For either class, try to use Explosive Dart or Death from Above on groups, it's strong and relatively cheap. For single target use a combination of Powertech: Flame Burst / Rocket Punch / Free attack (forgot the name) or Mercanary: Power Shot / Unload / Free attack in the very early levels until your spec builds up to a rotation. A big downside in my opinion with the Mercanary early on is abilitiy pushback, it's horrible! Another thing, never push yourself in too much heat when 'Vent Heat' is on recharge, unlike Force classes tech-classes work with a mechanic that if your resources get low they also regenerate slower. Also remember Mako deals less damage than a Tank companion such as Qyzen/Khem Val, and ofcourse even less than a DPS companion, though she should be alright at keeping you up.

You shouldn't ask yourself the question whether you're bad or good. You should ask yourself the question whether you did all you could and look at how you can improve (even the people that are under the impression they're gods gift to the game should look at how they can improve.) It's all you can do. Level always has something to do with it, where-as later gear will. A good level 30 will beat a bad level 54, sure. But assuming everyone is equally skilled you simply miss out on abilities and skilltree points. I also wouldn't worry about those people that can top damage in warzones at lower levels. I remember my Powertech and Vanguard non-stop topping the damage at level 10 before brackets were introduced. It's not because I contributed a lot to the warzone, it was because damage was all I could use my global cooldowns on. I couldn't AoE stun, I couldn't pull, I didn't have to focus on taunting the right targets, I would die in seconds solo-defending etc. All I had to do was 1 button and kill or interrupt node-capping people with damage. (Take the 1 button with a grain of salt.) It impressed people sure, but realisticly I didn't do much. (In before hate, it's great XP..)

Currently crafters can make up to 72 gear, how-ever to get the schematic you need to reverse engineer a 72 piece and get lucky, the materials are expensive aswell. Any crafter can buy the trainer schematics for level 53 gear and reverse up until purple, the purples are entry level for story mode Operations. How-ever (in case your wallet isn't too big) I would recommend against purchasing too much, since certain pieces (augments) can only be crafted/purchased from other players, you want to save a penny. Commendation armor does NOT have a setbonus, for the setbonus you need to raid (PvP gear and the old campaign armorings (61) being the sole exceptions.) Steps into endgame: 1. Dailies (read: Section X, CZ-198, Makeb and Oricon) these reward basic commendations for 69 gear (crafted gear is 66) and on top of that certain quests (CZ-198 weekly, Oricon story-line) reward a full piece (armouring/mod/enhancement) of 66 gear. (Due to this those pieces can be rather cheap on the GTN.) Dailies can be done solo except for certain heroics. 2. Combination of Story-mode and Classic Operations and possibly some HM Flashpoints. Classic Operation runs are really easy and reward tokens for 72 (and 78) gear, careful for Explosive Conflicts though, that one is tough if people mess up tactic. Story-mode Terror From Beyond, Scum and Villainy (both on Fleet) Dread Fortress and Dread Palace (both on Oricon, finish the story-line) drops 69 gear with setbonus. Another option is Toborro's Courtyard, this is an instanced World Boss (meaning no nasty respawn times) which for the time spend rewards quite a few tokens (72 and 78 gear) aswell. Hard Mode Flashpoints give tokens for 72 gear and the weekly for 78 gear, on top of that it drops (bad) 69 gear. Czerka Meltdown has Arkanian Implants. All operations are ment for groups of 8 or 16 (16 has better or atleast double rewards) Hence you likely want to find a guild to help you out and progress HM and NiM with. The only realistic expectations on solo endgame are grinding dailies over and over. Every Flashpoint, Heroic and Operations are made to do with a group of people. The priority transports are in my opinion a waste of money. Outlaw's Den is a PvP area but due to lack of rewards it's generally deserted. All the daily area's can be accessed through a terminal at the fleet infront of every class' shiphanger. (Once the appropriate level or cutscene (Makeb/Oricon) is reached.) All Operations except: Dread Palace and Dread Fortress are accessed on the fleet (mission departures > interfleet transport > Zoist Shadow/Grav Daragon) Toborro's is found on Makeb. If you feel like looking up tactics I highly recommend: http://dulfy.net/category/swtor/operations/ (PS it's easier to google the name of the operations and include Dulfy if you enjoy her guides.) Or for any explaination of classes/roles/spec the class-forums are very helpful. Have fun in the game!

I've got a few questions regarding gear: - What are the best Relics for PvP (once the Serendipitous bug is fixed) for a Sawbones and for a Scrapper? (If they're different relics, is there a huge difference?) - I want to run 2 PvE setbonus and 2 PvP setbonus for both Sawbones (15% on Kolto Cloud) and with Scrappper (15% increased Critical chance on Backblast) mixed with one of the PvP setbonusses (currently using 10% more on defensive screen, for DPS I doubt between that one and XS-Flyby duration.) Stat-wise it makes a small difference and Bolster puts my expertise at max (using 61 armouring, 66 mod, 66 enhancement.) but does Bolster affect my stats when in a warzone making the PvE-piece worse? If so should I run a full PvP-set instead of favouring a (in my opinion) better setbonus? - I'm currently full Power with a mix of Surge (70.77%) and Alacrity (5.61%) and enjoying it, but I was wondering if anyone did the math on what would be optimal? Middle question I'm very desperate for an answer. Some people do the same as me and others get upset I run with 2 PvE pieces. Thank you in advance!

Worthwhile... It's not that much + total stats. If I recall correctly it's 40 per main-stat and 50 Endurance and Presence (Makeb) which is less than 2 Augments. The matrix cube isn't best in slot for PvE and even for PvP I believe the new Tier makes Matrix Cubes sub optimal (still, not a bad fill.) So it's up to you. I'm going for all the datacrons on all my toons just to have it, but it's just a 'every little bit helps' thought. For me it takes about 2-3h per toon, only doing Endurance, Presence, Matrix Cubes (sometimes) and Cunning/Aim for tech users, Willpower/Strenght for Force-users. Besides a few annoying ones they don't take too long. Except the fleet one, that's a pain. I must admit I'm still hoping to run into some people selling a pull up to that one for my Rep toons. I also heard a lot of people struggle with the endurance one in Makeb, it's a long one but I didn't find the jumps too difficult. I highly recommend having youtube video's help you out if you do decide to go for it (I highly recommend Ayinmaiden/Ruin gaming, very clear guides without too much time wasted.)

Yes it does. (See above or the rest of the post.) No he didn't, he was talking about tanking benefits which is a balance of creating enough threat and survivability / requiring as little healing as possible. Yes, they do. (As shield specialist which the post clearly stated.) Shoulder Cannon costs no ammo and is off Global Cooldown so it doesn't cost a precious Global Cooldown either. Quoted! Quality, more please!

Every type (rTank, mTank, mDPS, rDPS, Healer) of companion gives a permanent stat boosts once you finished all conversations with that companion (just getting 10k affection won't be enough but max affection and story progression unlocks the conversations.) This boosts is account wide and does not stack with more companions of that type. (Say you maxed out JK's companion Kira and then max out JC's companion Nadia you will only get the 1% increase once, the +10 presence stacks.) The boosts can be found in the legacy panel, if I recall correctly they are: 1% HP, 1% Accuracy, 1% Critical, 1% Surge or something. 1% might sound like nothing, but every bit helps, I highly recommend doing it! (PS you can easily get up to 6k affection buying the t1 and t2 green gifts from the vendor in the GTN section, leaving only 3-4k to unlock all the conversations.)

Optimized gear (more or less) always beats the tier below it. Whether the Partisan was sufficient you can easily judge by now, no? ^^

If it starts out with polite advise I don't see any issue to be fair. That and I heard you guard nodes, therefor you must be amazing.

More please! In all seriousness. You claim to be a person that is good, can take critism and are completely sure in these cases you did nothing wrong. Then live up to this and learn to ignore those petty remarks made by (I quote) arrogant morons. But instead you decide to react extremely insecure. (Bringing it to local, later-on to the forums) On top of that you seem to value to scoreboard as much as they do, why? Surely you understand that getting a reaction is exactly what they want, hence he decided to attack you personally. Best you can do is simply ignore what they're saying unless it's relevant to the match and move on to your next match. But instead you went to local chat and now the forums to look for support (and I give it to you, yes it works.) Bet you brought the biggest smirk to his face if he happens to come across this post. Now stop letting people bring you down like this and enjoy the game like you should!

Nano-versions are available (just reverse engineer for purple) for adrenals and if I recall correctly Surgical Medpac is the best medpac, also reverse-able for blue and then purple (reuseable.) I do know some tanks prefer the Rakata Absorb adrenal for tanks due to the plain damage mitigation vs shield/absorb, but the other Nano-infused are simply a better version of the Rakata's.

I can confirm that, collections is only for Cartel items (and pre-order/promotional stuff) though Cartel Market has very similar skins so it might be better to aim for one of those (Cartel gear gets sold a lot on the GTN.)

Up the rewards and watch the next post of people complaining PvE-geared people enter ranked solo-queue to farm gear. To be fair I'm suprised they reward so much, but I'll be a good little nub and farm a decent optimized set before solo-queueing.

Hey welcome back to the game. I hope you find what you're looking for but I think you have a better chance if you post the server you're on and maybe check out the server-forums for guilds that are recruiting or a LF-guild post there. Anyway welcome back and have fun in the game!

The second one is stunning! Where was it? (First post btw ^^) And from all the bosses to have a Wallpaper of you pick him? ^^ Atleast it's not SoA.

1. The two sets is to make sure no-one complains they took away the Juggernauts DPS-gear (for those not realising it's now adeptive.) 2. The adeptive gear is likely not a result of laziness but to allow people to wear any skin they like, just like the CM works. Why you'd want to new skins I'll never understand, but some people like them. 3. You are forced to wear critical and alacrity gear so you will farm more pieces/do more raids to optimize your gear so you will be busy for a longer period of time before you feel there's nothing left to do in the game (and thus unsub.) Similar reasons is why the optimal pieces are over-all only available in raids (adept/initiative enhancements and setbonus pieces in case of a DPS) since RNG on top of optimization requires even more time (unless you're lucky ofcourse, but where 1 person is lucky, 7 aren't.) Welcome to subscription based MMO's.

A bit late but if you're struggling getting in enough experience solo try to keep your quests yellow for optimal experience without too much of a challange in the quest itself and keep your eyes open for anything that's a quest. Bonus series for example are more or less a must if leveling with quests only. With just quests and side-quests I can generate enough experience to comfortably get to level 55. In case you really don't like to team up. (100% soloist makes me assume no heroics or FPs either, my apologies if that's incorrect!) I'd also recommend to not rush it too much if you enjoy solo content, at level 55 you'll get bored easily, then again I can understand the 'it's a challange to do it as fast as possible' My fastest toon has still been non-stop flashpoints (with 1 other person, same level, so I never struggled with slow groups or unexperienced players, not because I didn't want to play with others but my leveling partner did.) Another toon with only PvP went a bit slow at the end, but if you do the right quests in between the queue times it's likely a lot faster, I never even got that toon to her ship. I got undergeared easily (considering my companion was important aswell) with just doing the FPs where-as PvP is a guaranteed reward. The OPs method is solid, semi-optimal, but far from neccesary. In the end 1 hour spend enjoying what you do always beats 1 minute spend doing something you dislike. That being said, time to convince someone to run the same boring flashpoints over and over with me and that before level 55!

Quite sure unless you post a work in progress you can't save it in any way. I recommend either making a [WIP] Guide to Credits (for example) to let people know it's a work in progress, You can ofcourse always copy-past whatever you wrote to a document (word, notepad, etc) or the other way around if you prefer people only seeing the finished result. Goodluck with your writing, can't wait for the result!

All crewskills (including Artfice) can be leveled by purchasing schematics from the crewskill trader (the one that thought you the crewskill) be sure to scroll through the schematics to find an orange (yellow is ok too.. but preferably orange) to level up with the least resources spend. An example would be Might/Resolve hilt 5.

I've never heard of people encountering this problem during the main questline so it's difficult to suggest things but you could: Look if there's any way around venturing into PvP area's, be it by a longer route or a different searching place. Try to do the really tough ones during a less active hour if you ever have the chance. Ask guildies/friends for a group, it won't save you from groups (maybe) but will discourage the lonewolfs. It's all I can think off. I play mainly on a PvP server so I have no clue (besides Outlaw Den and Ilum) where the PvP areas would start or anything. I understand your frustration however, shouldn't be forced to 'PvP' (if we can call ganking PvP) on a PvE server.

You included: Rogun: "So what about it, Captain, you know how to say; I'm sorry?" Smuggler: "I'm so, sorr, I'm... So incredibly goodlooking. Nope, can't." Instant win!

The way I've heard the word Scrapper been used: Scrapping - Fighting with the fist (sucker punch) Scrapper - Someone easily getting into fight Scrapper - Someone you easily underestimate but holds it's own in fights (might be more streettalk?) All of this does not fit Dirty Fighting if you remember it's also a gunslingers spec. ^^ It does all fit an aggressive Scoundrel. Hmm I wanna play Scoundrel as DPS now.

What Bobafaceroll said. We already work with the same energy system, just different ways of managing it. We rely solely on not casting too much and loads of hammer shotting / supercharged cells to stay at positive levels. For fights with constant equal damage, great, but anything with bursty phases and sleepy phases, not so fun. What the OP (and me) are afraid of is that we'll get hammer shots changed into a more or less diagnostic scan. This sounds like a wonderful idea to me if it works something like a cells-over-time (like cell-charger with armour-piercing cell) it promotes using super-charged cell more or less whenever it's up (unless a mechanic goes from loads of healing to almost none.) yet without resource management being too easy (this is how Scoundrel feels to me, even in PvP I have to struggle to get out of energy before coolhead is back up) If it's not cells-over-time but straight on X cells restored I'm worried it will be too much like a Recharge Cells every so many seconds. To me Scoundrel felt like it was in a good place in 1.7. The resource management was definitly there and less Slow-release medpacs flying around, but it was relatively solid aslong as you scanned as much as you could afford in between. I found a good Scoundrel really stood out from a bad one and I hope we can get all healers to such a point. But I do fear you're right. It's an easier fix than a complete overhaul. On the other hand certain other aspects need to be viewed aswell, mainly PvP survivability. Though same goes for Sage. Currently nothing is hold it's own as easily as Scoundrel, though a good team can support a good Sage/Commando. We can only hope. To be fair I feel the Shadow update will make Tanks more and more similar. Maybe the same will go for healers.

Just ask on the class forums like you did here. Want to know a rotatation/priority? Ask. Want to know what gear people use? Ask. Some guides are outdated but with the right questions you generally get quite far (like you did this time!) Enough people are all to eager to help! As for healing around you level. For a while you'll rely on Advanced Medical Probe followed by Medical Probe (at ~level 27 Advanced Medical Probe reduces the cost of Medical Probe so I recommend learning to use them in this order) and Kolto Bomb (level 20, skill trainer ability if I recall correctly) are your only heals and you use Combat Support Cell to use Hammer Shots on allies when they aren't in need of big heals. At some point (~35) Advanced Medical Probe also gets a healing over time and armourbuff attached to it. Helping immensely. Always try to keep your cells around 70-80% how-ever don't feel too bad if you drop and have to use Recharge Cells, it gets easier, especially at level 27 and at level 45 you get a small but free heal, once again improving your resource management. I played as the following at lower levels: - Maintain Trauma Probe (~level 36) - Hammer Shots whenever no-one is in serious need of healing - Advanced Medical Probe (prioritize the Tank) followed by Medical Probe for bigger heals - Kolto Bomb for the Kolto Residue (~level 25) and a small AoE heal, leaves an AoE healing over time (small but strong) once specced. - Supercharged Cells when you see fit. (~level 20) (Note: I use Supercharged Cell almost whenever, for energy management or to top everyone up.) The levels in brackets are the level you generally are able to spec into the effects if you go full medic. Goodluck!

I don't think anyone has done the math on how a companion works optimally so I gear him the same as I gear all my healers. Full power until (critical is fixed atleast, too heavy diminishing returns) and a nice mix between Surge and Alacrity (depending on availability) Making my preffered modifications: Skill Armouring XX Artful Mod XX (unlettered) Quick Savant/Adapt Enhancement XX XX being the highest number you can get. How-ever I wouldn't do a big overhaul if it will cost you a lot of credits/effort. Overall HPS from companions is relatively low (compared to a player or even Treek) and increasing their gear won't suddently make them godlike (ofcourse it does help.) Happy gaming!