Thank you all for the great discussion. I'll have to think this over carefully before buying. Thanks again!

I just amassed enough daily comms to buy my first Dread Guard relic last night. I have a Jedi Guardian tank toon, and I’m not sure which PVE Dread Guard relic to buy first and then buy second later on. My defense chance is around 27% and is the lowest of my main tanking stats (shield chance is around 43% and absorbs around 24%), so I was thinking that I should get the Imperiling Serenity relic that ups my defense for 20 seconds and gives me +95 on Endurance. I’d appreciate any advice on which relics to get in which order and what stat caps I should be aiming for. Thanks!

We are still looking for more players to join the fun with us.

Would like a few more to join our guild. New players and veterans looking for a home are welcome!

Still looking for some more players to join a fun and friendly guild.

Here’s the quick and dirty about us: Faction: Republic (though we also have a smaller guild presence on the Empire side for alt leveling) Type of Guild: Casual PVE progression guild probably best describes us Guild Size: Around 12 regular players and another 10 players that we see from time to time What We Are Looking For: Mature, fun, drama free, quality players looking for a smallish guild of friends to do operations, flashpoints, world bosses, and have a few laughs Ideally We’d Like: Level 50 tanks, healers, and ranged dps characters. Our biggest need right now is for another tank. Lower level characters are welcome to join our ranks as well. Operations Days/Times: Currently Fridays at 7:00 PM Pacific Time and Sundays at 5:00 PM PT For More Information: Visit our website and consider completing our brief application http://www.zenswtor.enjin.com/home Thanks and looking forward to hearing from you!

My guild is interested in possibly forming an alliance. Some days we have trouble fielding enough players to do 8-player operations, and we are interested in downing world bosses and also doing 16-man operations from time to time. Here is our guild website for more information about us: http://www.zenswtor.enjin.com/home. I'd say we are a casual progression guild with about 10 players regularly playing and probably another 10 players that drift in and out. Some of my guildmates are waiting for the expansion before they come back in earnest. If you are interested in speaking to me about a possible alliance, you can send an ingame e-mail to Thros or reply in this post. Perhaps we can speak in Vent to talk things over. I regularly play SWTOR M-F 9 PM - 11PM Eastern Time and play more on the weekends. Thanks!

Thank you oaceen and Deedrah!

I just got enough daily comms for a 2nd Dread Guard relic. Which kind of relic is the best for scoundrels in terms of damage type if I use dirty fighting? Kinetic, energy, internal, or elemental? It seems like I saw something in the forums awhile back saying the damage type for these relics and what you really need is misleading. Thanks in advance for any help.

Thank you all for the responses.

Does anyone know the answer to this?

I have a level 50 sage healer who does a lot of operations. My sage has artifice as his crafting skill and has made and uses a purple Rakata relic. I am considering switching my crafting skill to biochem so that I can use the highest end stims, adrenals, and med packs. If I make the switch, will I still be able to equip/use my crafted Rakata relic? I don’t see any text on the relic currently about 400 artifice required. There used to be text about that requirement at some point, and the Rakata relics were useless to anyone not having 400 artifice. I want to know on the front end if making the switch to biochem will cause me headaches with my relic. I assume Rakata relics are stil bind on pickup, so there is no point in making a few for the guild before switching to biochem, right? Thanks.

1. How do you think your Sage spec is perceived by other classes? 2. How do you perceive your own spec? Consular – Sage Healer PVE Operations/Flashpoints Perspective • Probably the best healers in the game due to the AOE heal that can heal up to 8 players and the Force Armor shielding ability. • Great array of tools such as Rescue, crowd control, and interrupt abilities. • Worst looking high end PVE clothing gear for male characters, no appropriate dark side looks. • Deliverance is a somewhat useless heal for HM operations and flashpoints because it has such a long cast time and does only a relatively “okay” spike heal for the long cast time. • Frustrating to run out of Force during long boss fights and have to use Sacrifice to keep healing.

Agree.

I'd like the option to see just MY stats right after a flashpoint or operation ends similar to the warzone stats. I can decide then if I want to share that information or not.

Regarding the OP, I'm wondering if you are level 50 or still leveling up. My experience is that DPS characters that are not level 50 face very long waits using the group finder tool. I think most people using the group finder tool are level 50 and wanting to do hard mode flashpoints or operations. If you are a tank or healer your wait should be pretty short. DPS will have a longer wait. If you are in a guild, try grouping with a tank or healer then use the group finder. That should cut down on your waiting.

I’m not sure if this has been suggested before, but I would like to see operations have scalable difficulty and rewards according to the number of people in the operations group. It would be really nice to bring along 9 – 15 guild players on an operation run rather than the current 8 or 16. It is a shame in my guild when we have say 11 ops ready guild members ingame, but we can only take 8 of them. This enhancement would give us more options and flexibility with operations, particularly if we want to run an all guild member ops run. Right now to run a 16 player ops run if you are a smaller guild you need to either ally with another guild or use the group finder tool to fill out the rest of the group. Another suggestion is that I would like to see ingame voice chat as part of SWTOR. The ingame voice chat could be similar to SWG, or perhaps it could be only available when the group finder tool is used. I’ve been frustrated when I run HM flashpoints using the group finder that I can’t coordinate well with the strangers in my group. Some of us use Vent, some Mumble, and some Teamspeak. No one wants to take the time to download a new voice chat system, and guilds are nervous about giving out voice chat access information to people we don’t know well.

Newly leveled level 50 dps PVE scoundrel here with most of his skill points in the dirty fighting skill tree. I’m wondering if folks have any recommended skill rotations for flashpoints and operations to maximize dps and manage your energy pool. I’m looking for an optimized skill rotation for consistent high dps and a skill rotation when you want to spike up your dps to down a boss getting ready to enrage. Poked around in the forums but didn’t see anything quite along these lines. Thanks in advance for any help.

Your interrupt abilities are an absolute must in the class story final boss fight. Could be you are under geared too, so check the levels and ratings of your gear and what mods/enhancements/augments/etc. you have in your orange gear. If you are still having trouble, I would ask if a fellow guild member or two can join you to help out in the fight. If you aren’t in a guild, I recommend you join one. Otherwise, see if someone on the planet would be willing to help you out by grouping with you.

I'm wondering if your group had to change ops leader during this. We've had to clear trash again in EV and KP if we passed ops group leader to another person if the leader wants to bring a different toon or we switch someone out because they needed to log.

1. Kel Dor 2. Nautolan 3. Mon Calamari

Except for FriarChuggs, thank you very much for the replies and help.

I’d like some advice and clear instructions about getting better gear to do operations and hardmode flashpoints if you are not into PvP. I’m a relatively new level 50 Republic Sage devoted to healing, and I have finished my class quest. I currently have a mix of level 50 blue/purple gear and level 49/50 orange mod gear. I’ve completed almost all of the flashpoints at least once with guild members, but I have yet to do any operations or hardmodes. I think my gear is about as good as I can get from doing normal flashpoints and occasionally buying items off the GTN. I’m on a PvE server, and my server has an imbalance in favor of the Empire on Illum. I don’t care much for doing PvP and warzones except for the occasional variety. I’d rather spend my time on challenging PvE content. Given my present situation and preference for PvE, how can I best get better gear to ultimately take on higher end PvE content? Given our Illum server imbalance, I would like to avoid Illum altogether or minimize my time there, and I hear that Illum dailies are a real chore and not fun at all with the server imbalance. Thanks in advance!

Regarding the OP, sorry this happened to you. It's always riksy when you do group content with some unknown players. You could post the offending toon's name in your server forum and explain what happened to you. Not sure how many people are checking out the server forums, but you might be able to warm a few players on your server about this toon's behavior. Check the TOS before you post though to make sure you aren't violating anything with your post.

I’m wondering if anyone else has encountered this. I’m a Sage healer who was doing the Red Reaper flashpoint this weekend with three Troopers. Pretty early into the flashpoint I noticed that I couldn’t cast my Force Armor bubble on two of the Troopers. I also noticed that their face icon UI was also darkened like it was tinted or something. I did a soft log and this fixed things for a little while, but then the problem came back. The Troopers were levels 43, 50, and 50 (2 dps and 1 tank). None of them think that they have an ability that would interfere with my Force Armor, and I ran the CWG flashpoint earlier with one of the Troopers (level 50 tank) and didn’t have a problem. I figured this was some kind of a bug, so I sent a ticket in.