Well SWTOR was a massive disappointment.  Horrible FPS issues with a machine far more than capable of playing it, engine issues and bad optimizations.  All of that plus RL friends not picking up the game or picking up the game then rolling a character on a different server.

So those issues have led me to cancel my account, that means I should also get rid of the SWTOR theme for the site.

Good news, GW2 1st beta weekend has come and passed and let me just say its looking to be a great game.  Will be trying to redo the site for a GW theme, might be a while got a job interview coming up and if all goes well I’ll actually be a busy person.

Just got finished with my second beta weekend and I’m still in love with the game, good job Bioware! I focused mainly on a Jedi Consular Shadow and a Jedi Knight Sentinel during the past two phases. Going to break down my personal experience with both classes which will hopefully provide some insight.

Jedi Knight – lvl 19

• Jedi Knight is the iconic Star Wars jedi that you see in the movies. Their specializations include Guardian (tank,dps) and Sentinel (dps).
• Guardians can wear heavy armor and wield a single lightsaber.
• Sentinels wear medium armor and wield two lightsabers.

SENTINEL
Since I focused on the Sentinel I will comment on the game style with that class. Every class has three talent trees to choose from, in the case of the sentinel each tree is a dps tree. The sentinel gameplay focuses on purely lightsaber combat, think warrior from WoW. Since I was low lvl I couldn’t experience all the abilities the class had to offer but the style of game play was jump into the fight build focus (rage) and use focus for hard hitting abilities. I wasn’t able to use any other abilities that are synonymous with the jedi class like force push, levitate, or any telekinetic abilities; just straight up lightsaber combat with force powers related to the lightsaber.

One of the cool things about the class were the lightsaber forms. Each form focuses on something different like defense, offense, or balance between the two. In terms of pvp this class was great in 1v1 combat, assuming you were able to stay on the target. The downfall of the Jedi Sentinel is the fact you don’t have any real ranged abilities other than force leap (charge). This class also had some potent defensive cooldowns, one of which you should always use every time in pvp.

The voice actor for the male Jedi Knight was more to my liking than the Jedi Consular, as well as the story. Not to say the story for the Consular is bad, it just felt like the Knight was better. I mean come on, its Bioware we are talking about anything they write is good.

Jedi Consular – lvl 26

• Jedi Consular is your ranged Jedi class
• Unfortunately there aren’t any iconic consulars I can think of from the movies (with any significant screen time)
• Sage can wear light armor, wields a single lightsaber, and can either heal or dish out some ranged dps
• Shadow can wear light armor, wields a double bladed lightsaber, and can either tank or dps

SHADOW
In terms of WoW the shadow would be your DK/Rogue, they mix lightsaber combat with force powers with the added bonus of being able to stealth. Sounds awesome, and it is! Playing as a shadow really feels like you are playing as a Jedi with the Force as your ally.

The downside I encountered in PVP with the shadow is survivability with no self heal or defensive cooldowns your only way to survive was to defeat your opponent before they defeated you. Fortunately the Shadow has some very hard hitting abilities. Keep in mind that I only got up to lvl 26 but I can say that whichever talent tree you go with, Project is instrumental with any rotation. Project is the ability that picks up something from the environment and throws it at your opponent, you will be using it a lot.

The other downsides to playing a Jedi Consular is that you get your second companion almost 10 lvls after the Jedi Knight can get theirs. The Padawan you can train who is also the only romance option for a male Consular you get a little after hitting lvl 40 which is practically in end game territory. The voice and dialogue options weren’t as fun as the Knight and the gear options, in terms of looks, were all the same. As far as the animations go, the Sentinel’s combat didn’t look nearly as repetitive as the Shadow.

OVERALL
The Shadow class was more fun to play however the Sentinel was basically better in every other category. In pvp every class needs to have at least one form of in combat self heal, or out of combat needs to happen a lot faster than it currently does. Takes about 30 seconds to 1 minute it feels like to get out of combat. The Shadow felt like it had higher burst damage with Sentinel having higher sustained dps. I will definitely be leveling both classes although at this point I’m still unsure about which one to focus on first.

Welcome to a brand new SWTOR/GW2 guild.  I am currently in the process of editing css/php/html files but wanted to get some things up and running while I was working on that.

Guild is compromised mainly of real life and online friends some who are mmo veterans and some who are new to the genre.

You can visit our guild application page at http://www.swtor.com/guilds/219411/band-hawks, at least until I have set up application and recruiting information on my site.