Nomadic Gamer

So yesterday the weekly patch notes included a line saying something like “mostly got rid of the combat delay bug.”  And in my playing yesterday, it did indeed seem to be the case. Controls were responsive, cast bars didn’t suddenly cancel and restart themselves anymore, queued abilities fired off almost all the time. . . . It was vastly improved.

Now if they would just make it so that mobs don’t instantly respond to your “instant” spells that delay applying their effects.  Yes, I’m looking at YOU, Project!

Finished up Alderaan with my Trooper at level 37 — only 5 levels above where I “should” be.  And now I’m back on Nar Shadaa finishing up the bonus series there that is rated level 31-32, just like the end of Alderaan.  Got my Legacy unlocked, so all my characters have the last name of “Le’fey” which is a carryover from EQ2, where nearly all my characters had the same last name so that people who saw me running around would know it was one of my alts due to them all having the same last name.  Of course, characters with names like “Gotter Dammerung” were fun too, and I do have a “Gotter” in SWTOR as well.  And my Commando’s really supposed to be “Wahren Peese” but yeah, he’s stuck with “Le’fey” now also.  Such is life.

Still and all, I can’t help but wonder what exactly these Legacy Levels I’m getting will actually do once they’re implemented.

In other news, my Consular Sage re-spec’d out of the Seer line for healing and is now rocking a hybrid Telekinetics/Balance dps build.  It can be downright brutal in the damage output at times, and can still spot-heal in a pinch if necessary.  At level 29, the build looks like this so far, and at the eventual level 50, I think this looks like it might be interesting.  I’ve not researched any dps builds anywhere, so I could be up in the night as to its effectiveness, but I think it looks fun, and if not. . . respecs are still fairly cheap for me, so I’ll see what I think later.

Yeah, I’m all out of creativity for post titles about TOR.  Too bad.

So in my last post I made a quickie comparison between the tank stats of my Shadow vs the tank stats of my Commando’s tank pet, and even though the Shadow’s gear isn’t completely up to snuff, it was still better than the not-terrible pet’s stats.  Well silly me, I decided to actually get the Shadow up to 29 and do a complete upgrade of its gear and see how it went there.  I was close enough to spit on 29 as it was, and in fact gained that level by doing the daily space missions.

I took screenies of the stats, but since the tank pet is a a ranged class I don’t think the damage stats are an apples to apples comparison.  So, I’ll just list off the relevant defensive stats instead:

.                                                  Level 29 Shadow      Level 35 M1-4X

• Armor:                             3392                           2998 (in-combat 3247)
• Mitigation:                     33.95%                      27.76% (in-combat 29.4%)
• Defense Chance:          18.39%                       10.54%
• Shield Chance:  20% base, 35% buffed     27.46%
• Shield Absorption:        24%                          21.58%

Same as before, obviously — the Shadow’s stats are definitely superior, in spite of being 6 levels below, and yet, the droid’s sufficient for everything I’ve tried to do with it so far, so take that any way you like it.

So anyway, after getting all the upgrades I decided to see what kind of trouble I could get into with the bonus quest series on Tatooine in order to see if the Shadow seemed “weak” in comparison to the Commando.  I had some old heroic quests sitting in the journal too, and figured I’d perhaps try to group up and clear those out.

I ended up in the Dune Sea and decided to clear out the Sarlacc quest by just stealthing past the mobs around the Sarlacc pit and tossing in the grenade.  AfterI did that, there’s that champion mob standing there which I know is a part of the quest’s bonus part, and I figured I can always do a stealth break of combat if it didn’t go well.  But it went fine.  Tharan kept me healed up like a champ, and a lot of the mob’s attacks were avoidable ground-targeted AE’s anyway.  He dropped some nice moddable light armor robe-style leg gear that I promptly gave away to the next Consular that I saw since my level 29 mods in my little bikini were already better than the level 25 piece of gear.

I decided to uncover the rest of the Dune Sea map, which found me that champion-level scyk to kill for the codex entry update and also the Ancient Sand Worm in the SW corner of the map.  I soloed both of them without any trouble.  Butthen there was Warlord Nekra the Geonosian champion.  I was even-level to it, so I figured it’d be tough if it was doable at all.  I attacked, and it became clear very quickly that I wouldn’t be able to solo it.  Not at that level, anyway.  Fortunately for me, a level 37 combat medic with his 4X out came up right then, so I stealth-broke the combat, invited him to group and we duo’d the thing instead.  Since he was at +8 levels the xp wasn’t nearly as good as when my “merely +3″ commando soloed it, but one can’t have everything, right?

I returned to the Jundland wastes section and looked at my heroic quests and realized that the Search and Rescue (Heroic 4) quest didn’t actually have a kill requirement, so I wondered if I could just stealth it.  And yes, I could.  What surprised me was that clicking on the prisoners you’re supposed to free didn’t break stealth, so I didn’t have to use my 3 minute cooldown combat breaker each time, but could get away with just plain stealthing up and hitting my 1 minute cooldown stealth-increaser if something gasped that it was about to detect me.  Seems a little exploit-y to me, so I don’t plan on doing so again.  Plus it just gives a crappy looking moddable helmet for the reward, and I’ve already got a good looking moddable helmet, so. . . I took the commendation reward, not the item.

And then I kept playing along, working the bonus series, thinking I was doing great and planning to be logging out at midnight, and suddenly “the servers are coming down in 15 minutes” maintenance announcement for patch 1.1 popped up, meaning it was 12:45.  I’d completely lost track of time.

So in spite of me still being willing to call the game a buggy mess (and probalby will for months to come — it’s a new game, after all. . . . ), it’s also a really fun game that can suck me in well enough to make me forget to look at the clock.

I do a bit of reading on SWTOR’s official forums here and there.  A common thread for the various classes asks the question “Which companion should I use?”  Responses then generally say “This one rocks, but that one is really weak, so don’t use that one.”  Further drilling down as threads on this subject get longer, plus other threads that have people complaining of weak companions reveal the answer to be a bit more nuanced, though.  Generally, the “best” or “strongest” companion will be the one that most complements your play style.  For example, a Sage Seer is usually best served by a tank companion that it can heal when needed.  But a Kinetic Shadow is probably better served by a healer companion to keep it up while it takes all the aggro.  Or maybe even a dps companion so they can burn the mobs down quickly.

For the Trooper, it seems that the most liked companions are Elara Dorne (healer), or the one you get toward the end named Tanno Vik (melee tank).  Yuun (melee dps) and Aric Jorgan (ranged dps) are well regarded too, but the ranged tank M1-4X seems to generally be regarded as “weak” or “bad.”  There’s an occasional shout out for him saying that if you keep his gear up to date that he’s really good, or that those who think he’s bad aren’t using him right or something along those lines.

Since my Trooper is a Cybertech crafter and this includes the ability to make droid parts/armor, I decided to see what I could do with 4x, since I like how the thing looks.  Plus I’m spec’d as a full Combat Medic healer, so in my eyes having any kind of tank companion should work well.  I was already level 30 on Nar Shadaa before I got far enough in the story line to get him as a companion, and the “full set” of gear for that level range needed level 31, so I didn’t start using 4x until I got to Tatooine.  And I love him to death and think he’s quite awesome.  He grabs aggro like a champ and then keeps it.  He can take quite a bit of damage, but. . . I’m a healer, so damage isn’t really that big an issue.  His dps is decent also.  Groups of “weak” mobs I can still AE down before 4x picks a target.  Strong mobs he can solo, and Elite mobs we can take down together usually without me needing to heal, though sometimes I will if he seems to be getting unlucky with his avoidance chance.

As for results, well, check the screenie to the left there.  That’s a Champion difficulty mob designed to be difficult for a group of 4 to take down.  For comparison, group quests usually have a boss at the end with about 30,000 HP — this mob had 78,000.  But yeah, it’s dead in the picture after having been hit up by the tank/healer combo.  It was a long fight, and I did spend a lot more time healing than dps’ing so 4x did all the real heavy lifting as far as the killing went, but he was just fine.  I also killed a few other Champions that were around the Dune Sea, though they were all in the 30K hit point range again.  Got a nice Codex update for the Scyk to boot.

Down in the screenies at the bottom of the page, I have a shot of 4X’s tank stats vs my Shadow’s tank stats.  Their levels are different so the HP totals reflect that, but the actual tank stats themselves look to be quite comparable when both tanks are fitted out in blue gear, though the Shadow’s still got a couple of pieces at the level 23 upgrade range, so once I get her to 31 and fully upgraded, her armor rating would probably be much nicer, especially since the 4X shot was taken while in combat with him having his 20% armor buff active.  So yeah, player tank better than companion tank, but you’d really expect that wouldn’t you?

***

On the game play front — I’ve made it past Tatooine and am now on Alderaan, in case the 1st 2 screenshots didn’t let you cotton to that fact.  I’m so over level already that I’m breezing through it and when I stumbled in to a “Heroic 4″ area and thought I was pulling a single gold that turned out to be a group of 3, I still managed to CC one of them, and 4x could tank the other 2 just fine, so that worked out.  Though I still don’t plan to try to solo that quest.  That’d just be a pain.

Anyway, my plan now is to push through Alderaan as quickly as I can in order to finish Act 1 and unlock my legacy stuff.  I was going to simply do the story quests and more or less skip the planet, but I’m enjoying the exploration too much, plus the gear I’m picking up from quests and kills and such I can send back to my alts so that they have gear appropriate to their level, rather than to the area they’re questing in.  So yeah, still doing all the quests and thus still way over level for the area, but. . . such is life.  Happy Gaming!  And enjoy the other screenies that follow –

Belt by Batman?

I thought the Sarlacc was just big enough for a stunt man to fall into. This looks a bit too big. . . .

Sith are flashy!

Shadow Tank Stats

Companion Tank Stats

My latest BFG and M1-4X too

So far as play time in SWTOR goes, not too much to report.  I decided to go back to my “main” of my Trooper and just keep working on him for a while.  Since he’s a Cybertech, the item mods he can make will be a big help to all my other toons as they level, so it seems to make sense.  Plus. . .TBH, the Trooper simply feels stronger due to all its AE damage options that the other toons all lack, plus I’m spec’d Combat Medic so I can just send in my pet and keep the pet healed for the fights vs Gold or even Champion mobs.

I’ve got the Trooper up to Tatooine now, but unlike the Shadow, I’m actually running around exploring the map and finding random 1-off quests here and there as well as a ton of quest hubs out in the hinterlands.  I’ve even stumbled into the “Imperial Area” in the south of the map.  As a result of all this, I’m now level 31 on a planet designed to take you from level 24-28.  I’ve also got my harvesting skill of Scavenging maxed out for the planet too — any node I find is gray and doesn’t improve it.  Which is fine — it just means I’m gathering lots of stuff to use to actually make things and level up the crafting skill, after all.  So there’s the gameplay update.  Happy happy joy and all of that.

***

Something that’s been cropping up a lot in blog posts and on the SWTOR forums is that a lot of people are complaining of “missing features” and bugs and whatnot.  The typical “fanboi” response is “Well compared to WoW’s launch this is pretty good.”  To which a rejoinder is made “But it’s competing with WoW *now* not WoW-at-launch.”  And then it goes from there in the back and forth with both sides talking past enough other.

I think what’s really going on is that “everyone” has a list of features in their head, probably not even consciously, that an MMO *should* have, and when a new game comes out that’s missing some of those features it makes them go “OMG this is crap!” and then go flame on the forums about what a crappy game it is that doesn’t have this “basic feature” that *all* MMO’s have.

I can see these people’s point — games released now are expected to be on par with other games, regardless of how many years head start the other game may have.  But on the other hand, the devs have only got so many resources to use for development before their investors/backers say “Get it out the door and start recouping costs here!”  So of course they have to prioritize and make sure you have all the *essential* features their game needs to fill their vision, and then the “quality of life” or “fluff” features can come later, while enduring the whining of the gamers that say “This other game that made billions of dollars and thus had a ton of resources to make this feature 5 years after it launched and everyone loved it so now any new game coming out has to have this feature at launch or else it’s a sucky game!”

Even worse is that I’m one of them.  There are several “missing” things that make me shake my head and go “What were they thinking launching the game without this?”  Of course, since I’m enjoying the game and can live without these “missing” features, it does show them to be non-essential and thus left out due to that priority list that the devs must have, so. . . yeah.  I’m sure over time more and more features will be added, and the game can only improve from here.

This takes me to another point:  There are a ton of bugs.  I’m not going to try to list them all off here, there are simply a ton.  And IMO, it’s better for BioWare to squash the bugs and also to get the interface and combat to have a nice smooth snappy feel to it before anything else.  If they get the actual gameplay is to where it should be, and then focus on the “quality of life” stuff, I think that’s the path that will make their players/customers happiest, even if the customers are whining more about the “missing” features than anything.

So in the past week I’ve found that a lot of the “playing in molasses” feeling of TOR is directly related to a bug in the display settings that shows you as playing where you’ve set them, but in actuality has you locked in at the maximum settings possible.  The fix for that is easy — just use the “preset settings” drop-down to change to something different than what it shows, then apply, then change it back, or to where you want it, or whatever.  I also found places where people have tweaked their settings in an ini file and reported great success in increasing framerates and appearances.  I’ve monkeyed a little with that, but not too much.  Seems I need to do so some more though, as my character models show a pretty universally gray skin color anymore, rather than the tones I’ve set for them.    So, there will be that done.  Eventually.  It really doesn’t distract me from playing too much, after all, so I’ve not bothered to exit out, do some tweaks, then restart to see how it went.

In the past week or so, my Sage made it to level 21 and is working her way through Taris now.  And the consular I made with the joking intent of going Shadow and being a “tank in a bikini” (due to the social clothing) has apparently become my main character.  I say “apparently” since I still think of my Trooper as my main, even though the Shadow is not only higher in level (28 vs 26) but has also gone farther into the story, having just completed her story arc on Tatooine (though still having the bonus series to do) while the Trooper’s still working on the Red Light section of Nar Shadaa.

Scary thing about all of this was that the Shadow finished up Coruscant at level 20, got level 21 from the initial run through of the space missions, then went to Taris, but I got bored there since I’d just done those quests on the Sage, so I went to Nar Shadaa “level appropriate” instead of having massively over-leveled it.  It made it so there was a little bit of challenge every so often, instead of always breezing through every quest.  And Nar Shadaa is also where you buy the “slave dancer bikini” social gear, so I was already there to buy it anyway.  But anyway, the “scary thing” was that I hadn’t intended to play this toon much at all, much less let it “take over” so to speak.

And in case you wonder, yes, I do get a lot of funny comments when I join a group as a tank and am running around looking like this screenie to the left here.  But I also have kept my mods up to date and blue as much as possible, so I have the best stats of any tank in my level range that I’ve seen — often having 20-30% higher hp than same-level Jedi Guardians.  So it works out

Overall, I think the Sage is probably the stronger soloer of the 2, since I can control when my tank pet gets healed and how well.  Getting the healer pet on Nar Shadaa was a big help for the Shadow, but sometimes his healing still seems a little lackluster, so while much of the time I feel like I’m wearing an unbreakable forcefield, there are also times then my health drops pretty precipitously, and what should be simple fights vs 4-5 mobs sometimes end up with a death.  No idea why I seem to take a ton more damage at times than others either.  Sometimes a “strong” (silver) mob seems to do more damage to me than an “elite” (gold) mob.  Go figure.

Since I’ve gotten my grapshic settings tweaked around and the game feels a lot more snappy as a result, my only real complaint now is the horrible UI.  Sure, there’s still a bit of the “molasses” feeling, but it’s far less noticeable now.  Hopefully UI customization and/or mods will be available soon.

And finally, to close — when I saw the Hutt and I was there in a dancer outfit, it became a moral imperative to take this screenshot:

Happy Gaming!