I have made a Powertech alt and I have decided to roll the Tank Spec because the dps specs had very uninteresting rotations(Pyro) or had lackluster results(AP), plus tanks are in far higher demand for PvE. Problem is, I have never rolled a tank in an MMO ever, so I was looking for some advice on how to tank in PvE effectively. Any advice is appreciated but I mostly need things on rotation and keeping aggro on single and multiple targets. Thanks in advance.

I don't think this thread had anything to do with arsenal mercs, pretty sure it was about Powertechs using anything other than a pistol.

Arsenal 1. PvP- Seen as a free kill by the other team and as dead weight by my teammates, would never be chosen for a ranked WZ PvE- Seen as a solid sustained dps, not the best but far from the worst. 2. PvP- I see myself as a useless nub who decided to go and try PvP while Arsenal speced, I am utterly useless and the only people I can kill 1v1 are other Mercs/Commandos or people who are occupied/not paying attention, my damage is fine but I am shut down so easily and have no survivability whatsoever, I think that many of the people in charge of PvP balancing overestimate the usefulness of heavy armor and the ability to off heal so we get nerfed. PvE- I see myself as a pretty good dps, never had anyone have problems with my damage output(occasionaly get complaints about pulling aggro), having no interrupts kind of sucks and I would say we need one Pyrotech 1. PvP- As pyro most people still see a free kill as I am still a merc, but my team seems to think that as a pyro I can at least contribute to the match a little, low chances of being in a ranked WZ. PvE- I don't think people really expect people to roll Merc Pyro for PvE so they expect it to be mediocre. 2. PvP- I finally could do something to contribute, can kill squishy people pretty easily, but still died if anyone sneezed on me, still really bad at 1v1 compared to any other class, but at least better then Arsenal. PvE- I see Pyro PvE being pretty bad, my damage was decent at best and I was way to reliant on the CGS procs that never seemed to happen, really reliant on Rail Shot, and the PTech Pyro gets a much better armor penetration buff to Rail Shot than the merc, the merc's Rail Shot needs to get the same armor penetration as the Powertech to even begin closing the gap between Merc Pyro DPS and PTech Pyro DPS General Thoughts: Merc DPS needs some love for PvP, PvE is not all that bad, but PvP is unplayable as a DPS Merc (for any 1v1, if you have a pack/teammate running around with you its not so bad), the Merc needs to be less reliant on teammates to kill enemies, Mercs also could use an interrupt similar to the Sniper's. PvE is fine for the most part.

Any character that finishes Chapter 1 of there storyline gets a mainhand construction kit as a reward, you can get armor bits and more weapon construction kits by sending your comps out on gathering missions(scavenging, slicing ect.) or you can purchase them with a large amount of Daily Commendations.

Pretty sure all the Orange crystal schematics are level 50, but I know that the Imp Taris and Pub Balmora Commendations Vendor sell weapons that have level 30ish orange crystals. At low level there are basically no choices in color crystals other than red, green, blue and yellow. White is unobtainable at the moment, used to by purchasable for 2.5 million Purple comes from Columi Gear, which drops from Hard Mode Flashpoints(level 50) Blue-Black comes from Republic Rakata Gear(raid quality) Red-Black is from Empire Rakata Gear Green-Black, not sure how to get it, there are tons on the GTN. Purple-Black, I knew someone who got it from Nightmare Denova, only seen it once ever Cyan is from Republic Columi stuff Orange-Black is also from Denova bosses Magenta is really hard to get, a big hassle

Anything but Arsenal for pvp.

Class: Dancer Faction: Empire Starting Planet: Hutta AC: Holodancer, Live Dancer Role: Tank/DPS(Holodancer), Heals/DPS (Live Dancer) Holodancer: Distracts enemies who can't stop staring and clapping at the seductive holodancer, but anyone who gets to close will be shocked by the energy field surrounding the platform emitting the holo. Live Dancer: Uses many traditional dances to bring health to her friends, like a Kolto Rain Dance and the Twi'Lek Party Dance to aid her friends in destroying their enemies, but she/he also gets deadly dances like the Sith Mating Ritual and the Wookiee War Dance to destroy her foes. Armor: Light Weapons: Electrostaff, Vibrosword(live dancer), none(holodancer) Primary Stat: Cunning VO'd by: Male-Clive Owen, Female- Cameron Diaz Story: Prologue:You start out as one of Nemro's best dancers, but you are cornered by some thugs who want more than just their standard dance so you kill them. But they turned out to be part of a big gang on Hutta, so fearing for your life you run across Hutta seeking protection in the weirdest places (The Rust Yards, a shack in Jigguna, An EvociI tent)but the gangsters still find you, until a man named Bodyguard (your first companion, Ranged Tank) approaches you before you go to hide in Fathra's palace, then, in desperation to get away, you go to the worst planet you can think of, Dromund Kaas. After several near run ins with the Hutta Gangster's Imperial Associates, you continue hiding in strange places, until you hear that the famous dance troupe, The Starlight Entertainers, are hosting auditions in the Dark Temple!!! You venture there and find that the manager, Sib Burool, is auditioning your future partner, Syn Lekla (Healer Companion, Female Twi'Lek Dancer) and she has no dance partner, so she needs your help so that you can both be part of the Starlight Entertainers, the prologue ends as you receive your ship, the Starlight Entertainers luxury transport and you head for Balmora, some Imperial Officer has hired your troupe to entertain his company. Acts I-III: All about entertaining various groups, but being violated and killing your clients and then hiding. Sib Burool is the final story boss when you reveal your plans to start your own dance troupe with all of his dancers.

There should probably be a training room type thing with some training dummies or holographic gangsters or something that you could test out an Advanced Class, but it would also give you temporary use of some abilities of the class, an option below the choices to inspect or select a class could be a Test button that teleports you to, for example the Operative training room, where you can sneak around and backstab holographic swoop gang members, heal wounded Imperial Troops and you would have a handful of the generic Operative abilities to allow you to do this, but you could also go to the sniper training room, where you could be in a long hallway type place where you could test out the increased range you gain as a sniper and use the interrogation probe, and use some other sniper abilities. You just stay in as long as you need to to get the idea of what the class does as well as get a preference for which advanced class you like to play more, instead of just going off of what the description describes.

Pyro is far better for PvP than the AP, I think AP is about on par with Pyro for PvE, but I'm not sure, don't do FP's or Ops with dps Powertechs much. Tanking Powertechs are great for PvE from my experiences, not sure about PvE. If you roll a merc, Arsenal is the way to go for PvE dps, but they are the worst class for PvP from my experiences.

Why are you now referring to the new animation as a bug? The old animation just looked dorky, I understood it but I looked weird leaning forwards all the time. It makes much more sense to have one of the most used and spamable abilities a wrist rocket, and your infrequently used ubermissile (like fusion missile, big AoE DoT missile) would be fired from you backpack which may or may not exist depending on your armor. I honestly don't want to be firing missiles from my back all the time and looking like I'm hauling a cannon on my back. I could understand HSM being a back missile because your firing like four freaking missiles, but Tracer Missile, an arsenal merc's main spam ability would just look stupid in its old animation, and dose anyone really want to spend an entire fight leaned over like a dork?

I consider the Twi'lek a republic race because the only imp class they can be is the SI and I have never seen a Twi'lek SI ever, but they can be any republic class other than the trooper, so I tend to think of them as a republic race.

I thought it was social gear when I first saw it, so I planned on making a IA sniper trooper guy, but when I looked up how to get it, my hopes were crushed by finding out that it was only available to people who bought the CE, I agree that it should be easier to obtain.

There should be dual spec, I would like to have a more convenient way to swap to healer from DPS when a group needs me to.

She is evil, and really really bad at being evil. She can't do anything and I loved killing her and keeping her locked in a prison, regardless for my character's morality.

Imperial Agent(nearly done): Best story by far and the only story where I saw some unexpected plot twists, haven't finished yet but Ive been grinding through nonstop. 10/10 Bounty Hunter: A decent story, Chapter one was the best by far, but the story degrades at Chapter three pretty drastically and the ending was dumb imo, no real surprises, very poor method of tying the hunter to the empire. 7.5/10 Jedi Knight(Act 1 early): So far, the story is pretty good, but the characters are lackluster and the Prologue felt rushed. 7/10 so far Sith Inquisitor: Horrible, I cried it was so bad. Chapter one was horrendous (and it was the best), it felt like I was going to a planet to fetch something that I should have no trouble getting to with the help of some bro, but the bro wants me to solve every little problem they have so they can help, the companions have no reason to be with you, they are dull and one dimensional and the story is just plain bad. 2/10 Jedi Consular(Early Act 1): Was really boring, deleted my consular in the middle of Taris, was just to boring to play I had to try to not fall asleep, but at least it wasn't outright terrible, just slow and boring. 3/10

This quest was insanely hard for me, just undo-able. I needed to get someone else to help me kill the damn thing.

I had the same problem, you just need to turn off all her offensive abilities, especially her CC lighting bolt thingy, ive died so many times because she sits there stunning a weak enemy instead of healing or stunning the strong guy.

I never liked the cathar, they always seemed way too lame. Imo more traditional races should be playable like the Togruta or Nautolan. Its just that cat people really don't appeal to me and I hope that they are not the only new playable race.

I had some trouble with him too, had to get a guildmate to come and help me.

BH story was the first I played so I thought it was good then, but after experiencing the IA story, I would say that the BH story is merely ok. I disliked the prologue, Chapter one was decent, Chapter two was so-so, Chapter three was horrible in my opinion, feels like they just had it to tie the BH to the Empire, forever blocking the idea of a BH that works for the empire or republic. Imo the BH story really starts to rapidly degrade after or during Hoth

A kill with a Merc where I don't get stunned or interrupted.

Imp Hoth and Imp Tat were my faves Least favorite was Nar Shadda, story was ok but the planet itself is horrible.

On my server its Human, Chiss, Zabrak, Sith, Borg, Rattataki, Twilek

Gault just plays and constantly beats Torian and Mako at Pazzak through countless cheating methods. Blizz spends time building things, inspecting the ship or thinking of ways to upgrade/scavenge 2VR8. Torian either communicates with the rest of the Caderas, cooks traditional mandalorian food (he has his own cooking show on the holonet, he keeps it secret to the rest of the crew, finding ways to block Mako's implant from receiving his signal) or plans hunting trips when he is not losing to Gault at Pazzak. Mako surfs the holonet watching her favorite videos of random creatures doing random things (ex. a singing womp rat). Skadge has no life and he sits in the corner and imagines sadistic things he could do to the rest of the crew, most of the others leave him alone, giving him full access to the sleeping quarters. 2VR8 paints my quarters, plans new meal plans(much to Torian's disdain), cleans the sublight drives and occasionally takes breaks to use his superior robot brain to crush everyone at Pazzak(the bounty hunter often finds 2V mysteriously disabled when he returns from wherever).

Sweeping blasters is a joke AOE, you should not use it, its supposed to suck. It has no cooldown, but a tiny area and a low damage compared to the other AOE like Death from Above(what you should be using instead of Sweeping Blasters) and Flame Thrower