It's a good idea to drop into cover for Cull to prevent interrupts. Otherwise, only SoS, explosive probe, and ambush are often used powers that require it. Overall, it is a very mobile sniper spec Not particularly. The DOT focus means it's not overly fast at killing trash and the corrosive nade -> corrosive dart -> weakening blast -> Cull combo that is the focus of the tree is insanely inefficient for normal quest mobs. It's a much better PVP and end game/operations boss spec. marksman and engineering are both much better leveling specs. Yes, quite good depends what you mean. For end game PVE, it's the best pure DPS spec for the sniper and is comparable. It depends a lot on the boss mechanics though.

The only way that server transfers make sense is if they condense the population onto fewer servers. Shuffling around the population on the same 220 servers accomplishes nothing. You'd just end up in the same situation with a low population on most of the servers. Why would I want to go from an empty server to an empty server?? It is also completely logical that the lowest population servers are merged into a high/higher population server. It's less work, inconveniences fewer people, is instant payoff, and is much smoother.

One easy way to boost DPS time is to know how to position yourself on the tanks so that the knockback will put you into the shields during the defensive systems phase. This way, you get an extra couple of attacks in instead of running for the shields. Assuming you have a runner on the ground managing the stuff falling from the sky, it's important to have this be a person who can DPS/heal on the run. If they can't, it's a huge drop off in the teams effectiveness. Otherwise, it's just a matter of optimizing rotations. About 1100 average DPS seems to be all that's needed. If you're 15% short and are in rakata, you're rotations probably need work.

I soloed Trapjaw with a sniper in roughly columni equivalent gear (I probably had a few Rakata pieces, but it was a while ago).

Corrosive dart is a staple power for lethality. Now, I wouldn't use lethality to level, but corrosive is still central to its rotation. For the other 2 specs, corrosive dart is really only useful for elites. Strong it's okay for

I used that one for a long time (L20 PVP). It's a classic brown duster jacket.

Either Merc/Commandos or Gunslinger/Snipers works for DPS. The slinger/sniper tend to be a little higher in DPS from what I've seen. For just about all the classes though with the same role, there isn't that much difference in effectiveness. For slingers/snipers, the only primary stats you want are cunning and endurance. Aim technically will boost your ranged damage, but cunning does that and more. Since you have to choose, cunning is always better. (Aim datacrons are helpful, but that's the only time aim is worth getting.) For mercs, it's reversed. You only want aim and endurance. Crew skills is mostly preference. I would tend towards cybertech for either of those, but there isn't a wrong choice. edit: Well, I suppose artifice or synthweaving would be poor choices as you get no benefit to your main character from them.

+1 You have quests to go to both Nar Shadaa and Balmora. You want to go to Balmora first, then Nar Shadaa. IIRC, L15 is about right for Balmora. Maybe a level under what is intended, but you should be fine.

In general, a customizable item with purple mods will be better. It depends exactly on what you're talking about though. Rakata armor pieces for example, it's a purple item that behaves like an orange (i.e., you can swap mods).

If you PVP, putting them in whatever your PVP gear you have is a very viable option as well. They're basically a (very fortuitous) mule for it, and are very well geared for all the PVE questing as a result.

I personally like Lethality, although they're just different. Marksman is much more adaptive, defensive, and stationary. Lethality has a higher max DPS output is more mobile which is its own form of mitigation. yes, this is a primary limitation of lethality. Cull away. Use it whenever you can, as long as the poisons are up. Weakening blast gets used every other Cull. For optimum DPS you should also refresh the poisons after the filler phase of every other Cull. If you're starved for energy, you can hold off on them for another Cull cycle and Cull during the weaker versions of the poisons (from lingering poisons) although it's a slight DPS loss. For PVP, it's a judgement thing. If think the foe will fall before a 3rd Cull (which it almost always will unless it's being healed heavily) it's not worth the energy cost to refresh them. Few foes last that long unless they have a healer in their hip pocket (e.g, the Huttball carrier and the support guys keeping him up). yes, That's pretty normal for a lethality build. On most operations, Cull+the 2 poisons are about 60% of my total damage (weakening blast's bonus I think factors into that as well, but it's not clear from the breakdown in most parsers). The rest is orbital strike, ambush, SoS, and exp probe, rifle shot fillers, and shatter. Personally, I've been using it more as filler lately in stationary fights but it's not a key skill like it is for MM. Yup, even with laze target snipe isn't all that impressive for lethality. You don't get any of the beneficial procs from it and the DPE is horrendous. At least it isn't as bad as overload shot though. Overload should almost never be used, it's pathetic damage and costs a ton of energy.

Yes, both Temple and Lokin can use the same stuff and are good for your cast off/excess gear. Off the top of my head, I think the only difference is Lokin takes a knife offhand and temple uses a pistol.

It depends on your spec which you don't mention. In general, for marksman you can either open with laze+snipe into ambush or ambush. Either way, the goal is to dish early damage w/o having to wait 2.5s for ambush while being shot at. Then explosive probe and SoS. Followthrough and takedown every time they're available. Overload shot is basically useless after around L10. It's weak and has terrible energy efficiency. For Engineering, I typically started with ambush and liberal use of grenades against normals. The explosive probe/cluster bombs+SoS combo also works well. Int probe I typically put on a strong or higher early in the fight. Near end game, I used to open orbital strike + grenades w/ SoS and exp probe thrown in against packs. It's hard to really put together a firm rotation for leveling as you never really get into a groove as your frequently switching targets as they die. The best skills also change a lot depending on your level (e.g., overload shot is vital at L6 but absolute garbage/waste of space by L30). What companion and how you use them will also make a big difference (e.g., Temple on AOE mode means you're also in AOE mode to complement each other, Lokin means you need to kill everything yourself but are fairly safe, a single target DPS/tank companion means you can ignore one of the mobs while they finish it)

Really, the power isn't a big deal. It's a nice damage boost that has no diminishing returns. The primary issue is the overabundance of accuracy along with power. Accuracy is really not needed beyond 10% boost. You can easily blow that away with most sniper end game gear. But at any rate, optimally you'll swap mods to optimize the gear if you want to min/max

yes, but it also prevents a wild dash to Fatman, Harbinger, Covenant, etc. A server would have to hit a critical mass of people to become an attractive destination in a free for all transfer system. However, nobody wants to go to a server that hasn't hit that critical mass. So you'll end up with everyone on ~4-6 servers because those already have high populations and nobody wants to go to any other.

The obvious goal of all of this is to axe servers and not really state that. The game population is pretty good overall for a MMO, but just WAY too spread out on 220-odd servers. They must eliminate servers and increase populations and this is how they're planning on doing it. Expect to see in about 3-6 months the closing of the "origin" servers after people have voluntarily moved. Any characters not moved from a closing server will likely end up in limbo at that point and be required to choose a new one when logging in. My only hope in this is that the destination servers for a particular origin server do not change over time (such that some are removed). It'd be horrendous if 80% of the guild moved in the first week to server A, then server A was removed as a potential destination. The guild bank issue isn't too big a deal. It's going to be a pain but what will happen in almost all cases is the guild leader or other responsible party will just empty the guild bank into theirs then take it all out on the new server. It's a one time hassle but well worth it on most servers.

This has always seemed like a big issue with the adrenals to me. They take a large number of materials for their duration. A couple seconds of boost for essentially the same amount of materials as a stim that lasts MUCH longer. The 1.3 patch notes that make biochem ones unusable in warzones seems like it will just favor those people with comms to blow on the PVP consumables.

I do believe stealth is really a non-starter for any ranged class. The ability to choose when to open a fight, and do so at range w/o the requirement to stalk/close the distance is a huge buff. It's not likely to ever happen. The stealth classes are melee for a reason. It is thematically appropriate for snipers, but in terms of game mechanics/balance it isn't going to work well.

Either: 1. 4s ranged stun - Snipers currently do not have any good ranged, hard CC moves, especially if you're lethality spec'd. 2. DOT self heal (maybe 20% heal over 10 seconds). Another weakness of the class in that there is absolutely no way to heal yourself. Something that can provide some health regen would be nice. Fairly long cool-down (~120-150 secs) and probably about a 20-25 energy cost. Something to get you out of trouble and temper some mistakes, but not something you can spam or rely on every fight. 3. Stealth breaker - Something to help spot stealthers while in cover. Might be hard to balance as those classes are our counter, but it is another glaring weakness of the class. I think something that shows stealthed characters, but doesn't actually break them out of the "stealthed" state so their stealth openers and such would still function. You just have a short warning it's coming. 4. Talent to improve evasion so it works against all (or more) damage types/sources.

honestly, it's pretty hard to really mess up your skills. Rules of thumb, you want to stick to one tree mostly for leveling. Don't go picking a wide variety of things from different trees. Engineering and Marksman are good leveling options. You want anything that boosts damage to your primary skills. You want the unlocked activated skills in whatever tree you're focusing. Anything that provides more energy or energy efficiency is good. The healing talents available to snipers are underwhelming (e.g., vitality serum/vital regulators). edit: Most of the "proc" talents are also pretty good. The only questionable one is the insta snipe on exiting cover. It's not bad for marksman but not a must have either.

If you're on a light server, I would definitely reroll to a higher population one with only a L10. It's like 4 hours of leveling to get to L10, but the choice will haunt you until they allow server transfers. It is really disheartening to reach L50 and have few people to play with as L50 is all about team content (whether flashpoints, operations, or PvP). The other issue also is that a light population server is a self fulfilling thing. It never gets better. If people log on and find nobody to play with, they're less likely to log on. So there are less people to play with and even less log on to that server.

This is really the issue. When launched they went with the theory of having plenty of servers for the initial rush. The launch was super smooth. Probably one of the best launches ever for a MMO. We are sort of in the inevitable state right now where the initial rush has slowed. This has happened to every online game ever (except maybe WOW). However, the game still has a very healthy population (~100k concurrent) for a MMO but they're spread over ~220 servers. There are also a couple servers with disproportionally large populations. So you've got maybe 70k people spread over the other 205 servers. Split that into 2 factions with a bunch of planets and instancing, and the population on many servers feels pretty light.

Most people don't stack alacrity. It makes energy management more difficult as you're using skills more rapidly. So many go with more power, crit, and surge instead so that you use skills slower but they hit harder. They all have comparable DPS effect (talking ballpark numbers..it depends a lot on how much diminishing returns your at with each stat). That said, there is nothing wrong with some. Especially if you're at the soft cap for accuracy and can trade some for alacrity. It's a little more difficult to do that at end game though as it's not a common stat on sniper gear. Also, alacrity hits diminishing returns pretty quickly. Using an alacrity trinket (relic) and target acquired at end game is nice though (esp if you mix it with a power adrenal) so you can throw out Orbital strike, ambush, cull (if you have it), and series of shots very quickly. I'm not sure if it's better DPS than the alternatives, but there is something satisfying about casting them in rapid succession.

To level, use either marksman or engineering. Marksman is good single target damage and has better defensive skills low in the tree. Energy is pretty easy to control compared to the other trees at lower levels. It is very cover dependent. It's the classic sniper spec in terms of taking cover and using rifle attacks. Engineering has very good AOE skills so you can melt trash quickly. Some good utility, especially mid-game. If you are lacking in survivability, you can pick up the early marksman skills to boost it. Pure engineering with ballistic dampeners (from marksman) is a common build. Single target damage is a little weaker for engineering until you get SoS and electrified railgun around L36, but manageable. Lethality stinks for leveling IMO. It relies too heavily on DOTs for damage when most trash mobs can be taken out super fast with normal attacks. Cull, the signature skill, takes way to much energy to set up for taking out normal trash packs. You also can't get it until L30. The energy regen mechanic requires good crit rating, which is tricky to get on leveling gear. End game though, lethality is very strong when you're fighting high HP bosses and players in PvP. I leveled as a pure engineering build to L50. Then I played around with some different builds (e.g., Marksman, Leth/eng, and lethality). I'm a Lethality spec at the moment.

Being greedy really has nothing to do with how the gear is itemized. Very few people will roll on companion gear, and it is considering inappropriate by most groups. It is not that big an issue overall. Personally, I think it's a benefit that players (multiple classes even) and companions can wear the same gear. If gear was super restricted to class and role, you'd have that much more junk you couldn't use.