News Alert: The Church of Alvis Kills Karagga!

KARAGGA’S PALACE, Nal Hutta (AP)- Noted crime lord and infamous hat collector Karagga the Unyielding is dead. The killing blow was at the hands of eight drunken members of the Church of Alvis.  Under the leadership of Major Jounville Blackferne, seen here stealing a taxi on Nar Shaddaa, the Alvians exacted a precision raid against the fat Hutt.

The operation occurred in Karagga’s palace and there were many civilian deaths. Major Cuspar said, “It was a bad night to be a janitor in this hell hole. My quote won’t be used will it? It just seems kind of insensitive.”

 

The raid consisted of Jounville, Cuspar, Dodd, Marrkin, Dashl, Bulwark, MarkusTiel, and Naarp. The operation almost wasn’t a success due to a stubborn  G4-BC Heavy Fabricator droid who vexed the raid until a focused effort brought him down.

 

“I hate that droid. I hate all droids.” Bulwark said. “Watching him fall down was the highlight of my week. To be fair it has been a rather boring week at work.”

 

The future looks bright for the Alvian Crusaders as they hope to polish off longtime foe Soa and his pesky assistant “Gravity” in the near future.

 

Getting Raid Ready: A Gear Debate

As Alvis approached the first raid I knew that I would be one of the two tanks for the instance. The other was my dear friend Cuspar. Both of us are Vanguard Shield specs with pretty much the same spec. But both of us took different approaches towards gearing. This article is intended to look at the pros and cons of the approaches we took and possibly draw broader conclusions from the experiences.

The conventional wisdom I got from various message boards, the official forums, and blogs I was reading was to take the following approach towards raid gearing: get as many orange pieces as you can, run dailies, mod the crap out of those orange pieces. Crafting was considered inferior to that approach. This might have been the result of either ignorance of real stat equivalencies within the theory crafting community, bias against crafting, or people just making stuff up since it was really difficult to “prove them wrong”.

Cuspar chose to follow the orange gear and mod it approach. I chose to go against the grain (and in the process worried our raid coordinator Furiel) and crafted a good chunk of my raid gear.

Important Maths

In the attempt to provide some measuring sticks by with judge how our approaches worked it is important to paint tanking in broad strokes of evaluation.  When you break it down to the gear composition there are two main goals you have as a tank. First is your ability to survive. The second is your ability to generate threat.

The Ability to survive can be measure by two metrics.

The first and easiest metric is effective health. Effective health only looks at two stats from your character sheet: health and armor. Armor reduces the amount of kinetic and energy damage you take. Since most enemies do those types of damage it is pretty useful to know what this is. If you have let’s say 10,000 hit points (hp) and you armor can reduce 25% of that damage it means effectively your health pool is really 12,500. If you armor reduces 45% your health pool is effectively 14,500 and so on. Or in other words a person with 10k hp and 50% damage reduction is the same as someone who has 15k hp and 0% damage reduction. Essentially effective health the bigger the better.

The second survival metric is a lot more complicated. It is called total mitigation. This metric looks at a wider array of defensive stats and essentially looks at how much of an incoming attack you will take on over time. I’m not going to get into the deep math on the formula but it essentially asks these questions in this order: First what is the chance that an attack hits you, and if it hits you, what is the chance your shield will proc? and if it procs how much will be absorbed by your shield? And after all that what is the amount that will be absorbed by your armor? The stats that factor into this equation as I’m sure you get by now is defense chance, shield chance, absorption amount, and armor mitigation. How much health you have isn’t taken into account because this is measuring more about how smooth your incoming damage is.

The second major gearing goal for tanks is threat generation.  Threat is measured by damage output. The base unit is 1 point of damage. A point of heal is approximately .5 a unit of threat. There are various things that alter the threat generation such as whether you have a tanking stance on, have a guard on you, and the range you are from the mob. The further you are from the mob the less threat you generate. For our comparisons Cuspar and I would be comparing Aim, accuracy, Crit Chance, surge, bonus damage etc. Threat generation is important for a tank since if you can’t generate threat your DPS will be capped in their output potential, and with tight enrage timers you don’t want to throttle DPS anymore than you have to. However the first priority for tanks is always to get to a point on survival where your healers don’t have a heart attack keeping you alive  before you switch to threat generation. This is derived from the “a dead tank is a useless tank” mmo maxim.

Cuspar’s Orange Mod Approach

Cuspar had orange for all armor except belt and bracers. He also had an orange weapon. That is a total of nineeen slots to fill with armor mods, mods, barrels, color crystal, and enhancement. It took him two weeks of fairly regular grinding of dailies on Belsavis and Ilum to get the necessary pieces to start his gear up to where he was happy with it for the purposes of tanking a normal raid. The thing to know about Cuspar is that his time is limited. He cannot spend countless hours on running the dailies to cap on commendations every day. Like all of us he has other obligations including a job and family. So it could be done faster, and I’m certain others in Alvis were able to max out quicker than Cuspar.

Looking at the primary stats, modding wins. Crafting is more secondary stats.

 

Cuspar’s end result was a larger focus placed on the primary stats of Aim and Endurance. His effective health was higher and his aim was higher meaning he should be able to do more damage than me. For all the gearing suggestions we could find going into the first raid his stats pretty much always lined up. Tanks seemed to be judged based on their health and armor alone, and not based on other stats which might make them harder or easier to heal. He was fitting all the conventional wisdom perfectly on what to do to be prepared to tank normal operations.

 

Jounville Goes Broke Crafting

I’ve bet on the crafting game. I know that at some point the raid gear will exceed what I could possibly craft, but I’m used to a template of raid preparation that says entry into endgame can be accomplished through crafted gear. I took armormech, scavenging, and underworld trading and had all at 400 before 50. I was already in the REing for entry raid gear before I finished Voss. This is not a cheap approach by any means. First gatherign materials is expensive. Materials range in price to gather from 200-500 credits per unit depending on what it is, and if you need to buy materials off the auction house you are looking at that per unit cost doubling at least. Highly rare materials like Mandolorian Iron routinely sell for 10k+ on our server.

Again more secondary and less primary on crafted pieces

The results were different than Cuspar was getting as well on his gear. While Cuspar’s base stats were higher, and as such his health pool and effective health were higher, my stats at avoidance and mitigation jumped out as higher. This created a perception on a casual glance that my gear was not ready. In fact Furiel told me to get a new chest piece since the Mastercraft Veracity Powered Ultramesh Body Armor I made only had 45 aim and 72 Endurance. I had to point out the secondary stats like +27 accuracy +20 absorb +48 defense and +76 shield to create doubt in his initial impression about my gear.

My effective health was lower than Cuspar’s by nearly 4k going into that first raid. But my total mitigation was 2% more. I had nearly 5% more chance to dodge an attack altogether and my chance to shield was 3% higher. These might seem like small differences, but in a key position like tank, every percentage point counts.

So given the conventional wisdom and now general unease of our raid coordinator, why did I continue to push for the crafting gear plan? Well a few reasons. First time was running out. Our first raid was approaching quickly and I didn’t have the time needed to run the necessary dailies to mimic what Cuspar was doing. Second I think that secondary stats were being undervalued, and crafted gear generally has better secondary stats than can reasonably be achieved with orange gear. And finally I felt that I needed to know if where all my money and time reverse engineering was a waste. Bioware in a sense had to prove to me that they cared about crafting, and if I could tank in an operation in mostly crafted gear, then I knew they had planned stuff well.

The Big Day

The first Alvian Operation came on February 25th, 2012. Cuspar and I were both ready and I was nervous if my bet would pay off. As a raid we had two tanks with different gearing strategies. Also we had two tanks with different tanking in an mmo histories. Cuspar hasn’t really played an mmo since SWG and that was nothing like the group dynamic SWTOR has adopted. I on the other hand tanked many raids in WoW and had experience in improvising in raid settings.

The toughest pull in Eternity Vault for us was the turrets. And I seemed just as durable as Cuspar. Neither healer complained I was a paper tank, or that Csupar was simply a giant health pool with no real mitigation. Through the operation I did take a back seat to Cuspar’s tanking on the one tank fights, acting more like an tutor on how to tank in case he needed guidance, but gearwise I was never at a disadvantage it seemed.

 

Conclusions

In the end I think crafting or modding is a viable method to get ready for normal operations. The  real puzzle at this point is figuring out what the real comparative value of stats are. Without combat logs and the math models that come out of them, it is really hard to say 1 point of endurance is worth 3 points of shield is worth 6 points of defense, or whatever the stat equivalencies are. I think in general people tend to undervalue their secondary stats. A lot of Aim, or Endurance, or Cunning is great, but being able to get crit, power, alacrity, shield chance, surge etc is what can take you from doing well to doing great.

The Church Bulletin January and February

I wanted to take a few moments to summarize some of the activities the Church has been up to lately.

The March to 50

Jeezbus was the first Alvian to 50 and since he hit that milestone in late december we’ve had several other Alvians hit the big 5-0 with quite a few coming up quickly. As of this writing Alvis has 15 fifties who regularly run flashpoints and dailies together.

 

Initiation

On January 28th we promoted the following people from Altarsquid to full blown Priests within the Church. There was a simple ceremony on the Fleet followed by a Sarlaac jump and some PvP with our friends over at Unrepentant and Archaic. While they may have landed a few shots on us, we put up a valiant fight.

Yim'ays and Devo valiantly fight for drunken vengeance on behalf of their fallen Archbishop.

 

Datacron Crawl

On Feb 11th, Jounville, Veela, Qwuaff, Bulwark, Yimayz, Klak, and Dashl set out on a great Datacron hunt covering Ord Mantell, Tython, Corellia, and everyone’s favorite post apocalyptic wasteland Taris. We were able to get to eevry datacron on those planets even though some were much harder than others. There are plans to tackle more planets in the near future.

 

Our First Operation

This past weekend the Church of Alvis struck a victory for drunken vengeance in the Eternity Vault. We managed to get to Soa to phase three in our raid. No doubt he will fall next time we set foot in there. Here is our first attempt and kill against the Annihilator Droid with our actual ventrillo chatter!

 

Upcoming Soon

Our raiding will continue. More people will be hitting 50 which means more flashpoints, more dailies groups. Our next crop of altarsquids are getting ready for initiation and we are going to be doing more datacron crawls. March and April will be exciting for all Alvians as we delve deeper into this galaxy far far away!

And they lived happily ever after – A first glance into end-game content

“You have taken your first step into a larger world.”

-Obi-wan, Episode IV – A New Hope

 

Of late, my toon has been racing across the galaxy, conversing with thousands of citizens of the Republic approaching him for help. He has killed countless enemies, gathered, destroyed, pillaged, escorted…and generally had a blast doing it all.

At the pinnacle of it all was his own defining story, a truly epic and heroic tale, of which he was the center of a major conspiracy which drove straight through the heart of the Republic. Not only did he survive the entire ordeal, but in the end he emerged from the ashes of conflict as a true hero of the Republic, and all the glory she stands for.

Then, the unthinkable happened.

Dodd hit level 50. His class story wrapped up shortly thereafter.

As a SWTOR player, this changes the context and psyche of the game considerably. Dodd is still very much the carefree flyboy with a heart of gold that I had intended him to be, however…the class quests and xp grind have both come to a fairly abrupt end. And also, the class story is done. No more Voidwolf chasing me around the galaxy. No more big schemes to thwart. The loading screen, which constantly provided me with an updated SW-themed scroll with Act I, Act II, Act III now reads…”Interlude”.

I found myself quickly asking…ok, what now?

I’m fairly sure as a n00b level 50, others have asked themselves this question, as well as those within the guild who will be getting there shortly. I owe big Props to Dashl for grouping up through several planets, and Jeezbus for running us through several flashpoints. I also freely acknowledge that I devoured this game content in relatively short time and found myself slightly ahead of the leveling curve in comparison to my Alvian guildmates. This was done consciously, for personal reasons I won’t get into here.

So I’m taking the time to document my research on life after level 50, and present it to you, spoiler-free. I’m sure this entry will not necessarily be complete, and perhaps might even become outdated by the time you read this. But here is my best attempt. Here is how to gear up and get ready for Alvis Operations. I admit, we may be getting slightly ahead of ourselves on this one, since they might be a ways off. But it doesn’t hurt to be prepared ahead of time…

Things to remember as a level 50 n00b:

1) You don’t need regular XP anymore, but you will be continuing to gain legacy XP. Keep this in mind if you’re still on Corellia at level 50, on a bonus quest and somehow thinking you still need to kill n mobs of x in total. Bonus quests provide a nice xp boost, but you don’t need xp anymore. So unless you think there is a hint of getting additional credits or commendations from the bonus, ask yourself if this grind bonus quest is worth it for legacy xp, or if it will help you move your character forward in any way. If the answer lies somewhere in the negative, or if you’re uncertain, or just plain bored, you may wish to discontinue the bonus quest and just focus on the overall quest objective.

2) All quests still provide you gear, credits and legacy xp. Average payouts for most Corellian quests are decent in the 6K+ range/quest. So they’re worth doing.

3) Continue to earn as much money as you can. If you go with Speeder 3 training, you’ll need about 500K or so for class training AND speeder 3 training when you hit 50. I was flat broke afterwards and could barely afford fuel costs when I was done on the Republic fleet. Sure, the 1.5 mill speeder which you can buy from vendors might look enticing, but keep in mind this is a vanity item, an expensive one at that, and might take time to grind that kind of cash. For now, speeder 3 and a nice Aratech Dagger will get the job done at 110% speed, quite adequately.

4) This is an MMO. MMO endgames usually involve the eternal quest for better gear until the level cap is raised and more content is added. SWTOR continues to deliver story and purpose to this MMO grind, but overall, the goal as compared to every other MMO remains the same. Get more gear!

5) According to Devs…more moddable endgame gear is on the way. This is a complaint on the forums I’m reading. The best thing about an MMO is that it is ever evolving, patching, ever improving. We’ve only just begun with SWTOR, folks. If there’s something you don’t like about the game…sit tight…chances are the Devs have noticed and are already working on it.

 

Things to experience at level 50, while your guild is getting ready for Operations:

1) First things first. Help other guildies, to the best of your ability. Class quests and Heroics aren’t always easy, having an extra blaster or saber at their sides will help (not to mention a level 50), and while you won’t earn XP anymore and you’ll be potentially gimping their XP gain for killing the mobs, you will nevertheless earn good karma xp. I’ve had the good fortune of Jeezbus running us through several Flashpoints, and I would say that I am extremely grateful for his assistance. Not only this, but consider the more people hit 50 in Alvis, the more available help you’ll have for some of the more difficult content, just as daily heroics and flashpoints (see below). So help out others and enjoy the content this game has to offer.

2) Gear up, and get ready for endgame PVE content. Here are the known current ways of getting started…

  1. PVE Repeatable Daily Quests. Without story spoiling, if you’re really stuck…Go back to the Republic Fleet. A Twi’lek located in the Cantina will point you to Belsavis, where you will eventually unlock around 8 repeatable daily quests on that planet, in a level 50 zone. These quests, unlike other regular quests, will provide PVE Commendations (along with credits) which can be traded for PVE items on the fleet.  Each quest (there are at least 7) earn 1 commendation and 7150 credits.
  2. Hard mode flashpoints. Group up and try some of the higher-end flashpoints (Directive 7, The Battle of Illum, or The False Emperor), or redo some of the original content on hard, and nightmare modes. The way these work is that the bosses up to the final boss will drop epic gear, and the final boss will drop a class token. All bosses will also drop Tionese Crystals, which are used in conjunction with other commendations to purchase epic PvE gear from the Tionese vendor on the Fleet. The main disadvantage here is that the gear drops are random, and from what I hear, Bioware still has some patching to do to ensure equal distribution amongst classes. As of today, the endgame loot bags we were promised while the game was in development aren’t there yet.
  3. Flashpoint Dailies and Weeklies. These are straightforward and gotten from the Fleet. Complete 1/day and 3/week on Hard Mode to get the max reward. Basically you’ll just be doing Esseles to complete this quest.

4) Gear up, and get ready through endgame PVP content. So – yeah. The PVP item purchasing system is a little confusing at first. But it’s pretty straightforward once you get the hang of it. For this, you’ll mainly do PVP Warzones. Lots of them. I’m guessing premades will help a lot in winning if you can find a good group of people who communicate and work well together. Otherwise, be prepared to swallow your pride and lose…repeatedly. I’ve been in about two dozen battlegrounds so far with Dodd and haven’t won one yet. I keep hearing that Republic isn’t that bad, and I’ve probably just experienced a string of bad luck. You might win a bit in the process, and develop l33t skills, pwn teh nub (then go to iHop).

  1. Grind Warzone Commendations through warzones, and trade them in for Mercenary Commendations at the PVP vendor (at a 3:1 Conversion Rate). Essentially, once you’ve accumulated 800 Warzone Commendations (specifically, 200 Warzone Commendations and 200 Mercenary Commendations), you can start buying Champion and eventually Battlemaster bags once your valor rating is 60. If you’re serious about this grind, you’ll basically want to set aside your tokens until you hit 60 valor so you’re skipping the Champion bags altogether (Rating 140 versus 136). These bags have (at the time of this article) a one in ten chance of dropping random epic items, as well as Champion / Battlemaster tokens which you trade in on the fleet for gear.
  2. Daily and Weekly PvP Warzone Wins – These two quests are picked up on the Fleet. Win 3 matches a day, and 9 a week. Daily gets you 1 Champion Gear bag, and the weekly gets you 3.
  3. PVP Dailies – Similar to Belsavis PVE quests, you will also get a quest to head to Illum, and there are daily quests there which also give rewards for completing specific objectives within a PVP zone. The slicing there is excellent, also…incidentally.

5) Crafting. At the time of this article, there aren’t a whole lot of schematics worth crafting for endgame, from the research I’ve done. Nevertheless, it’s still worth investigating and ensuring both you and your companions have the best crafted gear available.

6) Have you discovered all the holocrons and looked at Matrix Cubes yet? If you’re anything like me…you probably rushed through and never bothered. But they will give you a slight extra edge, so look them up on swtor-spy, and get cracking!

7) Do your companions love you, or hate you? Do you care? Do you want them to open up to you more? Romance, and possibly marry them? Try building your relationship with them by offering them gifts, and questing some more with them.

8) Roll an alt! Same server toons earn shared Legacy XP and it’s easy to run some PVE/PVP dailies on your main to get a couple mods and ship some credits to your new toon and blast through crafting much faster.

9) Social Points, titles, space content…there’s so much more the game has to offer.

I might have missed some stuff here, or there may be some clarifications required. Again, I’m still a newbie level 50, and I’m still putting the pieces together. But I hope this helps you, fellow Alvian, to quickly find your way in the universe after you’ve completed the leveling grind.

May the force be with you.

Tak’s Take: Being a Filthy, Filthy Codex Whore

Does this describe you?  You have just finished the last bonus quest on Taris.  You are ready to leave that planet and its horde of rahkgouls behind.  Suddenly, a persistent itch presents itself at the base of your skull.  Something is missing.  A quick look at your codex reveals your sense of deficiency.  There are things you have not seen, people you have not met, and lore you have not read.  If you cannot relate to this feeling, then congratulations, you are most likely a healthy well adjusted individual.  Otherwise, you are a filthy, filthy codex whore.

Mario Skills FTW!

Mario Skills FTW!

I have only ever played two MMOs: Star Wars: Galaxies and Star Wars: The Old Republic.  The games approach exploration in vastly different ways.  In the Galaxies sandbox, you had vast open vistas that, while often presenting nothing more than a pretty view, offered the hope of discovery.  As a theme park game, The Old Republic often rewards exploration with big red barriers.  So I see the codex as Bioware’s attempt to throw us explorer types a bone.

Curse You Missing Species!

Curse You Missing Species!

The codex encourages exploring areas on the map where no mission icon exists.  It tempts you to take on that champion mob to see what may be hiding behind it.  Loot is secondary to discovery.  However, the codex can also be maddening.  Datacrons, for example, reward exploration with stat bonuses, but require a level of jumping dexterity that I seem to lack.  Oh, Super Mario Bros, did I learn nothing from you.  It also drives you insane when a codex entry is bugged.  I must have travelled the entire map of Ord Mantell five times searching for those last two species entries that were impossible to find.

I like to poke my head in strange places

I like to poke my head in strange places

And yet, my futile attempt to complete the codex entries of Ord Mantell introduced me to my next obsession: completing the world map.  It is always fun to see all those little hexagons disappear from my word map once I have visited every area on the planet.  The bit of XP I get, does not hurt.  Even this has bugs, though.  The only way I could complete the world map on Coruscant was to poke my head through the roof of the starport.

No Hexagons!

No Hexagons!

Those of us who score a 100 percent explorer on the Bartle Gamer Psychology Quiz will find their options limited in Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Thankfully, Bioware has given us a couple of outlets. We have become filthy, filthy codex whores.

Basic Healing Theory

This is not about healing in SWTOR, this is a very very broad overview of healing in MMO’s in general.

Healing is all about “just enough.”  With DPS, you want to do as much as possible, period.  With tanking, if you have extra threat, so what?  With healing, you are constantly balancing health versus your force/energy/ammo bar.

HPM versus HPS

Oh noes, scary letters!  Breathe.  Let me explain.

HPM = Heal Per Mana.  In our case, it’s force/energy/ammo and totally not mana, because that’s so “WoW”, right?  This means what is the heal going to COST you.  After all, a healer who is out of mana is a useless healer and people start croaking.

HPS = Heal Per Second.  This means how much health you’re delivering in a given amount of time.  How fast are you filling up those health bars.

Each healer of every class has hard-hitting expensive heals (High HPS, Low HPM), and slow-ass cheap heals (Low HPS, High HPM).  Your job as a healer is to judge incoming damage and balance between HPS and HPM.

That’s it.  Really.  If the tank is taking slow damage, you can use cheapie heals.  If the tank is dropping fast, you use the big fat mana-hoggy heal-bombs and hope that you will have time later to use cheapie heals and build up your resource pool again.

It’s Probably Not Your Fault

Sure, if you ONLY use your big fat hoggy heals and run yourself out of mana early and the whole group dies, maybe you’re doing it wrong.  However, could you have used anything smaller at any point?  Did you need to spam those huge heals to keep people from croaking?  If so, it’s not your problem.  Someone ELSE was effing up.  Maybe the encounter was too hard.  Maybe morons were standing in the fire.  Maybe the tank overpulled.  Maybe the tank forgot he had cooldowns that he could have used to mitigate the damage.  Maybe there was crowd control fail.

Not every death is your fault.  In fact, most of them are NOT.  Remember that.  And if someone dares to blame you, come down with the fury of Alvis and smite his sorry ass.

Practice Healing

I know, this is DUH, but bear with me.  It is FAR easier to level as DPS and switch to healing later, and that’s fine.  But before you throw yourself hyperventilating into a flashpoint, why don’t you do some heroic quests with your buddies?  Maybe it’s “too easy” but it’s the laboratory where you can learn.

How much of the health bar does the heal fill?  How much of my mana bar does it consume?  Often you’ll be eyeballing the health bars and soon you’ll know exactly the right heal for 1/4 a bar.

It’s a good way to get comfortable with the slow-ass cheapie heals.  Often when you get into your first flashpoint, you kinda panic and go “zomg everyone’s gonna DIEEEE” and start throwing out the heal-bombs and next thing you’re out of mana.  Practicing can give you the confidence to say “this will take care of the damage, nobody will die in the next 3 seconds, I CAN afford to be cheap.”

And finally… where your buttons are.  You do not want to be FUMBLING later.  Half of this is muscle memory.  I am a total dork for about a day after I move any keybinds.

Attitude

The last thing you should take away is that you are super-important.  You are more important than anyone else in your group.  The tank may feel important, but he’s a loser.  You are the backbone of the group. They will die without you.

It is totally ok to let someone die on purpose.  You won’t get dark side points. Don’t do it just to be mean.  Ok, you can do it to be mean, but not too often.  If they can’t get their asses out of the fire, they need to learn the hard way. There are times where you are skilled enough to pull out the miracles to save someone who is about to die.  Whether you choose to go to those extreme lengths is up to you.

If you are out of mana (or whatever) you can (and should) stop the entire group and tell them STOP AND I HAVE TO REGENERATE.  If they wander off anyway, they are just asking to die.

DPS are a dime a dozen.  You are a superstar.  They need you.  Never forget that.

Flashpoint Group Play: A Primer

In recent conversation with a guildmate who hasn’t played an MMO in earnest since Galaxies, he confessed he was afraid that his lack of Warcraft experience would hinder him as he went higher in level. This prompted me to want to write a primer for how group play in MMOs like SWTOR generally work. This is intended to help close the knowledge gap between the WoW vets and the people who skipped that.  Some of the information may seem obvious or elementary, but it is all building to more complicated concepts later.

 

Basic Group Theory: Division of Labor

In group play there are three main roles that people play. Either you are designed to take damage, heal damage, or deal damage. We commonly refer to these roles as Tanks, Healers, and DPS respectively. Unlike in single player games, where at some point you become a god, MMOs divide up the jobs over different classes so people specialize in something and have only moderate abilities if any in the other areas. Tanks for example have talents and equipment designed to reduce that 1,000 point hit down to 750 or even 500 points. They tend to focus on having more health than other roles as well. But the cost to those abilities is they can’t heal themselves and their damage is mediocre compared to a character designed for DPS. Let’s take a look at what the roles do.

Tanking in a Nutshell

If MMO combat was a dance, the Tank would be the one leading. They often plan how the enemies will be pulled, they designate which ones will be crowd controlled, and they decide the kill order. But a tank’s main goals are two fold really:

  1. Stay Alive
  2. Keep enemies hitting them and no one else

The staying alive is partly up to the healer who we will cover later, but also up to the tank. Tanking in general is a very equipment focused role. Your gear directly influences your health pool, armor rating, and your ability to dodge, parry, deflect, or absorb attacks.

In addition to the gear, they also have talents designed to increase their survivability. It may be a talent that adds a debuff limiting the damage output of an opponent. Or it may be a talent that massively reduces incoming damage. Some will be passive requiring now work at all, while others will be something you want to use in special circumstances.

The final part of the staying alive job is knowing when to use your cooldowns. Cooldowns refer to special abilities that cannot be used more than once a minute. These tend to have big effects and should be used judiciously. Warding Call for a Jedi Guardian is an example. It reduces incoming damage by 40%, but can only be used once every three minutes. You would want to save this for when you need it and not just use it every time you can.

Keeping enemies hitting you is the second job a tank must master. Think of enemies (or mobs as they are often called) as having little lists of who they hate most. They will generally always attack the one they perceive as being the biggest threat. If the enemies were rational they would realize that the healer should die first, then the DPS and save the tank for last. But mobs are not terribly rational and we have tools to make them think the low damage guy in heavy armor is way more of a threat to them than the sneaky smuggler who just two shot his friend. Having the mobs attacking you is often referred to as having threat or aggro. One of the key skills a tank must master is when to use his taunt. A taunt forces the mob to switch who it is attacking towards the tank. This is really useful when an enemy is pummeling your healer and you want to redirect it to yourself.

Healing in a Nutshell

Healing is key to any advanced encounter. A good healer can keep bad tanks standing and dumb DPS alive through some rough patches, but a bad healer can let the tank die from simple neglect, wiping the group. The key to healing is knowing your priorities. A healer’s first job is to stay alive. A dead healer does no healing. A common ‘ailment’ of healers is tunnel vision. They get so focused on keeping everyone else alive and watching health bars they neglect to notice they are standing in the fire. The second job is to keep the tank up. Remember tanks are so much better at taking hits than anyone else that in many fights a good tank and healer can finish a fight long after the DPS has died. It may be close, but barring a fight mechanic like an enrage timer or the healer running our of resources (force power, ammo, energy etc), the tank and the healer can often finish the fight. That said keeping your DPS alive really does help.

The key to being a good healer is knowing how much to heal and when. Some fights are just a steady trickle of damage which can be responded with a regular heal. Other fights have large spikes of damage, but they are less frequent. Those might require a large powerful heal to respond, after which the healer goes easy in order to restore the resource pool for healing. Each healing class has strengths and weaknesses. Some are good at AoE heals (an area of effect heal that can heal multiple targets at the same time), others specialize in heals over time (HoTs) which are good for keeping people topped off. Some have really good single target heals but might not be as strong in other areas. It is important to learn the playstyle for your healing class and knowing which heal is the right way to respond to a given situation.

DPS in a Nutshell

DPS gets the reputation of being the easy job. People will rag on you as being a dime a dozen and easily replaceable. And while there are a lot of DPS players out there, the difference between a good DPS player and a bad DPS player is huge. A good DPS player will stand out for the small things they do that help a group out. The fundamentals of being a good DPS player are as follows:

  1. Minimize unnecessary the damage you take
  2. Crowd Control wisely
  3. Focus Fire on the right target

The first thing to know about being DPS is minimizing your incoming damage. If you are the Jedi Knight who insists on standing in the lava for some reason, you are going to irritate your healer who will have to choose between throwing heals at the tank or you. In that case you will lose and you just made the rest of the group’s job harder. Now you can’t always avoid damage. There are plenty of reasons you might take damage. Grenades have splash damage, things fall form cave roofs, and you might have to off-tank something for a second until the tank can pick it off you. Put the important thing is to try and keep it to a minimum.

The second fundamental is mastering your crowd control abilities. The tank may think they are indestructible, but I guarantee you that if enough enemies are hitting him, they will die. Crowd control makes this easier. Before a pull the tank might mark up mobs and tell you to crowd control (force lift, cryo grenade or something else) a particular mob. That essentially reduces your number of enemies everyone is fighting for some period of time. The tank is happy because they have one less thing to worry about, the healer is happy because that is one less source of damage. Keep your target crowd controlled as best you can until the tank turns the groups attention to it. Which leads us to…

Focus fire on the right target. The thing about mobs is they do the same damage output usually whether they are at 100% health or 1% health. The most efficient way to get rid of them is crowd control up some of them and then focus fire one mob at a time until it is dead. Sometimes with many weak mobs it might make more sense to just use area of effect abilities, but when dealing with strong, elite, or champion level mobs, focus firing is the best way to go. Make sure you stay on the right target, and don’t break someone else’s crowd control.

If you do those three things you will get a reputation as being a good DPS player and people won’t think of you as easily replaceable.

Final Note on Kill Order

It seems like Bioware likes to mix the difficult of mobs in flashpoints and heroic quest zones. A strong mob might be surrounded by a few regular mobs. An elite or champion may have a few strong mobs surrounding it. It has been my experience that the best approach towards killing them is to work from weakest to strongest. Crowd control elite mobs and strong mobs if you can and focus on the regulars first wiping them out quickly. As soon as you cannot crowd control the strongest mobs in the pull, have the tank focus on that. A DPS can easily offtank regular mobs since it is just a few seconds of incoming damage before they drop. Stong and elite mobs however generally need a proper tank to absorb the damage.

I hope this helps lay a foundation for group play for players who are new to mmorpgs and want to make an impact in group play in SWTOR.

The Church of Alvis defeats SD-0 and Other Doings of Early Access

Early game access has been with us for about a week and guild chat has been filled with comments like “Hey guys I just saw….”. Here are a few highlights of my week in early access.

 

Celebrity Sighting

We are on Juyo and one of the guilds on our server is named Porkins Pigs. I don’t know if this guy is aiming to join them, but quite frankly his look was well done and I wanted to give him props.

This man is on a mission

Lieutenant Porkins if you ever read this, I salute you for all your hard work and dedication to the Republic.

Alvis Defeats SD-0

Thursday night I was questing on Coruscant when I stumbled upon a world boss known as SD-0. Being the guild spammer I am I said “Hey guys I found a world boss.” I didn’t expect anyone to act on it since people were focusing on leveling at the moment. But to my surprise Jeezbus offered to come and tank it. The team of Jeezbus (level 33 tank), Dashl (Level 18 dps), Bulwark (level 17 dps who was healing), and myself (level 12 tag along) gave it a shot. It took us a few times to master it, but once we got the fight mechanic we got it down.

4 maned the world boss. Props to Jeezbus for tanking.

 

The key for us was me calling out who had the linking debuff and directing them where to run to minimize damage.

 

Crafting is Fun

I’ve played SWG and WoW and crafting has always been somewhat tedious to me. The reason I have figured out was I hated gathering things. When I’m out in the field I want to be shooting and looting, not looking for flowers and rocks. In SWG the resources you needed required a lot of work to get and quality mattered. In WoW my problem was the people I were shooting were always surrounded by materials I couldn’t gather yet. SWTOR has succeeded in helping me enjoy gathering crafts. Namely by allowing me to outsource.

Welcome to my crating workshop.

Being a GM I find often I have to take time away from the action to get involved in helping guild members. The SWTOR crafting minigame allows me to truly do both with competence.

 

Tak’s Take: Smuggling for Fun and Profit

So you want to be a smuggler. Good for you. Smuggling is an exciting and potentially lucrative endeavor. Here is a beginner’s guide to this less than noble profession in four easy steps.

Cloaking is for Pussies

Who needs a cloak?

When you first consider entering the exciting world of smuggling, you may have a moment of weakness: cloaking technology. You should avoid this at all costs. I cannot stress this enough. First, a ship capable of cloaking eliminates your light and medium freighters. As we all know, no ship that small has a cloaking device. If you are so wealthy as to be able to buy a ship large enough to carry a cloak, then why the hell are you smuggling in the first place. Besides, using a cloak to sneak past a blockade will lose you a lot of credibility with the smuggling community. Seriously, we will all point and laugh at you. Sack up and get a light freighter.

Nooks and Crannies

Choose Wisely

Now that we have settled on a light freighter as the ship of choice, it is time to focus on the contours. If you want to be an effective smuggler you are going to need a place to hide your stash. The key is to avoid simple geometric shapes. While your cubes and spheres may be great for hauling around your collective, they tend to make for poor hiding places when you inevitably get boarded. “We are the Borg. We do not know how all that pot got on our ship, officer.” No, the keys to a good smuggling vessel are nooks and crannies. The closer your ship looks like it was designed during an epileptic fit, the closer you are to passing that inspection.

Blasters and Enforcers

One big ass wookiee. . .or three or four.

Now that you have your ship, it is time to get your gun and someone bigger than you. Your choice of fire arm can mean the difference between walking out of the cantina and being dragged out of the cantina to be thrown in the nearest dumpster. You are going to want something quick on the draw, so stick to a small carbine or a blaster. For the love of Alvis, do not pick a melee weapon. They may be great for prancing around in robes or for a good ol’ fashioned baby seal clubbing, but they won’t do you much good when the guy you double-crossed is on the other side of the hanger bay.

Remember, hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a blaster at your side (unless your religion is all about blasters, like The Church of Alvis). You know what else no match is for: a big ass wookiee. What’s better than a big ass wookiee? A big ass wookiee with a life debt is, let me tell ya. Do your best to find the nastiest, foul smelling, so-ugly-his-mama-wouldn’t-kiss-him, bruiser out there, and save his life.

See, simple.

The Crevice that Dare Not Speak its Name

The beer may be warm, but at least it's close.

 

At this point you may think you have everything you need to be a successful smuggler. You would be wrong. Every smuggler reaches a point of last resort; the point where no other hiding place is immediately available. Yes, I am talking about the dirty, dirty business of anal cavity smuggling. Every smuggler must ultimately really on his or her resourcefulness. And nothing says resourcefulness more than being able to cram that balloon up where the sun don’t shine seconds before the authorities break through the hatch. Here are some tips:

  • Wrap that thing in something. Nothing kills resale value more than
    skipping this step.
  • Avoid pointy ends. This tip, as it were, speaks for itself.
  • Lay off the roughage. ‘Cause, you know, gross.

Mazel Tov

Congratulations, you now have the basic steps to successful smuggling. You have taken your first step into a larger world. One last thing to remember; even I get boarded sometimes. When that bounty hunter comes after you, shoot first.

Guild Launch Alliance Offer

The implementation of the guild launch program has assigned The Church of Alvis to the Juyo server. Unfortunately we did not have nearly as many guilds coming along with us as we would have hoped. As a result members of the following guilds are being extended an offer to relocate.

GalacticTradeFederation

Arion

Cult of the Wolf

Lost Smugglers

DHO

The Snark Side

The Watch

For Science

 

For those guilds we want very much for you to locate on Juyo from your assigned server and play with the Church of Alvis. We are prepared to give your members temporary use of our guild to coordinate until such time that you can form your own guild. And that is not all we are prepared to help raise funds for your guild charter as well.

 

Please be part of the growing Juyo server culture and take us up on our offer. Use our forums to coordinate the transition or the comments on this post.