"Aren't blasters ♥♥♥♥♥?"
"You're supposed to use a lightsabre, you dummy!"

Those are just some of the many things I've red when I've browsed through Blaster Jedi topics on various discussion forums. I gave it a whirl some while ago, and let me tell you, all the prejudice towards Blaster builds is uncalled for.

Is Blaster Jedi "cool" as a Lightsabre Jedi?
That's a matter of taste.

Does Blaster Jedi outperform Lightsabre Jedi in DPS?
It's surprisingly close, in fact, with proper weapons and upgrades.

What Blaster Jedi does better than Lightsabre Jedi?
Far greater survivability, tactical maneuvering and old western shootouts (no, throwing a Lightsabre REALLY fast isn't the same thing!).


Blaster Jedi is Hard viable and something different you'll see in the films/animations/whatnot, and definitely worth a playthrough or two.

When starting a new game, the first question you'll run into is "Which class you want to play?".

I'll summarize the classes briefly in my guide, but for those who are interested all the classes are described in greater detail in the Wiki:
https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Knights_of_the_Old_Republic_II:_The_Sith_Lords/Classes

UNLIKE IN KOTOR 1, ALL THE CLASSES HAVE SAME ATTACK BONUS PROGRESSION! This is something you should keep in mind when picking a class.

Jedi Consular
Lots of Force Powers, mediocre on Skill Points and low on Vitality and Feats. The last two points are a deal breaker, because Blaster Jedi requires heavy Feat investments to pay off and you'll want all the Vitality because enemies hit like a truck on Hard difficulty.
Repair as a class skill is nice, but the downsides are too much to deal with.

Consulars get a Force Focus feat, which makes their Force Powers harder to resist. Blaster Jedi spends most of their time pew-pewing things, so this feat isn't too important to us.

Jedi Guardian
Exact opposite of Consular: Lots of Feats and Vitality, but low on Force and Skill Points. This should be the obvious choice, right? WRONG.
KOTOR 2 has lots of skill checks in dialogues and work benches. Usually you can swap in a techie companion (Bao-Dur or T3) for all the crafting, that isn't always an option... and it just feels nice to be self-reliant outside combat, so Guardian is a no-go.

Guardians get a Force Jump feat, which adds bit of accuracy and damage on first round. Oh, and it only works with Lightsabres, so totally useless to us.
If you go Dark side, your alignment bonus +1-8 dmg gets added to each shot, making Guardian / Marauder lucrative in terms of DPS (+2-16 dmg per shot), but towards endgame your DPS is so high you're plowing through enemies even without the bonus damage.

Jedi Sentinel
LOTS of Skill Points and Feats, decent chunk of Vitality and Force Points and great Class Feat to boot, what's not to like? This is my top choice for Blaster Jedi, and it should be yours too.

Sentinels get a Force Immunity feat, which grants immunities to various effects: Fear at 1st level, Stun at 6th level and Paralysis on 12th level. Those are nasty ailments, so passive immunities are great thing to have! You just need Crit immunity and you're pretty much set.


The winner is, by a fair margin, Jedi Sentinel!

Dark Side Guardian / Marauder theoretically dishes out most damage per shot, but:
a) you'll have to get status immunities via equipments
b) you'll never have same amount of skillpoints
c) Force Powers may be scarce even in endgame, especially if you choose powers from opposing alignment

Our second class choice comes up when we hit level 15 at relatively high Light or Dark alignment. As before, I'll summarize things quickly and leave a Wiki link for those who are interested:
https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Knights_of_the_Old_Republic_II:_The_Sith_Lords/Alignment#Prestige_classes

Since Prestige classes require certain amount of alignment, I might as well go over alignment bonuses too.
Note that alignment bonuses affect both base and Prestige classes, for example Dark Side Consular who becomes Sith Lord would gain +100 Force Points in total.

LIGHT SIDE / DARK SIDE

Consular:
Light Side Mastery +3 Wisdom
Dark Side Mastery +50 Force points

JEDI MASTER / SITH LORD
Consular-lite, still doesn't offer anything of interest. Same weaknesses as before.

Jedi Master gets Inspire Followers Force Power, which adds up to +5 to party's non-droid members (Jedi Master included) Attack, Damage and Will saves on activation. Nifty, but +5 to damage, even per shot & good duration to boot, isn't impressive enough to convince me. Giving up a good Feat progression just ain't worth it.

Sith Lord gets Crush Opposition, which I find even worse than Inspire Followers. It reduces enemies Attack and Will rolls by -5, but it can be resisted.

Jedi Master: +3 Wisdom
Sith Lord: +50 Force points

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Sentinel:
Light Side Mastery +3 Constitution
Dark Side Mastery +3 Dexterity

JEDI WATCHMAN / SITH ASSASSIN
Sentinel's kin, sharing same strengths. Both Watchman and Assassin gains same Feats, Force Camouflage (Stealth mode without accessories, not that useful) and Sneak Attack featline, which is usually for Scoundrel's only. Sneak Attack can add good chunk of DPS if enemies are incapacitated or engaged with other combatants, but in 1-on-1 this benefit becomes useless.

Sith Assassin gains higher tier Sneak Attack feats, but in return suffers from worse Saving Throws.
Alignment bonuses are good on either side, but keep in mind added CON doesn't permit you to higher tier implants.

Jedi Watchman: +3 Constitution
Sith Assassin: +3 Dexterity

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Guardian:
Light Side Mastery +3 Strength
Dark Side Mastery +1-8 Damage

JEDI WEAPON MASTER / SITH MARAUDER
A variant of Guardian class, good Vitality and Feat progression but low on Skill points. By the time Sentinel hits lvl 15 you should have solid foundation on your skill points, the switch shouldn't be too painful at that point.
In return you get access to Superior Two Weapon Fighting, which reduces dual wielding penalties even further, and both sides have nice perks attached to them.

Weapon Master gains Increased Melee Damage (useless, sadly) and Inner Strength (additional damage reduction, yay!). Sith Marauder gains Ignore Pain (same as Inner Strength) and Increased Combat Damage, a passive skill that adds +6 Damage to all attacks. This is far more lucrative than Inspire Followers because it's constantly active. And yes, that's on top of +1-8 dmg Sith Marauder gets from alignment bonuses for total of 7-15 dmg per shot. Scary stuff.
Sith Marauder also gains Fury, whic adds STR, Vitality, Fortitude and Will Saves & up to 2 Attacks Per Round. This won't stack with Master Speed though.

Jedi Weapon Master: +3 Strength (useless for ranged)
Sith Marauder: +1-8 Damage (whoa!)

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Big winner for both sides is the Weapon Master / Sith Marauder. Whether you're Light or Dark, it provides greater benefits than other Prestige classes.

For absolute best DPS output, Dark Side Guardian & Sith Marauder wins due to extra 8-23 damage per shot. With 5 APR that's 40-115 extra damage per round, assuming they all hit. But as you can see on demonstration videos, you don't necessarily need more DPS.

I'll quickly summarize the stats and explanations here.
This is how I'd make and bake my Sentinel/Weapon Master (*insert Sith Marauder if evil*).

Strength - 8:
STR affects Melee damage, so this is entirely pointless for us. Dump it and don't look back.

Dexterity - 16:
Adds to our ranged accuracy, Reflex saves and Defense score. Defense becomes useless later on, but we can never have too much Attack Bonus. Stack it!

Constitution - 16:
Affects our Vitality, Fortitude saves and the type of implants we can use. 16 lets you wear most of the implants (full list here: https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Knights_of_the_Old_Republic_II:_The_Sith_Lords/Implants), but you can go all the way to 18 if you really insist.

Intelligence - 14:
INT affects the amount of Skill Points we get, and we want lots of Skill Points. I'm comfortable with 14.

Wisdom - 10:
Wisdom affects our Force Powers, Force Points, Heal FP and Will Saves. We don't actively use Force Powers, and when we do we can just stick with Force Channel (early on) or Force Affinity (later on)... I mean, we're never gonna use Lightsabre forms anyway.

Charisma - 10:
Another Force affecting skill, we can sink this one. It reduces the opposing Force cost penalties and affects Heal FP, so there's some inclination in not dumping it entirely.

After all the talk about skill points, it's about time we cover the actual skills themselves.

Most of the skills are used in making various weapons or upgrades no workbenches, extensive list can be found on Wiki:
https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Knights_of_the_Old_Republic_II:_The_Sith_Lords/Upgrade_items

Skills marked with CROSS-CLASS means they'll cost two skill points instead of one.


Computer Use: (CROSS-CLASS FOR WEAPON MASTER)
CU comes up in dialogues with droids, and it lets you interact with computer terminals etc. Fairly important, aim for 20 or so.

Demolitions: (CROSS-CLASS FOR SENTINEL)
Used for upgrade components and for disabling/recovering mines. Save it until you've swapped to Weapon Master, then starting pumping it. There's plenty of companions with Demolitions skills.

Stealth:
There is one part in Nar Shadda where this comes in handy, but you can have Mira, Atton or Kreia handle it for you. None of the important upgrade components have Stealth skill check on them, feel free to skip this one.

Awareness:
There's plenty of mines littered everywhere and skill checks in dialogues. invest heavily into this one.

Persuade:
Very useful for RPing, you can often negotiate better quest rewards and better outcomes with high Persuade. Invest heavily into this one.

Repair: (CROSS-CLASS)
Get this to 20 ASAP! At 20 you can break down any item and salvage all the components from it. You'll need 32 Repair to craft the best firing chamber upgrades, but maybe Bao-Dur or T3 can cover that for you.

Security: (CROSS-CLASS FOR WEAPON MASTER)
Lets you pick locks, pops up in dialogues from time to time. Without Security, you'd have to bash locks which might destroy whatever's inside the container. Quite important, but Atton and Bao-Dur can cover it for a while. You'll need 32 to craft the best power pack upgrades.

Treat Injury:
Sometimes pops up in dialogues (usually Light sided options) and sometimes used in workbench upgrades. Kreia can cover this skill, but eventually you can afford to pump points into this.

Blaster Jedi is very Feat intensive build, so we can't go leeway too much.

The big three are Precise Shot, Rapid Shot and Two Weapon Fighting roughly in order of importance. After that there's Toughness (get it to rank 2, Master rank is somewhat less useful), Close Combat and Class Skill:Repair.
All this may not seem much, but by the time Sentinel hits level 15, s/he's gotten 8 Feats. Just to give you some perspective, mastering the big three takes 11 points in total.

If you have extra Feats to spare in late-game, Conditioning is an okay pick.

Choosing between these three featlines is simple: Rapid Shot works with Master Speed, Sniper and Power does not.

Power Shot has the benefit of adding +12 damage per shot plus an extra x1 Crit multiplier (double damage becomes triple damage instead). Real shame it doesn't work with Master Speed, otherwise this would be a worthy competetor.

Sniper Shot amps up Critical chance even further, but due to not working with Master Speed, you're only getting two crits per round. With 30% Crit chance and 5 shots per round, seeing double crits occurs quite often.

So yeah, Rapid Shot wins by default.

Blaster Jedi is mostly doing pew-pew, but sometimes a buff or two helps immensely. Most of the Light sided stuff are buffs, Dark side is more about direct damage with some CC thrown in the mix.

For starters we want Force Deflection. This will greatly reduce incoming ranged damage and doesn't cost a damn thing. Super!

Burst of Speed is a terrific buff. It adds to our movement speed (kiting ftw) and at Master level it adds 2 extra attacks per round. You'll definitely want to max this right away.

Force Valor is nice battle buff for Light sided chars, toss it around frequently.

Heal does exactly what you'd expect. Grab it and cast it when needed.

Battle Meditation adds attack bonus & damage with a chance of inflicting penalties to same things for enemies. By mid-game you've gotten all the mandatory Force Powers maxed out, so you might as well grab this one.

Slow tree is the only Dark power I'd consider for Light sided character. At highest level, it becomes Plague, an almost un-resistable de-buff which slows the target and reduces their stats while in effect. It has short duration, but it's still very crippling.

There's a plethora of items to choose from. I won't delve too deep in it, instead I'll just mention some specific things to look for:

- Remember when I said enemies hit like a truck on Hard difficulty? We'll want to fix that with Critical Immunity. Bothan Sensory Visor is a cheap solution, shouldn't be too hard to find as a random loot.

- As for gloves, anything goes. Anything that adds to Dexterity and/or skills will do nicely.

- Same goes for belts. Only possible exception would be Immortality Belt, but it's a late-game drop and it's found randomly, so don't hold your breath.

- Armor slot is bit more complicated. You'd think "Jedis are supposed to wear bathrobes, duh!", but no, it's not that simple. I personally prefer Jedi Armors, which permits use of Force Powers AND permits more upgrade slots.
You can slap 30% Energy resistance upgrades on armors, but not on robes. The hardest hitting foes use either lightsabre or blasters. Do the math.

On next section I'll go through various blasters and their upgrades. Trust me, it deserves its own section.

Here we are at last, the meat and potatoes of the build.
Detailed articles can be found here:

https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Knights_of_the_Old_Republic_II:_The_Sith_Lords/Blaster_pistols <- Blaster pistols
OR
https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Knights_of_the_Old_Republic_II:_The_Sith_Lords/Blaster_rifles <- Blaster rifles

Our damage output is mostly determined by two factors:
- Upgrade parts
- Critical Threat Range

"Now what the hell is Critical Threat Range?" you ask. It's basically your Critical chance. For every attack you make, your character rolls a number between 1 and 20.
For example, if weapon description says "Critical Threat 20-20 x2", it means your weapon crits at roll of 20 (1 out of 20 is 5%) and deals double damage on crit.
Bowcaster description says "Critical Threat 19-20 x3", which translates to crit between rolls of 19 and 20 (2 out of 20 is 10%) and triple damage on crit.

Disruptor pistols and rifles have same Critical Threat 18-20 x2, which makes them ideal for consistent damage output despite having lower base damage than other weaponry. When you slap a mere Keen scope on it, the Critical Threat gets doubled and becomes 15-20 x2... which translates to 30% crit chance per hit. Now that's scary!

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EARLY GAME

Early on we wanna stick with rifles since we don't have Two Weapon Fighting feats unlocked yet.
We'll start off with a modest Blaster rifle, but we'll want to look for Disruptor rifle and get it upgraded while still on Telos.
Start investing in Rapid Shot featline, work towards Burst of Speed and dip Precise Shot whenever you can. TWF featline can wait for now.

MID-GAME

Wait until you've gotten two ranks of Two Weapon Fighting, then swap out to dual pistols & get them upgraded.
You won't find upgradeable Disruptor pistols for a while, stick with whatever pistols you can find and keep them upgraded with best parts you can craft.
Hold out pistols (which you can craft on workbenches) come with 19-20 Crit Threat and are fully upgradeable, they'll work adequately until you start finding hefty Disruptors.

LATE-GAME

Ideally you'll want a pair of Mandalorian Disintegrators, but due to their rarity and randomness you can settle for Rippers or Sith Disruptors and be just fine. Remember, the upgrade capacities and Crit Threat are what really matters.

Blaster upgrades comes in many flavors and sizes, so choosing the best ones might prove tricky. I'll list the ones that I've found most effective, but for theorycraft enthusiastics here's a full list of upgrades:
https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Knights_of_the_Old_Republic_II:_The_Sith_Lords/Upgrade_items,_ranged

TARGETING

Pinpoint Scope adds the almighty Keen attribute to our weapons, which doubles the Critical Threat range: 19-20 becomes 17-20 and 18-20 becomes 15-20.
Other scopes provide some attack bonus or minor damage boost, but they pale in comparison to Keen.

POWER PACKS

Ion Charger is nifty if you want to craft some anti-droid weapons, but otherwise it's unimpressive. Pass.

Power Pulsator looks little better, you'd think Massive Criticals works in our favor? Not exactly, since Massive portion is just a flat amount added on top of crit. Meh.

Rylith Power Cell adds raw damage, pure and simple. At best it adds 2-20 per shot, in Disruptor pistol that translates to 4-40 on crit... per hit. Get this one and don't look back!

FIRING CHAMBERS

Mandalorian Chamber, no competition. 2-16 extra damage per shot ain't a joke, Attack bonus is nice and Defense penalty won't matter.

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Here's some more math to keep you all bored.
Let's say you have a pair of Mandalorian Rippers with best parts included:

Base damage of 3-8
+ Rylith Power Cell 2-20
+ Mandalorian Chamber 2-16
+ Precise Shot V for another 8
=========================
Total damage range of 15-52

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

With Pinpoint Scope, we have Critical Threat of 15-20 x2.

With dual wielding we have 2 APR (Attacks Per Round)
+ 1 APR from Master Rapid Shot
+ 2 APR from Master Speed
=========================
Total APR of 5

Assuming all of our five shots land on our target, we're looking at 75-260 damage per round... BEFORE we factor in our huge 30% Crit chance and other possible damage increases from various Feats and Force Powers. Expect to see big barrages of Crits (and dead mobs everywhere).


Okay, so maybe Lightsabre builds can muster more DPS. But can they kill half the group before they even get to melee range? I think not.
Even with lower DPS, Blaster Jedi can mow through crowds with impunity. Yes, even the lightsabre foes, thanks to Precise Shot featline.

Here's a demonstration. This is Trayus Academy, the final area of the game, with my previous Blaster build. Bit out of date and un-optimized, but he got the job done rather nicely.

Time stamps can be found on YouTube video's description.
First part is just me showing game difficulty & character and tearing through Academy:

Second video contains two boss fights, Darth Sion and the final boss:

Enjoy!