Dang, you beat me to it.

They do wear medium armour. Beyond that... *shakes head.* Gunslinger/Sniper is primarily ranged *if* you opt for the Marksmanship/Sharpshooter trees. This tree is on average the most dependent on the cover mechanic and the least mobile for that reason. It also delivers the highest single-target damage for the class. Of all three trees this is probably the one that is most straightforward to play. Saboteur/Engineer is DoT-heavy with a lot of medium-range attacks. The various probes, DoTs and dropped gadgets give the tree utility as well as mobility as many of them are "fire-and-forget" type abilities that allow you to drop them and run. The downside is a lot of cooldowns to babysit in longer fights. Engineering is highly energy efficient. Dirty Fighting/Lethality is the most mobile of the three trees. It does *not* "rely almost entirely on 'white' weapon damage" but delivers huge amounts of DPS in the form of internal/bleed damage. Because of that, and because it is the most mobile tree, it's been generally favoured for PvP. In PvE, Lethality/DF plays more like an Operative/Scoundrel: short range with little use of cover. The downside is the relative lack of burst damage and the need to stack multiple bleeds and debuffs before really laying down the damage. It's also a bit expensive and requires active energy management. I have both classes. I leveled my Sniper as an Engineer, tested Marks for a few levels and speced Lethality at 50. My Gunslinger was leveled in the DF tree, which isn't really recommended but it's worked well enough so far.

I've played MMOs for a decade and have almost never played anything but male characters. No, female aren't taken seriously. Male avatars get gear. Females get belly shirts and garters. Male avatars walk like human beings. Females get ****ty catwalk sashays.

Rattis rule my legacy. I've got the only Rattataki Consular I've seen to date. A tank of course - because Jedi or not a Rattataki doesn't hide behind anyone.

<3 the attention to detail.

^This. I found the Trooper story very disappointing. It starts out promising but fizzles out into a formulaic, cut-and-paste non-ending. This is a pity because a soldier's story has so much potential for gritty moral ambiguity and they opted instead for a recruiting commercial. I wanted "Apocalypse Now" and I got "Sands of Iwo Jima." The Consular story on the other hand... Most people seem to hate it. It's widely panned as the weakest in the game, but I've enjoyed it far more than the Trooper up to chapter 2 precisely because it's less formulaic. Perhaps that's what others don't like about it.

I'm into it for the leather.

I'm also on Ebon Hawk (from Adraas). I've noticed that stuff is actually selling finally. Prices overall are down a bit but I think that's a good thing. On Adraas, crafters were overcharging to compensate for the week something would sit before it was sold and for the cost of the six items that never sold for the one that finally did.

An Agent's knife is an iconic piece of equipment, it would be great if it had greater visibility. Would love to see this.

I just finished the Trooper story at 49 and didn't even realize it. When I got there the mission was just Ilum. I checked my mission screen looking for my next "Class" mission and there wasn't one. I was dumbfounded. That was it? Seriously? THAT WAS THE ENDING? When my sniper finished his story I almost cried. This was so anticlimactic I missed it.

The ones that jump out at me: Agent - Male by a landslide. The male voice is better sounding and far better acted. Either gender can wear trenchcoats but men look better in the uniform jackets. Consular - Female easily. JC gear is very feminine (all pastel, lace and bonnets) and looks silly on men. Jedi Knight - Male for the same reason as Consulars. The Obi-Wan bathrobes and armor plate are mannish and unflattering on most females. Oddly, I do not find the same true of Inquisitors or Warriors. The devs seem to have applied a certain degree of gender bias into Republic-side costume design that doesn't exist in the Imperial ones. Trooper - Hrrm. I have trouble believing a tiny female Trooper as leader of Havok Squad. Yes, I know that's sexist. Sorry, it's the social programming. Yes, I'm female.

I'm guilded and I've never played any HM, any Op or any FP past Boarding Party (and that only once.) At this point I probably never will. My 50's PvE gear is too shabby for the regular level 50 flashpoints and I'm so rusty from never teaming that I make mistakes when I attempt heroics. Hardcore team players shout at me for being a "noob" because I haven't memorised the maps or the fights.

What's wrong with the way Tharan says thanks?

My Shadow on Tatooine. She occasionally gets stares for being an Imp. http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/796/screenshot2012060122304.jpg

That's funny because I'm a hetero female IRL who plays gay males almost exclusively. I think you have a point about the subconscious.

I seem to remember seeing some stats a while back that Zabrak were the least played race and Scoundrel the least played class, but that was a few months ago. Humans, Chiss and Sith are common on my server. In fact, both are becoming common on both sides because of unlocks. I don't see many Zabrak or Rattataki on either side and Imperial Miraluka and Mirialan are still rare. I have two Republic-side Rattis -- a Consular and a Smuggler -- and I've yet to see another.

+1 this idea. It would be nice to be able to choose the corruption level. If I want my Dark III Rattataki to look a little sinister but not go the full Nosferatu I'd like to have a slider to display Dark I corruption effects.

You're way too easily confused. That, or very young.

You haven't been looking in the right places. I won't even link the Tumblr feed. It's... slashy.

Lore-wise you wouldn't want to play an SiS agent because, well, the SiS sucks. Seriously, whatever Republic class you play, you constantly encounter SiS agents who need your help to accomplish their missions, or rescue them, or clean up their botched messes. If you play Imperial you encounter the SiS frequently and defeat them at every turn with your deadly fascist efficiency while they bumble around making hypocritical speeches about the Rights of Man while casually violating those rights at every opportunity. If you engaged the SiS to get a cat out of a tree, they'd cordon off the neighbourhood, intern all the neighbours on Belsavis, carpet bomb the street, miss the tree and eventually DNA match the cat's remains from charred bone fragments. Then they'd lose the paperwork and leave the neighbours in carbonite with the Esh-kah for three hundred years. SiS = duuumb.

I didn't like Risha from the start. Birthright notwithstanding, she's sort of skeezy and crass. I was looking forward to Akaavi but she's humourless and a buzzkill. So to heck with it, I'm saving myself for Corso. We can go drunken cow tipping together under a silvery moon or three and see where it leads.

My guildies were a core group I've gamed with for seven or eight years. They were all hard core Star Wars geeks, most beta-tested, and we organised the guild via the forum before launch. I was reluctant to join: I'm not a SW fan and I had to be dragged along to keep the others happy. Now I'm the only one left. They all got bored after a month and nerd-raged over PvP, or content, or lack of content, or gear models, or maintenance schedules or whatever rationalisation suited them. Now there's me and one guy who crept back in after a couple of months away who refuses to talk to me because I called him on his whiny rage-quit back in March. Yes I'm bitter. I'm not leaving my guilds because I'm the GM now and bought two guild banks out of pocket. Oh well, back to soloing...

Akaavi is basically a DPS Merc. Your tanks are Bowdaar and Corso. Use whichever is cheaper for you to gear.

Yep - bingo. You need to gear for cunning. You do not need any aim. Beyond that there's still some discussion on the value of power versus crit. Personally I've gone whole-hog cunning/crit on my 'slinger, but he's DF spec, which will play pretty differently than sharpshooter. If you have decent aim gear left over, give it to Corso.

If you're underperforming that badly it sounds like you need to look at your build, your gear, your playstyle or some combination thereof. If you're wearing quest greens you'll struggle. if you're wearing good gear with the wrong stats, if you have a random build, if you have a good build that doesn't suit your playstyle, you'll struggle. If you're not gearing Corso properly (because you don't have anyone else yet) etc. etc. So details would be nice.