The first thing I noticed upon updating is the blues. I have a Chiss and a blue Twi'lek, and two toons who wear the Calo Nord set. The blues look amazing!

I normally MVP the best healer, unless I feel that another player has been exceptional (e.g. a healer who didn't heal as much as the top healer, but pulled my glass cannon *** out of the fire once or twice). I can understand why people would vote based on damage output, protection, kills, etc... All of our roles are important, but there's a reason that you go for the healers first. Forgot to mention people who guard nodes with me. My main is a sentinel. She's not overly difficult to kill. Stay with me, and we're much more likely to keep that node.

Perhaps you should acquaint yourself with your escape key? I do get your point, though. It still wastes time, and that time is important when you've joined an in-progress WZ. I still think it's less irritating than hearing Baron Deathmark's spiel every time I queue into Huttball.

Speaking as someone who wanders around in full BM gear, I do just fine on SM FP's (except LI, which I know I'm not geared for, and thus don't queue for). I do relatively well in SM KP and EV with my guildies, or in a queue group that can actually work as a team. Hell, I've even seen a person or two (literally, one or two - most others fail spectacularly) do well in WZ's in decent PVE gear, even with almost constant gear snobbing (no wonder we lost. How do you fight and type at the same time?). From my experience, PVP in PVE gear is much more difficult than PVE in PVP gear. My point is this: while the importance of gear cannot be denied, it can be overstated. Meanwhile, the importance of an individual's skill is often overlooked (e.g. someone who kicks *** in a WZ with little or no expertise is clearly good at it; anyone without at least some skill would get ground into the *********** pavement). That's not to say that skill is everything, just that there's a balance. I understand that an idiot in Rakata is still an idiot, and a highly-skilled player running HM EC in recruit is probably gonna get their *** kicked (assuming a group would even accept such a player). Nobody gets the gear and skill by magic, we all get it by playing the content.

I find it interesting that so many people responding here are OK with recruit-level gear.. One time when I queued into LI (not understanding that it was more difficult than other SM's) and one time doing HM Esseles, I got gear snobbed in a mix of recruit and BM gear. The LI group scolded me for needing so much more attention from the healer, creating slack that the tank and other DPS had to make up for, etc because I was ill-geared (yeah, I was the problem. Not the idiot tank that couldn't stay out of the circles/bubbles and kept dying). The Esseles folks were nice enough to leave it at "healer, pay attention to Sinthe since she's under-geared" and I did fine. Granted, both times I queued in (maybe my guild would have been more accommodating?), but it kinda puts me off running them without a better PVE set. I don't like feeling like a burden, and it's unfair to my group mates if I actually am a burden. Errr, sorry about the lack of helpful advice, OP. Maybe get with a good guild (assuming you aren't already) that will guide you in this regard? People in GF can be ******es.

Yeah, that bugs me too. At present, I'm not geared for SM LI. Deselecting it means I don't get the daily comms. Same for clicking off EV, which I really don't like. So, I can either screw the group over by selecting content that I know I'm not geared for (or simply dislike) and drop when I queue in, or deselect and not get my comms. At the very least, GF should tell you which FP it's going to be, so that I can see that it's LI or whatever and decline.