Heatseeker missiles. The animation is pure win.

When I kill them in WZs they look like a mix of a regular cowboy hat and a sombrero. The type of hat Zorro wears is called a bolero.

If I get the ball I start running with the pass target circle already up and ready to go. You shouldn't be waiting to punch that button, because you shouldn't be stopping to do DPS. If you have the ball you should be waiting to use your mitigation skills, CC break, CC, and then pass to whoever is out in front (preferably on the other side of the fire so the enemy can't get to them unless they force leap I suppose). Question: As I don't play a force user and don't care to I'd like to know whether a Jedi takes damage when they force leap through the fire traps. Yes / no?

Wrong. Aside from being good for slowing down runners for a couple seconds so your group can pounce on them it also has other uses if you're smart about it. When in trouble or when trying to help someone cap an objective do this: Electro-dart on enemy. If they sit there to take the damage then save concussion and use unload to slow them (assuming you have pinning fire; you should). If, however, they use a CC break on electro-dart (this is most of the time) then you cast Concussion (use power surge and thermal override if you have them for instant, heat free cast) and now they are stuck in CC for 8 seconds with no way to break out. Just long enough to capture an object, run to hide/heal, or sit there and heal up near full so they have to try to kill you all over again from scratch.

On the other hand you could do it to one person to make the enemy blow all their cooldowns while the rest of the team ganks another who is totally unsuspecting.

A great case for removing expertise from the game. A useless stat once everyone has it you might as well not have any.

Only if you go 11 points into Body Guard which means you cannot get the top tier skill of either of the DPS trees.

I'd like "On the Trail" not to require an active companion and to have a smaller cooldown like 5 minutes or something. Would be nice for some PvP situations.

We aren't really built for 1v1, but most of the PvP in this game isn't 1v1 anyway. Start rolling with a group and don't let the targets see you until they've engaged your friends. Then you can just sit back and blow pudu up.

I only bother with Concussion when Electro-dart is off cooldown. When in trouble (getting to about half health) electro-dart the other guy. If they sit there pop off a heal and then keep fighting. If they break the stun with their CC-break cast concussion right away and you get 8 seconds to heal and get distance (or get away if they are stronger).

My reasons for rolling merc. 1) I like Bounty Hunters in general, and the story appealed to me more than any of the other classes. 2) I like DPS. 3) I like Ranged DPS. 4) I like watching things go BOOM! 5) The various missile animations and resulting explosions are fun to watch every time. Heatskeers are my favorite by far.

I love pinning fire. Keeps those huttball runners in range so I can gank them with heatseeker before they try to sprint away. And if talented right you get cooldown resets on the skill quite often. It's a 2 second snare per shot. So with 100% chance you gets 6 seconds of snare for a 3 second channeled. That enough time to add two more attacks before they break snare. However, given the semi-immobile nature of the class I'd rather a talent that let us get that snare proc on rapid shots so we could snare on the run to gain distance. Then we could snare on the move (still 3 hits, still 6 seconds), but I guess the babies would cry "OP". I'm still waiting on my jetpack escape ability so I can get away from melee more than once every 20 seconds.

Powershot is a good substitute as well when you are interrupted.

Speak of the Emperor! I was just complaining about how I never find a D-200 to match my first and what did I find first thing logging in to GTN today? A D-200 for 1350 creds. NIIIIICE.

Kiting means to be able to do DPS (damage) to your target while on the move and out of reach so they can't hit you back, or at least they can't hit back hard. Tanking means to soak damage for your group while they do the damage. If you go with a defensive tank build for PvE you will be strong and in PvP your job will be to defend objectives with (hopefully) a healer. If you go with the damage tree as a Powertech you do mostly melee range to mid range damage on the move. You get to move with the group focusing fire on called targets. For Powertech I have heard that Pyro is the tree to choose for going with damage. In PvP the types of talents and buffs you want in your tree are things that: 1) Let you absorb damage or remove Damage over Time. 2) Let you break free of crowd control skills. 3) Put crowd control skills on enemies. 4) Put burst damage (high damage hits rather than slow and sustained damage). PvP builds don't always work for PvE, but this game is so easy I haven't found it to be too big an issue. That's a simple answer, there is a lot more for you to learn but you'd be better off learning the rest as you go.