Yeah, you're seriously gimping yourself by being Rage without the Shii-Cho skills. You're losing a lot of straight damage bonuses AND a lot of rage gen.

Yep, gotta agree. When I hit 50, I splurged on some purple quality blaster pistols for Vette and she just absolutely chews through anything that looks at her funny. She can even take out strong mobs entirely by herself, without her defensive cooldown. I don't think I've ever bothered with Quinn. The heals just weren't worth it to me, because I got used to killing everything so quickly. In fact, I changed specs to Rage because mobs weren't even living long enough for the Shatter DoT to get all its ticks. I'm not even necessarily a very good player, just obsessively focused on keeping my gear up to date. Melee classes in every MMO always seem to be gear dependent, more so than other classes; if anyone's having trouble with things...you probably need to replace your green main hand.

So much this. I HATE dual sabers and saberstaffs, and having half the Force-wielding advanced classes run around with them all the time was such a stupid move and a slap in the face to both the existing canon and to common sense.

There's a black, hooded armored "robe" from Corellia commendations. It's heavy armor. It's not quite a full robe but it still looks pretty awesome.

Seriously. If I heard someone yelling like that in real life, I'd be quietly sneaking off the other way. Plus, given that he's usually fairly calm, especially for a Sith...well, it gave it a lot more gravity. If it was just another DARTH HULK SMASH kinda Sith yelling, it probably wouldn't have been as awesome.

As a villain, I thought he was an excellent character. He wasn't a totally over-the-top Batman villain like a lot of the other Sith (characters that I tend to find ridiculous - if you kill everyone, you have no power base and no allies). And his voice acting was great, particularly when he

Rage spec, leveled 1-50 solo with Vette and then Jaesa. Quinn felt completely worthless to me; sure, heals are nice, whatever. I never had any problems with the "kill stuff before it kills me" approach, and downtime was minimal. Even gold elites on Corellia can't chew off 1500 of my HP before Jaesa and I have drained all 30,000+ of theirs. I haven't touched a defensive cooldown in a fight other than in a long time. I don't even consider myself to be an "elite" player or whatever; it's all about situational awareness. I hate Quinn, so I don't use him, and I do just fine. DPS spec with DPS companions is totally viable as long as you're not a window-licker.

I've done everything solo as a DPS spec and geared SJ with a DPS companion, at appropriate level, without ever running into a problem. For the record, that's no heals besides medpacs and no significant CC. Around Quest, 35ish, whatever, I will echo the sentiments of a few previous posters. Strong mobs get stronger, elites get WAY weaker. It's actually kind of insane to end a pull of 1 strong/1 normal with both Jaesa and I at half health...and then fight a so-called "elite" and it barely manages to get me to 80%. As a few others have said, you absolutely need to start using your tools. You can't get away with ignoring your utility abilities. Look at the classification of the mobs and learn what abilities they tend to have (pro tip: if it has medic in the classification, you should probably kill it first). Vanguard or heavy gunner mobs usually have armor reductions like Grav Round, holo slicers do a lot of damage after they make holo copies of themselves, telekineticists like to throw rocks at your noggin, etc. Combat in MMOs is all about your situational awareness. If you don't have it, you're in for a bumpy ride.

I've got to agree with the people saying killing him would be stupid. I hate, hate, HATE the dark side options that make me feel like an idiot, and I had to do a lot of diplomacy missions to finally reach Dark V. Baras might have been a jerk, but the fat ******* was smart. So smart that he mistook me for just another grunt, and his hubris was his downfall. I like the feeling that my character is a schemer, a string-puller, a spider with a lightsaber, spinning a tangled web of intrigue that my enemies walk right into. I love the feeling at the moment of the great reveal when someone realizes I've been playing them all along and everything they've worked for was for nothing. One of the key components to that act is that you never get rid of valuable resources. Scorched earth works against an enemy you know. When you have as much game-playing, deception, intrigue, and entire complicated ************s of backstabbing like you do being a Sith, you have to play smart. You have to be three moves ahead of everyone else if you want to survive. People who slaughter their enemies get written down in the history books. People who manipulate their enemies to work for them and especially to destroy each other get to write the history books. For my part, I'm convinced that Quinn's betrayal was an act to placate Baras so he could avoid getting holo-choked until Baras was dead. There's just no way that Quinn could have seen all the things that I accomplished and truly believed that: a) him and his pitiful little droids could have even threatened me, and, b) I wouldn't be able to get rid of Baras by using his own arrogance against him The one rule of the game is that you never play a player; but, if you get stuck between two chessmasters, make sure you choose the winner. Even in chapter 1, it was pretty obvious that I was going to win. I always had one huge advantage over Baras: everyone knows that Baras is sharp, but as a few other posters have pointed out, Baras and a lot of other authority figures treat the SW like a person that isn't even smart enough to chew gum and walk at the same time without tripping. Convincing everyone that I'm all HURR DURR I SMASH WITH GLOWBAT while manipulating them behind the scenes was just awesome.

As a Sith Juggernaut who really hates anything that gets in my way, I'm totally okay with massacre. In fact, I'd do it for free. It's FUN. My apprentice once said that she might switch to a vibroblade, because lightsaber wounds don't bleed (I don't think random fluff one-liners are spoilers). I sympathized. Cauterization is no fun. Shoot at me? That's a killin'. Shake your fist? That's a killin'. Look at me funny? Oh, you'd better believe that's a killin'. [Empire accent]I mean, just look at all these...undesirables...daring to breathe the same air as a Lord of a Sith.[/Empire accent] Okay, okay, I actually do agree that it seems VERY strange to do the bonus objectives that require a lot of killing as a light-aligned character. But what could be done? You can't reward players for NOT doing something unless there's effort involved, and choosing a dialogue option isn't effort by any stretch of the concept. Having infiltration and subversion options would be awesome but impractical for most of the classes because they're just not trained in it. IMO, It's just as large a stretch of the imagination to see my heavy-armor, metal boot clad Juggernaut crawl through air vents as it is to see a Sage (gasp) killing things that are trying to kill him/her.

Not sure if Republic is any different, but in the Empire storyline (I'm a Sith Juggernaut), you learn that:

I'm gonna agree with this one. I play my Juggernaut as a character who truly learned from Darth Baras. I think my actions through and prefer to preserve useful assets and prepare for the future. I don't indulge in pointless cruelty just because it's "fun," because it's also usually stupid. Anyone with half a brain knows that people who respect you will do more for you than people who fear you. Controlling someone through fear and oppression alone usually doesn't work for extended periods of time. Vette has a smart mouth, but she amuses me, and she does good work. One could imagine that she's had ample time to escape or leave my service, but she doesn't. People I can trust are hard to find in the Empire, it's not a good idea to alienate them just for the sake of "teh evulz." In fact, she's more loyal and useful to me than Quinn. He's appropriately respectful, deferential...

I liked Darth Lachris, I thought she and my Dark Side Sith Juggernaut really had something special going. She was evil and a bit crazy, but devious and not senseless.

The crazy ones are always the best in the sack, until you suddenly wake up from the chloroform with a car battery attached to your...well, not that that's ever happened to me. I married Vette; sure, there's no gameplay benefit but the whole love confession scene was damned adorable.

I've generally found this to be the case as well. As long as you're able to do a quick pre-pull eval and decide the kill order and how best to split the damage between yourself and the companion, running with a DPS companion means things die a lot quicker and healing between pulls takes almost no time.