Recently logged back in the game and still don't have the replacement boosts for the one I lost after the update. Sent an in-game ticket a couple days ago which was answered today without a definite solution.

95% of the time you want to use TSO on Unload since it's the most effective ability to use it on, not only because it's your most heat generating ability but because it also takes up 2 GCDs while also doing good damage, giving you more chance to lower the heat. The reason you don't use it at the start is because as I said, your heat is still at the high regen levels, you'll notice that as your heat goes up the regen goes down. So you want to use it when your regen starts to go down, you can see that by the number of arrows in your heat bar, the fewer the arrow the slower the regen. As for Serrated Shot, yeah it can be diffiicult to throw it out if you're being targetted, but for example, as you go in a fight normally you have enough time to throw it to your target before getting jumped on. As for Power Surge into Power Shot, personally I save it for when kiting, just because it's instant does not mean it's more overall DPS, it will still take a GCD regardless, besides, throwing an instant Power Shot can even lower your overall DPS. If your Mag Bolt was supposed to proc at the end of the GCD, then using an instant Power Shot means you need to use it again to proc it.

There are several things that can be improved there. First never use TSO at the start, your heat is already at 0 so it's a waste of a cd. Second, apply Serrated Shot first (unless for some reason you have to stay on the move) It gives a 5% more damage taken from ranged damage to the target. Then you put Incendiary Missile followed by Mag Shot ( you can also proc it before going to the fight by using Sweeping Blasters, just activate it and immediately interrupt. ) After that you use Unload followed by Superchaged Gas and Thermal Detonator then Mag Shot. I like to do that combo at the end since that Mag Shot will have the 6 piece set bonus for the guaranteed crit and will also detonate Thermal Detonator for maximum burst damage. After that it's a matter of using Power Shots (or Rapid Shots) as a filler while reapplying dots and using Thermal Detonator as close to on CD as possible. You can also add a buffed Missible Blast instead of a Power Shot as long as that power shot isn't the one triggering the reset on Mag Shot. Also use TSO on Unload when your heat starts to get to 30. For DoT spread I'll be careful with it considering that if you try to keep your dots on everyone you will run out of heat. Also, you can use Fusion Missile then Incendiary Missile ,same for Explosive Dart and Serrated Shot, since both spreads have a delay before they hit the target. Note that I didn't mention Electro Net sinceI tend to use it situationally, for example to prevent a Sorc Bubble or a stealth out when I know the target can be bursted down in the duration.

Been looking around the forums for a bit and can't seem to find many people talking about the new stun with 5.0 and that it is now a ranged attack, as in white damage. Personally, I do not understand why that is the case where every other cc in the game, except for low slash is yellow damage. The main problem this brings in PvP, is that as it is white damage, any ability that increases your defense chance can practically render this ability useless. Deflection, Saber Ward, Evasion, Predation, sorcs and assassin can even just passibly negate the stun if you don't have 5% accuracy in the gear. When fighting someone, I usually save my stun usually for when those abilities are popped (deflection, saber ward) since a hard stun can negate the defense chance and given sniper nature of doing mainly white damage, it helps a lot. Now I rely on luck for my stun to connect if I want to do that while for every other class their hard stun is yellow damage, so only Shroud can negate the stun. I don't know what you all think, but I'd love it if the stun was changed back to tech damage instead of ranged.

Don't have a screenshot of this but you can reflect the 10 stacks one shot of Writhing Horror in TFB to instantly kill the boss. Only tried it with a Shadow so far but I'm guessing it would work on a Commando too.

Yes, you can still get PvP gear by doing PvP. But it's going to be way faster to do a HM or NiM ops to get the best gear than spamming PvP all the time. Ranked right now barely even pops anymore and, at least on my server, it pops because people get together and start advertising they're queing, that still only happens like once a week. So hardcore PvPers, without a reliable amout of ranked pops, will be forced to do regs to get the best gear and, assuming by logic, that will take much, much longer than the people who do HM or NiM raids. And let's imagine that ranked will pop fairly often. With how the matchmaking system worked in previous seasons regarding ELO (People with high ratings will get teamed together and go against those with lower rating. It happened a lot of times to me.) People with the higher gear will likely end up in the same team and go against those with lower gear. It's just going to be frustrating all around.

I haven't done shield squadron yet so can't talk about it. But I did do AoT yesterday on imp side. The heal check is tough, my friend that was healing it said he had to pull bear 7k ehps to keep us alive, but you can do it, he was in 204 pvp gear at the time, if two healers weren't able to keep the group alive then people were standing in purple or the healers weren't competent. One thing that helps is when the boss goes to channel the datacron don't kill it immediately, use that time to let the healer catch up since there's no damage going out there.

Yes, they've made leveling faster by increasing the xp gained from quests, though the increase is hardly enough to let you outlevel the planet by 4-6 levels unless you're doing every single side quest while constantly queuing for FPs/PvP. Xp boosts are far from worthless, it's still 25% extra xp to make leveling faster. And I don't know about you, but I prefer to be leveled down and still get relevant xp from quests instead of gaining 7xp per quest because I'm several levels above it, that feels way more of a grind. Actually, the game has never been easier than how it is at this point. Companions are capable of doing all the work for you, as an example, I'm leveling new toons for the event and I'm able to get Nico at level 1, setting him as DPS he kills everything before I can even throw a couple abilities. Operations are now all level 65 to keep them relevant and they all drop current, relevant gear. And you're supposed to require strategy, they are the top-tier PvE content so they should be hard (though SM and HM EV/KP are really easy for anyone capable of thinking but I won't go into that.) The jetpack you're talking about (Wings of the Architect ) and the Dread Master gear (no longer obtainable ) are supposed to be rewards for completing the hardest content in the game, so yes, if you want the best looking/strongest stuff you will need to actually put effort into it, that's literally how every single game and life in general works. Regarding heroics, one can bring out their companion, put a blindfold over their eyes and press random buttons by repeatedly smashing their face against their keyboard and still complete the heroic. So I honestly have no idea how you can't solo them (assuming, of course, you're not 10 levels below the heroic level). Level sync does not lower secondary stats (critical rating, alacrity, accuracy ) So a fully maxed out level 65 will be hitting 10 times harder than any level 10 on Korriban, not mentioning that at 65 you have all your abilities and yourcomplete rotation, something a level 10 is miles from getting . Sure, you can't one shot them anymore, but bosses will still die in less than 5 seconds to any geared 65. Simply put, no. Level 50 operations don't exist anymore, they're all level 65, and there's way more people running EV and KP (specially on HM and even more when they're the priority op of the week) than any other operation, simply because they're extremely easy compared to every other operation. If you can't find people for operations its because either you play on a really low population server or play when on the server time zone people are sleeping or working. About world bosses, people stopped doing them ages ago due lack of any reason to do them. At least now people have some incentive since the fastest way to recruit Qyzen in your alliance is to kill world bosses and now the Dark vs. Light event requires you to kill some specific world bosses.

This made me remember of a time when I was PvPing on my merc. On the second WZ, a Hypergate, I realized I had left my gear in the legacy bank (only had left side+weapons) the funny thing was that I still managed to pull more damage than anyone else in my team..., think it goes without saying that we got stomped, wish I had taken a screenshot of that.

Taken from the lightning guide on Dulfy:

The amount of sages that just stand there and take it is crazy, really most of them didn't even attempt to kite.

I really hope you're being sarcastic (I'm actually quite bad at detecting it unless it's blatantly obvious ). But Juggs are far from OP in a ranked perspective which is what the post you're answering to is talking about. I just did a rough look at the leaderboards and Juggs still have the least amount of people above 1600 rating ( speculated gold tier based on previous seasons). Their cooldowns are useless under the focus fire you see in ranked. Even Mercs have more people above 1600 than Juggs, and we all know how bad that class is considered in ranked.

I laughed waaaay too hard at this. It's so true.

I always thought this should've been the case when these movement abilities came out. Give a phasewalk-like ability to mercs and give Rocket Out to sorcs. That'd give mercs the much needed disengage ability and still let sorcs have a way of kiting without giving them two disengages like they now have.

That would work perfectly too. Or anything really so you don't have to choose one or the other. On another thing, does anyone actually take the utility that lets you get stacks when using the regen abilty for that reason? Yes, the reduced cd on cleanse and interrupt is useful in situations, but the regen stack gain is completely useless, I honestly cannot think of a single situation where one would choose that utility for that aspect of it.