If your raid group is fully rakata geared, you should easily be able to do story mode EC. Story EC is tuned for Columi geared players, while HM is tuned for Rakata plus. The best raid groups have cleared HM EC in Rakata gear with little to no Campaign. For EC, skill level and coordination are much more important than gear. The skill requirement for EC is much higher than Tier 1 raids. Also, War Hero gear is much worse than Rakata for PvE content. To the OP, as long as your group is good, you are more than geared enough for Story Mode EC.

Millaswe can also make the jerky. I am an Imperial on The Shadowlands server.

Looks awesome! I am working on adding some additional functionality to the spreadsheet as well. I will update this in a few days when I get a chance to work on it (finals week is tough).

Both tanking classes are extremely viable for current end game ops. As was mentioned above, Juggs have more survivability due to more cooldowns, while Bounty Hunters throw more dps and are better for aoe. However, of the two, I would pick Bounty Hunter over Jugg currently. In HM EC and other end game encounters, the theme of the day seems to be dps checks. Many groups have issues with lack of dps on the bosses. Bounty Hunter tanks are plenty durable to survive any current encounter if geared properly and their relatively higher dps is a huge benefit for any ops group.

Everyone posting in this thread is talking about since the patch on Tuesday. Our 8 man ops group has also been having a problem with this glitch on hard mode. Hopefully it gets fixed soon because right now, it is impossible for our clothies to survive.

Thanks for the update. I'm glad I can continue to use this spreadsheet to min/max in 1.2 now. However, there appears to be a bug in the spreadsheet now. It looks like the changes you made broke the sweet spot estimations in the relative stat values section of the mitigation tab. I am getting a recommended sweet spot which has lower mean mitigation than my current mitigation. As a reference, my tanking stats are listed below. armor: 8486 defense rating: 270 shield rating: 510 absorb rating: 309 current mean mitigation: 72.00 recommended sweet spot mean mitigation: 71.91 Other than that, the spreadsheet looks great. Thanks again for the hard work.

Any chance of getting this updated to deal with the new 2 point, stacking absorb buff in 1.2?

RIP Carolina Parakeet. Now what do I do with my battlemaster eliminator gear?

Exactly! The more replies I get to this thread, the more I think that people have no idea what the Carolina Parakeet build is. For those of you who are horribly misinformed and are just qq'ing about railshot procs, please read these links before you reply. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=147738 http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#301hRGbdMboZ0MZbIbbdh.1

You are not talking about different skill levels, you are talking about different play-styles. Parakeet is primarily tank build and should be able to take more damage than an op can. Your argument about the 7k bursts are irrelevant because they are already nerfing ppa which will decrease that burst significantly. As for the hybrid powertech you are talking about, if you are not killing the pocket-healer who is healing a primarily tank-spec'd player, then there is no helping you anyway. If you team was geared well and competent in any way, they should have melted incredibly fast. I have played a ton of warzones and have never seen anyone with 800k damage. That sounds like a false claim or else your team was horrible.

Wow way to flame me about something I didn't even say. Please reread my post and educate yourself about the spec before posting. First off, I am not complaining about the nerf to railshot procs. I actually think that should be changed, although I think they way they are doing it is wrong. See this thread for more info. The OP explains it very well. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=371363 I am specifically complaining about them getting rid of the Carolina Parakeet build, which is a completely separate issues altogether. The build was created to allow for moderate dps and moderate survivability. It was not OP because it was not possible to top the charts in terms of damage or in terms of survivability. It simply allowed for a nice combination of the two and offered a way for powertechs to vary their play style from glass cannon or tank. The build I'm talking about was nerfed because you can't guard and use ppa any more, which is ridiculous. Also, you have no idea what my skill level in pvp is. It is stupid to make cocky remarks that you can't back up just because you have the anonymity of the internet to cover for you.

I'm not dissing your build. It just serves a different purpose than the original intent of the Carolina Parakeet build.

You do make a good point about solo queing but living without guard is something that I and many other powertechs cannot/will not do. It may not be a big deal for solo queing but in groups, guard is invaluable for keeping your teammates alive. It is not viable to switch back and forth between stances mid combat with the interruptable channel times. One of the biggest draws of the parakeet build is being able to guard while still doing somewhat decent damage. Also, the iron fist build, while good, has inferior burst ability to parakeet and therefore is not as fitting of a spec for the primary role of a guarding powertech player in a group, protecting the healer.

Actually the reason why most people run the parakeet build is they want to be more survivable and still have decent dps. It is choosing a middle of the road playstyle, and you are making severe sacrifices in dps and survivability to do so. Everyone is not rolling the parakeet build, there are plenty of high level pyros on my server. If hybrid specs are so bad, then swtor should just put in premade specs that you need to choose from. It comes down to the same thing.

Except the burst is already being nerfed due to the internal timer on ppa so your point is moot. And the burst is highly reliant on procs anyway.