Has anyone tried a cunning build for Elara? Wondering if healing is higher with cunning instead of aim.

Just a word of advice. Find a casual guild that is really laid back. That should cut back on 99% of the stress. Raiding is a blast if you are with a guild that is about having fun.

I prefer to raid with friends, but I see no reason why solo players should not have something different from questing as well. Besides, there is already a solo player stat: Presence. This would seem to be the perfect stat to load on solo gear. Instead of inflating the main stats on solo "raid" gear they could put on massive amounts of presence to increase both you and your companion's damage. This would seem to be the perfect compromise as it would separate solo gear from group PvE and PvP gear.

My experience on the server The Jekk'Jekk Tarr has been the exact opposite. People are always grouping up for heroics.

The community has told them the features they want. Now we have to wait for them to be implemented, same as any other MMO. Lacking specific features is the price you pay for getting in on day one. This has been the case for every MMO.

"Indeed."--Teal'c

Best to wait until after the Oceanic release. There will be a lot of Oceanic players transferring to the new servers. After that settles down then they do need to take a good look at server pops.

You don't even have to go all out at times. I have pulled aggro with my sustained DPS rotation. Mixing in my threat reduction skill does nothing (which is said to be buggy). You literally have to hamstring yourself. Do tanks and healers have to hold back? Not from what I have seen. If a tank creates too much threat does a healer die?

The problem is that "managing threat" = "doing bad dps". They are one in the same.

I'm with the OP on this one. As DPS I don't mind having to manage threat. That is exactly what the OP was talking about to begin with, using skills to manage threat. Right now, the only way we have of not pulling aggro is to do bad DPS. That's lame. The whole point of getting better gear is to do better DPS. What is the point if we have to limit our DPS more and more as we get better gear? Personally, I think there is something going on with how threat is generated by troopers/mercs. Like the OP, if the boss isn't taunted I can pull aggro if I go full out even without CD's. My first suspicion is that the armor debuff from grav round is adding more threat than it should, but this is pure speculation on my part.

That's just it. If you stack 2 tanks and 6 healers for an 8-man raid without enrage timers even Nightmare mode would be a cakewalk. Just put 3 healers spamming one heal on each tank, and the tank using a super simple rotation and you win. Healers just have to heal themselves once in a while, and that's it. Super simple. No challenge. The only other mechanic to get around enrage times is forcing WoW-like mana pools for healers. This really isn't any different than an enrage timer since you now need to drop the boss before your healers go OOM. With SWTOR, you can't do this because everyone has a fast regen time on their skill resources. Their only option is enrage timers, or some other mechanic that works in the exact same way.

I still like to hear from WoW players that "call in sick" on Tues only to forget that maintenance starts on Tues morning. NA WoW players have had the EU sched from the start, and they seem to do just fine with it.

Holy holiday Batman, my trash day got moved up a day too!!!!!!!! Whiskey tango foxtrot?

As a NA player, I would be fine with down time while I am at work. What is the problem with that? Get home at 5 and servers come up? Sounds perfect.

I am Mountain time and 1 am is ok with me. Frankly, I need to be in bed by that time anyway for work the next day. It's nice to have a 1 am hard enrage for raiding.

And look at what happened to WoW. It was a total failure and had to go F2P after 6 months . . . oh wait, that didn't happen.

Could you imagine what people would be saying about WoW if it released right now? No BG's, no endgame raids, lacks tons of features that SWTOR launched with, massive server instability, etc. No MMO has launched with a full set of features. NONE. SWTOR is no different. I am not going to tell people how to spend their money or tell them that they should enjoy a game when they are not. What people do need to change is their expectations. If posts in this thread are any indication, no MMO will ever live up to some people's expectations. People see an MMO with 12 years of total development (i.e. WoW) and expect another MMO to do the same in less than half the time. Sorry, that doesn't happen.

You, the developers, really need to put in keybinds for raid markers. It would be helpful to everyone if we could hit a key to mark our targets (e.g. mark with flame, target, crosshairs . . .). I apologize if I am missing the option as of right now, but I can not find a keybind for marking targets.

I don't know about OP, but from my experience Gunnery is currently the highest sustained DPS in raids. It gets even better if there is more than one Gunnery in the group since grav rounds stack for bonus damage on Demo Rounds. Here is why I think gunnery is the best DPS right now, since we lack damage meters. When I raid I have to hold back on my DPS so I don't pull aggro, and when I go all out I am consistently pulling aggro off the tank. I have even become the de facto off tank for the Jarg/Sorno fight in Karagga's Palace because I hold aggro on Jarg the entire time without ever losing aggro to the other ranged DPS (unless it is another gunnery trooper). For the counsel fight in EV I consistently beat out the other equally geared DPS classes, and not by a little bit. Is Gunnery OP? You might as well ask if Arcane Mages are OP in that other MMO since they consistently top the damage meters. Personally, I think troopers are designed to be narrowly focused DPS demons.

That is a solid build, except for the two points missing in Reserve Round. In my experience, you need every single ammo regen talent you can get your hands on for an endgame gunnery DPS build. I use reserve cell every time it is up and it has really helped my DPS. I can even plan around it by digging a little deeper than normal into my ammo pool knowing that I can get back to the top regen rate on the next free cast. Personally, I would move the two points from Cover Fire into Reserve Round. Also, stay away from any talents that increase alacrity. The current theory is that any amount of alacrity is bad because it does not increase ammo regen and disrupts the sync between cast times and Cell Charger (3 sec downtime). Alacrity may be viable for PvP builds, but it could be detrimental to PvE builds.

Gunnery DPS is limited by ammo regen, and alacrity does NOTHING for ammo regen. The number one priority of any gunnery build or rotation is ammo regen, period. If you leave out a single talent related to ammo regen you have gimped yourself as a gunnery DPS. Other than talents, what is the one stat that can increase ammo regen? Crit. Alacrity will make your ammo disappear faster without making it regen faster. Crit will produce more dps per ammo spent AND refund ammo. Another problem is that alacrity disrupts the sync between casts and the 3 sec downtime on Cell Charger. For example, if you cast 3 grav rounds with no alacrity you have a chance to refund 1 ammo on the first and third grav round. One iota of alacrity and you lose the chance to refund ammo on the 3rd grav round. If you crit on a grav round and then cast full auto you have a chance of refunding 1 ammo on the grav round and a crit on the final tick of full auto. Not so if you have alacrity. Of course, all of this applies to PvE builds. In PvP, alacrity may be viable where burst is more important than sustained dps.

Good advice. The reason you want to use the relic for your weakest stat is due to diminishing returns. A power relic is going to "hit harder" for a crit/surge build because the power is on the steepest part of the DR curve.

Gunnery DPS is limited by ammo regen. If you talent FA for ammo regen then it borders on refunding more than it uses over its duration. Yes, the DPS may be a little less than 2 grav rounds over the same time period, but FA wins when considering ammo usage. During an acute burn phase on a boss you probably should leave FA out (e.g. Soa's third phase). For all other situations, it is a win.

Frankly, having perhaps the highest DPS and heavy armor is worth the trade for a lack of an interrupt. I have yet to see a boss that requires 3 interrupts within 8 seconds. Therefore, you only need one other healer/DPS to have an interrupt in addition to the boss. If you are running 2 trooper DPS and trooper heals then you may have a problem, but you will definitely NOT have a problem producing DPS.

When leveling up, Aim is everything. If it increases Aim then it is an upgrade whether or not it has alacrity. At 50, that is an entirely different story. Gunnery should NOT be rolling on alacrity gear if there is a Medic in the group. Period.