Something that just popped into my head which is possibly very OP and maybe not even programmable: make Laze Target put a debuff marker on your current target and your next Orbital Strike will track that target throughout its duration. This would obviously have a very long cooldown, probably 3 minutes or more. In PVE, usefulness would vary from fight to fight, especially since many of the latest boss fights are very light on movement. It wouldn't help much in fights like Terror or Thrasher where you have one big enemy, but against smaller moving targets like Cartel Warlords, Dread Guards, and EC Kephess it would be helpful, though not necessarily a DPS gain. PVP is where I worry most about it being OP. Being able to avoid AoE's is a fundamental element of PVP and if suddenly the strongest AoE in the game is tracking you, that could cause a lot of problems.Perhaps making it tech cleansable would assuage this issue. Paowee, I guess put me in the "undecided/abstain" camp. I agree that LT needs some sort of change, but a longer cooldown for just another auto-crit is unappealing to me.

You may have mentioned this in another thread, do you generally use your TA/Relic/Adrenal on cooldown or save them for burst periods like during orbital or sniper volley? Similarly, since the cooldowns on TA and relic don't line up is it better to just use TA on cooldown rather than wait for the relic? Also grats on killing Dread Guard

Marauders end up with 3 very good defensive abilities, 2 stuns (Force Choke and Chilling Scream which is an AOE stun), have an 8 second interrupt cooldown, and all of their main abilities are instant or uninterruptable. Not to mention Predation/Bloodthirst at higher levels. Commandos/Mercs need to channel most of their abilities which means they can be interrupted and shut down. The damage prevented by heavy armor is negligible in most situations. Healing themselves is only useful if you get put in a one-minute stun in which case you just use your cc-break. TLDR: Low level stuff is not an indication of level 50/55 stuff. Marauders destroy everything at max level in both PVP and PVE.

Look up some threads on Need/Green/Pass etiquette and how to properly play a certain role (Damage/Tank/Healer) This is a multiplayer game after all and proper knowledge of these mechanics will earn you respect and prevent hate.

Individual hits are meaningless since each class deals damage a different way. Good damage is measure by DPS (damage per second) which you can find by using a parser tool or by using a combat dummy (PVE or PVP). The highest dummy parsed dps is around 2700-2900. Not sure what the highest so far is is for commandos. DPS required to beat the current final boss (Dread Master Styrak) is approximately 2200 dps. Note that your dps against an actual boss will be dramatically lower than against a dummy due to movement downtime and other boss mechanics.

The previous posters have covered these classes PVP wise. Here's some PVE perspective: Marauder: Hands down one of the top dps classes since the launch of the game. Can be specced for burst/sustained/aoe, excelling in each. Has the 3 very good defensive cooldowns, so much that our tanks joke about having a marauder tank our raids. Provides great utility in Predation and Bloodthirst, a group speed boost and damage boost respectively. This makes them extremely desired in endgame PVE and PVP content. Operative: Very good healers and massive burst dps. Operatives use a separate energy source (Tactical Advantage) in addition to their standard energy pool so you have to learn to manage both for key burst phases. 2.0 made some nice changes to give them better sustained dps, but they were hurt by the crit rating nerf. Also somewhat hurt in that one of their big damage abilites, Hidden Strike, can only be used from stealth, which is on a 1.5 minute cooldown if used in combat. One of the more complex classes to play but very rewarding for those who can master it. Assassin: I actually don't know that much about this class but they are solid damage dealers. Better overall survivability than most dps due to good cooldowns. This plus stealth-burst makes them very desirable in PVP. Both Ops and Sins can utilize their in-combat stealth to perform stealth-rezs. These are difficult and risky to pull off but can save your group from a wipe if your battle-rez has already been used. These classes can also stealth-cc enemies to allow trash skipping, both in raids and while leveling. Now for serious business honest biased opinion time. This primarily applies if you are going to get into serious endgame raiding. (in general) Marauder is the strongest dps of these 3. Ops and sins are good, definitely better than pre 2.0, but they are still not on level with marauders. Other than stealth-rez, which is better done by an op healer than dps, marauders provide better dps and raid utility. A marauder will NOT out-dps the other two 100% of the time, (there are A LOT of bad marauders out there) but it is much easier to do more dps as a marauder than it is as an op or sin. TLDR: If PVE dps is your only goal, go marauder. If PVP is your goal, all 3 are viable in some way or another.

This is slightly off topic but since everyone is here: On our latest S&V run I (sniper) switched over to the adds while on the ground because one of our melee guys up top fell off. I didn't have any trouble hitting the ads, but all my attacks were "Absorbed" and did no damage. Our sorc was also unable to damage the ads from the ground. The marauder up top could still do damage and earlier in the fight I had been able to damage the snipers no problem. Anyone know if there is a mechanic which would prevent attacks from the ground floor from doing damage?

Another tip: don't buy the speeders from the actual vendors. Buy an adaptive speeder off the GTN. The adaptive ones increase in speed for each rank of speeder piloting you have, so there's no need to buy a new speeder when you get a new rank. Because of Cartel Market bloat you can get a good looking adaptive speeder for as little as 4000 credits on many servers. Considering a level 1 speeder costs 8000 credits and level 3's can cost as much as 125,000, you are saving a ton of money.

Pretty sure he's talking about RACE, not class. F2P players only get Human, Cyborg, Zabrak by default. For everyone else, each Class has the option of 4 races by default, for example Warriors can be Human, Cyborg, Pureblood, or Zabrak by default. To have a Warrior of a different race such as Chiss, you would need to purchase that race as a legacy unlock with credits or cartel coins, or reach level 50 with a Chiss character of a different class to get it for free. Legacy is unlocked at level 10 and is the last name you pick for your character. This will be universal for all your characters on that server.

Are you buying the shield item from the vendor at the start? Can confirm, our first clear was also in maxed 63's with minimal 66/69's

For most classes there is no way to move an offhand barrel/offhand by legacy. The only exception are the dual wielding classes (gunslinger, mercenary, sentinel, marauder) but for Mercs this doesn't really work because: Dual pistols =/= Cannon + generator (armoring) So it's not one specific class at a disadvantage, it's actually sentinels/marauders at an advantage because the two mirror classes use the same mainhand/offhand combo where both have a legacy item. We can probably expect Legacy offhands down the line but for now you can't trade around. Fortunately, the offhands sold by the Arkanian and Underworld vendors are very good and very easy to get.

I don't have actual parse data available right now, but it feels to me like I only get FT if the entire SoS channel finishes, not just the 4th shot landing. So if I get a killing blow with SoS I never get FT. Rather annoying and I hope BW will change it so that the FT proc is earlier in the channel.

This is the risk associated with any pug group: you aren't guaranteed gear and that's the way of the world. The solution to that is to get an organized group or guild and work out a system of equally distributing gear. Just because you haven't gotten any set bonus tokens doesn't mean the system is broken, it means you have ****** luck. On your last point, back in 1.1 raids DID give out gear on a per person basis, and it was completely awful. You had no control over what you won and the items had awful stats. This was terrible for guild runs where those who needed gear would often get crap and those who didn't need gear got the best stuff based on RNG.

Just a warning, unlike the other holostatues the Revan one is BIND ON EQUIP/USE. One of my raid buddies got one and threw it down to see what was special about it - locked to character. On the other hand, it is basically a repair droid with no cooldown.

You should have seen us doing 16 man Olok the Shadow. So many marauders breaking CC with Derp Saber Throw.

You do 3 Stage 1 missions, an interval mission, and then 3 Stage 2 missions. Doing certain missions will unlock others as options for completion but the Heroics are not worth any more than the other missions toward the Weekly goals. However the Heroics do offer better rewards (slightly more Basic Comms and a Blue Reputation item)

Darn I had actually typed out exactly what you said and deleted it when I was correcting grammar. Yes the most important part is that you zone in first, as in completely loaded and able to move around in the op instance before anyone else. I've found it still helps to be the ops leader because we've had instances where a leader on a different lockout can be locked out of the instance until lead is passed.

As the above poster said, don't bother with shatter shot ON TRASH. You do want to use it on elites and bosses as your opener. I haven't done too much lethality post 2.0 so I'll leave rotation to the experts, but you do not want to use Weakening Blast as your opener. It should only be used directly before a Cull when you have both your dots up. Cull has a shorter cooldown than WB so it will be tempting to skip it, but you get more damage by waiting a few seconds for the WB + Cull combo. Lethality's whole rotation is based around being able to use WB on cooldown, so knowing when to reapply dots and when to use other attacks is key. Speaking of dots, you'll definitely have energy trouble if you are reapplying dots every rotation. They last 2 rotations if you take the appropriate skills and the weak versions last longer to give you some breathing room if you need to get another WB + Cull off.

Enrage is extremely tight on 8man HM so we actually used 2.5 ranged dps on the ads. Our 3 ranged dps would all focus one ad based on the side of the center walkway it spawned on. Once that single ad was down, our sorc would go back to the boss while the other 2 finished the last ad. Obviously this strategy is much more difficult if you only have 2 ranged dps. Focusing a single target should help your tank with aggro. Guard the ranged if necessary but we usually didn't have too much aggro trouble. If you're losing your isotope you probably aren't interrupting the small droids channel in time. It knocks off the debuff. If dps interrupt one you should be able to get the other, at least when they first spawn. You can survive the small droids without the debuff, the important thing is to have it when you tank the big guy.

Yes you can start from where you personally left off but any trash after the last boss you killed will respawn. You need to be the Ops leader for the first boss you kill with the new group. Once everyone has equal lockouts, lead can be passed to anyone.

He starts with no weapon. Go buy him a green cunning pistol and he will occasionally shoot when not healing you. Also make sure to put him in his healing stance (Med Watch?)

You will have much better luck posting in your individual server's Guild Recruitment subforum. This forum is specifically for Flashpoints/Operations/Heroics discussion.

I'd recommend a Knight because it's the only class whose story I actually enjoyed after Act 1. You said you want a story with depth so I strongly recommend playing neutral or slightly-dark alignment because full lightside is literally Jesus-IN-SPACE! and full darkside doesn't really make sense story wise. Trooper is a very fun class and has a very strong Act 1 but the story completely dies after that. Every mission in Act 2/3 is basically Garza saying "Go here, do that, kill him" and you say "FER DA REPUBLIC herp derp" Fun if that's what your into, but there's no real story there. Smuggler has a decent Act 1 and lots of one-liners throughout but the story is pretty weak. Less smuggling and more Republic errand-boy. Haven't played consular past the first few planets. From what I've read the story doesn't actually seem that bad in regards to actually having one, it's just comparatively boring.

Bridge Boss, the level 55 version of the KP Elevator Boss

Haha thanks to the two above for adding in. Though I'd say pre-50 (55 now I guess lol) if you are going to Need companion gear you should always spell it out before a roll or even a fight as other people could also probably use it for their companions but hit Greed assuming the guidelines I posted above. Disassemble is a bit funny last time I tried. I believe it has the same precedence as Greed, but it will return crafting mats for the item. However I've had it bug out sometimes and produce Need level rolls which as you can imagine could make someone very angry. Honestly, I'd say there's no point to going Disassemble over Greed because chances are you'll get next to zero mats unless its been changed. If you really want to disassemble something, just RE it yourself if you win it.