<Cynical> is actively recruiting again after losing a few of our core raiders to other games and real life commitments. We are a mature somewhat casual Imperial guild, focused on having fun while progression raiding. We are currently 5/5 TFB HM and 7/7 S&V HM. Just starting to dip our feet into TFB/S&V NiM but needing a few more solid raid team members that we can rely on regularly to make some decent progression. We would ideally like a few more bodies to flesh out our two teams and perhaps a third, though with enough people putting together a 16-man progression team would not be out of the realm of possibility. Right now we currently field two 8-man raid teams, first being Sun/Mon, second being Tue/Wed, both from 9:00-11:30PM Eastern time. We would definitely be interested in recruiting anyone with solid raid experience either in SWTOR or other games. Anyone who is able to follow directions, put some time and effort into gearing their toons and mastering their class/role. Also open to potential guild mergers with like-minded guilds or package deals of friends who are on or near the same progression level and may be experiencing raid attendance/progression roadblocks. Please stop by our website to fill out an application if interested. (Yes, application is required so we can weed out the stupid) Feel free to contact myself (Opioid/Boriz/Amidora/Morphice) or Lute (Lutese/Luteze/Lutece or some other derivation of Lute) in game with any questions. If neither of us are on, any of our guild members should be able to track us down and/or answer questions. Thanks!

It's always a very small percentage of the community that is organized and dedicated enough to invest the time and effort into end-game content. I wouldn't expect anyone from Bioware to respond with any concrete statistics like what you're asking for, but you can definitely rest assured that the number of people able to participate in NM Ops is a very small fraction of the overall player community. The reason you see posts with people complaining about no one ever doing NM Ops or about them being too easy is because a lot of people who are into end-game content are the same people who are more inclined to bother with using game forums and making their thoughts/opinions known, thus end up being a vocal minority. The vast majority of MMO players don't bother ever looking at forums, if they even are aware that they exist in the first place.

MMGs for the most part only drop from 55 HM Operations (TFB/S&V), generally from the final two bosses but they seem to have a small chance to drop from other bosses as well. They also drop from the last 1-2 bosses in 16 man SM TFB/S&V, but not 8 man SM. They do not drop from 55 HM FPs.

You need to RE the armorings, mods and enhancements pulled from Black Market and Arkanian gear.

You forgot Accuracy. I would rank as: 1- Aim 2- Accuracy (to 100% Ranged/110% Tech) 3- Power 4- Surge Endurance isn't worth mentioning and crit is basically worthless aside from what you gain from stacking main stat and through talents. You're much better served by stacking Acc then piling on as much power as you can get your hands on, then surge in a couple of pieces once you hit your acc goal.

If you put 2 points in it, it gives your force lightning ticks a 20% chance and lightning strike 100% chance to give you a stack and it stacks up to 4 times. With how much you are normally spamming FL and using LS as a filler for wrath procs when crushing darkness is on cool down, it gives you an additional 4% alacrity buff most of the time which helps reduce channel time on FL (more DPS) as well as increasing your force regen rate a bit. If you're going full madness it's worth putting the points into it.

Augment for Aim. Add Accuracy through earpiece, implants, enhancements until you hit 100% Ranged/110% Tech.

I've been using an 8/10/28 spec on my PT. I tried a full AP and full Pyro as well as the 8/22/16 and found that I didn't much like the rotations and DPS felt relatively low compared to 8/10/28. Did a few ~5min parses with 4 different specs and still ended up parsing the highest with 8/10/28, topping the others by around 150-200dps. Could just be that I need to get a bunch more gear and min/max a bit differently, or could be the fact that I'm just damned lazy and don't like having any extra DoTs/cooldowns to work into my rotation and keep an eye on. Hopefully I'll get a chance to drag my PT into some raids soon and start working on Arkanian/UW gearing and see where it goes.

Full Madness is pretty straight-forward, take the skills that make the most sense for PVE. This is the spec I've been using since 2.0 went live. Don't have any parses to post since I've been raiding on my Merc primarily on the new content, so the Sorc is basically on hold for now. From the 55 FPs I've run though, the DPS seems very solid and force management isn't much of an issue.

I've always gone with the Dark Radiance relic since internal damage generally isn't subject to resistances. As far as I know, Dark Radiance and Boundless Ages are still BIS for Arkanian/Underworld. Underworld relics add a proc +power relic (Serenpdipitous Assault) but I haven't seen any solid DPS comparisons of it against (or paired with) Boundless Ages yet.

Because internal damage isn't subject to resistances like elemental/energy/kinetic can be.

I'm just interested in getting some kind of effective gap closer for PVE as a Pyrotech, don't honestly care specifically what it is. Drives me up the wall sometimes when every other melee we have in an op has either a leap or a sprint that they can use to close the gap when switching targets or when a boss moves to a new position while I get to plod along spamming rapid shots and hoping for a rail shot proc in order to maintain at least some DPS on the target.

Threat drop for sure. I'd also love to see them make Jet Charge a learned skill for all PTs and switch Grapple into the Shield Tech tree for tanks.

Perhaps, but crafting a bunch of junk to RE and then grinding through all of it and crafting kits gives me something to do while I'm standing around on fleet with nothing else better to do with my time.

You assume that people selling augment kits for that price are paying full market value for the base materials. In all likelihood, they are not. When I craft augment kits, I use the mats that I gather from crew skill missions and occasional farming while doing dailies. Selling them for 36k or less on the GTN nets a very nice profit as they cost me next to nothing to gather. The only major cost to farming the mats yourself and REing to get the components is the time investment.