I tried an IA sniper up to 16 in beta and absolutely loved the cover + "sniping" turret style play. But after playing a commando healer up to 50 after release and then starting a Gunsliner, I got bored really quickly of the turret style gameplay on my Gunslinger. After getting up to level 14 I was already bored out of my skull. Then on my commando, I teamed up with a Scoundrel Scrapper for my Ilum heroic daily and he absolutely butchered everything in record time while I kept him alive. That was a sign for me to stop doubting and just bench my Gunslinger to be an auction house patsy and make a new Smuggler to be a Scoundrel. Mostly likely I'll level him as a Sawbones but I'm hoping for dual spec soon so I can start Sucker Punching people In the end it all comes down to personal preference. Play a class and if you don't like it, try something else. But don't fret about time wasted / lost because then you'll just feel bad for yourself for a long time and that's not worth it. And just like me, you can always use your undesireable characters as auction house patsies and try leveling them later. Maybe you can enjoy them at a later time when you get bored of your favorite class.

OP, so basically you are saying: "I'm a healer but I like to DPS so I hate it that the healer set gives me healing related stats" Simple solution: Respec to DPS and quit complaining. And to actually add something useful to this discussion: Alacrity does NOT lower the GCD for instant cast abilities. They will always leave you with a 1.5 sec GCD. Alacrity DOES however lower the GCD for your abilities with an activation time if they go below 1.5 sec activation time. Then you can use another abilities immediately afterwards, even if the activation time is only 1.3 sec for example. Furthermore, I can confirm that alacrity shortens any channel times (thus the dps/hps happens faster) so I think that it might also work on dots/hots as one of the previous posters suggested. I have not tested this yet tho but it's definately something worth checking. If it indeed works on dots/hots then alacrity is a lot more useful than people think. The problem is that people only seem to know that alacrity speeds up activation time and don't know about channel time or possibly dot/hot ticking speed. Therefor they midjudge the value of alacrity.

My new sage is only 13 but I already have Disturbance as "filler" attack while I wait for the cooldown on Project and whatever that pebble stream is called. I do however keep my basic free saber attack on my hotbar because with Qyzen, I'm absolutely flying through packs of enemies without bothering to regenerate. So after a few packs of enemies, I often find myself in combat when I run out of force. The free saber attack doesn't do much damage but it's better than standing there doing nothing while waiting for force to regen. I only bother to regen force when I run completely out of it OR when I'm about to take on a strong, elite or boss mob. If you however prefer to regen force after every pull, then you will most likely never run out unless taking on a boss and then you can probably remove your saber attacks from your hotbar. It's all just personal preference.

As the previous poster said, if you are a healer sage and had a dps shadow in your group then it's just common sense that the shadow gets priority on a willpower item with accuracy. Accuracy does NOTHING for a healer. Your teammates will not try to dodge or resist your heals. Heals are 100% hit. That is why your group gave you a hard time and they were right. That said, if there is no dps shadow or dps sage in your group and you get more willpower / power out of such items then off course you can (and should) roll need.

The above is true and I even know where to get Magenta Adagen crystals from. The problem is that many people don't wish to share this information because purple crystals require a bit of work to get, are rare, cool, whatever and could possibly sell for millions, as long as the masses don't know how to get them. But the thing is, the information is out there for those who bother to use Google. You might have to sift through a lot of crap to get the correct information but it's definately out there in full detail. On a sidenote, Magenta Adagen crystals are unique so you can only have 1 purple crystal crafted at a time unless you send your Magenta crystal to an alt before getting another one. PS: I'm still looking for a republic side artificer on Hidden Beks who can craft purple crystals Can provide the Magenta Adagen crystals myself + a crafting fee.

After doing some more testing, I just give my companions the rank 1 gift they "love" according the list gift until they go over 2000 affection, then I give them the rank 2 gift they "love" until they go over 6000 affection. This will cost a total of 42000 credits per companions. Then you can either run level 49-50 missions with a "Rich" yield for rank 5 companion gifts. This will get you blue and sometimes purple quality rank 5 gifts. Use those to get them up to 10k affection. It actually goes pretty quick. For example, a purple rank 5 gift that they "love", for a companion who has between 6000 and 7999 affection, will give 422 affection. Store all the gifts you don't need for your current companions in your cargo hold to use on your alts later on (or sell them on the auction house) Alternatively, you could swap companions as you level and get the last 4k on most of them from quest conversations.

First: "love" comes before "favorite". This also means that the list from the original poster has most of these mixed around, except for a few that he already fixed based on comments of other people in this topic. OP, can you please recheck your list compared to the swtorface list at http://www.swtorface.com/p/swtor-companion-list.html and make sure that you marked all "love" gifts as +++ and "favorite" as ++. Not the other way around. Then you should have a correct list. Secondly, some general info regarding companion gifts that a lot of people don't seem to know. I just discovered this myself from testing on some of my companions for the last hour. Every 2000 affection, your companion wants a higher rank of gift. Giving a rank 1 give to a companion with 2000-3999 affection will give only 50% of the affection value and only 20% when your companion has 4000-5999 affection. After your companion has 6000+ affection, rank 1 gifts will give 0 affection. So giving the best rank 1 gift for your companion when he already has 2000-3999 affection, will only give you +48 instead of +96. Giving the same rank 1 gift when your companion has 4000-5999 affection will only give 19 affection. Giving a gift of 1 higher rank compared to your companions affection gives 10% more affection than an appropriatly ranked gift. For example: giving a rank 2 gift to a companion with 0-1999 affection will only get you +106, for a gift that costs 3 times as many credits as a rank 1 gift. This is a waste of credits. Giving a gift of 2 higher ranks gives a 100% bonus. For example: giving a rank 3 gift to a companion with 0-1999 affection will get you +117, but once again this is a waste of credits. Even more so than in my previous example for rank 2 gifts. So always give rank appropriate gifts: 0-1999 affection: rank 1 gifts: 21 x 200 (vendor rank 1 gifts) = 4200 credits. 2000-3999 affection: rank 2 gifts: 21 x 600 (vendor rank 2 gifts) = 12600 credits. 4000-5999 affection: rank 3 gifts: 21 x price depending on mission cost and luck of getting the correct gifts that you need for your companion(s) OR 42 x 600 (vendor rank 2 gifts) = 25200 credits. 6000-7999 affection: rank 4 gifts: 21 x price depending on mission cost and luck of getting the correct gifts that you need for your companion(s) OR 105 x 600 (vendor rank 2 gifts) = 63000 credits. 8000-10000 affection: rank 5 gifts: 21 x price depending on mission cost and luck of getting the correct gifts that you need for your companion(s). Total cost for getting a companion from 0 to 8000 affection without doing missions for rank 3 and 4 gifts: 105000 credits. This is with 21 rank 1 gifts and 168 rank 2 gifts. This will also take you 104 minutes since you can only give a gift to a companion every 33 seconds (30 second debuff + 3 second cast time to give the gift) I have only found vendors with rank 1 and rank 2 companion gifts so far. I don't know if there are vendors with rank 3, 4 and / or 5 gifts on higher level planets (I've been up to Balmorra). But it seems that we are going to have to get those gifts from one of the mission crew skills. NOTE: THE NEXT PART IS ONLY A THEORY I have no data regarding negative affection since I don't have any companions below -2000 but I have a theory that it follows the same pattern as positive affection. So giving a companion with -2500 affection for example a rank 1 gift will only give him +48 affection while giving a rank 2 gift will give him +96. Until you get his affection higher than -1999. At this point you can use rank 1 gifts for best affection per credit value. If someone has a companion below -2000 affection, maybe you can test it and let us know? END OF THEORY Lastly, I tried giving every type of gift to C2-N2 (the ship droid for republic, empire gets the same but with a different name) and they all give him 0 affection. He also does not respond at all in chat to the gifts. I'm pretty sure there is currently no way to increase his affection and thus his mission effectiveness. I hope this helps clear up a lot of confusion many people still seem to have regarding companion gifts and will help them maximize their companion affection / credit cost.

I'm a combat medic myself (39) so I share Mfryder's points. You'll miss out on too many goodies from the top of the combat medic tree to be able to heal hard/nightmare flashpoints. Normal flashpoints while leveling should not be a problem though. As for Gunnery, I have no experience with this but I try to follow the Gunnery topics as I'm going Gunnery for my offspec when dual speccing comes. I thought that Full Auto was the "filler" shot for whenever you already have 5 stacks of gravity vortex up and HIB + Demo round are on cooldown. But maybe doing grav rounds, HIB, demo round AND full auto is too much to keep ammo regeneration at max. Maybe a grav round / HIB build will work. I don't know. Why not try them both and let us know? It definately seems something worth checking.

I'm leveling as a pure healer as well. Currently 39. On a sidenote, I'm doing every planet, every quest in order as I want to experience the full story. This means that I'm usually doing content 4-6 levels below my own level. So far I have done half of the 4 man heroic quests solo. (whenever I cant find a group). It takes a lot of time but it's very doable with crowd control and then keeping Jorgan alive while he tanks and kills the elite mobs. Just take out the standard and strong mobs first to reduce incoming damage. If you are doing content around your own level then a tanking companion might be more useful. I'm using Jorgan as my "tank" because I'm armormech and it's quite easy to keep him in decent gear. Off course, if you are cybertech then you can make full use of 4X once you get him.

Just some additional info. Trooper healing will be ackward at best until you hit level 27 and get your 3rd point in Field Triage. This skill gives your advanced medical probe (AMP) a 100% chance to reduce the cost of your next medical probe (MP) by 2 ammo. (so it costs only 1 instead of 3) At this point you become a much better healer. Just use AMP whenever you can before you use an MP. Also remember that your Combat Support Cell changes the effect of your hammer shot. Besides doing damage to enemies, it will now also heal a friendly target if you target them with it. It's a rather weak heal but it's free and should be used whenever you are waiting for ammo regeneration. My rotation for healing medium damage is AMP, MP, MP. This leaves me at 8 ammo, just enough to keep my maximum ammo regeneration. Then I do 1 or 2 hammer shots. If damage get's too high, use Supercharge Cells (if you have 30 stacks of combat support cell, which you should have) and spam AMP, MP, AMP, MP, .... until the buff runs out. Next is Kolto Bomb. Use this at least every 15 seconds on your tank. The Kolto Residue skill makes your Kolto Bombs give a buff for 5% more healing for 15 seconds. It might not seem much but 5% more healing during spike damage can make that little bit of difference. Just use Kolto Bomb somewhere in between when you can. Lastly, keep Recharge Cells off cooldown until your ammo drops below 5. (or below 3 if you have Cell Capacitor). You never want to get back up to 12 ammo from using Recharge Cells because then your ammo regeneration isn't doing anything for 1,5 or 2 seconds while you cast your next AMP or MP. Your goal should be to get back up to 8-10 ammo when using Recharge Cells so your ammo regeneration is never wasted. (regeneration is wasted when you are sitting at max ammo) There are several other useful topics on this forum. Browse around and I'm sure you'll come across plenty of info on how to spec, gear and place a combat medic.

I'm a 39 combat medic, but just looking at the Gunnery tree, I can come up with something like this for PVE. I'll be using this spec or something very similar as my own offspec when dual speccing goes in. http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#800McZrIkroMdokfzZb.1 That leaves 3 points that could be spent in Target Lock if accuracy would be a problem at 50. No idea where I would spend those points otherwise. I might switch the 2 point from Advanced Tech to Cover fire if it turns out that the 2 second slow is helpful in some nightmare flashpoint or operation. For PVP, you might want to drop Advanced Tech and Heavy Trooper and take Concussive Force and Tenacious Defense instead. Maybe even free up 2 points somewhere for Quick Thinking since my own experience tells me that I'm not getting healed much (or at all) by others in PVP. Might as well improve your own healing a tiny bit.

Wrong, wrong wrong. Slicing does not make you rich. Crafting does not make you poor. Proper credits management and using your brain makes you rich (or less poor) First off all, you do NOT need to buy new ranks for every skill on your trainer. Check your advanced class, check the skill tree you invest points in and learn which skills you will use in your rotation and which skills you will never ever ever use with your current advanced class. Don't upgrade those skills. They are a waste of money until we get dual speccing. Secondly, do you really need that extra 10% speed from buying speeder piloting 2 at level 40? I don't think so. That's 200k saved right there. Just get it when you are swimming in credits later on. (Same for the level 50 speeder piloting, which is only another 10% speed increase) Thirdly, don't buy loads of expensive gear from the auction house that you will out-level in 2 hours. Total waste of credits. You can get the occasional nice piece of gear for a good price but too many people go overboard when they see that shiny purple item for "only" 20k on the auction house. That's 20k wasted on an item you'll replace within a day when you are still leveling up. If you don't have an armor crafting profession, then make some friends who do. Ask them to make you some armor for a fair price or buy some cheap materials off the auction house and have your armor made. Gatherers are swimming in green quality crafting materials and are throwing them practically for free on the auction house this early in the game. Lastly, don't pay your companions to go on gathering missions. Gather stuff yourself (scavenge, bioanalysis, archaeology) I'm currently level 39 with about 310 armormech, 330 scavenging and 395 underworld trading. i'm sitting on 300k+ credits and don't know what to spend it on. I haven't done a single scavenging mission in my life and have 100-200 spare of each grade 1 to 4 scavenging material, just from questing and grabbing all the junk I find on the floor. I also haven't sold a single underworld trading material on the auction house yet. All my credits are from quest rewards and selling grey / green junk to vendors. If you still can't make any credits after reading the above 4 points then maybe you are just destined to be poor. But that is NOT due to the game design.

sigh ... in queue for 1,5 hours, bam server error. Have to re-queue. Starting again at 578 ... There goes another 2 hours down the drain ... New servers were added way too late since most of the servers were already full just from the preorder guilds that were thrown onto them. Love the game, absolutely epic but regarding the queue's: epic fail BW ... epic fail.

EU Hidden Beks PVE 11:10 GMT+1 238 in queue Server shows: "estimated wait: < 15m 00s" Over the past 35 minutes, I've gone to 88 in queue and the server estimate wait has bumped up first to 20m and recently to 25m. Estimated wait times are still horribly underestimating the actual wait time. A friend of mine just spent 50 minutes in queue to get on Hidden Beks. Same story when I get home from work at 22:30 GMT+1. Still have to sit in queue for 30-60m each evening. Edit Just spent 62 minutes in queue to get on the server while the initial wait time said it would take less than 15 minutes ... Now I can play for 45 minutes before I have to go ...

The title made me smile Thanks for giving me a happy ending to a boring day at work.

As long as we don't have a load of level 50 combat medics doing some serious number crunching, and more importantly, as long as YOU are not level 50 yet, don't worry about it too much. Just make sure you are using AIM gear and the rest doesn't matter much. As already said, skill synergies seem to favor crit but that doesn't mean it's our best secondary. TBH, currently nobody truly knows what the best secondary is and it's all best guess. Just go with what you personally prefer. And once again, as long as you use AIM gear, you should be fine. Besides, min/maxing your character doesn't make much difference anyway until you hit level 50 and start doing heroic flashpoints and operations.

I'm very interested to hear about the results of your testing as I never had that problem before. i'm currently at work (obviously not working very hard right now) so I can't test it myself at the moment.

If you want to be a healer then go for 31 combat medic first. You want to take the good medic skills and abilities as soon as you have enough skill points to get them. Furthermore, I can suggest to only spend 8 points in gunnery and put the last 2 in assault. There is a nice tier 1 skill in assault where you can spend 2 points. I can't remember the name I think it's the one with an alacrity bonus. Alacrity gives you faster casting on all your abilities. But the last 10 points are only for when you reach level 41+ so don't worry about that yet. Just focus on CM first

Well, at what levels did you guys do that fight and did you do it as a trooper healer? From a healing point of view, that fight is not easy if nobody is high enough level to dispell the debuff. That life drain does a lot of damage and often people don't run away from the rest and thus explode for another 700'ish damage on everyone near them. That's A LOT of damage to heal as a trooper medic before level 27. I found trooper healing in general quite challenging until 27 where I got my 3rd point in that shiny skill that lowers the cost of med probe by 2 after using adv med probe.

I'm a 29 combat medic and I often switch between friendly targets while my heals are still casting so I can start casting the next heal asap on the next target that needs it. My heals ALWAYS hit the target that I STARTED casting them on. So I never encountered what you mention. I believe it might be incorrect information unless someone can confirm it, in which case I assume it's a bug. I do however have A LOT of UI bugs where I cannot click anything anymore so I have to use CTRL+U twice to remove / reload my UI. This is very annoying when it happens in a boss fight during a damage spike But unfortunately there isn't much we can do until BW fixes the UI bug. I personally use my F keys for my second hotbar but if you don't then you could try them to target your teammates with. (which is the default setting for the F keys anyway)

OP, I think it would help us a lot if you would let us know which spec you have. (just general, medic or gunnery) If you are a medic, send in Aric to "tank" and just heal him and occasionally DPS the Nekghoul if Aric's health is ok but only use Hammer Shot for DPS unless you're sure you won't need the ammo very soon for healing Aric. If you are Gunnery, then I don't have the experience to help you but others have suggested to send Aric first to take some hits before you go all out and take agro. Another option is to finish your class quests on Taris to get your next companion who is a healer and try using that companion to keep you alive. I'm not sure how good that companion is at healing at I haven't tested it yet but it might work.

Republic fleet in the combat training section. In one of the siderooms you will find a Rodian "Skill Mentor" (at least I believe it's a skill mentor). On Coruscant in one of the underground trading areas, there is a sideroom with the guild registration NPC and a Rodian "Skill Mentor". I'm sure there are more, but those are the first 2 I came across. I always use the fleet one because I use the fleet as my hub. Talk to one of them to respec. First time is free, after that I think it costs some credits but I don't know how many. The conversation with the NPC does not show the price but after you ask the NPC to respec, you will get a popup to confirm it and this will show the price. As for healing advice: Try to keep your ammo above 7 is possible. 8-12 ammo = 0.60 regeneration 3-7 ammo = 0.36 regeneration As you can see, as soon as you go below 8 ammo, you loose 40% !!! of your regeneration speed. Before you reach level 27, use adv med probe if it's off cooldown, otherwise use med probe but keep an eye on your ammo. Don't forget to activate your combat support cells and this turns your hammer shot into a weak healing ray when targetting friendly targets. Use hammer shot on teammates to heal them whenever you are waiting for ammo to regenerate. In your skill tree, take Supercharge Cells as soon as possible and then put the next 2 points in Field Medicine. Your hammer shot on friendly targets (the green healing beam) will build 3 stacks of combat support cells. With 1-2 points in Field Medicine, your med probe will build 3-6 stacks of combat support cells. When you have 30 stacks, you can activate Supercharge Cells to consume the 30 stacks. When you activate this, you instantly gain 2 ammo and for 10 seconds you do 10% more healing + your adv med probe doesn't have a cooldown. During spike damage on your tank, use Supercharge Cells and then spam adv med probe. Your ammo will be below 8 if your tank needs a lot of healing because adv med probe still costs 2 ammo but you can finish off with Recharge Cells to get your ammo above 8 again. Once you reach level 27, you can put your 3rd point in Field Triage. This gives your adv med probe a 100% chance to reduce the cost of your next med probe by 2. (so it costs only 1 instead of 3) Now when you use Supercharge Cells, you just alternate adv med probe and med probe for very strong healing with a very low ammo cost. I'm currently level 29 myself and as soon as I hit 27, healing became A LOT easier due to the guaranteed proc from 3 points in Field Medicine. I'm planning on taking Trauma probe as soon as possible, then Preventive Medicine and Armor Screen. I don't use the following talents at all as they seem to be more PVP oriented: Efficient Conversions, Combat Shield (maybe this has a use later on during some boss fights that require uninterrupted healing at some point but I haven't come across such a situation yet), Med Zone, Treated Wound Dressings. I hope this helps. I'm nowhere near pro but I find myself to be pretty when healing and have gotten several compliments from people liking my healing so I must be doing something right. Just keep in mind that it might start out difficult and frustrating but once you hit level 27, things will be A LOT better. Edit: just in case you are interested, this is the final build I'll be using personally http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#800rfRMR0cdkqZrcoZb.1 Just remember that if you want to be a healer, first go down the combat medic tree before you spend points in gunnery or assault.

@Astares (and for general info): Alacrity does NOT reduce the GCD. For those not familiar with the "GCD" term. This is the "Global CoolDown". It's the 1,5 second delay after you use an ability before you can use any other ability. In some games, haste, or "alacrity" as it is called in this game, can lower the global cooldown so you can use your abilities faster in a row. This is NOT the case in the current state of SWTOR however.

A friend of mine is playing Guardian and he mentioned that he doesn't have many AOE abilities at all for tanking. (at level 28) So as you already mentioned, Mortar Volley will pull everything because your tank simply can't get enough threat on everything at the start. Just go for single target DPS and go easy at the start. Make sure you are attacking the tanks main target. If unsure, ask in party chat in which order the group wants to kill the targets so you are attacking the target that has the most threat towards your tank.

That's quite painful, doing it as a level 19. (the Athiss quest is level 21) In case you're doing it at such a low level, you could ask if someone else in the group can heal as well. Then you can alternate healing so you can both keep your class resource high to deal with spike damage from the life drain. Also don't forget that the life drain debuff explodes in an AOE at the end. If nobody can dispell it, the person affected should move away from the group until it pops.