You can do it in any gear. You can also do it in just about any group makeup if you're gear isn't total garbage and you understand CC'ing.

Go to youtube and watch some walkthrough videos for the fights. Generally, it's not knowing the mechanics of the fights that causes people to die. Even after watching them, you'll probably need to live it once to really understand but it'll cut the learning time (and frustration) down a lot. These tend to be pretty good... http://www.youtube.com/user/thermal8691?feature=results_main

In general it doesn't matter. The scoundrel DPS trees are generally regarded as sub-par though. They're not that much worse (if played well), but the perception is there and that can complicate getting into endgame groups. If people see a scoundrel, they think healer.

It is generally helpful to get your mainstat and endurance ones. The other primary stat that benefits your character is also helpful. They are only a couple points each though. Missing some of them isn't a huge issue, but it is well worth at least getting the easier ones. The matrix shards also make a very nice L50 relic you can get with less effort than any other relic of similar usefulness.

Yes, you should finish your class questline. Then worry about the dailies.

I've finished up my class stories by L47 on both of my last 2 L50 characters intentionally so I can go to Ilum/Belsavis before L50. You can easily run the daily missions on those planets at L47. The benefit are substantial. 1. You start getting daily comms earlier. They're not awesome but it's better than most of the other options. Once you hit L50, you'll be even better off when you start HM FPs and Ops. 2. You get much more quest xp on the daily planets than for your class quests/corellia quests. It's more than 50% higher IIRC. The credit payouts are also pretty good. 3. The missions are FAST. The Ilum missions especially are super fast (talking Sith side, since that's my experience). 2 require you to defeat 1 group each. 2 more require you to defeat 2 groups. Travel time is short. It's much faster than most planetary quests in that level range. Corellia's quests also seem to be less organized than some others. You do alot of travelling back and forth and it's a pain.

I always find that is the biggest issue with dropping into cover in PVP (and similarly with the use of ballistic shield). It's just a big "look at me" sign that immediately draws in marauders and stealthers. I know I use the cover shield graphics to spot opposing gunslingers/snipers to focus down.

Tionese is frequently skipped as you can go straight to columi from recruit (or just pick up some pieces incidently in your Columi quest). Columi you can get pretty quick if you want via the group finder. Recruit is technically a PVP set, but you get it free as a fresh L50. It's good enough to do the initial hard mode flashpoints and story mode operations so that is why I included it. I would say that the dread guard/campaign generally requires more skill to get. War hero anyone can get via time played grinding warzones. Other than BH, the higher teir PVE sets require execution of operations content which does require some level of coordination and skill (or a ton of credits to buy the pieces from people who have run the content).

That is the best adrenal for healers. The power adrenal one has a reduction in healing IIRC. If you're in optimized gear, you'll get relatively little from surge b/c of the fairly high dimishing returns. Similar with critical rating, although critical is not as heavily punished by dimishing returns as surge is. Also with critical, you can be unlucky and not benefit from a crit or not have one at all (getting a critical is purely random). -------------- Most of the advice in this thread is only valid regarding actual gearing. In that case, you do want to get surge and critical up to about 75% and 35% respectively. After that point, you hit dimishing returns fairly heavily and power becomes better.

http://www.noxxic.com also has some decent guides. They tend to wipe the guides on this forum after each major patch, and they've not been rewritten/replaced.

At end game with the +9% main stat boost talent, one point of main stat is basically the same as 1 power. The main stat wins out if you're trading them 1:1, but not by that much. It is close though. With mods though, you're never trading them 1:1. In this case, since they're basically the same, you want to maximize their combined totals.

You can always create a human for any class/faction. By getting a human character to L50, you get +100 presence on all characters.

Basically: Recruit -> Battlemaster -> War Hero Recruit -> Tionese (nearly the same as recruit) -> Columi -> Rakata -> Black Hole/Campaign That isn't all the different levels and types, but the ones that are most common.

The belief is that they will eventually allow paid transfers, but at the moment your choice is permanant. RP, PVP, or PVE server doesn't really matter. Open world PVP is pretty rare even on PVP servers so the practical differences are slim. The questing areas on the planets are also separate for the different factions, so you dont' normally just run into an opposing player. It's also pretty rare to be attacked by players at a significantly higher level than yourself. I'd just pick a server in your timezone. Solid choice. If you really want a true ranged DPS I'd suggest the commando specialization. It can either heal or DPS and is good in PVE, so-so at PVP. The vangaurd specialization has mostly short-ranged ranged skills and does best under 10m. It can tank or DPS.

The other issue with 1 person working the consoles is they're going to need to deal with 3 probes that spawn. That can waste a huge amount of added time. With 3, it's nothing if they spawn. Each person can easily knock their 1 away or kill it or pop a cooldown and eat it. On each burn phase, there is also enough time before the puzzle resets and can be moved that a ranged guy on the right (at the firing button) can fire off a couple shots. Snipers/gunslingers for example can drop an orbital strike or take about 3 steps left and get LOS on the boss to fire off some attacks. The guy on the middle platform should also be able to heal the team a bit before they're needed on the puzzle.

I always like to use 3 people on the consoles. It's just so fast and smooth. You more than make up for the lack of DPS on the boss by solving the puzzle that much quicker. You can also use 2 people with the shifting together strategy (they move left and right together as a pair). This also works pretty well. I've tried it with a newbie staying on the left console and me running around working the other 2. It's too slow and rarely works. I can't see how 1 person working all the consoles would ever work. The boss is under the debuff that allows you to do extra damage more often (i.e., always). It's also just cleaner b/c nobody has to move and there are fewer probe adds that you need to worry about.

I think something along those lines would help immensely with the early game awkwardness.

You're plenty well geared. You can do the story mode operations in recruit gear. The biggest issue is just knowing the fights as they're more mechanics based than gear based. If you know the mechanics, you can do the story mode (EV and KP) with the gear you are handed at L50. The group finder tries to put together an optimal group. Make sure you queue for the role you can do. I don't know how many times I've seen a group finally form for a operation and 3 of the 8 people queued for the wrong role. For 8 man content, it's 2 tanks, 2 healers, 4 DPS For 4 man content, it's 1 tank, 1 healer, 2 DPS.

I always though operatives were very clunky early on, especially before L20. I'd alway been turned off by this when I tried leveling in beta and earlier on. Now I'm working on passing through the awkward stage. You don't have enough knife attacks to be a real melee character, so you need to alternate blaster & knife attacks. You can even use cover attacks b/c you don't have anything else worth using. It feels weird to mix all these from a thematic standpoint. You also can't generate TA as a healer all that easily, so you have only 2 practical heals. This does seem to change as you level though, with L20 as the point things start to gel. Snipers on the other hand are much more coherent in their rotations/theme from the start. You know immediately what the class is all about. It's all ranged attacks from cover with some anti-melee crowd controls.

Of course the higher level content is harder. It'd be a horrendously designed game if not. The low level FPs are just one example of why someone may choose to queue as multiple roles...it just doesn't matter what your role is.

If it works for you, go for it. My main point is that the one poster was claiming for only $700k you can augment it. That is a huge waste of resources. Your entire goal is to dump recruit gear whether you're a PVEer or a PVPer. And few people upon hitting L50 have $700k they can spend for a limited bump in effectiveness. The other issue is with that outlay of resources/credits, what can do you that you couldn't do otherwise? Before augmenting you could easily run the tier 1 storymode operations (EV & KP) and any hardmode flashpoint (except LI). You're still pretty much in the same boat after the augments. You can probably do the Hardmode EV/KP, but you can also do them after a few flashpoints (I did HM EV with like 3 columi pieces and the rest recruit and defeated my boss in plenty of time w/o help). In general, you can earn at least one piece of gear per flashpoint or operation run. If you run a story mode operation via group finder, you should easily get 2 pieces of gear. Many people run them for the black hole commendations (which you also want as the quest reward), and could care less about the loot drops. This makes it quite easy to gear up as you have little competition for your classes loot . Then you need to go and augment your new gear for another $700k (or whatever).

Also, for the early FP it doesn't matter at all what your role is. Nobody is even differentiated enough you can tell until around L20. I've healed all the low level flashpoints as a full DPS spec. (My favorite example people being crazy about roles is doing BT with two L14s, a L12, and a L11. The tank spent the entire mission running behind everyone telling them to slow down and he should be the first to go in b/c he's the tank. Never mind he has only a few tier 1 talents from the tanking tree and none of them have any noticeable effect on survivability. Never mind nobody took more than 25% damage the entire FP.)

power or cunning augs doesn' t really matter. Cunnings are a bit better, but the difference is tiny in the grand scheme of things.. Also remember, DPS can vary wildly depend on the specific bosses used for parsing.

I'm pretty sure the crit bonus is to all characters, although you can only get it once per legacy. The presence buff you can get an extra +10 from each character/companion combo.

IMO, it's a complete and utter waste to augment recruit gear. It's really low end L50 gear and you can't swap mods in it. Your entire goal on hitting L50 is to replace recruit gear with something better, so why spend a huge amount of credits dumping augments in it? Even if you're not a hardcore player, if you use the groupfinder for HMs and OPs you can replace most of your recruit gear within a couple play sessions.