My experience is with Sniper Lethality and I can say it's very much viable in end-game PvE flashpoints/operations. This is because a big portion of your damage ignores armor (bosses will still have armor even after multiple debuffs) and deals increased damage on targets below 30% (which is the point where you usually require more DPS)

This may help some players of DPS classes who prefer different builds for different situations (one for PvP, another one for PvE flashpoints/operations, and even another one for solo PvE play). For people who have adapted their build/playstyle to the current system, it won't change much. The feature will have an indirect effect on pure DPS classes since if (all things being equal) a healer/DPS class has the option to dual spec to fill either role when needed, they will have an advantage getting spots in groups.

This bonus boss was tough enough that the headpiece made sense and trying to farm it was inefficient since there is a good volume of difficult to kill trash leading up to it (even when my core group of 4 players found out about the headpiece drop, we never tried to farm it or consider doing it because of these points). Now it's another worthless bonus boss that drops unwanted loot. Say hello to Sith Entity from me, and tell him he can sit on all the earpiece/implants he has hoarded.

During another run of this place, we wiped on the first try (power of the core after first set of buttons) and managed to do him the second time. On the second run we waited a second after the buttons showed up before pressing them. We also do not kill all the adds in the second wave (cc one or two and kill the rest) to ensure he doesn't go back in the darth vader capsule of doom, since giving him a second chance to acquire power of the core increases the probability of a wipe.

My experience is similar as well. Normal modes are almost alwaays dependant on the classes inside whereas hardmodes drop pretty much random. This is more evident when I solo low level normal modes with my sniper and nothing but cunning armor/weapons drop (I think only once I had a marauder armor drop)

I am looking more in the lines of: Operative can cast X heal that costs 20 energy so it restores X/20 health per energy, since you recover 5 energy per sec, operative has X/4 healing per sec capacity. And then the same for sorc. So I'm wondering about the numerics of the battle actually.

Hello posters of my sister class, I'm an end-game sniper. I was wondering why field medics are so rare, this has been enlightening. I have a question though, sorcs recover 8 mana per sec, while operatives recover 5 energy per second (if they stay within the sweet range). Looking at this aspect alone, does a sorc put out more direct heals (over the course of an encouter) compared to the operative at the same level? Or are the problems confined to the secondary effects and utilities (operatives having more hots and less instant casts, sorcs having better shield/AoE heal, etc)

I'm playing a lethality spec sniper with over 40% crit self-buffed. I have tried a lot of builds while playing the character at lvl 50 and settled on 31 point lethality in the end. My damage is quite good (I consistently rank in top three on the damage meter with 350 expertise in different warzones), it certainly is not lacking compared to any other class (I will not go so far as to say I surpass every other class). My PvE experience shows my dps is quite good as well. A lot of frustration stems from having to use cover and having your big punches suddenly dodged/deflected/etc or LoS'ed. I am not saying I never use cover as a lethality spec (I probably use it quite often, mostly because of old habits but the defense bonus helps), but lethality eliminates a lot of the problems. Having an ambush deflected is extremely frustrating compared to having a shot from cull or series of shots getting the same treatment: even if the MM build were to outclass the lethality build in the long run, it is insanely more annoying. Add to this the fact that getting forced out of cover suddenly has many of your shots greyed out and everything suddenly feels like a mess. I don't think one build is better than the other, but lethality improves my ease of gameplay compared to marksman and that's why I don't feel the sniper is weak compared to any other class. I should also note that I never do 1v1 in warzones.

The ship's maid robot, RV-08 or something? All my other companions are at 10k affection so they are always on missions, I only used companions for healing anyways (and the droids is surprisingly good at it once you gear him up in modded oranges)

Do not read if you have not finished your story line:

Would adding something like this improve your suggested system: After each "defeat" (having their base taken over by the other side), the defeated side gets a stacking increase to their ticking valor (reset daily or after stack of X?). Do you think this would give the side with the smaller population (and getting defeated most of the time) a higher incentive to join the fight and not make them feel like they are getting farmed? Or does it sound exploitable?

My experiences (I'm the sniper): -Juggernaught, mercenary, sniper, sorc. Boss duplicates mercenary non stop, spews out 3-5 snipers. If we have the merc wait out this boss we can do without any problems. -Powertech, mercenary, sniper, sorc. Boss creates an extra sith warrior for each wave until once again the mercenary is chosen and duplicated endlessly. Again, kicking out the mercenary and 3 manning it works. Thankfully we are guildmates and RL friends so this doesn't create horrendous social issues.

My merc friend in my guild saq the first pair of pants after his 17th Mentor kill. My sorc friend has done about 16 hm flashpoints and just now saw his first inquisitor gear drop. I'm a sniper and I collected my Columni gear in more or less a week of doinh hm flashpoints. So yeah, from my perspective something feels iffy.

So what's your predictions for next Ilum fix? I'm thinking it's going to be "You need to kill an opposing faction player while they're opening a box under a shooting star to get quest progression"

Massive reports of not getting counts towards the quest on Ilum. People say it's related to being in an ops group. I had stopped going to Ilum for more than a week now, the "improved bags" piqued my curiosity, probably not going to try Ilum again anytime soon.

Build your rotation around these core points: Try to never drop below 60% energy. Always use Followthrough when its cooldown is up. Try to use Ambush when the cast time reduction from snipe/series of shots crits proc. Rotations usually depend on many factors, including what feels comfortable to the actual player. Use these points as a guideline to form up your own.

End game PvP on my server is currently: Queue for warzones. If you queued solo 90% of the time you are getting steamrolled by the other side which is pre-made, 10% of the time it is a normal warzone. If you queued with a group you usually have a fun match (since you usually meet up with premades) or the first few minutes of the warzone are so bad for the other side that they quit. Go to Ilum. Depending on time and weather conditions and the alignment of the stars, either of these three scenarios: 1- No Republic. Motorcycle gang riding in a merry go-around in the center. 2- Small amount of Republic (relative to the Empire). Either trapped in their base and/or relative spawn points on the map, trading fishing kills and/or ranged AoE kills with the numerically superior Empire OR Republic organising small raid parties that gank people in the middle (thus getting a few kills) until in a few minutes the horde catches up to them and overpowers them in seconds. 3- Republic relatively close to the number of Imperials (but still outnumbered by a small margin), still trapped in their base and/or spawn point, Empire unwilling to take a few steps back to allow a proper skirmish and Republic unwilling to break through and both sides resorting to fishing kills.

I'l try the champion when I'm able, to test my dps. I'm lethality and I will sometimes pull off aggro during boss fights in HM flashpoints. This is despite the fact that I'm trying hard not to burst. I'll try to gather data on it but at the end game, Lethality seems to be the way to go because it mostly ignores armor and bosses tend to have lots of it.

Unbelievable.. Companions are only a useful part of your character when you are questing solo, even then upgrading their gear to match a player at that level provides marginal benefit since they do not have the full abilities of an actual player. They have zero contribution end-game. By that logic, even if I don't need the item on my character, I should be rolling need, because I can vendor the item and use that money towards buying something from the AH which will help my character.

This "I need for my companion" argument is mind-blowing. Your companion did not tank in that instance. Your companion did not heal in that instance. Your companion did not dps in that instance. If your companion is so great and needs the gear, next time don't look for another party member and let your awesome companion fill in that role.

I'm really enjoying my sniper. For reference, I'm a lvl 50 with 1900+ cunning (while buffed), I have just acquired 4 pieces of my PvE set and do HM flashpoints regularly. I don't do PvP anymore and I'm Lethality specced. I'm not battlemaster but I've done enough PvP to reach rank 40 (mostly warzones because Ilum is a circular box hunting motorride on my server). I'm quite useful and wanted in my guild. My damage output is quite high, one of my guildmates is a better equipped DPS merc and the "stealing aggro from tank" goes between the two of us. My trashmob DPS is low (because of lethality) but I can spam grenades to compensate. If the tank dies, I'm almost always the next. On fights with lots of adds, I can use flash grenade to make sure the healer doesn't get ganked. I can protect the healer with ballistic shielding and cover pulse. Without my interrupt we have a high chance to wipe on false emperor (and similar encounters) because the tank has a chance to get knocked back. My biggest problem is survivability because if tank loses aggro for a short while, I'm going down (even with shield probe and the like). There are quirks and problems that could be ironed out but nothing disastrous that makes the class unplayable or sub-par. Without statistical data we don't have the damage numbers and but my anectodal experience doesn't make the class feel weak in terms of damage output.

So my reusable s/adrenal/etc that requires biochem is going to be equal to the reusable ones that do not require biochem? May I have the bop crafted relic (with an augment slot) for free please? Since we are talking about equality between professions and crafting and all.

Head, chest, pants, boots and weapon: For armoring/barrel, buy crafted purples from the AH or do your dailies and check out the mission support vendor on Ilum. The ones on Ilum are slightly better than crafted ones. With mods and enhancements you can do the same or take it one step further: take apart PvP items. Do your Ilum daily/weekly (this is usually easier on the Empire side on most servers), try to do your daily/weekly warzone quests if you can. Earpiece and implants: You want to buy off blue/purple ones with augment slots from the AH. Purple would be hard to find and costly, but it's only marginally better than a blue. Put in a +cunning augment into these (extremely important to put in a cunning one instead of power etc) Belt: Get the civilian pilot belt (yes I know it is light armor) from the starship vendor in the fleet (do some space missions). Fill in the slots with PvP items and things you can buy with daily commendations. Bracer: Drops in BT HM, it is not exactly difficult. Relics: Buy blues off the AH. Eventually you want one of these to be a red-red-red matrix shard combination.

So far the only way we've found to do this boss (with my group of sorc, jugg, merc and sniper, me being the sniper) is to dps the boss down after killing the first add. If merc is chosen last, it is actually easy (in a twisted sort of way) since the boss will only spawn 3 or so copies of me. The merc gets copied infinitely, so if he is chosen third we have a really hard time. Not fixing issues with my class while having instances in which me along is detrimental to a boss fight is adding salt to the wound.

General chat usually degenerates into WoW vs TOR discussion on my server. Or some other kind of flame-war. The few times someone wants to chat, they spam General so much to get responses with such worthless idle talk I turn off general in disgust. Ilum is a different story tho. It's either "back up guys let the republics come out so we cankill" or "'pubs in mid!!".