The Second Smuggler

If you had asked me not long ago which class was going to be my first pick to level to 50 a second time, smuggler definitely wouldn't have been my answer. Not that there's anything wrong with the smuggler story, in fact I quite enjoyed it, but if I was going to repeat a class story so soon I always figured that I was going to pick one where the light and dark side choices looked like they made a big difference to the outcome... so probably agent, knight or warrior.

However, not long after I hit 50 on my gunslinger and while I was still basking in the pride of feeling that I had seen all there is to see on Republic side, some guildies of mine were doing PvP on low-level alts:

"Want to join us, Shin?"
"Um... I don't have any Republic characters below 50 anymore."
"Well, then make one!"

So I did. Considering that this character was meant to be my dedicated low-level PvP character and in no hurry to go anywhere, I didn't pick her class based on the story, I picked it based on PvP utility, figuring that I wasn't actually going to level her to cap any time soon anyway. I just wanted an advanced class that I didn't have on Republic side yet (even if I had the mirror on Imp side perhaps), and one that was going to be fun to play in warzones. My choice soon fell on the Scoundrel, as a mirror to my Operative, but specced into dps this time so that I could have some fun blasting people in the back for a change.

At first things seemed to be going well. I levelled through Ord Mantell, did the Esseles, and then I started running warzones. While the lack of abilities at a really low level was somewhat annoying, I still found ways to contribute and had a lot of fun. I did my class quests on Coruscant to earn myself a couple more skills and found myself distracted for the first time as I ended up doing all the heroic missions on the planet as well. I just couldn't resist the lure of "LFM" in general chat! Oh well, I thought, even if I do some heroics in addition to my class quests, that still leaves the majority of my experience bar to be filled by PvP.

Then, one day, I found myself grouping up with a guildie's gunslinger alt, I can't even recall why. I said that I'd help him complete his last heroic on Coruscant, as I didn't mind doing it again. Then we both went to Taris, since that was going to be my next stop anyway. Before I knew it I had a load of quests in my log that I hadn't really meant to pick up... and the rest is history. Sort of.

While I kept moaning about "having to" do all the quests to satisfy my guildie's OCD, I was still happy to come back for more every time. Soon I respecced to healing as well, as my twinked out gunslinger companion was killing most things before I even had a chance to run up to them, and whenever we did heroics it made more sense for me to heal anyway. In exchange he provided me with a steady stream of crafted armourings, mods and barrels for my level, and his ruthlessly efficient levelling regime made whole planets go by in no time at all, which was quite a change from my usual slow bimbling about. One of my favourite examples of this happened early on Taris, when I received a phone call and told him that I'd have to be AFK for a bit, so he asked me to put myself on /follow. When I came back, he'd completed all my quests in the entire sub-zone for me and was in the process of trying to drag me up a ledge towards a datacron. Good times.

The only downside is that my "dedicated low-level PvP character" is just another one of my level 50s now... and she didn't even get to do that much PvP while levelling up either! I only just about made Gladiator rank - plus I ganked a couple of PvP-flagged Imps of my level whenever I met them out in the world while questing. I can always make another PvP alt I guess, but considering how easily I'm apparently coaxed into doing other things instead, I'm not sure how much good that will do me.