Things I Am Psyched About

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

OK boys and girls, enough whining.  Let me share what I’m psyched about!

Character recustomization.  AAAAAA!!! Undignified squealing! I want this so bad you have no idea.  I just don’t even KNOW what I’d do first.  This is the biggest reason that I’m not currently blowing all my cartel coins on fashion.  I need to save them for hairdos!  And species changes! And um… more hairdos when I change my mind about the first hairdo change.

Hearing my toon’s voice again.  I sometimes do the Belsavis quests just to hear her talk to the holograms.  It’s kind of sad.

New Clothes.  Because there are always new clothes in an expansion, right?  Even if I can’t craft anything cool.  Grumble.

Twin Saber Throw.  So let me get this straight, I get to THROW both sabers and they mow down anything in their path?  What’s not to like!

Resize Buff/Debuff Frames. That makes me less scared of trying healing because, seriously, right now it’s hard to see whether there’s something to cleanse.

New Operation.  I am so there.  I live for ops.  PvP can go to hell.

New Skill Trees For Patch 2.0: I Like the Destination, but the Journey Looks Scary.

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

I haven’t spent a whole crapton of time on the new talents and the trees, because everything is subject to change.  I’m pretty late to the party on this one.  (By the way, I’m using the SWTOR Spy PTS talent calculators.  I mean skill tree calculators.  Totally skill.)

The Watchman and Combat Sentinel trees look fucking awesome at 55.  There they seem balanced.  And the lower half of the trees seem to be barely touched.1

But the big top-of-tree ability for every tree of every class that I used to be able to get at level 40 is now delayed to level 45.  How are these changes going to affect me along the way (for main and alt alike) – specifically between levels 35 and 55, where most of the changes seem to be centered? Will the fight at the end of Act 2 (because there is always a fight at the end of Act 2) become super-easy or nearly impossible?  Will different classes be affected differently by this?

When I am forced to respec my Sentinel at lvl 50 for the climb to level 55 using the new skill trees, I will need to spend 36 (rather than 31) points in my primary tree in order to get the final talent in whatever tree it is, which is, in all three sentinel specs, the bread and butter of that spec. This leaves me with only 5 out-of-tree points to play with, instead of 10, and the abilities that I JUST HAD under the old calculator are now unattainable.  So I have to choose between the top-of-the-tree ability that I JUST HAD or the lower abilities that I ALSO JUST HAD.  It feels like losing something.

I will likely level in Combat spec because it doesn’t benefit much from those last 5 points (or lose out much by not having them spent), and then switch to Watchman at level 55.  Due to a talent position switch in the combat tree, Watchman needs to spend at least 8 points in the combat tree to get the off-hand damage boost which, in my opinion, is a very mandatory talent.

If you’re curious,  here’s my level 50 combat spec.  Seems pretty functional to me.  It’s only really missing a crit bonus, and I can live without that.

Gunslinger is a bit different.  I’m already playing a dirty fighting/saboteur hybrid spec, and don’t have the top talent in either tree. Similarly, there are plenty of viable sharpshooter specs out there that forego the top talent in that tree.  I don’t envision the respec at 50 to be too painful or to actually lose any abilities I currently have.  Because all the new talents are at the 31-35 point places in the talent tree, I won’t even be speccing those at all with a hybrid spec.  Will this gimp my dps?  Are the new trees designed to penalize hybrids by putting highly desirable talents in the 31-35 bracket?

My level 50 hybrid spec will probably look like this, and I’ll pick up the Arsonist and Sharpshooter talents along the way. (Sharpshooter (accuracy) last, since it won’t matter much until I start doing ops.)  Depending on the theorycraft regarding hybrids, it may be worth it to switch to pure dirty fighting at 55 or sooner.  In Jaspor’s Bioware interview (GO READ IT), it seemed like the devs allow for hybrid classes, but don’t intend for them, and certainly don’t want them to outperform everyone else.

As for my Sage, I have no clue, as I haven’t made it to 50 yet.  I just hit 45.  Cognizant of these changes, I paid special attention when I got turbulence at level 40 and tried to estimate how much it improved my DPS for the last 5 levels.  It was pretty important, though not as important as the top talents in the Sentinel Combat and Watchman trees (in my opinion).  I think I probably would have been OK without it, but not particularly happy to be putting my skill points into the skills right below turbulence that, you guessed it, buff turbulence.

I’ll probably stay telekinetics up to 55, nonetheless.  I’m not teaching myself new tricks in balance, and then ending up speccing heals at 55 anyway (the current plan).  Heals at 55 looks awesome.

How do you feel about the new trees at sub-55?

  1. Except! Dual Wield Mastery moved to tier 2 of the combat tree from tier 1.  Not cool, Bioware. ↩

Relaxed Jumpsuit Around The Fleet

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

Not the announcement you were looking for today, but I’m announcing my new Hall of Shame in which these creations are archived for future derision.

Anyway, here is an entry for the new aforementioned Hall of Shame.

relaxedshame

This next one gets a total thumbs up from me for the coordinated 80’s motif.  Miniskirt, leggings, tube top, leather jacket. All she needs is a bad perm.

relaxed80
Let’s Party Like It’s 1989!

If you’re curious:

  • Relaxed Jumpsuit Top
  • Last Handmaiden’s Leggings1
  • Covert Energy Boots2
  • I have no idea on the belt or gloves.

Most of these items and their sets are pictured on Dulfy.

  1. Yes, the skirt part is attached to the PANTS on the handmaiden set and not to the shirt. I’m pondering replacing my spacepants with space-miniskirt. ↩
  2. Or barefoot. ↩

Sentinel Builds for 2.0: Initial Thoughts

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

I finally got around to playing with the skill trees for Sentinel.  Yeah, I know, I’m behind.  SHUT IT.  I used the Swtor Spy PTS calculators.

At first glance, it looks like Combat gets a good headstart, because dual wield mastery is now in the second tier of that tree.  I can’t imagine a spec without that talent, but maybe some theorynerds know something I don’t know.  In both the Focus and Watchman specs, 8 of 10 out-of-tree points would be spoken for to get dual wield mastery.

In getting dual wield mastery (which, again, I’m assuming will be totally worth it in this brave new world) you might as well take the accuracy talent, which is now in the first row.  We won’t know how desirable that is until we see how easily soft cap on accuracy can be achieved through gear.

Moving on to my spec picks.  Unfortunately I can’t embed or get popup links to the new talents at this time.  I tried.  You’ll just have to open the trees in another tab/window.

Watchman

Inexhaustible Zeal is a must-have.  Let’s see, increases Juyo stacks to 6 (yes please).  Increases Merciless slash stacks to 4!  That means (1) you can use Merciless slash more often because the cooldown is even shorter AND (2)  the time for reapplication is longer.  With a 3-stack you have a 7.5 sec CD and a 4.5 sec window for reapplication.  Now it’s 6 sec CD, 6 sec window for reapplication!  The only problem I see with this is finding the focus for this hog every 6 seconds. (Ohnoes!)

Weakening Wounds is an interesting concept and goes nicely with watchman’s group utility.  Instead of healing people, it mitigates damage by making the boss do less damage (for single target, anyway).  I’m not sure how much it will be up on the boss in practice  Does application of a burn mean the initial application or a tick?

Zealous Ward is a neat idea but usually if I’m popping Saber Ward I’m either (1) getting attacked, in which case it would proc, and then I’d also be dead regardless or (2) taking AOE damage, which I’m not sure triggers the self-healing of Zealous Ward.  Seems lackluster.  Better to take force fade and use force camo like those dirty consulars use force speed.

Nerfs: Seems like some burn damage was nerfed, but the merciless slash change may compensate for that.

Combat

This spec has really interesting new abilities and doesn’t have difficult choices about what to take in the other trees.

Hand of Justice… holy shit guys, this is so awesome, and I understand why it can only occur once every 20 seconds because it’s a cooldown reset on Precision Slash (which, admittedly, might not come at the most opportune time) but ALSO you can use dispatch on targets at high health.  Dispatch is hawt.

Saber Screen looks like it will be up all the time and help combat’s survivability (as this tree’s version of the Watchman trickle of self-healing).

Contemplation is interesting, because you’ll start your fight with 15 stacks of centering (halfway to being able to trigger something useful), and I can live with that!  I wouldn’t spend points there if there were any other good place to put them, but I think it’s the best place given the other choices.  Of course, with coordinating 8-16 people on a raid, don’t be surprised if the first pull countdown is paused and your stacks drop off… or they start up when you’re mid-meditate and only at 5 stacks or so.

I can easily pick up anything I would ever want in the other two trees with my remaining points.

Zen has been changed pretty heartily.  Instead of getting a WTFPWN of decreased cost on blade rush, it’s just a craptastic alacrity boost.  Basically it allows you to cram 1 extra attack into the window after hitting Precision Slash.  Whoopdie.  Sorry, with computer latency and whatnot, small alacrity boosts don’t really do it for me.  Because there is no longer a focus cost reduction coupled with Zen, you will now need to pool focus more before Zen.  I’m not sure how much this change will affect overall dps, but it definitely limits our burst awesomeness.

Focus

Focus is my weak point, since I just started dabbling in it for dailies recently – admittedly I might be missing something but what the fucknuggets?  Singularity only stacks to 3 and its bonus damage is seriously reduced.  There seem to be more crit bonuses and a handful of buffs to single-target dps and defensive cooldowns.  Overall, I’m underwhelmed.

Momentum – this is pretty cool and gives a sorely-needed single-target boost.

Force Health – this makes guarded by the force a lot more viable to use in situations other than “ack we’re all going to die!” without the healers completely KILLING you.  I can see it being more useful in PvP, but sometimes for big, unavoidable AOE in PvE.

As for secondary trees, I’m not sure what to do.  I consider Valor and Focused Slash mandatory.  I also consider dual wield mastery mandatory, but that’s now in the second tier of combat tree, so clearly something has to be sacrificed.

An Expansion Is A Great Time To Start Over

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

When Makeb launches, a big reset button has been pressed.  Everyone’s gonna have to get to 55, and everyone’s going to have to completely re-gear.  It will be a bit easier to get a jumpstart if you start out with the superawesomemegapwn (TM) gear of this tier, but it’s not required.

hutt

Now, for me, do I still want to be a sentinel?  I have a scoundrel and a gunslinger at 50, plus a merc on the sithie side.  My boring consular is at level 41 with a month of double-xp weekends looming.1  I could conceivably change my main by simply leveling one of my other toons to 55 first, even if they are geared like crap, because I’ll have to re-gear no matter what.  No muss, no fuss, no extra effort on my part or the part of my guildies.

Of course, I could just change my outfit…

Are you planning to make any changes for the expansion?

  1. Having said that, I spent the first double xp weekend ogling fashion and shopping. ↩

Leveling the Playing Field for Crafters and Cartel

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

I want to craft again.  Right now, nobody wants to buy my stuff.  Quite frankly, the stuff I can craft kinda sucks too.

  • I’m tired of being stuck with republic-skinned clothes no matter what I make
  • Item sets that are identical to each other.  Seriously!  If you don’t believe me, check out the Republic Trooper and Hardened Plastifold sets or the Jedi Sage and Consular Adept sets.
  • The shoes and gloves don’t match.
  • Companions can’t wear republic-restricted or empire-restricted orange items.  This is because the items are (dumbly) restricted to specific classes. For example medium armor is restricted to sentinel or smuggler and Doc, being neither of those things, cannot wear the badass sunglasses.

Let’s compare now to the cartel market, shall we?

  • Full matching sets
  • Adaptive gear, not class-restricted.
  • Appearance the same across faction
  • ALL THE FASHION IS FUCKING COOL LOOKING

It’s no contest.  This cartel market bullshit is interfering with my enjoyment of fashion.  And no, I don’t want this whole thing to be solved by new recipes… on the cartel market, or purchasable with cartel rep, or as random crap in cartel packs because, seriously, fuck the cartel market.

We need to level the playing field, and fast.  So, behold, my totally awesome list of Things Bioware Should Do To Keep Me Happy Because I Am Important.

1. Crafted Orange Adaptive armor.  Why the hell not?  Everyone’s wearing inappropriate-looking items anyway.  If you wanted people to stick to looking like what their class is, don’t make bikinis.

2. Imperial and Republic recipes usable by both factions (and companions!).  I want to wear the imp-only recipes.  I want to wear the imp-skin of the recipes available to both sides.  Why?  See above re: ridiculous bikinis.

3. Matching Sets.  OK, guys, seriously, why things named the same don’t match the same is just beyond me.  But, for the love of Pete, don’t start changing the skins of existing items.  Just rename them or something and add in the matching stuff.  Because changing the skins of things without notice is not a good idea, as you well learned.

4. More recipes.  The cartel market is starting to have the monopoly on cool shit.

  • It should be accessible to casual players (not a stupidly long grind, not BOP drops in nightmare mode). The current random proc on UT missions is pretty annoying, but not the worst.
  • Embargoed cartel items should become craftable, and the recipes should be obtainable from the vendor for credits instead of the current system where the items themselves are obtainable for credits.  After all, the cartel market isn’t making money off those items anymore.  Why not filter the credit sink through the crafters?
  • It would be SUPER FUN if we could reverse engineer green drops in the world to learn the orange version.  It would create a market for these low-level items to help people leveling up make credits – and encourage low-level F2P players to purchase access to the GTN.  But, I know, the world would EXPLODE if we retroactively applied anything cool.
  • P.S. Fuck the cartel market.

OK, that is all for now.  Carry on.

Trying To Evilly THROWRAWKS (Again). Tharan Still a Tool.

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

In case you are not familiar with the terminology, Consulars, unlike Inquisitors, THROWRAWKS (pronounced: “throw rocks”) at things.  THROWRAWKS!

Solid rocks are far more dangerous than that insubstantial sissy purple lightning.  I’m always counseling my 5-year-old not to throw rocks, but I don’t bother talking about purple lightning.  (If some kid gets purple lightning to the FACE, he probably deserved it.)

Ahem.

When I last was playing my sage, I discovered:

Makes me want to jump right back in, right? But, as much as I love gunslinging, it is a totally useless alt to have, as my main is already pure dps.  And consular healer seems like the logical choice because:

  • I am an abysmally bad tank and a quite competent healer (at least in other games)
  • I suck at managing energy/ammo/heat because of the weird variable regeneration rates (which takes scoundrel and commando out of the running)
  • Consular is a pretty powerful healer!

If only consular weren’t so boring... The story is boring.  The character is boring.  The combat is boring. The companions are boring.  Even being an evil consular is boring.

I feel like a walking contradiction every time I heal myself with the power of the light.
I feel like a walking contradiction every time I heal myself with the power of the light.

Maybe I need to pay the cartel coins for HK so we can evilly delete some organic troublemakers together.

I mean, seriously, THARAN!  He gets to Hoth and he’s all whiny about the cold, and tauntaun shit getting on his imported boots.   Here’s the gist of his scintillating storyline so far: ***SPOILERS BELOW*** Continue reading »

I Wrote A Jedi Sentinel Guide

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

… because I am clearly insane.  I was just frustrated that there aren’t a whole lot of guides out there…

Anyway, check it out, and tell me if I did get something wrong, so I can fix it.

(P.S. After posting this on Reddit for feedback, because I *know* I got stuff wrong, I gotta say, you commenters on this blog are looking EVEN AWESOMER by comparison.  Some good feedback from Reddit, but also so many assholes out there!  Jeebus!)

New Schematics? Not Sure If Want

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

I’m raiding the other night and I get a whisper from a blog reader:

“There are new schematics on the PTS!”

Apparently we are going to be able to go to 450 in all skills, and underworld trading missions at the higher levels will also drop schematics for orange fashion items.

notsureifwant2

I went from “yay” to “crap” in about 4 seconds.  Do you know how flipping hard it is to track down every flipping schematic?  Ugh. Facepalm time.

Now my post-2.0 plan goes something like this:

  • Get all tradeskills up to 450 (facepalm)
  • Run underworld trading missions and hope for schematics
  • Expand srs bzns spreadsheet for new items
  • Check GTN obsessively for schematics
  • Pay obscene amounts of money for schematics (first: find money somewhere)

I was so psyched when the aforementioned grind was over after I got the last missing schematic a few months ago. Now, back on the completionist treadmill.

(And if you want to actually have details and pictures of the new stuff, check out Dulfy.  I’m way too busy for the PTS!)

Meters Epeen

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

So, gulp, we started using meters.  It has been interesting.

Now, you say, didn’t you play WoW?  Weren’t there meters all the hell over there?  Well, yes, but I was playing a healer at the time… and while healers use meters to some extent, it’s a completely different use than for DPS.

Before meters, it was like Schroedinger’s DPS… we didn’t know if I was the best or the worst, and technically I could be either, but as soon as we use a meter, it collapses the wave function and my DPS becomes a number-certain.

It turned out that my DPS was competitive.  Sometimes I was on top.  Sometimes I was not.  In general, we were all tightly clustered, which is exactly how we should be.

However, I am a little nervous still.  As a pure-dps with (now) fully optimized gear, shouldn’t I be doing better dps than classes that are hybrids?  Shouldn’t I be beating the pants off people’s offspecs?

Today’s neuroses are brought to you by the letters D, P, and S and the number “FFS IT SHOULD BE HIGHER!”