Yeah. We Assault Trooper/Pyro BH's can actually manage it fairly well, since we can proc a snare all day at 10m or less. PvE-wise, I kite all the time- generally letting a DPS companion do the lion's share while I taunt and LOS-kite mobs around to kill. PvP, it's not nearly the same. Players are much better about gap closing.

As I noted before- I got one off of the DS-224 Colossus, on -Quesh-. That may be the low end of the mob level needed to get a world drop for the head piece, which is why Hoth mobs can also drop the thing. I'm horrible about things- I'll go elite/champ/boss hunting on worlds just to find interesting bits. Finally snagged the belt off the Imperial Sniper Captain on Balmorra, though again- world drop, so he can have a megaton of other things show up (and does).

Truth is, you're going to use both, early and often. Stockstrike is wonderful, HIB is bread-and-butter for Assault and many hybrid builds. I use both talents myself, since Assault builds can proc HIB freebies repeatedly and Stockstrike is the best way to set them up.

Yeah, something is definitely buggy there. Put in a CS ticket. You're gonna need one.

There is no true "balance" in a PvE game. WoW DOES do it on purpose, because rotating the FoTM club means people get a chance at feeling like "the best". It's not incompetence to fail at the impossible. PvP is the minority, that means that the game is balanced for PvE. And the more they split the two apart in the regular function of the game, the worse it gets. If they balanced it for PvP, it'd suck the life out of their PvE game- and guess where the subscriptions are aimed at? That's right. PvE. Worse, the alterations they have made for PvP "balance" have done a great job of ticking off PvE players of those classes...which makes it even less likely (if Bioware has brain cells) to radically alter classes for PvP balancing purposes. The only real solution is to stop splitting the two games apart, and to stop treating each one as a "game within the game".

PvP+E, not straight up PvP. Stop splitting the PvP areas out of the actual game into instances and icy covered nowhere planets and give the PvPers reasons to actually be in play areas...playing. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=298731 for the long version.

Mind you, once 1.2 hits we'll be back in orange gear- as the modifications in said purple bits will then be transferrable to orange gear, set bonuses included. On top of that, crafted orange gear will be crittable (adding an augment slot) making them actually better than most purple gear is- you'll be able to transfer the mods over and then augment the gear for good measure. So even if you hit 50, you're not tossing your old orange gear out.

Nothing saying that can't go in as well. I figured for starters, keep it simple. Once Bioware is used to putting together PvP+E into planets, that can be expanded on. But hey. I'd like to see PvP+E targets starting on Tatooine. Go ahead, put a nice set of L30ish expertise-focused gear there on targets in some of the Empire and Republic areas. Make Anchorhead and the Empire equivalent accessible but reasonably defended and set up some appropriate bad guys there, auto-flag people for PvP from the attacking faction even on PvE servers. It's clear from Outlaw's Den that's where they were aiming to start world PvP off properly. Let it be so. Nar Shaadda would work as well, especially since it has a ready made "choke point" for people to cross the border and is another planet where both factions can explore much of the same map.

/pvp "You only hate me cause I'm RED!" /pvp Thanks for the votes of support here, people. I look at the game as being all about play. The more we split PvP and PvE, the more we see changes as "nerfed for PvP" or "buffed for only PvP", and it splits the community. That's bad for everyone. And it makes the devs look schizo trying to deal with things. Ilum was a failure- it segregated PvP and it turned it into a killtradefest or perpetual zerg camp. Warzones make the game look like a ghost town even worse than it actually is, since the PvP population (hello, all you L50's in Huttball!) is trying to be perpetually in warzones now. Put the war in the worlds we're already in, not a galaxy even further, further away.

Not at all. Flag the PvP+E primary target to be vulnerable to expertise, just like a player. If you REALLY want to be a pain, you stat it up a bit over a standard PvE target to boot, so people with PvP gear are actually more effective than PvE geared on those targets. In fact, it's in my first post: SWTOR actually has amazing potential to make gear specialized for different types of players. Expertise works for PvP as it stands. It can be made to be effective on PvP+E targets and PvP players. PvP gear is now most effective for these types of encounters. Raid gear is less effective. Solo (Presence boosting) gear is less effective. Presence improves companion power. This means that +Presence gear can be awarded for endgame solo-specific content. This gear makes solo content easier. Raid gear is less effective. PvP gear is less effective. Raiders get their raid gear. It's most effective on PvE raid-style targets. It's less effective on PvP/PvP+E. It's less effective on solo-specific content. I mean, heck. We could have three separate types of gear that make three different kinds of players happy that way! Whatta concept! And nobody would be ticked that raiding makes you a better geared PvPer to boot!

Primary stat, Power, Crit, Surge in that order. Elara's being Aim. Alacrity is a distant fifth.

And yes, it's an itemization screwup with Elara, they changed her dominant stat over just before the game got out of beta but didn't fix the quest rewards. It's sorta like the whole techblade/techstaff thing. You can't find orange ones because they were added so late they're not completely populated in the drop tables- and won't be till 1.2.

Also, it's noted that you (the protagonist) have that one-in-a-zillion resistance to the plague (if you do the vaccine missions and volunteer to be infected). Ergo, everyone else is hosed, you won the lottery. All they can do is tear you limb from limb.

It would be, but they did the whole "zombie plague" thing in WoW. Many said "epic", but the people who didn't want a loss of being able to play their character for even a brief period of time QQ'd too much.

Yep. I picked up a set of orange bracers farming Enemies myself at this point- so I can confirm it too. Just kill the Sith at the end, run out, reset the mission, repeat. It's not 1 in 10, though. The bracers are a world drop. The Sith will always have a world drop on the "blue items" chart, which includes the bracers. That's a whole lot bigger than just ten items, and by far your most likely drop is a random blue item. Some people are luckier than others in getting what they want, obviously.... It's not just Trooper ones, though. I've gotten JK ones as well and I'd bet he'd drop the others too- I just got tired of going back after getting my Talon bracers. The Sith doesn't drop specific items, he just auto-drops "blue", like many Boss+ level mobs will. (And I got lucky and someone put the Talon belt up for sale for 80K. Full orange armor for my Trooper, woo! ...at least till endgame where I'll want the 1.2 crit-crafted augmentables. ^^)

Since it's her primary stat, Aim will basically do point-for-point for everything what other stats will do for smaller chunks of her abilities. Aim, Aim, Aim. Cunning on her gear is a leftover from the aforementioned last-second changes before the game went live, and is not nearly as useful as Aim is. Just like her codex entry says.

You've got the right idea. Elara's probably best using Reflex mods, and then you're looking at +Power, +Crit, +Surge from there. And check her settings. Elara defaults to a mix of shooting and healing normally, but you can set her up to a straight-up healer as well. That can give you more band-aids (as it were) when you need them.

Heh. It's the "DON'T FIGHT" quest, which is probably why it drives people crazy. After all, the reflex is "It's bad, shoot it!"...

All they have to do is cut the internal cooldown to 4.5 seconds so you don't have burn time < potential reboot of HIB. That's it.

If you look over the whole apparatus, there's a spot on each one where you can disarm the system. Just make sure you disarm each one as you get to it, and you won't get burnt. You'll "stay frosty" if you manage to do that for the entire mission. Take your time, don't try and jump over the lasers- there's a way to get at every single one if you're patient.

I'm hoping you meant "Coruscant" there, as that's where a Trooper's storyline should take you after Ord Mantell. Sounds like you're on "More Old Friends". It's in Justicar territory. http://www.torhead.com/area/1So4TRn/justicar-territory Use that map. It should help you find your way to where you need to go.

I still use that model for my Vanguard. I really do think it's one of the better looking blaster rifles out there.

I'm used to assault cannon Aric, but I wouldn't have minded a sniper Aric either. (Amusing note: Sniper rifles are being dropped from Republic character loot lists after 1.2, meaning there won't even be a trace of the old Aric to be found.)

There's two movement-boosters in Shield and Tactics, respectively. Charge! gives you +30% after a Storm, Hold the Line is the more likely culprit since it makes you immune to snares and boosts your run speed 30% to boot.

I have yet to figure out why they cut the AoE down so much in the first place. It's meant to be a big opening move, and apparently big is bad?