Star Wars Galaxies: Eclipse-Delfi: A players small quick-start guide to the CU.

Skill prerequisites:
You can still tripple-melee! TKM/Fencer/Swordsman all combine still. All elite combat professions (except Ranger which requires Master Scout), require two basic profession columns of pre-requisites. The melee professions are staggered amongst all but polearms (unless you WANT pikeman) and the ranged professions all require Ranged Support 4 (bh and commando follow this!)

Commando (assault armor) unarmed4 and rangedsupp4
Bounty Hunter (assault armor) explore4 and rangedsupp4
Rifleman (recon armor) rifles4 and rangedsupp4
Carbineer (battle armor) carbines4 and rangedsupp4
Pistoleer (recon armor) pistols4 and rangedsupp4
Smuggler (recon armor) pistols4 and unarmed4

Combat Medic (battle armor) rangedsupp4 and rangedheal4 (0400 medic)
Doctor (battle armor) enhancement4 and medicalsupport4 (4040 medic)

TKM (innate armor) 2hand4 and unarmed4
Fencer (battle armor) 1hand4 and unarmed4
Swordsman (battle armor) 1hand4 and 2hand4
Pikeman (battle armor) 2hand4 and polearms4

Ranger (battle armor) Master Scout
Creature Handler (battle armor) explore4 and hunting4 (4040 scout unchanged)
Squad Leader (assault armor) rangedsupp4 and survival4 (survival is SCOUTxp!)

Notice the new armors (don't have all listed)
Assault is Chitin, Comp, Bounty
Battle is Padded, RIS, Marauder(new)
Recon is Tantel, Mabari, Ubese
(for those of you who have two mouths or thick fur, just consider your equivalents)



That said... here's the two most important things to remember.
An attack skill is an attack skill, it is NOT limited to the weapon type you got it from.
Commando is now just a series of weapon certifications.

Commando is the ultimate example of mixing a profession with others as it has no specific attacks.
It has NOT lost fire, that is actually bound to any form of ranged attack on the specific weapons that produce fire DoT (flamers, heavy lightning cannon, etc). The only profession with a "fire attack" is now combat medic (/deuteriumtoss deuterium is hydrogen btw). So what you must do is look at your needs in the commando role. This allows commando to be used much like the other ranged playing styles now that you can have commando and any of the other four ranged professions. If you like pistoleer then you can do commando pistoleer and use those specials with all the commando weapons. Carbineer has some nice shots too, like /fullautoarea lighting a whole mess on fire. With rifleman and the rocket launcher you can do long range knockdowns with a headshot and use /aim as well. With commando and bountyhunter together you can be a master of the heavy stuff and do quite a bit of damage while still being effective at close range. So when you select your professions you need to look at the combining effect and how you want them to join together. It's been said that CM is the flavor of the month, but I think you'll find that doing /concussionshot with a plasma flamethrower or rocket launcher will produce an even more effective result.

Medics, Doctors, Combat Medic and Heal-Hate (HH)

Don't dispare doctors, buffs have shorter durations and are easier to apply. Also having a master doctor right in the field to apply state-cures in combat is DEFINITELY nice. I cannot say there is any one "right" profession to have with doctor, I've found that since CM no longer has terrain negotiation that it is handy in rough terrain to be 4000 scout. A Master Doctor and Combat Medic will _ALWAYS_ be a welcome addition to any group. There is so much going on in combat now that needs to be controlled, and having a competent MCD along is like getting a whole extra level of buffs. The "MCD" is Master Combat Doctor, a dual master and it uses 212 skill points, but there are benefits on both sides to being this profession. Being able to apply states to targets AND cure states on your teamates doubles the team effectiveness AND you're right with them to reapply buffs when they are needed (desired.) Only /infect /deuteriumtoss and /poison work at 35m, the rest are "point blank" 15m skills. The thing to remember about this is the HH (Heal-Hate) though, Heal Hate will make a mob turn and attack you if you heal it's target.

This brings us to our second new abbreviation; OD.

OD is Out-Damage, and it's the newest thing to SWG combat. When you are in combat with a target and you OD your teammates, you are going to get attacked as the primary threat. Heal Hate counts towards the Out Damage count, so if you're the party's only healer you must be careful not to do much damage to the target unless you also wish to be the party's tank. Healing a member for 400 points of damage is seen by the mob as having done that in damage to them. Don't just spam /bactaspray all the time, be careful and use /bactashot /bactatoss and /bactastab. Also the /bactainfusion is good and does not show up as HH at this time (hopefully never).


Group Tactics on the Big Show.

OD plays an important part in big game hunting. You can achieve much faster and cleaner kills using it to your advantage on the target - in effect a state attack of true confusion - by keeping it dancing around between your ranged professions so that the tank/cm can concentrate on keeping the target in states and helping out damage. The CM needs to stay in close but unnoticed on the target to effectively apply the debuffs (negative state effects) and on the big game, no matter how hefty and buffed the tank is, it will go down if it gets noticed by the target. Ancient Krayt were hitting us for 8 to 9 thousand points, juvinile were doing 2500 to 3900 and the Grand Krayt was dropping us with 12,000 point hits (after armor). There is no way to "absorb" that kind of damage, and if the MCD tries to heal the tank out of the hole, they simply are the next target. Commando's ducking in with flamers, BH keeping /eyeshot, carbineers using /legshot and pistoleers using /concussionshot will all help to reduce, impair and even root the target.


Rooted VS Snare VS /paralyze

Paralyze is a nice little attack that only the CM has, it will literally paralyze the target for a short time as long as the target is not attacked. It is effective for buying small ammounts of time in combat to regroup, recussitate, heal and de-state the team. It's not the best combat state simply because even a failed attack will pop the target out. Snared is better but is simply a "dead slow" effect on the target, I've seen them continue to move. Rooted /concussionshot in pistoleer is the most effective of these attacks because it will litterally anchor the target to it's location, it cannot move but can attack to it's radius and range. You can root a target then run up and apply all sorts of nasty states and DoT then run back away before it clears.


The backup.

A backup team, party or even just a backup player such as a jack of the wilds that can set up a camp, entertain and heal wounds is a must for long term play. Remember that the new buffs don't last forever and that you will gain battle fatigue and wounds faster now. Entertainers are also handy for their inspiration buff's effect on XP gain. Another form of backup is someone willing to "take the hit" for the party when things get out of hand... run in and make everything mad then go get incapped on the way out, distracting the mob(s) involved and saving the party time.


Experience and Gameplay.

Gone are the days where the guy with the bigger gun gets all the XP... you shoot a 1900xp target once with your gun, you get full xp. You must hit it prior to it's death, if you get incapped you will have to hit it again. So a guild with a new member CAN take that member out to go hunting. The little PL5 player can sneak up and poke the con80 crazed durni in the butt then sneak away to a safe distance and let the higher players kill it and still get full XP for their level. There ARE positive side xp caps just like negative side xp caps. When I and a Carbineer/BH from Kettemoor took down this beast http://www.onipro.com/prjindigo/screenShot0051.jpg
I recieved 19,000+ carbines xp. This was a con334 Grand Krayt.
If you don't believe me, talk to him, his name is there kettemoore.inysk
I stayed down by the Grand Krayt (is GKD taken?) applying my debuffs, keeping it on fire and poisoned and staying as inconspicuous as possible while Inysk ran around in a large circle firing state-effect shots and damage onto it. This took about 12 minutes by my reconning (maybe longer) and was rather tricky, but we did it. Lefty there came in and joined in doing melee damage, but was incapped several times in the process because he made himself known through OD. I went down twice or thrice as well. You see that 19,984 carbines XP over on the side, that's from occasionally taking pot-shots at it when my mind pool became too low to poke detrimental states into it.


Medical XP and the combat tradeoff.

This is an important thing to remember. If you are grinding for medical XP, don't attack if you can avoid doing so. If you can simply stand there keeping youself alive while others try to OD your HH then do so. When you shoot the target and heal, then you get a pro-rated healing xp ammount and a proportionally smaller weapon xp ammount. If you do not attack at all, you get the full creature XP as medical xp. So if I had healed Inysk once in combat and had never shot the krayt, you got it, it would have been more than twenty thousand medical xp. This XP gain comes from each target killed by non-interrupted combat with a team member that you have healed, so if you run into a con80 mess of lesser plains bol and everybody takes their own target and you pop off a couple /bactaspray and no shots/hits, you will recieve full medical xp from the targets of each team member that made a separate kill. If they only attacked two targets, you only get two kills worth of xp even though you healed them all. XP is all in the dead target and the non-interrupted combat.


Weapon certifications and why there aren't many![/B]

This has to be the most important change in the gameplay. More than half the weapons now have a PL requirement instead of a skill box certification. This allows you to use any ranged or melee weapon without a skillbox-cert if your Player Level meets or exceeds the weapon's listed requirement. This is also why you don't see weapon certifications in your skills sheet. What this means to you is that you can, as any combination of combat profession, select weapons of very high damage that meet your needs in combat. I commonly carry an LD-1 rifle as a MCD because it's fairly good damage and has a nice 65m range. Even tho I don't have much weapon speed with it, I can still use a few combat attacks to add to the total damage on target, or use it with my basic level carbineer attacks if I do carbineer 2200 with my MCD giving me some ranged state effects and area attacks. While the most preferential weapons are still bound to actual certifications, as most the heavy weapons are, this gives a great deal of flexibility and even lets a jedi take part in combat or defend themselves against NPC without having to use the saber and gain visibility.

I had an image of a jedi moving at forcerun3 away from a BH chasing them on a bike, firing the LD-1 at the BH every time he came into range. Deflectors turn off on bikes


Two Final Chhanges of note.

Deflectors, PSG. The PSG now slowly recharge like ships' shields in JTL, over time and as they loose power temporarily they become weaker. They are very useful for the first assault and getting to your target, but their charge does not hold long and they will take damage (unless ADK, then will still loose charge temporarily.)

Income from lairs, like XP, is "pay # to the destroyer". Each and every member of the group at the lair will be paid the ammount listed on the mission terminal. It's no longer 30,000 credits or more, but when you have a bunch of friends along and you organize your hunt well, you can make money fast enough, you will all make money fast enough. You can pick your friends, pick your missions and never have to worry about overly chatty people in your solo group! (/wink)

Thanks to Eclipse-Delfi for this great article and the dedication to using teh benefits of a Test Centre to help others have a better understanding of this new system. If you wish to view the original post it is located on the SOE Forums entitled [a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=cudiscussiontemp&message.id=1699" target="_blank"][b]What I learned that you need to know in the CU (quick-start)
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