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Comments
Having played through both planets three times each, I'd still say Belsavis is worse.
Ord Mantell is really shitty, but I don't think it really compares with the horrible stuff going on in that prison.
I've played through both Ord Mantell and Belsavis.
The things going on in the prison in Belsavis is worse, but the corruption on Ord Mantell is more entrenched. Ord Mantell is used as a place to send a bunch of new recruits, wherein the corruption then spreads to them.
Ord Mantell is a hive of smugglers, corrupt Republic officers, 'freedom fighters' who are really terrorists, and civilians who have become so used to it they are jaded and cynical about any truly idealistic people who come along.
Belsavis has a few really terrible things happening in it, but you can affect change for the better on that planet, upping people's quality of life, ending real threats, and so on. Ord Mantell has smaller-scale terrible things, but they are so widespread that it would be impossible to actually affect change on the planet by any means short of killing all the seperatists, hunting down a bunch of smugglers and pirates, and replacing damn near every single Republic trooper on the planet with less jaded officers.
Okay, Lin was wondering earlier how I managed to get three levels past him a bit earlier when he wasn't looking.
Well, okay, that's fair enough. So, I'll just write a bit about it here, for those of you who haven't figured it out proper yet.
There's roughly two key elements to knowing what you can take on; you need to know your damage output relative to your opponent's health, and you need to know the underlying threat management system and threat pulling/dumping.
Damage relative to health is sorta simple to pick up, but at the same time, it's got a lot of really fiddly small bits to it that make it kind of a pain in the ass to deal with. Your damage is primarily the whole 'how much damage can I deal?' question, but it also splits into two categories; 'burst' DPS and 'sustained' DPS. Burst DPS, also called 'nuking', is how much DPS you can deal over a very short period of time, usually no more than about five seconds. Sustained DPS, or Damage over Time, is how much damage you can consistently deal- usually less than a Burst character can deal when they are dealing damage, but more than they can deal during their offtime.
There's a lot of fiddly bits to it, though. For example, you have attacks that can temporarily stun an opponent. The Trooper's Explosive Round, for example, knocks weak and standard enemies off their feet, and the Consular's Project stuns any enemies it hits.
It's knowing when to use abilities like those that really tips battles in my favour. I can interrupt enemies with minimal effort, preventing them from using powerful abilities on me, and thus keeping my own health up. I can deal sustained DPS to them, tearing them down before they get to me, and so on.
It... really requires you to play around with combat a lot to master. I tend to experiment a lot in the Black Hole on Corellia with my Shadow to try and experiment a bit, and see what really works. Quests which require me to kill more than a dozen enemies are also a good chance to experiment.
Tanking, or threat management, is a bit different.
Really, tanking is all about knowing how threat works. There's really three things that makes threat tick; threat generation abilities, such as Force Pull and Slow Time; critical damage (so Burst DPS characters have to be careful of that); and healing damage.
Any time a character does any of this, it increases that character's Threat to your opponents. That's also why a lot of people have trouble managing their healer companion's threat generation.
That's... really what it comes down to. Knowing when and how to deal damage to opponents, and knowing how to manage your threat to swap between you and your companions, forms the basis of being effective in combat within TOR, and that's how I managed to get three levels ahead of you, Lin.
Re. Ord Mantell vs. Belsavis:
Now that I've played through both, I think that Ord Mantell is more depressing (although who knows, it might've gotten better after the Separatists were driven off).
When you go to Belsavis, on either side, any illusions you may have had about nobody on the Republic side being capable of evil get quickly dispelled. But even so, the ratio of good people to evil among the Belsavis Republic prison staff is something like 50/50, whereas on Ord Mantell it seems like there are more bastards on the Republic side than not.
The thing that bugs me about Belsavis is that it would've been a good chance to demonstrate that there are decent people working for the Empire just as there are monsters working for the Republic, and they don't do that. In fact, when the Imps gain a foothold and learn of the alien experiments one of the things they do is start the experiments up again.
If the other tank classes are similar to BH Powertech, then it gets easier as you level up. At lower levels I didn't have as many threat-generating moves as I would've liked. But later on I got one dart that served the sole purpose (in PVE anyway) of pissing off the target enough to drop whatever it was doing and attack me, and then I got another dart that did the same thing only to multiple targets in a radius around whoever it hit, etc.
Yeah but I have no idea how to put any of that in practice.
You need to practice.
If you want, I'll log onto Nox soon, and take you to Balmorra's Heroic 4 area, so you can piss around and practice. Tharan will keep you alive.
In other news, here's a comment I found on that shamusyoung site linked elsewhere, on one of his articles about TOR, that I think is basically... the reason behind some people liking it and some not.
My problem is liking the former but finding the latter pretty meh. So while I loved the story, the game was...bland, to me. Not bad per se, but not subscription-worthy. I'll play when it's free.
I'm glad to hear that much, at least. I'll also be happy to buy you some Cartel Coins if you want.
Also, if I can just ask real quick; what class did you play as when you gave the game a shot?
Ah.
Although everyone here particularly likes the Consular, it's generally agreed that the Consular's story is the weakest out of all eight storylines.
When you get back to playing, I'd suggest continuing on with playing your Sith Warrior, but I'd also suggest playing as an Imperial Agent. That class's storyline is agreed by just about everyone to be the best storyline in the game, and it's also the class in which the mechanics of the game support the quests best.
If you want a good Republic story, your best bet would be to play a Knight, or a Trooper. For the most part, the Imperial classes have better stories than the Republic classes, though. (The Sith Inquisitor's class lacks pretty much any character agency, though.)
The Bounty Hunter's gets better in later chapters, though. The Consular's does, too, but not to the same extent.
Of the three class stories I've played (Inquisitor, Agent, Knight), the Agent's is easily the best, especially from the end of act 1 on.
The Knight's is a lot more fun and the characters are great (it had Laura Bailey eeeeee) but it's still the whole "chosen one saves the galaxy" thing.
The Inquisitor is easily the weakest, but the Inquisitor has a lot of great lines and companions.
Okay, since we actually have four people with Level 50 Republics (Kilgore, Forzare, Alkthash and I), I was wondering if anyone here wanted to try some Hard Mode Flashpoints next weekend?
Sure. Either that, or we could do some story mode FPs that some of us haven't done yet. (False Emperor, for example.) I have no strong preference though, and would be open to anything.
I mostly want to do Hard Mode flashpoints so that I can refine my skills as a tank on Nox.
Sure, but I have work, so I won't be around until a bit after three my time. Sorry.
Oh jesus fuck game, I just want to do my fucking class quests. I don't want to go all the way back to fucking Nar Shadaa to grind my way up to Level 28 just so that I can not have my arse handed to me by a fucking dog.
And adorable.
The transfer reward pet? I like him, he is a nice little addition to my Consular's menagerie of pets. CE Mouse Droid, Tauntan Ram, Orokeet, Tauntlet, Graniferi so far. One more and I can have a pokemon team.
There appears to be a new world event like the Rakghoul plague on Nar Shadaa.
Just bumped into one of those news terminals on the fleet.
I'm going to investigate.
Looks like it's a scavenger hunt sort of thing.
EDIT: There's more. After I picked up the scavenger hunt quest, I got a mail telling me to meet someone at the cantina on Dromund Kaas, with an item that started the quest.
Okay, so, just wondering.
Would everyone be okay with doing a hard-mode flashpoint tomorrow, or would they prefer the day after? (Tomorrow for me.)
Do you have a Level 50, Lin? You can't do Hard-Modes until you're Level 50, I believe.
Also, it will be Republic side, as that's where I have my only Level 50.
No, I don't have a fifty.
And wow doing the dailies and weekly mission for the Black Hole forks over a ton of credits. Not so many commendations, but a ton of credits'l
Also, you know what's fun? Running flashpoints with idiots who bitch about damn near anything. Up to and including you getting better stuff via random drops. On the plus side I got a purple robe, so woot.