From a gear standpoint you are shooting yourself in the foot by not picking a side while you are leveling. At endgame you can go back to neutral if you dont care about titles or have items that dont require light or dark. The developers have included no rewards in the game that honor the neutral fence-sitter, and at least for early relics force you to be the good or bad guy.

Yeah, "don't" is the most simple advice. Soloing it just makes it five times as long as it should. You'll make more use out of Mako, Kolto Infusion, and On the Trail more than you will elsewhere, with one or two death runs.

Well Mandalorians have been allied with the Empire for a long while. In the Tales of the Jedi comics, Ulic Qel-Droma defeated Mandalore in a duel to the death. He spared him for his loyalty and support for his future campaigns. After the disappearance of Mandalore when Exar Kun and Ulic were defeated, another Mandalorian took the title of Mandalore, and they have pledged themselves to the Empire for further generations. So that makes a little more sense why you are more "loyal" to the Empire than the Republic after the end of chapter two. During the first chapter you obviously are driven by credits and the Great Hunt, which is run by Mandalorians.

It says that occasionally we feel enough rage at a mob to warrant a little overkill after its death.

We aren't bad at all. Our armor debuff is of great value to a raid group and we have high survivability in raids as well. With myself, the only complaint I would have about our ability set is that we have no interrupt to lend to the group.

I was serious there.

And this is where we both agree but on different fronts.

I never advocated for dropping it, only that I felt it wasn't a necessary "must have, do or die, 'oops I divided by zero'" factor. It offers no benefit to intentionally drop it, agreed. But what other benefit besides a free shot does it provide? No increase to damage, only heat mitigation.

And I'm an expert in global warming because I live in Oregon with a bunch of tree huggers.

Hardly incorrect, as you might think, but to each his own. It's just a matter of "are you really spamming tracer too much that you have too much heat?"

The entire set isn't necessary, only the two piece is. If you find that you are having difficulty with your heat management then it is a good thing to have. So really right now since everything can be augmented, your choice is style over set bonus. If you are comfortable running around in Rakata style gear then just focus on augmenting and then black hole mod optimization. I learned to manage my heat much better after losing the free railshot just as they screwed with our heat management in the rotations, and as such only use vent heat when down the home stretch on an operations boss. With practice without the free railshot, you'll find yourself fighting more efficently in no time.

Though going through the armorings of the campaign eliminator's gear you lose 33 aim from head, pants, and chest when compared to the best in slot armorings from black hole gear.

After getting my campaign pants in Denova tonight I realized that the set bonus is associated with the armoring and not necessarily the shell like it is for Tionese, Columi, and Rakata. If I wanted to reclaim my full eliminators set bonus via campaign gear, I'd have to take a small but noticable hit in aim. Most of my gearset now is a mix, with the armoring of the highest aim value and the mod and enhancement from the med-tech boots. Occasionally on Drooga's Pleasure Barge, I see some of the mercs in "higher progression" guild's, such as Motion, running around in full campaign sets. I don't get why they are doing this (aside from the bragging rights.) Am I simply missing a bigger picture to getting the full set of campaign after spending a good amount of grinding to mix-match black hole pieces? Besides getting two 61 barrels, more BH comms, and accessory upgrades, do mercs need to even bother upgrading to campaign? I know I' may have answered my own question above but I'd rather hear a different point of view than my own on merc gear.

I changed up my characters canon a bit because the server swap took my original name. Bounty Hunter: Sith Inquisitor:

Ah, so the few lines of text that were so easily spacebarred over for the cash reward? Thanks!