Snipers have both. The problem is that (non-healing) Ops and Mercs are both a bit underwhelming.

I didn't say Defensive Forms was bad. It's just not a great PvE talent. 4% internal/elemental reduction is worth far less than the 30% from Defensive Roll. As filler to get to DR, it's great. If you're skipping DR (again, I don't think that's a smart call, but up to you), it's a weak talent compared to Brutality. Your healers will notice 30% less damage taken, not 4%. 30% damage reduction might save you from death. 4% will not. In PvP, it's a stronger talent because you will be taking damage more often. In PvE, the Fury building is generally unnoticeable, beyond a few gimmicks where you can stack up 30 before the pull due to this talent. Again, imo, DR + DF > Malice + Brutality > DF + Malice. The middle build undoubtedly does the most damage, but only if the content is trivial or your healers don't ***** about healing DPS.

Phantom is generally a PvP ability. Those points should be in Subjugation, as faster interrupts can be useful in PvE. Defensive Roll is a fairly important in PvE to reduce damage is Ops and FPs. I would recommend pulling at least 2 pts from Malice for this. I believe that Malice generally only affects our DoT crit rate, which is already substantially buffed by Juyo form, and is thus less important for Anni (as an aside, since Carnage generally gets auto crits on Force Scream and Rage gets auto crits on Smash, Malice is a fairly lackluster talent for all specs). Dropping that last point in Malice could then go wherever you like (back into Phantom, if really like it to get a point of Acc, if you've dropped all Acc enhancements). If you really want Malice and not Defensive Roll, Defensive forms is fairly minor and would be better spent in Brutality instead. However, I still suggest you take Defensive Roll.

Gotta say, I think you choose some poor fights to highlight. Most of the people you 1v2'd were in mostly recruit (<16-17k hp, several < 15k), and several were just awful. Like the Sorc in the first section. He had you in a full whirlwind and did nothing but cast a single affliction on you while standing right next to you. No one interrupted your ravage. People blew their CCs filling your resolve without attacking you (the sage/shadow section in Civil war). And a lot of people just let you wander off to the health packs. Yes, you've successfully highlighted how Undying Rage is ridiculously strong, but your opponents were not great. and you generally had a fairly large gear advantage (except vs the Merc at the end, and Mercs are pretty weak in 1v1 with no real ability to create space).

In the explanation post, they said they were adjusting survivability "slightly" for assassins. Those changes seem much more than slight. I'm worried this will make Assassins be relegated to only trash/off tanks, as self healing is fairly miniscule in the face of Ops bosses. I'm sure the PvP QQ'ers will be happy that Tanksin survivability is taking a massive nerf.

Good luck. When I asked for this around release, I was simply berated for needing to l2p and trying to make space missions even easier than they are, as well as numerous people jumping in to say just using the mouse is enough. Allowing strafe to move the ship has nothing to do with making the missions easier. Rather, they just fix a playability issue.

Bio is the only gathering skill that has multiple vendor bought materials in each tier, and this unduly fills up the available mission list. On both my 400 Bio toons, it is rare to have more than 2 non-First aid kit/hypo/implant missions at rank 5. It is not uncommon to only have 1. Since a lot of the lvl 48 stims/medkits/etc. require rank 5 mats, this is overly limiting. As the first aid kits/hypos are not tiered, it makes no sense to have them in rank 5 missions. If you won't remove them completely, can they at least be restricted to 1 mission?

. It has little to do with affection and more to do with your story line. You can't make this choice until you've completed it.

The damage reduction/transfer is in pvp only. Note how the tooltip specifically says damage from players.

I don't mind the platforming, but can they at least fix it so that you don't get auto-unstuck while waiting on the various moving cranes you ride on. It's quite annoying to wait 5-6 minutes for cranes to move into position, only to get teleported back to the start because the game thinks you're stuck.

It would be nice if you didn't have to cancel stealth before dropping combat by using one of these skills. Even as a secondary "increased stealth" skill, it has usage. Just a quality of life issue. And, while I'm here, can Assassin tanks get a Matrix cube sometime soon (i.e. fix the Aim cube for Force users)?

Don't forget Trauma. You get a 30% reduction in your heals, so you'd need ~35K health to get that medal. Maybe you could get it if you popped it before you got Trauma applied.

I've always thought that as well. And, if you're using Lightning charge, there are a number of Dark Charge talents in Darkness that aren't being skipped in the builds I've seen. *shrug* I'm liking 31/0/10 just fine.

Warriors had a similar issue w/ vibroswords during beta, but it has since been fixed to work with all their skills. Maybe BW will eventually get around to electrostaves.

How exactly were you testing? Dueling someone that only used autoattack? What is their accuracy on the attacks they used? Were you using discharge? That adds another 5% miss chance. And don't forget that missed/dodge/deflected attacks can't be shielded. So, you avoided 38% of the attacks, leaving 62% to be shielded. Assuming your 90% uptime estimate is accurate, we can just estimate your average shield chance at 42% (29 + 15 x .9). This would have you shield .42 x .62 = 26% of the total attacks. That's still higher than your 18%, which would correspond to just a .18 / .62 = 29% shield chance. It seems a bit more than coincidental that this value corresponds with your base shield chance. If you're testing via dueling, possibly Dark Ward isn't working against player attacks. How many attacks did you test with? It's possible you're within an explainable margin just due to unlucky rng, but we can't calculate standard deviation and the like with the information you've posted. Posting the combat log in a spoiler tag would be helpful. EDIT: I missed the fact that you were 46 (why skip wither but still go 30 into Darkness???). What level was the mob/player you tested with?

If you actually wanted to find out which does more dps, I'd recommend using the target dummies and a parser, like MOX. It also would be a good idea to compare Ashara's Armor pen stance to the DoT stance. I suppose it's possible the pirate's AoE stance does more dps than the sniper stance, but I doubt it (and it might be harder to test, as the AoE would hit the nearby dummies. I suppose you need a dummy on your ship.).

I also recommend you don't charge in from max range. It seems that the healer companions don't like to move closer if you're out of range to heal. They will just plink away at the closest mob instead. Also, if you let Quinn take aggro from some of the mobs (which he will, from his healing), he will have to heal himself as well as you, which cuts the amount of healing you receive significantly. Try to hit or at least cc all of the mobs before you work on killing any in particular.

I still don't buy it. I said it was 4 talents for 50% worth of a 3-pt talent, but it's actually 5-6. I forgot about Deathmark/Force Suppression. Since you're using no dots, the 20% from that talent is also wasted. And, if you don't have to get to the 5th tier, you can also pull a point out of one of the filler talents lower in the tree (like stun c/d reduction or dot dmg mitigation). Clearly, you get slightly higher burst by increasing the crit damage on FiB/DF. Assuming you have a 35% crit rate buffed, you're increasing FiB/DF dmg by about 10.5% overall. Where you could instead put those 5-6 talents in Deception/Infiltration and go 18/23 or 19/22, and pick up some actual Force regen (which 13/28 has none of beyond the minor bonus right out of stealth), AoE dmg reduction and/or a c/d reduction on Force Cloak. But it seems like, if you wanted more burst, going deep Infil/Deception would be better. You lose the range of FiB/DF, but buff Project/Shock heavily.

Regarding the 0/13/28 build, is it really worth 3 talent points to get 30% crit damage on FiB/DF? That and why put a point in Sharpened mind? It doesn't seem like you're using DoTs at all, so that half of the talent seems wasted. Do you hard cast Mind Crush often enough to be worth those points? Is the force management so good that Masked Assault or just more DPS/Defense (say Technique mastery, Security Breach, or Shadowy Veil) from KC or Inf? Dropping those 4 points from Balance would also let you grab one of the T4 talents in Inf. I know FiB is relatively high damage AoE, but I just wonder about 4 talents to get 50% of 3 talents value.

Seems very out of date, as it doesn't talk about Expertise, and the mods have different stats than what it lists.

The answer is probably not. The Recruit PvP gear crushes the Lvl 49 mods, etc. available from crafting. For example, the Str dps recruit saber has (taken off Torhead): rating 128 69 Str 57 End 64 Crit 42 Surge 69 Exp (irrelevant for PvE) A comparable saber w/ purple lvl 49 purple mods (advanced _blah_ 22) has Rating 124 83 Str 84 End 42 Crit 39 Surge 31 Power/Crit/End depending on your crystal So, the Recruit has 14 less Str, 27 less end, 22 more Crit, 3 more Surge, and a higher weapon damage and Force Power (4 higher rating, and I can't find the equivalent Force Power values for rating 124 and 128, but 128 will have more). It will also 31 less of whatever crystal you choose (I'm assuming you don't have access to +41 crystal, as you're trying to build your own). You can probably make a case that the extra Str and crystal on the orange w/ lvl 49 crafted purples is as good or better, but buying the recruit version will cost much, much less (in both credits and time) for something you're going to be replacing relatively quickly in both cases (to get all those purples you have to do a lot of RE'ing, not to mention the opportunity cost in the purple mats you have to use to make it worse).

I will jump in and say I've noticed this as well on my Diplomacy, Underworld Trading, and Treasure Hunting characters. I have not seen a Rank 6 Metals, Gemstones, or Medical supplies mission above Abundant since 1.2. I get tons of Rich Companion gifts and the occasional Bountiful lockbox mission. Similarly, for Rank 5, Rich Metals/Gemstones/Medical missions are much more rare than previously. The only way I've been able to get the purple materials is by using the lvl 340 purple mission unlocks. Maybe the Rich missions were a bit too common before, but I think the pendulum has swung too far the other way. With pretty much all non-dropped lvl 49-50 crafting being made worthless by Recruit gear, it seems like being able to get materials shouldn't be too much to ask.

Old thread, I know, but I just got a Naga and I was curious about making announce macros for raid buffs, such as Bloodthirst. Is it kosher to assign a naga button to: 1. <activate Bloodthirst hotkey> 2. /ops Bloodthirst active! or similar? The TOS specifically uses the word 'macro' as being banned, but does this type of usage qualify? I suppose only a CS person could answer this, but I'm simply wondering if someone has already gotten an answer to a similar question (with link, if possible).

Actually, Weak mobs are denoted by the Weak designation on their portrait. You typically only see them in groups of 4 or more, or when more than one mob is with a silver/gold in a non-heroic area. They typically have very low health for their level (if a few auto attacks kill it, the mob was Weak). Then there are Standard mobs, the most common type. These are the guys you typically see chilling in groups of 3 everywhere. You're correct about golds, but star mobs are called Champions, and they have multiple levels (Champion, Boss Champion, Elite Boss Champion, IIRC). The latter two varieties are usually only seen in Flashpoints or as World bosses..

The quoted portion was in regards to leveling, which is still true.