Ah, I thought your post was about 1.2. Anyway, raid-farming doesn't interest me, so I don't have those. I just assumed you were talking about changes with the new patch.

"I could understand if the purple mats were to come from a slicer, but I'm going to be needing green-purple mats from them while a level up the augment." I got a green augment schematic to a purple last night on my Armormech. If it's the same on Armstech, then you won't need Slicing mats to produce green augments. They seem to be made with standard materials. I'll see if the same is true on my Synthweaver when the servers come back up today. You need blue Slicing mats to create blue augments, but they're pretty common, and I bet the GTN will have plenty of the grade 6 variety. The purple components will be the bottleneck, as they are a rare return. If you want to make purple augments, then you probably need an alt with Slicing. As far as classes getting nothing goes, however, at least you're not Cybertech. I haven't touched my Cybertech except to make a couple of speeders to put on the GTN. They're expensive to produce, though, and neither one sold--of course, the GTN is bugged to hell and back, and no one likely saw them, so I can't say for sure if there is any interest or not.

I got the +Aim schematic to a purple last night, easy as pie. At a 20% chance, it took very little time. I believe I hit it on the 5th blue RE'd. Now the only problem is going to be getting enough enough purple components from the 1hr Slicing missions to produce a lot of them. They seem to be pretty rare, though I haven't been tracking it. So far I have +Alacrity, +Absorb, +Willpower, and I got +Cunning to a blue. That's divided between a Synthweaver and a Armormech.

If he's talking about transferring other mods into the armor, then it won't matter. Any character can wear a piece of orange crafted gear as long as they have that armor proficiency level, and assuming that piece has no inherent class restrictions. I don't see a problem with the plan, myself. I have a piece of medium, synth-crafted armor on my Bounty Hunter right now.

The profit from Slicing comes from mission unlock items obtained by hitting a critical on a lockbox mission. You can then sell those for a nice profit on the GTN, or use them with other mission skills for an even better profit. If you get really lucky, you might score a level 340 Slicing mission, and then perhaps get a level 49 +28 purple augment. I sold one yesterday for 125k. Doesn't happen that often, though, as Slicing mission unlocks appear to be the most rare, and there is always the chance you'll get something worthless, like a +28 presence.

Which isn't acquired until late game, and thus has no need of Cybertech crafted droid parts, only the mods that can go in them. Even if you DID want to craft some droid parts for Scorpio, there is still no reason to buy the lower level schematics, not unless you really, really want to use the ship's droid. Personally, I wouldn't even purchase the droid part schematics on Imperial side, it's a waste of credits. Imperial Cybertechs pretty much got the shaft on that one. Why they would invalidate a segment of crafting on one faction like that still mystifies me.

No. Heroic quests being a person's main source for orange gear depends on the person. I usually skip them completely, unless I can solo them, and so do many other people.

Your two main sources for Orange gear would be the GTN (auction house) and by turning in commendations for each planet. The availability of Orange gear on the GTN varies greatly; sometimes there is low level stuff posted for a fair price, sometimes there isn't. However, as you level, planet commendation vendors will have pieces of Orange gear for sale. You can pick up pieces as you go. Once you have a piece, you don't have to replace the whole thing, you can just change out the mods, which you can also buy from commendation vendors. That is, unless you like the look of a different piece of Orange gear, and want to change for that reason. You can also buy normal Blue gear from the GTN and from commendation vendors, though the selection will vary greatly.

400 Slicing brings in a lot of credits for me. Discounting Investigation, level 340 mission unlock items average around 20-25k each on my server. That's in addition to the 7-8k blue lockboxes you can get on a crit. If you have Underworld Trading, then UT mission unlock items will bring you about 60k worth of materials each. That's a worthwhile return. In addition, which you did not factor in with your comparison of UT and Slicing, there are all the lockboxes you run across while leveling. Just playing on Alderaan or Taris, I had to keep stopping to open boxes because my inventory would fill up. That definitely adds up, but people seem not to want to count that, for some reason. If the GTN on your server has a deficiency of some UT metal, then plug away at that until the supply increases or the demand goes down. That's basic economics. But are you really always going to have all five of your companions running metal missions? Personally, I constantly have companions on grade 5 "rich" Slicing missions, just waiting for mission unlocks that I can use on my main or one of my alts. That's where the real profit is.

Cybertech speeders are hideously expensive, at least the level 50 are. I didn't even make one for myself. I'm interested to see how much vendor sold speeders are having their price increased by, if it's enough to make CT speeders competitive. Honestly, out of all the professions, Cybertech probably has the least to be excited about. I was really, really hoping that they would do something to make the level 49 modification market viable, but I didn't see anything about that in the patch notes.

Slicing makes me a lot of credits. It still kind of puzzles me when people claim a loss. I have at least four companions out on Slicing missions at all times. Three with max affection, the fourth with 8000+. Critical hits of 5000 credits or more are not uncommon. The big crits more than make up for the small losses. However, I really don't care about the lockboxes. They turn a steady profit, but for a level 50, a couple thousand credits are nothing. I'm looking for mission unlocks. All of them sell for a lot of profit on my server except for Investigation. If I end up playing a lot, then I can easily make over 150k a day just from selling the ones I don't need. However, the ones I can use generate even more profit. A level 340 Underworld Trading mission unlock will bring in about 50-60k worth of materials. I really don't mind if other people abandon Slicing, though. The more people who can't see past the occasional loss of 200 credits on an individual mission and give up, the more value my mission unlocks have on the GTN.

It's interesting. I'm for it. I never run the augment missions, anyway. I make tons off Slicing from mission unlocks. All the augments I've sold on the GTN for ridiculous amounts came from level 340 Slicing mission unlocks, and not augment missions. I do hope they increase the discovery rate for Slicing missions, now, though.

I sell my Superior Earpieces for 40k, but the prices are quite a bit different on my server. I would never pay over 1k for a piece of durasteel, for instance, or 1k for a piece of zal alloy. So that part is relative. However, Superior grade pieces are mostly just items that I'm trying to get rid of. My goal is Mastercraft, and I usually have an entire bay of Superior that I wouldn't mind simply breaking even on. Honestly, I would sell for less in a heartbeat, but I don't want to hurt less financially secure crafters who see a 40k as a big deal.

I'd still take +crit over efficiency for skills that can yield rare materials or items. For skills that do not give you rare materials or items on a critical, such as Scavenging, I'll take the efficiency. We don't know the numbers, but it's possible that the two talents could even out in the long run. The increased crit would almost certainly be better if you only run a few missions a day, but as play-time increases, and the more missions you send your companions on, the more total returns you'll gain with efficiency, thus raising the number of chances for a critical.

Problem here is that they mentioned "augment crafting", which leads me to believe that Slicing will no longer have a monopoly. My guess is that it will go to Artifice, since they can RE augments now, but that's just a guess. Of course, Slicing is incredibly lucrative because of mission unlocks, so I'm not going to drop it, but I do hope it gets some love if it becomes a secondary augment production skill.

The person who posted that comment is mistaken. Level 22 is the highest augment on servers right now, which provide a +28 stat bonus. If that level 25 augment DID exist, I can guarantee you that it would be selling for more than 100k.

I'm not really seeing the problem, at least to the proportions you're making it out to be. Ever been in a group and a piece of gear came up for a class or spec that wasn't present? Pretty much the same thing here. Personally, I don't think schematics should be in raids at all, but if they're going to be there then having the item be BoP is the only way it should be allowed. Raid gear should come only from raids, period, even if it's a schematic, or else people begin to skip pre-raid crafted gear and buy full raid gear from the GTN, or you have people gearing out their alts in raid gear even before those characters have done any raiding at all.

Please explain why Grenades are somehow PVE only? Or PVE at all, for that matter? As far as I can see, the ONLY reason you'd want Grenades is for PVP. I read this a lot, and it just sound laughable. I look forward tor reading your rationale.

Perhaps for some classes/specs, but a crafted with an augment was definitely much better for me when I compared them.

On one of my first forays into reverse engineering, it took a little over a hundred attempts for me to hit a critical. However, that was the worst I've yet experienced, and I have over twenty level 49 purple schematics. My average is somewhere around 50-60 attempts for a critical. However, that's just my average for a CRITICAL. If you throw in "you already know that schematic", then it can be a lot worse. I'm thinking that's going to be fixed, so if you don't want to risk having to deal with that broken aspect of RE'ing, then you might want to wait on 1.2. If you're looking for your first purple, it's not an issue, but the more you get the more that message is going to pop up.

66 attempts? OK. Not to sound rude, but welcome to the party. Don't get into reverse engineering unless you're prepared for a hundred attempts or more. 66 is probably somewhere near average for a level 49. Most people who have been doing this for a few months wouldn't blink at 66.

If you play on Imperial side, then forget about droid part. Seriously, pretend that segment of crafting doesn't exist. Why they gimped a crew skill for one side versus another like that, I do not understand.

With the way things are now, no. Slicing is fine. I make a lot of credits with it. Slicing is different from the other skills in that it takes patience, and it requires the player to understand how it works in order to get the full benefit. A lot of players run ten missions, see that they've lost a little bit of money, and decide that it's broken. They don't understand how it works and often give up. My only concern is that it looks as though Slicers are going to lose their claim as the sole provider of augments. If level 49 augments are going to be devalued, then I hope BioWare is planning to buff other aspects of Slicing.

If you only have a tiny bit of capital to start with, then you probably shouldn't be running missions. Slice nodes in the wild until you build up enough that those individual net losses from the missions are inconsequential. Slicing can lose you credits on a mission-by-mission basis, but it does earn a profit in the long run. Anyone who has seriously kept track of their returns will tell you that. You might not see a huge profit from lockboxes obtained via Slicing missions, but the good thing is that it's not nearly as much as you'd lose trying to level almost any other skill. It basically pays for itself. The best aspect of Slicing is that it improves your profits from other mission/gathering skills. You will occasionally get unlocked mission items; sell the ones you can't use, but use the ones you can. When you reach 400 Slicing, those missions really start generating wealth. Also remember that Slicing is extremely crit based, so companion affection is important. Give the "rich" missions to those with the highest affection. Rich missions still crit for a pretty good amount sometimes. Slicing is a really good skill. Don't let anyone else tell you otherwise. However, you have to run a LOT of missions for the benefits to really flow. It's a little bit like gambling, in that the big wins more than make up for the small losses, but unlike gambling, you WILL come out ahead in the long run.

There is no level requirement. You can have 400 crafting on a level 10 character. However, it's going to be a pain to level up a craft with only one companion. I usually try to at least get the ship's robot.