…and probably a few things you don't.
This thread has everything, and it let's me know that a Shadow Tank is a viable option for the future. Guess what I'm making. ^_^
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The more I play with the skill calculator over at TORHead, the more I'm coming to realize that the class selection seems more of a personal choice rather than a choice of play style. On the Republic side, three of four classes can heal (Trooper, Consular, Smuggler), three can tank (Knight, Consular, Trooper), and all have some type of crowd control (although I think smugglers and consulars are best at this).
So, if you wanted to have a group consisting of nothing but troopers representing a Republic infantry squad, you can have it with two vanguards and two commandos (for heroics and flashpoints). One vanguard spec'ed defense as a tank, one commando spec'ed medic for healing, and finally the others spec'ed damage, although they could play backup to the main positions.
With the other classes, it takes a little more work. Jedi Consulars may be able to last, but they are made more for a backup tank role even if spec'ed defensive shadow (which is the way I am working on Bel'rihi). And Knights have very little in the way of healing, so they would have to have a bit of downtime for meditation during long fights. Mixing knights and consulars in the same group can create a nice Jedi force to help bring the light to the darkest sectors of the galaxy.
Smugglers will have a bit of trouble creating single class groups, but I'm sure with the amount of damage they put out as well their crowd control and AoE skills, they may be able to pull it off.
Other games pigeonhole you into a specific roll with your class, making it so you have to find others outside of your class (Clerics make lousy tanks, warriors are not know for their medical skills). That's not the case here, and it's just one more reason I enjoy this game.
As an example of a Republic combat squad:
Squad Leader
Combat Medic
Gunnery
Tactical Assault
These are preliminary designs and open for discussion. The Squad leader is the main tank, while the combat medic is the main healer. Gunnery and Tactical Assault are both DPS, with Gunnery being a more direct DPS while Tactical is more DoT based.
It would be great to give this setup a try one day, but I guess that would mean we would have to get people dedicated to a group like this. Would seem like fun though ^_^
Yup! You heard right. We can now add links to Torhead with the correct item hover overs. yes, it's a silly bit of functionality, but it means we don't have to follow to outside pages when we want to discuses SWTOR items and such. 
Well, one thing about TORhead is the skill calculator. I can finally play with builds now, so I can hopefully figure out how I want to play. ^_^
http://www.torhead.com/skill-c…..oZGbrkMd.1
This is my bombslinger. I'm looking to design an AoE style gunslinger. This build really depends on keeping the baddies at a distance and kind of together. Not exactly sure how to pull that one off, but we'll see. If using Corso, you definitely want to turn his harpoon off. Otherwise, he'll play Bass Pro and keep bringing the fish to you instead of keeping them out in the waters.
As I am still new to the system, I'm not sure it is the best build. Anyone want to help 'tweak' things a bit?
Okay, SW:TOR has a fairly complicated crafting system, with all sorts of variants to existing plans that you can discover. Instead of going crazy wondering if I've got it all, I found an expert.
Here's the main forum thread explaining it all. As new things are discovered it should get updated:
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=45866
And here's a graphic that summarizes it all:
http://www.lonestranger.net/swtor/re/SWTOR_RE_GUIDE.png
It's kind of confusing, but examining the key brings it mainly into focus. It's a great guide to what's going on, but doesn't really explain it all. So here's my summary of it all:
First off, you can purchase plans, create items, 'reverse engineer' them, and get improved plans to create more advanced items.
The grades of items in SW:TOR are:
Low-quality (gray)
Common (white)
Premium (green – WoW 'uncommon')
Prototype (blue – WoW 'rare')
Artifact (purple – Wow 'epic')
Custom (orange – closest to WoW 'legacy')
Non-equippable items (Mods, barrels, stims, etc) are straightforward. You get a plan for a green item, you reverse-engineer it, and get a plan for a blue item that is directly better than it, you reverse engineer that, and get a plan for a purple item that is a direct upgrade to that.
Equippable items (chest, gloves, earpeice, lightsabers, etc…) are more complex. First, there are plans for sale for green, blue and purple (and orange!) items out there. Here's the sequence for a purchased green plan:
Craft green item and reverse engineer it a few times, and you get a plan for a blue item. This will have a higher rating (which controls armor or damage), but none of the bonus stats will change (like they would on an improved Mod). Instead it will get a new bonus stat, and the name of the item will have a prefix which tells you which attribute it is.
There are three possibilities: Critical {item name} (+Crit), Overkill {item name} (+Power), and Redoubt {item name} (+Defense). [The community seems to be adopting the term "Tier 1" to refer to an item with this bonus attribute. I wish they'd picked a different term.]
If you start reverse engineering one of these, you will eventually get the plans for a purple version, with a second bonus stat. [An item with both bonus stats is being referred to as "Tier 2".] There are five different bonus attributes this time around (Accuracy, Alacrity, Presence, Surge, Shield), and they can appear with any of the first three bonus stats, creating fifteen different possibilities for the bonus attributes attached to the new plan (well, fourteen, actually, so far no one has seen a +Defense +Alacrity item).
So if you're wondering, "am I done finding new plans from this item yet?", you're looking for three variations of the base plan, and then four/five variations for each one of those.
If you look at the chart, you can see the same thing happens if your initial purchase is for a blue item plan, but both of the "Tier 1" and "Tier 2" variants will be purples. Reverse engineering purple purchased item plans does not seem to ever generate new item plans. Also, orange items cannot be reverse engineered at all (except for a bug which may be fixed by now).
And finally, a note on suffixes:
It is possible to get a critical success while crafting an equippable item, which will add an Augmentation slot to it. A green item with this will have the suffix "[Exceptional]" added to the item name. Actually, any item that does not have bonus attribute (and accompanying prefix) will have this added to it, including blue and purple items where the plan was leaned directly from a trainer or schematic.
An item that has one bonus attribute will gain the suffix "[Advanced]" if it has a Augmentation slot.
A purple with both bonus attributes gains the suffix "[Superior]" (this is how you can tell these from the purples that have one or no reverse-engineering derived bonus attributes–well that and the prefix name).
A purple with both bonus attributes and the Augmentation slot has the suffix "[Mastercraft]".
