Squad Leader Archive

Looking back at that fateful moment when I chose to be a squad leader, I remember that two things came to mind:

1) "Oh man, they have a Squad Leader class! That'll help with my eternal problem of always finding people to group with!"

and

2) "Hello! They have the word 'Leader' in the title! That's about as cool as it gets! It looks good on resumes! It's good as a conversation piece! How cool would it be if some hot smuggler at the local Imperial convention asks you 'So, what do you do for a living?' and you can only reply 'Oh, I lead a bunch of people, tell them to die, and they do it.'?"

Not once did I look at what skills the profession had to offer. Not once did I even glance at the skills mods or the amount of experience I needed to go through the class. I just thought it'd be cool to play a character that can give benefits to other players just by being the leader of their group.

Boy was I half-mistaken.

Flash forward to now... I've noticed that there's a common stigma among other players in my server that Squad Leader is pretty much a useless class and in my experience, their opinions are not unfounded. While the SL skills and mods ARE functioning as intended, they're just not to a degree that would be considered noticeable to most people. Yet, even though they may be wrong, it's still pretty disheartening to hear someone say "we have too many people already! why are we inviting this guy? squad leaders don't do anything!" followed by a huge debate on the merits of my profession.

It's common to hear those comments in large groups, who fear that the more people you have, the less experience you get, which is ironic because Squad Leaders thrive in large groups. While the problem with the amount of xp we get, in my opinion anyway, has been fixed, the true problem lies in trying to convince other players to form groups with squad leaders and make them BIG. If we can fix this problem, then more people will get into groups, helping us attain the dev's goals of a more social game. I haven't formulated any solutions at this time, but I do hope that the majority of you agrees with me on this matter.

However, all is not bad, because I've gained a lot of friends with the successful groups I do make. This, in itself, has made me conclude that this class is worth it. I've had experiences leading groups pre-sl and let me tell you, as a squad leader you get even more respect from those who're willing to give it. The roleplaying aspect of it gives enough returns to warrantmy choice.

We're also a rare breed, and that's a good thing. I've already had to compete against other squad leaders for group mates. It's becomming more of a headache all the time but because the class is so undesirable for people who don't take the time to look through it, at least I don't have to compete as much. Plus, with our small numbers we can hold successful squad leader conventions .

It's a tough road, as all of us knows, but for me at least it's a road worth taking. While we may experience times of hardship where nobody wants to be your friend (much like rangers in everquest hehe), when it finally pays off, it pays off big. Let's hope that the devs fix the statistical aspect of the class to make us more desirable yet not so much so that everyone wants to be one. To those of us like me who see Squad Leader as more than just a "PC Handler", more than just a guy who barks out orders, but see it as an opportunity to represent a group of players in the tiring galactic civil war, stand up and stay leaderly.

Keron Orinano-->Imperial Squad Leader, Ahazi Galaxy

leaderly? is that a word? j/k.

Hey! I found one! Another squad leader in the Ahazi Galaxy, thought they were a myth, felt all alone in the cold, cruel world... nice to see someone else sticking with the profession, on my own galaxy even (grrr!!! stay away from my group!!! mine!!!) Actually, I found a cool way to spruce things up a bit, with /emotes and the /sys message. You can mess with people with the /sys message, also change your shouts around, it makes it more fun. If you need a way to make people join a group, just tell them volleyfire works! makes people want to group with me, of course they spend the whole time trying to get me to test it out... of course, as large raids become more and more frequent (and are fairly lag-free) squad leaders will be in demand everywhere.

Major Jarik Suul

Imperial Army Command Corps

Bestine

Commando 4-4-0-0, Squad Leader 4-4-0-0... yes i dabble, but boy i suck at it...

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY

that brings the list of people on AHazi who are squad leaders up to 4 (counting myself)

Jeauxzuf (me)

Psquire

(there was 1 other who was a feild commander but i cant find him) (mobility 4)

You got 1 more SL in Ahazi,a mere 12000 camp xp away from joining the distinguised ranks of Squad Leader.

All your base belong to us!!

Yep and Slipmat (I think he was among if not thefirst to master SL) and GaryNg andDom'ro and Arica and Thermal Too. I remeber Spock was one and Zeal's new to the big show. Those are just names off the top of my head, I'm sure there are plenty more (roughly 0.46% of ahazi ). Although slipmat's the only one on this list I know that mastered it.

You actually hada hard time looking for other squad leaders on Ahazi? Man are you dense lol... j/k. I've seen quite a few squad leaders on this server. Nowadays, they hang out at Dantooine because of those stupid holocrons.

The first master squad leader I saw was a rebel and he helped waste us in Bestine, but I was relieved when I met slipmat on Talus once. I'm halfway to master myself with 1-2-2-2 (I can train mobility, but I want volley fire )