Yeah, all these people who tell the late night players to "get a life" when the game repeatedly goes down for maintenance, would probably start a revolution on these forums if the game went down in prime time multiple times per week, for 3-4 hours, instead. Imagine if 2-3 days per week, the game went down for four hours between 6pm and 10pm. This place would explode.

The occasional unscheduled maintenance is just part of life with MMOs, and can even be a good sign, as it means they are squashing bugs as they find them. However, there's also no doubt that this game has entirely too many unscheduled maintenances these days. The concerns of people who can only play late at night do not immediately become invalid because you utter some pithy line about how they should "get a life" and "do something else". They pay money for this service, the same as you do, and are being deprived far too often of the ability to play the game they are paying for. The SWTOR servers are routinely going down 2-3 times a week these days, for at least a few hours each time. That's absurd, and crosses the line from "hey good, they are getting rid of bugs", to "jesus, do you guys QA these patches at all before you deploy them?" And if you're someone who works a night job, it means frequent interruptions during your prime playing hours. Complaining about that fact is completely reasonable and valid.

I have no idea if he's lying or not, but I just wanted to say that I hate this line, and think it''s a BS demand every time I see it. Maybe it's a rare bug? Maybe he doesn't record video of every single PvP match he participates in? Maybe he simply doesn't care to spend the time trying to reproduce it, to convince a guy on the internet? The lack of a video has no bearing on whether he's telling the truth or not. Which isn't to say he is.

In no universe does an extra 195 expertise equal the difference between a balanced controntation, and what you described above.

You aren't "nullified" by it, any more than you're nullified by any AoE ability. And the trade-off of being able to continue attacking while it ticks, is the time we spend casting the ability. That's your chance to stun. Or pop a defensive CD, run in and swing away. If a sniper puts OS over themselves, then your melee may want to switch targets, but your ranged DPS can switch to them. It's pretty braindead strategy. This just looks like people who don't really understand how these abilities work, screaming about them because they seem overpowered on a surface level. I'll occasionally pop OS over myself as a deterrent for melee players, but it's hardly the overpowering "death field" you people are making it out to be.

My favourite part is when the OP says casting force lightning on yourself is totally fine, but casting orbital strike is "cheesy", despite being the same fundamental principle - casting AOE over yourself. Orbital Strike takes several seconds before the damage starts, and it paints a giant red target on the ground for you to avoid. Stop complaining and pay attention. Or better yet, interrupt the cast. Casting AoE spells in the vicinity of your own character has been a PvP tactic since forever.

My own PvP gear is currently a mix of campaign, battlemaster, and a few pieces of war hero - only totals 804 expertise - and I routinely sit up in the top 3 for damage (granted I don't play rated WZs). Expertise is an important stat in PvP, and if all you have is Rakata gear you should probably wear Recruit gear for your own good. That said, people focus way too heavily on it in determining a player's worth. Kicking someone for wearing all Rakata is kind of absurd - sure it might hamstring you competitively to an extent, but it isn't like "not being there" at all. I also tend to think the value of expertise depends on your class. If you're a ranged DPS class like a sniper, for example, you can probably get away with wearing less PvP gear if your PvE stuff is better, because the damage reduction and healing buff in the expertise stat are less important to you. If you're a melee class, that stuff is critical literally all the time. Ultimately, player skill still trumps everything. Any schmuck will eventually get full war hero gear if they play enough, with or without learning to play their class well. However, you need to recognize that you're part of a group in PvP, nerfing yourself for the sake of your character's appearance is pretty ridiculous, and walking around in certain gear doesn't really contribute to the "fun" of PvP. Feel free to put that stuff back on when you're at the fleet.

Or keep it exactly the way it is now, but cut down the cast time. I've got no problem with a reticle on the group, alerting people to where the OS is coming down - the real problem is the enormous gap from when you start casting, to when the OS damage actually starts ticking, with the reticle there the entire time. It gives players way too long to get out of the way, as opposed to the BH's DFA, for example, which starts pretty much immediately.

Well I can't argue with this well considered counterpoint.

Leg shot is a fantastic PvP ability - the only thing I hate about it, is that it's subject to being dodged or missing like any other attack, so it can be a bit nerve wracking when you're giving a last ditch effort to stop a ball carrier, only for it to not do anything. But aside from that relatively small wrinkle, it's boss. Bailed my team out countless times when I'm pugging warzones, and I get a team of dummies who spam CC's with no attention given to their resolve bar.

The only scenario in which we are "overpowered", is when we are completely left alone to DPS at will, which is the fault of poor opposition, not poor balance. If a team is smart, and immediately moves to try and neutralize the snipers, our effectiveness can plummet to zero pretty quickly. Particularly if you're a MM or hybrid spec sniper.

Imagine how useless snipers would be if they could be jumped to while in cover. The whole point of the sniper class is that you sacrifice mobility and melee range survivability, in order to be deadly at long range. Now imagine if melee classes had the ability to simply jump to a sniper's location - immediately closing that important buffer zone the sniper literally needs to be useful. Or imagine huttball, if snipers couldn't set up camp on the upper catwalk ledges, for fear that the opposing ball carrier could simply jump to them in a vulnerable position. The point is - quit whining. Good melee players are more than competitive against snipers.

Easy compromise/fix would be to make OS a channeled ability instead of casting first, like force lightning, death from above, and others.

Oh my bad - I'm not that familiar with the random drops in the EC loot table. I assumed he meant F&S had a chance to drop a random lvl 61 barrel/hilt mod.

Testing has shown that the internal damage proc relics hit for around 7 more damage on average, because despite hitting for less they don't get mitigated by anything. But yeah, the other guy is right - the PvP Boundless Ages relics are where it's at. Even if you just get the BM one, which is super cheap.