This thread is much appreciated. It's good to know I'm doing a lot of things right with my Vig Guardian. I actually got complimented the other day for my DPS during False Emperor HM, which pleasantly surprised me. It seems like I've got the right build and rotation going on. I'm not hardcore enough to track numbers, but my kill speed in solo and my group's kill speed in FPs seems to be satisfactory. Any recommendations for keybindings or quickslot organization (without macros) for maximum efficiency and speed? I know everyone has their preferences, but I wondered if anything in particular works really well for people. I have low FPS on the best of days and it's worse when I'm in the middle of a four-man flashpoint with lots going on, so having my key rotation down to something efficient is important so I'm not even slower to react. I tend to organize my quickslot according to my main rotation and use 1-5, then s+1(-5) followed by s+ a few random letter keys. I feel like my bar/binding organization could be better. My hands are small and my fingers short, so straying beyond the boundary of the 5/T/G/B line isn't terribly practical, and because of the position of my hand using ctrl/alt+anything is kind of uncomfortable. Thanks again for a clear, comprehensive guide. I find the combination of DPS/potential off-tank of this class really appealing and hella fun.

DPS Guardian here. I don't know whether my timing is bad or what, but I don't seem to be doing ANY damage to the clones. I LoS'ed behind a pillar and waited for them to come to me, but when I hit them, it doesn't do much, if anything, and they all keep throwing Force Lightning on me. Someone above suggested Force Sweep, but that does exactly nothing, too. Suggestions?

I've played every class for at least a short while, though I admit I've only played through IA up through the first ten levels. I have to say that the BH storyline is probably the most engaging, interesting and emotional one I've played, and the gameplay is the most fun, too. A couple nights ago I finished the Mandalorian Killer quest on the Aurora. All I'd read about it was that it was a pain because it was bugged, so I was kind of dreading it. Even more so when I found out the bonus was to kill 75 dudes, because I knew that meant there would be a TON of mobs around the ship. Well, I was right. Holy crap, it was FUN, though. I get where it was frustrating, particularly the part where the engine room is mobbed with droids and you end up pulling 15 of them at once, but the whole quest made me think through it, which I like. Here are a few points that made my life much easier. FYI, I was a level 32 Merc (damage specced) when I did this. I finished at nearly full health without using the Heroic Moment skill. - In groups of droid mobs, kill the repair bots (the boxy ones that stand upright, not the astromechs) first or they'll heal each other indefinitely. - When you get to the engineering room, kill everything, especially around the columns on the left hand side (when you enter the room). See above statement about repair bots. - Before you use the rigged jetpack, make sure you're at full health. It will try to blow up on you. It will also do damage to the engineer, but it'll bleed away about half your health. After fighting through more crowds of mobs (oh, so many), you'll reach the bridge. When you enter the bridge, kill everything there too. If not, the Jedi will throw you around and knock you into groups of mobs. This happened to me once and I had to go way back to a different part of the instance. And now you'll fight the Jedi Mandalorian Killer and his padawan. Fortunately, neither of them have any really vicious powers you should worry about. The Jedi has a powerful knockback, but it's nothing you can't deal with. - As a general rule when fighting elites, I turn Mako's damage abilities off so she can focus on healing me. - Use your 60-second stun on the Jedi and get the padawan first. For some reason the padawan was harder to defeat than I expected. - Expect to be bounced around. A lot. As I mentioned above, he has a hell of a knockback. Consequently you should also use both your knockbacks as soon as the cooldowns are finished, and kite him as much as you can. - Make liberal use of Tracer Missile and stack it as far as it will go. Though if you haven't already learned to do this on elites, I'm not sure how you've gotten this far. Also make friends with Fusion Missile. - When you're down about 1/4 of your health, stun the Jedi and self-heal for an extra boost.

DPS (Arsenal)-specced Merc here. It took me SEVERAL tries, but I finally beat him. My heroic moment was on cooldown after an earlier unsuccessful venture, but I did have an Aim stim. I also disabled Mako's combat abilities and had her focus completely on healing me. Two keys to success (finally) for me: 1) Borga is kind of dumb and 2) he left my Mako pretty much completely alone, probably because I'd had her combat abilities disabled. I actually started out on the high platform at the end of the arena--it took him longer to get to me. I started with a fusion missile, stunned him, then hit rail shot before he came up to get me. Unfortunately he was out of my LOS until he got to the ramp up to the platform. I couldn't quite position him to bump him off the platform using jet boost, so I just ran for the hills, down off the platform and back toward the entrance. As he was trying to figure out a way down to me, I self-healed like crazy. I hit him a couple more times, then ran back up onto the platform. Wash, rinse, repeat--do NOT stand still, and make liberal use of any DOTs. As an aside, one really good reason to go Arsenal is the Terminal Velocity ability, which makes High Velocity Gas Cylinder vent heat every 8 seconds. I'm pretty sure I'd have been screwed without that ability in this fight.

My gunslinger (sharpshooter spec with a few points in sabotage) was level 50 when I went into the fight. I used Guss--me mostly in orange and blue gear and him in mostly green. I beat my head against this fight five or six times before I was able to finish it. First, as per this thread (thanks guys), I disabled all of Guss's combat abilities so he would just heal. I started out with the armor debuff, speed shots and bleed shots, then hit the flyby ability before his first AOE. He kept tossing a smoke screen type ability at you that would knock me out of cover (as it turned out, all of my defensive abilities were more or less consistently screwed by this ability). Once this happened, I booked it across the room, threw a thermal grenade at him, re-upped my bleed shot and pillar humped. He kept stunning Guss, too, so it was particularly important to hide until Guss was active again. As a precaution I popped a medpack as soon as I got to 50% health and popped my heroic moment too--don't know if I actually needed to. At one point he ran up and came to find me, but at that point he was almost dead. I kept out of his line of sight except to hit him with more bleeds/grenades/the finishing shot. I think over all DOTs save the day on this one, especially for a gunslinger. Getting knocked out of cover is what makes this fight much harder. I'd argue it's still easier than Lightspring, which was such a huge jump in difficulty level.

Thanks for asking! I'd like to know this too.

What IS that crazy AOE he uses? That's the thing that kills me every time, and it's annoying as hell that you can't interrupt it.

My Mirialan smuggler is Calledan Teoda. One of those names that just popped into my head.

I. Love. Guss. Corso was my go-to guy until I got him, but now I'm nigh unstoppable. Corso is great for pulling aggro, but every class needs a healer, especially a not-so-mobile semi-squishy DPS. He's also as crazy and adorable as Corso.

Yeah, I remember blowing through my quests so fast I was at the beginning of level 35 when I got to Quesh and suddenly walked into that class quest first thing. Oops. Once I learned how to use the 60 second stun ability (forget what it's called) on the casters, though, my life was so much easier and more fun.

Excellent advice. Thanks guys! You've been super helpful.

Oh man, I couldn't even figure out how to GET my AC for the first alt who leveled that far. I didn't have one until level 13 on my gunslinger. It was LOLtastic bad.

This is my first healer ever and SWTOR is my first MMO. I'm still adjusting to the play style of a healer, since I'm used to diving in and tanking or ranged DPSing. I've only healed a couple of warzones and I've not yet tried to heal a FP. I've heard the complaints about nerfed healer Sages, so I figured that a tips and tricks thread wouldn't go amiss for anyone playing a Sage post patch. So, a question, my friends: for those who have had SUCCESS playing a Sage, pre- or post 1.2, what advice do you have for 1) solo combat, 2) FP healing, and 3) PVPs? This is not a thread for complaints about how nerfed this class is (that's legit, but there are plenty of other threads out there for this) but hopefully we can help each other out to make it easier.

I love, love, love tank spec Shadow. It's my favorite, especially running around in PVE with Tharan.

...Really? My Shadow has been by far the easiest to level. He does damage like whoa and stealth is the best thing ever. My Sage is a little damage machine too, and he's only level 20. Read some guides or ask players for tips. (Not all of them bite.) I prefer the Consular to the Knight, personally.