Crit percentages were reduced in 2.0 with the formula rebalancing, but it also comes with a lower cost on many important skills (primarily CG & CD). It seems to make (crit) gear a little less important and energy management a bit more predictable. While it looks like the crit loss is a big hit, it doesn't work out that way in practice. Honestly though, crits lost a bit of pscyhological impact when they happened nearly 1/2 the time like they did with lethality DOTs. I had crit rate up to almost 53% on lethality DOTs in 1.7. It's not really a critical hit then, it's a "normal" hit and the non-crits are "abnormal."

Technically, the dailies occur in zones with PVP. In reality, you rarely see it. I maybe run into another player wanting to PVP once every 10 days of doing dailies even on a PVP server. There is one really well known Republic guy on our server who likes to hide in republic spawns on Ilum and gank people while they're fighting pve mobs, but he's really easy to avoid. That's it though.

Operations are basically end game flashpoints with 8 or 16 players. Light on story, heavier on big boss fights. Progression typically refers to an endgame guild/group who have a goal of progressing through operations content from easier to harder. They can be casual or hardcore. Typically they'll keep trying an operation each week (or some other interval) until they get through. Dailies are just quests that are repeatable once per day. There are ones on Ilum, Belsavis, Section X, Black Hole, space, some PVP, and some Flashpoint based ones.

Short answer is, you don't really want to push your health too high. 8850 sounds about right for your level, off the top of my head. Basically, taking more endurance for a larger health pool means you are sacrificing strength. As a dps class, you need strength to improve all your attacks so more health will just mean you'll deal less damage. Otherwise, just upgrade your gear with the highest quality stuff you can find. p.s. 1 endurance = 10 health

+1. My patience for wiping with PUGs went way down with the increase in repair bills. I do dailies to get more credits so I can buy the things I want, not to make up for other's mistakes.

In general, people are trying to optimize their gear. Stock, from the vender, gear generally has some less optimal modifications/enhancements/armorings (or mods collectively) in them. As a sniper, you'll want the low endurance versions of them with maximim stats that boost your damage. These are generally the non-lettered modifications You'll also want to pay attention to dimishing returns on many stats. So you'll get your tech accuracy to about 110%, about 300-350 critical rating, about 75-76% critical multiplier (should be about 250 surge rating), etc. In order to do this you need to replace the stock mods. It doesn't really matter if you leave them all in the orginal shell or move them over to some other modifiable orange/purple shell for the looks. The only place it does matter is on low end gear (tionese, columi, rakata) the set bonuses are on the shell. War hero, elite war hero, Campaign and higher have them on the armorings. see above, it's the same other than the set bonus as the set bonuses for columi are tied to the shell. You need to craft or purchase augmentation kits mk-6. (Personally, I wait a week before doing this as they've skyrocketed in price today with all the new gree event gear that is available today. They should be around 30-40k each) Once you have a kit, find a modification table on the fleet and you can add the slot.

What stats are you referring, which class, which spec, and what set of WH/BM/Rakata are you comparing? You seem to be geting into a very specific question about specific gear sets, but speaking in extremely vague terms.

For best in slot for PVE, you'll want PVE gear. However, with how the current teirs of gear work out Battlemaster was roughly equivalent to Rakata gear. War Hero is better than Battlemaster so... War Hero gear is pretty good overall and good enough for any storymode operation, and HM EC/EV/KP, and NM EV. It's only sub-par when you start getting into HM TfB and NM EC. War Hero gear isn't really all that limiting. To improve War Hero you'll need Black Hole/Campaign or Hazmat/Dread Guard equipment. And Elite War hero is pretty close to War Hero overall. Tionese armor is junk, and in many respects worse than Recruit.

+1. Tanking companions just seem to become really lackluster after the mid-late 20s. All classes (except healer/tank combos) end up in a similar situation. The tank companions just eat too much aggro and die too fast. It's better if you have a lot of presence from other toons hitting 50 and keep them well geared (but you could do this to any other companion and be in fine shape).

+1 It was cool. Now I groan everytime someone wants to watch the cutscenes in BT. BT can be finished in like 15 minutes if ppl skip, or 30+ minutes if they watch. Now I just focus on the parts that are poorly done. The worst part is they still have the error in the VO/text where they want you to come back to the ship you're already on. Satele (sp?) goes on and on about how they're coming to help and you'll get beat down..blah blah blah...there is no sense of impending doom after that.

Sents/Maruaders do not have the +X% mainstat talent in the skill trees. That is a main difference. Gunslinger/snipers, for example, get +9% and it's trivial to get that skill in any build

1. Anyone pulling threat from the tank is bad. It usually causes a wipe and often an insta-kill on the tank once he regains aggro. He'll also AOE spit the raid if aggro swaps to someone out of melee range. edit: since this was misinterpretted, "who" caused it doesn't really matter. The fact is though if the tank looses aggro, a wipe is likely. It is a bad thing to have happen. 2. There are 2 parts to adds. The JM and accompanying red puddle adds are on a timer. The bonus adds that most guiides talk about happen around 10-14% boss health. You optimally do not want them at the same time. Hold dps on the boss if you're getting close to the 4th JM spawning. At around 20% health on the boss, we usually make a call if we're going to push through or slow dps and wait for the JM to spawn depending on how fast we've been on the DPS. If it does spawn both, have the 4th DPS get into the red pool and keep firing on the boss. The JM phase adds will all run to him and do reduced damage. It helps if the 4th dps for the red pools is the toughest of your team (i.e., has good defensive cooldowns) just in case. Off-tank gets everything else and usually runs around. Having an off-tank take the red puddle will probably mean he'll get punted out by the JM's knockback attack.

Same, I always say it before the fabricator fight and after (multiple times too). Even after that, it happens way too often. I'm similar. I hate doing KP via GF pugs. After this long, how is it that nobody ever knows how to do the puzzle? As a result, the mostly L63 geared DPS sits up there tapping buttons while the recruit/tionese tickle the boss.

Like others have said, it's not super hard. You just need to keep up 2 stacks of your HOT on yourself and your energy regen power. Keep corrosive dart on the target, shiv if you need TA stacks, orbital strike (just find a corner far away from everyone and be sure your neighbors aren't moving their boss around), and rifle shot. Use TA for Surgical probe for instant, energy free heals. Just chip away at him. It's a last man standing fight and trying to race through it just makes it harder. Explosive probe is also an underappreciated skill in this fight. You're not going to be moving around, so drop into cover and use snipe/explosive probe as needed/energy allows. Like in any boss fight, interrupt everything you can. Use shield probe on cooldown just to slow down any health loss. Most Importantly: Be sure you don't have any HOTs up on anyone else at the start of the fight. Do not use any AOEs near any other boss or player (besides yourself). Do not heal anyone or effect any other person during the fight. Any of these will cause you to do pitiful damage and cause the group to fail the fight. Pick a spot and fight the boss there. Running around will screw up other people.

no The bosses (warstrider, soa) are immune to all. pro-tip: If you do have a DOT build, it is handy to pre-DOT the boss so they are already there when the boss becomes vulnerable. This way you can immediately chain into your bigger hitters. Lethality snipers are a prime example of this where you can apply corrosive dart and corrosive grenade while the boss is invulnerable. As soon as the boss looses immunity, you can unleash weakening blast and Cull. It gives you 2 free GCDs to up your damage with high burst skills.

When EC first came out, it was hard even on story mode. It was way too much to pug when it first came out. Since then, it has been nerfed repeatedly (weakening of toth/zorn proximaty buffs, weaker boss damage outputs, AOEs no longer effecting the shield gens, double destruction weakening, longer enrages, etc.) and people have easier access to better gear (i.e., better than Rakata). It's currently quite easy and there is little reason it can't be added to the GF. At least as a teir 2 operation. Tfb, while not very hard does require more coordination and could prove to be difficult for a pug. It is probably too early to add it IMO, but the time is coming shortly.

Exactly, and better put than what I was trying to say. There is nothing special about quickbar #1, other than it is the location the cover bar takes. The designation as being quickbar #1 is completey arbitrary in every single way other than it being where the cover bar goes (it has no other significance). You can move it anywhere, and put any abilities you want on it, and keybind any keys to whatever position you want (same with all the other bars as well). Bar #1 doesn't have to be the "Main" one you use for your nomral abilities. I think the OP is stuck thinking that the bar #1 is somehow special in some other way.

Right, but you can move it around anywhere you want and make bar #6 (as an example) use keybinds 1,2,3,4,5, etc. or whatever else you want. Bar #6 now behaves like your old quickbar #1 w/o it being the "cover" bar.

With the ability to completely customize the UI, it's bar #1 in name only. It really means nothing. You can completely rebind which key corresponds with each quickbar slot, and you can move them around. So you could swap the positions of bar #1 and #2, then rebind all of the quickbar #2s hotkeys to be the shiftless numbers, and quickbar #1 to use the shift + a number combo.

Probably, there are quite a few bugs with inspecting other people's gear/stats currently.

For PVE single target damage, you want the DG boundless ages (clicky power boost) and the DG internal damage proc. Those give the best DPS, assuming you use the boundless ages on cooldown. This is true for all sniper/operative/powertech DPS specs and the non-arsenal merc DPS. Arsenal mercs should use the kinetic proc relic. For AOE, the damage proc relics loose some of their benefit as they're limited in the frequency. It'll only proc on 1 target every x seconds regardless of how many foes you hit. In those situations, the static power relics become better as it's a Y% boost to all your hits.

That's pretty low. My server usually has them 1.6 - 2+ million.

Because they are great at clearing trash mobs. If you hit more than 2 foes, they're extremely efficient. With the standard group of foes in PVE being 3 normals, it works great.

For when to level as engineering, as soon as you get the cooldown reduction on frag nade (i.e., right away). MM really has little in the lower parts of the tree that help you defeat foes faster. It's mostly survivability related talents. Lower cooldown on frag nade and bonus AOE damage in engineering is immediately helpful and clearing trash. I find this too, with MM your total damage numbers aren't that high but when you want to kill someone you can. I often get kill shots on about 1/2 of my total kills. The spec also makes healers run for their lives when they loose 1/2 their life in the timespan of a GCD. Engineer is a better "team" spec in that it is about control and playing for the objectives. You can really deny people from capping objectives for a long time.

Unless you want to reuse the name, there is little point in ever deleting one. As a sub, you have 10 more characters you can make.