Yeah i overread the last part of your posts, sorry for that. And no i am no Armormech but i am a Tank, who got an Armormech friend, who already learned some nice pieces for me and is working to get some of the rest. The point still stands that it is possible to craft very good Chest/Legs/Helms etc. and this has nothing to do with speculation or the fact that you already mentionend that the crafted rakata gear is BiS. Here is the best craftable Helm : [Masterwork] Veracity TT-17A Elite Vanguard Helmet (stats with Fortitude Augment) 776 Armor 110 Endurance 52 Aim 69 Defense 77 Shield Rating You lose out on 60 Armor, 10 Endurance and massive Aim(~50), but gain tons of Defense and Shield Rating (40, 29). If you put an Absorb Augment in it you will also lose heavily on Fortitude but gain another 28 Absorb Rating. You might still put on the Columi-Helm if you have issues with threat or if you are worried about your total hitpoints, but for reducing your damage taken as a tank the crafted Helm is miles ahead.

You can crit craft rakata Gear, so Armormech gets effectively 56 stats as a gift, i would hardly call that nothing^^ Also you can upgrade blue "pieces" two times through reverse engineering. The endresults are pretty equivalent to anything that drops in hm fps (seriously you can get upt o 60% shield chance, 60 % Absorb with crafted gear, but yes your hitpoints and threat will be abysmal). Edit: Yes Setbonusses are nice and i do wear 5 pieces of the columiset, but the nonsetpieces are in almost all cases better than hardmode drops, and even for the setpieces i would at least buy one, if anyone on my server knew the recipe:/ I am not saying Crafted Gear >all. I am saying crafted gear is really usefull and you can enhance your equipment by mixing some pieces in, depending on the stuff you want to tank and how much problems with threat you have.

Yes it does, but at least when you are just looking for a flashpoint groups, people tend to judge a tanks equipment solely by his hitpoints and ignore all other stats. And edit: I have both Columi Waist/Bracers and MW Veracity crafted Waist/Bracers. I prefer the crafted ones by far. They have almost four times the Columis secondary stats (aka your defensive stats). You can craft awesome stuff with armormech. Yes getting the right recipies might be a hassle, but you can craft a whole set of gear, which effectively is a sidegrade to hardmode flashpoint gear and sometimes straightout better. I simply dont get why the "Crafted gear sucks" mentality still prevails.

The crafted gear is pretty good and in the case of Implants/Earpieces/Bracers/Belt, Masterwork Veracity items are pretty much straightout better than anything you will get inside a hardmode Flashpoint. The only thing you have to keep in mind is that by carrying crafted items, you lose on Aim/Endurance heavily but gain large amounts of Defense/Shield/Absorb. In total you will have around 3-5k less Hits than a hardmode geared Tank but you will take alot less damage and do somewhat less threat (which might be a problem in raids). The loss of health is actually no big problem at all, but alot of peole might be not taking you, because the hitpoints is the first thing everbody notices about a Tank and people might directly assume that your gear is "bad". So yes finding a guild for raiding with crafted gear will probably be harder, but this does not mean that there is a good reason for it:/

Bounty Hunters get a dark purple Blaster Pistol from one of their class quests. Its color is actually just a bug since it is just an "orange"-weapon (no base stats but fully modable). I am guessing this is the weapon you saw.

Yeah, Accuracy is pretty much a wasted stat for Powertech-Tanking, because every attack besides Rail-Shot/Unload/Rapid Shots can never miss against an Npc. Even for threat generation i find surge-rating to be the far stronger stat as our crit-chanche with Rocket-Punch is pretty high and surge is insanely good before diminishing return kicks in. What you can do to get rid of those Accuracy Enhancements is to run Kaon under Siege/Boarding Party for Helm/Gloves and break out their Enhancements, which are Shield/Defense.

Mandalorian Iron goes for 10k a piece on our server. You only need 2 for the bracers/waist and he sells these pieces with the Endowment prefix (crit/surge as secondary skills) for 75k each, while getting up to 250k for a Mastercraft item if the item crits. Thats quite a healthy profit margin

I don´t agree. A friend of mine has Armormech and is trying to get all recipes for his class. He already has lots of them and while learning them and producing [Mastercraft] items he sold all [superior] items at the GTN. Up until now he made around 8 Million Credits profit through selling his crafted stuff. This might be different on different servers, but there is quiet a high demand for top notch crafted gear right now. And keep in mind the following: Crafted Artifact gear is really cheap, only the recipes are hard and expensive to get. Once you have them you can and will make tons of money as it should be.

I actually can´t imagine why someone would think that there isn´t anything worthwhile to craft at lvl 50. The Pieces that you can get through reverse Engineering are really interesting. While they lack in Main Stats (Aim/Cunning/Strength/Willpower + Endurance ), a critted Artifact Quality Item has close to double the secondary stats of even Columi Gear (including the Augment Slot). And primary stats aren´t stronger than secondary Stats in this game, actually the reverse is true. For Example a Tank decked out in the best available crafted Gear will take far less Damage then a Tank in full Columi Gear, he will just have around 4k health less than the Columi geared Tank and do less threat. Here is one example: Columi Supercommandos Bracers 72 Aim 83 Endurance 27 Defense vs the crafted Bracers Veracity Powered Ultramesh Bracers [Mastercraft] 45 Aim 52 Endurance 28 Shield Rating 41 Absorb Rating 25 Defense These two items are effectively sidegrades and it depends on the encounter which one are actually better.