There's guerrilla set also. It comes from the cartel market, but sometimes u can buy it on GTN. Prices are bit high.

Actually if you play pyro you sure need the 4-piece eliminator set for the 15% RS crit bonus. But I play arsenal and I prefer 2-piece PVE set bonus for 15% crit on TM. To get it I bought 2 campaign armorings for gloves and boots, they are the most affordable and have same stats as more expensive ones for chest and head, 72 BH comms for both. Then I just replaced armoring in my WH gear with them. What I'm loosing is 100 expertise and almost useless for arsenal 15% crit on RS, and the gain is around 65 aim, 30 endurance and nice set bonus. So I still got 20 sec cd on jet boost from pvp set bonus and over 50% crit chance on a hard hitting TM.

All u mentioned above are fire effects. I know this cos I can read the tooltips on my abilities and I also can compare the numbers with points spent on the talent and with no points spent. Yes, i'm that good.

I usually /votekick the person who is not listening to a good advice. So u only need to replace one person, and it takes not much time to get a dps replacement since healers usually don't run around doing stupid things. Almost.

Well, my point here is the shield tech heat management mechanics. You vent heat when shield procs. And it will not proc from tech and force attacks. So you end up as an overheated beating dummy for everyone.

Main reason why you should not pvp in shield tech or stack tanking stats is because shield is nearly useless in pvp. Yes, you'll be a bit harder to kill, but also u won't be able to kill anything. I use pyro spec and IMHO it's the most viable for pvp. There are some variations of this spec and I prefer the one without thermal detonator.

The main difference between merc and PT is that merc is a ranged class and PT is almost every time melee. So choose what suits you best. I've got both merc and PT at lvl 50, and both are very fun to play.

There are different bosses that switch or reset agro. Having taunt on cd in such moments could cost u a dps or two.

Am I wrong or taunt tooltip clearly says that it has no effect if u already got Agro? Furthermore if u ever loose Agro using taunt on cd (and that will happen on some encounters), ur fellow group member will probably die, cos u will not be able to pull mobs off him.

The main reason for not having a TD is that u can take +9% aim in tank tree not sacrificing some vital talents in AP tree. That ends having 1830 aim in BM/WH gear for me, and I watch shiny 5k crits from RS on PVE-geared targets. All other skills get significant damage boost too.

In 1.4 I switched to AP and it gives me a really nice feel. Pyro is bursty but it's heat management vitally depends on rail shot proc. And sometimes it never happens and u end up overheated. AP damage is more sustained. And some skills like 30 sec cd root/knockback immunity, overall speed increase, huge boost to flamethrower (dmg + 70% slow) Makes this spec usable in PvP.