You really ought to decide yourself rather than just taking what others say for granted. If you are unsure, you can save up skills for a few levels as you get to understand your class abilities better. Those points are not going anywhere, and you can always respec later.

I ran slicing missions for around five hours after the nerf and recorded the numbers. Not a very large sample size, but as large as I have patience for, and large enough to demonstrate to me that slicing is still OK. The big winners for me were, unsurprisingly, Finding our Way (8378 profit after five missions, one crit yielding 4362 profit), Taking Back Control (4583 profit after five missions, one crit yielding 4814 profit), and Arranged Accidents (2655 profit after ten missions, two crits yielding 1587 and 1195 profit). These numbers include the cost of the mission and do not account for profit from the numerous blue/purple schematics and mission discoveries that also dropped and which I usually save for later consumption. I also tried Pointing Fingers (488 profit after six missions), For Better or Worse (486 profit after three missions), and Identify and Neutralize (47 loss after three missions). Total proceeds: 16543 credits. Not an earth-shattering amount but certainly profitable.

We might as well ask for saber whips, saber sickles, and saber katana while we're at it.

I think that between Artifice and Synthweaving in their present state, the only viable choice is Biochem... At least until the next nerf comes up.

I'm pretty sure that daftshadow was not addressing his question to you specifically but to the forum at large. We get that you hate Kira, good for you I personally like her, but so what? Last I checked, this was about T7 and the final class fight, not about who hates Kira and who doesn't. daftshadow, you can upgrade T7 beforehand or you can solve the puzzle in the Temple and receive a full set of equipment for him (but the chest tends to be bugged). Either way, even with lvl 50 blue-modded equipment, T7 is squishy and will die within ten-fifteen seconds on the final boss fight. You should count on having to solo that fight, by glitching it. Or you can bring friends.

Yes, it's a prereq. I also kind of fail to see the logic behind that but there it is. You need to kill the last boss that you mention. Get help if necessary (I was not able to solo him as I couldn't get the pillar trick to work - I suppose my finger dexterity is lacking. After spending 100k on repairs I asked for help). Go to wherever 50ies gravitate on your server, probably Fleet or Corellia, and ask nicely. After you finish that mission, you'll unlock the Ilum storyline, the Belsavis bonus series, and rest of the dailies.

I've run a few dozen slicing mission yesterday and overall I came out well ahead. So yes, you will still make money if you run Rich/Bountiful missions for credit boxes.

Level 50 after 6 days and 16 hours /played. I listened to every conversation for every quest I came across and took time out to go datacron hunting and exploring. Perhaps a more interesting question would be how much of that time was spent mounted moving around from quest to quest!

I have this bug also. I'm not at maximum affection with Doc so it's likely not related to that. Have Crazy Talk in journal with no objectives listed. In the field, Doc has the icon that shows he wants to talk to me, but when I am actually on the ship he has nothing to say.

Actually, slicing also has a chance to return blue/purple mission discoveries, which can be quite useful. So it's not entirely useless past augments and lockboxes. Overall I'm not sure why this nerf was needed - I am sitting on 1 million credits here and only about 200k came from slicing, I recon. Most of my income comes from quests and vendoring loot, with a good chunk from selling items on GTN. I'll reserve judgement until I see the new slicing in action, though.

I use it, but as I level up (am 49 now) I find that I use it less and less. Usually I want to be building focus or spending it. Master Strike does neither and takes three seconds to cast. Typical combat for me: Saber Throw and Leap on weak mob in group, at this point Opportune Strike will finish it off. If not then I hit Master Strike and interrupt it once the mob is dead. If there's another weak mob then I Force Sweep followed by Pommel Strike and another ability like Strike to finish it off. Then I switch to the strong mob, if any, and use Sundering Strike followed by Plasma Brand. After that I alternate between Sundering Strike and Reposte / Blade Storm / Overhead Slash / Plasma Brand, using interrupts as needed in between (Force Push as interrupt also works nicely since you can follow with Saber Throw and another Leap). Once the mob is below 20% I add Dispatch to the mix. Usually all this leaves me with little to no time to use Master Strike, although I throw it in there for variety once in a while.

I've dutifully watched every cutscene of every quest in the game (I swear, if my toon says "It's both a duty and an honor" one more time...) on Republic side and am about to hit 50 finally. Seeing as you guys are complaining a lot about endgame, I suppose it's time to level one of my Empire alts. Bioware shall have all the time they need to flesh out endgame content, no sweat.

How did you guys get the other items? I know the chest is a reward but are the others simply drops in Coruscant and Nar Shaddaa?

I've been using my current hooded robe, Battle Expulsor's Chestguard, all the way from Coruscant (or was it Esseles?) to Corellia and I love it, precisely because it has a hood and does not look like plate armor.

You clearly missed the time when Bioware said that all DPS trees across all classes are meant to do within 5% damage of each other. Guardian/Juggernaut is only not meant to do as much damage when you spec into Defense/Immortal. I'm not certain that's the case right now but if it's not, I'm expecting that Bioware will adjust it accordingly. On another note, DPS-specced JK/SW lack long-term CC ability but they do not lack Focus/Rage burst. Anyone claiming that simply has not leveled far enough yet. After around mid-thirties, when you get Saber Throw, you can open any combat with full or nearly full Focus/Rage bar if you so desire and immediately proceed to use your high-damage abilities.

I've only ever seen the chest, wrists, and leggings. IIRC all three were quest rewards. I'm also very interested in how to find the rest of this set. Is it just random drops?

I've leveled using Vigilance from 1 to 45 (so far) and, while it was no walk in the park sometimes, I never had any real problems. Tatooine was a step up in difficulty but I expected as much from talking to other people. I used Shii-Cho, follwed by Shien once I unlocked it (around level 20 or so), and only switched to Soresu for fights where I persistently kept dying. I used Kira and kept both of our equipment updated, so DPS was high. You can certainly spec Defense to go through Chapter 1, but you will be severely gimping your damage output by doing so, and it will hence take longer to level up. None of the Chapter 1 content is impossible to solo or even particularly hard. I can think of only two places that might pose a real challenge - the Tatooine end boss and the end boss for Chapter 1.

There was another player trying to progress while I was at Angral. We both struggled. I died twice I think, being level 32 guardian and only getting him down to 20% health, while using all cooldowns and interrupting his abilities as often as possible. Most likely, my gear was not good enough at that point. But we simply teamed up and steamrolled him, he died in about 15 seconds and the mini-boss after him died in 5. Then the quest got bugged and we had to do it a third time... Lesson learned: two lightsabers are better than one. But that still won't make me roll a Sentinel. Pah. I think Angral is of an appropriate difficulty, especially for the epic encounter he is part of. Compared to that, the boss at the end of Act 2 is far too easy - the trash mobs on the way to him are ten times harder than he is. While there is a conceivable in-story reason for why he's so easy, it still felt a bit cheap.

I'd rather people congregate in Kaas City / Coruscant senate but I'm afraid that train has already left. These places are going to be emptying out as people outlevel them, and the space stations will fill up more and more.

The real reason is because if they did that, they'd have to create a proper, full-fledged mounted combat system which works against both mounted AND unmounted opponents. And the regular combat system now has to work vs mounts. This would increase complexity and costs significantly, while the benefits apart from cool factor are unclear. A futuristic MMO in Star Wars might allow you to control walkers or fight from the back of your speeder.... but in the meantime, I suggest you play Mount & Blade or any other similar game which does allow mounted combat

You get experience twice - once for running the daily related to the mission and once for the mission itself. The daily is worth significantly more.

Slow elevator is slow, but otherwise it's an awesome flashpoint.

Also did with Kira and Vigilance but I was around level 27 or 28 when I did it. Watch out that he does not Force push you off the cliff, that can get nasty and also bugged the quest for me. Otherwise just watch what he's doing and keep interrupting him.

I have no hand-eye coordination to speak of. If I can do this, so can you and anyone else. You don't have to be some MMO god who ate the wisdom fruit to survive this encounter. There was actually a lot of good advice in this thread already, including many alternatives that you can attempt if, despite trying your best with the class mechanics, you have trouble - like asking someone for help or coming back a level or two later and/or with better gear. I see Valdis as a sort of gear/skill check - as in, if you can manage him, you can manage Tatooine, which is a significant step up in difficulty from Nar Shaddaa. With Valdis you really have to pay attention to what he's doing - if you see the blue bar below his health bar which indicates he's casting something nasty, it's high time to use your interrupts.

Pretty sure it's cybertech as I've found cybertech schematics for starship parts. Maybe armsmech has some also, not sure.