Only if I'm trying to bait a purge from a sorc/sage so my force crush won't be wasted. Other than that rare occurence (I can count on 1 hand the number of players that will cleanse my FC), rupture is not often used.

Not exactly true. 18 power provides more bonus damage than 18 strength (4 power per bonus dmg versus 5 strength per bonus damage). 18 power will not give the additional crit rating that strength will give. So really it just depends on your priority. As rage, I'm modding out for 72% crit multiplier, and dumping the rest into power. Crit rating is worse than useless, and acc is sitting about 99.xx%, and I find that sufficient for my needs, considering very few of my attacks rely on accuracy.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=72872

If you're looking for a build that has decent overlap of pve and pvp, I would suggest annihilate, you'll end up wasting fewer points I think to get a strong build for both pve and pvp.

Pop quiz, does armor mitigate Force scream damage? If you answered 'no', guess what? You're wrong! Force scream may be a force attack, (meaning it cannot be dodged, blocked or parried) but it deals kinetic damage, which is mitigated by armor. This has nothing to do with semantics, and everything to do with mechanics. Mechanics that you seem to have no interest in understanding. If you take a look through your character sheet, you'll see that force/tech has its own tab, showing accuracy, crit and crit multipier values independant of your sheet that lists your primary damage, acc, surge stats. For example, as a rage marauder, my crit multipier under my force tab will be 30% higher than whats shown for my normal crit multiplier, because I have a talent that increases my force crit damage by 30%. This is a perfect indication right there that force and tech are classified as attack types. edit: SI/RC buffs give 10% dmg reduction to internal/elemental, and there are various talents for many classes that reduce the damage as well. It is not inconsequential.

12 seconds I believe.

As much as I like payback, it just isn't worth getting unless you're going rage. You're basically spending 5 points to get it (2 for payback, and 3 wasted points in malice). Malice is wasted because FS is already going to be a 100% crit, and force choke and rupture are your only other force attacks. You skipped short fuse, which is baffling, and chose 3/3 DWM over 2/2 CoC 1/3 DWM. DWM might be nice for raiding, but if this is a pvp build, get CoC. DWM is for sustained dps, the math works out to be something like 1% extra dmg per point. And I disagree about displacement being wasted points. Deadly throw is not a finisher, its a heal debuff, and something you're going to want to keep on any primary focus target. You're confusing that with your sub30% execute. Deadly throw root is a great way to stop a kiter, or pin someone down in a fire pit that already has full resolve. Not to mention the extra range on your blind is underrated.

How can you not monitor when blood frenzy comes up? You can force a blood frenzy proc just by using massacre. You are giving up alot of burst damage. Massacre -> gore -> ravage -> FS

He is mostly correct. And if you read his post, there are 4 types on damage. Internal, elemental, kinetic and energy. Internal and elemental are not mitigated by armor, but that may have been an oversight in the post. Force, tech, melee and ranged are not damage types, they are attack types. Ranged and melee damage are characterized as 'white' attack damage, while force and tech are 'yellow' attack damage. To check on the types of damage, all you have to do is look at your defense tab. Mouse over your armor, it will show you your mitigation to kinetic and energy. Further down you can mouse over your resistances, that includes internal and elemental. edit: a link for your convienence. http://www.jedilace.com/2012/02/09/attack-and-damage-types/

Ah, ravage. Yea, that's probably going to be scaled back. Haven't had the time to play yet and test it out, but from what I saw on the marauder boards, it hits really hard now.

If you're talking about marauders and juggs, most likely you're talking rage spec. Smash will crit every time in that spec due to talents. Smash damage was also buffed 20% for marauders. So most likely this is what you are seeing. The 5k smashes now were doing 4k pre 1.2. The changes to expertise may have also factored in. If you're running around in a mix of pve and pvp gear, as was popular pre 1.2, you may want to switch over to full pvp, as expertise was heavily buffed.

Hitting or critting? If you're taking about crits, a 5k doesn't automatically turn into 7.5k, because you need to consider the way crit multipliers work. edit: also keep in mind that marauders have armor penetration talents in two of their trees. 100% pen. in carnage (6 sec duration) and 20% in rage (all the time) so, hypothetically, if you have 8k armor (42% dmg reduction) and a rage marauder smashes you, you effectively only have 6400 armor due to the armor pen. (putting you at around 36% dmg reduction)

Sorry, but as much as I like the game, there is a tier system to the canon of star wars, and games are pretty far down on the list. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_canon There is a hell of alot more info from books and comics saying that there is more than just the light side and the dark side, before this game was ever released. edit: as an mmorpg, SWTOR falls under S-canon, which is below C-canon.

Armor mitigation doesn't make a distinction between a force attack and a melee attack though. The only difference between force/tech (yellow) and melee/ranged (white) is that melee/ranged has to bypass the defense check, force and tech do not. So if your armor is giving 52% mitigation against kinetic and energy types, and a force scream hits you for 2k, it would hit you for 3k if you were wearing no armor. You don't understand the mechanics if you think the shield adds a flat % to mitigation. Shields increase your chance to defend against an attack (melee/ranged only, since force/tech bypass defense check), and if an attack is shielded, further reduces the damage via absorbtion. jedilace.com has some very good information on the way the mechanics work, check it out.

Pretty sure legacy moves aren't available in pvp or raiding. At least, that was how it was explained in the dev posts about legacy.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Je%27daii_Order The dawn of the jedi series is still on going, but if I remember correctly, the Jedi and Sith (school of thought, not species) were once one and the same, only to split at some point. So yes, there is a grey area. Furthermore, the Aing-Tii Monks viewed the Foce as a spectrum, with no definitive light or darkside.

Buff will last for 1 minute, but refreshes each time another stack is applied.

Malice won't benefit smash, assuming you're picking up the talent to make it 100%, its just redundant. Force scream, force crush, force choke, and rupture (if you use it). Scream is a less effective filler than a talented VS, the only time I'll be using it is when I'm being kited. Worth 1 point to lower the rage cost, but 2 more points for only 4% crit chance? No way. As rage you're not going to be stacking crit in your gear, its going to be all power (though I put in a few surge pieces to bring me up to 70%~ crit multiplier, just below where DR really starts to kick in). With VS criticals refunding rage now, it may be worth bumping up crit to 25%~ (talents bringing it up to 40% crit chance), but your bread and butter is and always will be your smashes. Smashes won't benefit from crit, so its wasted there, and more crit means less power. edit: I would argue that this 2/2/31 is going to be the core of any smash build, leaving you 6 floaters. http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#100bZ0MZRrRrzfRbfz.1 edit2: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#100bcZMMZRrRrzfRbfz.1 an alternate rage build, with more focus on VS and less on defense, with 1 floater. I'm tempted to try this out, as VS crits will be resource neutral.

I went with a 2/6/33. Anni. was the same, Carnage I picked up CoC, only 1 point in DWM (rage is a burst spec, the offhand dmg isn't worth the 2 points unless you're raiding and going for sustained), and 1 point in defensive roll, though I may find a floater later to fill that out if I find there is enough aoe to warrant it. In the rage tree, I went with 1 point in malice as a filler. Honestly, it isn't worth filling out for rage, smash is already a 100% chance crit. I picked up enraged scream, interceptor and payback, and opted out of strangulate. I may end up dropping interceptor now that there is a 1 second root on obliterate, but I haven't gotten around to testing everything just yet, this is just preliminary.

My post was a tongue in cheek response, as I had hoped the rolling eyes smiley would have conveyed. I personally don't see sorcs as over powered, being a marauder myself, but the main point was to mimic the OP was speaking from a position of not knowing end game.

The first respec is free, and the fee increases nominally the more you respec.

On live servers, valor is capped at your level, and currently only those with valor 60 or higher can open BM bags. So no, you either heard incorrectly or were lied to.

I don't understand how any class is underpowered or overpowered. I'm level ten and they all feel about the same to me.

The edit was more for JM. The biggest weakness I see right now in anni and carnage is that pressuring healers will be harder, because they will most likely all be guarded. Rage will likely have an easier time with it simply because of the aoe capability. It's much harder to peel when melee dps become a liability stepping inside the aoe, and tanks guarding healers will need to find a position outside the aoe but still in range to guard. Which won't be impossible, but certainly harder considering how fluid pvp is.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=72872 This is the sticky at the top of the page. The information is still relevant. Look it over, if you still have questions that are a little more technical or specific, come back and ask those. On a side note, this is the 4th thread you've made about asking for advice on builds. Not flaming, but please stop spamming the boards with the same question over and over again. Do a little research, there is plenty of information both here and in the sentinel forums, which is our republic mirror. People aren't just going to spoon feed you information when it's readily available if you'd just take 10 minutes to browse older threads.