What's up everyone. I am brand spanking new to SWTOR. I think today may be day 5 or 6 that I've been playing. I've been subscribed 2 of those days.

 

So I went with Imperial Agent then Sniper advanced class. So far I am a lvl 13 and have completed Hutta and just touched down on Kaas. I ran through Black Talon with a group and got some experience from that as well. I have Kailyo (spelling) and have upgraded her armor level to around 480-500. We are about equal in armor rating. my crew skills started out being Armormech/ Scavenging/ Underworld Trading however after reading articles and getting sucked into slicing for money purposes I dumped Underworld Trading and went with 2 gathering skills.

 

I am so lost in regards to what my main focus should be right now and what crew skills I should go with. I haven't done any pvp and have only been playing the story line. I'm sorry if I have left out important information in regards to my player stats etc.

First of all, Welcome Glocktwnty! Hope you enjoy your swtor experience. I'd say you made a great choice in sniper as it's one of the better designed classes right now able to do great damage in all 3 trees (+ a hybrid spec). Since I'm not entirely sure what you're looking for here's a brief rundown of sniper:

 

Your main stat is cunning (don't bother with willpower, aim, or strength gear).

For secondary stats, both power and crit are good (at least sub-50)

getting your accuracy close to 100% will prevent you from missing, and surge becomes more important the more crit you have.

 

First thing i'd do is choose a spec to focus on. Snipers mostly rely on cover which protects them in some ways, gives them access to several heavy-hitting skills not useable outside of cover (snipe, ambush, series of shots, explosive probe). The Marksman tree is a strong single target damage spec which is heavily reliant on cover (gets much better once obtaining followthrough in the tree). Lethality (and the hybrid) are dot specs which are more mobile. Engineering is great for leveling as it's got great AoE capabilities but lags behind the other specs for endgame damage (barring specific circumstances where it shines).

 

For crew skills, I always find biochem to be the most useful (paired with bioanalysis and diplomacy or slicing) as you can make reusable medpacks, stims, and adrenals as you go. At endgame, while these are not the best for maximizing dps, they will save you quite a lot of credits for anything other than progression raiding. Additionally, with planetary comms being so readily available now, it's very easy to gear up planet by planet.

 

Hope it helps.

Thanks for the reply. I'm sorry I was vague in regards to what I was asking from the post. I appreciate the explanation and you answered the post well. I wanted to know what crew skill to go with that would both enhance my player as well as earn me credits on yhe GTN. I went initially with armormech because snipers didn't have much in terms of healing o i figured makibg strong srmor would help. You mentioned diplomacy, why would you suggest that as a crew skill. I'm asking bc I know nothing about it. Also should I focus on the story line and not buy items off GTN and use drops or buy higher grade items like weapons to deal more damage? I really want to know the best route for improving my player without backpeddling days of playtime to redo mistakes .

Thanks for the reply. I'm sorry I was vague in regards to what I was asking from the post. I appreciate the explanation and you answered the post well. I wanted to know what crew skill to go with that would both enhance my player as well as earn me credits on yhe GTN. I went initially with armormech because snipers didn't have much in terms of healing o i figured makibg strong srmor would help. You mentioned diplomacy, why would you suggest that as a crew skill. I'm asking bc I know nothing about it. Also should I focus on the story line and not buy items off GTN and use drops or buy higher grade items like weapons to deal more damage? I really want to know the best route for improving my player without backpeddling days of playtime to redo mistakes .

 

Diplomacy was recommended because he had also recommended Biochem as your profession. Bioanalysis and Diplomacy crew skills gather the mats needed for your crafting of stims. Stims can be made as reusable and give you an extra buff to your stats.

 

You can focus on the story line for your drops but understand that flashpoints have drops for moddable gear as well. Not only are they good experience but you may walk out of there with some better gear than what you went in there with.

 

Normally, I will try to outfit my character in as much orange(moddable) gear possible and then spend planetary comms at the vendors to buy my own armorings/mods/enhancements as I level up. You will receive these comms and other drops to help along the way as you progress through your story. You can get moddable gear off the GTN for cheap. It's even easier to find the gear in Adaptive form from the CC market that people put on the GTN. You may not look the way you want to for a bit but you can have some nice stats and gear as you level up.

 

Best of luck to you!

So I went ahead and switched things around and set my crew skills to biochem, bioanalysis, and diplomacy. The stim packs you get to make are nice. I ran through black tallon again and picked up nice gear for my companion . She is well armored now. I'm undergeared so I will work on that next. So are any of you in a guild?

Lots of us are in guilds, there are also server forums here with a subsection for each server with a recruitment section. Edited October 3, 2013 by chuixupu