New Group - Imperial side this time

[Longshot17]

Hi All, just coming back... played my Republic side (Vanguard, 2 x Troopers, Sage) up to 45, but quit about 2 months later. Decided to come back and play a few different classes up to 10 to see if it inspires me enough to re-sub.

Sith Inquisitors seem pretty cool, for pure DPS, Sorc or Assassin? Thinking about tanking with Sith Warrior (Juggernaut) though. However gonna do 2 BH and to 2 IA to 10 as well, just for that storyline, so will have options.

Initial plan is 1 Juggernaut and 3 sorcs, do a old school WoW style Pally - 4 shaman style group. So spec Sorcs mostly in DPS and heal by committee, feasible?

Other options would be more mixed setup, is there an ideal Imp side healer for Melee only setup? Like Jugg, 2 Assassins and ??? Mercenary? I'm leaning Assassins over Sorcs to do a Melee only group, provided there is an appropriate healer? Prefer to drive with tank, but I believe it looks possible (maybe even easier then in WoW) to drive from the healer? Or for melee team would it be better to tank with Assassin, 2 Marauder DPS and whatever heal class is best for melee group?

3 options: Jugg - 3 sorcs, Jugg - 2 Assassins - Healer, or Assassin - 2 Marauders - Healer. Read lots of positive for both Jugg and Assassin tanks, would lean to whichever class is better overall dps, but if it's close prefer melee.

Thanks.

[Riiker]

Longshot,

I have one of everything at level 50. I would recommend against assasins as anything but your tank. Their DPS is either AOE or heavily proc based which makes them terrible slaves. But you could easily drive from an Assasin tank.

Your best bet for melee DPS will either be marauders or powertechs. Both have very high sustained DPS and both lend themselves to make great slaves. I personally would go with the powertechs.

For ranged DPS, the only class to consider is a pyro specced merc. It is easy to slave and DPS is second to none.

The only melee healer in the game is an operative right now. I have never tried to run this kind of healer, but I imagine that it would be very challenging.

Hope that helps

[Longshot17]

Awesome, thanks for the feedback! I just wasn't sure about assassins and wanted to check, good thing I did! So for Healer type, probably Sorc would be the easiest?

[Riiker]

Sage (Sorc) is the only healer that I've used. I've found it to be pretty easy to control.

I set up the bubble and hot to cast on the tank automatically which increases the tanks survivability a ton.

Im actually about to make a new team of one scoundrel healer and 3 vanguards. I don't know though. I might put one commando in the group for ranged DPS.

[Riiker]

Just curious, why don't you finish leveling your republic team? My first group to 50 was a vanguard, gunslinger, commando, and sage. I actually wish that I had leveled 2 commandos instead of the slinger.

I ran some parsers on my slinger and commando fights and discovered that my columi geared assault commando was doing higher DPS than my Rakata geared slinger.

I think you would find that your republic group could clear a couple flashpoints (red reaper) to level up to 47 then do a couple days of Belsavis dailies and you'd be at 50 in no time. Plus you would get a ton of cash from doing the dailies that you could give to your imp team.

[Longshot17]

Republic side is Vanguard, 2 Gunnery Commandos and Sage (healer). I'm playing for free right now, and so the xping is nerfed. From what I've read, xping from 1-10 is normal, so thought I'd see if I got the 'itch' again before re-subbing.

What do you use to gauge your damage output? Am I overlooking an obvious dps meter or something, google turned up two out of date or no longer supported dps meters... to be honest that's sort of my favorite thing in games like this (WoW) is tweaking teams for ideal damage output/group dynamics etc. etc. and I felt like I was just blindly guessing when setting up my Gunnery rotations. Looking for something that allows a 'spam' or 'popsicle stick' approach to macroing! Even priority (which was what I was sort of using with the gunnery commandos), though I failed with my 'channeled' abilities.

There are target dummies now, so you just enable combat logging... dps for a few minutes then run some form of script on the log that spits out the damage? I should refine my search... that reminds me of my old-school DAoC days!

[Riiker]

I use the DPS parser at askmrrobot.com. It's pretty easy to use. There are some more out there but that is the one I've used. It is what I used to determine that I could max my DPS by going assault spec commando instead of gunnery. I'm pretty sure that assault spec vanguard is still the highest DPS.

[Longshot17]

Went back to finish off my Rep. team. Probably a wise move to respec to Commando Assault specialist asap? Also what's best strategy for gearing up?

[Riiker]

Definitely a good move. Oh and don't bother with assault plastique! I don't use any of the skills in the last 2 tiers. Just make sure that you do full auto on cooldown because that will proc the reset of HiB.

You are gonna have to sub to be able to use artifact (purple) quality gear. Once you hit 50, go to the fleet and get the new tech quest from the PvE mission terminal... That quest automatically gives you 99 tionese comms which is enough to get a full set of tionese gear. Next go to the PvP mission terminal and the same quest to get recruit gear, this will give you ears, implants, and relics to finish off your level 50 starter set.

Now that you have gear, you are ready for hardmode flashpoints! The last boss in each hardmode drops columi gear. Do all of the dailies / weeklies that reward blackhole comms. Get enough black hole comms and buy black hole gear.

[Longshot17]

I did resub Got to 47, started up the Belsavis dailies, also gonna finish off class quests just for the story. Just at 49, very close to 50! What is the trick with Channeled abilities?

Thanks for that gear tip, that's REALLY gonna help.