http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/200/420/BRTky.jpg?1321408042

Because they all really like Mouse droids. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Rebaxan_Columni

I figured, just made me chuckle.

I found this funny, because my usual frustration with this forum is that there are about a billion threads about marksman/snipers in general being underpowered in PVP (which I don't care about AT ALL, personally) and relatively few about playing the class in PVE. /my$.02

What spec do you use? Just curious.

Most scientists I know do not cite solely their own work as definitive fact (unless they have done EXHAUSTIVE research). Rather than saying "x is the best spec", you could just say "I personally have seen the best results with x spec, I recommend you try it out and see how it works for you". Just a thought.

Yeah he's kinda pimping this build all over the place, every thread I've looked at about sniper specs today has this guy copypasting his above post as if it was obvious and agreed by everyone that this is the best DPS spec, then the source he refers to is....his own post, on another forum. A little odd.

Sorry to nitpick, but I assume you mean 6 GB here, not MB.

HDMI is always preferrable.

Are you sure? I thought this at first as well, but on further examination I turned out to be stupid, and I was indeed able to fire 4 torpedos.

I actually hadn't considered this (the correlation between non-force users and previous MMO experience), but that's an interesting point and I think that's probably accurate. Most people who came to the game purely for the Star Wars tag would naturally gravitate toward the force-using classes, except possibly on republic side where Han fans might lean more toward smuggler. That would tend to load the force-wielding classes with MMO newbies when compared to the other classes. Hrm.

I honestly believe this is a very large part of why you see so few Agents (snipers in particular) on many servers. While I really enjoy playing my sniper, the leveling between about 20 and 35 (especially coming from my Assassin, on whom I could stealth my way through most quests really quickly) felt like a really hefty grind. I ignored him almost completely for a while and focused on my Assassin, but now that I've gone back to my Sniper and gotten him past Taris (where we get our healer companion) things feel a lot smoother and it's once again a joy to play. I've got him at 41 right now and I suspect I'll be pushing him to 50 fairly quickly, but I think a lot of players get discouraged by that hump in mid-levels, or just don't enjoy the grind and translate that to not enjoying the class. Also, obviously, the cover mechanics/playstyle are not for everyone. Personally I really enjoy playing as a Marksman sniper and using the cover system, it adds some variety to the usual MMO dps style. However, I can definitely see how others might not like it. Especially given the questionable design decision of having knockbacks/certain pulls/etc yank or throw you out of cover. Given the (I cannot stress this enough, it's one of my few major gripes about this game) massive, throbbing, face-slapping erection the BW devs seem to have for knockbacks and the like, it almost negates the point of having interrupt/pushback immunity while in cover, which is one of the main things that makes snipers (marksman spec in particular) work in both PVP and PVE. tl;dr: I enjoy playing as an IA, but there are challenges both in levelling and general playstyle/mechanics that can turn a lot of people off the class.

Are you a tank? If so, endurance. Are you a dps or healer? If so, crit.

Do you still have the quest in your logs for the normal difficulty D7? If so, you can't get the HM quest til you abandon the normal one.

I don't think this is true at all. Assassins do tend to be proc heavy, but I find my darkness Tankasin to be quite easy to play as long as I'm paying attention.