Ok, so I'm a level 50 gunslinger, specced sharpshooter, fairly fresh, and I'm wondering what I can do with the gear that I currently have, as I've had differing opinions, and so, I thought, what's wrong with some more?

 

I have almost a full set of orange moddable gear available to me, (I have the sand people belt and wristguards) and in them I have the best armorings and blaster barrels that the dailies can give me. I have a Xenotech Enforcer's Belt, a black hole wristguard, The Recruit Enforcer's earpiece and implants, and the level 50 cunning matrix cube.

 

Based on that, what do you people think that I could contribute to a group in terms of the end game pve content? (Can I do Hard mode flashpoints? What do I need to do my first operation?)

You can most definitely do hardmode flashpoints. Queue for Story Mode EV as well, and get gear through that. Just do SM EV and SM KP every week and grind out HM Flashpoints and you will get geared enough to do HM EV and HM KP- which will gear you out enough to do HM EC.

I agree, you should be able to do any HM FP except probably LI. LI would be possible, but very difficult in a pugged group where the raiding IQ is fairly low via group finder. I would pug into HM FPs other than LI every day for your daily and also do your BH Weekly once a week for the coms. Also do SM EV when you can to get some Columi. Once you have a few pices of Columi start doing SM KP and keep doing your HM Dailies for the BH coms. Before you get full columi you will probably already have some BH pieces from the dailies.

 

If you end up in a SM op with people that are over geared for the fight (don't need any drops themselves), then you get everything that drops for your class which can gear you up really fast.

 

Then start doing HM EV and KP to get Rakata, put your BH mods from Helmet, chest, gloves, pants, boots so that you have BH lvl gear with your classes set bonus (this simulates campaign gear without having to do HM EC. You only have to do this with 4 of the 5 pieces for the full set bonus. Note: this is expensive to do, even after the reduction in cost to pull mods, but if you are doing your dailies you should have plenty of money. You can also start augmenting your Rakata/BH pieces and putting in purple lvl6 augs in everything And you can do your Rakghual weekly of Kaon and LI for additional BH coms.

 

Keep doing your dailies for the Campaign relics, 200 daily coms each.

 

When you are mostly Rakata/BH, start doing EC to finish up. When you are mostly full BH start doing HM EC. Then full BH with set bonuses and Augs, HM TfB.

 

Its easier with your second toon because you can use your first toon to earn BH coms for your second toon and transfer the mods using Legacy armor. By the time your second toon is lvl50 you might have half the BH gear already waiting for them.

 

So far I've geared up 3 toons to full BH with Rakata shells for the set bonus this way.

 

Good luck!

Thanks for both of your replies. I just finished Esseles HM, and I'm looking forward to my first op.