Making the most of Raid Hiatus

Whilst I am one of my guild's progression raiders, I'm in the unfortunate position of occasionally not being able to attend raids every few months for several weeks at a time due to being-at-University and being-elsewhere schedules - in this case, my hiatus started at the end of June and will culminate in the last week of September. My guild doesn't mind this, as we're active enough that my replacement was ready-to-go the immediate week after my departure. Three months without raiding, though, does leave an incredibly big gap to fill, particularly as it is one of my biggest prides and joys to accomplish.



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The thing I do most commonly are Dailies across Ilum, Black Hole, and Oricon. I do these only because I can solo the [WEEKLY] Missions there. If I could do so for Czerka - Meltdown does slightly too much damage for my Gunslinger for now - and Section X, I would gladly add those to the rota as well. In spite of this, one can earn ~400k per day just doing these three areas, not including the cost of selling the Isotope vials that can be bought. I don't really do many PuGs for raids that drops anything more exciting anymore, so this is literally as far as the extent of my GTN selling per week stretches.

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When my most recent hiatus began, I still had two classes to get to 55; my Shadow and my Marauder, who were at 51 and 50, respectively. I wasn't particularly keen on either and so had put off levelling them to 55 until I decided I wanted to get around to it. Cue Double XP Week. With that as motivation, I now have all 8 classes at 55, finally completing that particular achievement. Having done this, I resolved that I wouldn't level another character.

Ten days later, however...

How to make a ginger hunter more intimidating: hide his hair with a shark-fin-hat

I had a new Bounty Hunter.Brand new, level 1, ready to face the world. Directly violating that resolve of mine.

Why did I go back on my resolution? I'll be honest, I have no idea. I think it may be because on Republic I have two characters who are geared for endgame raiding, my Gunslinger and my Commando - although even then he needs more pieces because he was replaced as main by the former before his gear was even complete - but over on Empire I only have one; my Sniper. Whilst I do have a Powertech, an Operative, a Marauder, and a Sorcerer up at level 55, I'm not sufficiently well-enough practiced with any one of them to use them thus, although I did use to be quite good at using Concealment. To have a Mercenary at 55 would mean that I would have another class that I fully understood how to use. Whether I'm trying to avoid practicing with any of the others or not, I cannot answer for sure, but it could mean that I could practice on the Powertech without any sort of 'pressure'.

One side-effect of this is that I'm able to complete more of the "Kill 'x' NPCs with Companion" Achievements, of which I am lacking quite a few. In this case, having just unlocked Gault, I'm able to actually quest with him now, which I didn't before because of some reason or another. The same will likely be the case for Torian, Blizz, and - sadly - Skadge. Whereas I have since fallen in love with Gault, I highly doubt the same can be said of Torian and Skadge, neither of whom I particularly like. Blizz, on the other hand, I've loved since my Powertech found him on Hoth, even without questing with him.

Regardless of my true motivation, this decision has been a good one, in retrospect. Whilst I wasn't counting on this, it has since led to the happy situation whereby me and a good friend of mine level together - me on the Merc, they on a new Juggernaut that they created after I my Merc in order to replace their own Marauder whom they did not like compared to their Guardian. I've always complained that levelling on Empire is a pure nuisance when compared to Republic, due in part to the lack of multi-stage missions. Doing this levelling lark with another person makes it incredibly fun; we can easily duo [HEROIC 4] missions with our companions, thus essentially negating this aforementioned nuisance.

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Of course, the fact that Soovada, Gree, and Rakghouls have all been about throughout these past two months helps with this hiatus a great deal, as the last two in particular have given me reason to break my Daily system and to use my Commando and Sniper more in conjunction with the Gunslinger. As I was on Friend rank with the Gree and Hero with T.H.O.R.N, I still needed to gain the Reputation. After a week of each of the two events doing as many of the missions as possible across the three characters, I saved up enough reputation trophies to get to Legend with both; this means that the only Reputation faction I need to do so with is the Hyperspace/First Mobile Fleet, from the [HEROIC] Space Missions, which will likely never happen.

I've already posted my musings on the Rakghouls, and soon I'll make a post on Soovada, although the Gree will be touched upon the next time they return.