I'm fine with Operation-strength premades... as long as they are only fighting other premades. Its bad enough having a 4-man Premade + 4 randoms vs. 6 randoms, without making it 8-man premade vs. 6 randoms. Tonight I did five warzones in a row where the Republic started with less than a full team, against Imperial premades in four of those five. Of course, the majority of the Imperials had better gear as well due to the fact that they constantly get to farm such situations. Seriously, is that really fun for anyone? A game that is a challenge for both sides is much more fun. Undergeared, Outnumbered and less coordinated most of the time - those are the things that Bolster should compensate heavily for but it doesn't. So either fix Bolster or fix the imbalance.

You need either 8k or 9k, I don't remember precisely other than that it was high. As far as the gifts losing effectiveness that isn't entirely true. Rank 5 Blue and Purple gifts of the right sort (Underworld, Luxury) will still give you several hundred affection a time and so if you really want to you can burn through 1k affection in 5 minutes...

True, I didn't really have any trouble with Dirty Fighting levelling up though. It's only in the 50 FPs & PVP where the weakness is really obvious. That said, I'll take an Upper Hand granter lower down the tree instead - I was just assuming that they may not want to give Scrappers/Hybrids easy access to it too and so a DF-focused fix was the most plausible for us to actually get.

Hemorrhaging Blast needs to grant Upper Hand for Scoundrels. That little fix alone will solve a lot of the issues with needing Upper Hand to be able to Wounding Shot and actually kill PCs by yourself sometimes. We also really need a more efficient gap closer, something that gives us a speed boost to get into melee range instead of out of melee range... In short, they need to make Dirty Fighting as viable for Scoundrels as it is for Gunslingers.

Give all 4m Melee attacks 360 LOS. With the amount of lag and delays that you often get when there is a large scrum around an objective it really does seem like the only solution to people constantly running through each other and it not showing instantly to everyone.

Prototype Hyper Stims are also worth investing in for non-Biochemists. 20-30k for +1k health for 2 hours regardless of how many times you die isn't a bad rate to pay as thats 1-2 dailies plus a few WZs and the difference it makes is very noticable.

Med Pacs no longer count as heals for medals. I'm at Level 50 and because of Trauma have to rely on Crits to get the 2.5k heal medal, which isn't that much of an issue as I'm around the 45% crit chance range so if I chuck three out during a game then I'm normally getting it. All in all, though, outside of Civil War where Defender points work properly (never seem to get them in Voidstar) I'm often getting 6-8 medals rather than more.

I have both Melee and Ranged DPS characters and the Ranged ones do, for the most part, have more advantages. The issue is clouded by a few things: (1) Scrapper Scoundrels and their Operative equivalents are a bit too good currently. They are lethal melee classes. Please note, not all Scoundrels are Scrappers and the other two trees are both a bit of the weak side. (2) Gunslingers and their equivalents are a bit on the weak side, especially compared to their Scrapper cousins. All in all, Melee DPS should do more damage than Ranged when they are in position to strike because of all the time that they aren't and because Ranged can unload their DPS at point blank range with little penalty. Yes, some melee get a little more survivability than their Ranged peers but not really enough to make up for, say, being constantly knocked into the pit in Huttball and having to spend 20s running back up with no speed boosts at all.

You can respec pretty cheaply the first few times, and for free if you leave it 7 days between changes. Seriously, just use them and if you dislike them after a few days shift them around.

It took me a while to learn the lesson the hard way but those sorts of fights you really should open with Flash Bang, especially now they fixed the CD. Then while everything is stunned start clearing trash and then use disappearing act when you're just about to die if it gets to that stage. In most cases dead mobs don't respawn, so focusing on killing the weaker ones before you vanish is a good plan.

For what its worth, I had no trouble dropping him first time using Corso as a Dirty Fighter.

Bioware have stated repeatedly that they intend for people to play multiple characters. The system is set up to encourage that. After you've finished your dailies on you main character swap to an alt or two and PVP there. I'm having a lot of fun PVPing as a mid-level Guardian, its a nice change of pace to my DF-Scoundrel main. Playing each of the classes also goes a long way towards improving how you fight against them. Rack up the Legacy XP, eventually you'll be glad you did.

I'll never leave you. Not so much fighting today? Whee!

Make Hemorraghing Blast grant Upper Hand for Scoundrels to compensate for the decreased range we get on it compared to Gunslingers. I think that would be enough to let us fight mostly at 10m, just occasionally diving inside 4m to plant a Dirty Kick-Blaster Whip combo before retreating again. Of course, an ability that lets us get a speed boost when we actually need it instead of when we don't would also be nice. All the other melee classes have great range closers, I need a boost to get within 4m to use Dirty Kick, not after my target has been stunned already!

I'm ok with them nerfing Scrapper a bit so long as they bring Dirty Fighting up to par so that we then have two decent DPS trees instead of one semi-broken one and one underwhelming one.

People really need to realise that not all Scoundrels are Scrappers. I play a Dirty Fighting based Scoundrel because I find that between lag and ability delay getting 4m backstabs against people circling is very tricky and not much fun. My main is currently in a mix of Champion and Centurion gear, around the 350 expertise mark, and I'm a biochemist with Hyper-quality reusable adrenals, stims and medpacs. I'm on a RP sever and generally place in the top three on my side in terms of medals. My evaluation of how easy it is to get the medals for a DF Scoundrel: solo kill = normal - I need a softish target and for nobody else to come whaling in to support me. Generally I'm trying to fight 2v1 as 1v1s are tricky for the build. 2.5k single hit = hard. Even with a Crit/Surge Champion Relic and Force Adrenal I'm normally only hitting for around 2k. AOEs and Bleeds don't calculate this medal correctly. 5k single hit = very hard - See above. 75k damage = easy 300k damage = hard - I'm normally in the top two damage-dealers for my side but in the 150-220k range. I've never actually seen somebody do 500k damage on my server. 10 kill = easy 25 kill = normal single heal 2.5k = easy - yep, a crit on Underworld Medicine will do this 5k single heal = hard - again, my gear is pretty decent but even without trauma and with the buffs up I'm only healing about 4600 on crits. Think you need /very/ good gear for a non-healing build to do this easily now medpacs don't count. 1 killing blow = easy It's only Scrappers who are very strong, Dirty Fighting Scoundrels are weaker than our Gunslinging counterparts so please don't lump us together with them.

The PVE dailies on Ilum and Belsavis let you get pretty good gear in about a week. You can pick up about two armour mods a day plus an Enhancement and a Mod at either Epic 51 or Epic 50 level just doing the two heroics (and they are 2+s, so not that hard to find somebody to do them with) and then the other missions solo. You'll also earn about 150k and it takes less than 2 hours to do the lot. Orange gear with Purple 50/51 mods in every slot is actually on a par with Centurion gear and is adequate for you to not get completely rolled in PVP. 3 days and you'll have a full set of armour mods plus a barrel/hilt. 6 days and you'll also have every other slot filled. As you should be picking up SOME champion gear on those six days too you can get to 'passable gear' in about a week without running a single FP. I'm currently in 2 pieces of Champion gear (plus relics, one implant and belt) then have PVE Daily equipment in every other slot and thats enough to let me consistently place in the top half of the board with 5-8 medals. Not amazing, but not bad for somebody who has only been PVPing for about a week.

The biggest issue with Dirty Fighting in PVP is getting Upper Hand. Sure, sometimes I can Blaster Whip mid-fight but getting and staying within 4m is hard against targets that weave like crazy. I actually find that I rely mostly on Shrap Bomb, Vital Shot, Hemming Blast and then... Quick Shot. I get the occassional Whip against a CCed target which then turns into massive hurt as Wounding Shot follows up but... its pretty rare. (I'm a Level 50 who generally places above average in Warzones.) All that we really need is to have a better way of regaining Upper Hand in PVP. While I have the two points in Sawbones to let me generate it pre-fight it is very hard to get Underworld off in the middle of a fight due to the two second freeze it requires. I think my ideal solution would be to make Hemming Blast also grant Upper Hand as it would prevent helping out other builds while pretty much solving everything as the CD on Blast is already long enough to prevent spamming.

Bolster, in theory, is a great idea. The problem is that it utterly fails in practice. I just did four warzones back-to-back where it was 4-6 Republic against full teams of Empire. Now, obviously, none of them went well. Putting up a good defense when you're so heavily outnumbered is practically impossible. It isn't fun for the outgunned side and I'm sure it can't be fun for the dominating side either - especially if they've queued for as long as some apparently have to. Bolster should fix this sort of issue but it doesn't. What does my tooltip say? Your stats have been increased to ~level 49? In a 50-only Warzone. Bolster needs to grant significant levels of Expertise - the only stat that really seems to make a big difference in Warzones. What sort of levels of Expertise would make up for being outnumbered almost 2-1? I don't know, but I'd have thought that we must be talking in the ballpark of at least +1k Expetise when outnumbered 8 vs 6. Thats about +25% to damage and reduction which is a significant enough swing to make a difference although, frankly, defending locations when you get zerged is still going to be very, very hard. Also, to prevent people just quitting when outnumbered how about awarding extra Valor/Medals for actually showing some guts and continuing to fight on when facing impossible odds - so that when people join a losing game they have an incentive to muck in instead of quitting immediately.

...at which point you may as well just be using Stealth+Sneak instead. I agree, anyway, that Disappearing Act needs to be fixed so that its more useful. As a Dirty Fighter who relies on bleeds I have to basically stop attacking for about 15s prior to popping DA and even then it still often doesn't work properly.

Slicing also gives augments, which sort of synergises with biochem.

I'm with those who think that the EU servers should have different maintenance windows to the US ones. 4am-8am is way better for the majority of people than either 12am-4am or 8am-12am. It's not a huge deal, but it is a nuisance and global maintenance windows for regional servers just doesn't make all that much sense.

(1) The forums don't reflect the playerbase, they reflect a very vocal minority. (2) Playing on a RP server instead of a PVP server means you avoid 75%+ of the QQers. Or at least, in the RP-server forums I've not seen anything like the sort of QQing that is seen here. Strangely enough, people who just want to enjoy the game's story elements don't care so much about a slight perceived edge going to some other people (but y'know, if we wanted first day access we should have pre-ordered sooner... I took a few days deciding on which edition I wanted, so now I wait an extra day... like they made clear I would.)