1) they've made an effort to remove highly Situational skills or make them less situational in 2.0. Both headshot & eviscerate fall into this category. 2). They're completely redundant. There is absolutely no need for both. 3). Ambush and SOS already 1 shot most normals, so why purpose do headshot/eviscerate really serve? So you can kill all 3 normals w/o any of them returning fire? 4) they were useless on anything that was really a challenge

Alacrity's usefulness will depend on spec to some extent. For example, I don't see alacrity being all that helpful to Lethality, as you'll still be limited by the cooldown on Cull more than anything. The cooldown as also so short, that it's really hard to squeeze another skill in before Cull is up and delaying Cull has always been a dps loss. Engineering may see more use as it's "rotation" is not as strictly limited by short cooldowns. Either way though, alacrity is not in competition with power.

Best option would be to have all world bosses do/take damage scaled to the level of the player. Basically a "bolster" for world boss fights. You attack the boss, get a "bolster" buff, loose the buff if you go more than 50-60m from the boss. Then, they'd be a challenge for any level player. The next issue would be to actually make killing them desirable. As it stands, other than the codex there isn't much point. Travel time sucks to just about all the locations they spawn and the rewards would need to be meaningful to a Level 20 and a Level 50 (pets, mounts, uniquely skinned gear?)

I think it would be alot better if you assigned your 46 skill points you have available.

meh. Ilum/Corellia dailies can be done in pretty crappy gear. I've done the Ilum/Belsavis dailies numerous times on L47 characters as the XP is significantly better than class quests (especially Ilum since most of the missions are super short and give good XP). They usually have around 13k health at that level. As long as you don't get sloppy or aggro 2 groups, it's not tough. BH, at least Empire side, you never have to fight anything harder than a strong/normal or an elite by yourself. The heroic is also quite easy. They can all easily be done "sub-par" gear.

Groups just don't want ppl that don't know what they're doing. There are numerous youtube videos out there with walkthroughs for all the operations boss fights, on every difficulty. Read/watch the tutorials and you'll have a huge leg up. Also, if you're unsure let others lead and keep up with them. There are often set paths people walk in ops to avoid various fights and nothing pisses a group off more than a person who is constantly lagging behind/running and aggroing everything that can be easily skipped. There are also guilds of every type. Many will bring along a new person and teach them the fights. We do it all the time. It is sooo much easier to do it on voice comms though as you can give instructions during the fights and it's much faster than typing.

U won't need the gear. You get free tionese at 50, which is vastly superior to anything that'll drop on Voss (or even Corellia). Unless you want to see the stories, skip all but the class quests.

In the early levels, it makes a huge difference. It's a major boost to your companions effectiveness. If you plan on leveling numerous characters, it will make it go very easily. With that and a couple presence boosts from companion affection, your companion can out dps you. As you get to the higher levels, 100 presence isn't as large (relatively). It makes a difference, but it's not as noticeable when you're companion has a large value of their mainstat. At L50, it's not really anything significant. Most L50 content is not done with your companion and your companion is probably in gear with >1400 mainstat (even if you don't really gear them)

The aim datacrons are also helpful. Obviously not as much as cunning, but still useful.

As others have said, generally the tank is in charge of keeping aggro on the strongest or a couple of the strongest mobs in a group. A tank should always have aggro on any flashpoint or operations bosses (unless the specific fight mechanics make that impossible, like Heirad on TFB, or the first Rancor boss in KP who is untankable). It is usually not practical (or possible) for the tank to taunt/hold aggro on everything all the time. DPS should clear out the other foes from weakest to strongest. Generally, these do not do enough damage to the DPS to be a real concern. DPS should not generally attack the tank's target unless the others are CC'd, everything left is the same "toughness", or there is a very specific reason to do so (e.g, some trash operations mobs self destruct and should be killed fast, or will spawn other foes so it is important they're killed fast)

+1 I really like Engineering for leveling b/c of the frag nade spam. It makes clearing the vast majority of the trash much easier. It's relatively weak on single target damage at the lower levels (esp if explosive probe is on cooldown) but the AOE makes up for it IMO. Something like 2/3 (or more) of the foes you fight while leveling are packs of normals/weaks, which Engineering chews up and explosive probe/cluster bombs works great on the occasional strong you run into. Marksman is also viable. It's much more single target focused but has some solid defensive skills low in the tree which can offset the lack of a true healing companion. The talents also tend to boost a lot of your skills you use while leveling (snipe, ambush, etc.). In terms of feel, it's much more of a "classic" sniper spec as well. Lethality is IMO just poor for leveling. Cull takes too much setup and overkills most foes. DOTs tick for too long to be useful on normal trash, which is everywhere. Energy regen is based on crit, which requires a lot of dedication to get it to a high value while leveling. Too many talents buff DOTs or skills you don't have until later, so they don't have a very large effect while leveling. End game PVE, it's a beast of a spec (and my favorite) but it's just not a good leveling spec.

Is that relic the internal damage proc one? I never remember their names. At any rate, for snipers, the internal damage proc one is the best for DPS. The energy/elemental ones have critical % based on your force crit rate, which is terrible. So they crit at a very low rate for bounty hunters and agents. The kinectic/internal damage ones use tech crit rates, so they end up doing a lot more damage (You'll crit more than 2x as much as you would with a force crit based one). B/c of the armor penetration available to snipers, the internal damage one ends up being the best for DPS.

This rotation is sub-optimal. Letting your weak version DOT ticks is a large DPS loss. CG - CD - WB - Cull - SoS - Ambush - Cull - rifle shot - REPEAT Is a better rotatoin. You can also replace SoS-ambush with Orbital Strike - rifle - rifle - Snipe is generally a poor dps skill for lethality. It does little damage and has a very high energy cost with no useful procs with it (like Marksman has). Shatter shot can be used as well if no-one else in your raid is applying it.

TheUndead answered all your Qs, but I would also advise the guild to watch a tutorial video of all the boss fights. It will save you a ton of time if you know how the fights play out (especially on the final boss). There is a quest giver for them right outside the mission entrance. I would also advise you to form up your team, then queue your team in the group finder. It'll give you an extra reward for completion.

For SM, Tionese/Columi is really okay. SM is a joke. For HM, you should have at least Black hole gear. Obviously, skill and team makeup matters as well (so you'll always seem some variation in opinion) but these guidelines should work.

I seem to remember around 1200 being good for rakata gear, optimized so it doesn't sound like you're too far off. It's a little tough to say what a rakata geared player should be doing dps-wise, since most of us who post on the sniper forum are much better geared and have been for some time. The other way to increase DPS is appropriate use of Orbital strike. You can use it as filler between Culls by using a Cull - OS - rifle - rifle -Cull. SInce it can easily tick for 10k on it's own, it's a nice DPS gain if it'll hit the target each time. The other trick is when ot use relics/adrenals. The benefit of biochem is the rakata adrenals are quite nice and essentially free. Timing them well also will boost DPS by alot compared to randomly using them. You want to use them right before Cull, and after your poisons have been refreshed. That way, you're not spending time applying poisons while your damage is boosted. You're throwing out your big hitters. A great opener is also CG--CD--Orbital strike--WB--adrenal/relic--Cull--SOS--ambush--Cull and using your adrenaline probe in there when appropriate. It's also a good idea to aggro drop as well after the first Cull.

The field tech bonuses are the only ones that are useful. The others that you would want are no longer available. Accuracy you want 110% ranged accuracy.

+1 crafting is almost always a loss unless you really put time into researching what sells then being dedicated to it. It costs alot to level it up mission skills (which are needed for most of the things ppl want) and it's hard to get those credits back. For a new player, it's easier to not worry about making anything. Gather and sell. Use planetary commendations or mission rewards to keep you in decent equipment.

For critcal rating, you want enough to have about a 38% critical chance with lethality to help with energy management. The exact amount of critical rating this will take varies, and is easier with better gear as Cunning will also increase your critical chance. About 300-350 critical rating is usually about right. After that, get power. (after the 2.0 patch hits, this should change). Alacrity at this point is largely useless for lethality. You're limited by the recharge time on Cull, not by channel/cast times. So it helps very little/none. After 2.0 hits, it may be more helpful as it'll give some resource regeneration as well but you'll still be limited by the cooldown on Cull more than anything (which alacrity doesn't effect). If you have a little, it helps with a bit with compensating for lag but it's definitely not a priority stat to go after. The only alacrity I (and most other lethality snipers) usually have is the 2% boost from the teir 1 talent in lethality's skill tree. Surge go for about 250. That should put you at 75% critical multiplier.

+1 I usually run MM in PVP. Compared to the other specs, MM tends to have lower total damage output on the scoresheet. The thing is, MM is focused more on single target damage than the other specs and with its burst will easily end up with killing blows equal to half your "kill" total. Few other specs in the game can so effectively kill what they target. If you just want to throw up high numbers get a pocket healer, spec into engineering, do Voidstar, and fight a team that has a lot of healers and doesn't mind standing together in your AOEs..

Yes, that mission was horrendous as it was just a massive wasted time sink. They were also kind enough to (generally) put the droids in the furthest corner of the maps. Despite being almost entirely (very) grey foes on every planet and not more than 4 per planet to defeat, it took over an hour.

Everything about travel is a pain in the game. It's the one glaring quality of life issue they have, and have very slowly been mitigating it to a minor extent with legacy travel perks (with insanely long cooldowns). They could just do a much better job and fix it much faster. Traveling requires you to: 1. Cross a huge starport 2. Watch a useless cutscreen of you taking off 3. Load 4. Run around your ship 5. click a map 6. run around your ship 7. Watch a low rez movie of you approaching a ball that looks remotely like a planet.. 8. load 9. run through entirely empty airlock 10. run through entirely empty orbital station (baring a single non-repeatable quest giver) 11. load 12. finally arrive at your planetary destination. 13. If it's Black hole, there's an extra load screen just for fun.

Shatter shot usage really depends on who is in your raid group as you said. If you have someone who normally armor debuffs as part of their rotation (e.g., arsenal mercs, juggs, etc.) then it can/should be omitted. In pvp, i don't think it's worth delaying cull to apply it unless you want the trama debuff.

That one is horrendous. It is one of the two that I don't even bother going after b/c of all the laggy, unresponsive jumping (the other one I hate is on Nar Shadaa).

+1 They provide the same numerical benefit to the things they (both) benefit. Cunning just benefits a lot more things (e.g., tech damage which depending on spec, can easily be near 1/2 your damage output).