I received the comment above on an article I wrote last week about companion affection and the legacy unlocks associated with it. At the time I didn’t know that AMR even had an item database for SWTOR, much less that I could link to items in it. I had spoken to the team at Ask Mr. Robot around the time of SWTOR’s early access about testing out their SWTOR features but after I had agreed they never contacted me again (I thought we were friends too, AMR. Why the silent treatment, eh?).

As you can see from my WoW leveling guides and heirloom guides, I’m real big on linking to items when I have a reliable database that I can look things up in and actually work with. Up to this point I’ve been using Torhead, mostly because I had no other option, but also partly because I was hoping that Torhead would eventually get somewhere close to Wowhead in terms of database functionality. Here we are 4.5 months post-launch and Torhead is still lackluster at best as far as items are concerned.

Ask Mr. Robot Has Useful Filters?!?

So I went to Ask Mr. Robot and loaded up their SWTOR Items Database to see what I could find on Synthweaving patterns because I have a Sith Warrior who has 400 Synthweaving and I want to know when I’ve managed to get all of the patterns custom gear from Underworld Trading so I can stop running those stinking missions.

I had already done the search on Torhead, but without any worthwhile filtering on their schematics pages or their armor pages I had to scroll through thousands of items, fifty at a time, and look for the custom pieces myself. That being the pain that it was, I wanted to see how much simpler it was to do at AMR.

Having never even seen their database before, I was able to pull up the search in that screenshot above in about 15 seconds from the time I entered the URL to the time I had my results. You can click on the screenshot to take you to my search if you’d like to see it in action yourself.

Clicking on the individual items gives more specific information about that particular item, which is exactly what I want to see. You get which mods the item accepts, where the pattern for the item comes from, which materials are required to make it (which are also links to more specific info about the mats), what the required skill level is to craft it and at which skill rank it goes from orange to yellow to green to grey.

In short, it has almost everything I would ever want to see from an MMO item database.

How Could AMR Improve?
There are still a few features that I think could be added to improve their database. The filters that they have in place already make it better than Torhead’s in my personal opinion, but they could still add some more features that would make it even more useful.

Screenshots
I know the database isn’t the primary function of AMR so it’s not likely to be a high priority for them, but in the age of transmogrification and people wanting to customize their looks it’s going to become a big deal soon if it isn’t already. With changes in 1.2 allowing custom pieces to proc an Augment slot this gear is now moving into that best in slot category and picking and choosing for the best look is the nature of the customization beast.

One of the biggest features of Wowhead’s item database is that it has not only screenshots but also a 3D model of almost all of the items in game. I think SWTOR is currently locked down to where you can’t get those 3D images from it like you can with WoW, and that’s fine. But allowing users to upload screenshots would still be much better than just the in-game icon that we can see right now.

Most items have a different look depending on which faction you’re viewing them on, so you would need to be able to see pictures of how it would look for both factions if you were trying to decide on a specific look to last you through to the end.

More Filters
The fact that AMR has any filters at all is a really big deal, but they could take it a step further to make it more universally applicable beyond their initial scope of just telling you how to optimize your gear. For example, I’d like to know how these items bind because I have no interest in crafting 25 of an item at once (queuing five on each of my five companions) to proc augment slots if the item in question is Bind on Pickup.

Some additional filters that I would propose include:

• Binds on ??? / Does Not Bind
• Source
• Class

Binding is a pretty big deal if you want to use this database from the perspective of a crafter/seller rather than simply optimization. If you’re making things to give to guildmates or to sell on the GTN then you want to be able to search your items based on whether or not they are Bind on Pickup before anything else. We may or may not see more items that become Bind to Legacy in the future, but having that as an option that’s already in place would be good for when and if that time does come.

Source might not be a huge issue right now with the game still fairly new, but as the game ages and more and more schematics are added to the game it’s going to become more important. Right now there are only a few different sources for schematics as it is, but it would still be good to be able to filter out which ones come from Underworld Trading missions versus which ones come from vendors and so on.

They have a filter for Advanced Class, but that doesn’t help much when you’re dealing with a piece of gear that can be used by Jedi Knights or Troopers. Some end game gear is specified for use by certain AC’s, so I can understand the reasoning for including AC as a filter, but I think they would be better served by have a combined list of both Class and Advanced Class rather than just the AC’s. I might need to play with the existing filters more to see if this is absolutely necessary or if we can get by just fine with what’s there already. I tested the AC filter to see if it would accomplish the kind of filtering that I was looking for, and it worked just fine.

Export Functionality
Entirely selfish of me I know, but I would like to be able to export my filtered lists to a spreadsheet. The purpose of a database is to hold information and offer methods of querying said information. Once that information is collected it should be up to the end user to decide how to manipulate and present it.

I would really like to get spreadsheets of all of the custom gear that you can make with each profession so that I can keep track of which ones I have and which ones I still need. As a programmer who works with databases all day long at work, it’s not that big of a deal for me to get the information off of their pages and make my own spreadsheets with it, I just wish that functionality was built in so that I wouldn’t have to go through that effort every time.

If you want to see my first attempt at a poor man’s export you can check out my Custom Synthweaving Google Doc to see the full list of items. The most important thing I’m missing from that list is that there’s no link going back to AMR’s website so it’s not easy for me to look up which mats are required to make them, or where the schematics can be found. In patch 1.2 most of the schematics just come from Underworld Trading missions or PvP vendors, but in the future I’m sure we’ll have more that are world drops, dungeon/boss drops, or perhaps purchased from vendors for commendations or something along those lines.

Conclusion
Overall, I think the item database at Ask Mr. Robot is honestly the best one I’ve seen for SWTOR to date. It might not be perfect, but it’s a heck of a lot better than some of the others I’ve seen and as far as strictly items are concerned I would say it’s currently the best one out there.

I know that I have seen at least two other sites mentioned this week on twitter as having item databases in the beta stage. I haven’t looked at them (yet) because I don’t think either of those are actually open to the public just yet. Those new ones just might come out and surprise us all, but until I see them in action I’m going to have to give my stamp of approval to Ask Mr. Robot.

In this article I’m going to tell you who those picky companions are who don’t like any of your special gifts, and we’ll look at what your options are for increasing their affection despite their pickiness.

Who Are the Picky Companions?
Before we get into how to deal with these companions, it’s probably a good idea for us to know who these companions are.

Ashara: The third companion for the Sith Inquisitor, found on Taris.
Doc: The third companion for the Jedi Knight, found on Balmorra.
Elara: The second companion for the Trooper, found on Taris.
Jaesa (Light): The third companion for the Sith Warrior, found on/after Alderaan.
Kira: The second companion for the Jedi Knight, found on Coruscant.
Malavi: The second companion for the Sith Warrior, found on Balmorra.
Qyzen: The first companion for the Jedi Consular, found on Tython.
Risha: The third companion for the Smuggler, found on/after Alderaan.

As you can see, there are three Imperial companions and five Republic companions that fall into this category, and you’ll also see that the Sith Warrior and Jedi Knight each have two of these companions.

Ashara is the single-hardest companion to increase affection with because she has no Favorite gifts nor does she have any that she Loves, and only four of the ten total companion gifts does she even Like enough to give you any affection at all. The one plus side to her is that if you’re a male character she will Favorite the Courting gifts once you have her romanced, but romancing her in the first place is going to take a very long time.

Doc has a similar work-around to Ashara because he will Favorite the Courting gifts for a female character who has opened the romance options. Doc is also unique though in that he is the only companion in the game who Loves Courting gifts by default. Otherwise, Doc is the typical picky companion who has at least one type of gift that they at least Love (Courting, Luxury).

Elara also has the romance work-around where she will Favorite Courting gifts from a male character who has established a romance, though again you’ll have to actually earn enough affection to start the romance in the first place before that option becomes available. She is one of the more picky companions though as she only has a single Love gift of Luxury.

Jaesa (Light) is a truly unique companion because you make a choice in game that completely changes who she is and how she acts. By choosing to have her stick with the Light side you convert the one gift that she Favorites (Weapons) into a simple Like. This version of the companion ends up with only two Loves (Cultural Artifact, Republic Memorabilia).

Kira is one of the picky companions who has no work-around, or rather her work-around of Courting for romanced male characters still only gives her a Love and no Favorite. She has two types of gift that she Loves and the rest are either Like or Indifferent. Her Loves are Luxury and Technology, but some players report her Loves bugging into only Likes during certain affection ranges.

Malavi is another companion who has no work-around. On the bright side, at least he does have three different types of gifts that he Loves (Imperial Memorabilia, Military Gear, Weapons).

Qyzen is one of the most picky companions in the game, and he has no work-around. He has a single Love (Weapons), only three Likes, and all of the rest he is Indifferent to. Also, Qyzen is the first companion for the Consular which means he has no built-in affection multiplier to make increasing his affection from questing faster or easier. Having that one Love is the only thing keeping him from being the hardest companion in the game. [Update: As my buddy Volador pointed out in the comments, Qyzen actually does have a work-around which is running the Esseles flashpoint over and over. I have a post on that coming out next week so I didn't mention it here but it actually is a work around so it should be mentioned in this post even though I'm not going into detail on it yet.]

Risha is the final picky companion, and she is also one of those with no work-around. Some of her gifts even appear to be bugged at times so that even her Loves give you affection as though they were only Likes. She is easier to raise affection with than some of the others because she has three Loves (Cultural Art, Luxury, Underworld Goods).

Overcoming Pickiness
Unfortunately there aren’t a whole lot of ways to increase affection with your companions, so you either give them gifts or you take them with you on quests and that’s about all there is to it. For some of my companions, mostly those who have at least one Love gift, I tried to stick with gifting for the most part because I had a stash of gifts on both of my primary servers just waiting to be handed out.

With only two options available, it was either that or go find a place to quest. Questing works well for earning affection, but it can be really frustrating when you’re trying to gain affection with a specific companion because you have no control over how much affection each quest has to offer the companion(s) in question. If you’ve already reached level 50 and are just now starting to work on affection then you might also have the extra hurdle of already having completed some of your best affection quests while using another companion.

Right now there is no specific tool that’s great for finding out how much affection you can get with each companion on each planet or each map within a planet. The best advice I can give you on finding that out is to go to Torhead.com and start digging through it one quest at a time. If it sounds tedious, believe me, you don’t know the half of it.

Hopefully we will get some of those “Coming Soon” Legacy unlocks in Patch 1.3 which include ways to increase the affection that you earn. Until then, there are sadly only these two methods of earning affection and no way to speed it up. Even in 1.3 there will not no new ways to increase it, that I’m aware of, but at least there will be bonuses that you can unlock to the two existing ways.

Giving the Gift of Love
If you’re working on a companion that does at least have one Love gift available, then your fastest method is still going to be gifts. It will certainly be taxing on your pocket book, but it’s still the fastest way to do it. And, if you’ve already completed the majority of the quests available in the game because you’re a high level character or you’re a completionist in terms of questing, then gifts may be the only option you have left outside of daily quests.

There are two reliable ways to obtain companion gifts – mission quests and GTN.

Investigation, Diplomacy, Treasure Hunting, and Underworld Trading are the four crew skills that you can run missions for gifts and none of them is any better at it than another from what I can tell. Which gift you get from running them is apparently completely random so you have no guarantee that you’ll receive a gift that you can actually use on the companion you’re interested in. That’s what makes this particular method potentially so expensive, you could run 20 missions at 2,000 credit each and get gifts that don’t help you (more on this in just a moment).

Using the Global Trade Network gives you control over which gifts you get, but prices can be all over the place. On my two primary servers (Juyo and Sanctum of the Exalted) you can get Rank 5 blues and purples for usually around 5,000 credits each. That’s about 2-2.5 times the price of running a random mission quest, but you know up front which one you’re getting. Sometimes I can find those same gifts for 2-3k credits, and I snatch all of those up if they’re a type that I know will be useful for my companions. I might have max affection on all five companions on the toon I’m buying them with, but I can still mail them to an alt who can use them.

Concerning gifts, don’t forget that these things do not bind to you. Just because you get a gift that none of your Sith Warrior’s companions want doesn’t make it useless. You can mail those to your alts and max their companions’ affection with it instead. You can also put them up for sale on the GTN and use the profit from that gift to fund one that you do need.

Finding Gifts on GTN: For whatever complete lack of reasoning, you can’t search directly for gifts on the GTN because there’s no category dedicated to them. That doesn’t mean you can’t find them, it just means you have to know how to do it.

First, select Miscellaneous as the category. Next, you have to set the Rarity to at least the green quality. Then you can click on Search and it will pull up all of the companion gifts that match or beat the rarity that you set. You’ll also get a few items that aren’t companion gifts at all, but those are usually some of the most expensive items listed and an easy to pick them out of the gifts is by looking at the bottom-right corner of the item icon for a number. Companion gifts stack so they have a number showing their quantity, but the lockboxes that sell in this category do not so there’s no number. You can also just mouse-over them and read the tooltips, of course.

When you’re buying gifts off of the GTN you want to check first to see which type of gift it is, and then see which rank it is. Anything that’s Rank 4+ are the ones you’ll want to consider buying. You can pick up some Rank 3′s if they’re cheap, but I wouldn’t go below blue quality for those and I wouldn’t pay more than a couple hundred credits at most. With Rank 4+ I’ll take anything that’s green quality or better that’s a decent price. In my experience, “decent” caps out at 5k for Rank 5 and 3-4k for Rank 4 depending on which type it is.

I typically only buy Rank 3 gifts if they’re purple quality because I don’t usually see super cheap Rank 3′s and the purple quality ones are the only ones that give enough affection that I would care to buy them in the first place.

When you’re looking at buying in bulk make sure you scroll through all of the tabs on the GTN because the GTN by default sorts strictly by total price. You don’t want to buy a single Rank 5 gift for 5,000 credits when two pages later you can buy a stack of four for 8,000. I love finding stacks of 4-5 selling at less than 50% of their worth, and it happens almost every day.

How to Gift Efficiently
The key to gifting a companion’s affection high enough to either unlock their legacy feature or reach the 10,000 cap is to know which types of gifts to give and when.

The first goal you should set with a new companion is reaching the 4,000 affection mark. Why is 4,000 important? Because it’s the easiest breakpoint to reach with cheap gifts. To reach this goal you want to find out which non-Courting gift your companion Favorites. Assuming they have a favorite, and not all of them do, you’ll want to buy 63 Rank 1 gifts from the Companion Gifts Vendor and then start handing them out. That’s going to be 12,600 credits worth of gifts so that you know.

Now, 63 is the number of Rank 1 gifts that you need to give a companion who has zero affection starting out in order to get them to 4,000 affection. Beyond that point it’s no longer cost effective to stick with Rank 1 gifts. If you already have affection with that companion then you’ll want to buy a smaller quantity. You can figure out how many gifts you need with a companion who already has affection with the following formula: (2,000 – CurrentAffection) / 54. Round that number up and that’s how many gifts you need to buy. If you don’t like math, just buy 10 gifts at a time until you get over 3,500 affection and then buy them 1-2 at a time until you pass 4,000. If you have extra, go ahead and use them even though you’ll only get 19 affection for each one. You don’t get 0 Affection from Rank 1 until you reach 6,000 affection, so even though returns are low, they’re still useful.

Once you reach the 4,000 mark you can start handing out your higher ranked gifts. Anything Rank 3 or higher will still give you decent returns as long as your companion Favorites or Loves them. You can start with Rank 5′s if you want or you can do 3′s and 4′s instead, just use what you’ve got starting with the lowest ranks and lowest qualities and move up from there.

Rank 2 gifts that you purchase from the vendor are a waste of credits. They cost 3x as much as the Rank 1 gifts and rarely give even 2x as much affection, so you’re better off skipping Rank 2 all together. If gifts are really expensive on the GTN then you can get by with Rank 2′s until you reach 8,000 affection, but it’s going to cost you 3,000 credits for roughly 100 affection at that level.

Affection While Questing
Questing is certainly slower than gifting, but you earn money while questing rather than spending it. Also, keep in mind that each companion has an affection multiplier regards to questing and affection because of when you gain access to the companion.

Affection Multiplier
If you take any character you’ve got that has a companion and go do a quest with the first companion you get, you’ll notice that the majority of the affection that they gain during conversations come in 15′s. Someone says something, you reply, companion likes it, +15 Affection. If it’s something they really like it might be +30 instead, and if it’s something that’s crucial to their personality it might be something big like +150. Pretty simple, right?

Now, if you take your second companion and do the same thing then for the majority of companions you’re going to gain affection in multiples of 20 instead. Something simple is +20, something they like +40 or +60, and something huge for them might be up to +200.

Now jump to your final companion and your simple conversations are going to reward something like +55 or +65 Affection instead of that measly +15 or +20.

This is because of that timeline that I talked about yesterday. Bioware knows that you won’t be questing as much with a later companion as you will your initial companion based solely on how long you have access to them. Not in terms of the level 1-50 timeline, anyway. So to compensate for that each companion beyond the first has an extra multiplier to increase the amount that they get from each conversation item.

This is important to know because it’s the key to maximizing your affection gains while questing. If you’re looking up quests on Torhead.com then you’ll see the total amount of affection gained by each companion off to the right. Those calculations are incorrect though, because they don’t take the multiplier into consideration. Let’s take Qyzen and Nadia for example, the first and last companion for the Consular class. If Torhead shows that both of them receive 60 Affection for a quest, then that means you’re going to get 60 for Qyzen because he has a multiplier of 1.0 (so no bonus at all) while Nadia is going to get closer to 260 because her multiplier is around 4.3 for being the last companion.

I haven’t done the research to get the exact multiplier for every companion, but if I can get my hands on that information then I will certainly share it with you here.

If you’re comfortable with math then you can calculate roughly how much affection you’ll get with each companion by dividing the amount the Torhead tells you you’ll get by 15 and then multiplying the result by however much affection your companion gets from a typical 15 affection response. If Torhead says +30 but you’re on a companion that gets 20 each time then 30 / 15 = 2 x 20 = 40 affection. If you’ve figured out the actual multiplier then you can just multiply the Torhead total by the amount: 30 x 1.333 = 40 affection.

If you’re not comfortable with math then all you need to remember is that you’ll get more affection per response from a later companion than you will with an earlier companion. You can use that information to determine whether you want to spend your credits getting gifts for a companion who gets only 15 affection per quest but has a Favorite gift or if you would rather buy gifts from one who gets 45 affection per quest but has only Love gifts. I can’t just tell you which route is better for you because it’s going to be completely different for every player because there are just too many variables to take into account based on play style and quest completion.

Gift Popularity
Now I’m going to link you to that same Google Document that I linked to yesterday, only this time I’m going to link you to the first sheet.

Google Document: Companions

Scroll down below that initial table and look at the one directly below it titled “Total Companion Gift Affinity (+++ / ++ / +)”. There I have calculated how many companions like each gift and to what degree. This information is useful in figuring out which types of gifts are the most valuable, or which ones are used by the most companions. You can use that to determine whether or not you want to blow a purple Rank 5 Weapon on a companion who only Likes/Loves Weapon gifts, or if you’d rather save it for another companion. You can also use it to determine which price you want to sell them at yourself or how much you’re willing to pay for them if you’re buying. I’m sure you can come up with other uses beyond that as well.

This table shows how many companions Favorite, Love, or Like each gift, then it breaks down that same information for each individual class so that even those of you who are not altoholics can figure out how valuable each type of gift is for your current character list.

Here is some of the information that I found when putting that list together that I consider good bits of information for everyone to know:

• Weapons are the ultimate gift with 10 Favorites, 10 Loves, and 14 Likes
• Cultural Artifacts and Techonology are the second most-used at 6 Favorites and 5+ Loves
• Republic Memorabilia is the least common gift with only 1 Favorite and 8 Loves
• Imperial Memorabilia is the second least liked gift with 2 Favorites and only 5 Loves
• Courting is the second most liked gift, but only when considering Romances, otherwise it’s the worst gift in game

You can get more details by looking at the table.

Weapons are kind of like the wild card of gifts because of the 40 total companions in the game (not counting C2 and 2V) 20 of them either Love or Favorite Weapons. This makes them not only the most valued, but also the most versatile. So in general, Weapons are the best gifts you can get because there are only six companions in the whole game that don’t at least Like weapons.

Troopers have the only companion in the game who Favorites Republic Memorabilia, but both factions have four companions who Love it. Imperial Memorabilia is Favorited by one companion in each faction, but it has fewer who Love it than the Republic version.

Courting ranks high on this table because it includes bonuses from Romance options. If you take romances out, it’s easily the most worthless gift in the game. Since most of the Courting numbers take into account both the male and female romanceable companions you can cut the numbers in half by default, and if you’re too low level for your romance to take place then you can drop the number by an additional one. In short, Courting is great if you’ve already established a romance, but otherwise it’s total garbage and you’re better off selling them to a vendor or saving them for another character’s romance rather than trying to sell them on the GTN.

Today I wanted to talk just a little bit more about companions and how they relate to the Legacy system. I’ll start off by going over what perks exist in the Legacy system for companions and why you would want to unlock them, then we’ll get into how and when you unlock those perks.

I’m also going to talk about companion gifts and how they relate to each of the companions in the game as well as methods you can use to maximize your affection with your companions outside of companion gifts.

Companion Legacy Perks
The first thing to understand about the Companion Legacy Perks is how many there are. The game has eight total class, each of which has five companions. So eight classes times five companions equals forty total companion perks. That’s step one, so keep that in mind but don’t dig too deep into that just yet.

Second, you need to note that companion perk actually consists of four individual perks, but three of those perks can only be opened once per legacy. Not once per character or once per faction or whatever, but once per legacy period. Those three non-stacking perks are tied to the five different companion types, and every class has one companion of each of the five types:

Melee DPS: +Surge, +12 seconds to Heroic Moment duration, -1 minute Heroic Moment cooldown
Melee Tank: +Accuracy, +12 seconds to Heroic Moment duration, -1 minute Heroic Moment cooldown
Ranged DPS: +Crit chance, +12 seconds to Heroic Moment duration, -1 minute Heroic Moment cooldown
Ranged Tank: +Max Health, +12 seconds to Heroic Moment duration, -1 minute Heroic Moment cooldown
Healer: +Healing received, +12 seconds to Heroic Moment duration, -1 minute Heroic Moment cooldown

That is the list of the three perks that can be unlocked only once per legacy. For example, Vette is a Ranged DPS companion so unlocking her affection will give you a bonus to Crit chance, an extra 12 seconds on your Heroic Moment duration, and a one minute reduction to the cooldown of Heroic Moment. If you then unlock another Ranged DPS companion, such as Zenith from the Jedi Consular, then you will not get any of those three perks from maximizing his affection and completing all of his conversations. However, you can unlock Vette as your Ranged DPS and then unlock Theran Cedrax as Healer and you would get the full perks from both of them because it’s the type of companion that determines these three perks, not which classes you unlock them in.

The fourth perk that’s tied into the companion legacy unlock is a +10 Presence bonus, and you get it for every companion. Keep in mind, when I say “every companion” I’m talking about every unique companion. If you level up two Sith Inquisitors and you finish all of the conversations and quests with Khem Val on both of them, you only get credit for unlocking Khem Val once.

So if you level one of all eight classes and unlock all of your companions then you’ll end up with +400 Presence from the stacking perks, and then you’ll get +60 seconds to Heroic Moment’s duration, -5 minutes on Heroic Moment’s cooldown, and you’ll get a bonus to Surge, Accuracy, Crit chance, Health, and Healing received though I have no hard numbers are any of the stat bonuses.

If you were instead to level two of each class on either the Republic or Imperial faction, then you would end up with only +200 Presence for the 20 unique companions between the four classes, though you would still get the full bonus to HM duration, the full reduction to HM cooldown, and the non-Presence stat buffs.

Here is a table to show you which companions fall into which categories

Unlocking Companion Legacy Perks
Every class has five companions that are tied to their legacy unlocks, and each of those five companions falls into one type of NPC (healer, melee tank, ranged tank, melee dps, ranged dps). To unlock the companion and their associated buffs you’ll need to complete all conversations and quests associated with that companion.

What that means is, you’ll have to increase affection with each companion to somewhere between 9,250 and 10,000 affection because all of those conversations and quests are tied first and foremost to affection level. Some of your companions also have additional restrictions on their conversations and quests, the most common of which is that most (if not all) of the companions that you can romance will require you to complete Chapter 1 (in some cases Chapter 2) before they actually romance you and the romance conversations and quests are reliant on that.

Also, the first companion that every class gets has actual quests that are tied to their affection. So far it looks like each of the first companions has three quest chains that they’ll start for you. Some of them include combat which will restrict the level that you can accomplish them at, and others are purely conversation so can be done at any level.

As I was listening to Darth Hater Podcast Ep. 120 this morning I heard them discussing these companion unlocks and naturally someone on the internet was “wrong” so I’m here to set you right on that part. You do not have to be level 50 to unlock all of your companions’ legacy perks. As you can see in the screenshot below, I have unlocked all five of my companions on my level 36 Warrior (level 38 in the shot). [NOTE: My wife reached level 50 on her Sorc last night and we found the Khem Val does not give you his final quest until you finish your class story, so he basically does require you to be level 50 to unlock his legacy feature. It's possible that other companions will do the same.]

The Warrior’s first companion, Vette, only has combat in her first quest and her other two are all conversation. I was able to solo all of my class quests on Hoth at level 36-37 which was required to get my final companion. Other classes, such as the Smuggler have a first companion who does have combat in their quests which will restrict the level at which you can complete them without help from higher level characters. I believe when we did Corso’s final quest for my wife, we were level 35′ish facing off against level 45 mobs so we had to have help from one of the guild’s 50′s (thanks War!).

Affection – What Does It Do?
In short, Affection increases your companions’ crew skill performance. For every 2,000 Affection your companions get +1% Crit chance and +3% Efficiency. So at the max 10,000 Affection each of your companions has +5% Crit and +15% Efficiency. I’ve gotten mixed replies when looking for more specific information about whether you get the crit/efficiency bonuses only at the breakpoints or if you get partial percentages as well.

Affection is also the gateway to companion conversations and quests, which is why I brought it up. Most companions, especially those who you do not romance and who are not your first companion, will only need 9,250 Affection to unlock all of their conversations. I suggest you go ahead and max them out regardless so that you get the full bonus to Crit and Efficiency, but if you’re just shooting for being able to unlock all of the legacy features then you can stop with most companions in the lower 9k range.

If you don’t want to bother with reaching max affection, you just want to get all of the quests completed, then the best method of doing this is to gather the companion gifts associated with the companion(s) in question (see below) and then go to your ship. Your ship opens conversation options that do not exist elsewhere, so go there. Do any quests that appear for the companion, and then step off of your ship and back into your hanger. You can’t give gifts inside the ship itself, so you have to step outside.

While in the hanger give your companion gifts to raise them to the next increment of 250 (250, 500, 750, 1,000) and then step back inside your ship. For example, if you’re at 9,014 affection with Broonmark, then you should give him gifts until he’s at 9,250 or higher and then go into the ship to see if another conversation has opened up. There’s an icon that’s supposed to pop up over your companion’s portrait when they want to talk to you, and you’re supposed to right-click on them and they’ll say something about needing to talk to you, but I’ve found that since 1.2 neither of those are reliable. Also, don’t trust your map or mini-map to tell you they have a quest either. Go to where your companion hangs out in your ship and actually look at them to see if there’s a quest marker or not. If there’s not, go back to the hanger and get back to gifting until the next increment of 250 and repeat the process.

[UPDATE: Also, I forgot to mention that if you're over 9,000 Affection with a given companion then every time you complete the conversations/quests that they have available you should check on your Legacy screen to see if you've unlocked the companion. By default the Legacy screen is bound to the 'Y' key, but if you're big on setting up custom keybindings then you may have overwritten that. You can also access the Legacy screen from the menu bar in-game, the same one that has buttons for your character, you skill tree, and so on.

If you check the Legacy Screen and you see your companion's portrait showing instead of the shadowy silhouette then you've successfully unlocked that companion and you no longer need to increase their affection unless you want to get the full crit and efficiency bonuses for having max affection. If you do still see silhouettes then you'll need to get back to handing out those gifts.]

Affection Farming: Companion Gifts
In patch 1.2 we had two really great changes to the way companion gifts work. First, they removed the 30 second cooldown on them which is fantastic, and second they made them actually stack inside your inventory so that you can use them way more effectively.

Companion gifts come in 10 different types, and each companion likes different types to different degrees. There are four different levels to which a companion can like or dislike a particular type of gift. The four levels are Indifferent, Like, Love, and Favorite.

Each type of gift also comes in four qualities just like your gear does, which is White < Green < Blue < Purple. Naturally, the higher the quality the higher the affection gain. However, gifts also come in five levels, or ranks, from 1-5 which are targeted for different affection levels. Basically, every 2,000 points of affection relates to 1 rank worth of companion gift and your companion's current affection level determines whether they get more or less from a particular rank of companion gift. If you want to get deep into the math to calculate how much affection you'll get from each type of gift then I'll direct you to Dulfy’s post on Companion Gifts.

Gifts are the fastest and easiest method of increasing affection. They certainly aren’t the cheapest, but they are the fastest. Other methods of farming affection include flashpoints and regular questing, both of which we’ll talk about next.

You can scroll to the bottom of this post to find a table that shows you which gifts each companion likes, and how much they like them so you’ll know which gifts to give them.

There will also be a chart of companion gifts that shows you which companions like them so if you find yourself with an abundance of Trophies, you’ll know who you can give them to.

Affection Farming: Black Talon and Esseles
Farming these low level flashpoints is an easy and relatively quick way to earn around 450 Affection with your first companion, no matter which class you’re using. Companions other than the one you start with will receive no affection from running these flashpoints.

Be aware that in order to maximize your affection gains from these runs, you’ll also have to make Light Side and Dark Side choices that are in line with that companions personality. In some cases that’s good since you can also farm your LS/DS points, but in others your companion may very well contradict your alignment so you’ll need to decide whether you want to make all of the maximum affection choices or if you’re willing to sacrifice some affection gains, and take penalties in some cases, in order to maintain or increase your alignment standing.

If you don’t mind running these flashpoints repeatedly then you also have the option of running through to max affection even though you make an opposing alignment choice, and once affection is maxed you just switch out that companion for another or for none at all and then rerun the flashpoint a few more times to get your alignment back where you want it to be (or further along if you want).

This post is already getting longer than I had intended for it to be, so I’m going to leave out the conversation options to maximize all of the companions in this post, but I will have a post specifically dedicated to these in the near future when I decide on the layout I want to do it in.

Affection Farming: Questing
The most effective method I’ve found for farming affection while doing normal questing is to simply look all of the quests up on Torhead.com and open the chat options to see what’s there. You can filter it by class and/or companion if you’d like to make it simpler when striving for affection with just one.

You can do this by searching for the name of the quest if you already know it, or by looking up the name of the NPC who is associated with the quest. If you look up an NPC then you can scroll down to see the names of the quests that they start and the quests that they end, then open the one you need. Not all of the conversation options are there, but the majority of them are.

If you find that you’re in the middle of one of those quests and you’ve run out of conversation options on Torhead but there are still things to say in the game then you’ll want to scroll down further and look at the comments. For most quests there are users who have linked the follow-up quest in the comments. The vast majority of follow-up quests starts right in the middle of a conversation when turning in another quest, so if things start to look a bit different or the subject of the conversation changes then you’ll want to look into follow-up quests.

I will warn you that Torhead is not 100% accurate, but it’s close. You’ll find a lot of conversations where Torhead doesn’t have anything listed, but you can still actually gain affection. You’ll also see that sometimes the game will glitch and not reward you with affection when it should have. If Torhead says you should get affection, but you don’t see it in game then you should press Escape to cancel the quest and then start it up again. If it doesn’t give you affection after the second try, then Torhead was probably wrong, but 90% of the time it’s just a glitch in the game. When the game glitches like that though, you will not get affection that you should have if you don’t back out of the quest. My wife and I have done the same quest on the same class while leveling together and had it glitch for her but not me and at the end of the quest having made exact same decisions I received more affection that she did.

Disclaimer: Doing something like this, where you’re looking up all of the answers for you, can very easily have a negative impact on your enjoyment of the game. Any time you seek to min/max in a game there is always a trade off of some kind. If you’re going to max affection with one of your companions then you’re basically sacrificing your own personality and your freedom of choice in order to score points with the companion. If that’s going to bother you, then don’t do it.

Companion Rushing and Questing
One last thing I wanted to touch on in regards to companions and affection is something I call Companion Rushing. Companion Rushing is where you skip over a particular planet’s quest chains and instead focus solely on your own class quest in order to obtain a companion. This type of rushing is done for multiple reasons, but typically because you either want more companions so that you can send out your maximum number of companions on crew skill tasks and still have one to quest with, or because Companions come with higher level gear so rushing to get a companion from the end of your class story on one planet will mean that that particular companion is overpowered for that same planet.

The quests that are on a planet give affection rewards to your companions with the assumption that you follow a static timeline. That means if you have a companion that you get on Tatooine for example, then none of the quests on that planet are going to give you affection gains with that companion unless the time that you do that quest coincides with the time you’re “supposed” to have gotten the companion if you had done all of the quests in the order that they were designed to be done in. So, rushing to get your companion will give you the companion quicker, but if you plan to quest on that same planet then you’ll want to use another companion while in conversations because the new companion will most likely have no gains or losses associated with that planet’s quests.

This same logic applies to doing Esseles and Black Talon runs, as well. If you don’t have access to a companion during the level range that’s appropriate for the content, then there are no affection gains to be had. That’s why those first two flashpoints only reward affection with the first companion of every class, because in terms of the timeline your other companions don’t technically exist at the time your character is supposedly running through those flashpoints. The developers didn’t bother putting in affection rewards for later companions to receive during earlier content, so just be sure to use appropriate level companions during all conversations.

Affection Tables
The first table that I was going to link here turned out to be freaking massive since there are 40 companions to put into it, so I decided not to include the table here. Instead, I’m going to give you a link to a Google Document that I made to house all of my companion related information and research, and I’ll let you use the second sheet in there to see which companions like which gives.

Google Doc: Companions

That link should default you to the tab that has all 40 companions listed alphabetically on the top so that you can easily scroll over and find the one you’re looking for. I tried to use everyone’s first name as a point of reference there, except for those who are known most commonly by a title and then a name. For example, Doctor Lokin is listed under ‘D’ rather than ‘L’.

This second table lists each type of companion gift and then breaks down how much each companion likes that gift. When you have companion gifts sitting in your inventory and you need to figure out what to do with them, refer to this list to find out who has the best affection gains from it.

{R} indicates that companion only gets that amount of affection if you currently have an active romance with them. Otherwise, they will appear in one of the other categories for that item, or not at all.

I’m going to look at the entire legacy system here, so I’ll also touch just a little bit on the family tree, then we’ll get into the global unlocks which is where the price analysis will come into play, and we’ll wrap it up with a quick look at the Coming Soon tab of the legacy screen

Family Tree
The family tree portion is the one I care about the least because it does absolutely nothing at this point. It does work, it lets you put people up there and assign them to different relationships to your other characters, but what relationships are there have no impact at all on game play so it’s purely a vanity feature. That said, I do actually fill out my trees, even if I only do it because seeing it blank when I pull up the legacy tree is like staring at a puzzle just waiting for me to put it together.

I think they did a decent job with the family tree and giving us options for which relationships to form. My major gripe with the family tree is that you can’t assign multiple people to the majority of the positions within the tree. I can understand that for spouse, but for something like Rival? I have seven Republic characters and one Empire character on the same server, so I’d really like to make that Imperial a rival to several of the other characters, but I can’t.

Other than that, I think they did a good job with the family tree for what it is.

Imperial and Republic Classes
Each class has two features that unlock after you finish Chapter 2, one that you unlock for finishing Chapter 3, and then a total of five that represents each of your non-ship droid companions after you finish all of their quests (which takes anywhere from 9,250 – 10,000 affection each).

The /ClassName Emotes
Requires: Complete Chapter 2
Alternative: None

I haven’t seen all of these yet because I only have two classes above chapter 2 (Consular, Warrior). The two that I do have are sort of cool considering what they are. I liked that I was able to use the /warrior emote on a Jedi Consular Shadow and have my glowy red fists of doom that had my wife asking me what the crap I was doing. These emotes are really short and give just a little hint to the fact that you’ve leveled a character of another class, and I actually enjoy having them.

Personally, I would like to see these opened up for completing chapter 1 instead of 2. Since it’s another purely vanity reward it doesn’t hurt to give it earlier than it currently is, and I think something nice and small like this would be suitable for having finished the first chapter.

Class Buffs
Requires: Complete Chapter 2
Alternative: None

This is one of my favorite features, honestly. It’s such a minor thing in the long run, but as someone who likes to focus on leveling I just really like being able to make my characters stronger. I like big buffs and I cannot lie. I like having access to all class buffs with a single class, so I’m a big fan. It lets me not have to worry about whether or not everyone’s caught up on their buffs when I’m grouped up, I just cast my own and know that we’re all good.

Heroic Class Ability
Requires: Complete Chapter 3
Alternative: None

Each class that you complete chapter 3 with will unlock a special version of a signature spell that you can use on your alts during their Heroic Moment cooldown. These spells are in no way balanced against each other, they simply took the coolest spells they could from each class that would make at least some amount of sense on all of the other classes and threw it out there.

Despite some of these spells being underwhelming for me on a personal level, I think the idea of this feature as a whole was really well done and it was implemented pretty well too. Right now I only have one of these unlocked on my servers, which is the Consular’s Project spell. Shortly after receiving it though I started focusing on another pair of alts with my wife on another server so I haven’t had a chance to actually use it yet.

Could they have chosen better spells? In some cases, I would say yes and in others I think they nailed it. Overall though, any complaints that I had about their spell selection in the past were just me being picky. Taking another look at it, I think it’s a job well done.

Companion Quest Bonuses
Requires: Completion of all conversations and quests with this companion
Alternative: None

There are five types of companions:
– Melee DPS: +Surge, +12 seconds to HM duration, -1 minute HM cooldown
– Melee Tank: +Accuracy, +12 seconds to HM duration, -1 minute HM cooldown
– Ranged DPS: +Critical Hit chance, +12 seconds to HM duration, -1 minute HM cooldown
– Ranged Tank: +Max Health, +12 seconds to HM duration, -1 minute HM cooldown
– Healer: +Healing received, +12 seconds to HM duration, -1 minute HM cooldown

If you do this with all five companion types you end up with an extra minute on the duration of your Heroic Moment and a 5 minute reduction to the cooldown.

The first time you unlock this feature for each of those five types of companions gives you a specific buff (see list above). Also, every time you complete this requirement for any companion, even duplicates of the same type (but not the same class), you’ll receive a +10 Presence buff to all of your characters. So each of the buffs mentioned in the list above can be obtained only once per Legacy, but you get a +10 Presence buff for every companion for a total +400 Presence if you finish all 40 companions.

Species
The species unlock was one of my primary objections to Legacy as an altoholic because of our restricted character slots. There are nine species to choose from, but only eight character slots so you can’t unlock them all without deleting characters (unless you want to pay credits to unlock them instead), and even if you did level all of the races in order to unlock them all then you’d be out of character slots to actually use them for. Bioware has stated that they’re looking into ways to expand the character slots, so while it’s still a concern because it hasn’t been addressed yet and the plans could fall through, I’ve got faith that Bioware actually listens to their customers and will follow through.

Unlocking a species makes that species an available choice for all classes. In some cases, such as Cyborgs, it also unlocks additional character creation customization options.

You unlock a species by reaching level 50 with a character of that species. Alternatively, you can spend credits to unlock this if you’ve reached at least Legacy Level 5. The cost is 1,500,000 credits for each race except for Humans which costs only 500,000 credits. Unlocking the Human species also gives you a +100 Presence bonus for all of your characters since the Human species can already be used for all classes.

From an altoholic’s perspective, it still sucks that there are nine races but only eight character slots, but again I have faith that they are going to address it. All that aside, I think the addition of a feature like this is fantastic. One thing that still bugs me to this day about WoW is that there are restrictions on race and class combinations, and I am thrilled that this feature exits in SWTOR and truly wish that WoW would embrace the concept.

In regards to the alternative method of unlocking these, I think 1.5 million credits is a bit too high. On the one hand, people who are going to pay to unlock the features probably aren’t the ones who are also going to want to unlock them all. There will be exceptions to that of course, but in general I think the people who would rather pay to unlock them would only want one or two unlocked. Even then, I think 1.5 million is a bit high. Overall, it costs 12.5 million credits to unlock all nine races if you go that route, and that’s pushing insanity in terms of money sinks.

Other
There are a lot of different features unlocked in this section, so we’ll break it down and look at each group individually.

Alignment
Legacy of Sacrifice: Injure your companion to instantly heal yourself
Requires: Level 50 and Dark V or above
Alternative: 250,000 and Legacy Level 10

Legacy of Unity: Reduces the damage taken by you and your companion for a short duration
Requires: Level 50 and Light V or above
Alternative: 250,000 and Legacy Level 10

I don’t have either of these unlocked yet, so I haven’t used them myself to see how effective they are. I do like that these are tied into companions though which means it’s one more thing that can’t be abused by raid leaders requiring their members to have a certain alignment in order to get a special buff and so on. These features don’t necessarily scream light side or dark side to me, but as far as unlocking features goes I think these are both nice options to include so I think they did a good job with them.

I tried to think of what might be a better fit for these two, and I really couldn’t come up with anything fantastic. The only idea that came to mind at all really was to give a buff to LS/DS gains on your other alts so that you could reach the different ranks faster on them.

Ship Unlocks
Repair Droid: A droid on your ship who buys items, repairs gear, and sells unique droid mods.
Requires: Legacy Level 7 and costs 1,000,000 credits
Alternative: None

Ship Mailbox: Unlocks a mailbox on board all characters’ ships.
Requires: Legacy Level 10 and costs 500,000 credits
Alternative: None

Operations Training Dummy: Unlocks a dummy on your ships that simulates an Operations-difficulty target.
Requires: Legacy Level 10 and costs 500,000 credits
Alternative: None

Warzone Training Dummy: Unlocks a dummy on your ships that simulates a PvP target.
Requires: Legacy Level 10 and costs 500,000 credits
Alternative: None

Galactic Market Kiosk: Unlocks a neutral GTN terminal on your ships.
Requires: Legacy Level 25 and costs 5,000,000 credits
Alternative: None

The Repair Droid deserves a special mention because it sells Sensor mods for your C2-N2 and 2V-R8 ship droids that gives them bonuses to crew skills. I’ll direct you to Dulfy’s blog for information on which units exist. One of the sensors is particularly worthy of note because it gives +5 Cybertech Crit which none of the existing companions have. Beyond those items, this is primarily a convenience benefit. The 1 million credit price tag is incredibly high in my opinion unless you can get a return on your investment from the droid mods to make up that money in a short time. Selling trash is already as simple as clicking a button and waiting 60 seconds for a companion to do it for you from anywhere in the world.

The mailbox and GTN kiosk are both convenience, and personally I won’t bother buying either of them unless I find myself suddenly rich and have no reason not to buy them just to spend the cash. The cost on that GTN kiosk is insane if you ask me. I understand the convenience of always having one close to you, but I do all of my auctioning on a single alt to whom all of my items are mailed and he’s perpetually by the GTN anyway. Five million credits for a little slice of convenience to players who will most likely spend the majority of their time on the Fleet anyway is just absurd.

Training Dummies can be really beneficial to people who like to maximize their performance for raiding or warzones, which they can actually do now that we have combat log functionality. Prices aren’t too terrible for these, I guess. I think they should put some free to use ones out in the worlds/fleet somewhere in addition to these and then have purchasable ones opened up on the guild capitol ships once those become available as well so that guilds can practice together by themselves.

Valor
Punch: Unlocks the Punch move in unarmed combat.
Requires: Valor Rank 5
Alternative: Legacy Level 5 and costs ??? credits

Jab: Unlocks the Jab move in unarmed combat.
Requires: Valor Rank 10
Alternative: Legacy Level 8 and costs ??? credits

Uppercut: Unlocks the Uppercut move in unarmed combat.
Requires: Valor Rank 15
Alternative: Legacy Level 10 and costs ??? credits

Bash: Unlocks the Bash move in unarmed combat.
Requires: Valor Rank 25
Alternative: Legacy Level 15 and costs 30,000 credits

These are all just fun little moves that you can do to box with your friends. It’s the perfect kind of vanity reward for the game, and even though not everyone is going to want to sit around and punch their friends in the face I think this was the perfect example of a set of legacy features that are both easy to earn and also easy to purchase.

While farming DNA during the Rakghoul event on Tatooine we entertained ourselves with fist fights while waiting for our infections to reach stage 2 and it was a lot of fun. Things like this add more flavor and fun little quirkiness to the game.

Convenience
Legacy Fleet Pass 1/2/3: Reduces the cooldown of Emergency Fleet Pass by 1/2/3 hours, cumulative.
Requires: Legacy Level 5/10/15 and costs 100,000/200,000/300,000 credits
Alternative: None

Legacy Travel 1/2/3: Reduces the cooldown of Quick Travel by 1/2/3 minutes, cumulative.
Requires: Legacy Level 5/10/15 and costs 100,000/200,000/300,000 credits
Alternative: None

Rocket Boost: Unlocks use of personal rocket boosters on all characters.
Requires: Legacy Level 8 and costs 2,000,000 credits
Alternative: None

Improved Rocket Boost 1: Decreases the cooldown of Rocket Boost by 30 seconds.
Requires: Legacy Level 10 and costs 1,000,000 credits
Alternative: None

Improved Rocket Boost 2: Decreases the cooldown of Rocket Boost by 60 seconds.
Requires: Legacy Level 12 and costs 1,500,000 credits
Alternative: None

The Legacy Fleet Pass and Legacy Travel features are both really cool in their general concept, which is lowering cooldown times. I don’t think the amount of time is enough for me to personally want to pay 600,000 credits to unlock them all though. If the cooldown for Quick Travel was reduced by 10-15 minutes total instead of only 6, then I might be more tempted to get it. But still, at 600k I have to consider just how many times I’ve needed to use QT and have it be on cooldown for less than 6 minutes. I can think of four or five, which means there’s probably been a dozen or more in reality, and all of those times I either used my fleet pass instead or just hopped a flight and spent an extra 30 seconds getting to where I was going. Personally, I think these are either a tad over priced or more likely too small of a reduction to really be worth it.

For the Emergency Fleet Pass though, there’s no way I would invest any amount of money in reducing that cooldown unless it could be reduced to no longer 1 hour at most. For 600,000 credits I can buy 600 regular fleet passes that cooldown in only one hour, and in four months I’ve used less than 10 of those. Either the cost should be significantly reduced on these or the amount of time reduced should be significantly increased or else these three features are a total waste.

Rocket Boost is one of the features I was most looking forward to, but with a 2 million credit price tag that sucker can wait. I haven’t unlocked it and I’ve only seen/known one person who has, but this one seems incredibly over priced to me. That better be one heck of a speed boost and usable in PvP for me to spend that kind of money on it. And oh, the hell that will be raised if they do allow it in PvP. I saw confirmation today that you cannot use the Rocket Boost in PvP or while in combat, which is good for PvP, but which completely removes any chance that I’m going to spend 2 million credits on this. Unless it moves faster than speeders do and its duration is long enough that I can get from one city to another on a map, then this thing is just ridiculous. Seriously? 2 million? Make it 200,000 and then I’ll buy it.

This is basically a vanity sprint spell. It’ll get you from point A to point B faster than most of the other methods of travel you’ve got, but it can’t be used in any setting in which having a speed boost is truly beneficial to your character (no combat, no PvP) which greatly reduces the usefulness. Instead it becomes a way to look cool while you’re moving around when it’s not on cooldown, and that’s about it.

Social
Companion Dance: Dance together with your companion.
Requires: Social 2
Alternative: Legacy Level 3 and costs ??? credits

Tech Emotes: Unlocks /datapad, /holocom, and /map emotes.
Requires: Social 4
Alternative: Legacy Level 8 and costs 50,000 credits

Tool Emotes: Unlocks /scanred, /scangreen, /binoculars, and /weld emotes.
Requires: Social 6
Alternative: Legacy Level 12, and costs 100,000 credits

Double Lasers Emote: Unlocks the /doublelasers emote.
Requires: Social 10
Alternative: Legacy Level 15 and costs 150,000 credits

The companion dance option is fun and one that a lot of people were looking forward to. Unfortunately, the dance doesn’t loop so you only dance for about 5 seconds and then you stop which makes it a bit less interesting. The good thing is it currently will continue to play the dance even if you start moving which is kinda fun.

I haven’t seen any of the other three groups of emotes, so I can’t say anything about them. As emotes are pure vanity, I’d say prices are fairly reasonable for those who will be interested in that sort of thing.

With patch 1.2 they significantly increased how quickly you build social ranks, so earning these without paying the price will be much easier. Particularly if you’re willing to roll a fresh character with at least 1 other person to party with you through the leveling process. My level 50 character is still Social 1, but a level 19 alt I rolled over the weekend is almost halfway to Social 3.

Coming Soon
Overall, I like what the Legacy System has to offer in 1.2, though I don’t care for the majority of their pricing to unlock the features that cannot otherwise be earned. As I mentioned in going over them above, there are a few suggestions I would make to improve some of them but I’m only one player in a sea of players.

There are several additional legacy features that are set up in the “Coming Soon” tab as well. The assumption is that they will be included in patch 1.3, but I don’t think we’ve received official confirmation on that. At least, not for all of them.

Some of the coming soon features are ones that I’m really looking forward to, which I’ll go over here in a moment. First, let’s take a look at what the future has in store:

Advancement
Flashpoint Experience Bonus 1/2/3/4/5: Increases experience gains from killing major enemies in flashpoints.
Space Experience Bonus 1/2/3/4/5: Increases the experience gains from completing space missions.
Warzone Experience Bonus 1/2/3/4/5: Increases experience gains from completing warzones.

Extra experience for doing the things you want to do is an absolute win in my book. My assumption is that these will each provide either 1% or 2% per rank that you unlock, for a total of 5-10% increased experience. I haven’t sat down and explored experience gains from each activity enough to know exactly how much difference there is between each one and questing to see if my assumed numbers are either too low or too high, but I would be surprised to see much more than that.

With no information on how to unlock them, I can’t say much about that aspect of it. From what I’ve seen in 1.2 so far, I expect the prices on these to be equally ridiculous if I’m being completely honest. I very much doubt that they are going to make them easily accessible.

Travel
Celerity 1/2: Increases sprint speed.
Legacy Speeder License: Grants use of level 25 speeders at level 10.

Faster movement speed is king in MMO’s. Faster run speed and earlier access to mounts are both pure win in my books. I would imagine we’re going to spend somewhere between 1-2.5 million on the sprint speed increases, if not more, and I would be very surprised if they didn’t charge at least 2.5-5 million for the reduced speeder level based on current pricing.

Companion
Legacy of Altruism 1/2/3: Increases affection gains from giving gifts to companions.
Legacy of Persuasion 1/2/3: Increases affection gains from conversation options.
Legacy of Crafting 1/2/3: Increases chance of critical success while crafting.
Legacy of Leadership 1/2: Companions sell junk faster.

I like what we have in store for Companions in the future. Selling junk faster is just about worthless to me with how few areas there are in the game that have lots of mobs to drop stuff and no vendor to sell to. I do run out of space, don’t get me wrong, but it happens so very seldom that I wouldn’t even consider buying that one unless I was overflowing with credits and had nothing better to do with it.

Increasing affection gains and critical crafting success are both fantastic ideas. Again, I’m sure the price tags are going to be astronomical, but I’ll certainly work towards them. My priority from this list will be Crafting first and then I’ll probably rotate the other two since I like to do a combination of both methods when getting affection with my companions.

Convenience
Repair Droid 1/2/3: Creates a repair droid that you and allies can use to repair gear in the field.
Priority Medevac 1/2: Return at increased health after dying and respawning at a med center.
Field Respec: Reset your skill tree in the field.
Portable Mailbox: Drop a mailbox in the field for you and your allies to use.

Here we see that everyone will have access to the SWTOR version of Jeeves as long as they can afford it. I’m going to assume that the different versions of the droid either have progressively shorter cooldowns, better pricing, or they’ll sell a better variety or more useful items.

The Priority Medevac is incredibly stupid from how I’m reading it. Respawning at a med center means that you’re spawning at a safe location where you can spend a few seconds to recoup your full health and mana for free. Unless someone is dying at an unfathomably frequent rate then I don’t see where there’s any appeal at all in this feature, much less two different ranks of it. If you unlock this one by dying 500 deaths or something then I’ll get it, but if you have to pay credits then anything over about 500 credits would be asking too much in my opinion.

Field Respec is a fantastic idea though, so I’ll give full props on that one. There’s a ton of time to be saved by being able to respec on the fly rather than returning to the fleet, and in situations like raiding it’s truly invaluable. For me, I just like being able to change as the situation demands, and I hope the cooldown on this thing isn’t too terrible and they just leave the credit cost as the speed bump for using it often.

Portable Mailbox is another fun convenience feature. It doesn’t appeal to me nearly as much in SWTOR as it did in WoW, mostly because there’s no real farming to be done in SWTOR. The only reason I would need a mailbox randomly while out in the middle of nowhere is if I’ve been farming kills and my bags are full of items that need to be reverse engineered, and those places don’t exist in this game. This is one that’s much like the GTN kiosk that’s in 1.2 right now, where it’s cool to have it but at the same time it’s so completely unnecessary that without a very small price tag on it there’s no reason for me to buy it.

Hello everyone! At BioWare we’re always listening to our fans and we’ve heard our community’s comments around players with Level 50 characters being the only group awarded 30 days of play time. We appreciate the feedback and are pleased to announce that we are expanding our Legacy Promotion, also awarding 30 days of play time at no charge to players that have reached Legacy Level 6 (who may not have a 50th level character).

We just released the innovative Legacy System as part of Game Update 1.2, and felt that looking at Legacy point progression across all of your characters was a great way to reward our most avid players. This means that any of the experience you earn with any of your characters brings you closer to the goal of Legacy Level 6. The choice of how to get to Legacy Level 6 is yours.

First, you need to have passed Chapter 1 to unlock your legacy. Examples of how to get to Legacy Level 6 include:
A pair of characters Level 45 and 42
A trio of characters of Levels 45, 32 and 32
A bunch of characters Levels 35, 33, 31, 29 and 20
A single 50th level character that has enjoyed the endgame for a brief time
Remember these are just examples – you’re free to choose how to earn your Legacy experience to gain Legacy Level 6.

We’ve also got another significant piece of good news: everyone will have until April 22nd at noon CDT (5:00pm GMT – click here for a time zone converter) to have a Level 50 character or Legacy Level 6 on their account to get 30 days of game time on us. (Your 30 days of game time will be applied to your account on April 25th by 11:59pm CDT.) Players will now have multiple options, as well as more time, to try and reach these goals.

As always, we appreciate your feedback and will do our best to surprise and delight our customers.

Dr Greg Zeschuk
Studio GM, BioWare Austin

I have to give Bioware some serious props with this announcement. They made an announcement yesterday that was meant to be a good thing, but due to some horrible wording they actually pissed off a large portion of their player base. Today they’ve released this expansion on yesterday’s reward and redefined the whole thing.

And I think they’ve done a great job.

The first thing they did in redefining this reward is getting rid of those three horrible words. No longer are they rewarding players for things that are very open to interpretation and nearly immeasurable. Now they’re giving this reward to people who have achieved a specific thing within the game and taken into account the altoholic play style.

Second, they put an extension on the time limit so not only are you no longer screwed if you hadn’t already achieved the initial goal of level 50, now you’ve got another 9 days to plan and work towards achieving it. Legacy 6 isn’t too terrible to achieve, and that 9 day extension gives you time to push for it if you haven’t already achieved it. This completely changes the foundation of the reward because it’s no longer set in stone that you’ve either already done this by now or you’re screwed, and that’s a huge deal if you ask me. It’s also important to note that those 9 days includes two full weekends for extra playtime.

Third, it should not be understated how awesome it is that Bioware heard the outcry and within a day had redefined it. It might not please every customer out there that it wasn’t given to an even larger group of people, but you do have to draw some line with a reward like this because it literally is a loss of money on their part. They aren’t just giving away something virtual this time, they’re basically handing out cash as a thank you.

Overall? /salute

In case you haven’t seen the most recent announcement, here’s the Source.

With the launch of Patch 1.2, Bioware has decided to give out some extra rewards to their players. I’m going to assume that this has been planned because I have faith in Bioware. I’m slightly annoyed right now, so I’m going to go with that assumption rather than the one I’m hearing from other people that this is a distraction to take away from the fact that rated warzones didn’t make it into the patch which pissed a lot of people off last night resulting in scores of people cancelling their subscriptions (and for the record, I really don’t care about the rated warzones thing, I’d rather it come in working than come in buggy).

Thank You Gift: Legacy Tauntaun Ram
The first reward they’re giving out is the Tauntaun Ram pet. This cute, furry little fellow goes out to all active subscribers that meet the following criteria:

• You must have purchased the game and redeemed an official Game Product Registration Code at the Code Redemption Center.
• You must have signed up for a recurring subscription using a valid payment method OR redeemed a Game Time Code.
• Your account must not be banned.

Not an active subscriber? Purchase the game and activate your account on or before April 21st at 12:00PM CDT, 5:00PM GMT and you will receive the Legacy Tauntuan Ram pet*!

Deadline: April 12 or April 21

This pet can be yours if you’re a current subscriber, and not banned, and you can still get it if you bring your account back to active status by next Saturday.

I think this is a nice little gift, and one that a lot of players will be happy to receive.

Unsubscribe Gift: 1 Week Free
The third reward (though I’m listing it second) goes out to players who have cancelled their subscriptions. For having cancelled your account, you get to come back and try out the new content and features free for one week, starting tomorrow and ending next Thursday.

Also, if you happen to resubscribe before April 21sth you’ll also receive the Tauntaun Ramp Pet that they are giving to those of us who have remained loyal.

This one doesn’t really bother me. They want to bring people back into the game and not make them feel too left out or else they might just turn right back around and quit again when they see loyal players got something they didn’t. I know it’s going to piss some of the loyal players off, but the loyal players aren’t missing out on anything, they just aren’t getting anything super special unless they also apply for this next reward as well.

Level 50 Gift: 30 days free
The next reward they’re handing out is 30 days of play time to all players who have a level 50 character.

A SPECIAL GIFT FOR OUR LEVEL 50 PLAYERS – 30 DAYS OF PLAY TIME ON US!

As a thanks for being one of our most valued players, every active account with a Level 50 character as of April 12th, 2012 at 12:00PM CDT / 5:00PM GMT, will receive thirty (30) days of game time** in appreciation for your support and loyalty.

In order to receive your thirty (30) days of game time, you must meet the following requirements by April 12th, 2012, at 12:00PM CDT / 5:00PM GMT:

• You must have purchased the game and redeemed an official Game Product Registration Code at the Code Redemption Center.
• You must have signed up for a recurring subscription using a valid payment method OR redeemed a Game Time Code.
• You must have at least one level 50 character.
• Your account must not be banned.

This is the one that’s got me a little bit annoyed. Getting 30 days free is cool, right? What’s wrong with that?

Being an altoholic is what’s wrong with that.

I’ve been playing this game since early access, and pretty much every single day since I got in save for when I’m out of town or when my wife wants to have a night away from the computers. In an average week, I log somewhere between 35 and 55 hours on this game. The big kicker there? I don’t have a single level 50 character. Why not? Because I’m an altoholic who prefers to level various toons rather than reaching the level cap because I couldn’t care less about raiding.

I’m going to assume that they’re rewarding level 50 players, not because they reached level 50, but because they’ve been dealing with bugged encounters in Operations for four months. That would make sense, right? People have put up with crappy content, so they deserve a reward? I think that’s fair.

However, they state right there in that little quote “As a thanks for being one of our most valued players, every active account with a Level 50 character as of April 12th, 2012 at 12:00PM CDT / 5:00PM GMT, will receive thirty (30) days of game time** in appreciation for your support and loyalty.” Notice that there’s no extra time to qualify for this reward? Either you have a level 50 character as of today or you don’t get the reward. There’s no time for me to jump on that level 47 character I’ve been ignoring for weeks and make up those three levels real fast to get this reward that we knew nothing about. Nope, they just reward their loyal level 50′s and move on.

Loyalty is an interesting word for them to have chosen here. By getting a character to level 50, you are loyal, supportive, and valued. For doing something that a dedicated player can achieve in a roughly five days /played you are labeled as loyal, supportive, and valued.

What does that make someone like me who has established Legacy on four servers (counting PTS), and who puts in over 40 hours of play time each week on average? Apparently it doesn’t make me loyal, supportive, or valued. Beyond that I don’t know what it makes me other than an active subscriber.

As an altoholic I’m going around experiencing all of the content that they have put into this game, listening to all of the voice acting, exploring every map, playing all of the classes more than once to see the stories told from both Light/Dark and Male/Female points of view, and I’m being shown less appreciation than someone who can reach level 50 by pressing the spacebar to skip through all of the voice acting, does only enough quests to move on to the next planet, and rushing through content while ignoring all of the things that Bioware has spent all of this time developing.

Maybe as an altoholic I’m supposed to accept the Legacy system as my thanks for playing the game. I seem to recall writing another article (or was it two articles?) about how the legacy system doesn’t actually meet the needs of a hardcore altoholic, but it’s a step in the right direction at least. Maybe the problem isn’t so much that they don’t appreciate us as it is they have no fucking idea what an altoholic actually is?

On the one hand, this is sort of a slap in the face as Bioware hands out rewards to certain people while ignoring others. I don’t really take it as an insult despite all that I’ve just said and how I said it. I don’t think it’s them actively saying, “we don’t care about altoholics” so much as they just completely missed the point of alting.

This paints a pretty clear picture of what Bioware thinks an altoholic is.

And they’re wrong.

Update: My Calculations
My wife wanted to see how much time we’ve put into SWTOR since neither of us have earned the free month of play time without having a level 50 character.

Total Levels: 430 (not including characters below level 11)
Non-PTS Levels: 391
Total /Played: 29 days, 9 hours, 9 minutes (696.5 hours)
Average Hours per Week: 42.24 (a full time job, plus a little overtime)

The numbers don’t lie, folks.

Now, I don’t have anything at all wrong with Bioware rewarding people who have level 50 characters. What I have a problem with is that they rewarded them for being their valued, loyal, and supportive players with no regard for the rest of us.

I completely agree with Liore’s comments concerning this type of reward being a good business move for retaining the end game players. I pretty much said that exact same thing in the article when I posted it. I never said Bioware hates altoholics, I said they don’t understand us. And I stand by that.

Liore is also right in that altoholics don’t usually need much in the way of rewards to keep us interested. We like the leveling game so we keep right on playing. We don’t need all those sparkly, purple gear drops to keep us going because we just have fun in our own little world of progressing via character levels rather than boss kills. What they fail to understand is that while we don’t need all of those shiny carrots to lure us forward, it’s not very fun to see all the people around you getting other rewards (like 30 days of play time) when we frequently get nothing.

A good move would have been to give all of the level 50 characters something in game like a title. “Crash Site Survivor” signifying that you lasted through all the buggy encounters and crashes, or something like that, would have been both fun and rewarding to those players. Instead, they gave everyone who had reached level 50 $15 for doing so even if they had never stepped foot in any of the buggy content that the level 50′s are potentially getting this reward for. Let me state for perfect clarity right now that I have no problem at all with Bioware rewarding people for reaching level 50.

In essence, we’re paying the $15 Altoholic Tax for not playing the game the same way other players are. Would I have paid that money anyway? Of course, but that’s not the point. Why don’t I deserve to be rewarded in a similar way when I’m experiencing the content that they spent the majority of their budget on when someone who skipped it all potentially is? Does 42 hours a week not prove that I’m loyal? Does offering people seven day passes frequently via twitter not show that I’m supportive? I think I’ve done my part to show that, I’m just disappointed that I’m seeing rewards handed out to one type of player to show their value while my type is ignored (sending the message, “we don’t value you” or “we don’t value you as much”).

I know a lot of people will not want to use heirlooms on their monks, especially since the class and expansion are going to be brand new, but I also know that there are a lot of people who really don’t like the leveling process at all who are going to make use of every heirloom they can get their hands on. And you can’t forget the twinks, of course.

This guide is written for those of you who do want to use heirlooms on your Monks, and would like a little direction in which purchases to make, and which enchants to use on them if you feel like maximizing your leveling potential.

As you continue reading, please keep in mind that this guide is aimed strictly at showing you which heirlooms are you best option among the heirloom gear; I am not necessarily saying that you should use these heirlooms exclusively and ignore all other gear. For example, I would never use the Dread Pirate Ring unless I really wanted to level a character quickly because it offers only secondary stats and an experience bonus. I would much rather use rings that provide a bonus to my primary stats that I know I’m going to use. As a guide that covers heirlooms though, I’m going over every slot for which heirlooms exist to say, “if you’re going to use an heirloom in this slot, then this is the one you want.”

Heirlooms in Mists of Pandaria
As far as we are aware at this point, there have been no new changes to heirlooms in the upcoming expansion. The items still have the same level restrictions, the same item level limits that prevent using upgraded enchants, a quick scroll through the list looks like they all give the same bonuses to the same stats, and there is still no way of getting heirlooms from one server to another without paying for a character transfer.

There has also been no change to the methods of farming for your heirlooms, so you’ll still need to pick your chosen method(s) of farming for Justice Points, Honor, Champion Seals, Darkmoon Artifacts, and gold along with guild reputation.

The fastest method of farming that I’ve found so far has definitely been Honor farming. Doing random BG’s at least until you score a victory, hitting Tol Borad every chance you get, doing Wintergrasp weeklies, and so on can really get those Honor points flowing. The PvE heirlooms are almost without exception better than the PvP heirlooms, but you can convert your Honor to Justice Points and still earn those heirlooms faster than if you had just farmed the JP itself. Running a few random dungeons can speed up that process too, of course, but if you’re going to pick and single method and stick with it then Honor is the key for me.

A Quick and Dirty Look at the Monk Class
Monks are the new class coming in Mists of Pandaria (MoP), which are very mechanically similar to Druids in many ways. Monk talent trees allow them to fill three of the four roles: tank, heals, and melee DPS.

Two of the Monk talent trees utilize Agility as their primary stat, very similar to the Druid’s feral forms. The third tree, healing, utilizes Intellect as their primary stat, similar to the Druid’s Moonkin and Restoration specs. Monks also have another resource called Chi, but gear has no impact on Chi so I will not discuss it in this article.

The only real difference in heirloom choices between the two classes at all is in which weapons they are able to equip. Monks have a pretty limited selection of weapons to chose from, but they also have the advantage of being able to dual wield in all three specs. According to the Monk overview on battle.net, the Monk can use the following weapons: Fist, one-handed Axe, one-handed Mace, one-handed Sword, Staff, Polearm. Of those weapons, there are no fist or polearm heirlooms and the restriction of only being able to use one-handed versions of most of the melee weapons as well as no access to Daggers means that some of the better Agility-based heirlooms are off limits. Lucky for the Mistweaver healing spec, Monks do have access to staves which means they’ll be flying high with one of the strongest heirloom weapons available.

Brewmaster (Tank) and Windwalker (Melee DPS)
Both of these specs use Agility as their primary stat, so many of our gear choices will be very simple. At this point in time I am not in the MoP beta yet, so my knowledge of the class comes only from what I’ve been able to read online. Once I am able to see more about how each of these specs work I will be able to revise this list, if necessary, to adjust some item slots if a secondary stat priority makes one weapon (for example) significantly better than another.

As far as the armor pieces go, there’s no question those are the ones that you want. Since Monks are limited to only cloth and leather armor, you want the leather pieces that have Agility (not that you have a choice).

Weapons give you a little bit of wiggle room because there are two options for you to choose from. The only reason I went with a Sacred Charge and a Mace is because I found no indication in my research that Monks gain any particular benefit from Haste. The Sacred Charge has a higher Crit bonus because it has no other secondary stat, so I would lean towards using one from a min/max perspective. The values of the secondary stats are low enough that you’ll be perfectly fine dual-wielding Maces if you would rather do that.

The only reason I’m suggesting Haste trinkets is because you would get no benefit at all from the Intellect trinkets and their mana restoration, which is your only other option for heirlooms.

Mistweaver (Healing)
The Monk is a leather wearing class, so leather armor is the way you should go in my opinion. If you have the cloth heirlooms and want to use those then feel free to do so. The major difference between the leather set and the cloth set is that leather pieces have Spirit on them while cloth pieces have Haste. While looking over the Mistweaver’s healing spells, I didn’t see any particular need for Haste where as the changes to intellect and mana pools has only increased the importance of Spirit for mana regeneration.

The staff beats out the one handed options at every level. You can occasionally get higher stats for a level or two when you combine a one-handed BoA caster mace with an off-hand item, but the staff will top the combination again within a few levels until you get near to not using the 1-80 heirlooms any more anyway. Even though you can dual wield as a Monk healer, the off-hand weapons that have caster stats on them suck.

Enchanting Your Monk Heirlooms
I know a lot of people feel that using heirlooms in the first place already makes the leveling process too easy or too fast, but I play to level and I treat my leveling game the same way other people treat their end game. That means I like to maximize my performance at all times and in every way that I can, which includes enchanting my heirlooms with the best enchants available.

For those slots that I give multiple options for enchanting I have listed the enchants in the order that I would suggest them. As this guide is directed at leveling, I’m going to put my focus on leveling and not PvP twinking. What this means is, I’m going to lean heavily towards enchants that will benefit you through the entire leveling process as much as possible. If you are looking at this list for your twinks then you shouldn’t necessarily assume that it’s the best enchant for a PvP twink. If you have questions about enchanting heirlooms for your twinks, leave me a comment and I’ll be happy to help.

Brewmaster and Windwalker (Agility)
Helm: (Return to Gear)

Both of the Arcanums require you to grind reputation to purchase, and they both have a level requirement of 70.

Ferocity is the clear winner here as there isn’t an Agility enchant available for you. Outcast is a decent option, though it’s not spectacular since Strength is only half as good as Agility at best, and the Intellect doesn’t do anything for you in either of these specs.

Cloak: (Return to Gear)

Stealth requires a reputation grind, but has no level requirement. The Embroideries require Tailoring of 400 to activate. Flexweave Underlay requires Engineering 380 to activate and use.

Stealth is by far your best option thanks to the change it received in the Shattering making it what it is today. Superior Defense is a great enchant when you’re at a low level, but the higher you go the less important it becomes, so from a leveling perspective I’d even take +3 Agility over +70 Armor.

Shoulder: (Return to Gear)

The Inscriptions and Greater Inscriptions (except Gladiator) all require reputation grinds. Inscriptions require level 64 to activate, and Greater Inscriptions require level 70 to activate. Master’s Inscriptions require the Inscription profession and a skill level of 400 to activate.

My personal preference on Shoulder enchants is the level 64 Inscriptions, Vengeance in this case, because it gives me 16 full levels of benefit before I stop wearing the heirloom shoulders. Next up for me would be the Greater Inscriptions to use from 70-80. The Inscription profession is one that gives little benefit to having on more than one character on the same server, so I wouldn’t personally use the Master’s Inscriptions.

If you’re a Brewmaster Tank, then you’ll want to look at the last 3 for your tanking stats.

Chest: (Return to Gear)

While an extra 100 health is a pretty big deal early on, it doesn’t take long to become nearly worthless. For that reason my personal recommendation is that you go with either the +4 or +3 Stats enchants. With Stats you’re getting 10 health for each point, plus you’re getting that buff to your primary and secondary attribute stats as well.

Weapons: (Return to Gear)

Since Monks can dual wield, you’ll most likely want to use two +15 Agility enchants on your weapons. I haven’t found a good article covering the stat changes in MoP yet, so I’m not 100% sure if Monks will benefit at all from Strength or not. Since I’m not sure, I’m going to assume that things remain as they are for now, and I’ll revise this portion later if I find out differently.

My personal preference for Monks will be to use the Agility enchants over Crusader, or possibly to use one of each enchant with Crusader on the main hand weapon for more chances to proc its effect.

Ring: (Return to Gear)

This ring enchant requires a reputation grind to purchase the pattern for it, requires you to be an Enchanter to activate it, and requires character level 25 to activate. I don’t have the heirloom ring to try it out myself, but there are mixed replies as to whether or not there is an Enchanting skill level requirement to activate them as well, though it would be 300 if so.

Since only enchanters can enchant their own rings, I’m only going to list this one since it has the most benefit with the lowest level requirement. If you level an enchanter high enough to use the other enchants possible, the mats are cheap to re-enchant it with whatever you want instead.

Mistweaver (Intellect)
Helm: (Return to Gear)

Both of the Arcanums require you to grind reputation to purchase, and they both have a level requirement of 70.

It’s up to you whether you would rather enchant more for DPS (Arcanum of Power) or Healing (Arcanum of Renewal). Personally, I went with Renewal for mine because I prefer Intellect over Spell Power for leveling because as a healer there’s very little chance you’ll need to increase your Hit and with the changes to mana in this expansion I’d rather boost my Spirit for the extra regen.

Cloak: (Return to Gear)

Stealth requires a reputation grind, but has no level requirement. The Embroideries require Tailoring of 400 to activate. Flexweave Underlay requires Engineering 380 to activate and use.

If you’re wondering where the caster enchants are for cloaks, welcome to the club. Your best choices are professions-specific and will give you no benefit until you’re in your 60′s at the earliest. If you’re a solo player or like to level in PvP, then Stealth and Superior Defense are your best options because they’ll add some survivability. If you prefer to stay in groups then Subtlety is a decent option to help reduce your threat, though it’s largely unnecessary. My personal preference is Stealth, though I do have Subtlety on one of mine and a +5 to All Resistances on another. There just isn’t a good caster option outside of professions.

Shoulder: (Return to Gear)

The Inscriptions and Greater Inscriptions (except Gladiator) all require reputation grinds. Inscriptions require level 64 to activate, and Greater Inscriptions require level 70 to activate. Master’s Inscriptions require the Inscription profession and a skill level of 400 to activate.

My personal preference on Shoulder enchants is the level 64 Inscriptions, Discipline in this case, because it gives me 16 full levels of benefit before I stop wearing the heirloom shoulders. Next up for me would be the Greater Inscriptions to use from 70-80. The Inscription profession is one that gives little benefit to having on more than one character on the same server, so I wouldn’t personally use the Master’s Inscriptions.

Chest: (Return to Gear)

While an extra 100 health or mana is a pretty big deal early on, it doesn’t take long to become nearly worthless. For that reason my personal recommendation is that you go with either the +4 or +3 Stats enchants. With Stats you’re getting health and spell power for each point, plus you’re getting that buff to your primary and secondary attribute stats as well.

With the changes to mana in MoP, maybe the +100 Mana enchant will become a big deal, but I don’t think that’s going to be the case.

Weapon: (Return to Gear)

In the current live patch Mighty Intellect is the superior enchant, but once MoP launches that’s going to change because Intellect will no longer increase your mana pool. There are only two things that will keep the +22 Int enchant on this list once MoP launches. First, it’s easier to find people that have +22 Int versus those with +30 SP not to mention it’s a cheaper enchant materials-wise. Second, Intellect still increases spell crit in MoP (as far as I’m aware), so you do get at least something besides just 22 SP vs. 30 SP out of the deal. Even with the spell crit factored in though, diminishing returns on spell crit will make the +22 Int enchant less and less effective every time you gain a level.

Ring: (Return to Gear)

These ring enchants require reputation grinds to purchase the patterns for, they both require you to be an Enchanter to activate them, and they both require character level 25 to activate. I don’t have the heirloom ring to try it out myself, but there are mixed replies as to whether or not there is an Enchanting skill level requirement to activate them as well, though it would be 300 if so.

Since only enchanters can enchant their own rings, I’m only going to list these two since they have the most benefit with the lowest level requirement. If you level an enchanter high enough to use the other enchants possible, the mats are cheap to re-enchant it with whatever you want instead.

This planning is necessary for me because SWTOR has no intention of increasing character slots above the existing 8, which I talked about in some detail in the post linked above. Since I can’t get all of the features I would want (ie all of them) I need to decide which ones matter to me the most so that I can prioritize the alts and see if I’m able to justify not deleting all of the high level characters I currently have.

There are two things that really stand out as far as deciding which alts to roll in regards to legacy: Species and Class. Certain features are tied to leveling a species to 50 and others are tied to leveling a class to 50. I need to decide which of those features matter the most to me.

Welcome to my thought processes.

Unlocking Species Features
This is probably the single biggest issue for me because the high level characters I have right now are all using the two least-useful races: Human and Zabrak. They’re the only two races that can be used for every class in the game right now by default. I get some more skin color options from the Zabrak (I’m assuming), but the Human reward is a bonus to Presence which is a leveling-only stat that’s largely useless.

Of the seven other races, let’s take a look at which ones appeal to me enough that I would sacrifice a character slot to unlock them:

• Chiss
• Cyborg
• Miraluka
• Mirialan
• Rattataki
• Twi’lek
• Sith Pure Blood

Chiss: This race of overgrown smurfs is sort of appealing to me because they do look kind of cool with their blue-toned skin and their glowy-red eyes. I kind of like the thought of having a blue skinned race flinging purple lightning around as a Sith Sorcerer, so they’re going to remain on the list.

Cyborg: Cyborgs are one of my favorite races because I just like the look of their cybernetics. Getting one to 50 not only unlocks the species for all classes, it also opens up all of the cybernetics options for all classes. Definitely remaining on my list.

Miraluka: The race that intentionally gives up their vision in order to enhance their Force sensitivity…I kind of like the look of a couple of these, but overall I don’t care for them a whole lot. If other options are open to me, I’m almost certainly going to take another route. I don’t need to waste time unlocking a race I’m not going to use.

Mirialan: Green being my favorite color, you’d think I kinda like this race. But, for all the Miri’s I’ve rolled, every one of them has been deleted. I really don’t care for this species as a choice for my own characters, so there’s no reason for me to really bother unlocking them.

Rattataki: This is an interesting looking race of grey people who have no hair and like jewelry and tattoos. I actually kind of like this race even though I can’t really say for sure what it is that I like about them. Will I use a lot of them? No, I don’t really think that I will…However, I do like them enough that I would at least consider them when rolling an alt. They can stay on the list, for now.

Twi’lek: I’m not gonna lie, I hate this species. If I could wrap my little head tentacles around my neck or something so that they didn’t swing around like I have two giant gummy worms on my head all the time then it might be different. Since I have no choice but to deal with stupid looking head thingies, I don’t need this race. I do really like the look of them when they’re standing still, but the second the gummy worms start to move it just looks bad. Animations have them move around like clothing (nearly weightless) and it just looks completely off to me.

Sith Pure Blood: I really like playing this species as a Sith. The more I think about playing them for other alts though, the less I feel that it’s necessary. They definitely fit that force-user look to me, so having one as a non-force class doesn’t really appeal to me. I could have one be a Knight or a Consular, I guess. It doesn’t bother me to see other people use them for whatever class they want, but for me personally I don’t know that I would really want to use them outside of what they can already be. I wouldn’t mind unlocking them, but I wouldn’t necessarily mind not unlocking them either, so they’re a maybe with a slight tilt towards no.

Recap of Species:
Looking at what I just said there, we end up with the following results.

Definitely: Cyborg
Probably: Chiss, Rattataki
Maybe: Sith Pure Blood
Not Interested: Miraluka, Mirialan, Twi’lek

So there’s only one species that I truly care about unlocking all of the features with, which is the faction-neutral Cyborg. I have two Empire-only species that are probablies, and a third Empire-only species as a maybe. None of the Republic-only races matter to me.

That’s kind of eye opening now that I sit and think about it. Maybe part of that has to do with me wanting to play Empire when the game launched and then ending up as a Republic? I don’t know, really. I guess it’s probably just more of my tendency to like “evil” races in games more than normal looking ones.

This brings up a few key points though:

1. I only have to level 1-3 alts to unlock all the species features that I really want.
2. Three of my four potential species choices are Imperials.
3. The only reason for me to level a Republic alt on an Empire server is to unlock faction-based features.
4. I need to potentially level 1-3 Imperial alts to 50 on my Republic servers to unlock everything I’m interested in.

I’m going to be flying high on my Empire servers, which is a very good thing. I’ve got some serious thinking to do on my Republic servers, though, because I’ve got some serious potential to end up with more diversity than I really want.

Unlocking Class Features
Each class that you level up to 50 gives you a couple of different legacy features. First, you get access to that class’s buff for your alts which is handy when you’re leveling as more buffs are always good. Second, you get a signature ability from that class that you can use on your alts once every 15-20 minutes.

Class Buffs
Consular/Inquisitor: +5% to all four primary stats, -10% elemental/internal damage
Knight/Warrior: +5% damage and healing
Trooper/Bounty Hunter: +5% Endurance
Smuggler/Agent: +5% Critical hit chance

All of those buffs are great. I’ve listed them in the order of importance, based solely on my own opinion. I would say the top two are definitely the most important as every single character can benefit from all of those equally. Increasing your endurance is cool, but it’s not nearly as important as the first two. The crit buff I have listed last strictly because not all classes benefit from crit, and they certainly don’t all benefit from it equally. Some classes will want that crit buff a lot and others won’t really care.

Personally, I want all four of these unlocked, so I’m definitely going to put forth the effort to level at least one of each on each server. I might not follow that priority as far as which alts I level in order because I level what I want, when I want.

A thank you to TORWars.com for the following information on legacy spells:

• Inquisitor: Lightning Storm (Force Storm?)
• Agent: Orbital Strike
• Consular: Project
• Bounty Hunter: Flamethrower
• Warrior: Force Choke
• Knight: Force Sweep
• Smuggler: Dirty Kick
• Trooper: Sticky Grenade

I need to start this one off with a big disclaimer: these abilities are not like the normal class abilities, they are a super-duper beefed up version of the spells. What does that mean? I have no flipping idea, except that they’re supposed to be much stronger versions of the spell.

I’ve listed these in order of their coolness as well, again based on my own opinion.

I think the Inquisitor’s spell is actually misnamed from the source data. I’m pretty sure (and hoping, wishing, praying, etc) that it’s actually supposed to be Force Storm which happens to be my favorite spell in the entire game and it’s a solid AoE. The Agent’s Orbital Strike isn’t too far behind it in coolness factor for me and it’s also a very good AoE spell, so it gets my second spot.

The Consular’s spell Project is one of my favorite animations in the game for a simple spell. I love pulling out chunks of terrain or parts of ships or old droids and flinging them at people. The Bounty Hunter’s Flamethrower spell is pretty cool too, though I initially hated the spell when I first leveled a BH in beta.

One of the most iconic Star Wars spells ever is the Warrior’s Force Choke ability and there’s no doubt that it has loads of cool factor. I don’t love the spell itself, so I’m hoping it’s like an AoE version where I choke a whole group of people at once because that would be pretty sweet. I like it, visually, more than the Knight’s Force Sweep spell, though it wouldn’t be bad to have access to an instant AoE on more of my characters.

The last two are the least thrilling to me. The Smuggler gets Dirty Kick which is great as an instant stun in melee range, but I don’t know how they’re going to make that more epic unless you get to kick several people in the nuts at once. Sticky Grenade from the Trooper can be useful, but it’s probably tied for first or second place on my “trooper spells I use least often” list. If the damage is high enough, it might be good, otherwise – meh.

So out of all of these, the only one that I would really be willing to go out of my way to get is Force Lightning. I’d love to have Orbital Strike as well. Project is pretty sweet, but I have enough Sage’s that I won’t miss not having it on other characters. Flamethrower is nice, but it’s not really necessary. The others I could take ‘em or leave ‘em. No big deal.

Class Conclusion: Combining the class buffs with the heroic spells, here are the classes that I need to get up to level 50:

1. Sith Inquisitor >> Jedi Consular
2. Imperial Agent >>>> Smuggler
3. Bounty Hunter > Trooper, but either will work
4. Sith Warrior > Jedi Knight, but either will work

Well ain’t that a kick in the pants… Once again, I’m drawn significantly more to the Empire.

Alright, there’s no way I’m going to level a full set of Imperial toons on each server just to get some 15 minute cooldown spells. That being the case, let’s look at this realistically with needs versus wants. Time for a brainstorm:

1. I don’t need any of these abilities. For that matter, I don’t need the buffs either.
2. I do want the buffs enough on leveling alts that I’m willing to elevate it to a Need.
3. Most of these spells are AoE’s in one form or another.
4. Spells that look cool eventually lose their flair when used too often.
5. Leveling is what I do, and I do it well.
6. I don’t need extra AoE spells to level a character, useful though they may be.
7. Having access to all of these extra spells would negatively impact my blogging if it trivializes leveling or if I use it as a crutch.

There’s a list for you that came straight from my brain as I thought about them. Conclusion? Screw the extra spells from the classes, they don’t matter enough to me that I’m going to base alts purely around heroic spells.

Final Result: One of each primary class is needed, non-faction specific. Buffs I do want, heroic spells aren’t crucial enough to influence decision making. In regards to buffs, Force-users should be my top priority as their buffs are more important to me than those given to non-Force classes.

Two Factions, One Server
The whole two factions on one server thing still bugs me. I don’t like having to have both factions in order to unlock features when I only have eight slots available. However, as long as it remains necessary to have only one character of each faction I think I’ll be able to deal with it. If we were required to have more of each faction, say a 4:4 split, then it would be a bigger issue. While I’d rather keep it all the same on a server, I can definitely handle one much easier than half of my available character slots.

I thought about doing a 4:4 split regardless and doing it for two different servers so that I had all the characters on Server A be four Republic characters and four Empire characters of the mirrored advanced classes, and then having Server B be the same setup but with the opposite advanced classes of Server A (and also opposite sex and/or alignment to experience the full stories). While such a setup would provide me with optimal legacy feature unlocks, it also means I would be locked down as far as which toons I was able to play.

I don’t want the legacy system to become something that dictates how and what I play. Its supposed to be a rewards system that encourages me to play, not something that rules my game. So that’s exactly what I’m going to have it do for me.

Maybe I’ll get around to unlocking everything at some point in the distant future. For right now I am comfortable with playing the game the way I want to play it. If I miss unlocking a feature because I level three human Consulars, then so be it. As long as I’m having fun it doesn’t really matter.

I’m not going to get into the details of the Legacy system that have been revealed yet, though I did initially when writing this post. At this point in time the information that’s out there on Legacy has already been covered by more than enough sites so there’s no reason for me to repeat it (see the links at the end of the post if you need details). Also, we don’t have all of the details yet so even if I did post all of the information it would be incomplete and I’d rather get all the details out there at once as soon as they’re fully released.

What I want to do instead is exactly what the title implies. I want to share my thoughts on the Legacy system as an altoholic because that’s who this system was designed for. There are many things to cheer about in regards to Legacy, but there are also some things that make me a bit concerned.

I am going to touch briefly on the basic concept of Legacy for those of you who are not playing SWTOR or who have not looked at any of the information on it so that you’re not wandering around here completely lost. I’m going to try to fight my natural instincts of sharing bucket loads of detail here though, and just try to cover the basics.

What the Legacy System Is & How it Works
The Legacy System is earned in a way similar to your characters’ experience points. As you earn experience, you earn a percentage of that experience (based on your level) as Legacy experience, and your Legacy levels up in pretty much the same way as your characters would.

It’s been described to us as a Family Tree, or a way to link your characters together in various relationships that obviously could never take place in the game since you can never be logged in to more than one of your characters at once. It’s not just a family tree though, because your characters don’t have to be related to fit within the tree. What those trees actually do hasn’t been discussed very much as far as I’m aware, though I have heard some talk about certain unlockable features only being an option if you have multiple Force-users tied together in the family tree for example.

By gaining Legacy experience you’re able to increase your Legacy level, and your Legacy level is what determines which features and bonuses you have access to. As far as I’m aware we have not received any information about which features unlock at which Legacy levels beyond a few examples given at the Summit that mentioned “new feature X does blah-blah, and it’s unlocked high in the Legacy tree.”

If you’re a WoW player, or have been for the Cataclysm expansion, the Legacy system is basically WoW’s Guild Levels and perks. Except rather than benefiting the guild and being unlocked by the guild, it’s all based solely on you. Your Legacy has nothing to do with your guild and they do nothing to directly help/hinder your Legacy, but it works under the same basic principles.

What the Legacy System Holds
Like I said, I’m not going to get into the full list of features that we currently know about. However, there are some perks that are important for the topic of this post, so here they are:

• Legacy Class Abilities unlocked
• Species unlocked for all classes
• Species-specific attribute buffs

Legacy Class Abilities: This feature unlocks a signature ability from a class that you have leveled to 50 and makes it available on your Heroic Moment spell’s cooldown for the alts that have it. Examples they gave included the Bounty Hunter’s Flamethrower and the Sith Warrior’s Force Choke ability. It was confirmed in a recent Q&A that the ability that is unlocked is specific to each class, you do not get to simply pick an ability from the class you want and run with it. So if you level a Sith Warrior to 50 then you get Force Choke and that’s it, you don’t get to pick a different spell from the Warrior.

Species Unlocked: Once you level a character of a given species to level 50, that species becomes unlocked for all other classes (once you have this feature unlocked, of course). It also unlocks things like the Cyborg’s implants which vary from one class to another to be unlocked for all Cyborgs you roll.

This caused a bit of an uproar in some of the player base who feel that racial restrictions are required for them to have canonical immersion. It’s an opinion that’s completely valid, and one that I absolutely hate.

Personally, I hate having unnecessary restrictions for the sake of immersion in a game. Not being able to roll the character I want to roll isn’t immersing, it’s frustrating. Racial restrictions are a feature that I personally feel should have become a thing of the past in gaming as a whole back when Dungeons & Dragons did away with it decades ago. You want conflict? Do it with organizations and allegiances, not races.

It sucks that this has to be unlocked with a legacy feature rather than being a base part of the game, but at least the functionality will exist. (Blizzard, I hope you’re taking notes.)

Species-Specific Buffs: Upon reaching level 50 with a given race, you’ll receive an attribute bonus on all of your alts. The example given was that having a level 50 Human would give you a bonus to Presence. There’s a big fuss brewing about this one as there will inevitably be some guilds that require you to have the best buffs in order to be members or raid with them. I have no interest in being a part of a guild that does that in the first place, so I couldn’t possibly care any less about that potential “drawback” of the feature. Even if it’s just a small buff, like +3 Presence, the fact that you get a buff by leveling a certain race to level 50 is going to make some people feel forced to level a character they may have no interest in leveling simply to obtain that buff.

Through the Eyes of an Altoholic
And now we start getting to the whole reason why I wrote this post, which is to share my thoughts and concerns about this system as someone who takes a great deal of pride in being an altoholic.

How Legacy Thrills Me
First, I love the fact that they’re trying to reward people who will play this game A LOT by giving them little perks and bonuses for doing just that. It’s an incentive for people to roll alts who normally do not, though how strong of an incentive it is will vary from one player to the next, and for people who do roll alts to keep right on rolling. Not everybody is going to care about unlocking the Twi’lek race for all classes, or using the Sith Warrior’s Force Choke spell, but for some people that’s the coolest thing in the world.

Bioware has said that this system is designed for people who play alts. You earn Legacy experience by doing things with all of your toons, most of the perks are useful for leveling characters more so than characters who have already reached level 50, and many of the features that you unlock are only useful if you’re going to roll yet another alt.

It’s important to note that this audience is “altoholics” and not “hardcore altoholics”. An altoholic is anybody who happens to enjoy playing multiple characters. You can bounce back and forth between just two or three characters and be considered an altoholic, or you can be someone who has eight level 50 characters on each of three realms and still be considered an altoholic. In this way, not all altoholics are created equal.

The biggest draw to a system like this is that many players are going to want to collect all of the perks available so that they have the freedom to roll the characters they want to roll and have the benefits that they’ve earned. It gives people something to do when they’re not doing their big time sink activities (operations, flashpoints, warzones), and gives the people who have no job and are able to play virtually all day long something to sink their time into that doesn’t require other people.

How Legacy Fails Me
The most disturbing announcement that I saw in relation to the Legacy system came during the Q&A portion: they have no intention of increasing character slots.

This threw me for quite the loop after reading about all of these Legacy perks and how you unlock them. We have all of these things encouraging us to roll alts to get all of these different features unlocked, and yet you’re still only going to let us have 8 characters per server?

Let’s take just one example: unlocking all races for all classes.

Right now there are nine playable species. Of the nine species, two of them are Republic-only, three are Empire-only, and four are capable of serving both factions. Of the nine species, two of them can already be used for all classes (Human and Zabrak).

At this point we have seven of our eight character slots taken up by one of each race in order to unlock all racial options. We only have one character slot left, so six of those seven races that we unlocked are wasted because we don’t have any slots to roll a new species/class combo them with.

By leveling one race to 50 in order to unlock the racial choice for other classes, rolling an alt using the newly unlocked species means you’re already robbing yourself of that potential feature on the new character because you’ve already unlocked all of that species’ perks. You’ll still get the perks of leveling the class (if that’s not also a duplication for you), but you’re missing out on unlocking other features by making use of an unlocked feature. Unlocking Chiss means your new Chiss Sorcerer has his species wasted.

We also still have two races that we need to level in order to unlock their attribute bonuses since we still have two races that we didn’t need to level in order to unlock the race/class combination. The only way for us to get all nine of the species buffs is to delete a level 50 character that we’ve already unlocked and then reroll the final race and get it up to level 50 as well. Deleting characters won’t bother me, but it will bother other players.

Money Solves All Problems
Bioware apparently saw at least some of these drawbacks because they’re planning on some of the features you can unlock in your Legacy to be opened with high credit costs. I don’t know for sure if those features that can be unlocked with cash can also be unlocked through leveling a character, or if it’s either one or the other. If we can assume that you have the option of buying some of these features like species choices, then you won’t have quite so big of an issue, but if the only way to unlock everything is to level characters over and over to max level, then they need to give us more character slots in order to make it work.

Every game needs a money sink, I get that. Unlocking features like this with credits is a good idea. It gives us at least some way around the issue with maxed character slots, so I’ll take what I can get. I don’t particularly like having features restricted by credits when I’m the type of altoholic that rolls on several servers, but it’s better than nothing.

Where I Stand With Legacy
I love where they’re going with Legacy, and I’m excited beyond words to see what new features they come out with for it and to get more details about the system that they already have in mind for 1.2. The only thing that really kills me is this ridiculous eight slots per server thing.

Unlocking all of the class features won’t be a problem because there are only eight classes and eight character slots to match up with them. Though again, if you have to level eight characters in order to unlock everything then how do you expect to ever benefit from all of those unlocked features when you don’t have any character slots left to roll new ones?

They’ve also said that they’re considering Legacy rewards that require level 50 characters from both factions in order to unlock. Each faction has eight advanced classes to choose from, meaning there are sixteen classes for you to play. Sure, the advanced classes are mirrored across the two factions, but of all of the different characters I’ve played so far the only ones that actually feel the same between the two factions has been the Jedi Knight and Sith Warrior. All of the other combinations are different enough in look and feel that they might as well not be mirrors. That aspect has been a huge success. The drawback being that in order to experience them all you have to have a minimum of two servers to house all of the character slots you need to do so.

I take that back, character slots isn’t the only thing that bothers me about Legacy. There’s also the whole Legacy being tied to a single server issue. If you roll on another server then you have to start all over with your Legacy there unless you’re willing to pay to transfer a character from an existing Legacy (a feature which does not yet exist).

While the system does encourage alting, it actively works against the brilliance we like to call “Cyn Crash”. Legacy doesn’t even match up to WoW’s guild perks in this situation because leaving a level 25 guild in WoW wasn’t so bad if you could join a level 25 guild on another server, but with this if you don’t pay to transfer a character then you completely lose out on all of your perks and have to start with nothing until you level that new character to 30+ again to reopen a fresh Legacy. Starting over from scratch with a new character is fun. Starting from scratch on such a huge time and energy investment project as a Legacy is disastrous.

Bioware is doing their best to encourage server-based communities, but in the long run it may very well come back to bite them as they’re focusing so much on the little communities at the expense of the SWTOR community as a whole. It’s not a problem right now, but it very well could be in the somewhat near future if other games continue to open doors while SWTOR trudges forward with blinders on. Let people play what they want to play, with who they want to play it with, and without penalizing them one way or the other when they do so.

Giving Credits Where Credits Are Due
As I said before, I did not attend the SWTOR Summit, so all of my information comes from blogs, twitter feeds, and forum posts. The following blogs are where I got the majority of my information, so here’s a shout out to them for their recaps, live tweets, and so on:

Ask a Jedi
Dulfy
Force Junkies
TOROZ
SW:TOR Strategies

For the first 10 levels of playing a Sage/Sorc healer, you’re no different than any other Consular/Inquisitor out there, so I’m going to refer you to my 1-20 DPS Guide for information about how to level and what spells you get during the 1-10 range if you feel you need it.

This guide is aimed specifically at leveling as a healer which takes place from level 10 on, so that’s where this guide is going to start. I will be discussing how to deal damage in the healing spec, and how to go about questing and so forth, I’m just going to assume that you’re already at least level 10 for the purpose of this specific guide.

Playing a Consular Seer/Inquisitor Corrupter
Playing a healer isn’t all that much different than playing as a non-healer. You’ll still cast similar spells while you’re solo questing, and overall you’ll notice very little difference. The only real difference is that your talent points are going to help you better survive and better keep your companions alive as opposed to making you deal more damage. So instead of killing a group of mobs in 10 seconds, might take you 12-14 seconds instead.

Once you step out of the realm of solo play and into grouping your experience will change a bit because your primary focus shifts towards keeping everyone in your group alive rather than trying to kill things. That’s not to say you can’t help them kill the mobs you’re facing, which you should do if there’s no need for your heals, you just have a change in priority.

The key to healing is understanding your resources and the taxation on them. As a Sage your resource is called Force, and you have a total of 500. A talent exists in one of the damaging trees that will increase your total to 550 for one point or 600 with two points, but otherwise there is no way to increase your resources beyond 500. Your spells will range in cost from 20 Force to 65 Force (at this level range), and you regenerate Force at a rate of 8 Force per second. If math really isn’t your thing, don’t worry about it, but if you like to know the numbers behind the class then there’s your starting point.

In order to heal effectively you need to know how much healing each of your spells is capable of, how much Force they cost to cast, and how much time it takes to cast them. Those three things are what determines how useful each individual spell actually is. I’ll get to that in just a moment, but first let’s take a look at what spells you have.

Important Spells & Abilities
This list is only going to include the spells that particularly important for your healing. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, as I’ve already covered DPS leveling you can refer to that post if you would like information regarding rotations and which spells to use when and how. So this list will include your heals, obviously, but also spells that can perform a specific function for you while healing that’s important for leveling as a spec that has no damage buffs.

Benevolence/Dark Heal (10): Heals a friendly target. (fast cast, small heal)
Deliverance/Dark Infusion (12): Heals a friendly target. (long cast, big heal)
Force Armor/Static Barrier (14): Surrounds the target in a Force shield that absorbs a high amount of damage and lasts 30 seconds. Protected targets become Force-Imbalanced and cannot benefit from Force Armor again for 20 seconds.
Mind Crush/Crushing Darkness (14): Crushes the target’s mind with the Force, instantly dealing kinetic damage and additional kinetic damage over 6 seconds.
Weaken Mind/Affliction (16): Weakens the target’s mind, dealing internal damage over 15 seconds.
Force Speed/Force Speed (16): Increases your movement speed by 150% for 2 seconds. Does not break stealth.
Mind Snap/Jolt (18): Interrupts the target’s current action and prevents that ability from being used for 4 seconds.
Noble Sacrifice/Consumption (20): Sacrifices 15% of your maximum health to restore 8% of your maximum Force. Each time this ability is used, your Force regeneration rate is reduced by 25% for the next 10 seconds. Stacks up to 4 times.
Rejuvenate/Resurgence (Lv 20 Talent): Immediately heals the target for an amount, plus an additional amount over 9 seconds.

Healing Spells
Benevolence is the first heal you receive, and one of the worst heals you’ll ever have. That’s not to say it doesn’t have its uses, but it’s not one that you’ll cast with any amount of frequency once you get another option. This spell costs 50 Force, has a 1.5 second cast time, no cooldown, and heals for a fairly small amount.

Deliverance is your bread and butter healing spell. It costs 55 Force, has a default cast time of 3 seconds (2.5 w/ talents), no cooldown, and heals for a significant amount. For 5 more Force and one extra second worth of cast time, this spell will heal for roughly twice as much as Benevolence, which is why it’s so much better. Soon after level 20 you’ll also get another talent to help with that cast time to make it even better.

Force Armor is a “bubble” which means it absorbs damage that the target would have taken until it reaches its limit and is then removed. This spell has your highest base cost at 65 Force (35 Force with higher level talents), an instant cast time, a default 4.5 second cooldown (1.5 seconds with later talents), and absorbs a “high” amount of damage. Force Armor is also unique in that it applies a debuff to the target that makes them immune to Force Armor for 20 seconds so it prevents you from spamming bubbles on a single target over and over.

Rejuvenate is a healing spell that also contains a heal over time (HoT) effect to it, and it will soon become the single-most important spell because of how other talents interact with it (I’ll get to the details in the 20-40 guide). Rejuvenate costs 30 Force, has an instant cast time, a 6 second cooldown, and heals for a decent amount.

Utility Spells
Mind Crush and Weaken Mind belong in the same listing here because of what they are – damage over time (DoT) spells. As a healer, you’re lacking a lot of the killing power that other specs have, but DoT’s allow you to deal damage to several targets at once without having to waste time casting the damage spells which allows you to spend cast time on your heals instead. If you find yourself facing tough enemies, one of your best tactics as a healer is to cast your DoT’s on them and then start running away and stopping only to heal yourself or reapply your DoT’s. This tactic is called “kiting” and I can go into more detail in a later post if anyone needs me to.

When DoT kiting you don’t want to run away in a straight line, you want to run in circles and abuse terrain and structures to keep distance between you so that they can’t hit you with melee attack, and break their line of sight so that they can’t use ranged attacks on you either. When your DoT’s wear off, simply reapply them and then take off running again.

Mind Snap is an interrupt spell, used to cancel a spell that’s being cast by an enemy. I mention this first because as a 30 meter ranged interrupt it’s one of the best in the game so you should be familiar with it, and second because one of the best ways heal damage is to not let it happen in the first place. If an enemy is casting a spell that you know is going to deal high damage or they’re casting a crowd control spell on you, your companion or a party member then you can use this to stop the spell from happening and preventing it from being cast again for 4 seconds. Experience will teach you which spells are worth interrupting and which you can ignore.

Force Speed increases your speed by 150% for 2 seconds (which is 40% faster than the fastest mount in the game right now, btw). There are countless ways that this spell is useful, but the main reason I wanted to mention it is for the same reason that I mentioned the DoT spells and Mind Snap up above – it’s fantastic for kiting, and getting out of your enemies’ attack range is a great way to prevent damage from happening to you in the first place. It’s also good for group play if you have members of your party/raid that have moved out of your healing range so that you can quickly reposition yourself to be able to reach whoever is in need of a heal.

Noble Sacrifice is a spell you definitely need to be aware of. Casting it sacrifices 15% of your health in order to restore 8% of your Force. At this level, casting this spell is a bad idea unless you absolutely NEED the Force it gives you. As you get higher in level you’ll get talents that reduce the amount of health you have to sacrifice as well as a proc that removes the health sacrifice all together. So keep it in mind and remember it’s there to be used, but be cautious for right now of casting it without a literal need. It’s also important to note that casting this applies a 10 second debuff on yourself that reduces your Force regeneration by 25%, and this debuff stacks up to 4 times which means a full stack will completely remove your Force regeneration for 10 seconds.

If you need the Force to keep people alive, then by all means use this. Also, if you’re not taking any damage at all and not in any threat of taking damage, then go ahead and use it. Keeping people alive is your job, and if sacrificing some of your health in order to heal someone else is required then so be it. Just keep in mind that if you die because of using this then nobody is getting heals regardless.

Leveling a Consular Seer/Inquisitor Corrupter
This is the section where I normally like to talk about rotations and such, but healing doesn’t have an actual rotation so I’ll discuss how to heal in just a moment. I’ll go ahead and talk about your damage rotation while you’re questing, but first I want to address something that’s bothered me about so many other guides I’ve seen out there for people talking about leveling this class.

Time and time again I see Sage/Sorc guides say that you should start every build, no matter which tree you’re going to spec into, with your first 5 points spent in Inner Strength/Electric Induction (9% Force cost reduction) and Mental Longevity/Reserves (+100 total Force). I’m here to tell you right now that with the exception of a full Telekinetics/Lightning build I have never put any of my first 5 points into either of those two talents, and I’ve leveled just fine.

I’m not saying that it’s a bad idea for you to put some points in there early on, but I am saying that it’s unnecessary. If you find that you’re constantly running out of Force then the first thing you should do is evaluate which spells you’re casting and whether or not their effect is worth the Force cost to see if maybe you’re not casting the right spells. If everything looks good there, then you may want to consider putting points into those talents to alleviate some of that Force cost.

For example, as a healer you do not want to use Project/Shock in your rotation because it’s damage compared to its Force cost make it a total waste if used for anything other than finishing off a mob that’s close to dying. It’s just like Benevolence/Dark Heal, the cost is just too high for what you get out of it.

Sage Weak Mobs: Disturbance, Telekinetic Throw, Disturbance x2, Telekinetic Throw
Sorc Weak Mobs: Lightning Strike, Force Lightning, Lightning Strike x2, Force Lightning

This is a simple rotation for taking out the weak mobs. Pull with a cast time spell, follow it with a channel, two more cast times while the channel’s cooldown finishes, then fire it off. You can use Project/Shock here to finish off mobs that are low on health, or you can use Force Wave/Overload to deal AoE damage instead. Some healers also like to keep Saber Strike on their bars since it’s free damage and also regenerates a small amount of Force, and use it as their finishing move instead.

Sage Strong+ Mobs: Force Lift, Mind Crush, Weaken Mind, Telekinetic Throw, Disturbance x2, Telekinetic Throw
Sorc Strong+ Mobs: Whirlwind, Crushing Darkness, Affliction, Force Lightning, Lightning Strike x2, Force Lightning

These rotations differ from the others only in the spells that you’re going to start combat with. You want to start by using your 60 second crowd control spell on the toughest target out there to remove them from the equation. Follow that up with Mind Crush/Crushing Darkness and Weaken Mind/Affliction both on the second-toughest target, and then fall into your default rotation. The reason why we start this round with Telek. Throw/Force Lightning instead of Disturbance/Lightning Strike is because we’re already in combat and can’t take advantage of having Dist/LS’s cast time combat-free, so instead we go for instant damage with our channeled spell and then use the cast-time spells while the other is on cooldown.

If you’re solo questing, then it’s also a good idea to cast Force Armor/Static Barrier on yourself and/or your companion before combat begins so that you can focus on the damaging spells once the fight starts instead of having to jump straight into healer mode where you’re dealing no damage at all.

If you have your bubble’s debuff active and you’re taking some damage, then Rejuvenate/Resurgence is your next best bet for keeping yourself healthy while still focusing primarily on damage to kill the mobs. If you need more healing than that, then of course it’s perfectly fine for you to actually cast your healing spells as needed.

Also, always keep in mind that you have some fantastic crowd control spells at your disposal. Force Stun/Electrocute is a nice stun that will give you time to cast a couple of heals freely, Force Wave/Overload is an AoE knockback that can buy you a little time for healing or to run away, and Force Lift/Whirlwind has a cast time on it but it does remove the target from combat completely for up to a minute. And if all else fails, hit your Force Speed and run away until you can either heal safely or the mobs drop combat and reset.

How to Heal With a Consular Seer/Inquisitor Corrupter
Healing doesn’t have a rotation at all because here’s no consistency in when someone is going to take damage or how much they’re going to take. There is sort of a priority system, but it doesn’t actually come into effect in this level range, so what I’m going to do is explain how and when to use each of your healing spells and a couple of different situations and how you might handle them.

Benevolence/Dark Heal
This spell has an incredibly high Force cost compared to how little it actually heals you for. It’s only real benefit is that it has a short cast time, so it can give you a little boost in an emergency when other spells are not available. For this level range, you want to avoid using this spell whenever possible. If you absolutely have to have a heal in the next 1.5 seconds and your bubble isn’t available to be cast on the target, then go ahead and use this spell.

After a few more levels you can use this to top people off when you get a proc that cuts its Force cost in half, so it will eventually be useful for topping people off when you have nothing else to do. Until you get those talents (in the 20-40 range), your main use for this spell is to pad someone’s health who has taken a lot of damage really fast but you’re unable to use your bubble on them, so hopefully a quick heal will provide enough of a buffer that they can take one more hit while you switch to casting Deliverance/Dark Infusion or while your bubble cooldown or debuff clears to allow the bubble to provide a barrier for those larger heals.

Deliverance/Dark Infusion
This is your main heal now and forever, so you want to get real familiar with this one. It has a 2.5 second cast time after talents, so it’s a little bit slow. Because of that, you’ll want to get a feel for how long that 2.5 seconds really is so that you can judge, based on how quickly your target is taking damage, whether you have time to cast this or if you need to sneak a bubble or other healing spell in first.

In terms of a default rotation, it’s good to be in the habit of casting Rejuvenate/Resurgence before Deliverance/Dark Infusion because of other talents you’ll receive shortly after level 20.

Force Armor/Static Barrier
Since bubbles prevent damage from happening at all rather than simply restoring lost health, it is the most effective method of healing out there. Because of that you want to make sure you’re making frequent use of this spell when targets really are taking the damage to warrant its use. It does have the highest Force cost you’ll see until you get your level 40 talent, but it’s a great tool.

There are three ways that you want to utilize this. First, to prevent damage from happening in the first place which gives you time to regen your Force and gives you time for a breather or to reevaluate the situation if needed. Second, it gives you a buffer for your HoT spell to give its full healing to the target because while they’re pseudo-immune to damage the HoT gets to tick away freely. Third, it acts as a buffer to allow you the time to cast a bigger heal (Deliverance) without the target taking more damage during your cast time.

The two things to keep in mind about this spell are its debuff, which prevents the target from having the bubble cast on them again for 20 seconds, and its Force cost. Because it’s the highest cost you have, you don’t want to cast this on people who aren’t going to take enough damage to make it worth the cost. You can spam bubbles on your whole party if you really want to, but if three of your four party members never take any damage then all you’ve really accomplished is wasting 195 Force.

Rejuvenate/Resurgence
This spell is good right now for a couple of reasons. First, it provides an instant healing effect with an instant cast time, which is great even if the healed amount is low. Second, it provides a heal over time effect which acts similar to a bubble in that sometimes the HoT tick will fall right after damage is taken and it basically works out as though the damage had never occurred.

Having that HoT effect bringing a constant stream of healing in also gives you more time to cast other, bigger heals that have a longer cast time. Waiting on a 2.5 second Deliverance cast isn’t quite so bad when you’ve got a HoT ticking away that’s keeping your target somewhat more stable (hopefully) while the cast time is taking place.

Situation Examples
Now we’ll look at a couple of example situations and how you should go about using your spells to handle the situation. Keep in mind that the following information is applicable only for healers up to level 20 as talents from 21+ will significantly impact how you heal.

Minimum Damage: Target at 70%+
When your target still has most of their health you don’t need to be too worried just yet, so start off with Deliverance/Dark Infusion, followed by Rejuvenate/Resurgence. This will provide a nice, big heal at the front followed by a HoT that will either help top them off or provide some buffer to keep them nearer to their full health. If Rejuv/Resurg is on cooldown, then use your bubble after your big heal instead.

Moderate Damage: Target at 30%-70%
When your target has taken some pretty big hits you need to be more aggressive in your healing to prevent them from getting to a critical level. Start with Rejuvenate/Resurgence followed by Deliverance/Dark Infusion and follow it up with Force Armor/Static Barrier, and if necessary follow with another Deliverance/Dark Infusion.

High Damage: Target below 30%
If someone is in critical condition and desperately needs healing to prevent them from dying, then it’s time to get serious. Your first priority in this cast is Force Armor/Static Barrier if they don’t have the debuff to prevent it, followed by Rejuvenate/Resurgence and Deliverance/Dark Infusion once or twice to bring them to a more stable level.

If your target does have the Force Imbalance/Deionized debuff on them that prevents your bubble from being cast, you might consider (very carefully) casting Benevolence/Dark Heal first if the debuff is about to wear off of them within the next 2 seconds. If it’s going to be more than 2 seconds before the debuff is gone then you should skip them both and go for Rejuv/Resurg followed by Del/DI casts to get them back up to a reasonable level until you can bubble them again to buy yourself some more time.

At this level range you don’t have a whole lot in the way of emergency healing tools, so your goal is to keep people right around that 70% or higher range. You don’t need to keep people at 100% health at all times, and your Force pool won’t allow you to do that very often anyway. Everyone has a free non-combat ability that refills their health and resource bar, so there’s no reason you should feel a need to top them off when your real job is to keep them alive during combat and they can freely top off themselves after the fighting is over.

Talent Spec: 20 Seer/Corruption Tree

Sage: Seer	Sorcerer: Corruption
Torhead: Seer	Torhead: Corruption

I’ve listed these in priority level based on what level they become available to you. So the first two are tier 1, the second two are tier 2 and so forth. Immutable Force is the more important talent in tier 1, but it benefits a spell that you don’t get until level 12, meaning that if you spend your first 2 points on it then you have a talent that currently gives you no benefit. So if you want to get all technical about spending points then you want 1 point in Penetrating Light followed by 2 in Immutable Force and then then 2 more in Penetrating light.

Immutable Force/Dark Mending 2/2: Reduces the activation time of Deliverance/Dark Infusion by 0.5 seconds.
Penetrating Light/Seeping Darkness 3/3: Increase your Force critical chance by 3%.
Foresight/Lucidity 3/3: Reduces the pushback suffered while activating healing abilities by 75% and lowers the threat generated by healing abilities by 15%.
Pain Barrier/Empty Body 2/2: Increases all healing received by 8%.
Rejuvenate/Resurgence 1/1: [Instant cast, 6 second cooldown] Immediately heals a target for an initial amount, plus an additional healing over 9 seconds.

Immutable Force is absolutely critical for a healer because it reduces the cast time of your primary healing spell by 0.5 seconds. That might not sound like a whole lot, but with how much you’re going to cast that spell it’s a BIG FREAKING DEAL, trust me. Penetrating Light increases your crit chance, making your heals more likely to crit thus saving you Force in the long term by not needing to cast so many healing spells among other things.

Foresight is important in pretty much any situation. While solo or in PvP you get the benefit of reduced pushback on your heals, while solo questing you also benefit from reduced threat for when you’re letting your companion take all the hits, and in group play you’re reducing your threat generation so that mobs keep hitting your tank rather than destroying your expensive robes. Pain Barrier is all about your own survivability by increasing the healing that you receive. The role of a healer is almost as critical as it comes, so keeping you alive is always a good thing.

Rejuvenate is your heal over time, or HoT, spell. It works very similar to WoW’s Regrowth spell by providing an initial heal when you first cast it, plus a heal over time effect afterwards. At level 20 this is just another nifty little heal for you to use that takes some of the stress off of you thanks to the heal, but in a couple more levels it’s going to be the keystone to everything you do.