Why not just go for the Rakata implants instead of wasting tons of Alien Cubes trying to crit a Columi one? You lose 30 Strength, 12 Surge rating, and 68 Defense but gain 26 Endurance, and 102 Crit rating - not to mention the Rakata one is a lot easier to obtain. My PvP set is pretty close to what the OP's ideal stats are, except I only have 17.5k HP rather than 20k. I'm sitting at 435.1 bonus damage, 30% crit, and 93.10% surge (unbuffed aside from Biochem stim) and yeah it's an absolute blast plowing through people in Warzones. I have my Champion set (minus boots) but I don't really even use it anymore - I just go full PvE and haven't seen any issues with survivability. I'll most likely swap to BM gear once I hit rank 60 and grab enough Expertise for 8%, but that's far in the future at the moment.

Dual spec is needed but your DPS has to be hilariously bad if you're hitting enrage on HM Rancor. LOL @ having to sit out tanks. Sure, it might be optimal but 100% not needed unless your DPS players are horrendously bad. The Bounty Hunter and Droid fights on Nightmare can be solo tanked, especially if you have Marauders or Snipers that can rotate their -accuracy debuff on the bosses (which, I might ad, trivializes many fights that are already easy. See: Droid boss in EV and his Salvo vs accuracy debuffs).

The fact that people are hitting enrage timers in a game where enrage timers are so loosely tuned says a lot. What happened to gamers improving themselves rather than whining on a forum? The current gen "gamers" are hilariously pathetic.

http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/1898/screenshot2012013019030.jpg y u no drop, Rakata body.

None of the fights in the HM FPs are really "gear checks" outside of maybe having a tank with 15k+ HP (easily doable in 1 day of dailies). I still remember doing every single HM FP in early December with a group of fresh 50's. The only boss we hit enrage on was Bulwark in D7 at around 15%; we still managed to down him. Your DPS simply didn't know how to play their class - simple as that. Gear only acts as a bandaid for weaker players that don't know their optimal rotation or priority system.

Honestly, Karagga as a whole feels a lot more melee friendly than EV is. My DPS uptime on every boss in there (save Foreman and his melee knockbacks) is close to 100% so maybe Bioware is already aware of the problem and all future content will be just as melee friendly. EV, on the other hand, is completely terrible for us. Turrets are unhittable for melee, Gharj's idiotic leaps that do almost 10k damage on Nightmare to melee (somewhat better for Marauders/Sentinels since we can Force Camo one and -negative accuracy debuff another), and of course, the only fight that actually matters in EV, Soa. I honestly want to know whose bright idea it was to make him immune to Force Leap past phase 1, effectively killing the SW/JK's only gap closer (and resource builder for Anni/Watch). Not only are you losing a ton of DPS uptime when you run back and forth between mind traps and the boss, but you're also running at base move speed without a gap closer while ranged can just sit in the middle and switch between mind traps and Soa without much movement outside of lightning balls. Also, you want a DPS comparison? Put a melee and a ranged on the same Infernal Council mob type and have them go at it. I tend to kill mine with ~1600-1650 DPS as Watchman/Annihilation at the same time as my Sage guildy who is Balance/Telekinetics hybrid spec. Keep in mind that I have 100% DPS uptime on this mob, which simply doesn't happen on every operations boss due to mechanics.

I do more damage in my Rakata/Columi set than I do in PvP gear (as Rage). The downside is you lose the dmg reduction that Expertise also grants, but that's a tradeoff that you have to make to gain more killing power. My survivability isn't THAT bad in full PvE gear. I have almost 18k HP unbuffed so it's more than full BM geared players (aside from tanks) by a good 1k+

We use a single Shadow tank for both Karagga and EV (HM+NMM). In fact, Shadows are probably the best Soa tanks due to how his attack mechanics work (purely force) + being able to Sprint.

For those of you playing Annihilation, how do you cope with healers that dispel your dots? I've been thinking of trying it out in PvP (I play PvE as Watchman/Annihilation, would probably just move 2-3 points around for a PvP spec). PUG smashing is nice and all, but I'm wondering how well it'll do in organized team vs organized team games.

Rage gets pretty disgusting when you have gear but like the poster above me mentioned, it's so easy to predict your burst; especially with how terrible our Smash/Force Sweep hit detection is (i.e. use Smash, get knocked back mid air, Smash does 0 damage because of the animation delay). Annihilation's problem begins when you fight half-way decent premades with healers that know to just dispel all of your DoTs.

Why would you ever use a Surge trinket? Any kind of clicky (relic, adrenal) will push you well beyond the Surge softcap. Of course Power relics/adrenals are better in this case unless you have 0 Surge on any of your slots. Surge is good up until 90% (+40%) before it starts to heavily DR. If you're running with a preset HM FP group, just spam the FP that drops boots and pray that the Inquisitor boots drop - I'm pretty sure the enchantment has power + surge on them that you can steal. Alternatively, you can get the lvl 58 ones from HM/NM Karagga bounty hunter fight.

Everything in 8man is doable with 1 tank, including the droid boss in Karagga's (HM/NM). I don't know what sorcery he uses, but our Shadow tank just sits there with 10 debuff stacks and tanks it fine. Probably has something to do with Shadows being more avoidance tanks that don't really rely on AC in the first place.

Marauders and Sentinels are 100% mirrored classes with the exception of Blade Storm and Force Scream; Blade Storm has a slight windup time + travel time on projectile before damage is applied while Force Scream is instant. There also a few other subtle animation differences like Ravage vs Master Strike. Unfortunately, this also means we suffer from the same exact animation stutter issues that plagues both classes...

See title. Is there any particular reason as to why? Hell, even Guardians/Juggs get one in the second tier of their Vigilance/Vengeance tree. Just strikes me odd that the DPS AC of Sith Warriors don't get any bonuses towards our main stat.

The bounty hunter fight in HM/NM Karagga's Palace drop lvl 58 power/surge enchantment. I have one of them socketed into my gear right now. Aside from that, I haven't seen any power/surge enchants.

Depends on what class you're playing. Assassins/Shadows seem to do the most tank damage while Vanguards and Guardians are a bit behind. As a Vanguard, I routinely get 2.3k-2.5k Stockstrike crits and around 1.2k~ Ion Pulse crits with Columi/Rakata armor + Columi rifle. I would honestly be more worried about your DPS party members rather than your own DPS if you're hitting enrages.

Not entirely true. Vanguards/Powertechs can somewhat tank at ranged by cycling taunts + spamming HIB/Energy Blast/Stick Grenade/Hammer Shot/Explosive Round/Ion Pulse. It's not ideal for threat but entirely doable for stuff that punishes melee tanking (e.g. Esseles first boss).

Put them on the tank NPCs that don't knockback then. We've always put our DPS on said mobs and I don't ever remember being kb'ed.

In regards to PvE DPS, you can always use the Infernal Council in EV as a DPS parse. Just put the Sorcerer and Sniper on the same mob type and let them go at it. Reset and repeat as often as you feel fit.

Tank pets even when fully geared are pretty sub-optimal. As another poster mentioned, they really need to add +armor % back onto their tank stances. My Lord Scourge is in full Columi gear with a 156 rating lightsaber and he still just falls over on golds (http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/4053/screenshot2012012609030.jpg). Even if they added +armor % back, our tank companions will never rival an equally geared player tank due to the fact that they simply don't have the mitigation talents (+shield, +endurance, +defense talents) that players get.

I'm beginning to think some of you have a severe lack of reading comprehension. I never said that it was impossible to complete the extremely easy HM FPs, just that it's more optimal to bring ranged over melee in every single endgame FP/Operation (save maybe Karagga's Palace). The fact that I 3-manned Taral V/Maelstrom as the only DPS in the group (Sentinel) goes to show how "hard" some of the hard mode FPs are. Have you done NM or even HM Soa with mostly melee DPS? Go try it and tell me how well that goes compared to bringing ranged. How about Gharj? Turrets? Fact is, ranged DPS have an obvious advantage when it comes to avoiding raid damage as well as maintaining DPS uptime on the boss.

I tried to RE a spare Rakata legging and bracer on my Vanguard when I was still Armormech and it ate my item and spat out an error message saying "No schematic information for xxxx item". Not sure about the other tier/PvP items, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

The saddest part is there's nothing overly difficult in either Operation regardless of difficulty. There is something very wrong when people hate doing a fight (specifically Soa) not because of its difficulty but rather because of how notoriously buggy it is.

Nightmare Soa drops different gear from his HM counterpart. Not sure about Karagga but I assume it's the same. Then again, HM Karagga didn't even drop loot period for us this week. Nice bugs, Bioware.

No one is saying that melee do bad damage. What I am saying, however, is that ranged do just as much DPS but without the drawbacks of being melee. Try it. Play a Sniper or Sorcerer at 50 then play your Marauder or Operative. You will absolutely notice a damage taken difference. You will also notice that your DPS uptime on everything (including trash packs) will be higher due to not getting hit by melee range AoEs, knockbacks, and knockdowns.