SWG the Clone wars!!

Venom

I cancelled when the combat rebalance was pushed back but might go back for JTL if it gets good player feedback.

Wertz

Iceman's comments on the whole solo thing and not needing a group illustrates exactly what's wrong with the game: I used to PvP (as a pistoleer it was always a challenge) but PvE was my thing. However there is little a pistoleer can solo unless they have an exceptional/ legendary pistol and doc skills.

CM/riflemen ruined it for me: even with a group of varied player I'd invariably die. I never wanted to play the uber 1337 fotm templates: lack of diversity of skills makes for boring RPGs IMO.
CMs also ruined the GCW and jedi helped bury it.

It'll take a lot more than JTL to get me back: most if not all of my american based guild quit in disgust at the reschedule with talk of WoW taking over. Since WoW servers are to be "forced" for the first few months (latency/ping issues) I'll loose touch with a lot of my guildies.

If and when I read a comprehensive revision of combat/GCW has been implemented I might come back but TBH SOE left me with a bad taste in my mouth in the way they handled their player base.

][cEMAN**

Yup. I mean I used to be a BH. I took about 6 months to get to BH 2-0-4-4. I wasn't pushed on grinding, and I wasn't interested in FOTM.

When I saw a bit of PvP action, I stepped in to do a bit of it, but as a BH (someone who's meant to be capable of tracking down and killing any person who has a bounty on their head) I could do nothing.

I subsidised my lack of skill by taking up a bit of commando as well. I'd seen the flame thrower in action and figured I wanted a bit of that. When I realised how powerful it was, and how pointless BH was to me (bounties weren't taken, you killed a mark....there was no real BH RP ability and the skills were a joke. Didn't even get ranged mit) I started dropping BH, but kept pistoleer. I took up a bit of pistoleer because I wanted to gunsling for a while. Got a bit bored with that and had always wanted to be a swashbuckling swordsman, so I opted for fencer.

Went master fencer, master commando. Now it was more powerful than you'd realise. With mitigation level 3 on ranged and melee, I could withstand almost any brawler elite, and marksman elite. I could stand for up to 5 minutes against about 8 players including 3 riflemen, 2 pistoleers, 2 TKs and a pikeman. It was incredible. A great feeling, and definately nice when people started sending me /tells with how impressed they were. (was nice basically).

Then I had to drop commando because I wanted to get a holo done before publish 9. I went master chef. Dropped most of commando. When I started back up I decided to take in a few professions for taking out bases. Went commando, smuggler, fencer, and threw in a bit of TK for added ranged/melee defences.

I had to drop these when publish 9 hit and I thought "i'll get the rest of my holos in before 10 because the devs are saying they'll give people a reward, and I want my speshull prize" :P. I had to drop smuggler (which was nice for the sliced mission terminals for cash, but of no real other use) and decided to drop commando for a bit more TKM. I wanted the meditation tree.

By the time I had dropped commando and the rest for TKM/Master Fencer, I realised I was becoming a power house. The only thing left to do was take up master brawler, and top up the defenes with pistoleer 0-0-3-0. This gave me ranged mitigation 2 (enough to slap 60% off the dmg span on ranged weapons) and gave me lots of extra stun protection, dizzy protection and blind protection etc.

I've kept that now for a couple of months. It's served me well. I once went with another TKM/Doc, and a CM/Rifleman to Lok and went from city to city wiping out all the overts. Must have racked up about 100 kills in 1 day! I loved it. We teased them because quite frankly, except for poison/disease (which I could meditate off) we were unstoppable.

Recently though i've had to drop pistoleer to get SP to get force powers. A little luck, a little repair, and I think i'll take the 2 melee trees (acc/speed) and the 2 def trees (ranged/melee). I've taken up swordsman 4-4-0-0 in the meantime while i'm waiting for the cycle to level further.

It's not bad y'know. I can still PvP, but now I can take on larger creatures like Krayts. Still takes ages to kill, but the fact that I can do it is fun.

Sadly.....the only way to really get a hunting group going anymore, would be to just drop all elite profession skills and half of the marksman or brawler skills, and go out with a squill hunting group. Once you hit elite combat, there's no real way to hunt in a group. 1 person is always enough.