To put it simply... Carnage is better for burst and faster target swapping in PVE. When Gore is up you have a period of time where you do a lot more damage (with the 100% armor pen) and can melt things quickly. Annihilation is more sustained and "ramped up" damage that would do better for boss fights and such. It can still be used in solo or heroic content, but it might be a little slower since it lacks the burst that Carnage has. For PVP... I personally ran Carnage and it was fine. Your mileage may vary though depending on how well you can manage the cooldown and Gore-related damage times. Try both out and see which one feels better in PVP for you.

The Columi OH drops from Battle of Ilum last boss... got it the other night. The belt and main hand are the ones missing from hard modes.

That's fine until end game when you start getting tier-level gear with much better armoring mods that, at the moment, cannot be ripped out. I was lucky to get the Xenotech Weaponmaster Vest from Karagga, but I did replace it with Columi since it was an upgrade. You have a lot of flexibility until you hit 50 and start needing better gear for raids/pvp. Just waiting until they make the change to epic items and u can pull armor mods out

When you try to Intercede someone so you don't have to walk as far....

I would be interested to see if anyone has numbers from bleeds pre-patch with no stims/adrenals used and compare them to post-patch with no stims/adrenals. That would be the MOST accurate way to compare the changes.

Bioware specified the updated numbers for the PVP bags, so i was just wondering if someone would mind posting how many Tionese/Columi tokens you get from the daily/weekly now. Still at work right now.

I can tell you it does not generate useful loot most of the time.... it's totally random. We had a couple of bosses drop items and give them to people who did not need them at all nor anyone else for that matter. Basically became vendor trash. Again, this is for normal modes only and yea... it's a poor system.

Yeap.... drops specifically from Karraga at the very end, but not sure who drops it in Kaon HM.

I'm running Carnage at the moment.... I like it, but it's very very bursty on the damage. It is nice to have though when we pop Bloodthirst, use a Power Adrenal, and tear in to a boss. Thought about going Annihilation tonight and see how I like it for the more balanced damage it gives. With Carnage, you're basically waiting for Gore to come off cooldown and then have Blood Frenzy up so you can crit scream and get the bonus of armor pen.. then follow that up with Ravage. Other than that it's just mixing it up with Battering Assault, Assault, and Massacre. In Annihilation you'll be keeping your stacks of Deadly Saber up, using Annihilate on cooldown, refreshing Rupture when the dot comes off, and using Vicious Slash as a filler along with a rage builder. It's more steady and doesn't have any real massive burst damage phase like Carnage.

Yea I got it from Karagga last night on our first time downing him... never seen it in Kaon as of yet. As far as stats.... have yet to get the Columi chest from Sao or False Emperor. I ripped the mod/enhancements from my Champion chest and stuck them in this. It's actually quite decent now. So to compare Columi to the one I have (with level 56 mods in it from Champion piece): Columi - 93 strength 116 endurance 53 power 48 accuracy Xenotech (w/ Champion mod/enhancement) - 85 strength 108 endurance 53 power 48 accuracy It is now only SLIGHTLY worse than Columi and a major upgrade over Tionese and even Champion. If you are lucky enough to get this Xenotech piece and have the Champion one I highly recommend doing this until you can get your Columi chest.

Yea lol.... second pic has my other lightsaber out. And if you still don't believe it I will be glad to take some ss of my UI, char screen and such.

So just got the Xentoch Weaponmaster's Chest from Karagga.... must say I am quite pleased with it. =] http://tinypic.com/r/2uiufr4/5 http://tinypic.com/r/2csi5mt/5

It's not on the dev tracker anymore (or I am not seeing it).... they posted about it earlier in the month. They will, at some point, be making the purple items fully moddable so you can rip the armor mods out. Most likely they will tie the set bonuses to the armor mod item itself so when you equip armor mods from a set in any gear it will register set bonuses. No ETA on the change tho right now.

I've been 80 for about a week and a half now and run 2-3 heroics a day plus my 3 daily warzones... I stopped doing Ilum bc my server it's just too hard to get Repubs to come half the time and everyone is farming the armaments. Anyways... I have Columi gloves and bracers, Tionese belt and boots, chest and pants are Champion, helm is an orange with level 50 mods in it so basically Tionese level, one relic is from Boarding Party and the other is my Matrix Cube from datacrons. It's probably just a luck thing... I've seen several warrior tier tokens drop, but since I also run with a Jug tank I will pass to him first since he is our main raid tank too. Got the main hand lightsaber from Kaon as well the day....

The armor loss is negligible... I dropped about 1.5% in damage reduction when I put my mods in a couple light armor pieces and changed them out.