Totally. The orange gear is going to be the bread and butter, TBH. Lots of people want to customize, or may for a while, then switch back. I could see myself having one of every set of orange gear so that I could redo my look whenever I wanted. Of course, I'm an aesthetics whore....

Totally agree. Now, the big concern for me is that it sounds like the basic, green rarity items also require raid mats to make. This would be a horrible mistake if true. If it's not true, then we're good, though Mr. Undef's suggestion would be better. /signed

I'd just like to point out that you would actually be *gaining* 37 armor. Not saying that the parity is somehow restored by that, but just thought we should be accurate.

I don't want to say you don't have a point, but looking at it from the perspective of the people trying to keep making money by keeping more people subscribed to the game you can see why they will never decouple raiding from crafting as you suggest: Way more people play the game for "end-game" content than play simply to enjoy crafting. And really, splitting it in that binary of a fashion is inaccurate anyway. Many people enjoy both. Now, if I can invest even significant amounts of time, say twice as much as I might invest in downing a single Operations boss, in order to get a raid drop equivalent crafted item made, where is the incentive to go raiding? I'll kill bosses and then be done with them. Once I've downed the last boss in the Eternity Vault, I will never set foot in there again. Why risk the perils of RNG on drops when I can simply have a crafter (who can now be level 1, since the materials he needs are not tied to anything level relevant) whip up a new chest piece that is just as effective? By allowing crafters to make equivalent items to raid drops without setting foot in raids, you will severely diminish the amount of participation in raid content. I would argue that the bigger problem is that it sounds like top tier crafted gear *ALL* requires raid drops. I like how they handled it in WoW where there was heroic instance (flashpoint) equivalent gear that could be crafted, but raid drops were a step above that. PvP gear needs to be equally time consuming to get so that it isn't viewed as "the easy alternative" to crafted or raid gear. These things must all be carefully balanced. From what I'm hearing, either that hasn't happened, or people are not being able to easily distinguish quality of various gear sets.

Although, I'm shocked at how many solid survivability choices are built into the Vigilance tree to get you to Overhead Strike. Making Force Sweep free, getting solid damage reduction after Force Leap... these are not bad options in terms of survivability. The only issue I can see with the Hybrid build is single boss fights where you might not be bouncing around as much, though I suspect you would just bounce around as CDs permit regardless of the need...

Granted, I haven't started playing my vanguard yet (one of my first alts, though, to be sure!), but I feel like the synergy between Focused Impact and Brutal Impact makes skipping Brutal Impact, as you have, somewhat detrimental. Additionally, and this may be moot, since I haven't seen much of group play in the 30-50 range, but skipping a skill that gives +3% Endurance seems like a poor choice for higher levels. Again, perhaps this makes a ton more sense for people who are already playing this class and getting into the higher level content, but would you mind going into some of the reasons for those choices? Many thanks!

Also a Level 27 Seer, and it's been a great experience. It's actually pretty straight-forward, though you do have to focus on two things (damage output and healing) instead of just nuking. But, what I really like about the viability of this strategy is that I'm getting to practice the style of play that I use in Flashpoints and will eventually use in Operations. Even when soloing, I'm building relevant muscle memory and reflexes. It's a great idea on Bioware's part.