When it is uneven teams why don't they just slow down the higher pops team's spawn rate (ie increase door times)?

I'm pretty new to the ops too, I'm only level 20 so maybe this advice is newb but I am ruining the content typically 3-4 levels above myself. I am concealment and here is my priority. Regular mobs: Kaliyo attacks > Back Stab > Stim Boost* > Carbine/Lacerate* > Shiv > Frag/Overload > Rifle Shot Strong+: Back Stab > Corrosive Dart > Stim Boost* > Carbine/Lacerate* > Shiv > Frag/Overload Shot > Rifle Shot With strongs+ I usually start the attack from stealth, so I soak up a bit of damage before Kaliyo starts tanking. With regulars it easier for her to just attack, do about 3 groups and dismiss her and resummon her. Obviously Stim Boost and Carbine/Lacerate are only popping when TAs are available. I use the AE skills when I'm fighting multiples. And since this is a priority I just run through a macro except for Corrosive Dart which I manually apply. I don't us CD on regular mobs because they just die too fast for it to get close to the end. As far as gear, I picked up an Orange rifle from Black Talon and I just keep it modded up and i try and keep Kaliyo's gun, chest and legs as up to date as possible. I also try and focus on Droid content since we have a droid mez and I am armstech.

Try a different strategy, maybe even look one up Level to 50, buy pvp gear Pay 100k Identify why you can both "care" about community and leveled to 49 but have no friends Make sure you have a valid spec Ragequit

Isn't increasing your defense by 2% worth it?

Yeah, its a good place to start, a lot of my companions (especially the ones I don't use much) still have that gear. You can start piecing in orange + purp mods/purps afterwards.

I'm pretty sure the 550v is better than my 310m and we have a similar processor. I think he can get a lot more performance out of it with some tweaks.

I saw this in The Prestige, there were two Marauders...don't over think it, before you know it it will turn into a PVP rage obsession and it will lead to you soliciting David Bowie's expertise to judge a fashion walk off that won't end well for you...maybe that was a different movie.

I have an older laptop with 1st gen i5 dual core and a POS 310m graphics card but I can get 25-40+fps by doing a few things. I also have AA and some of the graphics on high. Run 800 x 600 resolution (this one is HUGE for performance, I see a lot of people trying to run at 1080p and having performance issues) Turn grass and the other slider next to it to 0 in the Graphics Preferences (this was the second biggest) Force SWTOR to run under NVidia graphics rather than try and run as Intel 3000HD graphics (this was the biggest, but such a no brainer, no idea why my system tried to default to CPU graphics the first few times I played) Run in full screen rather than windowed mode (this was 10fps itself, you'll notice in the above linked that some people argue that running full screen turns off windows Aereo itself, ymmv) Run SWTOR as Admin Run win compatibility mode for XP SP3 Stop the Steam32.exe process before startup (if you have steam that is, I dunno why but it seems to cause conflicts and hitching a little more) Downloaded the most recent drivers and made sure I had DX9 so that DX10 wasn't doing emulation That all being said, I still hitch/stutter every once in a while, my load times are huge and the game certainly isn't super pretty at 800 x 600 (though AA on high helps a lot). To get what i felt was decent performance I tried each graphics setting individually and noted the FPS change with my character both staring at a wall and a more congested area. Then i found a balance on the looks of the game and the performance, again ymmv and no we shouldn't have to do this for a game, but alas... Things I haven't tried that might work for you. Ramdisk http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=394951 Overclock your CPU since this game is very CPU dependent Get a SSD or RAID HD config Best wishes.

I think you guys were all higher level than the content, you could have just given it a shot. The third pull has two elites, two strongs and some trash, you would have gotten a good sense if you could finish it up pretty quick.

Personally I love the companions. Your shadow get's two lame ones right away though...Most people don't mind Tharan because he is a healer but he's pretty boring. On Belsavis you get Nadia though too bad that is lvl 43+. However if you let your companion die it shouldn't pop back up until you resummon him or change planets.

Leveling is easy, just like it is with any class. As usual I advocate against using your healing companion for standard content. It makes the game trivial and boring and you can get too lazy with your skills.

I disagree, the increase of force from 100 to 110 is useless other than the initial burst (and even then how valuable is it really?), after that the 10 points is useless.

This is pretty cool (though wouldn't it be better to drop dark ward and maybe one point from endurance to get 4% defense in lightning reflexes?) . I can definitely see how the 18 point investment for the 30% force regen is going to really help with DPS, would this be viable for a Deception hybrid too?

As what others said, 10 levels above is the easy mode sweet spot. I duo'd Red Reaper last night with a lvl 45 buddy and me being lvl 50. I wouldn't say it was easy mode but it wasn't stressful either. So if you plan on duoing make sure someone is about 5 levels above the content. Also as was brought out, unless you are gearing Xalek a lot of the drops will be light armor which isn't super useful. If you are level 50 you can get a nice starter set for a companion by buying the PVP set and this will give your under-geared (non-droid) comps a good starting place.

Agreed, I pepper in Thrash when I am getting close to capping force. Otherwise I just Shock >> Wither >> Attack until I have 3 HDs. When you first open it makes sense to Shock, Wither, Thrash, but after the initial volley I don't use Thrash for another rotation or two when my force starts getting high. Losing the energize procs sucks but I get more healing and (it feels like, I should really use a parser...) more shocks (but less crits from less energize procs).

Since its a bit of a FOTM class atm, you get focused on a bit more more. I am also in my 20's and when I queue I notice I die a lot when i compare it to my PVP experience of my other characters. Also my damage isn't spectacular (mainly because i am spending more time running back to the fight than fighting) but it is a fun class. Finally, you are coming from a pretty tough class with a lot of tools (especially if you play tankasin like I do).

I get where you are coming from but if you want to make a suggestion that makes an impact you'll need to know more about the class than you currently do. Basically you're trying to take a hard road of convincing BW to do something they aren't but you haven't done your homework...basically not a recipe for success.

I'd like anyone who doesn't have 1 minute or more loading screens to post their spec. I'm commonly at 5 minutes. I don't have a great Laptop; i5 cpu (2 core), 310m Nvidia graphics card, 4gb of ram, 5400 rpm HDD. I keep my system clean, defragged and I use soluto to keep the running tasks down. I have to play on 1024 x 768, everything low or off to get around 30fps and my load times suck, yet I can run DCU on medium with 40+fps.

I'm really enjoying SWTOR but sometimes it lacks some of the emotion I've gotten from other games. EQ1-Velius: Three faction war that involved multiple zones with each faction being different. Zones were dangerous and staying alive was not only hard but it mattered. This expansion has some of my fondest gaming memories. EQ1-Epic weapons: Epic weapons made you feel so BA Baracus, taking months to get a single item and said item actually being worth it was AMAZING. EQ1-Plan of Hate/Sky (pre-Pop planes): Going there made you feel like a real adventurer, death was always around the corner and the rewards were amazing. I rarely feel this way in a game anymore. WoW-Alterac Valley: There are probably some haters, but mixing NPCs with PVP was great. Having non-combat collection missions inside the battle was great. Having sumnonable world bosses was AWESOME.

Agreed, looks matter.

Agreed, I'd love to re-watch "my story". This is a brilliant idea, BIO make this a legacy unlock plzzzz!!!!

The only purpose for level limits on un-modded orange gear is to "lock/unlock" specific looks. I'm not sure if that was the goal or this is an un-expected consequence of adding orange craftable gear.

I'd like to just bring 3 of my companions for 4-man content!

A lot of classes chose to use their healer companion and there is no "best outcome". I fell into this trap too on some of my characters and it took a long time to get out of it. My tip is skip easy/slow-mo with a healer and go DPS or tank comps. Yes you have to heal after the fight but they are much more fun and faster. Healers are for champions that you can't kite, don't hop on the boring train just because it's safe.

I like when I see someone circle-strafing PVE content... Even better when they try to add "jukes" to their strafing...