force Lighting has no cool down. That’s not overpowered or anything… mwhahahahahaha. On the technical side, you’ll use Force Lighting as your key cast to make the whole damage rotation work.

Wrath – Madness tree. Taking this talent is another key component to the build. You have two options when this activates passively. Both options are big damage dealers, and you’ll find it a huge part of your rotation.

Deathmark – Madness tree. While not necessary for the rotation to work, it augments core components of the build. It’s too good to pass up.

Force Horrors – Madness tree. Again, this one doesn’t change your attack patterns, but it modifies your core Damage Over Time (DoT) ability that makes your rotation work.

Convection – Lightning tree. You’ve got to pick some talents in the Lightning tree to move up, might as well augment your damage.

Exsanguinate – Lighting tree. Picking this talent will make your casting more efficient. Allowing you to bypass a Crushing Darkness instant cast for a Lighting Strike instant cast, which could activate a Chain Lighting instant cast, which is just fun.

Chain Lighting – Lighting tree. To get the instant Chain Lighting, you have to have it. This is a bookend ability in this build, passing it up isn’t going to break anything, but why would you pass up so much destruction?

Lighting Barrage – Lighting tree. You will cast Affliction, and this talent makes your Force Lightning cast faster. More damage = more fun.

Lighting Storm – Lighting tree. When you attack packs of enemies you’ll be using Force Storm. You might as well take an OP (Over Powered) Talent to augment it. As a bonus, and bookend talent to this build, your instant Lighting Strikes can activate an instant Chain Lightning.

The Build : Endless Force

Taking these talents will grant you, Ipso Facto, endless Force.

Sith Efficacy – Madness tree. Your most used spell will regenerate Force.

Lighting Effusion – Lighting tree. Casting Force Lighting, while having this talent, actually generates more Force than used.

The Build : Your Rotation

• Single Target

Death Field (15 sec cool down, which means you have a maximum 15 second rotation)

Affliction (Talented it lasts for 20 seconds, you always want this DoT on the strongest enemy you are facing)

Force Lighting ’till Wrath activates. It’s ok to clip (cut short the cast) of Force Lighting. It’s always available.

Crushing Darkness It’s counterproductive to cast this if not instant. Wait for the Wrath talent to activate.

Force Lighting ’till Wrath Activates

Lightning Strike (If you activate an instant Chain Lightning, cast it)

This rotation can be practiced on a dummy. There are dummies on the Ziost Shadow’s Bridge Deck. In reality you’ll only use your full Rotation on Gold or Champion enemies. Everything else will be dead.

• Multiple Targets

Death Field

Force Storm till Chain Lighting activates

Chain Lighting instant cast

• Casting on the Move

If you’re in a situation where you have to cast on the move, these are your options.

Death Field

Shock

Affliction

You can toss out a second or two of Force Lighting to try and activate a Crushing Darkness or Lightning Strike instant cast as well.

This information gives you the basics of the Hybrid Sorcerer build. When I visit this build again, I’ll drill into how your instant CC’s can impress and amaze your team members.

The Silverstrike Legacy can be found on The Bastion’s Vaiken Space Dock in the company of his fellow Zergadins.

BioWare’s original stance was that implementing cross server PvP and LFG would destroy the community by ruining the social aspect of the game. However, Cross-server Warfront will be coming soon after patch 1.2. Despite the fact that BioWare has changed their stance on cross-server Warfront, they still hold the belief that cross-server LFG is bad.

If anything, cross-server PvE would make much more sense than cross-server PvP, because “PvPers” tend to place a lot of value in forming rivalries against opposing guilds or specific players on their server. Thus, same server rivalry should be nurtured and not neutered. BioWare needs to go in the other direction and look at enhancing faction rivalries by merging servers and offering extra rewards for completing Warzones.

BioWare’s reasoning behind not implementing a cross-server LFG is that it ruins the community. Damion Schubert stated, “There is huge social pressure to not be a jerk that goes away when the odds that you will never see these people again is high…We believe this will cause more damage to the community than good” (source). Community can only prosper and be nurtured through Guilds and not by Pugging. The claim of people being jerks stems from roll disputes. Majority of disputes can be lessened by implementing a smart loot system, similar to the one being implemented in WoW’s Mist of Pandaria expansion (source). You don’t roll against other players; thus, another player winning doesn’t mean you lost. Your chances of winning an item is not diminished or decided by what other group members win. Each player has an X% chance to get loot, and the smart loot system randomly determines who those lucky players are. All the items you win will be useful to your current spec. It does not mean that the game will always give you an item you want, but at least the item you win will be class-appropriate.

If anything, cross-server LFG would be more beneficial to the game than a cross-server Warfront queue because it would open up more content to more players. The majority of the player base is not able to run much group content because of the sheer amount of time it takes to put together a group. Cross-server LFG would create a larger pool of geared players for a Guild to recruit from, further bolstering the community.

Rift originally implemented a same-server random dungeon finder before expanding it to cross-server because the queue times for DPS were too long. The tank and healing player pools on individual servers are not large enough for a server only tool to be effective. Even if Bioware consolidates servers and allows players to server transfer at will, same-server LFG will simply not work. This is because tank and healer archetypes are not popular with the player base, and play time varies greatly from one person to the next.

If cross-server Warfront is a good thing, then it stands to reason that a cross-server LFG would be too. Majority of the problems can be lessened through implementing a smarter loot system. Overall the benefits of cross-server LFG far outweigh the disadvantages. Either way sound off in the forums below and let me know if you agree or disagree with me.

When dealing with MMO’s the topic of End Game is inevitable, but the answers are not always the same.  SWTOR has been called out several times now for not having enough end game to satisfy their players.  However with three different Warzones, two different Operations, and a plethora of Daily Quests the question becomes why do players feel this way?

SWTOR removed two major components from a player’s daily grind, mats farming and reputation grinds.  These are typical staples in the average MMO.  And while you can still technically go farm up mats with a gathering skill out in the world, very few players actually do that due to the crew missions.

While some players (me included) love not having to grind out mats and reputations, this was part of why many players logged in each day between raids and pvp to work on their grind.  However in SWTOR, there’s not much to do outside of Daily Quests and PvP when on your own.  And not everyone is happy about that.

What do you think?  Was removing these grindy mechanics from the game good for SWTOR’s overall health?  Or was this a mistake?  Leave a comment below!

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters…

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I put off writing this article as I was trying to do more research to prove my theory wrong; however the Dev Blog by Georg Zoeller today laid down the cement for this in the 1.2 Patch.  So if you read that post you may be already guessing that this is tied directly to the gear and crafting system.

This may or may not be an inherent flaw, but this points to BioWare spending a great deal of resources on potentially unused content that will go into the game.  What is this potential flaw to the crafting and end game loot system?  Click Continue Reading.

The State of 1.2 End Game Items

In 1.2 if you want to be wearing the Best in Slot(BIS) items you will have to be wearing Orange customizable armor that has been crit crafted by a crafter in game.  This will craft the item in question with an Augment slot.  From there you will have to remove all of your mods from your BIS item and put them into the crit crafted armor that has an augment slot.

1.2 Reverse Engineering

In 1.2 you will be able to RE just about anything in game except for armor mods that have set bonuses attached to them.  This will even allow you to RE a T2 armor piece (the new version of Rakata for example) to learn the schematic to create that orange armor custom appearance.

Prestige Armor

No this isn’t new armor, however it is the way that BioWare has set up the new gear.  Take Ranked Warzone and normal Warzone rewards, they have the exact same stats.  The only difference between the two pieces of armor is that they have different colors.

So What’s the Problem?!

You are going to spend a great deal of effort on getting these BIS end game items only to strip out the mods and put them into whatever Orange crit crafted piece that you already have.  You will not keep the appearance of your current armor as it has no augment slot.  So if that’s the case, why bother with getting the Ranked Warzone armor?

The players who would take the time to earn Ranked Warzone armor for it’s appearance will be competing fiercely for their rankings.  They will be after BIS armor, which means crit crafted armor.  So if there’s no stat difference (which is fine) between Ranked Warzones and normal Warzone gear, where is the carrot on the stick?

Crit Crafting T2 PvE & PvP

It will be entirely feasible to have crafters crit crafting T2 PvE and PvP gear.  However what kind of an investment will that require from not just the player, but their guild as well?

For PvE you will have to award multiple pieces to a crafter in order for them to learn the schematic.  It’s not a 100% guaranteed chance.  Then once they learn the schematic they will have to be given raid resources (BoE crafting drops) to attempt to crit craft the schematic which is also not a 100% guaranteed chance.

Essentially we’re talking about investing anywhere from 2-10 sets of armor just to create one crit crafted Orange armor piece so a raider can actually keep their appearance.  And for PvP?  Now you have to spend all of your commendations on armor that you will RE instead of wearing.

If you get lucky the first time you’re golden as you can strip the mods out first.  But if you’re not lucky, how many times will someone buy that same item piece attempting to RE it for the schematic before they want to throw their computer through a wall?  That doesn’t even account for having to crit craft the item after…

Costs

You can’t forget about costs.  For a Rakata level mod it costs 29,990 credits to remove it, and the costs increase with higher item level mods.  So one piece of gear that has 4 slots will cost you 119,960, or 120k credits, just to strip it down.  And that doesn’t account for the different tiers of gear or acuiring the best in slots mods for specific slots, so you will be doing this multiple times for each mod slots.

The Breakdown

Orange customizable gear will be massively expensive as crafters will make buckets of credits off of people rushing to get these armor pieces.  And as this will be gated by RE’ing schematics and crit crafted the augment slots, this will stay profitable for a long period of time.

Due to the costs of the crit crafted armor and the costs of reslotting mods, most players won’t necessarily even have the credits to spend on buying multiple orange item appearances.  So they’ll be stuck with their one appearance if they want to wear the BIS armor available.

As it’s not remotely practical to get crit crafted gear from the “prestige” appearances, why even go after Ranked Warzone armor?  Players at that caliber will most likely strip their mods to put them into crit crafted armor, so why even bother attaining Ranked Warzone armor for the improved appearance if you won’t get to wear it?

The Fix

BioWare should have put a crit craft system in place that would allow a crafter to add an Augment slot to an existing piece of gear.  Had they done this, players could actually keep their gear if they wanted to and then go about trying to add augment slots through a crafter.

Summation

The way things currently stand on the PTR is a mixed bag.  The new system will in fact make a large amount of the game population happy, but there will also be a lot of people who are unhappy as well.  Also to be complete, the end game PvE items are not itemized yet on the PTR (can’t see the stats), so I could not delve as deeply into that topic.

But the real problem boils down to this.

BioWare is putting in a system designed to reward players with unique appearances for attaining the hardest to achieve armor in the game.  However those won’t really be used by players who would put in that much effort as they will turn to crit crafted gear instead which will have a different appearance.

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The Heroes of MMO’s are not NPC’s.  They are the players.  

I’m talking about the the top 10 world ranked DPS on a boss fight, the players who live stream end game PvE and PvP content, have the best in slot gear standing in town, and the top ranked guilds in the entire world.  These are the “Heroes” of MMO’s.  And MMO Developer Teams don’t seem to realize this anymore.

The indelible fact, unmeasured by any metric that BioWare uses, is that these “Heroes” are a significant part of what inspires players to keep playing their game.  And as SWTOR is currently directed towards the casual market, they are missing out on an under utilized tool.

What to know what these tools are that are already in place?  Want to know how BioWare could cater to both the hardcore and the casuals at the same time?  You know you do.  Click on “Continue Reading”.

The Theory

As I can’t give you statistical facts to back this up, we will go with the proper term and call this a theory.  But ask yourself this.  How many times have you seen someone in game with something that made you stop and say, “I want that!”  Whether it was a title, mount, or amazingly cool piece of gear, you’ve probably felt this way at some point and time.

It all comes down to basic psychology.  People want what they can’t have.  And if a game puts something out there that is difficult to achieve, then that many more people are going to want it as well.  Which in turn incentivises players to work (play) that much harder, longer, and often to earn those achievements.

If you look back to WoW, their “hay day” is considered by many to be Vanilla and Burning Crusade.  Back when gear wasn’t just recolored and there was more content than you could shake a stick at.  And while many resources were spent on content that players never saw, the rewards were seen as gear worn by players.  Which pushed many players to play longer than they would have normally (and keep subs active longer).

SWTOR’s Direction

In an interview with Kotaku BioWare recently stated this:

Zeschuk said that a “small percentage” of players have reached the game’s level cap (50), but that “these guys still play a lot.” He says that BioWare is striving to do even more for them. “One of the main thrusts of what we’re doing is a lot of the end-game content.”

While they’ve said that they are adding more end game content, that doesn’t mean that it’s actually going to be what is truly needed.  Countless Dev Teams over the years have made promises and fulfilled them, only for the players to later realize that the Dev Team’s version of what the promise meant didn’t equate to what the players needed.

Also, quotes like this seriously raise the question of whether they’re using reliable filters to get accurate information from their metrics.  If they’re pulling up all of the characters in game, do they filter out the player who has one 50 and then 5 different alts below 50 like me?  Because at that measure, I’d show as 16.67% at 50 and 83.33% below 50.

The Core Concept

People want what they can’t have.  And “in the old days when I had to walk a mile in the snow for that Shining Metallic Robe and Maladath” there was always something you couldn’t have.  Today you can get whatever anyone else already has.  It just might have a different color scheme.  Where is the sense of reward in that?

If something is too easy to get, then people lose interest.  Not only does something need to be exciting, but it needs to be hard to get as well.  And unless BioWare sees that they need to have a top tier of content that is incredibly challenging they will lose their “Heroes”.  

The undercurrent from many top end content players is that they are already unsubbing, or will unsub if 1.2 doesn’t add in challenging content to keep them interested.  And while these players may only account for a very small percentage of the overall player base, they affect the larger player base more than anyone realizes by inspiring more casual players to achieve the things that they see the “Heroes” achieving.

Operation Fixes (Raids)

SWTOR has three modes of difficulty: Normal, Hard, and Nightmare.  Normal mode should be content that is easily accessible for everyone.  Hard modes however should actually be hard, designed for your more organized and dedicated groups.  This should probably be somewhere between current day Hard and Nightmare settings.

And then for your hardcore end game raider tune up Nightmare beyond where it currently is.  You don’t have to add in new animations and art work.  However an extra phase with the currently existing animations, a shorter enrage timer, etc…can really change things up without requiring a massive resource investment.  Currently Nightmare difficulty is considered to be a joke by top end raiders.

Warzone Fixes (PvP)

It’s more difficult to talk about this one as BioWare has announced their Preseason for ranked Warzones without giving any details.  So they may already have a solid fix in the pipeline for the myriad of issues with PvP.  And no I’m not going to even talk about Ilum because it’s still so horribly broken that they should just start over.

The current incentives for PvP are rather poor.  And once you’ve achieved Battle Master and farmed up your gear there is no further incentive to PvP outside of your enjoyment of it.  In addition to that, the inability to queue up 8 people together without access to cross server que’s currently cripples the longevity of SWTOR’s PvP.  

All of that said, we are going to have to wait and see what 1.2 reveals before discussing this further.

Gear Fixes

My Sith Marauder Columi and Rakata chest pieces have slightly different graphics.  They’re not drastically different, however combined with the recolor it’s just enough to make them look and feel significantly different.  My Champion and Battlemaster chest pieces however just have a recolor.

The top tier of gear for each level of content should have slightly different graphics from the bottom two.  Meaning Tionese/Columi and Centurion/Champion should just be recolors, and then Rakata and Battlemaster should be a recolor with a few minor graphics changes.  While this would take up extra resources for the Art Team, it wouldn’t have to be a monumental undertaking.

When players see the difference from Columi to Rakata for a Sith Marauder there’s that awe factor (for those who like that art style).  But when they see the difference from Champion to Battlemaster it’s more of a “meh” reaction.

Gear is the primary “carrot on a stick” for MMO players, so why not bring back that feeling of awe and desire that they yearn for?  Don’t just slap on a new coat of paint for the piece of gear that they already have.  No one gets excited for a new paint job…

Combat Logs

How in the hell did he find a way to get Combat Logs into this?  How many famous players in WoW became famous due to their rankings on World of Logs?  With combat logs and damage meters player performance can be recorded and listed for all to see.

And allowing players to see that someone else did 30% more dps than them is going to give them that incentive to play more often and improve their game.  This can already be seen with streams, videos, and screenshots of the PvP scoreboards as players ask, “How can I do that much damage and healing?!”

Summation

BioWare has demonstrated an art design to differentiate gear, and they also have the difficulty modes necessary to challenge and reward end game players.  And with preseason Ranked Warzones on the horizon, they will round out the end game for PvP as well.  

By doing all of this, the casual players will see these top end players in “amazing gear” that looks better than their own, pushing them to achieve those same goals.  And the only extra investment by BioWare was small tweaks and modifications to existing artwork.

In addition to this, being able to see these players tackle top end content through videos and streams will push interest further.  It’s the entire basis of e-sports.  And while SWTOR may not yet be in a place to be an e-sport, it is still a strong enough game that viewing other people playing at top tier levels will inspire people to play more and longer (longer active subs).

What do you think?

Do you believe that these “so called Heroes” really affect players and how long they sub?  Do you believe that keeping top end content challenging for end game players can keep them playing?  What do you think BioWare should do to appeal to both the end game and casual players?  Leave a comment below!

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters…

Blog: SkeletonJack.com
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SWTOR has bugs.  Shocking, I know…  Today it’s time to set my fan boy hat to the side and delve into the dark side.  The fact of the matter is that SWTOR has been bungling up some pretty basic things about MMO’s.  And while there are other peripheral issues that need to be addressed as well (such as the terrible GTN), today’s focus is exploits and bugs.

Want to know more about Ops bugs, PTR issues, and the ever borked Ilum?  Click on “Continue Reading”.  Or else…

The PTR

This is honestly where the majority of the issues with SWTOR are coming from.  New patches are going up on the PTR and are then rolled out to the Live servers within 2 weeks sometimes.  This is why you see fiasco’s where BioWare has to take the servers down a 2nd time one or two days later to issue emergency patches.

The concept of using pre-made characters at max level or using a character copy tool to get an existing character onto the PTR isn’t news.  It’s an old concept and a requirement in order to get things properly tested before release.  However BioWare didn’t bother to get this in, so new patches just introduce new bugs.

Stephen Reid:

I wanted to also address concerns about the Public Test Server. We’re working towards enabling character transfers so you can move your own character across and test new patches. Other ideas to allow the testing of high-level content have been explored, but ultimately character transfer is what we want to allow for everyone.

That is all fine and good, but the fact remains that this should have been in for release.  BioWare is using their paying subscribers on Live servers to test these patches because it’s not getting done on the PTR.  And that isn’t acceptable from either a business or customer service standpoint.

Emergency Patches

So lets start with January.  We’ll give BioWare December as a grace period since the game just launched.

• 1.0.2 – Released 1/4/12, then required 1.0.2a (1/4), 1.0.2b (1/5), and 1.0.2c (1/6) to be rolled out.  I can’t confirm if the servers went down 3 times total, but they did at least once.  1.0.2b was the infamous /getdown patch.
• 1.1.0 – Released 1/18/12, then required 1.1.0a on 1/19 bringing the servers down.  This was when players were farming the opposing faction players at their respawn points in Ilum.
• 1.1.0b – Released 1/24/12, then required 1.1.0c on 1/28 bringing the servers down.  This was to fix player disconnect issues, but was also done on the weekend when more players are on than is typical.
• 1.1.1 – Released 1/31/12, then required 1.1.1a on 2/2 bringing the servers down.  This was to fix freezing/hitching issues.
• 1.1.2 – Released 2/7/12. then required 1.1.2a on 2/9 bringing the servers down.  This was to fix player kills not properly rewarding Valor and mission credit in Ilum.

So in less than one and a half months, the server has been brought down 5 times for an emergency patch if not more.  These are simply the times I can account for with 100% accuracy.

That’s bad any way you cut it.  Don’t just look at it as server downtime.  These are also *MAJOR* issues that have to be addressed immediately because of the negative impact they are having on the entire game community.

These emergency patches typically occur early am (typically 2am CST/GMT-6), so you may be thinking that at the very least this won’t affect too many players.  However you forgot to account for not just the late night US players, but also all of the overseas players as well.  

At a reported 1.7 million subs, if only 10% of the players played at that time, that would still be 170,000 players being frustrated by the server downtime alone.  And I’m just making that number up.  It is entirely feasible that the amount of players being affected by that time frame is larger than 10%.

Ilum

It’s bad.  Can you honestly describe it any other way?  Because not only does the entire zone suffer from poor design, but it’s also been riddled with exploits and bugs since release.  The most recent exploit is players go there in pre-formed raids and trade kills for hours on end, farming Valor at such a massively ridiculous rate that it’s possible to earn 10 or more Ranks post-Battlemaster (Valor 60) doing this in just one day.

PvP

If you’ve played PvP even a little bit then you’ve most likely suffered from a bug or exploit at some point.  To list just a few:

• Ability Delay stopped you from using an ability when it would have made the difference between living or dying…
• Knockback and Air Vent collision in Huttball making you 100% immobile until you either died, got pulled, or pushed again…
• Leaping to someone or getting pulled to someone caused you to fall through the world…
• Someone on the opposing team leaped over the starting wall in Voidstar, capping the door before the match even started…
• Someone in Voidstar stood inside the door to cap it making themselves untargetable for a free cap…
• Someone in Voidstar AoE’d the red wall so you couldn’t activate the controls to open it for the final door stage…

I could go on for quite some time, but you get the point.

PvE

A few of the end game PvE Ops bugs that I experienced myself are:

• Bonethrasher’s AoE cleave was hitting players behind him on Nightmare Mode.
• Mindtraps had ridiculous amounts of hit points on Soa Nightmare Mode.
• Dying randomly while running back from a Gharj wipe.  If you stood in the lava and wiped you would randomly die afterwards.
• Trying to reenter an Op, but the game wouldn’t let you because it bugged out.  So you’d have to reset the instance and reclear all of the trash again.

And just so many more…  Which doesn’t even get into all of the other bugs that have shut down or frustrated countless other guilds out there as well.  And while people have referred to bosses as guild killers because of the endless wipes they have caused, you can also apply that concept to bugs as well.

Reality Setting In

The fact is that many of the bugs in the game have been addressed, or are being addressed.  However instead of players being happy about this they are instead further frustrated and aggravated by all of the new bugs introduced in each new patch release.

This is exacerbated by the Emergency Patches putting this into the forefront of player’s minds, blowing these issues even further out of proportion.  Making these problems go beyond simply bug and exploit issues into a public relations disaster waiting to happen.

BioWare needs to test their patches better before releasing them to the Live servers and avoid causing themselves issues which result in Emergency Patches.  While new content arriving at a rapid pace is wonderful, when you keep releasing new bugs at the same time people tend to just remember the negative.

What do you guys think?  Leave a comment below telling me *YOUR* experiences with bugs and exploits, and what do you think BioWare should do about it?!

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters…

The Seer spec of the Jedi Consular Sage advanced class is a healing focused character class. When you’re not healing as a Seer you can put out a respectable amount of DPS, and have several utilitarian tools and crowd control abilities. Thanks to your strong healing capabilities and decent damage output Seer survivability is high, making the leveling process a smooth and painless one. In group quests and flashpoints you can heal or do DPS (or both simultaneously), protecting yourself and your party members with a powerful armor spell. In PvP matches you will be appreciated for your ability to shield and heal teammates while slowing, knocking back and interrupting those who would try to do them harm. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First let’s learn the basics of the Seer spec as they apply to the leveling process.

Important Stats

The following is a list of stats that are important to the class, in no order of importance:

Willpower: Your most important stat. Willpower increases force damage, force critical chance and healing power.

Endurance: Determines how much health your character has.

Critical Rating: Increases your chances of getting a critical hit or critical heal. A critical hit or heal will do 50% more healing or damage than a normal hit or heal. It’s possible to do more than 50%, based on Surge Rating. Crit rating starts at a base value of 5%.

Alacrity: Reduces the activation time of your powers and channel abilities so that they can be executed faster.

Surge Rating: Increases how much more damage or healing a critical hit or heal will do. Base value is 50%. Increasing surge rating will increase critical damage or healing value above 50%.

Force Power: Increases the damage of force attack and force healing abilities.

Presence: Increases the health, damage and healing of your companions. You won’t encounter this stat on gear very often. Improving the gear of your companions while you level will obviously make them more effective.

Expertise: Increases your PvP effectiveness, improving your damage and healing output while reducing the damage you take.

Accuracy: Chance that your force powers will hit their targets. Accuracy values above 100% will reduce your targets armor.

Willpower, critical rating, force power and alacrity are the stats you’ll want to focus on. There’s currently a lot of debate on what is the better stat between critical rating and alacrity. Some argue that stacking critical rating is better in that it allows your force powers and heals to hit harder. Others swear by alacrity stacking since it allows you to fire off abilities faster. I suggest having a healthy balance of both stats until you learn what works better for you. If you’re a tank healer it might be better to have more crit. If you’re tasked with healing multiple party members it might be better to have more alacrity. Both stats will increase your damage and healing output.

Possible Jedi Seer Talent Builds
There are currently a number of popular Seer talent builds and they are all very similar, with only minor differences separating them from each other.

The Offensive Leveling Build – 30/9/2
This build focuses on more efficient self-healing, reducing pushback (for those who don’t know, pushback is when your casting bar on non-instant cast abilities gets delayed if you’re being attacked at the same time) while casting certain offensive spells, and quicker force regeneration. This build lacks the top tier Seer healing area of effect (AoE) spell, Salvation, which you wouldn’t get until at or near level 50 anyway.

The PvP Build – 32/7/2
This Build focuses on more efficient crowd control and opponent slowing.

The Egress Spec – 32/7/2
This build sacrifices a small amount of critical damage/healing for two points in Egress, which grants faster movement speed to party members shielded by your Force Armor ability. This is useful for fights involving a lot of movement and Huttball.

The Healing Spec – 31/7/3
Has a point in Jedi Resistance, which reduces damage taken by 1%. In my opinion 1% damage reduction isn’t that useful so I prefer 1 point in Concentration instead, as seen in this build: Alternate Healing Spec – 31/8/2

As you can see each spec has very minor differences that are tailored for very specific things. Feel free to experiment and find your own combinations that work best for you.

Companions

You will encounter six total companions throughout your journey to level 50, however one of them is the droid that comes with your ship and is rather annoying, on top of being mostly useless. Below are all six companions and what their roles are, what gear they wear and what primary stats you should look for when upgrading their gear.

Qyzen Fess
Role: Tank/DPS
Gear: Techblade (main hand), Shield (off hand), Heavy Armor
Primary Stats: Aim, Endurance

Theran Cedrax
Role: Healer/DPS
Gear: Blaster (main hand), Scattergun (off hand), Medium Armor
Primary Stats: Aim, Endurance

Zenith
Role: DPS
Gear: Sniper Rifle (main hand), scattergun (off hand), Medium Armor
Primary Stats: Endurance, Cunning

Lieutenant Iresso
Role: Tank/DPS
Gear: Blaster Rifle (main hand), Shield (off hand), Heavy Armors
Primary Stats: Endurance, Aim

Nadia Grell
Role: DPS
Gear: Double Bladed Lightsaber (main hand), Focus (off hand), Light Armor
Primary Stats: Willpower, Endurance

C2-N2
Role: Butler, Cook, Pillow Fluffer, Annoyance
Gear: Doesn’t matter
Primary Stats: Aim, Endurance

Qyzen Fess will likely be your go-to companion while you level. He’s a great tank who can hold agro on multiple enemies at once, letting you sit back out of harm’s way and do damage or heal as needed. Throw your Force Shield on him for added protection. Theran Cedrax can often come in handy when you need some extra crowd control and healing in tougher fights. Try using them all and see which ones you like, and be sure to upgrade the gear of your favorite companions along the way.

Clearing up the Qyzen Fess Aim Stat Confusion

You may be confused as to why Qyzen’s priority stat is Aim, not Strength, despite the fact that he is very clearly a melee fighter. Qyzen originally used ranged weapons in an earlier version of the game but this was changed and Qyzen became a melee figher. His priority stat was never changed from Aim to Strength to reflect this change . However, how Aim works for Qyzen was changed to suit his needs.

If you mouse over the Aim stat of a Trooper, a ranged class, you will see the tooltip above.

As you can see the Aim stat increases Ranged and Tech damage and crit chance.

Now mouse over Qyzen’s Aim stats.

Notice how his Aim stat includes melee and melee critical damage. Qyzen utilizes melee weapons as well as tech abilities during combat, so you absolutely want to focus on the Aim stat! Let’s take a look at his strength stat:

Note how strength only increases melee damage and critical damage. Gearing up Qyzen with only strength gear will result in the gimping of his combat tech abilities, which are mainly used for AOE damage and threat generation. So if you’re wondering why Qyzen hits like a wuss or can’t hold aggro, check to make sure you’re gearing him up using Aim, not Strength!

Leveling Guide

For this guide we will be using this 31/8/2 build.

Regardless of whether or not you plan on healing heroic groups and flashpoints during the leveling process, the bulk of your first 10 points will actually be wisely spent outside of the Seer tree.  In the Telekinetics tree spending points in Inner Strength, Mental Longevity and Telekinetic Defense will reduce the force cost of your force abilities by 9%, increase your total force pool by 100 (400 -> 500) and increase the amount of damage absorbed by your Force Armor ability by 20%, respectively. Over in the Balance tree, spending two points in Will of the Jedi increases your most important stat, Willpower, by 6%. With those 9 points out of the way, spend the next two points in any two abilities at the bottom of the Seer tree as you see fit. You’ll eventually want them all but for now just put them wherever you want.

Abilities learned from levels 1-20

Starting abilities: Meditation, Force Valor, Saber Strike, Double Strike, Project.

Learned: Telekinetic Throw, Force Wave, Force Lift, Force Stun, Force Potency, Force of Will, Armor Proficiency: Focus (allows you to equip Focus items in your offhand slot), Mind Crush, Heroic Moment: Channel the Force, Force Speed, Mind Snap, Benevolence, Deliverance, Disturbance, Force Armor, Weaken Mind, Noble Sacrifice.

Obviously, you learn the majority of your abilities in the first 20 levels, giving you plenty of time to experiment and practice with them all, which you should absolutely do to become familiar with how they work.

The DPS Rotation

Early on you’ll only have Project and Telekinetic throw, which you’ll alternate, using Double Strike to finish off opponents low on health. Later on, once you reach level 10, introduce Disturbance to the mix. Project, Telekinetic Throw and Disturbance will be the primary abilities of your DPS rotation. The rotation is really a game of whack-a-mole; use whichever of these primary abiliies is off cool down and available.

At Level 14 you’ll get Mind Crush which you probably only want to use on strong and elite enemies (the ones with silver and gold frames around their portraits), as it takes a long time to cast (2 seconds) and only effects your target for 6 seconds (at least until you’ve got a decent amount of Alacrity on your gear), which is a waste on standard and weak enemies. Once you reach level 16 add Weaken Mind to your rotation. Like Mind Crush, Weaken Mind is a DoT (Damage over Time), but it’s an instant cast ability and has a much longer duration of 15 seconds. At this point your single target rotation should look like:

For normal and weak enemies you can skip Weaken Mind as you’ll likely be killing your enemies in half the time it takes for Weaken Mind to run its full duration. However, for strong and elite enemies you’ll always want to begin your rotation using it. For strongs, elites and bosses your rotation should be:

These are your basic single target damage rotations.

Basic DPS Tips

• The majority of your DPS abilities are ranged, so make sure you’re standing a good distance away from your enemies before attacking.
• Use Saber Strike flurries and/or Double Strike to quickly finish off nearby enemies who are very low on health.
• Once you learn Tumult at level 28, quickly close in on stunned/dazed enemies with Force Speed and give them a nice double kick. Tumult hits like a truck!

Becoming a Healer

Healing is pretty straightforward, especially early on. You’ll want to protect your party’s tank, yourself and other party members when necessary with Force Armor. Keep their health up with Deliverance. Benevolence uses 5 less force than Deliverance but doesn’t heal for nearly as much, so stick with Deliverance. Later on you’ll learn Rejuvenate: an instant cast Heal over Time that will further increase your healing capabilities. There are more advanced things to learn about healing which I’ll discuss later on in the guide.

Crowd Control

Practice using crowd control abilities like Force Wave, Force Stun and Force Lift whenever possible. PvP is a great place to become familiar with crowd control abilities but you’ll also find uses for them in PvE situations. If you find yourself on the receiving end of such crowd control abilities, don’t forget about Force of Will, which is learned at level 9. This will free you of incapacitating and movement-impairing effects.

Other Observations

Once you choose Sage as your advanced class at level 10, the duration of Force Lift increases from 8 seconds to 60, allowing you to completely subdue an opponent in encounters with multiple enemies. Also at level 10 you learn Armor Proficiency: Focus which that lets you equip Force Focus items in your off hand slot, so be on the lookout for quest rewards offering them.

Use Force Potency whenever it’s off cool down and during tougher fights to give you and your companion an edge. It only has a 90 second cool down so get in the habit of using it whenever it’s available to help speed you through fights.

At level 10 you’ll learn your first healing spell, Benevolence. Level 12 will bring you Deliverance which is a much more efficient heal. At 14 you’ll learn learn one of the most useful abilities that will be at your disposal, Force Armor. Keep this handy as you’ll constantly be using it on yourself and your companion. With the two points spent on Telekinetic Defense you’ll get 20% more damage reduction out Force Armor.

If you’re in the middle of a long fight and find yourself running low on Force don’t be afraid to use Noble Sacrifice. It’s likely that you won’t use it much while leveling, but it’s a great way to give yourself a much needed force replenishment in combat. Use it sparingly however – it comes at the expense of 15% of your health each time you use it!

Leveling 21-30

Abilities learned from levels 21-30

Force Slow, Speeder Piloting, Tumult, Restoration, Cloud Mind
(Abilities learned from talent tree point allocation: Rejuvenate)

These are mostly utilitarian abilities, and obviously speeder piloting isn’t a combat ability but allows you to cruise around in style in your very own cruiser mount. Force Slow deals a small amount of damage to your target and slows them by 50% for six seconds, making it handy in both PvP and PvE. Tumult is a hard hitting double spinning kick that has an awesome animation. Its drawback is that it can only be used on stunned or incapacitated targets. Follow up a Project with Tumult for some nasty damage. Restoration removes negative effects from a friendly player, which won’t happen frequently early on but will become more useful during end game content. Cloud Mind is your basic threat reduction ability.

Back in the talent tree, the bottom tier now has all 7 points. In tier two spend two points in Psychic Suffusion (increased AoE heals and damage), and 1 point each in Pain Bearer and Foresight. The latter two points will improve self-healing, lower your threat generated by healing and reduce spell casting pushback. With 10+ points now allocated in the Seer tree, the third tier opens up, as do several options. You can choose to take Rejuvenate to add an extra healing ability to your arsenal, or put a point in Preservation to reduce the force cost and cool down of Force Armor. I suggest grabbing Rejuvenation to increase your healing tool set.

Leveling 31-40

Abilities learned from levels 31-40

(Abilities learned from talent tree point allocation: Conveyance, Healing Trance)

During this chunk of levels you’ll learn only a single new ability which gives plenty of opportunity to practice what you already know. Forcequake is an awesome ability that makes up for the lack of new abilities learned from levels 31 through 40. It’s a channeled AoE spell that will damage any enemies within 8 meters of the target location for six seconds while reducing their movement speed by 30%. Standard and weak targets have a 33% chance for each quake to knock them to the ground.

With the 10 points earned from levels 31 through 40, you’ll want to completely max out the second tier. Head back up to the third tier and allocate 2 points in Force Shelter and 2 points in the very important Conveyance. Jump up and put 2 points in Force Shelter and your final point in Healing Trance. Force Shelter increases the duration of Rejuvenate by 6 seconds and grants anyone being healed by your Rejuvenate ability to also have +10% armor during its duration. Healing Trance is another HoT but is channeled so it requires you to stand still in order to use it. You are really starting to have a lot of tools in your healing arsenal at level 40!

Conveying the Importance of Conveyance

Conveyance adds a fun layer of complexity to healing. With two points in Conveyance your Rejuvenate healing ability has a 100% chance to grant you Conveyance, which enhances four of your healing abilities in the following ways:

Benevolence: Force cost reduced by 50%

Deliverance: Cast time reduced by 1 second

Healing Trance: Critical chance increased by 25%

Salvation: Force cost reduced by 30%.

Once you cast one of the above abilities while granted with Conveyance you will lose it until you cast Rejuvenate again. Obviously with these healing perks you’ll want to be using Rejuvenate a lot. Keep an eye out for when Conveyance is activated by monitoring the icons above your action bar. See the image below for an example – conveyance is highlighted in red.

Leveling 41-50

Abilities learned from levels 41-50

(Ability learned from talent tree points allocation: Salvation)

The home stretch! Once again there aren’t many new abilities to learn in the final ten levels to level 50. At this point you’re probably going to be rushing through content as quickly as possible, but hopefully you’re also working on perfecting your dps rotation and practicing healing in PvP and Flashpoints.

Rescue is an interesting spell in that it lowers the threat of anybody you use it on, but if that person is in your group it yanks them to your location – preferably out of the path of a huge monster about to do some serious face breaking. It should also come in handy for Huttball, although admittedly I haven’t experimented much with it yet. Unity is basically a panic button. Activating it an emergency situation will reduce the damage you and your companion take by 50% for 15 seconds. Revival brings a fallen ally back to life but unlike your other resurrection ability, Revival can be used during combat. Finally, at the top of the Seer talent tree is Salvation, your Area of Effect (AoE) heal.

For your final 10 points, start by putting 2 points in Serenity. The top two tiers at this point are still locked out so something further down in the tree must be picked. If you’re following my build put it in Mend Wounds which lowers the force cost of your Restoration spell, and slightly heals your target while also cleansing them of negative effects. Or if you plan on doing a lot of PvP you might put the extra point in Confound, which will slow targets affected by your Weaken Mind spell by 10% during its duration.

With that extra point spent just fill in the top two tiers of the tree fully. This will require 3 points in Clairvoyance, 2 points in Resplendence, and finally Salvation, your AoE heal. You’ll still have 1 point left when all is said and done so put it wherever you desire, but if you’re following my build put it in Concentration of the Telekinetics tree.

About Resplendence

Remember when I talked about Noble Sacrifice earlier, and how it will give you a mid-combat boost of force at the expensive of some of your health? Well worry not! After you spend two points in Resplendence you can Noble Sacrifice your little heart out and not have to worry about it leeching your health. The only catch is for that to happen you must first get a critical heal tick off your Healing Trance spell. Try it out for yourself. Cast Healing Trance on yourself and look out for the following icon (highlighted in red) to appear above your action bars:

Once this icon appears activate Noble Sacrifice and note how it doesn’t penalize you by taking 15% of your health. Once you’ve used up your charge of Resplendence you’ll have to get another Healing Trance critical tick to gain it back. The downside to this is you’ll have to get in the habit of looking out for that little icon.

Seer Leveling Tips

• Always keep a supply of Resolve Stims in your bag while you’re questing. They provide you with a Willpower boost for 60 minutes (or until you die), are inexpensive and will help speed up the leveling process.
• Same goes with medpacs. Sure, you will have plenty of healing abilities at your disposal, but having a medpac boost your health in the middle of a tough fight can be the difference between failing and succeeding. Reserve a slot on your action bar for medpacs so you don’t have to go fumbling through your bag in an emergency situation!
• Stims and medpacs get stronger as you level so sell off your leftovers and buy their upgraded versions whenever available.
• Each time you learn a new ability, practice, practice, practice! Knowing when and how to use each one will make you a better player when you reach level 50. Also, don’t be shy about PvP. It can be frustrating and discouraging, but you’ll be a better player for it.
• Don’t forget to visit your trainer after each level gained to make sure all your abilities are current.
• Don’t be afraid to use meditation to restore your health and force between fights. It doesn’t cost anything to use.

Originally posted by GeorgZoeller (Source)

---

Hi guys,

There are many different subjects discussed in this thread and I would like to take the opportunity to give you some information on the topics at hand.

First off, we currently have no indication that any class needs a huge buff. Class balance is defined by the interaction between classes and changes we make to one class will, inevitably, move the balance towards or from other classes. Our data and testing currently indicates that the Juggernaut and Guardian AC could use some buffing up in two areas where we see them underperforming against our expectations.

Here are some of the things we’re planning to roll out in the short term specifically regarding Sith Warriors and Jedi Knights :

• >Mobility/Anti Kiting (PvP)We agree with the sentiment voiced by the community that some Guardians and Juggernauts have to work harder than other classes to stay within effective combat range, putting them at a disadvantage. We intend to address this in an upcoming patch where, as a first step, Force Push will clear the cooldown of Force Leap, granting for more reliable in combat pursuit capabilities to the Advanced Class. Further changes will be made if necessary.
• DPS spec survivability (PvP and PvE) The DPS specs on Guardian and Juggernaut are performing to our expectations when it comes to the ability to create damage, especially of the burst variety. However their survivability is lagging behind our expectations, especially in the later game, and we are going to start addressing that particular issue in an upcoming patch.

Our attention to the class obviously won’t stop here. Balancing MMOs is a never ending endeavor and we’re in for the long haul. For example, we are certainly aware that the Marauder and Sentinel are very gameplay intensive classes with some of the most complex rotations in the game. While we are currently looking at quality of life and usability improvements to increase the class’ playability without compromising the unique aspects of the class, we don’t have anything specific to announce just yet. We do however anticipate that some of the combat responsiveness improvements (AKA ‘ability delay’ – more on that here) being worked on by our engineering team will specifically aid both Marauder and Sentinel.

In regards to PvE balance, any place in the game where our data shows significant issues with the balance tuning for one or more classes or specs are of course also being looked at.

For example, Jedi Knights will be pleased to hear that we are working on tuning the final mission in their class chain to provide a better, more fun and more reliably solvable challenge (see a post from another member of my team here). Currently a large percentage of players bring a friend to solve this mission, which, while social and often more fun, is not in line with our stated goal of allowing players to progress solo through their class arc if they desire to do so. We’re also looking at some companions with a critical eye to improve their viability for certain role/companion combinations.

I would also like to give you some general understanding about approach to class balancing and how you can aid us with your feedback:

• Now that we’re out of the first few weeks of launch madness, you will see class and combat balance issues addressed with increased frequency. Larger scale gameplay changes and features are more likely to coincide with major content releases, but smaller scale changes and improvements can be expected to become part of our regular update schedule.
• Statements that we hate a specific class or faction, or that we intentionally underbalance certain classes to make it less popular are conspiracy theory territory. We have nothing to gain from such an approach we want players to pick the class and faction they want to play and have confidence that they are able to perform their chosen role in the game. Anything that comes in the way of that goal is considered a balance issue for us.
• We make our balancing decisions based on a combination of internal and external testing and metrics. We don’t make decisions based on who is the loudest on the forums. Community feedback is valuable in bringing issues to our attention and even to highlight possible solutions, which means that well written, constructive posts are the most effective way to communicate your wishes and feedback to us, rather than petitions and calls to nerf specific classes.
• Please understand that balance issues during the leveling process are different than issues at level 50 and are handled in different ways. If you feel your class has issues during your journey to 50, especially communicate the level range and area of the game where you are experiencing issues to aid our investigations. Player versus Player situations in during the leveling process are not always balanced at every level (a mathematical impossibility), but we are always willing to investigate.
• Just because we haven’t mentioned the specific issue close to your heart in a post (such as the one above) doesn’t mean we are unaware of it or that we don’t want to address it. It would be impractical for us to comment on all investigations currently in the pipeline. That said, we definitely want to take a more open approach in regards to upcoming class changes.

Finally, I’d like to acknowledge, again, that we do understand that there is a desire for players to get more detailed information what happens to their character in combat. We agree with those requests and are working on various ways to, optionally, get more detailed data on your combat performance.

Thanks for your feedback!

– Georg

Introduction

Hello all, my name is Elicas and I will be writing about the Imperial Agent class, as someone mostly interested in end game PvE. There will be some PvP writing, but it will not be a focus of my articles.

This piece details my impressions of leveling and playing an Imperial Agent, from the point of view of someone playing the Medicine and Lethality trees, I will not be playing Concealment at any point in the near future. This article, and subsequent articles, will have absolutely no mention whatsoever of the story, outside of which planets you recieve your companions (excluding hidden companions, find those yourself!). I’m not here to spoil peoples evenings giving the game away.

The Imperial Agent is a suave, seductive and deadly force within the Empires ranks. Recruited and trained to carry out the most sensitive and dangerous of the Empires missions, they utilise their proffessional perfection to get the job done. At level 10 they can choose to specialise in either the Sniper advanced class, or the Operative advanced class, which is the focus of this article.

Contents
1 – Class Acronyms
2 – Class Defining Abilities
3 – The Medicine Tree
3a – PvE
3b – PvP
4 – Lethality DPS
4a – PvE
4b – PvP
5 – Companions
6 – Crew Skills

1 – Class Acronyms

Every class has it’s acronyms, and the following are the most commonly used within the IA community.

IA – Imperial Agent!
TA – Tactical Advantage
AP – Adrenaline Probe
SB – Stim Boost
RPS – Regen Per Second
KI – Kolto Injection
KP – Kolto Probe
SP – Surgical Probe
RN – Recuparative Nanotech
CG – Corrosive Grenade
WB – Weakening Blast
CD – Cooldown/Corrosive Dart (context depending)
RS – Rifle Shot
DS – Diagnostic Scan
OS – Overload Shot
FB – Flash Bang
CB – Carbine Burst

2 – Class Defining Abilities

The IA, as well as their counter class the Republic Smuggler, have several class distinct abiilities. The most prominent of these is the cover mechanic, the ability to roll/crouch in cover and gain a moderate amount of defense and extra abilities, while sacrificing mobility. When and where to enter cover will be a very large part of the learning curve for IA’s at each encounter in the game.

This system works according to your current hostile target. Should you have no target selected you will use portable cover instead. Note that you cannot roll into cover when you have a friendly target. When you have a hostile target, green silhouettes will appear that show you the positions you are able to roll into relative to your targets position.

The IA also has portable cover, though only the Sniper AC receives the funky looking portable laser screen. Operatives instead just crouch in place, the same as during levels 1-10.

The second major part of playing the IA is resource management, namely energy starvation and regeneration. This resource depletes as abilities are used, but regenerates at different rates according to how much energy you currently have.

Energy Regeneration works at a variable rate dependant on your current total energy.

To play at the maximum potential throughput of the class, you need to try and keep above 60 energy when you can, using both Stim Boost and Adrenaline Probe to keep your energy up.

Adrenaline Probe is a cooldown ability that returns 50 energy over 3 seconds. It is a clutch ability that should ideally be saved for when you have to use excessive energy during either a burn phase (dps) or when you need to put out an extreme amount of healing throughput. It has a 120 second cooldown, allowing it to be used multiple times in longer fights.

Stim Boost consumes a Tactical Advantage proc to return 3 energy every 3 seconds for 45 seconds, this buff should be kept up in any fight lasting 45 seconds or longer. In small trash pack pulls, this buff can be safely left off, unless you do not need to use TA to heal. If you’re not needing to heal, use your TA to keep this buff up between trash packs. While SB is active, your energy regen becomes;

The differences between keeping your energy at a good RPS level and keeping it the lowest RPS level are massive. Let’s have a quick look at the math behind this.

Agent A keeps his energy above 60 for the entire duration of a ten minute fight, while maintaining SB. This gives him the following;

Agent B likes to do as much as possible when fighting, he spams his abilities to try and burst as much as possible. He keeps his energy below 20 for the entire duration of a ten minute fight and doesn’t keep on top of his SB buff. This gives him the following;

Current Energy = < 20 = 2RPS 2RPS x 600 seconds = 1200 energy to spend on damage abilities In real terms, Agent A has 2.5 times more energy to spend than Agent B. Resource managment will be an incredibly important part of playing an IA, easily differentiating the really good IA players from the average.

3 – The Medicine Tree

To really shine as an IA healer, resource management is absolutely critical. Unlike when you are dpsing, there are very few situations where you can blow your energy to frontload healing and reap any kind of result other than being out of energy. Medics can only heal damage that our group members have received after all. Of course, keeping that energy level up will yield a higher throughput in the end after all, by simple way of giving you more energy to actually sepnd on healing. Though it might seem like your not necessarily casting as much, you will in fact be doing much more if you can keep your energy level around ~60.

Stim Boost is an absolutely critical ability for healing, with 2 points in the Incisive Action skill we will be gaining TA from our base heal. The simplest way to get this buff up and running is to cast a heal just before the combat pull and keep SB ticking away for the duration of the fight, refreshing as needed.

Another important resource management ability is the fully skilled up Diagnostic Scan. Fully skilled at level 26, this ability returns energy to you every time it crits. With a base crit chance of 35% before you add your crit gear (24% skill, 5% crit from our class buff and 6% from 3 points in the Lethality skill), with an IA easily capable of sitting at around 50% crit chance for this skill. This effectively means you can ‘weave’ this ability between your heals to keep your energy level high.

At level 30 you can receive the Surgical Probe skill if you have gone far enough into the medicine tree, which uses a TA to cast an instant 0 energy cost heal, further increasing your ability to heal for protracted periods without running out of energy. With your Kolto Injection giving TA, a 30% chance for your Kolto Probe ticks to give a TA and Surgical Probe giving a TA when used on a person with less than 30% health (when skilled appropriately in the medicine tree), an IA has the potential to continuously pump out instant zero cost heals.

3a – PvE

Current PvE Spec 31/3/7

The primary stats for healing IA’s at the moment are Cunning, Endurance and Presence.

• Cunning improves Tech attacks, and is the dominant stat for Imperial Agents, increasing by around 4 Cunning per level on average. Endurance improves health, and is more of a support stat for Imperial Agents, increasing by 3.5
• Endurance per level on average. Every point provides 10 health points, and every 5 points provides 1% health regeneration.
• Presence improves Companions, and is an important stat for Imperial Agents, as we rely quite extensively on our companions during leveling and solo play. providing 3.5 Presence per level on average. Every 1 point provides 2 health points to Companions, and every 20 points provides a 2% bonus to Companions’ damage.

For damage calculations, every 10 points in a stat provides 1 bonus damage to the appropriate type, and every 140 points provides 1% crit chance to the appropriate type. However, the dominant stat of a class provides this bonus to all abilities, so a Imperial Agent, and therefore a Operative, gains both bonus melee damage, tech damage & healing and crit chance from Cunning. This makes stacking cunning a legitimate choice for new IA’s learning the class.

The secondary stats of interest for healing IA’s are Alacrity, Critical Chance and Surge.

• Alacrity is comparable to Haste in World of Warcraft, reducing activation and channelling times. This stat is of reduced value, as it does not affect our energy regen. It should never be discounted however, as reduced heal cast times are never a bad thing.
• Critical Chance is the chance to score a critical strike, which improves the damage/healing of an ability by 50%, and is improved by Critical Rating and the classes dominant stat. It seems reasonable that we will want quite a lot of crit until we can get Diagnostic Scan to 100% crit chance, if that is a possibility. (currently unknown)
•  Surge increases the magnitude of critical effects, improving their extra damage/healing beyond +50%. Given that we will stack crit this will also be an important stat to us, as surge and crit will scale very well with each other. It’s important to note, that this doesn’t seem to affect Diagnostic Scan in any way, the energy returned from critical hits always remaining 2.

Our stat priority from gear is most likely along the following lines, bearing in mind things such as mods can be used to increase the viability of certain gear by boosting deficient stats in an item with more mod slots.

This can make gearing at end game an involved process.

Cunning > Alacrity > Crit >= Surge > Power > Endurance

Currently, using your TA to cast SP when a target is under 30% health, thus returning to you the TA, is the best way to heal your group when not receiving massive amounts of group wide AoE dps. This further helps us to keep our energy levels high. My basic healing priority list in Flashpoint healing goes like this.

SP Tank if under 30% health > SB > KP dps under 50% health > KI Tank > SP DPS under 30% health > Diagnostic Scan if under 60 energy > AP if under 40 energy.

Now, obviously this can’t be used in every situation, as healing is a fluid beast, but it gives you a rough outline of how I process thoughts when healing.

3b – PvP

Current PvP Spec: 33/8/0

This spec utilises our mobility to keep in the back to mid lines of battle, healing our team. Our main damage in this spec is done by CD and RS, but as we’re a healer dps should not be our main focus. Throwing a CD up on the main target, say the enemy player with the ball in Huttball for example, should never be discounted however.

This spec completely ignores DS. This is due to the fact that while useful for energy regen, it is too easily interrupted when we are usually one of the main focusses of enemy dps. Sedatives has been taken, so liberal use of Sleep Dart should be made. Note that the -50% damage debuff starts from when the sleep is broken, not at the end of the sleep. This means you can sleep someone and then start dpsing them immediately. It becomes a very useful 1v1 ability for escape as well, as any Jedi breaking out and then force leaping after you will be at 50% less damage. Add our 20% move speed to Evasion and the static -2% damage taken and we become a moderately durable healer, when we’re not focussed by more than 2 or more dps.

In a PvP environment, we need to prioritise our heals differently. In PvE I spoke about how important energy conservation would be. While still important in PvP, there is a different way we can go about healing. We still want to use our first TA to keep SB up and ticking over, however, we can now start spreading out our KP on multiple targets to proc lot’s of TA. Now, this will drain energy, so how do we maintain our energy levels?

By using all of those TA’s on SP when a target is under 30%, which gives us another TA. This is a free to use spell basically, as long as the recipient is under 30% health. Now obviously, if someone is being burst down by 2 or more dps this isn’t going to keep them alive for long, but in general PvP where you are not having to focus on someone specific, it is a more than sufficient way of keeping your team topped off. For most dps classes at level 50, a well geared IA can heal for around 40% of their health bar with one KP and one SP.

In a PvP environment, stat priority on our gear takes on a whole new slant. We still need to be prioritising Cunning, but survival stats and obviously the PvP stat expertise. This would make our stat priority list as follows;

Cunning > Expertise > Endurance > Alacrity > Crit >= Surge > Power

Unfortunately for PvP i cannot really give a healing priority list, as every PvP fight is different.

4 – Lethality DPS

The Lethality DPS tree for Operatives is currently in a strange place in my opinion. The subject is rather devisive on the forums, with people both pro and anti Lethality. Lethality is a heavily DoT dependant spec that requires good management of DoT’s and Debuffs as well as TA to maximise DPS. The devisive issue with Lethality is that many of it’s blaster abilities have a 10m range, allowing the IA to get into close cover and start dishing out the damage by getting their DoT’s rolling and then using Snipe as filler. However, one of our main abilities and arguably the main ability of the Lethality tree, Cull, requires a TA in order to activate. Lethality Operatives have three ways of gaining TA for cull, either using Hidden Strike from stealth or Shiv in melee, thus giving up on using cover or being a purely ranged class, or using the Medicine spec skill and casting the occaisional Kolto Injection. Currently, from a pure dps perspective, staying in melee range and using Shiv is the best option.

4a – PvE

Current PvE Spec: 3/7/31

A major part of playing an effective Lethality Operative is again resource management, however, we have one less thing to our advantage here than when we are healing, there is no equivalent to Diagnostic Scan to return energy. This means sensible use of our SB and AP is critical to maintain a high enough amount of energy to maintain a solid rotation.

One thing where DPS does have an advantage over healing however, is the burn phase of a fight. This means that the Operative can spend all their energy on dps abilities without having to worry about regen for the last few seconds of a fight, spending the full ~60 energy on your hardest hitting abilities to ‘burn’ the enemy down fast. This can also be combined with AP, when you spend energy down to about ~30, hit AP and keep burning as your energy regens. Doing this should give you a full 10-15 seconds of burst at the end of the fight.

One thing I have noted in many other guides is that Precision Intruments is nearly always taken for a 2/2 skill cost. However, if we maintain good energy regen then there are much better talents available to us. In the build above you can add 2 points to Precision Instruments if you wanted to make your energy regen more forgiving.

There is no strict rotation involved for Lethality Operatives, as we operate from a priority list. This list starts with our debuffs, and works down to our damage abilities. Keeping our DoT’s ticking on target will be the best way to maintain good dps as a Lethality Operative. Our priority list is something along the lines of;

Shiv for TA > SB > CD/CG > WB > Cull > OS > RS if at

In an AoE situation, substitute Carbine Burst for Cull.

As a dps operative we can afford to drop to slightly lower levels of regeneration, the 4 RPS of holding at 40-60 energy is more than sufficient to maintain this priority list without it being a strain for energy. The reason for prioritising our DoTs over Cull and WB is that our Lethal Purpose talent allows us to regain 2 energy per DoT critical tick, allowing us to use more abilities. Thus, maintaining DoT coverage will eventually equal out as higher dps overall compared to letting DoT’s drop off trying to squeeze in an extra OS/RS.

4b – PvP

In pvp, I’ve had some success using Kolto Injection and playing a close ranged dps, with some off healing support. This can be especially useful in a Warzone like Huttball, where you can drop heals on the carrier, while DoTing the opposing team.

Current PvP Spec: 7/3/31

In this build, Cull takes much more of a back-seat. This is due to the fact I play this spec as more of a debuffing DoTing off healer, than as a straight up dps class. Basically I CG and CD everything I can, relying on our high crit chance for energy regen from Lethal Purpose. CG is talented to give 100% chance of 30% reduced movement speed, always useful in a PvP environment, especially when it can hit 3 targets at once.

I generally keep my DoT’s up on everything within range, and use KI sparingly on anyone desperate for it to maintain TA and therefore my SB buff. I then try to use FB to reduce the effectiveness of enemies that are clumped up, before spending my TA’s on CB.

While I don’t get many killing blows, I generally get many, many assists from my slows and debuffs, very high damage, spread out over many people, and middle of the pack healing. While I can’t claim to have ever won a Warzone by my own contribution alone, I dare say a well played Lethality Operative can be of more use in a good team than nearly any other class.

5 – Companions

Agents receive many different varied and interesting companion characters. We receive a good selection of healers, dps and tank companions that should allow us to cherry pick the right companion for the job. Below I shall list which companions we can get, where we get them (but not how to get them) their specialities and any crew skill bonuses they might have.

Kaliyo Djannis – Hutta
Combat Style: Ranged Tank
Armour: Medium Armour
Weapon Type: Pistol and a Shield Generator.
Special: Plasma Round
Starting Kit: Grenade Kit
Crew Skills: +10 Armstech Efficiency, +2 Underworld Trading Critical
Gifts Loved: Military Gear, Underworld Information, and Luxury Gifts

2V-R8 – X-70B Phantom
2V-R8 is the Droid that comes with your personal ship, the X-70B Phantom. He is a non-combat companion, than can only craft and do missions. The 2V-R8 are the standard on all Sith Empire ships, all ship companion Droids look like this one for all Empire classes.

Vector Hyllis – Aldaraan
Combat Style: Melee DPS
Armour: Medium
Weapon type: Vibrostaff
Special: AOE Swipe Taunt
Starting Kit: Ground Slam, Shockwave
Crew Skills: +5 Bioanalysis Efficiency, +5 Diplomacy Critical

Doctor Lokin – Taris
Combat Style: Healer(Human Form)/Melee Tank(Rakghoul Form)
Armour: Light
Weapon type: Vibrosword and Shield Generator
Special: Tank Transformation Mode; Rakghoul
Starting Kit: Ground Slam
Crew Skills: +15 Biochem Efficiency, +10 Research Efficiency

Ensign Raina Temple – Quesh
Combat Style: Ranged Healer
Armour: Medium
Weapon type: Pistol and Shield Generator
Starting Kit: Medical Pack Kit
Crew Skills: +10 Scavenging Efficiency, +2 Armourmech Critical

Scorpio – Belsavis
Combat Style: Ranged DPS
Armor: Heavy
Weapon type: Blaster Pistol & Shield generator
Starting Kit: Shield kit
Crew Skills: +5 Bioanalysis, +5 Diplomacy Critical

6 – Crew Skills

Professions for the IA comes down to a choice in your playstyle. There are four main crafting professions that work well with the IA. These are:

• Armourmech – Crafting of Medium/Heavy armour for non force users.
• Armstech – Crafting of Blaster Rifles and Pistols, as well as Weapon Mods.
• Biochem – Consumables and Implants.
• Cybertech – Droid components and Armour Mods.

Certain resource collection skills work well with each of the above. Each crafting crew skill has a gathering skill and a mission skill that compliments it. Each crafting skill has a skill that is labelled as ‘primary’. This means they will gather the items most useful for that crafting skill. Each crafting skill has the possibility of having a secondary skill. Secondary skills gather items that can be used to level the main crafting skill, but aren’t necessarily only for that crafting skill.

• Armourmech – Scavenging primary and Underworld Trading secondary.
• Armstech – Scavenging primary and Investigation secondary.
• Biochem – Bioanalysis primary and Diplomacy secondary.
• Cybertech – Scavenging primary and Underworld Trading secondary.

Personally, as a high-end PvE raider, I will be choosing Biochem in addition to Bioanalysis and Diplomacy. This allows me to use Scorpio and Vector Hyllis for Diplomacy missions utilising their +5 critical Diplomacy Bonus, which gives them a +5% chance of finding something rare. It also allows me to use Doctor Lokin for my Biochem crafting, as he has +15 Biochem Efficiency. This gives him a +15% speed bonus when doing Biochem crafting.