Hello all, I'm a MMO Vet, semi-new to SWTOR (played at the start but then quit up until 2 weeks ago) that is looking to get into raiding (ops). I have over 400 days in-game /played in WoW across all my characters, and killed Illidan/KT/Vashj pre-nerf and KJ post-nerf in BC, and did all the hardmodes except firefighter in Ulduar pre-nerf. I have a lot of other raiding experience, but BC & Ulduar are the only ones I'm proud of, and can give the others on request. I've raided on every class, as every spec, in WoW at some point, so I know the ins and outs of everything in a MMORPG raid. I can raid at any time, and can play any class if the need arises. I prefer a 2-3 night a week raiding guild, 1 night is fine if we go 4+ hours.

I have pretty much all I can get with my basic comms. With the Ziost gear it was pretty easy to get all the pieces. So SM FPs do nothing for me. People still say I need the augments to do HM FPs.

Well, I've just never had this type of system forced on me in an MMO before. It's worse than WoW dailies because you simply HAVE to do them, or buy CC and sell stuff that way to make easy credits... Maybe I could stomach doing dailies if I had not done them so extensively in WoW. Probably did over 50,000 dailies total in my time in that game, once MoP came out over there I said no more and refused to do them. I wasn't hindered from that though, gems and consumables were fairly cheap in comparison to augments over here. 10k credits per daily means I would have to do 30 dallies (assuming 300k is a correct number, might be a little higher) just for one augment in a piece of gear that I will replace fairly quickly, which means I would have to do another 30 for the replacement piece, and so on. Meh, oh well, I guess I'll just quit, don't really feel like having to do all of that for every character that I want (I'm an altoholic).

So I was happy to hit 60 yesterday, my first one. First HM FP I went into went flawlessly, I am a tank and I didn't know what to do, but I am a MMO vet so all the mechanics were simple enough. The healer kept me up just fine. After that one run I've had 3 failures, and it's extremely discouraging. Not because I've died, but because they inspect me. Everyone tells me "you shouldn't be tanking in that gear" It's just all the gear that was given to me up to and including Ziost plus the basic comm items to fill in the stuff that Ziost didn't give me. I also re-augmented my weapon. The problem with this is, I found out it's like 300k credits per item to augment, needless to say, I don't have that much, and with the amount that dailies give I would have to farm dailies for a week to augment gear that I'm going to replace quickly anyway... starting the cycle over again, trapping me in an endless pit of dailies. What should I do? I just want to run dungeons and stuff... it's why I'm playing the game, I have no problem in any other MMO starting off, but this one it seems people will scream bloody murder if you don't have fully augmented gear (again, 300k+ per piece). It kinda makes me sad to feel so... lowly... and talked down to in the groups that I join just because I can't afford the augments, compared to other MMOs where I've been in cutting edge raiding guilds (top 200 US in WoW for 2 years, and a top progress guild in FF14/Rift).

Looked up a video of a Commando and it looks interesting. How are their heals? Are they good enough to not get kicked from HM ops?

I have over 400 days /played on WoW, so I definitely don't need anything to "ease me in" or anything like that. I'm just looking for a class that is very good at DPS and mobility in PVE. I have a lot of fun with "agile" classes, ranged or melee. A bonus would be that the class has an offspec tank/heal spec that is also very effective. I just don't want to make the mistake of making a class that will get me kicked from hard mode raids, since that is my goal.