Lol. I've been in world ranked guilds since mid-early EQ (followed by WoW0). Min-maxing is just something I do now. So apparently, guilds that enforce min-max professions (we just made fun of applicants with sub-par tradeskills such as Mining and then deleted them) needs to "play better". Show me a world ranked guild in WoW that doesn't enforce the most optimal enchants, the most optimal tradeskills, or the most optimal gemming. As always, this is a game. You have choices. You don't *need* to join the most crackshot top tier raiding guild on your server, just like how you don't *need* to level Biochem if you're just playing casually. Biochem grants a boost to your character that no other crewskill can provide which is why it's held in such high regards.

Nobody seems to know where the mainhand Columi weapon drops from. A few people (myself included) are speculating that both the belt and mainhand tokens will drop from either one of the two new upcoming FPs in the 1.1 patch or one of the new bosses being added to Karagga's Palace.

The Exotech stim is only learned via a schematic that drops in EV and it is currently bugged. We had it drop twice last week and when one of our biochems attempted to learn it, it gave him the "unknown schematic" message and ate the schematic. As for the "amazing schematic" for armstech or artifice dropping, it's fairly simple: just have whoever wins it drop Biochem and level up the corresponding crewskill. It takes 5-6 hours max and around 150k. The best part about this is that the Rakata stims, adrenals, and medpack all don't require Biochem so it's not as big of a deal as you're trying to make it seem.

Yes, you can. You can also do this with Cybertech's grenades, Armortech/Synthweaving's bracers/belt, Artificer's relic, etc. I wouldn't be too surprised if Bioware tagged them with 400 (insert crewskill name here) in the near future, though. As it stands, every serious min maxer at 50 has done exactly what I described.

The easy solution would be the replace your melee with ranged DPS. Melee dps has a lot of travel time on this fight (which destroys their dps uptime) and some class gap closers (such as force leap) is unusable on the main boss. An alternative would be to have your tank call out 3-5 seconds in advance when his shield is going to drop and have your melee swap off the mind traps and start running towards the boss.

The magenta crystal is nice for visuals, but that's it. Columi and Rakata weapons have better color crystals in terms of stats. I see your valid point on artificers with the magenta schematic making tons of credits and raise you another valid point: credits in this game are fairly useless. I have 4.2million credits right now and it's growing daily. There is simply nothing to spend it on. Also, the Artifice relics are simply just the PvP relics. In other words, while you can obtain the Artifice "perk" item by making it, you can also obtain it by just getting PvP champion bags or tokens. Biochem provides bonuses that are not obtainable in any other fashion, which is why it's held in such high regard.

Tell your DPS to push their buttons harder? We were beating the enrage timer as fresh 50s on this boss (honestly had a harder time on Ironfist in regards to Enrage).

This is a serious question, I want to know what stims you're looking at because I'm just flipping through torhead and my own Biochem list and there's no blue stim that's better than the Rakata version.

Yeah, but that artifact one requires Biochem to use and is still not as good its Rakata counterpart. And honestly, requiring specific tradeskills is not any different from any other MMO where their tradeskills give bonuses. Try applying to even a semi serious raid guild in WoW with Mining and see how well that goes. Like I said, if you aren't into the min-max type of gameplay, then just start shopping for a new guild. Even if Biochem does get nerfed, these kinds of players will just migrate to the next best crewskill that will benefit their class the most. This is especially easy to do in SWTOR due to how simple it is to level an entirely new crewskill to 400.

You have more than enough time to move. We've never had any problems with him even when we were first starting out in quest blues/daily gear.

It's not really about how easy a raid is or not. The OP sounds like he's either in a min-max raiding guild or a guild that's aspiring to become one. Eitherway, if you don't like min-maxing and just prefer to play the game the way you see fit, I would strongly advise looking for a new guild. As it stands, there's really no reason not to go Biochem for the bonuses it gives out. Also, I'm pretty sure the blue version of the stims is less powerful than the epic one unless we're looking at completely differently stims. Comparison: http://www.torhead.com/item/1uIrNTv/rakata-fortitude-stim http://www.torhead.com/schematic/3Wo7ocn/prototype-hyper-battle-fortitude-stim Sorry if I am indeed looking at different blue stim, but that's what I currently have in my Biochem tab.

Honestly, that's more of a problem attributed to a lack of a LFD system than you being a healer.

This is certainly an issue, but I highly doubt Bioware will do anything until more people hit 50 and start plugging away at operations. We simply don't have enough people to even get their attention on this matter. In the meantime, I'm leveling a Gunslinger in the hopes that one day I'll be able to play my Sentinel when HM FPs and Operations aren't so melee unfriendly.

Honestly, this is true. Unless you are supremely unlucky, by the time you get enough Columi commendations to buy anything, you'll already have no use for them.

That would be pretty amazing if that's true, especially since how pretty much every tier set (Tionese, Energized, Columi, Rakata) looks really bad for nearly every class. And yes, I was talking about the Armoring, Zappa.

Having a "static" loot progression in an MMO might seem good to us players, but look at it from a developer's perspective: they need the general population to stay on the gear grind hamster wheel until they can push out the next major content patch. When your core playerbase gets everything they want gear-wise from an MMO, they tend to either quit entirely or just temporarily until the next content patch hits, ultimately causing Bioware a loss in revenue. So while I hate running that one HM FP for a week+ and not getting my drop, I can understand why the current loot system (random) is in place.

I can definitely see them putting restrictions in the future, but who knows what they'll do with the Synthweaving belt/bracers since they're essentially just the Rakata bracers/belt that you can get from HM/Nightmare mode operations.

If you're a guy that just wants to have fun, I wouldn't worry too much about which crew skill you want to go with. However, if you're a min-maxer then I suggest picking your main character (as it seems like you're still undecided) and do the following: 1. Level Cybertech to 400/400 and make the grenades that you want. No other crew skill in the game gives you an additional ability that deals damage (extra threat for tanks). Proceed to drop Cybertech and 2. Level Synthweaving to 400/400. This phase can be skipped if you're in a guild that's capable of doing HM/Nightmare mode operations weekly, but most people aren't. Make the Rakata Bracers/Belt that's tailored towards your class and drop Synthweaving. 3. And finally, level Biochem. You'll get the re-useable Adrenal, Medpak, and Stimpack. At the end of your journey, you'll have access to Cybertech grenades, the Synthweaver bracers/belt, and the Biochem consumables. There's really no need to pursue any other crew skill as a min-maxer, especially since the Magenta crystal for Artificers is BoE.

Yeah man, because it's really efficient to spam recipes that require 8 Mandalorian Irons, an Alloy, and a bunch of other mats for a chance to get an augment slot (not to mention the 50-1hr wait). On paper, an armor piece with an augment slot may be superior, but really, how often are you going to crit something that's on par with raid gear (e.g. Rakata Bracers/Belt for Synthweaving) due to the insane amount of mats each craft requires? Orange slotted gear even with an augment slot falls short of Columi/Rakata tier gear simply because there's no armoring mod in the game that's level 56 or 58 (the closest being 51 from the daily commendation vendor).

Nope, I got the Cybertech grenades and Synthweaving bracers/belt before swapping to Biochem. I can use all of them without restriction.

It's almost like loot is random!

I wouldn't be surprised at all if they put in a faction change/server change paid service later in the future. Do you have any idea how much money Blizzard makes off of those two changes alone? EA/BW isn't going to just skimp out on it.

From what I've seen, it's on a random respawn timer between 2-6 hours, meaning it can respawn anytime during that timeframe.

The problem here is that leveling new crew skills in this game is laughably simple when you're at 50. I could level any crafting skill and a gathering skill to 400 in a day by just spamming missions all day long since earning money at 50 is a complete joke. What this ultimately means is that there's little to no consequences for dropping your current tradeskills (the only exception being if you had many artifact level 50 schematics learned via RE) and swapping to the current FOTM crew skill, even if it gets nerfed later down the road. Even the part about the artifact schematics is somewhat sketchy depending on what kind of a player you are. For example, the Synthweaver Rakata bracers/belt drop from HM/Nightmare operations anyways.

It's already being fixed. However, whether the fix will be sufficient is an entirely different story. Those of you that played Warhammer Online will understand exactly what I'm talking about.