wait a min, your telling me that if an ability has a cast time alacrity will lower it's cast time and the global cooldown? so if I use snipe, and have enough alacrity to cast it at 1.3 seconds, the global cooldown on all the abilities becomes 1.3 instead of 1.5. but if I use rifle shot, or takedown the global cooldown is still at 1.5 regardless?

I find it odd that no one seems to take the global cooldown into account. I understand how alacrity could seem to give you more room for a rilfe shot, but that really isnt the case. if your shots are instant cast, it doesnt mean you can cast another ability right afterwards cuz theres a 1.5 global cooldown. alacrity doesnt effect this global cooldown so no matter what your waiting 1.5 seconds after every ability. with every ability being used in the marksmanship sniper being 1.5 second cast time/instant cast this means that alacrity doesnt improve anything since your gonna have to wait that 1.5 seconds regardless cuz of global cooldown the only ability that I can think of that it will effect is series of shots that is if its above 1.5 seconds duration so that it can be unloaded faster. the only thing I can see alacrity can do is allow you to be more mobile by finishing your cast faster and allowing you to move while waiting for your global cooldown to be done but chances are the amount of time you get wont be enough to make any effect in game play

just an fyi, if you think bioware doesnt want to take the community input for what direction the game should go, you should check out some of their interviews, they specificly say they do. so get your facts straight

there is no build for cunning tanks, but you can kinda build yourself if your a imperial agent or smuggler to be tanky in the beginning since cover does provide 20% increase to defense. but other than that, yea its a useless stat, dont really bother with it unless it really is far better than what you already are using

wow I find it odd that everyone here thinks that the reusable items should be boe, its almost like no one came from wow at all. there is a reason why theres crafted BoP and crafted BoE items. BoP items should be the best of the best, and given only to those willing to go to the max level of a crafting skill, while still making a BoE that is slightly worst to provide to the public. with biochem the only difference should be one is reusable and the other is a consumable, with the same stats. this will keep people buying more, while you get yourself something nice to keep forever. the real problem is that no other crew skill gets this benifit. in wow this was a very popular trend and it also gave you a reason to level a certain profession as apposed to another, engineers get their specialty bikes and other tools, all armor professions got specialty gear they could make just for themselves, blacksmiths could make epic weapons just for themselves, and so on and so forth. if bioware took a lesson from wow they should learn to give specialty items to each crewskill to make them unique and worth leveling in the end. thats how they should have balanced it. im just hoping that this change will start giving the same type of change to each and every crew skill.

/bump just think this is a great idea and would love to hear more feedback from the community

for snipers going down marksmanship, we have the talent sniper volley. this increases our alacrity to a max of 9% from what I understand of alacrity, all it really does is allow you to burn through your energy faster. it makes casting quicker and channeling faster (basically dealing the damage in shorter time) but then I also heard that it doesnt affect the global cooldown. if this is the case, whats the point in this skill then? because the only abilities the sniper has that has a cast time is ambush and series of shots. from guides i've seen most people say to use ambush only when your reactive shot procs and thus bringing it down to an activation of 1.5 which is the same as the global cooldown. so whats the point of taking this talent? am I missing something? and if alacrity is such a bad stat then wouldnt this talent do nothing if we had no alacrity then?

as a previous wow player, its always been the trend that raid gear is always thee best gear you can get. or raid drop schematics or schematics that require raid dropped materials. the reason being is that you have a large amount of people there, and only 2-3 items drop per boss, that means only 2-3 people will get 1 upgrade in most situations per boss. what crafting usually allows is that it'll give you the best gear you can get before you enter these high ranked level content but currently that doesnt seem to be the case, commendations seem to have filled that role thus leaving most of the crafting stuff pointless unless you level it as you level and replace your gear with that gear as you level, but this I find is very inefficient and not required. hope this helps

I can see where your coming from but what your comparing are on 2 different levels, I believe the Tionese gear SHOULD be better due to the fact that its something obtained in the end game. what im trying to compare the crafted gear to is pre-end game items. so what you should compare the item to is the vendor bought items. also im more focused on the armstech crewskill since they are the ones that are hit the most since all the other crew skills can provide something that cant be bought, armortech and sythweaving can create stronger belts, which are hard to find custom quality of. cybertech can make epic ship parts which you cant find better of biotech has it's reusable stims artifice has crystals that you cant buy through vendors also another note is I really dont believe that the loss of the primary stat aim is worth getting the increased crit and surge. for one in the end game you'll get capped on crit very easily hitting the 30-35% mark, I already am at that point without any of the epic crafted gear. so I dont want such a heavy amount of it, and yes I understand that if I had that then I could shift some of my stats to other stats. but another note is that aim does provide crit as well as base damage. the amount loss I bet is fairly similar to the amount gained from the crit rating, and the base damage loss from the loss of aim can probably compensate the loss of surge damage as well so really all your losing out on is endurance. and yes endurance isnt as important to a dps player but from past experience in WoW, im sure there will be fights where bosses will do random damage out wards and wont be pure tank and spank fights (one example in this game already is the mentor fight in district 7) where having more health just means higher survivability chance. so honestly I do believe that they should scale aim and endurance up as the REed weapon is improved. and for balance issues I wouldnt mind if they reduced the amount of stats gained from the bonus. currently my endowed pistole has 97 crit on it, I honestly dont think its really required

now we all know that the crew skill vendor will always sell green quality schematics. the way we improve them is to reverse engineer the weapon we create and hope it procs a new schematic that is a stronger version of what was reversed engineered. currently the problem is that the items obtain do not compare to commendation items. the reason for this is how the new item that you discover is created. when you reverse engineer an item and get a new schematic, the only thing that is added is the max and min damage is increased and 1 additional secondary stat is added. this means that the primary stats (aim, cunning, wisdom, strength, endurance) remains the same. a standard green value weapon at level 50 is about 40 of the primary stat. while a custom weapon bought with commendations will have about 80 of the primary stat since the weapon will come with prototype level modifications. now I propose that as you go up a quality, the primary stats of that weapon should also increase. this way the weapons will be on par with the commendation items and will also allow these crafting skills to be that much better.

except there is no twinking and the Reverse engineering path isnt as good as a modded weapon pre-operations. for those who are new to mmos, twinking is when you make a new character and leave them at low levels and gearing them up as strong as you can for their level bracket. usually for pvp cuz in WoW pvp was done in 10 level brackets, meaning you can only fight people that are with in the 10 level bracket. in this game, theres no such thing and everything you do will give you exp and thus forcing you to level. so twinking isnt possible with reverse engineering, your gonna take a green item and try to reverse engineer it to get a better weapon, but the thing is that the new weapon will only increase it's base damage and improve 1 secondary stat, the primary stat is left unchanged. so most weapons will have about 40 of the main stat (aim, endurance, strength, cunning, and wisdom). but a modifiable weapon can have upto 80 of these stats with just prototype mods of it's level (blue colored mods) so thus your sacraficing half of your primary stats for 2-3 secondary stats which wont even compare to the loss of your primary stat. (3 is only if you get a critical build with agument slot but even then your only able to add 1 more secondary stat) so yea, honestly right now armstech is the worst crew skill out there until they decide to buff the items.

I can see some potential here I can understand the whole not wanting it to be pure random since i've had the harsh run of trying to get an epic weapon schematic and spending 5 days trying to get it, and then finding out its the wrong combination I wanted. (crit and presence, no thank you) but creating a whole new skill for it seems unnecessary instead I would say that you create a "experience" bar under each schematic in the crafting section. every time you RE that item, it increases a bit. once it fills up, your rewarded with a new schematic. if its a linear built schematic, then obviously there wont be any randomization. but if its a multi prefex built schematic then I would say it should randomly choose between the 3 or 5 choices. but would remove that choice when picked and the process starts over until you have them all. this way we know exactly how many we need to craft in order to obtain that new item instead of crafting 5-25 one night and waking up to find that the first one RE was the one that gave the new schematic or having to spend days hoping to get the right one. if i were to implement this the numbers I'd think would be fair is Tier 1 -> Tier 2 would cost 35 RE for multi prefix and 55 for linear Tier 2 -> Tier 3 would cost 15 RE for multi prefix and 25 for linear

wow I just love how some of these people cant read, I never said that crafted gear MUST beat end game gear, im simply saying it should be PRIOR to end game gear, the only crafted gear I feel that should be on par with end game gear should be the the ones that require material that only comes from that content. and my major concern is how armstech gets totally ripped off cuz every aspect of it can be replaced easily by commendations. armstech makes 2 things, weapons for non force users and barrels, THATS ALL. voss commendations gives you main hand weapons that are better than the main hand weapons armstech can make. Corillia commendations gives you off hand weapons that are better than the off hand weapons armstech can make. Daily commendations gives you better barrels than armstech can make so what does armstech end up providing before you start heroics and operations? NOTHING so I just wasted all that time and effort to leveling it up to find out that it all becomes obsolete, thanks for wasting my time

everything you can make can be outdated by just doing dailies and using the commendations to buy the stuff you need, that takes a few days instead of hoping for a random chance of RE your items that your making. it took me 3 days to go from a green lvl 50 to one of the epics that is not even on par with a commendation bought weapon. and also theres 15 possible epics too (3 possible prototypes that split into 5 possible epics) you might be spending days and days just trying to get the right combination. and they dont even remove the discovered schematics from the randomization. I know this because I actually discovered the same schematic and the game said "you already discovered this schematic" which I feel is a total rip off.

and from the rumours im hearing that biochem is getting nerfed cuz people are saying how its a requirement for operations, well clearly cuz its the only crew skill that gives any real benifits. what also pisses me off is how theres blue gear that you can make but requires a material that drops off of bosses in operation and heroics, but then those gear dont even compare, espcially since the modifications in it are all blue. you can get those replaced easily by epic versions. why would we bother getting these mats when we can get better before even stepping foot into the operations, just a wasted rare materials if you ask me. instead I feel like these should be epic weapons with epic mods in them, or like regular epic weapons that have one of the modifications missing but has it's own base stats on it. at least make it on par with gear you get in end game. otherwise it becomes just a waste material that no one wants. also getting low level crew skills are pointless as well since we out level them so quickly that theres no reason to build them, and also theres no such thing as twinks in this game since theres no pvp brackets or even a way to stop yourself from leveling since pvp grants experience as well. these crew skills really need a real good looking at and fix soon because right now its a feature that has great potiental but was executed very poorly in my opinion

I have arms tech and I just got to level 50 and got to ilum, and found out that my armstech is totally useless. all the weapons seem to be pointless, they get replaced by commendation items from voss and corillia, and the modifications are replaced by ilum, even the ones that require drops from operations and heroic flash points. thus making biochem the only viable end game crafting skill there since you cant buy their end game epic consumable items. with the amount of time required to obtain the epic version of the items, and the amount of materials wasted to get specific ones, I feel that these gear should only be replaced or equal end game operation and heroic flash points or very expensive commendations. or at least make very strong bop items to make these crew skills unique and valuable.

/bump anyone else have any thoughts on this topic or am I missing something?

I just hit lvl 50 and I have 400 armstech and thought i'd RE the strongest blaster for my mercenary bounty hunter. but I noticed how the blaster is actually weaker than the lvl 48 voss commendation weapon I bought, which is A-212 projection-X blaster http://www.swtor-spy.com/item-db/A212_ProjectionX_Blaster/27182/ for reference to it's stats the Fusion-X blaster is the crafted weapon http://www.swtor-spy.com/item-db/FusionX_Blaster/38289/ but the epic version ending up to being (+critical and +surge one) +48 aim, +57 endurance, +94 crit, +403 tech power, +75 surge, 237.0 min and 441.0 max damage so the difference between my commendation bought weapon and this epic version is a large amount of aim and endurance reduction and great amount of crit and surge. but the amount of aim loss seems like it'll counter the amount of crit and surge gained, but the loss of health is really the major loss in this change the item is only 14 commendations which I easily got from normal questing, so to me I feel like the weapon I reversed engineered for was a waste of time. shouldnt epic crafted be better than a peice of gear that you can buy from commendations? especially since it took me about 3-5 days to get this. I feel the gear levels should be vendor cash gear < green crafted gear < commendation gear < epic crafted gear < flashpoint heroic gear < operation gear

you know, posting a link would have helped as well, theres so many postings its hard to find certain stuff without a search function

alright fellow theory crafters, im trying to figure out at what point should I stop focusing on one stat before I move on to another. also this is mainly for secondary stats, since its obvious that we want as much aim and endurance as possible. First off, we all know we want as much crit as possible due to our cylinder's talent to reduce heat whenever we crit. so clearly that will be our first priority. but how much do we need? clearly ideally 100% would be great but chances of that happening is almost impossible. so I feel that getting as much as possible is best and having over 50% can allow you to focus on other stats. correct me if im wrong. Second we want accuracy, this will make sure our attacks hit, but is there a cap? well its all percentage base and there are 2 things people seem to miss understand or could be misleading in the game, please correct me if im wrong. for ranged attacks, going over 100% accuracy will reduce the enemy's defenses meaning that they'll dodge and deflect less. but for tech attacks, it'll reduce their resistance, thus deal more damage. im still unclear as to what is tech damage and what is ranged damage, currently I feel anything that is blaster based is ranged, and missle based is tech (correct me if im wrong plz) also im not sure if negative resistance is possible and if it is if theres additional damage to it. and if this is structured similar to wow, I would expect normal mobs to have no defense thus going over 100% accuracy is pointless for them, but for bosses they should have some defense stat but its unclear on how they work. also with the introduction of different ranks of mobs (weak, strong, elite, champion) what defense stats they might have. if theres any information on this please share it with the rest of us. and the last stat we'll want is surge, increasing our crit damage multiplier. clearly this stat doesnt have a cap since the higher you go, the more it'll give and never be a waste. I didnt include alacrity cuz I believe its already been understood that this stat causes more heat problems than more damage thus doesnt help us much at all. plus our cast times are low enough that it is fairly close to the global cooldown. so from what I've learned already the only caps that an arsenal has to worry about is the accuracy cap, if anyone has any knowledge on this please share with the rest of us

/bump for more information on the topic if anyone has any or knows of some site that could explain this better

does this also mean its best not to get gift items from missions until you get all companions (or at least enough companions that each item can be used) otherwise you'll just end up wasting bag space? or end up with gifts you cant use and will be forced to sell?

ok heres what I understand so far, that each companion likes a certain types of items and have different levels of affection for them. and how higher the rarity gives more affection bonus for that type of item but I want to know is how does the grade of the item effect the affection? I understand that each 2k of affection the companion gains 1 rank and that if the gift is the same rank as the companion's affection you get either 0, 24, 54, and 96 affection and each rarity increases it by 50% of the previous rarity (so green is 100%, blue is 150%, and purple is 200%) and finally I know giving a companion a gift thats lower rank than their affection rank will reduce the amount you get. but what about the vice versa? how is that calculated? if I have a new companion with no affection, how much do I get if I give them a rank 5 gift? I did a little test with gault when I first got him and I was getting rank 3 gifts from my mission quests. I gave him a green item he favourated and got 70 and something he loved he got 125 these ended up being only small values compared to the rank 1 gifts, so does this mean that giving them higher rank gifts are just a waste of money compared to giving them gifts of their own level?