I tihnk you were trying to get to this but... Good luck spamming (IM) a 25 heat skill with low burst damage from range and being effective. Rail shot is also sort of useless from range as you can't reset the cooldown of it so it's only occasionally useful b/c of it's cooldown time. You always had to move into melee (or near melee) range for optimal performance. It's just now you're going to be gimpy outside of melee.

For PVE: If you're comfortable with your role on a team and are decent with your rotation/skill usage, queue up for HM flashpoints and get the BH comms and some columni gear. Focus on the Black Hole dailies for the BH commendations. Those give you access to the 2nd best gear in the game currently but it takes a while to earn enough to buy it. You can also do storymode EV. Just watch some Youtube strategy videos of the fights so you know what you're doing. Recruit gear is enough to do EV, it's just at the low end and if you don't know what you're doing it'll drag the team down. Gear progression is fresh 50 -> recruit/tionese -> columi -> rakata -> black hole -> campaign Black hole gear is basically the same as campaign, but lacks the set bonuses. For PVP: the gear progression is recruit -> Battlemaster -> War hero You can buy gear and modifications with daily commendations. The mods are slightly better than what comes in the recruit gear, but hardly worth the effort to replace most of them. The implants/earpieces for daily commendations are pretty good but expensive (IIRC you can get all of them with daily comms) Black Hole commendations are much better and can be used to buy some of the best gear in the game for PVE. You get them from the group finder and black hole weekly missions. Do it now, as long as you're competent with your class and group role. Just avoid Lost Island and you should be able to do all the other hardmode flashpoints. It'll gear you up faster w/o the need to stockpiling daily commendation based modified orange gear, which is slow to earn and quickly replaced. Story mode EV can be done with recruit gear, but it's at the low end. Pick up groups are sometimes wary of taking a person in recruit gear. Any rakata or columni you get from the hardmode flashpoints or BH gear will help you out and make it easier. At any rate, you should watch youtube videos of the operation boss fights to get an idea of the strategies. They are more complex fights than any of the others in the game and have multiple phases and reactions you need to execute. Knowing the fights is a big part of success against these bosses and that much more important in lower end gear.

You should do Hard or Nightmare mode EV and KP first. Nightmare mode KP is about the same difficulty as SM EC. EC requires more coordination than EV or KP and it ends up being harder, especially for a pickup group. The gear requirements for EC storymode are also MUCH higher than either EV or KP. General difficulty progression of the operations is a bit debatable but goes roughly: SM EV -> SM KP/HM EV -> HM KP -> NM KP/SM EC -> HM EC

For operations, the 2 piece PVP bonus is nice. You use orbital on cooldown and it is the most damaging skill in the game (as long as the foe stays in the area...which is common on operation bosses...they tend to not move much). All DOT time increases say that they increase the time by X seconds. It's misleading in that they do more. What actually happens is they all provide additional damage ticks and will increase the overall damage by a factor of: (original #of damage ticks + bonus # of damage ticks) / (original # damage ticks) DOTs seem to be coded as having a set damage per tick and then a duration (or # of ticks). The tooltips just multiply the two base numbers together to "simplify" the tooltip but it leads to this confusion frequently.

Yeah, it does feel like it looses most of its usefulness. It was always lackluster as a damage skill w/o TSO in my opinion. Once you're within 10 m, you have much better options that are spammable and cost less heat. These changes also mean that rail shot has (essentially) been reduced to a 10m ranged skill as well. You have no reliable way of proc'ing the conditions for it now outside of 10m. You may occasionally get rapid shots to proc it, but your goal is always going to be to put yourself in a position where you don't need to use rapid shots (as its damage stinks). What always made powertechs unique was their ability to function at range or melee. Melee was always better, but you had options. These changes pretty much just make them another melee (<10m) only class.

For control, rebind movement to E,S,D,F and use S&F for strafe instead of turning. Turn/look with the mouse. Using these keys for movement opens up additional keys for your pinky to use/reach and is a more natural home if you're a touch typer. I have a 20 button mouse that I got recently, but honestly I only use 5 of them often. I prefer to keybind stuff to the keyboard. Pick easier to reach keys for stuff you use often and use the same sort of skill in the same spot for all characters. I use the same key for incombat self buffs on all characters, AOEs are always on the same keys, DOTs on another, energy regen/heat venting on another, defensive cooldowns on another. This way, it's much easier to swap between alts. For numbered keys, anything above 6 should be rebound to something easier to reach.

I have to see how it plays, but the loss of essentially all true ranged skills is depressing.

Here is my breakdown with some pros and cons. None of the specs are really horrible in any aspect, although I do not think lethality is good for leveling. The other 2 specs are just faster and more efficient at trash clearing. While leveling: Engineering - very good spec with great AOE Marksman - Pretty good defensively with the low teir talents and good single target damage. Probably used by the majority of people as it's more in line with a classic view of a sniper. Lethality - skip it. DOTs are slow compared to the other 2 specs and few of the talents help the skills you use most (while leveling). Really weak until Cull. For Endgame: Engineering - IMO, the single target damage is weaker. Predictable energy regen mechanic. Marksman - Good overall, Not an inherently mobile spec and tougher for newer/inexperienced players to use when mobility is required. Predictable/simple energy regen mechanic Lethality - best DPS output potential, easy rotation and mobile. Squishiest spec. For PVP Engineering - The best spec for objective play and harassment. For absolutely killing someone fast, it's not great but you can wear people down with all the control options. Marksman - Immobile, poor against heavily armored targets. Decent burst against light armor. Lethality - Squishy yet mobile, best DPS against any target (light or heavy armor). Frequent target swapping hurts DPS output

One other thing, depending on your class and the colors of the shards you will get different results. it can be pretty expensive to experiment, so I suggest looking up the viable combinations for your class/level range.

Once you acquire 3 matrix shards you can combine them to form a matrix cube (goes in your relic equipment slot). They give pretty good stat boosts. There is a location on your capital planet that you have to go to to make the matrix cube. For the Empire, it's on Dromund Kaas near the dark temple in the far northwest. If you're looking at the steps to the temple, there is a cave to the west/left.

How good do you think the gear people wore was when people first did these flashpoints? Groups weren't decked out in full daily comms gear. Most people had some, but weren't in full daily gear. Recruit gear is not much different than that. Sure, daily stuff is better but not for the effort it takes and the time it lasts. It's generally worth grabbing the barrel/hilt (especially if you're a damage dealer) or some armorings (especially if you're a tank), but it's not strictly required. Recruit gear just means you need to pay attention to what you're doing and play smart. Last night we had 3/4 people geared well with over 20k health and ran through the HM Foundry w/o any care. Barely healed ever between fights, never cc'd anything, and as DPS I led off a bunch of fights. This level of sloppiness would never fly with recruit gear, but that doesn't mean you can't do the flashpoint.

Absolutely nothing. Actually for some classes the endgame set bonuses are better on the PVP sets than the PVE ones, so the best thing to do is get the PVP armor and replace the armoring/mods/enhancements with PVE ones. (For everything except war hero and campaign items, the shell determines the set bonuses ...this is not confusing at all...) For example. on snipers the best thing to do (for PVE) is have the 2 piece of PVE armor set bonus and 2 piece of PVP armor set bonus. Obviously, you swap out the things with expertise for non-expertise versions. When people talk about "PVP" armor being bad for PVE, they mean the unmodified, as-received versions. The terminology is a bit ambiguous. You also have this with "mod." There is an subset of items called "modifications' or "mods" for short, and "mods" is also used to refer to some mix of hilts, armorings, barrels, enhancements, and modifications. Pre-L50, the sets you buy with warzone commendations are really PVE armors too IIRC. I don't think there is any significant amount of expertise you get on them until L50. (This may have been changed recently so the earlier armor sets do have expertise..but i can't check now).

Cunning is slightly better than power b/c of its bonus to critical chance (and the % boosts to cunning in the talent trees). They are close though. Practically speaking, cunning has no dimishing returns to worry about. The bonus to critical chance does have some diminishing return, but it is a very weak decline. The bonus cunning provides to healing/damage is purely linear and has no diminishing return. However, when choosing assorted mods with power you generally want to maximize the sum of cunning+power. They are very similar in effect so you'll do better that way. (The ones that do it are also the ones with the higher power.)

LI is going to be hard in recruit gear. It's just a difficult flashpoint. Many people want blow through the flashpoints when queuing, so they see a lesser geared person and get all bent out of shape b/c it's not going to be trivial. If you get a group in rakata gear or better, you can pretty much just breeze through any of the teir 1 hardmode flashpoints. These flashpoints were all originally done after launch in blue L50 gear or gear stuffed with daily comms, as that was all that was available in the gear progression. Now, you're pretty much assured one person in the group is going to be full rakata gear or better, so you shouldn't have any issues. Recruit gear is pretty much the same as daily comms gear, and MUCH easier to get. It's perfectly fine to do any of the non-Lost Island flashpoints and story mode EV. It probably goes without saying that these gear recommendations assume you know your class, your role, and the mechanics of the fights. Most of the mechanics are pretty straight forward and can be explained quickly, but the minimum gear recommendations don't give much room for poor play/errors.

Basically, PVP gear has expertise which has no effect in PVE. This expertise rating takes away from stats that could help in PVE, so on the whole it is worse than equivalant PVE gear (for PVE). For the most part though, any L50 PVP gear is sufficient to run the HM flashpoints (excluding Lost island). Boarding party, foundry, false emporer, and esseles/black talon hardmodes are all really easy if you know the fights and can be done in just about any gear rated for levels 48+. This is even more true as you'll probably have someone in the group who is heavily overgeared for the fights (e.g., in full BH/rakata gear)

Kaliyo is probably better/safer to use. Any damage she takes can also be easily healed out of combat. Vector is a DPS companion so you'll take more damage in general. You can potentially defeat foes faster with Vector, but it's more of a race to see who dies first than with Kaliyo. edit: I agree with the poster after in that Doc and Temple are both better than either Vector or Kaliyo. Personally, I like biochem for the free stims/adrenals and some healing. Since you can't heal yourself normally, medpacks can be a lifesaver. Either is fine though.

As others have said, it's just a kite fight. There are a couple of them here and there in the higher levels. The boss really only has high power channeled abilities (there is one that is esepcially damaging, but I forget the name). If he can't see you, they fail. So you just use any obstruction you can to "interrupt" his attacks. You can also use your actual interrupt/cc when it is available. This is a super common PVP tactic against arsenal mercs (if you see one), lightning sorcs (if you see one), most snipers, and a few other classes. You want to be as mobile as you can. You need to use non-channeled abilities so you can keep on the move. It's not about the big hits on him, it's about just wearing him down.

I believe you can also get BOP or any other bound modifications/enchancements/etc and put them into an unbound orange item in your inventory and send them to an alt. It can be expensive and clunky but it used to work.

the character pane numbers are not really valid to compare between specs and definitely not for class comparisons. Actual skills and the rotation used makes a huge difference. Skills each have their own damage modifiers, and are inherently different between the 2 classes. The cooldown lengths and their effect on the DPS of the two is also going to be different.

Gunslingers are better for DPS. They're a true ranged class and have a very high damage output. Scoundrels are quite adept healers but relatively poor endgame DPS characters in comparison.

In general, it is best to specialize in one tree. There are only a few hybrid specs in the game that work across all the classes at endgame. And those are hybrid only in that they don't pick up the (2) highest tier talents. Also, there are a few times while leveling it is best to beeline to X talent in one spec then move over and focus on another spec, or respec later. These often aren't really true hybrid builds but can make leveling easier.

As you hit on, there are a ton of wasted warzone comms before you hit 50 if you level with a fair amount of PVP. You can easily earn what you need to get gear and then have nothing to spend them on other than consumables, which are a luxury, especally in non-rated PVP. You can't pre-buy gear as purchasing it is level restricted (which IMO is also unneeded). You already can't use it, and it's hard to really save for it, and you can't buy it. So you're often behind the curve slightly in getting geared.

These and probably the interrupt. That's not a lot of keybinds and anyone should become comfortable with that level of keybinding pretty quick. Everything else could be "clicked" and you'll not be too far off a pure keybinder. Pyro doesn't really use all that many skills. For PVP it is more important to keybind b/c you'll tend to be moving more. PVE is somewhat less critical, although binding and being comfortable with it will make you better/faster/more precise.

I pretty much agree with you. You do need to know the fights and be knowledgeable about your class and role. Ignorant players will always have a hard time in any endgame group content though. Better gear just gives you more of a cushion. But all of the flashpoints were initially done in pre-columi gear, as that was all that was available at the start. Recruit gear is pretty decent, and is sufficient. You just need to use your head with it.

People actually use his rakghoul form?