SWTOR Grouping Guide

SWTOR Grouping Guide by Herbaceous

For new players looking for a quick guide to grouping, here’s some general advice that might help:

Firstly, never randomly invite a player to join your group. This is considered very rude and is usually declined. If you see someone near to your level and hanging around a quest zone you want help with, send them a /whisper and ask them, politely, if they would like to join you, before inviting them. To invite a player, just type /invite or right-click on their name in chat, or their portrait and select ‘Invite to group’ from the context menu.

Once in a group, try to be patient if people are organizing themselves before the quest. This can often take 5-10 minutes as the others get to the mission area, or try to organize their inventories for the quest. It’s not always the case, but it can happen. Impatient group members are usually frowned upon.

If you are creating a group yourself, be sure to take the initiative when people are asking where to meet, etc. As leader, it is your job to keep things on track. If you can’t handle that kind of pressure, offer the leadership to another member of the group.

If you are invited to a group, always be mindful that the leader is in charge of organizing the mission. This is not narcissistic, it’s essential to good group function, and is usually rewarded with fluid gameplay and direction, as well as successful fights.

Never just steam into a fight, no matter how tough you think you are. Always wait for the group to be ready before an opening attack and be very mindful of your role in it. Tanks ALWAYS open the assault, followed by crowd control if designated and then DPS. Any deviation from this can cause huge problems with agro for the entire group and can often lead to wipeouts. Also, remain focused – Don’t be chatting away to guild members when a group quest is running. It’s too easy to miss things that might be important.

An important note on crowd control tactics: (Thanks to EternalNight for this esential snippet):

CC is any ability that is meant to keep the target in sleep/stunned/immobilized or some such thing for a period of time which for long cc abilities is 60 seconds. Any of these 60 second cc abilities will end prematurely if you do any damage to that target, so whenever cc is used you must only attack the targets that are not under cc and not use any aoe (area of effect) damage abilities so as to not to brake cc.
If you constantly brake cc, the other people may get very frustrated with you.

When it comes to loot, try to remain calm if you like the look of something being rolled for. Need Before Greed (NBG) is the general direction people expect with loot rolls. And that doesn’t mean “I need that for my other character”, it applies ONLY for your current character. In some (rare) cases, rolling for your ‘Primary’ companion can be acceptable – BUT this MUST be agreed upon before questing and it usually only applies for small groups that use their companions to play the more difficult heroic missions (this is, however, a controversial subject). Generally speaking, it’s common practice to simply take a deep breath and either roll for greed, or pass altogether, if you don’t actually need it for your player class. Rolling need for items that are of no use to you can get you kicked from a group and make you very unpopular. Take time to examine the items, carefully, before rolling.

In closing; A good group isn’t hard to find, but it can take a while to get organized. Be patient and polite when setting one up or joining one. Once in a group, be friendly, attentive and patient. Remember your role as a combatant.

Above all, enjoy yourself

Looking For Group (LFG) Tool Guide by DarthKhaos

With all the requests for BioWare to implement a LFG tool I’d like to help players understand the tools currently available to them.

NOTE: Granted the current LFG tool is a bit crude and rough around the edges but it can work.

The LFG Tool is tied into the Search Tool. You can access it in one of a few ways.

• Click the Social Icon on the menu at the top of the page then click the “Who” tab at the bottom of the window.
• Hit the Social Hotkey (default is “O”) then click the “Who” tab at the bottom of the window.
• In the chat windo type /who

This is a simple procedure. All you have to do is check or highlight the “Looking For Group” checkbox in the bottom left hand corner of the window.
This will “Flag” you LFG, however for greater effectiveness it is recommended that you also add a “LFG Comment” by clicking on the “Add a comment” button located in the bottom right hand corner of the window.
Good examples would be:

• Tank BT HM LFG (Tank Black Tallon Hard Mode Looking for Group )
• Healer Foundry LFG
• DPS 20-25 FP LFG

Also you can use the tool if you are a part of a group (preferably by the leader) to show your group is looking for members. Example Athiss LF2M Healer & DPS. The only problem with this example is part of it gets cut off at the end. This is why in my previous examples I placed the LGH at the end.

Remember I said that the LFG Tool is also merged with the Search Tool, so in the same window you will see a text box located at the top left side of the window. In it you can use it to search for players who are “Flagged”. By default when you open the window the system automatically places the name of your current location and searches for all players there. This is good for looking for people to do a heroic quest on that planet but not for a galaxy wide search.
Replace the text in the window with a more suitable search like:

• LFG BT
• LFG HM
• LFG 50 Tank
• LFG 20-25
• LFG Commando

By using the letters “LFG” in your search the Search Tool will search the entire game for all players “Flagged or Tagged” LFG. Also if you notice you can also search for specific classes.

NOTE: There is a hard limit of 100 results on any search maximum so if your initial search finds too many players refine your search parameters. Example instead of “LFG HM” use “LFG Tank HM” or “LFG BT HM”

I understand some people are accustomed to a fully automated system where you click some check boxes and wait for the system to assemble the group for you.

This is not that type of system but more of a Tool to assist you in finding players to party with.

• It WILL allow you to be anywhere in the game and find players to party with.
• It WILL allow anyone in the game to find you to party with no matter where you are in game.
• It WILL make it easier to find a party once used by the game community.

• It will NOT create the party for you.
• It will NOT notify you when a player “Flags” themself LFG.
• It will NOT teleport you to the Flashpoint or Operation.

I hope this helps you understand the current LFG Tool and if you still wish to stand in Fleet advertising in General Chat for your party you can. It wouldn’t hurt to ALSO “Flag” yourself LFG for an additional way to advertise.