I just set Mako to Med Watch, activate all of her abilities and let her do her own thing. She still throws out attacks and seems to do decent enough damage. The only ability tend to manually take control of is Electro Stasis.

Kapyshyn probably never played the KotOR games and just browsed Wookiepedia for the basic information about Revan and the Exile; that's the only reason I can figure for why the two characters (especially the Exile) were portrayed so differently in the novels than they were in the video games.

Yeah. It only works when you activate Vent Heat. So it's a 7% heal once every 2 minutes. It's really not a very useful talent.

Fell back down to page 7. Gonna give it another bump for people.

I didn't find a helmet that I liked until I reached Hoth, and then I had to wait until I hit 39 to equip it. Then after landing on Belsevis I saw at the token vendor that there's a newer hat and I like it even more. So yeah, it takes the Bounty Hunter a long time before you get a good looking hat.

One easy suggestion: a lot of the complexions in the character creator over the veiny look of darkside corruption, so you could just choose one of those.

The biggest benefit is that you can use your stims/adrenals/medpacks every cooldown without even having to think about it since you don't have to make new ones. That turns into a very nice advantage over the longrun.

The armor on orange items is a problem. I got a level 39 orange heavy armor chest piece, which gave me 986 armor. I didn't much care for it so I pulled the mods out, bought a level 20 heavy armor chest piece and put the mods in it. I found out that it was only giving me 624 armor. As a tank, I can't sacrifice mitigation for appearance. So I took the mods out and put them back in the original piece and ended up wearing it. If this isn't changed, at end game everyone is going to be running around with the level 50 gear. Even if you pull the mods out and put them in lower pieces, your armor is going to be lower. That means you'll be taking more damage. Even if you're just a healer or DPS you still can't afford to take too much damage. And nevermind if you PvP where your mitigation is actually important. Bioware needs to fix this up ASAP. Because currently their entire mod system is completely meaningless.

If you're not happy with the Bounty Hunter, then go play something else. Nobody is making you play it, and it's clear from your post you don't like how Bioware designed the class.

For leveling? It doesn't matter too much. But, if you're going Powertech you might want to consider leveling as a tank and bringing along Mako. It's what I've been doing and I can snooze through the class quest missions and even do the Heroic 2+ missions without too much difficulty. I also kill things really fast and almost never have to heal myself except after a fight with a gold star or silver/gold star enemy. If you're set on DPS both Arsenal or Pyrotech are both equally viable for leveling. If you're leveling as a Mercenary then probably an Arsenal spec would be best. As for actual talent point distribution just follow the basic specs at the beginning of the guide, putting 5 points into each tier as you go up. Again, there's really not a lot of room to play around with the talent trees - most of the talents are pretty obviously geared towards PvE or PvP. With a leveling spec, if you spend most of your time questing, you're probably just going to want to put your points into the PvE talents.

It's not going to matter at end game. Check out the base armor number on the dancer chest piece. Now put an armor mod in it and see what the total armor is. Now, look at a level 30 orange chest piecer without any mods in it and you'll see the base armor is probably at least 150+ points higher, if not several hundred points higher. Put the same mod in it and see what your total armor is. Armor rating is what your defence against kinetic and energy attacks is based on. At end game, nobody is going to be using the appearance gear because it's statistically worse. While you might get away with a really low armor score for soloing, no end game raider or PvPer is going to be using that stuff. Everyone will either be using crafted level 50 gear, or the level 50 raid/pvp gear.

With the official release tomorrow, I'm sure we'll see some new players on the forums looking for info, so I'm just gonna bump this.

During the early, early planning stages, they toyed around with the idea of a third "criminal" faction, composed of an aliance between some of the major cartels. But, that was ultimately decided against. It's way too late for them to introduce a third faction now.

Check the quest color. If it's blood red that means you're too low a level to actually do the quest. You've probably just been racking up reputation with Mako extremely quickly. Wait until you get a few more levels or so; probably around 27-30. Then you can do it.

Kolto Missile is a very minor heal. At end game it heals for around 5-8% of someone's health. You tend to use it for the +10% healing bonus that you can talent Kolto Missile for. Thermal Detonator is one of the hardest hitting, single-target abilities in the game, among all of the different Advanced Classes. If it crits on a Light Armored character, don't be surprised if it deals as much as 20%-25% of someone's health. Your spec idea certainly isn't bad. It is a bit more group dependent though. If you frequently run with a group of guildies or friends, it seems like it could end up being pretty useful.

Suck it up. If someone decides not to vote, that's their business not your business. If you want an MVP vote then ask for people to vote for you before the match starts. But forcing people to vote is dumb. It's just a nice bonus, that's all. Personally, when I bother to vote, I usually vote for people with the lowest damage, kills, healing and protection done. I like voting for the guy who just entered the warzone 10 seconds before it finished. That's just funny.

*EDIT* Sorry, this forum moved pretty fast.

Yeah. You could easily swap out two of the points from Powered Insulators for Improved Vents. I never really found that I had much trouble with the heat system as long as I was paying attention, and 50 Heat dissipation was plenty for me. 4% damage reduction can add up to quite a bit less damage to yourself over the course of a raid. But, if you find yourself frequently needing to deal with burst healing at end game, then Improved Vents would probably be a better choice than Improved Vents. Certainly Improved Vents will be necessary if you plan to level as a Bodyguard spec; until you have all of your healing abilities, you'll be having to just try to power through quite often and that can build up heat very quickly.

There are 4 "Primary" stats plus Endurance. The primary stats are Aim, Strength, Cunning, Wisdom, and each class focuses on one stat. Bounty Hunters use Aim. Sith Warriors use Strength. Imperial Agents us Cunning. Sith Inquisitors use Wisdom. Aim adds a bonus to all of your attacks. Cunning only adds a bonus to your tech attacks. Strength only adds a bonus to your kinetic attacks (like Rocket Punch). Wisdom doesn't add much to anything. Since Aim boosts all of your abilities whereas the other stats only boost a few, clearly Aim is far superior to other stats for a Bounty Hunter. Getting gear that is +Strength, +Wisdom or +Cunning is pretty much a waste - you're almost always going to be better off using a piece of gear that has +10 Aim than using one that has +20 Strength or Cunning. For Secondary tank stats, you want to focused on Shield and Absorption where possible, though gear that has bonuses on those stats is incredibly rare. That means you're pretty much stuck with Defence for most of the game.

Umm... like which information conflicts with what players are saying? If something is wrong, I'll be happy to update or change it or even erase it. But you gotta point out to me where the problem is, especially if you're saying that a majority of my FAQ, or even just a significant minority of it, is totally wrong. I admit, I'd be surprised if much of anything is wrong. Most of what is written here is very basic descriptions of how the mechanics of the class and some of its abilities work. But if there is a problem, please let me know what it is.

I would probably drop the two points from Prototype Electric Surge and put them in Hitman. getting your interrupt down to only 6 seconds is incredibly in PvP, much more useful than just reducing your stun from 60 seconds to 50 seconds. Other than that, I plan to try out this spec in end game PvP. It's got good mobility and it looks like it should be doing fairly decent damage. Plus there's a lot of synergy between the two trees.

Thanks for all the positive feedback! I'm really glad everybody seems to like it. Sure thing. I'm gonna be honest - of all the specs I put together, this was probably the toughest decision, and I vacillated back and forth quite a bit. During the beta I tried the spec both with Degauss and without it, and my playstyle caused me to not quite like Degauss as much as you might think. As I said in the Powertech vs Juggernaut/Assassin section, Powertech cooldowns need to be used proactively rather than reactively. I don't think that this idea changes in PvP. Energy Shield is a good ability, but it's a bit subtle. It reduces damage you take by 25% for 12 seconds. That is a difference but only significant once at least eight seconds have passed. If you use it and die five seconds later, or use it and finish the fight 5 seconds later, it would have been better to have popped the ability earlier. If you wait until you get below 50% health to activate it, you very well might not live through the full duration. Often times in group PvP, even in PUGs, people naturally tend to target players with lower health. So, ideally you want to try to keep your health as high as possible for as long as possible. Popping Energy Shield while you're at <80% health means that you'll probably get the full duration, unless you have 5 or 6 people attacking you at once. During the beta, when I had Degauss, I found myself using Energy Shield less for the protection and more for the extra mobility break. I tended to hold off on using the ability, because I felt that I needed to use it at the "right" time - and there were several fights where I waited so long to use it, it didn't make much of a difference when I finally did. I was already so low on life even with the shield and break free I died not too long afterward. Furthermore, in group PvP you're going to be frequently getting hit with stuns, knockdowns and immobilizers. I felt that getting Heat dissipation from Gyroscopic Alignment Jets, and getting the freedom to pop Energy Shield early in the fight rather than holding off, was a bit more useful than taking Degauss. But, that decisions was very much a "Your Mileage May Vary" section of the build, and if you would rather take Degauss, then by all means, feel free to do so! I certainly don't think it's a bad talent at all. I just found that it turned Energy Shield from a pro-active cooldown into a reactive one, and I didn't like the way that that changed my PvP playstyle. *EDIT* I think I'll add the above to the Pyrotech segment since you're probably not the only one who was wondering about that.

I'm actually leveling as a tank. You can tear stuff down just fine, and with Mako backing you up, it isn't too difficult to do some of the 2 player content, or gold star enemies, on your own without breaking a sweat. You might kill a little slower, but it's a marginal difference. The Powertech puts out good damage regardless of spec.

Really, when you get down to it, Sweltering Heat is more of a PvP talent than a PvE talent. So for a PvE build, Sweltering Heat isn't a big deal. The AI in the game isn't fantastic, so enemies generally don't run away from you; when they do it isn't very far, usually just a few yards. Further, as a Merc, even on those rare occasions when they do run, I've never seen a mob run out of your attack range (unless they get bugged). If you need to use snares frequently in Operations then yeah, spec into Swealtering Heat. But I can't imagine that happening - certainly it isn't the case right now. At the same time, I'll admit that you don't get CC'd very often in PvE, but there are enemies who do knock backs or throw out snares or roots or stuns, even in raids. When that happens, an extra 8 heat dissipated isn't bad. For end game PvE, I think you're going to get a little more use out of Gyroscopic Alignment than you'll get out of Sweltering Heat.

Pretty much anything but Synthweaving will have some use for you; even Artifice lets you make shield generators. Armstech lets you make guns. Armortech lets you make armor. Cybertech lets you make grenades and mods. Biochem lets you make health and buff items. Most of the armor and weapons that you can craft are Bind on Equip, though I have heard that some of it is Bind on Pickup. I didn't get far enough to really try out the crafting system, which was why I didn't want to include much about it in my guide - not until I'm more clear on exactly how it works. It's hard to say what will be better at end game for PvE. Tentatively I would suggest Biochem, because the reusable items will be useful for raiding. Likewise, Cybertech could be handy because the bombs will be a DPS boost - back in WoW during Wrath, Engineering was (barely) the "best" endgame DPS profession because the Saronite Bombs added up to the most contribution to DPS. But, as there's currently no DPS meter in this game, you may want to prioritize survivability over DPS since you won't be able to get bragging rights for pulling 10 DPS ahead of the next guy. At the same time, it's very possible Armstech or Armortech will be the best professions depending on whether top end recipes will be BoP and how easy it is to get crafting materials for those top end recipes. Long story short, it's impossible to say which profession will be best at end game. Bioware changed the crafting system around a few times over the course of the beta, and had some major, last minute changes to the way gear worked, which had a big impact on Armstech and Amortech. Only time will tell which profession is "best".