You have 191 less crit rating, and 146 less willpower and the crit chances are nearly identical? I guess you're that close to the DR limit? And fractional main stats? Seems odd.

TOR is significantly different than Galaxies. It's a much more guided, story and quest driven game and much less sandbox. It has many more similarities to a more modern MMO than to Galaxies, which was more UO like. To get a better weapon, there is a market on Coursant. It's sort of hard to find as it is below the Senate area(? I've not done any significant time on a Republic character since beta). When you first get to Coursant, go past the taxi speeder, past the fountain, up a little ramp and there are 2 stairwells leading down...the market is down there. A lot of newer players miss it. You can also buy them with commendations, which are just a second form of "level range specific" currency you get from defeating enemies and finishing quests. Generally speaking, most of your equipment needs will be taken care of with quest rewards and trading in commendations (comms) for gear or modifications. You can also find crafting trainers in that general market area or on the republic fleet you passed through on the way to Coursant.

Definitely, I'd even say it's plenty for both EV and KP hard modes.

The post you quoted was in response to doing EC. A group of all BM geared people is going to have a very hard time with EC, regardless of having done it on another character. A single person in BM gear (or a few) can do EC with a decent team around them. A full team of BM people leaves very low margins for error. Also, while we've taken mostly BM people into EC (and other difficult ops) before, I would never suggest doing it with a PUG player you're not sure of. Tionese gear doesn't even enter into the equation on EC, it's just not going to cut it. Also, there is always going to be a certain person who sucks and just can't do it. They're not really relevant to the conversation as their gear doesn't matter if they fail all the "derp" checks.

Certainly. Rakata and Black Hole gear is definitely better and all operations and flashpoints are going to be tricky for people who have not done them/know them. I would not really want a group of all battlemasters as that indicates nobody has done it before, but in terms of gear, it's not bad. EC especially is very hard on people who do not know the mechanics. It has a lot of "derp" checks, although there are some tricky burst DPS checks as well.

The damage rating is determined by the barrel in the rifle (as with blaster rifles and pistols). This has the same role as a "hilt" on a lightsaber. If you swap the barrel, the damage will change accordingly.

Agents have the longest wait until their 2nd companion. And he isn't all that great, he's basically Kaliyo with a little bit more melee DPS and lower armor. He's typically going to have worse gear than Kaliyo though, so any improvement is marginal.

Assuming you traded it in for Battlemaster gear, that's sufficient for all the HM flashpoints (Lost Island will probably be tough based on what people say about it, although I've never done it personally). Battlemaster is also plenty for EV and KP on both story and hard modes. If you're a tank, it may be tough on some fights but it'll depend on how well you know the fights and your healers gear/skill. The most important thing on them all is knowing the fight mechanics. If you have battlemaster gear, there is little point farming for columi gear. It's nearly the same in PVE. If you get it, great but it's not a huge step up in most cases.

yes. It's plenty for EV and KP. Both story and hardmode. If your group is good and knows optimal rotations/mechanics, it'd be fine for EC story, and nightmare of EV/KP.

For end game content: The sniper is considered to be vastly superior as a damage dealer. The operative makes for a very good healer, but the DPS specs tend to be inferior b/c of their burst nature and boss mechanics punishing melee.

This goes completely counter to what they're doing and would be pointless. The main issue was there are/were ~220 servers that the population was spread across. Throw in a couple really heavy ones, and you had a ton of dead servers. The game's population is pretty decent, it was just spread out. Moving people back to dead servers fixes nothing. They'll eventually shut most of the servers or just let them die out.

If you have no intention on selling items, this is the best option. Get what you can from missions/comms, and buy anything you fall really behind in. You don't need superb gear for questing, so this will work well.

Finish your class quest on the L42. After that point, you can get to Belsavis and Ilum to do the daily quests. (Most classes can realistically do this around L48.) They are very quick and net roughly 10k per mission reward, plus whatever drops you get. For example, there are 2 quests on Ilum you can finish with a very short speeder run and killing 1 group of normals. It takes 5 minutes and that's about 22k right there. Once you get to L50, you can do the black hole missions on Corellia for similar fast credits. It will take less than a week to get the credits from doing nothing other than the dialies. Earning 300k a day is very possible. The other way is to play the GTN market. This will require some knowledge of what sells and the appropriate crafting profession. It can be lucrative, but is also riskier and requires some initial credit spending.

Just a little? http://itsjustpicturs.webs.com/troll%20food.png

Basically, do missions with rest xp. Rest xp is a huge boost to your xp gain, so always log out in a cantina, the fleet , or your ship. Class, world, bonus, space are all good missions to do. Heroics (and flashpoints) are good if you can seamless get into teams and run through them quickly. If you have to wait to find a team or travel across world, it's not worth it. It's also best if you keep slightly underleveled for the zone you're in. You'll get more xp for content above your level. There is a point of dimishing returns where it will take longer or be too hard to effectively clear quickly. If you find you're overleveled for a planet, focus on quickly finishing the class quest and move to the next.

The only damage powers a sniper has that do not require a gun are corrosive dart (primarily used by leth), corrosive grenade (leth), frag grenade, Orbital strike, Explosive probe, interrogation probe (eng) and plasma probe (eng). All but frag grenade and corrosive dart have long cooldowns, so you'll use a lot of blaster/rifle attacks.

The parse numbers can vary substantially depending on some simple things like relic/adrenal uses, class buffs, time, and specific stat distribution. Actual gameplay and dummy parses also typically vary by hundreds of DPS. The icon similarities across all classes are an annoyance. Pretty much all armor debuffs have the same graphic as well. Play with another sniper and it's even worse, especially in 16-man content. Who's debuffs are the active ones? Who put that corrosive dart up? Is that my corrosive grenade and is it the strong version? You will sort of get a feel for it by the timing of the rotation, but it's still a deficiency of the UI. I personally think that having a little higher crit rating on a lethality spec is helpful. You get energy back from crits, so it gives you more flexibility and more room for error. You do still have a fair number of non-tech attacks that you use all the time, so I would not drop accuracy too much. That said, it is a smaller portion of your DPS than on a MM. Easy way to tell is to run a parse and see how often you miss. If you're happy with your miss rate, I wouldn't worry about it. That won't tell you if you're at the absolute optimal point or not, but it'll give you a feel.

If it were just you, I'd completely agree with you. I tend to think about rotations in raid settings when there are likely 3 other DPS on the boss, so I prefer to get all the group benefitting debuffs up first. This is part of the reason I didn't really specify a definitive position for shatter on the priority list. It's a little more fluid based on what else is going on. There are situations where it's a DPS loss to even use shatter shot (e.g., against lower health foes).

It's probably just a practice issue then. You'll likely need to work in some rifle shots to keep your energy high. Because sniper rotations are more of a priority system than a hard and fast rotation, it's more of a feel for it that will come from practice. Depends heavily on the boss mechanics and the number of armor debuffs. Greater than 1200 is a good target for most boss fights if you're in unaugmented rakata. Lethality generally will do more damage in boss fights and some better mobility, but you do give up a fair amount of mitigation for it. Also, lethality does have poorer ability to deal with trash and target swap.

For rotation against OPs bosses, shatter -> corrosive nade -> corrosive dart -> weakening blast -> (TA) -> Cull -> filler -> Cull -> corrosive nade -> corrosive dart -> weakening blast -> Cull The filler is Orbital, SoS, explosive probe, ambush, shatter shot, and rifle shots. Rough priority is: 1. Corrosive grenade (CG, keep the strong version up if you have energy) 2. Corrosive Dart (CD, keep the strong version up if you have energy) 3. Oribtal (great DPS and DPE for anything that doesn't move much) 4. Weakening Blast (used every other Cull rotation, right before Cull) 5. Cull (used on cooldown, but you must keep CG and CD up) 6. SoS 7. Explosive Probe 8. Ambush Rifle shot if you're low on energy. And you should keep shatter shot up for your entire raid's benefit. I was lazy and didn't assign it a priority, but it should be in there somewhere. Takedown should also be used whenever it's available. Stuff you never use: snipe, overload shot. Terrible DPE and low damage and unlike MM, lethality doesn't have any interesting procs of snipe to make up for the low DPE. Try to maintain the strong stacks of the poisons. You'll get into a rhythm of refreshing them after every other Cull. The lingering toxins versions can be used if you're low on energy and still want to Cull, but it's a DPS loss if the low strength versions are up. It allows you to not spend the 40 energy to apply CG/CD but still allows for the Cull bonus procs. Additionally, you can apply the poisons during many of the bosses "immune" phases and immediately Cull when they're vulnerable (e.g., Fabricator, Kephess' robot, SoA) Cull and the poison skills should account for about 60% of your total damage output. I don't have access to any of the builders at the moment, but basically you take anything that refunds energy, improves poison damage or duration, or benefits cull. The talent that adds a slow to CG is primarily a PVP skill and you should skip it for PVE. The shiv skill in teir 1 is garbage. You almost never shiv. The bonus speed after an debilitate is also skippable.

They setup server transfers so that they would not have any dead (destination) servers. They've gone from ~120 North American servers, to less than 20 North American ones. They call it server transfers, but it's really a server consolidation. The server populatoins on all the destination servers are HUGE in comparison to what they were. Prophecy of the Five (which I'm on) has had multiple instances of the fleet recently, which happens when the population exceeds about 300 people in an instance...so they are quite well populated. Not sure, especially for other servers but in general the population is slightly larger on the Sith side. It's not a huge deal now in general as the populations are sufficiently large for both factions on the destination servers.

All HMs OPs and flashpoints but Denova should be fine in BM gear. You can probably do Nightmare EV in BM well. Nightmare KP will be tough, but it will depend on the rest of the party and skill. If you know what you're doing, it should work. For Story Mode Denova, I think it'd depend on your role. The DPS requirements for some of the bosses are really tight especially if you're not 100% up on the mechanics. I generally would not do hard mode denova in BM gear. It probably *can* be done, but I wouldn't. I've done most all of them but HM Denova with some Battlemaster pieces mixed with Rakata. I've been quite unlucky with some drops/rolls.

Either marksman or engineering are good leveling specs. There are a couple threads on the subforum about it. Basically, lethality sucks to level with as the DOTs are slow, it's too focused on the massive cull combo which is overkill most of the time, and relies on crit rating for energy regen (which is harder to get while leveling). It's a great end-game spec though. The other two choices are much better. Stats are basically the same as any ohter damage class. About 35% crit, 75% crit bonus damage, +10% accuracy, and the rest power. A little more crit is helpful for lethality.

I like this strategy too of running through to the far side near the cave. We've tried a few times not running through and it's always been a mess. When the ground spike phase starts, there is nowhere to run with everyone packed between the cliffs. We'd have too many people running from their circle into someone else's or getting stuck between a bunch of them with nowhere to go. Keeping 30m is also harder as you often need to watch the other mob and slight misplacement by the tanks can make it very hard to properly position yourself. It's even worse with 16 man. At the far side by the cave entrance, there is MUCH more room and you can easily place Toth and Zorn so that everyone can easily stay 30m away w/o worry. You've got about 3x as much room to move in when the ground spike phase begins also. The only drawback is the trees can screw with your camera a bit.

grey/white < green < blue < purple Orange items depend on what modifications are slotted into them.