So, I'm wanting to play an SK and the reason why is that I've read that they are great at solo play. Due to family (wife and kids) I only have a few hours at night to play and I won't really have the time to commit to raids or dungeons. What I'd like to know is what should I focus on to ensure I am using all the potential the leveling SK has. Thank you for your time.
I'm just going to give generic advice, because I don't know what your goal is with the character, and what type of content you do want to play. While leveling, use crafted gear- most of the quest gear isn't good enough, at least until you are around 85. Leveling is so fast, you really don't need mastercrafted. Handcrafted should be fine, and is cheap. If however, you are intentionally slowing leveling, then splurge for the mastercrafted items. In the very low levels, you probably won't even need to upgrade abilities, but once the leveling slows a bit, go ahead and upgrade all abilities to Expert- it will make everything much easier. Do not use the default AA builds. They are bad for pretty much all classes. Look at the options to see what things do. It is cheap to respec, so don't be afraid to use trial and error to get the spec that is best for you. SK is only going to give the soloer an advantage up to a point- if you are not killing large groups of mobs, if you are not trying to solo heroic content, if you just want to do the solo questlines and solo instances, any class can do just fine. SK might be a little faster because you can kill large groups instead of one mob at a time. You can train through stuff you don't need and FD. But really, any class can do the solo content. If you do ever decide to join a group- and at max level, most instances can be done in 30 min- if all you have is the SK, you will be expected to tank. Since doing a group instance is not a large investment of time, and a lot can be accomplished in "a few hours at night", don't limit yourself to only soloing. I'm saying this because if you don't want to tank when you do group, you might want to choose something other than an SK.
FWIW -- & just as an example of what's out there -- the raid alliance I ran with last night limits themselves to 2 hours a night, 3 nights a week. & as Sogapa said, it's surprising what you can accomplish in just a couple hours with a group, at level 95. However, the Advanced Solo dungeons are a lot of fun, & you can be DPS Master to your heart's content in those; just don't expect to gear up quickly doing them. I'd otherwise echo his advice.
Very good advice so far. And yup even with only a few hours a night you can run ToV dungeons with a pick up group. No problem. If you do, you may find it helpful to have a solo gear and aa set up, and a more tanky group set up.
