OotiniCast – A Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) podcast

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We find out what’s coming up between now and Game Update 2.9 in Bruce MacLean’s roadmap. In our discussion, we do some lightweight theorycrafting, comparing primary stat vs power augments, and whether there’s a point at which crit becomes more valuable than power.

1. Introduction

Teo appeared on episode 77 of The Oceanic Gamer’s Flash Point podcast, A Hot Cup of Teo. He also refers to Mae’s (@MaeBeeBuzz) article “SWTOR Blog: The Queue Sync Problem”.

2. Tip of the week

Congratulations to this week’s winner, Nightmare of the Pot5 server! Thanks to Darth Malvictus for entering.

Please send your tips to ootinicast@gmail.com by next Wednesday for a chance to win a M8-R3 code, courtesy of BioWare, and an OotiniCast-provided Cartel Market pack from the latest shipment.

3. Holofeed

• A reminder that you will need to be subscribed as of Sunday 11 May to receive the Nar Shaddaa Sky Palace with five additional rooms unlocked for free (total value is 4 million credits), in addition to the Subteroth mini-pet and the character title “The Intrepid”. If you delay subscribing until 15 July, you’ll get the Sky Palace with three rooms unlocked.
• Game Update 2.8 has been deployed on the PTS and is now available for testing. Note that your previous character(s) on the PTS will have been wiped, so you’ll have to copy characters across from the live servers via the official website.
• Bruce MacLean’s roadmap update tells us more about what will be included over the next four months, encompassing Game Updates 2.8 and 2.9.
  • 10 June (2.8) to 19 Aug (2.9): Nar Shaddaa Nightlife event and its Casino
  • 10 June (2.8) to 1 Jul (2.8.1): Double Fleet Req & credits from GSF matches
  • 1 Jul (2.8.1) to 22 Jul (2.8.2): Double WZ comms & credits from WZs
  • 10 June (2.8): Bolstered 50-55 access to Group Finder 16-man Story Mode Operations on a schedule
  • 10 June (2.8): Nightmare Mode Dread Palace & Nightmare Power buff removed from Nightmare Mode Dread Fortress
  • 10 June (2.8): New GSF Gunship and Bomber variants
  • 10 June (2.8) to 19 Aug (2.9): Double XP weekend, Gree Event, BCW, Rakghoul Resurgence (maybe)
  • 19 Aug (2.9): Next chapter in Forged Alliances story arc (presumably Manaan Flashpoint(s))
• It seems that the Grand Acquisitions Race, the Chevin world event, was one-time only and will not be returning.
• Rob Hinkle (Senior Designer) started several threads in the PTS forum requesting focused feedback from players on changes being made to Madness/Balance Sorcs/Sages, Madness/Balance Assassins/Shadows, Annihilation/Watchman Marauders/Sentinels and Concealment/Scrapper Operatives/Scoundrels. The threads have now been closed until the next PTS build is deployed.
• In response to an observation that the class changes seem to be doling out buffs a little too liberally, Rob Hinkle said that they’ve recognised this, and will be dialing things back.
• One change for Marauders and Sentinels is that the popular hybrid build referred to as “dotsmash” will be rendered ineffective in Game Update 2.8.
• After signing a petition thread titled “Repair the double relic glitch”, Rob Hinkle confirmed that they are intending to finally iron out the remaining issues with relic procs.
• BioWare are recruiting for a new position on their Community Team, to join Eric Musco, Courtney Woods and Tait Watson.
• Electronic Arts held its Q4 2014 earnings conference call on Tuesday 6 May. Besides noting that SWTOR was an “existing live service” in the slide presentation, it otherwise received no mention.
• The next Community Cantina will be on Friday 16 May in Vancouver, Canada.

4. Community

Chill’s interview with Njessi (@HawtRepublic), author of the Hawtpants of the Old Republic blog, is now available.

The Galactic Gamers Coalition podcast can now be subscribed to in iTunes.

Kranitoko is back with another video where he opens the latest Hypercrate, this time containing Hotshot’s Starfighter Packs. It includes another awesome introduction!

Our Ootini Knights guildmate Darmist is hoping to organise a non-progression raid group on the Republic side of The Harbinger. See this thread in our forums for more information.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets, emails and comments from Aaree (@AramondNoir), @Charles_Boyd, Road (@ThatRoadGuy), Will (@GhostMirror), @GregCarter78, @Dekarch, Hugo (@PadmeAm), @ForceChuckle, Terg (@TheTurg), Heather (@Heather_PLS), @fnord3125, @tyious, @JediKrackr, @mark_swtor, @swtor_buckeye, @TheMalgadar, @Adam_Schumpert, Laurie M (@Lawilc01), Bad Feeling Podcast (@badfeelingpdcst), @BillLentz and Chaz Lobo (@Strongshocker).

Chaz Lobo’s got a new job (he wishes!):

Our guildmate and friend Adam Schumpert presented this work-in-progress to celebrate Star Wars Day:

Gary provided this panoramic view on Tython:

6. Sarlacc Digest

Two topics were covered during the discussion: primary stat vs power augments, and revisiting (and perhaps rehabilitating) the value of crit.

We received an email from Oofalong, the author of the Theorycrafting series on Dulfy’s site, giving us a detailed explanation of how to make an informed decision about whether to stick with primary stat augments, or switch to Overkill (power) augments. He provided this spreadsheet to support his reasoning.

Our guildmate Terg (@TheTurg) subsequently determined that once a certain level of primary damage was achieved, and assuming at least 70% Surge, crit actually became more valuable than power. He provided the following graphs in support of his assertion:

7. Outro

Thanks to Redna (@R3DN4, twitch.tv/r3dn4) for joining us this week.

Information about our guilds on The Harbinger, Ootini Knights (Republic) and Ootini Rage (Empire), can be found here.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. You can subscribe to us on iTunes, and listen to us on Stitcher.

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We cover what made it into Game Update 2.7.1, the developer livestream, and the new Galactic Strongholds trailer about the Nar Shaddaa Sky Palace. In the discussion, we analyse what has been revealed so far in the Forged Alliances story arc, and indulge in some wild speculation about where it’s going.

1. Introduction

2. Tip of the week

Congratulations to this week’s winner, Darth Malvictus! Thanks to The Malgadar for entering.

Please send your tips to ootinicast@gmail.com by next Wednesday for a chance to win a M8-R3 code, courtesy of BioWare, and an OotiniCast-provided Cartel Market pack from the latest shipment.

3. Holofeed

• Game Update 2.7.1 was deployed during maintenance on Tuesday, three weeks following Game Update 2.7, reflecting their new delivery cadence. It includes the addition of the “Bolsterizer”, which grants the “Bolsterizer” buff that effectively bolsters a character such that their stats reflect what they would be in a warzone.
• The occurrence of the new Quesh Huttball warzone has returned to its default probability of appearing. It seems that based on community feedback, BioWare will not increase the probability in the same way again!
• Ranked PvP Season 2 began with Game Update 2.7.1. BioWare’s official leaderboards
  now show the results for the new season, with all ratings having been reset. Our own leaderboards page, showing a graphical analysis of the current leaderboard data, has also been updated for Season 2.
• To celebrate Star Wars day (4 May), in addition to the double XP weekend, if you log in anytime until 4 May, all players (subscriber, premium or free-to-play) will receive the MT-4T mini-pet.
• If you’ve found yourself stuck in a warzone, unable to move no matter what you try, then please contribute your experience in as much detail as possible in this thread to assist BioWare in solving the issue.
• Game Update 2.8 was deployed on the PTS on 1 May. While Bruce MacLean’s roadmap mentioned a fifth ship role being added to Galactic Starfighter, Eric Musco indicated that the plan has changed, meaning the addition of the new ship role has been postponed indefinitely. New Bomber and Gunship variants will be added in Game Update 2.8.
• Bruce MacLean’s update to the roadmap for the rest of 2014 is still being worked on, and may be published next week.
• Charles Boyd, Ben and Eric Musco participated in a live stream on Wednesday 30 April, with Ben joining a random group to play through the Korriban Incursion tactical Flashpoint. The following points came up during the conversation:
  • The Esseles is pronounced “Essa-LEEz”, according to Charles Boyd
  • There will eventually be hard modes for all tactical Flashpoints, but there is no timeframe for this
  • Tactical and regular Flashpoints are not typically designed to prevent soloing, but they also don’t make it easy (e.g., kolto stations can’t be used outside a group)
  • Initial pulls in Flashpoints are deliberately designed to be difficult, intended as gear/skill/level checks
  • Ben’s group almost wiped on the big droid boss
  • New tactical Flashpoints are intended to be easy and thus accessible so as many players as possible can directly experience the story; they are not meant to be replayable content, especially for well-geared players
  • Charles Boyd quashed the theory that all the story content being released was written before launch; it’s all new, though obviously using many pre-existing characters
• At the end of the live stream, they showed the new Galactic Strongholds trailer “Galactic Living: Nar Shaddaa Sky Palace” (also available on YouTube) narrated by Jack Wood (Producer). It’s the first episode in the “Galactic Living” series, so expect more to come!
• The latest three questions from the class representative programme have been answered for Guardians and Juggernauts.
• In general Star Wars news, the Expanded Universe is getting rebooted, and we have the cast announced for Episode 7!

4. Community

Dulfy has a compendium of information she has put together about Galactic Strongholds, though we recommend swtorstrongholds.com created by Swtorista.

The second episode of the Galactic Gamers Coalition podcast has been published. You can subscribe to it via iTunes or directly using its RSS feed. For further updates, follow @SWTORGGC on Twitter.

Our Republic-side guild is attempting to expand our Friday night Operations group to 16-man. It runs for 3 hours starting at 4:30pm Pacific (Saturday 9:30am EST in Australia). Please contribute to this thread on our forums if you’re interested in joining us.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets, emails and comments from Bear, Ru, @ThePummeler, Laurie M (@Lawilc01), @AlexDGeslin, @JediKrackr, @Adam_Schumpert, Shamar, Thross, Oofalong, @darksplat, Chaz Lobo (@Strongshocker), @FrankT800, @Jayconnell, @FerrousTerran, Terg (@TheTurg), @TheMalgadar, @Manciferous, JB (@O_JohnnyBravo_O) and @Rrubb.

Chaz Lobo sent us the following:

The ever-observant Krackr spotted the following bug in the new Quesh Huttball warzone, thankfully fixed in Game Update 2.7.1:

6. Sarlacc Digest

Redna leads a discussion about what we’ve discovered so far in the missions and the two new tactical Flashpoints that start the Forged Alliances story arc, followed by some wild speculation about where it might be going. Note that this section contains mild spoilers!

7. Outro

Thanks to Road (@ThatRoadGuy) and Redna (@R3DN4, twitch.tv/r3dn4) for joining us this week.

Information about our guilds on The Harbinger, Ootini Knights (Republic) and Ootini Rage (Empire), can be found here.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. You can subscribe to us on iTunes, and listen to us on Stitcher.

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Game Update 2.7: Invasion is here! We discuss our initial impressions of the new content, along with other news from around the galaxy.

1. Introduction

2. Tip of the week

Congratulations to this week’s winner, Russ! Thanks to Raymond, GasGuy, Jay Connell, Mark, Fisk, Ben B and Bara-dur for entering.

ArticueGaming has a new channel that will be primarily PvP tips and video for SWTOR.

GasGuy recommends swtor-holo.net‘s guides for leveling your crafting skills.

Please send your tips to ootinicast@gmail.com by next Wednesday for a chance to win a M8-R3 code, courtesy of BioWare, and an OotiniCast-provided Cartel Market pack from the latest shipment.

3. Holofeed

• Game Update 2.7: Invasion was deployed during regular maintenance on Tuesday. We recommend Dulfy’s various guides that comprehensively cover what’s in 2.7. Note that with their new delivery cadence, we can expect maintenance every three weeks, excepting the times when an emergency patch needs to be deployed.
• You can see the analysis of the data associated with Ranked PvP Season 1 on our Leaderboards page for solo and group.

• It seems a small number of glitches made it to live with Game Update 2.7.
• The Shroud lets us know the “State of the Galaxy”.
• Bounty Contract Week is back this week, finishing Tuesday 15 April at 7am CDT (1pm BST, 10pm AEST). It will overlap with the “make good” double XP weekend, which will run from Friday 1pm CDT (7pm BST, Saturday 4am AEST) to Monday 2am CDT (8am BST, 5pm AEST).
• The Class Representative programme continues, with the top three questions answered for Commandos and Mercenaries.
• The Known In-game Issues list on the official forums has been revamped to only include “largely impacting, high traffic issues”.
• Following this Friday’s Community Cantina in Boston, the next couple have been announced: Vancouver, Canada on Friday 16 May, and Los Angeles on Thursday 12 June.

4. Community

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets, emails and comments from Gary (@wirapidsgamers), @TheMalgadar, ndbbm (Nobody’s Damn Business But Mine), Big of the Enmity Podcast, Matthew D (@mwdowns), Krackr (@JediKrackr), Laurie M (@Lawilc01), Brian Peters (@fnord3125), @MaterRex, Vigilanis (@SWTOR_Vigi), @_Casmas, @darksplat, Brian M (@lordnathanial), Jeff Dimbo (@Dimbo56, SWTOR Mayor), JB (@O_JohnnyBravo_O) and Goaster (@JeffyJaws).

Goaster recommends the video SWTOR – EMP field analysis for 2.6 for dedicated GSF pilots.

6. Outro

Thanks to Redna (@R3DN4, twitch.tv/r3dn4) for joining us this week.

Information about our guilds on The Harbinger, Ootini Knights (Republic) and Ootini Rage (Empire), can be found here.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. You can subscribe to us on iTunes, and listen to us on Stitcher.

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With Game Update 2.7 set to drop next Tuesday, we revisit what it includes and provide some advice on how to get ready. Returning guest Jacob also provides some insight into how the class changes in 2.7 will affect Ranked PvP Season 2.

1. Introduction

2. Tip of the week

Congratulations to this week’s winner, Oxi-jin!

Please send your tips to ootinicast@gmail.com by next Wednesday for a chance to win a M8-R3 code, courtesy of BioWare, and an OotiniCast-provided Cartel Market pack from the latest shipment.

3. Holofeed

• BioWare announced a new ship role for Galactic Starfighter a lot earlier than expected; in fact, on April 1st. It’s the Asteroid. Eric Musco subsequently let us know about the “Fist bump, bro” achievement (for crashing your Asteroid ship into another asteroid), Tait revealed the “Roid Rage” achievement (for getting killed 10 times in a row while piloting the Asteroid, then quitting the match), and Courtney told us about the “Back that Ast Up” achievement (if you fly your Asteroid backwards for a certain amount of time). There’s also the “> 9000” title for killing 9,001 Scouts, and the title “‘The Rock’ Johnson” after 500 kills in your Asteroid.
• If you have an idea for the next warzone, BioWare would like to hear from you! Contribute to this thread in the official forums, though pay careful attention to what the development team is after.
• In response to a query sent to Musco, prompted by the assertion by Corellian Run Radio’s Jason (@JT_HoloNet) that Galactic Stronghold’s “Prestige Score” was something new, Musco confirmed that it was indeed a new system unrelated to achievement points.

4. Community

Our ops group that runs on Fridays at 4:30pm Pacific is hoping to expand to 16-man. If you’re interested in joining us on a regular basis, see this thread on our forums for details.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets, emails and comments from Shamar, @GregCarter78, @TheMalgadar, Laurie M (@Lawilc01), Chaz Lobo (@Strongshocker), Ali, Kuze (@kuze_roh), nbbbm, @DanCremer, Haede, Hru, Oxi-jin, Andrew, Terg (@TheTurg), @Kranitoko and @ben_b55. Kranitoko is back with another video where he opens the latest Hypercrate, this time containing Space Jockey’s Starfighter Packs. It includes another awesome introduction! The Despair guild’s contribution to April Fool’s Day was a murder of Sleeths:

6. Sarlacc Digest

We discuss what’s coming in Game Update 2.7, and how to get ready for it.

7. Outro

Thanks to Jacob (@deltiasgaming, twitch.tv/deltiasgaming, deltiasgaming.com) and Redna (@R3DN4, twitch.tv/r3dn4) for joining us this week.

Information about our guilds on The Harbinger, Ootini Knights (Republic) and Ootini Rage (Empire), can be found here.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. You can subscribe to us on iTunes, and listen to us on Stitcher.