SPLIT: Useless Profs, Another POST CU Debate.

[Yala]

Isleh is the perfect example of an intelligent ranged team player and she does it good!
In many ways I do much of the same with Powers because unless the tank has really good dmg I pull major agro with my aoe debuffs and nuke (haha nuke, pfft) and I need to run close to the spinners, then back to my spot of around 15m behind the tank, or I wont get all the mobs into my area cone. I get a lot less XP per lair than when I was spin attacking with lightsaber. I simply dont have the time to hit all the mobs, my powers are weak and slow and the mobs die in a flash, melee or ranged.
Despite being ranged myself now, I really hate groups with ranged weapons. They pull agro in all directions and there is no WAY my slow lightening can catch up.
I'll return to the saber some day but it IS fun to play powers, ranged jedi and its less common. I'm a good support class. KDing 20 pikets in one go is fun

Entertainers just got more useful with the profession specific buffs, adding another 5% to the xp bonus, for crafting, ID and more. Just not combat. If I was say, an armorsmith grinding that out, which takes forever and a day, I'd spend time getting the 5% extra profession specific buff before start, however finding an entertain that is ATK and cann provide it, is much easier said than done.

What I miss in swg compared to the fantasy games they have tried to emulate is more effective group functions. They have all classes defined well, crowd control, tank, dd'ers, healers etc. but in those functions they don't work very well imo. We have few "dungeons" in which we can play out the various classes effectively and I don't think piket lairs provide a very entertaining challenge. Spin the lairs, kill the mobs, get the XP and move on. Understandable for the jedi who need 30+ million jedi xp which is roughly the same as combat xp. Imagine having to make 300 million xp to make a decent template. Wouldnt you be spinning lairs at max effeciency? FYI, its not "fun" gaming. Back to combat professions, everyone wants to be uber. Ekade is a great example, returning to swg, like most others she thinks. AHA.. I need to have fun again, so I need to omgwtfpwn like the 3000 other players on the server. I havent yet met ONE player with speciality in crowd control. No CC means people rely on the tank to keep agro. Taunt/Dominate Mind is a joke. People then need more defense and all the templates we see are made up of defense/dmg combo. Who wants to be helpless to defend themselves when the tanks/cc's are able or present? The majority of the players are simply DDers which is a huge shame.
Back to Force Wielders, we arent very effective as pure killers, we are group support for pve/pvp. I have a hard time handling a BHer who knows what he's doing, I usually have to take my massive xp loss or simply cloak and hide, being subject to verbal abuse *snickers* but I AM USEFUL to any group, dungeons or lairs

[Ekade]

Entertainers just got more useful with the profession specific buffs, adding another 5% to the xp bonus, for crafting, ID and more. Just not combat. If I was say, an armorsmith grinding that out, which takes forever and a day, I'd spend time getting the 5% extra profession specific buff before start, however finding an entertain that is ATK and cann provide it, is much easier said than done.

Well.. the simple math is this...

If an entertainer gives you a buff, this is basically giving you time.

How much time? A 10% buff gives you 6 min per hour. Half that for a 5% buff.

10% buff benefits: (a 60 min grind actually gives you 66 min worth of xp)
1 hour grind session = 6 min time savings
2 hour grind session = 12 min
3 hour grind session = 18 min

5% buff benefits:
1 hour grind session = 3 min time savings
2 hour grind session = 6 min
3 hour grind session = 9 min


Benefits versus cost:

The benefit of the Inspiration buff is time savings.

The cost of the Inspiration buff is the time it takes to obtain the buff and optionally some credits (credits are also a form of "time"... time = money after all ).



Conclusions:

You can draw your own. I tend to think that unless you have a immedate access to an ATK entertainer, or a long grind session planned.. it's not worth it to try and track down an entertainer for the buff. In some cases you may actually be wasting your time trying to get an entertainer buff. (You have no idea how much it pains me to say that.)

Sooo.. how useful are entertainers?

however finding an entertain that is ATK and cann provide it, is much easier said than done.

Exactly.. the relative uselessness of the inspiration buff is part of the problem. If there was a real benefit there, there would be a legitimate demand for those services, and thus a motivation for someone to offer those services. Double or triple the existing benefit and you will see a lot of entertainers offering this service. It would be worth going out of one's way to get an inspiration buff.

Economics rules everything.

[Novall]

I like to think I'm pretty good at the CC. Even though I'm an MBH...which is the "master" of one on one, I can honestly do things that most one on one and totall group templates cannot.

My plan of attack is always this: Root the biggest buster in the group. Stick snares on everything else. When the Root runs out, you KD the biggie and recharg your snares on the smallers. In between all this you drop 2 crits and a DPS shot on the weakest one. Then I stick a snare on the big guy and root the weak one I've already shot and finish him off if possiable while recharging snares on any others on me. I heal throughout this and only use stims if I absolutely have to.

Something that saves my life alot: Duelist Stance + Synth Steak. A 300 dmg hit drops to maybe 110 damage for a good 30 seconds. That 30 more seconds of staying on your feet getting out of rage of enemies while keeping them in yours. For a ranged, thats the key...keeping them in range while your out of theirs. NPC's dont run away like players do

In tight spots, CC is really prety much useless unles your enemies are all melee. The thing to remember when in dungeons is that you become a support person, and you have to worry about keeping your melee guys alive which means upping the DPS hitting the mobs.

You want to be able to have crowd control and learn how to affectivly use it. That whole debuffing crap for CC that SOE said was a bunch of junk durring the CU. You chances of getting those debuffs to stick on high level mobs is right up there with finding Jimmy Hoffa's body.

We have a Kryat hunt tomorrow Ekade if you wanna tag along and watch. You can get a good idea of what I'm talking about. Hell, I'm used to keeping my guild alive after a certain master rifleman does something not smart =P

[Ekade]

What I miss in swg compared to the fantasy games they have tried to emulate is more effective group functions. They have all classes defined well, crowd control, tank, dd'ers, healers etc. but in those functions they don't work very well imo. We have few "dungeons" in which we can play out the various classes effectively and I don't think piket lairs provide a very entertaining challenge. Spin the lairs, kill the mobs, get the XP and move on. Understandable for the jedi who need 30+ million jedi xp which is roughly the same as combat xp. Imagine having to make 300 million xp to make a decent template. Wouldnt you be spinning lairs at max effeciency? FYI, its not "fun" gaming. Back to combat professions, everyone wants to be uber. Ekade is a great example, returning to swg, like most others she thinks. AHA.. I need to have fun again, so I need to omgwtfpwn like the 3000 other players on the server. I havent yet met ONE player with speciality in crowd control. No CC means people rely on the tank to keep agro. Taunt/Dominate Mind is a joke. People then need more defense and all the templates we see are made up of defense/dmg combo. Who wants to be helpless to defend themselves when the tanks/cc's are able or present? The majority of the players are simply DDers which is a huge shame.
Back to Force Wielders, we arent very effective as pure killers, we are group support for pve/pvp. I have a hard time handling a BHer who knows what he's doing, I usually have to take my massive xp loss or simply cloak and hide, being subject to verbal abuse *snickers* but I AM USEFUL to any group, dungeons or lairs

Yeah.. the other thing we are fighting is the Pre-CU mentality. Xyryn touched on this in her posts about melee versus ranged groups.

The old way of doing things was to spam your best attack ad infinitum.

The new way.. and this is still not quite mature, is to use roles in a specific way to control the battle.


Don't be so quick to say I just want to pwn.. I know I say that a lot, but I really enjoy team pwnage more than anything else.

There are some places that challenge you enough that you need to play your roles properly.. but the average "lair" does not. So you can get away with just being an attack spammer. SWG monsters are very very simple.. so the AI does not challenge you very much. I hope this changes over time.


Here is an example of something that happened last night..

Battly, Isleh and I are out hunting near Noct. We come across a level 84 Dune Kimo. Batty decides to pull (before I can object).. the kimo comes.. I try chasing it and taunting it.. but he is kiting it all over the place so I can never get a hit in. The Kimo them proceeds to eat Batty and Isleh, then it turns on me.

I spend 5-10 min tanking it solo, getting it down to half health, but I ultimately die because I ran out of mind and could not heal myself.

Consider....

What if Ekadetheubertank does the pull.. is allowed a few moments to get in some hits to build aggro.. then Batty and Isleh apply a steady, but not excessive amount of DPS so as not to steal aggro?

I'd be willing to bet that if the tank can hold aggro in this scenario, Mr. level 84 Dune Kimo goes down.

Controlling the battle for teh win.

I havent yet met ONE player with speciality in crowd control.

Why don't you specialize in crowd control?

Because it is not fun. Honestly I think the CU needs more tweaking before people are forced to use balanced roles to suceed. You can still get XP and credits and loot by fighting easy stuff and spamming the same special over and over.

Kasyyk is a step in the right direction, as I am discovering.

People then need more defense and all the templates we see are made up of defense/dmg combo

Actually the "warrior" class in WoW debates this all the time. One argument.. if DPS = aggro, than it is GOOD for a tank to have DPS. If they are pure defense, they cannot hold aggro well.

As such, a good tank needs to find a balance of defensive capabilities to keep themselves alive while still being able to generate enough DPS to hold aggro. Swordsman/TKM is an attractive solution. You have Swordsman Area Taunt, and the Improved taunts from TKM.. then add in heal aggro from a line in Doctor and you have my answer to an ideal non-Jedi tank.


How does aggro work in SWG?
Now.. I don't have enough experience to know how aggro truly works in SWG. In WoW, each mob has an aggro table.. and as you hurt it or heal near it.. you build aggro. If your name rises to the top of the "list", the mob comes after you. Some classes have specials that effect aggro. Some can "fade" to reduce aggro, some can "taunt" to raise their aggro.

Does it work the same in SWG? If not, how does it work?

[Hashum]

Yes agro works pretty much the way you described it in your last paragraph. It is idea for a tank to be able to do damage to hold the agro because currently the tank specials that are suppose to draw agro are not all that effective.

And to your point about the Kimo I would think you're quite right about the scenario. It's always best to let the tank begin the battle by htiting striking first. Usually by striking first you get the immediate agro and then will normally get it at least 1 more hit before everyone else has jumped in. Which can help you hold the agro. Unless someone is really out damaging you.

Novall is right though Crowd Control is a huge key to survival and if you don't have one in your group when over powered your in trouble.

Wish I could join you tomorrow night for the Krayt hunt but I have class. If you're still out there when I get home I'll join you. All depends on how early class gets out. My biggest problem tanking is remembering to use AI, I always forget I have that it seems.

[Ekade]

I like to think I'm pretty good at the CC. Even though I'm an MBH...which is the "master" of one on one, I can honestly do things that most one on one and totall group templates cannot.

My plan of attack is always this: Root the biggest buster in the group. Stick snares on everything else. When the Root runs out, you KD the biggie and recharg your snares on the smallers. In between all this you drop 2 crits and a DPS shot on the weakest one. Then I stick a snare on the big guy and root the weak one I've already shot and finish him off if possiable while recharging snares on any others on me. I heal throughout this and only use stims if I absolutely have to.

Something that saves my life alot: Duelist Stance + Synth Steak. A 300 dmg hit drops to maybe 110 damage for a good 30 seconds. That 30 more seconds of staying on your feet getting out of rage of enemies while keeping them in yours. For a ranged, thats the key...keeping them in range while your out of theirs. NPC's dont run away like players do

You want to be able to have crowd control and learn how to affectivly use it. That whole debuffing crap for CC that SOE said was a bunch of junk durring the CU. You chances of getting those debuffs to stick on high level mobs is right up there with finding Jimmy Hoffa's body.

Yup.. that is a perfect definition of crowd control. You keep the mobs pinned down so your group can focus on killing one at a time. Without good CC, they eat you.

Tanking is also a form of crowd control and should be used as such.

The perfectionist/idealist in me wants to say that ranged players should not even need to wear armor.. because they should not be taking any hits if the battle is controlled properly.

In tight spots, CC is really prety much useless unles your enemies are all melee. The thing to remember when in dungeons is that you become a support person, and you have to worry about keeping your melee guys alive which means upping the DPS hitting the mobs.

Yeah, I have not seen the dungeons post-CU. I really want to now. If it is balanced like WoW.. yeah, sometimes it is a race to turn the battle in your favor before the tanks/healers run out of gas.

We have a Kryat hunt tomorrow Ekade if you wanna tag along and watch. You can get a good idea of what I'm talking about. Hell, I'm used to keeping my guild alive after a certain master rifleman does something not smart =P

Yeah, I would like to!! You have to allow me to try and tank one. I have no clue if that is even feasible, or if rooting is the only safe wat to manage Krayts.

[Novall]

What I miss in swg compared to the fantasy games they have tried to emulate is more effective group functions. They have all classes defined well, crowd control, tank, dd'ers, healers etc. but in those functions they don't work very well imo. We have few "dungeons" in which we can play out the various classes effectively and I don't think piket lairs provide a very entertaining challenge. Spin the lairs, kill the mobs, get the XP and move on. Understandable for the jedi who need 30+ million jedi xp which is roughly the same as combat xp. Imagine having to make 300 million xp to make a decent template. Wouldnt you be spinning lairs at max effeciency? FYI, its not "fun" gaming. Back to combat professions, everyone wants to be uber. Ekade is a great example, returning to swg, like most others she thinks. AHA.. I need to have fun again, so I need to omgwtfpwn like the 3000 other players on the server. I havent yet met ONE player with speciality in crowd control. No CC means people rely on the tank to keep agro. Taunt/Dominate Mind is a joke. People then need more defense and all the templates we see are made up of defense/dmg combo. Who wants to be helpless to defend themselves when the tanks/cc's are able or present? The majority of the players are simply DDers which is a huge shame.
Back to Force Wielders, we arent very effective as pure killers, we are group support for pve/pvp. I have a hard time handling a BHer who knows what he's doing, I usually have to take my massive xp loss or simply cloak and hide, being subject to verbal abuse *snickers* but I AM USEFUL to any group, dungeons or lairs

Yeah.. the other thing we are fighting is the Pre-CU mentality. Xyryn touched on this in her posts about melee versus ranged groups.

The old way of doing things was to spam your best attack ad infinitum.

The new way.. and this is still not quite mature, is to use roles in a specific way to control the battle.


Don't be so quick to say I just want to pwn.. I know I say that a lot, but I really enjoy team pwnage more than anything else.

There are some places that challenge you enough that you need to play your roles properly.. but the average "lair" does not. So you can get away with just being an attack spammer. SWG monsters are very very simple.. so the AI does not challenge you very much. I hope this changes over time.


Here is an example of something that happened last night..

Battly, Isleh and I are out hunting near Noct. We come across a level 84 Dune Kimo. Batty decides to pull (before I can object).. the kimo comes.. I try chasing it and taunting it.. but he is kiting it all over the place so I can never get a hit in. The Kimo them proceeds to eat Batty and Isleh, then it turns on me.

I spend 5-10 min tanking it solo, getting it down to half health, but I ultimately die because I ran out of mind and could not heal myself.

Consider....

What if Ekadetheubertank does the pull.. is allowed a few moments to get in some hits to build aggro.. then Batty and Isleh apply a steady, but not excessive amount of DPS so as not to steal aggro?

I'd be willing to bet that if the tank can hold aggro in this scenario, Mr. level 84 Dune Kimo goes down.

Controlling the battle for teh win.

I havent yet met ONE player with speciality in crowd control.

Why don't you specialize in crowd control?

Because it is not fun. Honestly I think the CU needs more tweaking before people are forced to use balanced roles to suceed. You can still get XP and credits and loot by fighting easy stuff and spamming the same special over and over.

Kasyyk is a step in the right direction, as I am discovering.

People then need more defense and all the templates we see are made up of defense/dmg combo

Actually the "warrior" class in WoW debates this all the time. One argument.. if DPS = aggro, than it is GOOD for a tank to have DPS. If they are pure defense, they cannot hold aggro well.

As such, a good tank needs to find a balance of defensive capabilities to keep themselves alive while still being able to generate enough DPS to hold aggro. Swordsman/TKM is an attractive solution. You have Swordsman Area Taunt, and the Improved taunts from TKM.. then add in heal aggro from a line in Doctor and you have my answer to an ideal non-Jedi tank.


How does aggro work in SWG?
Now.. I don't have enough experience to know how aggro truly works in SWG. In WoW, each mob has an aggro table.. and as you hurt it or heal near it.. you build aggro. If your name rises to the top of the "list", the mob comes after you. Some classes have specials that effect aggro. Some can "fade" to reduce aggro, some can "taunt" to raise their aggro.

Does it work the same in SWG? If not, how does it work?

Batty made the mistake by attacking without everyone being ready. Not sure if he has a root or snare, but if he doesnt then thats a problem to. Unless your taunt can hold an aggro, the ranged guy might as well be food unless his template can accomodate otherwise.

I remember in the documents for the CU, Pistoleer and Smuggler were supposed to be the kings of crowd control. Using debuffs and roots/snares/delays to pick targets off one at a time. What they didnt tell you was that 75% of these shots are going to be resisted. It sounds all well and good on paper, but then ingame its an entirely different story.

Your ranged guy should always have the melee guy primarly on his mind. Melee cant kite, so you have to learn to root one enemy for them at a time. Once the melee person pulls (and I say Melee because they should be setting up the PvP encounter for roots, snares ect.) then the ranged person should go to work keeping him stopped but tossing in as much damage as possiable.

When you see the root icon start to flash, start using your lower DPS/AC attacks and build yourself up for another round of root and burn. If the ranged and melee person are doing their job correctly, then both will get "rest" periods and both will get burn periods. When the creature isnt rooted, let the melee person throw in their burn attacks so that they can hold the aggro.

Its a pretty simple switch up that works very well.

[Hashum]

Yeah, I would like to!! You have to allow me to try and tank one. I have no clue if that is even feasible, or if rooting is the only safe wat to manage Krayts.

Here is my take on that. I don't recall how much TK you have but I believe at Master TK you have 60 Innate armor which translates to 6000 armor which is about 50%.

As a Master Defender I get 70 innate armor or 7000 armor which I think is 54 or 56%.

With that template and Improved Aura (+500 to Melee/Ranged Def) I can pretty well tank a Giant Krayt CL 86. In order to do so though I need other damage support. The problem with these is simply their high health numbers. This drags the battle out and my Force quickly drains keeping Aura up and throwing heals on as needed.

I would assume the same would be true for TK, I would think with the proper food to keep your Action, and Mind stats up and using CoB you should be fine as long as you have enough dmg coming in from the ranged guys to bring it down in a timely manner.

When fighting small lower CL Juvie's and such you should be fine, I think they're CL 79. Safia and I were able to take a Juvie out ourselves but it cost us both a full bar of Force pretty much. Simply from having to deal all the damage ourselves we were under constant burn.

[Yala]

Im happy there are BHers who specialize in CC instead of "how can I beat the jedi fastest"

Why don't you specialize in crowd control?

Actually I do heh. I root and snare and debuff in controlled scenarios. I have enjoyed a krayt hunt with Novall and I used root/KD/armorbreak and heals on others more than I used my main offensive skills. It was FUN!

Hunting in a small group with the guild is a bit more DDer for me. Its a waste of Force to debuff one mob for me as most my skills are AOE, sadly. They start as single target, then the upgraded version is aoe and has a high cost. I actually seem to perform better as puller/tank

Spin lairs has little to no CC. I use all my AOEs, from debuffs to aoe KDs to aoe Lightening. Its about killing fast and furiously!

Team play can be fun and you teach other what to do when, like many ranged players are clueless when I root a mob, they will still stand up close, shooting instead of running 5m.

On debuffs being mostly useless and hard to stick? Absolutely. For 300 force out of my total bare of currently 5850 force, an intimidate that gets mostly -Resisted- seems pointless compared to throwing an aoe nuke where I have 5-10 mobs taking 1k dmg from me instead. Calculate the DPS on that! Another thing to remember is, unlike the action and mind bar, the Force bars almost regenerate nothing over the time of a battle. That means every expensive State I throw had better stick somewhat.. yet they do not. The same can be said for many professions, specials are expensive with little effect, its better to use all that action in a powerhit for DMG often.

We definetely need fixes in states for all professions, so its not only about dishing out max dmg.

[Ekade]

Yeah, I would like to!! You have to allow me to try and tank one. I have no clue if that is even feasible, or if rooting is the only safe wat to manage Krayts.

Here is my take on that. I don't recall how much TK you have but I believe at Master TK you have 60 Innate armor which translates to 6000 armor which is about 50%.

As a Master Defender I get 70 innate armor or 7000 armor which I think is 54 or 56%.

With that template and Improved Aura (+500 to Melee/Ranged Def) I can pretty well tank a Giant Krayt CL 86. In order to do so though I need other damage support. The problem with these is simply their high health numbers. This drags the battle out and my Force quickly drains keeping Aura up and throwing heals on as needed.

I would assume the same would be true for TK, I would think with the proper food to keep your Action, and Mind stats up and using CoB you should be fine as long as you have enough dmg coming in from the ranged guys to bring it down in a timely manner.

When fighting small lower CL Juvie's and such you should be fine, I think they're CL 79. Safia and I were able to take a Juvie out ourselves but it cost us both a full bar of Force pretty much. Simply from having to deal all the damage ourselves we were under constant burn.

I am TK 4442 atm.. still working on the last bit of XP needed to master. Even so, I still find myself able to tank remarkably well as long as I keep Center of Being up. I can't wait to see what it is like as Master TK. Taking the 4xxx line in Doc is a huge.

My guildies have helped me out a lot in getting food figured out. It's kinda silly that food is such a huge part of the game, I think the importance of consumables is out of whack.. but we gotta play with the system that they give us. I still have a lot to learn. I need practice to get good at managing all this.

[Hashum]

What's even worse on state specials is that there are entire branches related to protecting you from them, and you don't even need them. Imagine how terrible those states would stick if people were using enh xx4x or healer xxx4 to remove them with one special?

States are in sore shape. I actually think they meant more pre-CU, however I'm not going to complain when 90% of everything seems more important to me post-CU then it was pre-CU. So if states was in the 10% that got killed I can live with that. Although I'd like to see it corrected at some point.

[Isleh]

Yeah, I would like to!! You have to allow me to try and tank one. I have no clue if that is even feasible, or if rooting is the only safe wat to manage Krayts.

Here is my take on that. I don't recall how much TK you have but I believe at Master TK you have 60 Innate armor which translates to 6000 armor which is about 50%.

As a Master Defender I get 70 innate armor or 7000 armor which I think is 54 or 56%.

With that template and Improved Aura (+500 to Melee/Ranged Def) I can pretty well tank a Giant Krayt CL 86. In order to do so though I need other damage support. The problem with these is simply their high health numbers. This drags the battle out and my Force quickly drains keeping Aura up and throwing heals on as needed.

I would assume the same would be true for TK, I would think with the proper food to keep your Action, and Mind stats up and using CoB you should be fine as long as you have enough dmg coming in from the ranged guys to bring it down in a timely manner.

When fighting small lower CL Juvie's and such you should be fine, I think they're CL 79. Safia and I were able to take a Juvie out ourselves but it cost us both a full bar of Force pretty much. Simply from having to deal all the damage ourselves we were under constant burn.

I am TK 4442 atm.. still working on the last bit of XP needed to master. Even so, I still find myself able to tank remarkably well as long as I keep Center of Being up. I can't wait to see what it is like as Master TK. Taking the 4xxx line in Doc is a huge.

My guildies have helped me out a lot in getting food figured out. It's kinda silly that food is such a huge part of the game, I think the importance of consumables is out of whack.. but we gotta play with the system that they give us. I still have a lot to learn. I need practice to get good at managing all this.

Maybe that Scythe needs to be replaced Ekade. What's your DPS with it? If I remember, it's about 350 base or so. It is pre CU and it was speed sliced and don't think it did to well in it's conversion to a post CU weapon. It may be the key reason why Batty and I still pull agro even when I try to hold back.

[Sai'nu]

Aye', Batty 'did' make the mistake in that little scenario... *blush*... but there were other factors at work as well. Namely, another group there ready to go after the same said Kimo. My lag got me in that situation.

Indeed, I popped off the first shot, Isleh and Ekade sprang into action; And I was trying to get my root into play so Ekade could take over aggro while Isy and I supported her. Obviously... it didn't go down as planned.

I wouldn't say aggro works exactly as it does in WoW or our tanks, aka Ekade in this case, should've been to easily take aggro over... the game, to me, seems to go straight after whomever is doing the most damage.... which isn't exactly what a tank is designed for... delima in game design right there to me.

I'll admit; This is giving me some training as well since I'm used to doing the quick eliminate and move on effiency of solo play and high damage groups/working with just me and Isleh sometimes.

Now... back to our original topic again...
I don't think any profession is just completely useless (except maybe Squad Leader at the moment)... but there are deffinate degrees of usefulness to them.

We take out artisans... no vehicle repair kits nor swoops.
We take out entertainers... let's face it, those buffs are worth it.
Marksman, Brawler, Medic... Aside from not being able to branch out to an elite profession with them... their masteries 'do' add a little something to their hybrid and elite classes.

Balance is, and probably always will be, a bit of an issue in every mmo.

[Ekade]

Maybe that Scythe needs to be replaced Ekade. What's your DPS with it? If I remember, it's about 350 base or so. It is pre CU and it was speed sliced and don't think it did to well in it's conversion to a post CU weapon. It may be the key reason why Batty and I still pull agro even when I try to hold back.

Definately.. I have other swords that are at least 100 DPS better than that one, with better special action cost. I just want to make sure I got the one sliced to perfection before I consider slapping and ADK on it.

The nux that Rinna gave me are even another 100 DPS better than that! I just need to be TKM to use those.

[IagoBoom]

If you didn't know, I'm not only on Gorath, I just prefer it, here. Of my 6 other characters I've tried CM, BH, CH, TK, swordsman, smuggler, pistoleer, doctor, squad leader, rifleman, carbineer, and ranger in different combinations. I only PVE and never solo.

As Iago is musician by trade, I can only choose one combat profession, unless I piecemeal, which just isn't as effective to me. I pick CC because it's the most fun for me. Iago's been a smuggler or pistoleer for almost a year, and I made the smuggler to pistoleer switch to be more effective in combat and for the extra skillpoints, after the concussion shot fix.

Warning shot (-80 defense), my root, my snare and my stun stick about 90% of the times I use them on level 80+ enemies. Intimidate shot is crap and never sticks. It even fails on enemies around my level (55).

As for the ideal way to pull, in my opinion, a CM can pull a single creature from a tightly packed group, without drawing any other mobs by throwing a neurotoxin. As long as he/she turns off their auto attack and no other group member fires on the mob until it is outside of 30-35m of range of the others, they will ignore that their fellow is on fire or suffering from some poison. CM's can throw 35m, and get safely away before another attack must be made....drawing the mob into range of the melee.

CC rocks.