I agree with this. I just got Xalek on my character, but I have yet to use him, although I did invest in filling his empty equipment slots with updated gear and also upgrading his saber and shield. His greens start out at 92 rating, which is technically better than what I had Khem Val wearing at the time, so he should be an upgrade all around. He's also a good dumping place for your outdated oranges, you can always just toss some tanky components into them and just go. I really haven't had much problem through Voss. I went a little ahead on my class quest so now I have to go back to Voss and continue questing, but the point still stands, your companions are an investment! Also, if you're feeling sassy and want to buff with a stim, for soloing, the Presence one far outdpses the Willpower one.

I have a legitimate question for you. Why the hell is the arbitrary age that everyone pulls out of their *** to call someone out for being childish always 12?

Buy Andronikos some guns ffs. He crits for 2.5-3k at my level (mid-40s) and just chews through everything. You have to invest in your companions if you want to succeed. You don't really need the 100% mount at 40 anyways.

I'd love to know, as well. You start seeing some conspicuous droid gear on a lot of the vendors starting at Hoth. Perhaps the Bonus Series has something to do with it?

If you have access to some good barrels and components for cunning users, pretty much any Specialty Vendor that has orange blaster pistols is viable. The earliest is on Dromand Kaas, I believe, although you'll have to immediately swap out the components on those as they're already outdated by the time you get Andronikos. The ones on Tatooine are around 25k each IIRC, but I've literally been using them for 16 levels, and if you decide to use Talos later, you can just give him one of them and whatever non-companion specific gear Andronikos has as well, since they're identical gearwise except for their offhand slots. When you first get Andronikos, you probably don't have Force Storm yet, and either Chain Lightning or Death Field will be your only real AoE outside of Overload, so his single target stance is preferred. If you do as I did and spec madness and take the Whirlwind talents, there's some more sensitive encounters where you also want him in single target mode so as not to break your mezzes. Otherwise, after 34 on anything that's not silver/gold/platinum you can basically turn on all his AoEs and put him in AoE stance and just chew through everything in sight. As for whether you'll know when to use Khem Val and not him: Pretty much any gold or higher mob with a gun, you'll use Khem. Anything that can be kited, if you have the knowledge and skill to do it properly, will see Andronikos making it more efficient and faster.

Andronikos Revel makes already trivial content more trivial. Once you get some kiting tools he works just plain better on a lot of the harder mobs that would normally hammer the stuffing out of Khem Val or Xalek (when you get him) just by virtue of the above stated fact that you're the one with the aggro, and he just buzzsaws through things if you can fully upgrade his guns. I personally got him two of the level 29 orange cunning pistols from the Specialty Goods droid on Tatooine, and have kept them upgraded religiously through the levels (Now almost 46). But, that's the thing. He's not meant to hold aggro. You have to know how to kite. Once you're 34 and have Force Storm, on groups of 4-6+ unmedaled mobs, you can just bubble up and storm them into oblivion, with Andronikos babbling constantly about 'BOOM' this and 'Right between the eyes. I love this!' that, and rarely ever even get hit. Against silver mobs, you can juggle Electrocute and your 31 point talent (They both CC IIRC) and have them dead before they even reach you unless they have a leap. Golds take a little more finesse, but are perfectly doable, with the melee ones being much easier than the ranged ones. You shouldn't let your tank's gear get too far behind though, and there's definitely encounters where you need to slog through it by healing him and taking pokes whenever possible, but Andronikos isn't the companion you'd use for those fights anyways. He's just another weapon you can add to your arsenal if you know how to properly place him in a context where he can blast the tar out of everything in sight.

I've no personal experience with this, but I do have lots of MMO experience and enjoyed soloing group content in a lot of games before, so I'll just toss my 2 credits on the pile. Right when you hit 50, there's probably a pretty massive jump in mob difficulty. You'll probably have to switch to Andronikos and kite mobs a lot, focus on ones without ranged attacks, and lean back on judicious use of bubbles and aggro swapping to keep you and him both up in the event the above isn't posslble. As you get geared, you can eventually start to gear your tank too (Xalek probably) and also assemble a bunch of gear with Presence on it. At this point you can probably start doing the Heroic 2+ dailies solo, but realistically not before. I'm going to try, but I will probably fail. Badly. At least at first. A lot of encounters have their own idiosyncrasies that can make them easier or harder depending on circumstances, so you may have to use trial and error to figure them out. (Such as the world boss on Hoth that you can kite near infinitely around a nearby vehicle.) Six months from now these 2 player heroics will probably be trivial sources of amazing money for the wily solo player, but that'll take some specific gearing for you AND your pets that you choose to bring along. Going high enough in Madness for instant three target Whirlwind will probably help a lot (and is the linchpin of my Heroic 2+ soloing to date) and possibly going some sort of hybrid corruption/lightning spec (like the one featured in the thread I made on the subject yesterday) so you can keep your force up and still be able to both heal and DPS somewhat efficiently.

The reason for the hybrid build is in situations where spam healing is possible but not always needed, so your otherwise empty GCDs can still contribute rather than just standing there and doing nothing, and to conserve/produce enough Force that you have lots to burn.

No, it's not. Pretty much any 2 pointer that doesn't directly contribute to your DPS that you haven't already taken to get to this point is better use as filler to get to Creeping Terror. Parasitism isn't all that bad by itself. For soloing or PVP, every little bit helps, and in Operations, it helps cover unavoidable raid damage in small amounts to aid the healers in keeping everyone up. But this thread is more about how Devour sucks rather than mild weakness in Parasitism.

So has anyone messed around with a Corruption/Lightning true hybrid spec? If so, does Lightning Effusion apply to heals as well? If that's the case, I've thrown together a build that can function as a healing/dps hybrid that should be force-efficient enough that it never has to sit on a single GCD in some of the less healing-intensive content. http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#201GGbRbd0zZforMdoMZ0M.1 With this, you'd essentially keep 3 stacks of Subversion up at all times (Along with however many instances of Affliction are necessary to guarantee Lightning Barrage every 10 seconds), manage Force Bending and Lightning Effusion procs on heals, Bubble anyone that needs it, burn Force Lightning on Barrage procs, and spam Lightning Strike otherwise. Chain Lightning and Lightning Storm are to help speed through trash pulls, the latter of which adds another layer of utility to Lightning Strike so you have something more useful to burn your Effusion procs on if immediate heals aren't needed. Disclaimer: If Lightning Effusion doesn't apply to heals, the build is basically (bad) theorycraft and therefore worthless. My ingame latency is really bad right now and I don't really want to blow 50k on respecs to try it and then switch back, so it is what it is. Thoughts/Suggestions/General discussion on the build are more than welcome.

If it was the other way around everyone would have Revivification, Thundering Blast, and Creeping Terror in every build, lol.

So yeah, why would anyone going heavy madness take this talent? An underwhelming use for two entire levels worth of talent points, IMO. Parasitism by itself is decent and on a DPS build, seem like better filler points than Sith Defiance (went heavy CC with mine). Just wondering if anyone else actually feels this way. Not sure why these points were even taken in the sticky builds, they're terrible. What it would take for Devour to be worth it? Have it make Death Field heal you for 1% of your total health for each mob hit per point, and have it add 50% to Parasitism's healing per point.

Okay guys, here's what's up. We need to take every new MMO released, keep comparing its level of polish with other MMOs that are several years old, set up unrealistic expectations, and then ragequit over them. Gogogogogogog!

You could just skim read them and hit the space bar to fast forward through them. No need to multitask.

I kept slicing because it was at 400, and I still like it for mucking around the countryside. However, I won't be sending companions on slicing missions until they fix it. It shouldn't be a black hole into which Credits disappear. The current implementation of Slicing missions just tells me that BioWare simply didn't test this change to see if the magnitude of it made any sense. You should, around 75% to 80% of the time, make some kind of negligible gain from a lockbox when you send your companion. They can downgrade the amount in the lockbox if you get another item along with it, but to pay more to get a lockbox than is in the lockbox, especially once you're at 400 skill, makes absolutely no logical sense from the players' standpoint, zero, and that can't possibly be working as intended. If the idea was to bring Slicing in line with the other gathering/mission crew skills, you lose money to get other forms of material compensation. You don't just lose money to lose money. That can't be the intent behind this nerf. I'm cool with a nerf if it doesn't make lockbox missions useless. But in their current state, I'm going to be doing a lot of Treasure Hunting until they deem it OP and nerf it, too. *knock on my mother-in-law's head*

I recently improved her gear, and will see how she stands up, but I'm with the Andronikos Revel crowd here. He doesn't have to travel, I think his defensive CD lasts longer (not certain) and he simply outputs higher DPS than she does. And her coloration is completely wrong for a Togruta. There, I said it. All the yellow on her face should be crimson or rust. I shouldn't have to buy an authenticator just to have her face make sense from a SW lore canon standpoint. Her sith ancestor was colored fine. Actually hell, I'd rather have him as a companion.

If you buy an authenticator and then get the customization for her and then cancel the authenticator do you lose the customization? Half serious.

This sort of dismissive hand-waving post completely ignores the [speciulation] tag on the thread title itself. As such, it contributes nothing. As he said, basically the gist of this build is that it is so ridiculously force efficient, and also that it's a lot more movement-friendly on fights with ground hazards. You can't just throw it out the window until we have a means to parse it in top-end raiding gear to see how it stacks up. Even then, there's encounters where you can stand there and spam your rotation like you're playing Simon, and there's those where a simpler rotation that's more movement friendly will outdps even the former one just because the lightning guy will be wasting procs etc. Criticisms of the build itself: Parasitism and situationally Sith Defiance are just filler points, obviously, and IMO they don't really contribute that much to the build that Oppressing Force and Haunted Dreams wouldn't trump in terms of utility. Yeah, you probably won't often be able to get more than one target that often with Whirlwind, making Oppressing Force the worse talent(s) of the filler options to take, but instant Whirlwind with a stun on break is great. Without knowing whether or not raid mobs can even be silver/gold or if everything starts at Champion level, I can't say for sure whether I'm right on this, although I like to think there will be some need for effective CC in raids, else there's a whole role that becomes worthless come endgame.

For speed, going with Madness and taking every talent with 'Whirlwind' in it, along with 7 points in Lightning for Electric Induction, Reserves, and Subversion has been treating me well. Most mixed mob packs with one or two Strong mobs plus some normals and weaks are trivial. Go with a strong single-target DPS pet. Use Presence stims! BUY GEAR FOR YOUR PET. It's expensive, but worth it. Weapons, most importantly. It's actually ultimately cheaper to keep Andronikos or Ashara in good weaponry than it is to update all of Khem Val's armor to keep him up to speed as a tank. You'll still need him occasionally, but the vast majority of the time, you won't.

If you took Exsanguinate along with it though, it's a really long snare if minor. Still, it is what it is and its pros make up for its cons in any hybrid Corruption PVP build.

I'm actually building on a CC-heavy version of a similar build. For leveling and PVE content, having up to 3 target whirlwind that's instant and stuns for 2 seconds if broken prematurely is invaluable. You can plow through mobs with a strong single-target DPS companion, with very little actual tanking needed except on gold or platinum mobs. It also makes Tumult fun. Edit: This. Also the guy you quoting saying he doesn't know what Alacrity is? You can mouse over that stat, and at the bare minimum you can take out a dictionary and see that it means 'speed'. Not too hard for those with a minimum of elementary scholastic accomplishment.

Does Death Field retroactively apply to the dots you cast before it? If not, you'll probably want to lay down Death Field first, and then do the single tick of Force Lightning into CD > Affliction.

OP: I think this is your problem. It's not a guaranteed proc when you only have one point in it. That's where a bigger sample size than 1 attempt is advisable.

If the ticks each do as much damage before and after, it does do more damage technically, 33% more to be exact, by adding two more ticks. It also increases its uptime, but that's not that big of a deal since you'll still be casting it on cooldown.

It damn well better be for two talent points, lol. Although on the other hand if it proved the tooltip was right, that would've been two free points to distribute elsewhere.