It's fine. Edit: Might be rough for Lost Island HM though. For some classes the expertise penalty on WH is pretty high (as is the stat distribution). YMMV.

In your original post you stated you don't PvP, you don't do ops, flashpoint rarely and mostly single player stuff. The concerns people have don't affect you.

Tooltips are broken, that's fairly obvious from what you've posted. You also say you're testing naked which changes your position on the DR curves. As someone else already suggested, use a test dummy.

Technically Tionese is a lower tier so easier to get. Run the group finder enough and you'll have enough comms either way to pick up either one if you haven't already gotten the chest item/token.

Perhaps, but I would think it's server/community dependent. If the Group Finder were to ever evolve into having some kind of gear check/remote inspection capability/codex check, then it might make sense to have it. Regardless though, it would definitely have to be a separate tier in the Group Finder so that folks that are uncomfortable pugging it could simply uncheck it, right? I'm generally against WoW style gear score checks. In the spirit of providing constructive feedback, I'd really like the codex check for certain hard modes. If someone's queuing for LI HM, it'd probably be wise for them to have first gotten the codex entry for LI SM. At the very least you'd feel comfortable that this toon has gone through the content at some point in time. The same would apply for HM EV/SM, it would be really nice to introduce those into the Group Finder as queue choices, but requiring the existence of the story mode codex entry would be awesome. Just my 2 cents

I would start here: http://dulfy.net/2012/04/13/dailies-and-pve-gearing-in-1-2/ It's a great guide for new to 50 folks. It's only a tiny touch out dated due to the augment changes in 1.3 and the Group Finder, but otherwise it's a very solid guide for getting your feet wet. Of particular interest, get your Corellia/Belsavis/Ilum dailies done, do your daily Group Finder FPs for comms. That alone should get you off on the right track pretty quickly. You should be in full Tionese without too much trouble. Good luck!

Would be nice to have an additional tier option to queue for HM EV/KP. In my dream world, I'd like yet another tier option for SM Denova as well.

@OP it's pretty pot luck. I had a really smooth EV GroupFinder run where two people didn't know the op at all (1 dps, 1 healer), no voice comms, and all typed instructions. Then I had a pretty rough KP run where only 1 person fessed up about not being there before (melee dps), but it was obvious there were at least 3 others in that run that were clueless (2 tanks, 1 melee). Really depends on the personalities on your server. Oh it's not overtuned, it's fine. If you see above, I had a really rough KP, no voice comms, all typing. Yes it took us a few tries to get through the puzzle boss, but that's part of the learning. We were too worried about the enrage and overcompensated by having 2 clickers, and more dps on the floor. Went with 3 clickers and it was fine. I believe that's working as intended. If you join the Group Finder with a full (4/8) group, you're not adding anyone from the pool and therefore not actually using the GF, and thus no comms for your group. I'm not saying I'm right, just a gut feel for the spirit of the tool.

Can they be reverse engineered from mods ripped out of exotech/columi/rakata?

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Okay maybe I responded in a huff, sorry about that. While I do get that you want to be awarded for your effort (of course everyone does) it's still a game that changes and evolves. Your example of being paid the same as someone else simply by showing up may piss you off, but it does occur in the real world. Following along that analogy, I think you should feel comfortable knowing that, even though these other folks can get their gear with less committed effort as you had put in, they will not have gained the experience you had. Which ultimately means, you should be better off then them when new (hopefully harder) content arrives. MMOs aren't supposed to be stagnant things. You're on top because you got there first and beat the content, everyone else is playing catch up. BW just made it easier for folks to catch up. There's a positive to this too. It means that when new content rolls out, you'll have many more geared players to do that content with, as opposed to having to do this "LFM HM:EC must be geared, blahblah" for an hour. The other positive is obviously for folks that are gearing up a second (or more) alt with campaign gear. It makes the whole legacy thing with alts viable without making people feel like it's an impossible grind to get their secondary characters up to snuff. All I can say is, chill, try to enjoy the game and perhaps even help some of these folks get into EC since their gear will be better.

So after 1.3 hit there's now a rumor flying around that BM and Rakata armorings DO carry the set bonus now. Can anyone confirm or deny this? What's happening is, the item you're moving the BM/Rakata armoring INTO won't show any set bonus information but the when you look at the other set pieces you'll see the set bonus as if the armorings were still in their original items. For example, you move Rakata Force-Master armoring into social headpiece. You still have 3 other Rakata set pieces. When you mouse over any of the other pieces you see the 4pc bonus in green, not 3 pcs. Looking for some confirmation, thanks!

Out of everything you posted, the overall base cost ends up being based solely on the raw mats costs on your server. If you obtain all your mats from crew missions, then you can certainly price lower than someone that either buys their mats, or runs wealthy missions (mission discoveries). Why? Because the GTN rates fluctuate wildly from server to server as do the mission discoveries. Keep in mind that your reduced cost for gathering by using crew missions cuts into your so-called opportunity cost because that same amount of time could've been spent making more augmentation kits which means you'll get to market slower than the others that are buying (or have stockpiled mats) for a while. I would imagine that once demand dies down, 75-80k will likely be the comfort range for these things as that plus the table costs keeps the augment tax per gear item at roughly 100k. But initially expect people to start off around 200k-250k depending on your server.

Apologies, I quoted the wrong thing. As I said in my post, gear-wise BM is more than enough for the OP's question which was EV/KP story mode. My real concern with this line of questioning is the type of gear score/check profiling that occurred in WoW and that folks are asking for in the PTS threads with regards to the group finder. I simply encourage discussion with the player more than just looking at their gear.

You do realize that the cost of expertise relative to other stats got nerfed in 1.2 right? So it became feasible to use recruit gear for early PvE. Stat-wise, and you could probably check this out yourself if you cared to, a full set of recruit gear vs a full set of orange + 22 armoring/mods/enh is comparable. There is actually very little trade off. In fact, someone that dumps all their quest gear for recruit, in my mind, is someone that's looking at improving themselves. Grinding for 22 purple mods blindly is an indication of someone being a lemming and not actually taking the time to look at and compare gear.

You're making an assumption that BM geared folks haven't done the ops before. Realize that for a lot of folks, BM stats are much better than Tionese and therefore they're overgeared for SM EV/KP. Also realize that there's enough level 50 alts out there wearing full BM that probably have mains that have completed all the ops already so know the fights. I would hesitate profiling people based on the gear they are wearing. All Rakata gear means is someone entered an HM:EV/KP at some point in time and won a drop. It doesn't mean they're good, or if they were carried or not. Don't "bar" people from your groups based solely on gear (I'm looking at the folks that want a gear check in the group finder), but talk to them instead and see what their experience is.

You'll still need the rare slicing rewards to craft the actual augments.

Actually rather than transfer the one he's plays the least, instead transfer the one(s) that are in most need of groups. If that's leveling alts and your destination server has many folks in those level ranges, then do that. If you have lots of 50s that are pining for FPs, Ops, PvP, whatever, then transfer those. I've found that for some folks, alt'ism can sometimes be attributed to the difficulty in finding groups. It may or may not be true for the OP, but perhaps it is. And if the higher pops help him find groups, then perhaps the issue resolves itself. I was an altoholic, until I transferred. At which I found myself with no time left to play alts due to the constant HM:FP, PvP groups, Ops I'm doing. And yes, I'm a cup half full type of guy.

It would probably be in BW's best interest to (within the immediate near future) open an extra fresh and brand new destination or two for the sole purpose of being the catchall bin for everyone that didn't end up taking advantage of the current round of transfers. This would solve the OP's issue as well as allow those folks that didn't transfer due to concerns about keeping their character names/legacy/etc. Perhaps even allowing small windows of time in which folks on the current destination servers may choose to move out (so they can reclaim their preferred character/legacy names, avoid login queues, rejoin characters from multiple servers, etc.) The real problem is that even if BW did do this to accommodate folks, there'd still be the moaners and groaners that would complain about it.

Wouldn't that unfortunately dumb down the encounters too much?

You're going to an extreme. There are plenty of 50s that haven't done mid 40s FPs due to lack of population. Denying them access is silly via the Group Finder is silly. Denying a lvl 15 from doing BT is silly. Denying anyone from doing any lower level content due to a lower level range is plain silly. You want MORE grouping and socializing, not less. While it's true having a 50 in a normal BT run will trivialize it, it doesn't mean that the 10s-12s in that group will be unhappy. In fact, I'm sure many will appreciate a fast, safe run with one less person rolling Need on gear. And it means that 50 (if farming social points) might be running BT all day, which in the long run, ultimately helps people starting new characters. The fringe case of a people not wanting a higher level to "triivialize" their content is probably a much smaller group than those folks that would be happy to have a higher level if it simply meant that the group can actually happen. Just my 2 cents.

Yep I realized my mistake, forgot that the shells carried the bonus for the older tiers.

You know what... I think I just got it. The problem is that the set bonus on pre-Campaign is tied to the shell.... duh, I'm a doof, sorry.

Understood, but the OP was arguing how the new BH comms from the Group Finder would ruin HM EC, which I disagree with. It would make it easier for folks to get into HM EC by allowing customization and optimization along the way while pursuing your full Campaign kit (whatever that ends up being for you), but definitely not make HM EC worthless. All I was trying to prove was that shoving BH mods/enhs into Tionese is nice, but NOT BiS by any stretch of a min/maxer's imagination.

Actually they could've made the Biochem consumables not require Biochem to use and that would "balance" that out on it's own by making them available to everyone. The combination of relic + adrenal pop + expertise change + healer nerf definitely made TTK a huge issue when going up against an organized team (i.e. folks that know how to focus dps). This change won't affect those people at all, they'll still continue to dominate per their coordination and skill level. But it will change how the PvP game plays for the solo queue folks. They won't be able to solo burst down squishies anymore and may need to rely on more group dynamics to succeed. Hard to say if that's a good thing or not in the long run as it's the type of thing that *should* encourage better play, we all just gotta weather the forum QQ to get there and find out.