Can you explain these thresholds some more? I've scoured the internet looking for details on this stuff and can't find it. It had been my understanding that the diminishing returns after that low mark made it less important for alac and to boost Crit up to around 3300-3500 and then dump the rest into Mastery. I will admit that I would prefer to have more of a balance but again, just going off of what I'm reading from the community. To your other question, I don't ever run 16m content. Only 8-person SM/HM raids and the usual daily crap. On the gear set, I do run full tactician for now. Again, something there is virtually no good info about online. I'll check out what you're suggesting. I have no idea what the Toxic Haze heal puts out but having a free AOE heal that is also my best DPS skill seems at least to be selectively a helpful thing given that an operative is more of a HoT healer than burst like sage/sorc.

Thanks - these are good thoughts. I've been off and on with this game since launch so I've really done it all. Used to be in hardcore NiM raiding groups, so I believe I am a very competent healer. People rarely die in my grps/raids and I even find myself tossing patch heals to other grps because the other healer is lagging so bad. I've also solo healed many sm ops fights with cleanses etc. For me though, it's about continuing to improve. Where I'm at now is the stats game - trying to get better however I can. To that end, I would again welcome any feedback or tips. Thank you for taking the time to read this. As far as my current setup, you can see that here: https://ibb.co/BLX1B54 I used to have more in Alacrity but have read that it's kinda pointless after 1,213. I am rocking the 228 augments for the higher Crit/Alacrity. Have full set armor - working on second set to get the Toxic Haze AOE heal. Want to see how that one parses since it's a free cast. I've been working to get Medtech amplifier armorings on my gear items and the Crit/Alacrity clicky relics since the old Master/Power ones cap out on most content. Any other tips to squeeze more heals out?

I recently returned to the game so I'm out of date on some stats things. As an operative healer, what should my parse goal be for doing HM ops? I've been doing 5-7K on sm bosses but not sure if that's good or not. My rotation prob needs some work.

Thank you all for sharing your thoughts. I've decided to go Tactician's. The biggest reason to go for Healing bonus over Mastery is that for the older raid content, Mastery is capped, so it wouldn't do anything for you in that content anyways.

That's a fair argument. But would you say that a 5% healing boost is better than a 5% mastery boost? And do you know if anybody has ever parsed that?

Hey all - I'm hoping to get some opinions about the best gear sets for an operative healer. Here are some of my initial thoughts: Best Option: Stimulated - if you rock the 480min stimpacks, you're really always under the effects of a stimpack...so this is essentially a permanent 5% mastery buff. It may not sound like a lot but at 10K mastery, it's 500 more to your primary stat that impacts every heal. Seems significant. Maybe Option: Tactician's - it sounds good but I'm not so sure. Unless they changed the soft cap on crit chance, then I am already maxed (or will be soon). So unless this 15% CC extends the cap, which I doubt, then it's useless. As to the 5% heal, it's only while you have a tactical advantage....which is microseconds when you're going down a heal rotation. So basically it's a 5% increase on a single heal. Say that's Kolto Infusion and it doesn't crit, then it's roughly a 700hp additional heal. Again, useless. Worst Options: Aggressive Treatment - sounds good but that "minor heal" is going to be so small it's useless. Amplified Champions - admittedly I don't understand what this one does. Avenger's - not for a healer Berserker's - not for a healer Debilitator's - just sucks Probe Tech - sounds good but I've read about parsing it and it's only like 5K - aka useless Quick Thinker - just sucks Rapid Response - sounds good but I'm almost never below 50% health Stationary Grit - not for a healer Taskmaster's - sucks The Slow Road - sucks Victor's - not for a healer Trishin's - not for a healer -- Please let me know your thoughts! Thx

I am level 70. I hit lvl 70 years ago. I'm a founder LOL. I'm wearing 248 armor, aka a couple tiers from max. Thank you all for the responses. I believe my question was answered.

Fair enough. I hate DPS anyways. I'm 246-248 geared, just returning from a break. I only need to do a DPS so I can plow through the storyline crap and unlock Ossus.

I'm hoping that it's a feature that I just haven't discovered yet, so help me out! I'm primarily a healer but I sometimes need to DPS. OK, no problem. Just switch roles between (Sage) Seer/Balance. Here's the issue: As far as I can tell, every time I switch roles, I have to manually setup my skills on the hotbar every time. This means not only having to do this annoying process but I have to remember how I usually set it up...which candidly, requires me to save a photo of each hotbar setup on my phone and use it every time. This simply does not make sense. I've never seen a game that doesn't allow you to be able to have saved hotbars/skills for each or something like this. The default hotbar that rotates between #1 and #4 - I've tried saving my healing layout on #1 and then the DPS layout on #4. But when I switch roles, it wipes out what I had just set. And I also checked with the UI - if you switch saved interfaces, that only impacts the UI elements (where things are on the screen) - it has nothing to do with skills on hotbars. Help!

Thanks for the link. Candidly, I'm finding all of that hard to digest. Looking for a more direct answer if someone wouldn't mind explaining!

Hey all - looking for some opinions: When looking into upgrading to the new tier of Augments, (I'm a PvE Operative/Medicine healer), I can either go Alacrity or Crit Rating. The way MMOs used to work back in the day was that crit % meant everything, especially for caster DPS and healers. Is that the case with SWTOR? I've tried to do the math on it and it seems like get better value with the crit % and crit magnitude by investing in that rather than going full alacrity and shaving a fraction of a second off cast times. But I've also heard talk of certain stats getting maxed at a certain percentage...so looking for feedback. Thx all

I've heard the debate regarding the Orbital bonus from the PVP gear being better for DPS than trading those 69 armorings for the 78 armorings that would give you 24 more Cunning and 21 more Endurance for each. Smarter people than me have supposedly parsed this and swear the 3 more sec of orbital is more damage if it's used in the rotation. BUT What about the PVE set bonus that shaves 15 seconds off the cooldown of Target Acquired? I'd wager that most well-geared snipers are just at or slightly over 100% accuracy. So is shaving 15 seconds off of a skill that boosts your accuracy really better than the 24 cun/21end (x2) you'd get for skipping the set bonuses and just rocking all 78 armorings? Appreciate any insights if anybody has actually tested this before.

Update: I just ran it with a sorc and destroyed it in about 5 seconds. This encounter is clearly extremely easier for certain classes than others. There's certainly some sort of balance needed here. Just a friendly suggestion for the devs who I assume are going to lock this post soon

Is there some trick to killing this guy? This is labeled as a solo quest but I don't see how it'd be possible to kill this mob without a full group. He's immune to CC, casts a snare on you, and his attack drains 30K HP in about 3 seconds. What's the deal here? Is this guy bugged?

I have a theory about this and it may not be a popular one... Snipers have a few AOE abilities, though they're not really sustainable depending on the encounter. However, for boss fights that have several mini-waves of adds, dropping those AOEs in all of those instances results in a significant boost on a parser. I know because I've done some encounters and boosted by overall DPS by several hundred. So, for the people who only look at Snipers and will only recruit them for example if they often top the parsers, that's one way to appease them. But, I'd argue that there's a difference between high parser DPS and good DPS. There are certain fights that the overall encounter is dependent on burning the boss down as fast as possible, rather than killing the adds that a Merc for example could easily handle. This will hurt my overall DPS but it's also me doing what's best for the raid overall. I have mixed feelings about this because it's annoying when an elite guild won't accept people who don't cross a certain threshold on the parser without considering what really best for the raid. Others experienced this or do you genuinely hit 1600-1800+ on parser without AOEs?

I have all of those already - on everything. I'm trying to figure out if it's better to have the Overkill ones for power or what else I'm doing wrong.

I've been working for over a month now to get my raid DPS boosted to the level that I've seen other Snipers at - that being the 1500-1800ish range for boss encounters. I'm usually around 1100-1300. Understand that I'm a veteran MMO player and take a lot of pride in pushing my characters to the limits and am willing to dive into the weeds on the stats math, but I'm genuinely stumped on this one. I'm in full campaign gear with all of the correct Enhancement/Mods etc in my items to maximize Sniper stats. Regarding the skill tree, I'm running 31M, 7E, 3L. Casting order may be part of the issue here but I doubt it's the core problem. Looking for some ideas here. There's a lot of debate on the forums about where a Sniper's stats should be. Let me start by asking which Augment (22) you guys are using on gear? Overkill for Power or Skill for Cunning and why? Any other ideas?

Yes, thanks. I have been talking to him. The only thing we've been able to identify is that he has 200 more power than I do. I have 200 more Cunning than he does. Thoughts on that impact? My casting order has worked well for me but I'm not bold enough to claim that it's the best. Is there a good guide out there that anybody's taken the time to explain their specific casting order through say the first 30-45 seconds of a long fight?

I've seen a few threads on this but I'd like to ask people to react to my comments, so Devs - please don't delete this. I've been experimenting with my Sniper trying to find the right spec for damage. Recently, I've invested a considerable amount of time into getting the correct Armorings/Mod/Enhancements on all of my items. Needless to say, I have them all at 146 and the Cunning/Power stats maxed. So, the other day when I ran a raid with another sniper that was almost identical gear...he was out-pacing me by about 30-40% on the DPS parser. Something is going on here and I haven't been able to figure it out yet. After reading the forums, it seems like it could be the skill tree. I'd always used Marksman but I'm hearing that for long boss fights, Lethality may be the way to go? I'd really like to hear some feedback from other snipers. Thanks.

Ok that's what I thought and I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that it was an unintended error....though I hope it's resolved quickly. Hate to say it but I'm basically fully rakata geared....crafting/selling is about all I have left to do in the game and now I can't even do that. If you select just 'Starship Upgrades' and hit search, nothing pops up when they should all be listed there without other filters.

I like some of the things that were added by I'm wondering if it was a bug that when you select "Starship Upgrades' under the Category drop-down, that you also have to select a tier (like blue or purple) before the items appear. I can tell you for a fact that this has ruined my ability to sell starship items. I used to sell 4-5 each day and I haven't been able to sell even one since the patch went live. This is almost certainly because people select 'Starship Upgrades' and then hit search...no results. They don't know that they have to select a tier also. Is this a mistake? If not, can it be resolved or come up with some solution to clarify this? Based on the huge number of starship items that are now for sale, the other crafters/sellers must be having the same problem. Are others experiencing this? Please don't close this thread and tell me to put it in the suggestions forums. I'm wanting to see what other people are experiencing and would like to view their comments. Thanks.

Ok, well since my other threads keep getting closed, I'm going to take your advice and try this here. I'd have thought that the general discussion forums were actually a place for discussion, but apparently not. So anyways: This is going to be constructive, I promise. Do with it what you want but it's likely to be my last attempt to share thoughts: I've been playing these games since the launch of Everquest (that's a long time). A group of us created a community and we've been gaining more and more members over the years. We're actually up to about 80 active players now - about 40 of them came over here to play SWTOR at launch. We're a healthy mix of players - hardcore raiders, PVPers, casual players, crafters etc. Our first impressions were very positive. The leveling experience was fun, pvp was entertaining and competitive and once we got into the raid content, it was relatively challenging for a little while. Now that we're all wearing basically full sets of Rakata gear and PVP is getting boring, we've literally run out of things to do. Now listen, I know how this works. You guys have to make money to keep the lights on...this is a business after all. So, I understand why you're introducing incentives to get people to play other characters on the same server. It's a good way to keep populations up and keep people experiencing all that story-line content you developed. This is all good stuff. But I feel compelled to ask the question: What about the rest of us who don’t want to roll other characters? I enjoy this game. I enjoy my class. I want to keep playing. But you’re not giving us a reason to login….at least for those of us who want to continue to advance our characters. Want some suggestions? - Introduce legacy tiers that are much harder to get and reward actual stat increases -Have quest lines that are difficult but unlock access to Operation/Raid zones. Make it an accomplishment to even get in there. -Create more incentives for open-world PVP in certain zones -Add more fun features like the datacrons that are difficult to get but rewarding -Add more quests to earn titles or reward pets/cosmetic gear -More complicated crafting system that takes serious work to master Humans by nature are both competitive and enjoy rewarding experiences. At the moment, I’d argue that neither are existent for the people that are level 50. This is disappointing and I hope you take this post to heart. We’re not complaining – we’re begging you to give us a reason to play. For the record, of the original 40ish people, we now have 5 login consistently and even they’re beginning to wonder why. Please give us a reason to keep playing or we’re going to have to go somewhere else to find competition and satisfaction. Thanks for your time.

Here's my thought on this - Bioware obviously spent an enormous amount of development time designing these story-lines...they want you to experience them. So as a result, they're doing everything they can to encourage people to roll alts. That seems to be their model to keep subscriptions up. Where as a game like WoW kept subscriptions by constantly releasing new content that you had to complete if you wanted to stay updated on your gear. Here's my problem with what Bioware is doing - I don't want to roll an alt. I found a class that I enjoy playing. So why not allow me to keep playing it? I'm all for having these bonus type things and incentives for people to play other characters but are you really going to toss us aside? We're not asking for a lot here....I mean, you could have tossed in some more difficult to acquire legacies that would have been genuine stat increases or Operation/Raid unlock quests. As far as I'm concerned, there isn't a single legacy upgrade that's anything more than a minor convenience. I can afford every single one of them and I'm not going to waste the credits. That should tell you something. Personally, I'm in a tough spot here. I'd like to keep playing this game - as would the about 40 people in my guild who have played many games together dating back to the EQ days...but we're all wearing Rakata gear now. We're bored with warzones. What are we supposed to be doing now?? We just login, chat for a few, maybe get a raid going just to kill time, then log out and play other games. We're begging Bioware to give us something to keep us playing. What are we supposed to do??

Ok, believe it or not, I'm actually asking for some constructive and factual feedback here, not just another thread of complaining. What's so great about 1.2 for those of us that are wearing full rakata gear? Is there something for us that I'm completely missing? I've been trying it for a few days and here are some thoughts: 1. The legacy system is complete junk. There isn't a single one of those items that is anything beyond a minor convenience item (run speed? GTN on my starship?) - not one of them will actually improve my class and make it more competitive. 2. What's the point of these new Tatooine daily quests? I ran them long enough to get the new pet. Ok, he's fun. But there's nothing else on that merchant that's useful. Am I missing something here? I'm hopeful that I just haven't done enough reading and that there are all kinds of things that I could be doing now that 1.2 introduced - things that will advance my character and make it better. Help me out here please? P.S. My definition of 'better' is actual advancement - like stat increases or since I'm a sniper, things that make me do more damage...or wear stronger gear...etc.

I'm actually hopeful that this is a bug because if it's not, the changes make it hard on sellers. For example, I make and sell starship upgrades. They're slow to sell but do go occasionally. In the past, you only had to select 'Starship Upgrades' under category. If people now also have to select a grade, it makes it more difficult for the buyer to compare blue parts to purple parts for example. It'll require more steps and undoubtedly hurt sales. This is a bit disappointing.