All of the Rakata recipes can be found on the trainer. You don't need to kill, loot, or RE anything for them - they're purple out of the box, cost you around 15-20K a piece to train, and require normal mats + biometric crystal alloys, which you can get from HM flashpoints (or ops). They require 400-skill to make, but not to equip.

Any of the tier 6 metal missions can crit, even if none of them is bountiful/rich. I've had companions without a UT Crit bonus come back with Mando Iron after running the moderate/abundant missions. They are all at 10K affection, but other than Tanno Vik, they don't have anything to give them an advantage. You can run all the tier 6 missions at once if you're willing to relog a few times to get them to show up in the list. That, at least, guarantees you plenty of ciridium. Mando Iron will depend on affection and your own luck.

Synthweaving and Armormech get Rakata belts/bracers, which can produce mastercrafts. Artifice, as you know, gets Rakata relics, which can also be critted. Biochem gets Rakata reusables. Cybertech gets Rakata grenades. Armstech gets squat for now.

You don't have to have any crew skills at all, but having gathering skills will help you make credits more easily. Crafting can also make you good money, but if you don't like it, you'll probably find it more frustrating in the end. You can take all gathering/mission skills. The only restriction applies to crafting skills, of which you can only have one.

What you need to do is go read the stickies for each advanced class and figure out what stat combinations are considered optimal. For both DPS and healers, there are usually 2-3 that are decent. For tanks, it's mainly the Veracity one, since the itemization on the others is pretty bad. Just keep in mind that what's considered BiS for a certain level of gear may be sub-optimal once some caps are reached. Stat priorities tend to not be static. However, there are usually only 1-3 versions per blue that are worth RE-ing.

Yield is dictated strictly by the quality of the mission (Moderate, Abundant, Bountiful, Rich) and not by alignment. The alignment gains are simply a Diplomacy bonus, since they can help you advance in your chosen alignment much faster than someone who relies only on dialogue options. If you care about alignment on your alt, then do only LS or DS missions. If you care only about mats, then go by mission quality and ignore the LS/DS part.

I noticed the exact same thing. The easiest way to notice it for mission skills is that they all seem to bring back the same kind of gift (say, a Courting one), but when you look in your bag, you find an assortment of various gifts and even some schematics that didn't show when you accepted the pending missions. I'd say empty your bags into your bank before you log for the night, and check your bags after repeated failure messages. If you don't have anything in your bags, then you'll know all of them indeed failed. If you have stuff in your bags, then it was just a display error.

If you mean the Rakata reusables, you train the purples directly from the trainer, so there's no RE-ing involved. You'll just need a biometric alloy for each, but you only need medpack/Aim stim/relevant adrenal, so that's a whopping 3 for all your needs ever. There are also green level 48 ones which can be RE-ed to blue and epic reusables. RE-ing them to blue is a good idea, since you can sell them to other people, regardless of profession. The epic ones require Biochem, so there might be a market for them, but I wouldn't RE them for myself. This is my reasoning: you'll waste more blues in the RE process than you'd use in the few heroics you'll run to get your alloys. If you already have your alloys saved up, then I wouldn't bother except for commercial reasons. Before you drop Armstech, you should try to make yourself a critted weapon, since next patch you can drop a better barrel in it. If you already have it, then disregard this.

You don't actually need the blue and epic mats to level with. That said, it's probably not a bad idea to keep your mission skill one tier or more above your crafting skill. If your companions have decent affection and you're running gray Rich missions, you're pretty likely to see crits.

The one with more endurance was probably a crafted Columi. When you RE a tank piece, there is absolutely no point in RE-ing anything but the Redoubt blue. The rest are wasted itemization. I would also not bother making any epic versions except the Veracity one, but that depends on your server (i.e. some people will buy anything as long as it's epic, but suckers are an unreliable market).

You can learn all 3 blues from one green, and as of yet, I haven't seen the dreaded "you already know this schematic" message pop when RE-ing green --> blue. You're just unlucky. At this point, just use one of the augmented greens you got, stick a nice a nice augment in it, and you'll have something at least as good as the blue.

Kolto Bomb is - instant - cheap - a direct heal and provides - a healing increase buff - a damage reduction buff with SCS It's obviously meant to be used more like a raid wall than a powerful raid heal. Increasing the number of targets it hits is a pretty important buff, especially when you take into account the presence of another healer who can AoE HoT the targets affected by Kolto Residue. More targets will make it easier for Commandos/BHs to solo-heal some content and to contribute more to AoE healing in Ops during times when tank damage doesn't require their full attention. Giving us both the best single-target healing and the best AoE heal in the game would be unbalanced and would lead to heavy-handed nerfs. I'd rather have a decent buff that will stick instead of a huge buff which will get our single-target healing or single-target ammo efficiency nerfed into the ground afterwards.

There are no moddable techblades, but Armstech gets trainable techblades (green), which can be RE-ed to better. The one you were looking at must have been much lower-level than his default one. The blue Redoubt ones are very decent for each level.

The problem with Armstech isn't that it's not profitable, but that it doesn't offer anything at end-game. The easiest solution would be add BoP Rakata weapons. That would bring Armstech on a par with any profession which offers crafted Rakata-level armor. In terms of profitability, it's doing pretty well, but I think that's connected with its lack of popularity. There are few Armstechs, Investigation missions can be bought for next to nothing, and the demand is there for leveling blue/epic barrels and some weapons (I sell blue techblades and scatterguns, but other people have reported success with other things as well). Augmented moddable weapons are already selling for high prices in anticipation of the next content patch, and will continue to sell very well after that. They could lower the Bio Alloy requirements to 1 instead of 3, though.

Elara's healing is pretty decent if you keep her gear up-to-date. During my Gunnery stints, I give her my healing gear and she can can keep up with damage very well. I have her Carbonite Stream keybound so I can use it as an interrupt, which also reduces damage. I wouldn't recommend her for a Medic because you'll take longer to kill anything than if you used Jorgan or Yuun, and neither is exceedingly hard to heal in normal questing circumstances.

I think it's useful nevertheless, since you explained your motivation, exact role in the raid, and the level you're playing at. In the absence of an armory, it's hard to get an idea of what set-ups people are using for various purposes, and I'm interested in learning how practical experiences match what the spreadsheets are recommending.

My friendships with these people are based on common interests, mutual support, and a mutual appreciation for each other's work, rather than on their dating behavior. Obviously, you have every right to employ different criteria, but I would appreciate it if you afforded me the same courtesy. I also take issue with considering serial dating as "horrible actions." Many people, of both genders, choose to engage in it, and it is not our place to judge their behavior as "horrible" when things like violence, discrimination, genocide, etc. happen in this world. I guess it depends on where your priorities lie. Their reasons for doing it vary wildly and aren't always centered on a lack of respect and appreciation for the gender they pursue. These reasons can include egocentrism, perfectionism, a lack of realism as to what can be expected from a person or a relationship, fear of intimacy and commitment, desperation to prove certain things, etc. I am not saying that these reasons are healthy or that some people shouldn't get therapy, but generalizing and saying that this kind of behavior is rooted in misogyny is an oversimplification. It also does not mean that these people are incapable of maintaining friendships or that their friends/families should abandon them. Next, I don't think we need to infantilize women by depicting them as victims in situations which don't involve coercion/violence or lying/cheating. Adults are responsible for themselves and for the choices they make, and making oneself prematurely available to someone you don't know very well can be a poor decision, especially when you have no proof that they will be equally available to you. That's a delicate way of saying that if you don't value yourself as a shimmersilk purse, others won't either, and you can't solely blame them for it. In any case, my point was that people like Tharan Cedrax are not necessarily evil to the core and that it is possible for a woman to be friends with them, as is the case with our Jedi. Obviously, I don't expect everyone to agree, but I wanted to show a different perspective.

For non-heroics or when I do something with my tank friend, I use Jorgan. Granted, Yuun does good DPS and shares a gear-set with Jorgan, so it's a matter of preference. The only problem with him is that his BiS weapon is the crafted purple, while Jorgan can get much better barrels if you raid. When I have to do the Ilum/Belsavis Heroic 2s alone, I use Tanno. He's decent now in just blues, so I assume he'll be almost awesome once I get him full purples. I don't personally mind his lack of Harpoon, since I try to LoS after I CC something. I suspect Forex takes a little more micromanagement to be effective, but I don't see why he'd take more damage at equal gear levels.

Sorry for the double-post, but I didn't want to mix these together. @Ellie - Could you post your stats so those of us who are trying to gear up can use them as a guideline?

Just one quick question, RuQu: does your recommended Alacrity range include talents? Since I think it does, it looks like I'll have to drop Weapon Calibrations then, because I don't have a good way to drop Alacrity without also dropping Power. I could switch to Power/Surge enhancements, but based on the stat weights produced by the latest version, Surge has the lowest weight for my current stats. So I'm thinking that I'll get more mileage out of Muzzle Fluting + Combat Shield.

Elara has only one heal with a cast time; the rest are instants. That means that Alacrity is not particularly useful for her. At the same time, she doesn't have a resource bar and can't conceivably run out of ammo, so there's no reason to keep giving her gear with Crit and Surge once she's past the caps. She'll get less mileage out of them than out of Alacrity at that point. Power sims better than any other secondary stat for healers, so that's what you should prioritize. The Rakata Medic gear should be fine for her, since it doesn't have any Accuracy. If you have spare enhancements and want to min-max her, swap some of the Alacrity enhancements with Surge ones until she's at about 80%. If she's already at 80% Surge and 35%-ish Crit, leave it alone. For non-set items, pick the ones that have the most Aim/Power and don't unbalance her secondaries too much.

Blatantly false. My Mastercraft BoE bracers and belt (made by an Armormech, but Synthweaving has equivalent patterns) are superior to the BM ones. Switching to the BM ones would entail a direct loss to Aim and Power. They are also better than the ones on the Rakata vendor - either more Aim or more of a secondary stat, depending on which augment I feel is more beneficial at a given time. I'm sorry, but grinding to Valor rank 60 to get a subpar piece isn't worth it when you can craft yourself Rakatas or buy a BoE mastercraft. Maybe it was "totally usless" for your spec, but my guess is that simple math may not be your strong point. If you argued that slotted bracers with lv 57-58 mods are better than Rakatas, I would have agreed, but those aren't accessible to everyone.

If they introduced a scaling medpack usable only in operations, they would have to design content around everyone using it. That would be a pretty unfortunate development, because nothing they could give other professions would ever match Biochem (short of extremely OP craftables, which would remove the incentive of raiding in the first place). My main problem with scaling medpacks is that they likely scale better than healer talents and spells, given that all our spells have varying coefficients. The fact that it already exists for PvP is already grossly unfair to healers, whose top-tier talents get handed around, but who get nothing in return. I'd be fine with it if they introduced scaling consumables which mimicked tanking or DPS CDs, like a 40% damage reduction medpack, or an instant grenade on a 90-sec CD which did at least as much damage as a top-tier talent. However, going down that path would lead to cheesing encounters to a ridiculous degree. I'm sure you'll get mad and throw some choice words at me, but since your group is in full Rakata, you really don't need better consumables.

Unless you have access to a top-of-the-line armoring and mod, moddable bracers aren't better than Rakata with an augment slot. Also, depending on spec/your current gear/where you are with regards to stat caps, secondary stats can have higher stat weights than primary stats or be very close, so the Rakatas might be better even with great mods. At this point, Biochem offers zero benefit in terms of extra stats. All it does is save you money. If you PvP a lot, the savings on adrenals alone would be substantial. If you're willing to wait about a month, you could just stick with gathering professions now, buy some BoEs, and see what happens in the next major patch. Undoubtedly, they know that professions aren't very balanced, and they promised some changes. If the PTR goes up and Armormech isn't getting anything special, you might as well go with Biochem for the reusables.

Synthweaving can produce Rakata bracers and belts, which are BoP and require Biometric Crystal Alloys (you can get them from HM flashpoints). You can crit on them and obtain a Mastercraft, which gives you an augment slot. They can also RE lv 49 bracers/belts, which lead to BoE epics; those can also be critted. Again, depending on your spec, the BoE ones might be better than the Rakatas, so you'll have to look them up beforehand and figure out how good the Rakatas are in comparison. Either way, they'll be the best you can get unless you can get mods from HM/NM ops and put them in socketable bracers/belts. Biochem doesn't offer you a stat advantage any more, so it's a matter of convenience. If you think you'll be doing anything which will involve using a lot of consumables, it can save you a lot of credits. Otherwise, you'll get more mileage from Synthweaving.