The [superior] tag means it has a Tier 2 prefix. See here for more info. No, he is correct. [superior] items are a different schematic and have nothing to do with critical crafts. Critically crafting an equippable item will always give you an augment slot.

RNG is RNG. I RE'd about 10 Critical Nano-Optic Cardio blues and got the Endowment purple schematic. It's just a very low chance, probably 5% or less.

I don't know. I've never seen anything drop in a raid but schematics for implants. I think it's likely the Exotech medpacs/stims/adrenals are not actually in the game. Remember Torhead and Darth Hater got most of their info from data mining the beta files, and there are going to be inaccuracies.

They only add to secondary stats, and +585 to crit/power is not actually that huge a buff. Using my power adrenal takes my +healing from 520 to around 610 or so. My heals hit for 100 more points. Stop the presses! Secondary stats have steep DRs attached to them. It's why the clickable relics aren't very good compared to a matrix shard with your primary stat on it. Rakata stims are the perk of biochem, they're what make it worth having at 400. Rather than taking them away, they should give every other crafting prof a static bonus to stats comparable to the difference between a Rakata stim and a normal stim.

It's an insanely hard fight because it is a failure condition. You can beat Jadus without firing a shot.

Hmm, my experience is very different from what most are reporting. The content I'm healing now is hard mode flashpoints and normal mode operations, for context (just cleared 5/5 EV today on my first raid). First of all, I very rarely run out of energy, unless I'm spamming direct heals absolutely non stop. There are a few situations where that's needed, but for the most part it's easily possible to conserve energy enough to last to your next AP cooldown. Actually the fights are so short, with the exception of Soa, that I usually couldn't hit more than one AP even if I wanted to. Anyway, I never ran out of energy without an AP available in the raid, and in flashpoints the worst that happens is that I have to tell the tank to slow down a little. Second, I don't find Operative underpowered compared to Sorcerer. I 2-healed EV with a Sorc and I was easily holding my own -- I can tell because there are many situations when one healer is doing all the work, e.g. Soa Mind Traps/Force Cyclones, or the split groups for Pylons. The one respect in which Sorcs clearly outperform us is with their AOE ground heal. That thing is pretty much broken, but it has limited usefulness in current content because most fights mandate spreading out the raid. Sure is nice on Gharj and the Soa platform stages, though. /envy Third, I seem to have pretty different healing priorities than most Ops I've heard from on this and other forums. I find Kolto Infusion to be an extremely useful ability, for instance: it's our highest HPS spell, it benefits from Accomplished Doctor (a very, very strong talent), and it's cheaper and faster than Kolto Infusion. Surgical Probe, the other TA-consumer, has its uses, but it simply doesn't heal for enough to be very worthwhile other than as filler or an energy regen/TA dump. The damage profile in current content is very, very spiky. This isn't WoW, where every other boss has a damage aura and you can heal effectively with HOTs and slow direct heals. TOR is more like: BAM, someone's at 20%. BAM, someone else is at 20%. BAM BAM, the tank is at 20%. Etc. Given that damage profile, you have to be very reactive, and crits become much more valuable than is typical for other MMOs. (The Surge crit multiplier also makes a crit build much more attractive, since it's almost impossible to avoid Surge on your gear anyway and it ramps up quickly -- at 300ish Surge I'm getting over +30% to crits). Overheal isn't really a problem, and efficiency isn't really a problem: the name of the game in TOR is triage plain and simple. So, my basic healing approach is: Roll 2xKP on the tank and as many targets as possible if I have nothing better to do; respond to damage spikes with KInf/KInj as they happen; dump excess TAs on SP if no one is in immediate danger; use Nano if I can hit at least 3 targets with the expectation of it being useful for its full duration (this is rare). Diagnostic Scan I find myself not using at all; although I want to play around with it a bit more to see if it's ever useful, I can't seem to find a niche for it. This approach worked quite well in EV normal mode, although admittedly, that content is pretty easy and at least two of the bosses are way undertuned right now.

Yep. Happened to me too. It was fixed when she got back.

Soloing hard modes? Impossible unless they are exploiting some kind of bug. That's not out of the realm of possibility, I suppose, but they'd be risking a ban. Biometric Crystals drop from hard mode flashpoints and normal mode operations.

I remember thinking "Man, this would suck for people who are relying on Kaliyo." She's gone for the entirety of Corellia. You get her back just before you do the final part of the class quest. One thing you might consider doing is just finishing the Corellia storyline quests, then moving on, getting her back, and returning to do the side quests later on.

On the timing thing, I'd want to see some proof in a log. I just tested it and I couldn't tell any difference in the GCD on KInj+SP vs. SP by itself. SP can be buffered to cast as soon as KInj ends, but that's true of any ability. As far as resource management, like I mentioned before, the healing "problem" in 4-man HMs is more about crisis management than it is about sustainability. If you have to burn all your energy to keep people alive, then you burn it, and you hit Adrenaline Probe to get it back. In most cases you will have some sort of down phase to regen, or else the really high damage won't start until the end of the fight. The idea that Nano will keep party members up through hard mode damage is... well let's just say it's not gonna happen. Boss abilities hit for 4k or more, frequently, and Nano ticks for 400 or so. The only time I've gotten really good use out of Nano was on normal mode Malgus in TFE, but that was a trivially easy fight anyway. KP can be a cheap, efficient alternative to direct heals to top players off who aren't in immediate danger, but I can't stress enough that you CANNOT screw around in hard modes and heal people with dribbles in most cases. As far as pre-casting Nano, I consider it more important to start with full energy than with a weak HOT up, and if you wait for your energy to come back before the pull then Nano will be half over. Plus I hate telling the group to wait on the pull while I fiddle around with HOTs. I can put up 2 stacks of KP on everyone while we buff and get ready to pull, and keep them rolling as long as I want, since KP is energy neutral as long as you wait a second between casts. Mods from Corellia Commendations, mostly, and a few crafted enhancements and blues from guildies, plus I've gotten enough daily tokens to upgrade my armoring and barrel (though those don't have surge, just cunning/endurance). I also got a nice prototype implant from an artifact box from Corellia Commendations. Sadly, hard mode loot chests are still bugged, so about half the bosses don't drop loot. Sigh.

One daily at 50 gives about 10k from the quest reward alone. Slicing isn't really worth the aggravation anymore, IMO. Others may disagree. I'm actually sort of happy about the nerf, because: a) I made my credits ahead of time and now I get to enjoy lower prices, and b) I was sick of having to pull up the crew window every 10 minutes or else feel like I was slacking.

This is not true. Companion affection is lowering mission times for me exactly as it did pre-patch. Time is decreased by about 17% at 10k affection.

I'm not familiar with this. Is there some trick to making KInj + SP take less than 3.5 seconds? If so I'd love to know how to do it. I don't use Nano much. It's really only worth it if you can get at least 3 targets, and most fights seem to encourage spreading out (plus my core group is tank + 2 ranged dps + me). I open with KPx2 on everyone pre-pull. Keeping Stim Boost up is obviously priority 1, you must have 100% uptime with it (which is pretty annoying at times, but at least it's off the GCD, thank goodness). I try to keep the stacks rolling on everyone if possible -- I would give a lot for a Grid-style HOT duration indicator in this game, because those damn tiny icons on raid frames are impossible to see, and they don't show duration anyway. The tank is prioritized for KP, of course. Other than that, I use KInj for main heals on the tank, KInf for spot heals on other players as needed or if I need a faster tank heal, and SP if I need an instant Hail Mary heal or if I am low on energy with no AP available. Edit: Actually I do use SP a little more than that. If the incoming damage isn't urgent and I am at 2 TAs, I will throw an SP on someone just to prevent TA wastage and regen some energy. I've probably talked SP down more than it completely deserves; I just wish it healed for more, or at least that Alacrity lowered its GCD. I meant SP scales badly with character level. I assume it has the same scaling with Power as other heals do. Surge ramps up really quickly at the beginning; I have around 200 Surge and my crits on casted heals are well over double base value. I actually find that kind of annoying, because I frequently find that crit RNG makes the difference in the fight. HM damage output is no joke; players drop REALLY fast from unavoidable damage, and you find yourself praying for crits. The last boss of Boarding Party was one of the most challenging single-group fights from a healing perspective that I've encountered in any MMO. I wouldn't venture a strong opinion on which secondaries are the best overall right now. I'm sure some are better than others, but it's hard to tell without logs. None of them are useless, I know that much, and at the moment I don't have enough options to be picky about gear anyway.

In the HM flashpoints I've run, the damage profile is strongly biased toward spikes and high-damage phases rather than being steady and continuous. Bosses do stuff like randomly target players for 4-5k hits 3 times in a row every 30 seconds, pseudo enrage at 20% health, etc. You scramble to keep people up, then you have a recharge period. That means high HPS rules the roost as far as healing abilities go. If you rely on Surgical Probe, tempting as it can be to fire off all those instant "free" heals, people will start hitting the floor, because SP's HPS is very bad. Kolto Infusion is a lot better than it looks on paper given those damage profiles. But I've only done Black Talon and Boarding Party hard modes so far, which is hardly a comprehensive set.

As far as secondary stats, none of them are useless. Also the secondary stat scaling in this game is weird: all of them have diminishing returns, so even if, say, Crit is better than Alacrity at baseline, going from 0 to 100 Alacrity might be better than going from 200 to 300 Crit. The system seems designed to encourage spreading your gear around multiple secondary stats rather than just stacking one of them. See here for more info.

Kolto Infusion heals around 40% more than Surgical Probe. SP scales so badly that it's almost not worth using at 50. The only reason I keep it on my bar is that it's an instant heal -- the only one we have, although it heals for less than the average boss hit in a HM flashpoint. And it's better than Diagnostic Scan if I have a spare TA and need to conserve energy. But KInf is significantly higher HPS. In my gear, SP heals for around 1400 non-crit, KInj around 2350, KInf around 2000, KP 2-stack 595/tick, DS around 150/tick. It's also worth keeping in mind that KInf is a faster cast than SP if you have non-zero Alacrity (since Alacrity does not reduce the GCD for instants, but does reduce 1.5s base casts below 1.5s). KInf is our highest HPS heal by quite a bit, in fact, and benefits from Accomplished Doctor for higher crits, which SP does not. Surgical Probe is the real problem. It's fantastic at 30, terrible at 50. They need to fix its scaling in a big way. Yes it has a zero energy cost, but a TA is a cost too (not a trivial one) and its HPS is the worst of all our heals by far. It regrants TA on targets below 30%, but if a target below 30% is still taking damage then SP probably won't keep up with it.

It's a bug and will be fixed in tonight's patch. Of course BW does not intend to disable master loot in operations.

Speaking of, is there any breadcrumb at all to the Alderaan bonus series, or are we just supposed to randomly go back to Alderaan at level 40 and find it? I had no idea there was one until a guildmate mentioned it (and I was already well over level 40).

I looked for a long time, but couldn't find any option to disable companion headgear. It's unfortunate because most of the head pieces, although very Star Wars-y, are ugly as hell and hide most of their face.

Healing through Crushing Affliction damage is not difficult if you react quickly. Most (all?) healers don't have a cleanse at that point, so either the cast has to be interrupted or you just have to suck it up and heal/mitigate all the damage. Again, though, that is very doable if you are on top of things. The boss hits like a newborn kitten otherwise, and the fire kiting stage is an opportunity to regenerate energy/Force.

You're talking about hard modes, right? If so, then in current gear it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. I ran hard mode BT today, and it was not trivial even for a well-coordinated group of experienced players.

No, the problem is that there is little or no demand for crafted items, because you can get better stuff through commendations while leveling, or running hard mode flashpoints and Ilum dailies at 50. When crafted gear is vastly inferior to what you can get from the first boss of a heroic 4-man, there is no reason to craft anything. MMO economies "mature" almost instantly if there is player demand for crafted items. In this case, there isn't. Simple.

Only run Rich/Bountiful missions. Rank doesn't matter (except skip the single rank 1 Rich mission, it is much less profitable than the others). Rich and Bountiful missions give approximately 3x the credits per hour that Moderate and Abundant ones do.

That's pretty much it. Don't train skills you don't use -- depending on your AC, there will probably be a few of these. The mount costs are: Level 25: 40,000 training + 8,000 speeder Level 40: 210,000 training + 25,000 speeder Level 50: 330,000 training + 55,000 speeder