Squad Leader Archive

I tend to disagree with the commenteds on the System Message Ability ("It's of little practical value beyond the novelty factor")

I find is pretty darn useful, especially when leading large groups that are fighting large amount of enemies - in these situations, the chat screen goes crazy and its impossible to organise without it.

It also adds authority, so people take notice more.

Sadly, this is the only real benefit I've seen for SL at the mo'.... and though I find it useful, it aint worth the skill points required to get it.

I want to be a squad leader. I know they suck, but hopefully this will change. When i first started playing i wanted to be a bounty hunter. After a while i realised it would take me a long time to become a BH. By that time BHs will be a dime a dozen. Then i thought about pistoleer/rifleman. Then i thought about a pistoleer/smuggler but i decided on becoming a pistoleer/squad leader. There are very little squad leaders. That is one of the main reasons i wanted to be one. I don't want to be the same as every other character running around out there. I want to be different. I also want to help outthe ppl ido raids and stuff witheven if i hardly can at this point. I am going to stick with it and if it doesn't get any better in a couple of months im going smuggler/pistoleer.

I'm not sure that the defensive abilities aren't working. I'm a master SL, and I've noticed that when I'm grouped with something, I don't get hit nearly as much as when I'm solo. This isn't just a matter of there being more targets - there seems to be a large difference between having my faction pets following me ungrouped under guard and having them following me grouped under guard.

The reason Boost Morale is powerful is because currently pets do not take on the wounds that Boost Morale should give them. This means if you have a pet with no wounds, you can eliminate 1/n of all the wounds in your group. I'm not a CH, but I do have a weak pet and a droid, and whenever I had a lot of pool wounds (due to not cloning, usually) I just summon the pet and droid and Boost Morale a few times in quick succession. Each use cuts 2/3rd of my wounds, so I can sink massive wounds in a few seconds. I can do this for my group members, too, although somewhat slower since a smaller fraction of the group are pets.

Volley has a really weird bug. If you use it while grouped and in a duel, it acts like everyone involved has a TEF on one another (your entire group can now fire on the target, and the target can fire back at the entire group).

While retreat is of limited use, I have been able to use this in PvP to some extent. Using SL abilities does not seem to grant TEF, so you can provide speed to the rest of your group without losing covert status. While it's expensive, 20 seconds of double speed is a HUGE advantage in PvP.

I haven't found a use for steady aim or rally. I've heard rally increases defense bonus, but I've never had the opportunity to really test this.

Hiya!

I'm a Master Squad Leader and Master Heavy Swordsman and I agree and disagree with your points. One I find mobility extremely useful, expecially when getting your medics out with you quickly into the battles. They have limited scouting abilties and with me, they move just as fast as me. I've also noticed the defensive bonuses DO help, without me as leader my incoming damageis dramatically increased, thus many more incaps for me as well as the group in general.

And lastly, the MOST important command that I have been able to use is by far /sys! I have a couple /sys binds that include the %TT command, so people know who to target etc and where to attack. It seems (but I am shakey on this one) the /assist command has also started to work, so I have my whole group type /assist to my target, I do a volley fire (which works and doesn't but I have had some success) and pretty much instant kill on most 10k targets.

Keeping everyone together is my number one importance. People close and in tight formations are a god send, limited incaps, no deaths, and great experiance and fun for my groups!

In my mind a squad leader is about being a leader. They only give us one truely awesome command (/sys) to support our leading abilities, I have been in too many groups where you have a squad leader that does nothing, says nothing and just runs around and people follow him/her. If you have the title, be a LEADER, by default you should be, take your group bonuses or no bonuses and lead them to victory!

I know Sony will make us better, but they have tons of issues, I'm already happy with what they have done so far with squad leader and I will continue to be even more happy as they continue to improve our skills.

Let's step up, quit whining and be the LEADERS that we are ment to be!!!!!!!!

-slipmat

Ahazi (Master Squad Leader, Master Heavy Swordsman and proud owner of the Tusken Supply Depot NW of the Tusken Fort featuring the TuskenFunk band)

I'm going to whine until they fix us. I do not enjoy playing a broken class and the fact that I can pickup Doctor instead of SL and still lead the group just as well AND heal/revivethe group being 100 times moreuseful is ridiculous. People go out searching for Doctors to group with, not Squad Leaders. But grats to you on being a good group leader.

/agree /agree /agree /agree /agree

I couldn't have embarrassed the Squad Leader tree any better myself. Right on every point, especially the overlooked & useless Master Squad Leader skill.

The real trick isn't evengetting the Devs to read this list. The real trick is getting them to not say, "Well, we disagree because Volley Shot is blah blah blah," and then hand us a few scenarios that will never actually come up. Although looking at the disman descriptions of most of those skills I can't even think of an obscure situation where I would want something like Boost Morale. Not with Wound Healing as powerful as it is.

*sigh*

This makes me cry and im not even a squad leader.

This is sad. Just today I was leading a size 10 group on Lok and thinking I should pick up squad leader, as the /syscommand would be useful and because I was essentially doing those things anyway. Now I find that it's pretty much broken, just like it was in beta. What a sad waste of an awesome class.

1) Bump.

2) Can we get a sticky on this thread from the correspondant?

Perhaps it would be easier if they simply scrapped the entire Squad leader profession all together. We can probably all come up with a bunch of improvements, but they may not have the resources to implement them. It seems the entire squad leader premise was not well thought out. Bugs and special moves not working are one thing, but how can advancement in the squad leader profession be dictated by how much damage you do in combat? If you spend all your time trying to kill things in a battle how can you possibly be watching out for your team and executing team based commands? I am the defacto leader of my guild, and from the start I knew I wanted to be a squad leader. My hopes were that I would be such a great addition to hunting parties that everyone would be looking for me to start a team. Instead the medics in my guild are the true team builders. A combat medic can give a team the extra edge against red mobs. We do not even bother with reds if our medic is not around.

I'v noticed that the bonuses do something as well. And pistoleer defenses are working as well. I agree that a a lot of the skills are useless though.

rally is good.......or would be

but they need to reduce the freaking cost

eliminate the fail altogether (unless they DRASTICALLY reduce the cost)

have it do what it SAYS it does..which is increase to-hit AND combat defenses....atm it onyl does to-hit an di dont even notice that

very good summing up of our skills

I'm brokenhearted myself. I had such high hopes that this pfrofession would turn the members of my guild into an almighty force to be reckoned with. But as it is, I really haven't much a skill of much use at all. Steadyaim can be useful when the target you are shotting moves to a range where a rifleman or pistoler would be inefective, but its only good for one shot, which makes it not worth the huge action bar cost associated with it.

Volleyfire while I had hoped for more (I though it'd actually make the team fire ont he same target and stay on it) seems slightly useful in one context, but completly not worth the huge mind cost, and the fact that it fails half the time, makes it dangerous to actually employ this ablity.

What I did find useful about the posistion, is that people actually expect you to lead. I just grabed the title at first beacause I'm big on teamwork, and it sounded like a good way to help out the team, I didn't expect to be bossing anybody around or issuing orders, but it sort of naturally fell on my lapto have that responsiblity. And after a month of doing it now, the skills I've learned in just leadership are pretty useful, when I have my team together and they follow my lead we can take down targets incredibly fast and incredibly hard because we are coordinated. and Sysgroup is useful when the situation turns dire and you want to get everybody to run away in the same direction, it is also useful as a way to advise your team of a situation when you become incapacitated.

For what its worth... Rally does seem to have a slight effect, I usually hit rally when things are going bad and I have a few members close to death. It seems to be more noticeably there, my teamates have gained the ablity to just hang on that extra 2-3 seconds required to make the final winning shot.

All in all, I'm unimpressed with what they did with this profession. A Squad Leader should drastically improve the efficency and ablities of a group, it doesn't seem to do anything worthwhile. If I had gone Chef instead I could at least make them food to eat before battle, and food boosts ablities more.