Darth Hater

Willpower increases healing too, not only damage.

Only for Consular's and Inquistor's... not every class. 

up to about lvl25 there are only base stats on most items, after that power/ratings appear

makes sense too, since u wont be able to specialize too much at early lvls anyway ;)

Nice update. I was wondering what the different skills did.

Alacrity is going to be very build specific.  The important thing to remember with alacrity is that it does NOT shorten the GCD.  The GCD is always 1.5 seconds.  If you load up with alacrity and shorten that 1.5 second cast to 1 second you will just be sitting there for 0.5 seconds doing nothing.  This is based on beta experience, so please correct me if things have changed since then.

Having played a DPS trooper (gunnery), it doesn't seem worth it, especially if you are sacrificing crit or power to add alacrity.  As a gunnery DPS trooper you only have one important skill that has a cast time over 1.5 seconds, and that is full auto.  You are not spamming it, so alacrity only helps to shorten one cast time every 10 casts or so.  Not worth it.  However, if you are playing a commando medic you may be able to boost your HPS by shortening your spammable 2 second heal.  Like I said, alacrity is going to be very, very build specific and will need to be verified with a DPS/HPS meter when they become available.

A very informative post was made over on the commando character guide (http://www.darthhater.com/articles/feature/19807-guide-trooper-commando), explaining that ANY alacrity was actually detrimental to a gunnery commando - even the tier 1 talent in the assault specialist tree. The tree seems very proc-dependant (think cell charger & curtain of fire talents), and with a 3/6 second lockout on those talents, even 1% alacrity will throw out the number of GCD's used to trigger these. It seems crit & surge will be the go for gunnery.

Combat Medic on the other hand, may well find a great deal of use for it, at least until medical probe gets down to a 1.5 sec cast (if such a thing is possible). There is only 1 crit proc in the tree (and that grants alacrity as its bonus) - however, what I have seen of CM so far is that resources have to be managed far more carefully than either a scoundrel or sage healer. Pumping power/tech power for stronger baseline heals seems to be the school of thought atm.

In regards to Alacrity and the GCD, Sithwarrior.com has since demonstrated this false. Alacrity does not reduce the GCD on instant or channeled spells, but cast-time spells that are reduced under 1.5 seconds modify the GCD as well. This is also see with talents, even ones that don't directly provide Alacrity. For example, the Sith Sorcerer talent Haunted Dreams reduces the cast time of Whirlwind (normally 2.0 seconds) by 50/100%. If only a single talent point is placed in it, it will have a 1.0 second cast time and a 1.0 second GCD.  This was apparently changed during one of the last two beta builds.

Incidentally, in reference to the original list, you missed Absorption Rating (well, you technically referenced it under Shield Rating, but it's a separate stat), which increases how much a successful shield absorbs. Also, Cunning by default only increases tech abilities (both damage and healing), but for IAs and Smugglers only it contributes to ranged attacks as well (in much the same way that Aim contributes to tech damage/healing for BHs and Troopers). Lastly, damage reduction isn't really a stat, and it's highly misleading to say that all 4 types of damage can be mitigated by a player's armor, since Internal and Elemental damage innately bypass armor and are only reduced by talents (such as Charge Mastery, SI Assassin Darkness) and buffs (such as an SI's Mark of Power).

Overall a good summary, though.

This guide is based on the tooltips which isn't showing the full picture.

From what I've seen, and correct me if I'm wrong:

1 power = 0.2 straight damage/heal increase for all of your abilities

1 crit = ??% increase

Aim = 0.2 damage increase for blaster abilities. UNLESS you're a Trooper/Bounty Hunter, and then it's the equivalent of 1 power and 1 crit

Cunning = 0.2 damage increase for tech abilities. UNLESS you're a Smuggler/Agent, and then it's the equivalent of 1 power and 1 crit

etc, you get the idea.

I have what may be a silly question, but I'll ask none-the-less; what makes willpower and power different from one another? Is one more important than the other? They sound as if they're almost the same thing, just that they're separate stats.

Depending on the class willpower may not do the same thing as power. On top of this power seems to have a better boost per point than willpower.

Isn't there a Absorbtion stat as well? I could have sworn I saw a piece with Absorbtion on it last night.

Classes always want their primary stat. That means cunning also affects healing performance for IA/smuggler heal specs. Same deal with willpower for inquisitor/consular and aim for BH/trooper healers.

The only specs that don't really care about their primary stats to fill their roles are tanks. Threat isn't much of an issue, so they can concentrate on survival, but there's no way to avoid the primary stat, as there's no arbitrary "gem" slot like in WoW, so they end up getting their might/aim/willpower anyway.

Absorption is a sub-stat of Shield Chance. It increases how much the shield blocks I believe.

Hey there! Nice write up. Now I am super confused though where you keep coming up with the term POWER. I have yet been able to find any  stat or attribute that contributes to anything called POWER. Any enlightenment on this? I also reference this http://www.swtor.com/gamemanual/how-to-play/character-sheet to double check. Also to clarify, I am currently a Trooper Commando, and your write up on that said the same thing, use POWER to increase healing... No such luck finding POWER  for me. Thank you in advance!