Merc/commando is, by far, the most fun I've had healing. Ever. This is coming from someone that tanks almost as a way of life. I've always leveled a healer after maxing every available tank in a game and at least one dps. And that healer rarely makes it very far past the starting zone of the game. I absolutely can't wait to max out my merc healer and see what she can do, but they do start off kinda slow and clunky. Incidentally, while I finally maxed out my operative as my first healer, I found him boring and not very engaging. He did the job well, but it just wasn't fun. Did not like sorc/sage healing. They're pretty traditional I suppose, but not the class for me.

For their level, they're actually fairly decent. The problem is you out level them incredibly fast. I think they're somewhat of a throwback to the original devs that saw custom gear as somewhat rare. Since then, there's been a design shift such that "static" gear is mostly referred to as vendor bait or minion food. It's especially disconcerting when you take crew skills devoted to static gear into account such as synth weaving and armormech. Sure, there are custom patterns to find, but the bulk of the things you're going to make are completely worthless outside of leveling your skill. And even the custom pieces that are available are rapidly being displaced by the cartel market. My opinion is that crafting needs a serious overhaul in that regard.

Why even apply it as a buff? Simply bake it into the skill such that, for every 10 levels or so of skill level you get another 1% chance to reverse engineer an item. That way, at max crew skill level, the basic patterns (he ones you get when you choose the skill) have a roughly 65% chance of discovering the proper schematic with that percentage dropping off until skill cap. In that way, "easy" patterns are learned quickly (by highly skilled persons), while the more contemporary or "cutting edge" schematics might still take some time to discover.

He's specifically talking about pvp, in which case simply having the extra mobility of jet charge with the added benifit of some extra survivability could go fairly far. That's not to say a "pure" build won't be better suited to certain situations, but if he can make it work, more power to him.

Most, if not all, companions start to really suffer at the end game. Combined with inherently abysmal ratings for defense and they tend not to survive very long without constant attention by a healer. Tough to do when you're trying to do enough dps to finish the fight in a timely manner. However, one thing I've started doing with my tanking companions is stacking their shield and absorb ratings and forgetting about defense almost entirely. They don't avoid taking the damage a lot, but the incoming damage curve tends to be a lot smoother and more manageable. As for specific numbers, I think you can reasonable expect to hit mid 30% or even up to 40% shield chance with roughly the same absorption. I haven't put my companions in 69 gear that I recall, but even the 66 blue armorings and mods will get you close to that range. Combined with their defensive CDs and, in Treeks case, minor healing, and your companion should prove rather robust. Your mileage may vary, but this works for me.

They're there. They're under the general cartel market section under special if I recall. It's the section in your collections tab that's outlined with the colored boarder. I believe it's also the very first entry on the tree that gives multiple panels with xx/xx displayed at the bottom. Incidentally, the contract for treek is there as well in case you were wondering if you had to burn 300k to a million credits every time you wanted your angry carebear.

The 78 is a reference to the equivalent item level of the mod. So the rank 25 mods available from the Makeb vendor on fleet (level 58) have stats equivalent that of a randomly dropped piece of gear (mod in this case) of level 58 if such a thing were to exist.

Yes, yes. I've seen that thread and had to almost break my fingers to prevent some type of actionable reply. I still think I may have detached one of my retinas with my /eyeroll. But that still doesn't explain the "big hair". Because, I don't know about you all, but I'd like the '80s to stay dead...

The others require no explaination, however I feel we must elaborate on the "big hair". Are we talking lustrous locks or '80s hair bands here?

While I get what you're saying, the feasability is what I'm questioning. Since any mong can use any legacy name without restriciton now (none that I'm aware of, anyway), ignoring/friending based on legacy name alone could potentially add many times the number of players you were expecting to one list or the other. The function NECCESSARILY needs to be tied to accounts and not legacy names. You ignore the players' whole account (or friend, lets keep his positive).

Welcome to PvP. There are poor winners just like there are poor losers. What you describe is an example of the former. Learning to deal with it not only makes you a better player, but a better person. As far as them jumping characters to continually send you whispers, that's a defined breach of the EULA and should be reported. You're right, you shouldn't have to put up with it, but there are avenues to can take to help prevent hat player from continuing to do it. All that aside, I would agree that the game needs some sort of way to add all characters of an account to ignore or friends lists. Unfortunately, since they now allow multiple players with the same legacy name, that may be easier said than done. My programming knowledge is certainly limited (mostly to 80's movie cliches), but I woud imagine they'd have to somehow link the portion of the players account information with their character list to your friends or ignore list. Giving the apparent wonkiness of the game engine, it could be problematic at best.

I'm not so sure about that. I kinda like the idea, but I suspect the reason they're not in game is to maintain the very thin appeal of any crew skills other than cybertech, biochem, and MAYBE artifice and armstech. And the latter 2 are pretty sketchy since you really only need one or 2 barrels or hilts unless you're fanatically trying to gear up every companion. And even then, it's likely easier to simply use extra coms to get the weapon with the barrel or hilt you want. Realistically, the crew skill system needs a dramatic overhaul. There are systems in place that are primarily just a legacy of an earlier vision of how the gear would work (legacy gear, anyone?). Until they do an overhaul and give us a solid, single vision of gearing from level 1 to whatever the max is at that time, I have a feeling we're going to be chasing fixed accessory items.

These suggestions come up quite often. The same argument can be made for assassins/shadows being locked to polesabers and guardians/juggs being stuck with the one traditional saber. The fact is, arbitrary weapon restrictions are arbitrary. The argument can be made that assault cannons and polesabers do extra damage to make up for this or that, but if players had the option to choose their weapons irrespective of weapon damage, they wouldn't have to necessarily bump up he damage on any weapons. They could likely balance damage through the individual skill or power based on what weapon type was being employed. But I digress. This thread and any other suggesting abolishing arbitrary weapon restrictions gets a big fat /signed from me.

Political correctness has certainly sunk to a new low when we're being asked to be sensitive to the emotional needs of a people THAT DON'T EVEN EXIST. If you're a troll, congratulations on a job well done. If you're not, then you're either unaware that Star Wars isn't historically accurate or you take yourself entirely too seriously. In either case, relax, it's a game. Next you'll be asking us to band together to abolish in game references to slavery.

In the context of this thread, he actually is correct. Given the 4 stats available for crystals, I'd like to see my tanks choose END over any other stat. Gives me that warm fuzzy to think I don't have to contend with a casual tank that might be using his dps set for the lulz. But you're right as well. He didn't need to disrespect the OP.

I'm not entirely sure why you chose my post to quote and then discuss crit rating as if I were suggesting you should stack it in any way. My post was about accuracy rating. The last part of the post is pointing out that it's possible to get up to a 30% crit rating before the diminishing returns become simply punishing, although I have to admit I didn't necessarily make that abundantly clear. In any case, I in no way suggested that it was the thing to do. As far as the difference in dps with relation to accuracy, I do agree that the dps difference is marginal at best. I thought I articulated that appropriately with the language I used, but evident there's some room for interpretation. For that I apologize. The reality is, while 100% accuracy is ideal, anything over is simply wasted stat points. Perhaps it's my own personal OCD showing, but I would much rather come in UNDER 100% by a slight bit on accuracy and put the points saved on accuracy to use in some other meaningful way. Even if those points go into END, in my mind, I haven't "wasted" anything by spending more point in a stat than is even useable. And before it becomes an issue, yes, I know hat acc over 100% reduces the targets defenses. But let's be honest here, it's negligible at best and likely even less of a dps contribution than 10 or 20 more dps over the course of a single encounter that you MIGHT get from any other stat.

I would agree here with the exception of getting my ACC to as close to 100% (110% for force/tech) as possible without exceeding (or even hitting) it. It's mostly semantics, but from a min/max perspective, the odds of you missing at 99.xx% are slim enough that the extra couple points in dps MIGHT be relevant and even beneficial in the grand scheme of things. Also, I think the current gear scaling allows for crit ratings approaching 30% and surge ratings approaching 70% without buffs (but including skills for crit rating). I can't verify this, however.

To more directly answer your question, there ARE purple crystals available to lower level characters starting at level 30 or so. They're only available from artificers and only if they've acquired the patterns by defeating the various world bosses. I don't believe they're available from lock boxes or random mobs. In addition, they're only going to have stats correlating to their respective level. I can remember finding and winning a couple of these patterns, but they're bind on pickup and the character that had it wasn't an artificer (there were none in the party when it dropped either). If memory serves, there are level 30 and 40 versions of power, crit and endurance varieties. Or at least there were. They could have conceivably been removed by now. In any event, they're vastly inferior to the level 10 cartel crystals by way of stats and derelict purple suits most people just fine should color be that big a deal.

As was mentioned before, it depends heavily on how you want to play. My personal opinion would be to go for merc for dps and scoundrel for healing. I don't care much for the scoundrel story at all and I've found that the mercenary feels much more like what I would picture the proper gunslinger to be (minus the fancy trick shots, which really have no place in a shootout anyway). That said, merc healing needs some love. It's for from being completely broken, but even a scrub healer like myself gets decent to above average mileage out of scoundrel (and agent) heals with hardly a duck given. Conversely, I feel that I've really got to be Johnny on the spot while healing with the merc.

Don't even joke. That actually became a thing in "that other game", and I like to not have to see it in this one...

Be happy you can even gain affection with the ship droid to begin with. He used to have nothing. Now he's not only capable of being custom tailored to the specific crew skills of your character (to a limited extent) but he can now be equal to, and in many cases better than, your companion "specialist" for any particular crew skill. As an aside, I'm almost 100% sure that he doesn't count as a companion for the purposes of the presence boost. I'd be rather surprised if any of the companions outside of the 5 relevant to your character's story contribute as well. They're "fluff" characters with OP skill sets (with the exception of the steward droid) and highly useful and generic crew skill boosts.

Companion tanks are rediculouly squishy and, unless you have a ton of dps, can't really stand up to more than a couple strong or elite opponents for very long. Part of this has to do with the relatively low armor values they get (only base value as opposed to players who usually get a boost), and part of it has to do with the way ratings are calculated, specifically defense. As such, I've started practically ignoring defense on my companions. Instead, I've been going on the premise that that they're simply an extra HP bar. That said, the more that tank companion can soak, he bigger the window of opportunity for me to take care of business. They also usually have some sort of cooldown ability that boosts defense, shield, or absorb considerably. I've thought about stacking tanking stats based on that ability, but abandoned it for the "sponge" approach instead of having the potential to be spikey with RNG (yes, there's still a lot of RNG with shield rating, hence the stem heavy mods) So for my tank companions I've been focusing on shield rating and absorb almost exclusively with endurance prioritized over the companion main stat. Essentially, I'm banking on that shield rating to function as additional "armor" as often as possible and having that extra boost provide as much mitigation as it can. I've found that even the crafted 28 mods provide enough of both to give about 35 or 40% shield chance and roughly the same absorb while still maintaining 10% defense (from implants, ear pieces and such). All in all, it seems to give me a companion tank that last long enough for me to get the job done with the least amount of headaches on my end from a gearing perspective. Could you do better? Likely. But I, for one, don't really feel like contributing that much time and effort into my companions to get them into rank 72 or higher gear. As with everything, your mileage may vary, but I've found this works great for all of my dps characters. If the companion gets too beat up, just dismiss and re-summon when the fight ends.

I haven't seen anyone address this, so I'll touch in it a bit. I, too, had this concern. But after I finally remembered I could capture them instead of killing them, I made it a point to put the capture item on my quickbar. While I was doing a bounty mission on DK with a lower level character, another level 55 player stopped to "help out" when he saw me summoning the mark. Fortunately I was high enough in level that he couldn't one shot my bounty, but it went down faster than I'd really expected so I simply waited for the carbonite icon to light up and hit it. Immediately after I clicked it, I started seeing immune pop up on the bounty whenever damage was done to it. It might have been patched after the event launch, but it seems that they've taken steps to greatly increase the odds of live capture. TLDR; When you hit the carbonite freeze item, the bounty becomes immune to damage.

Excellent! That was what I was assuming, but I've gotten into some bad habits doing that in the past and just figured I'd nip it in the bud right now. I should be picking up blade rush in a level and a half and it will occupy the warm spot left by slash. Thanx for the quick reply!

So, scrub question here... I don't have the skill yet since I took the points in the watchman tree before hitting the top of combat (mainly to increase the uptime of zen and increase my burst availability), and only having just hit 47, but I would think blade rush effectively replaces slash for all intents and purposes. Yet your expertly written write up and explaination seems to indicate the seperate uses of both skills. Why is this? Did I miss something or does slash just hit significantly harder and thus justify that precious keybind/ability slot? Thanx in advance!