idd. A new level 50 is fodder, you just have to stick it out for now and its going to SUCK for a while. Once you catch up in gear a bit more, you will enjoy it again.

Well, I DO have the 3 classes at 50 and it is really like this: Overal Damage: Sorc=BH > Operative = Sniper Burst Damage: Sniper > Operative > BH > Sorc Defense/Surviablity: Sorc > BH > Sniper > Operative Mobility: Sorc > Operative > BH > Sniper Negative affect of interrupts: BH > Sniper > Sorc > Operative Range: Sniper > Sorc = Bh >operative Healing ability: Sorc > Bh = operative >>>>>>>>> Sniper Utility: Sorcerer > BH > Operative > Sniper Green are positive attributes, Red is negative. Scoring 1-4 points depending on ranking: Sorc: 26 pts BH: 21 pts Sniper: 18 pts Operative: 21 pts Operative ranks above sniper in utility due to the ability to heal. Sorcs are by far the best non specced healers Sniper scors 1 pt for healing thanks to the damage reduction shield. Sorc is top utility due to extricate and force speed, BH second due to 15 second AoE knockback. I love my sniper, My other characters just dont hit as hard and sure, my merc might be hitting 200k easily every WZ with worse gear while my sniper struggles to get over 160k, but my sniper does it with 4k+ numbers, which is so... satisfying =). By the way, if you have a 50 sniper, level up a sorc or Merc BH. The difference is.. astonishing =).

Knockback while entrenched is a bug. I see a lot of people with the problem, Ive never experienced it myself. The issue is this, while snipers have some useful skills, they still get outshined by the other range DPS. And while havgn a sniepr is of course not a detriment, a similar geared Sorc is just a better class to take the slot in PvP due to better utility. PvP = 90% of the time playing huttball. Snipers have useful skills, Entrench, shield etc are great and unique, but dont have anywhere close to the impact on a game that being able to heal your target has, or having the ability to AoE knockback every 15seconds including a 60% 4 second long snare. Or how about Extricate? So sure, snipers are far from useless! And we all love to see big numbers when you find that newly dinged level 50 sorc =) but the other classes just have better utility.

Its not right for every game developer to make similar mistakes. Look at Rifts launch... it was fantastic. Aion had a great launch too. just because one of the first games of its kind had a bad start, doesnt mean its ok for other games to also have crappy, bug ridden launches. You need to learn from OTHERS mistakes too.

imo the issue is simply that snipers dont bring anything to the group over what other classes bring. I can go frag hunting on any of my toons and top the damage in the WZ. Or I can have crappy damage scores, ok healing scores, but use my sorcerers skills to position myself to extricate our ball carrier in huttball. Or use my shield and heals on him to keep him alive as he crosses the line, forcespeed to position myself better etc etc etc. My BH can aoe knockback + 60% snare for 4 seconds every 15seconds, single target knockback every 9, if Im the ball carrier I can reduce all damage taken by 25% for 12 seconds, self heal about 20% of my hp, instant cast a self heal on myself etc. Ignore damage for a moment, what does the sniper bring then? My sorc is madness spec, she has legshot (leg shot is better, my legshot crits for 1.4k and lasts 5sec if I do no damage, hers lasts only 2sec always, but still... =) My BH already outdamages my sniper vs many targets... passive 35% armor penetration, up to 55% after some tracer missiles, its SO strong... Sure I can ambush a sorc for 5k, but I can tracer missile every 1.5sec for 3k on the same sorc! Snipers are fun, My sniper is the only class i have that can get that 5k damage medal =). I have literally giggled IRL when using Explosive probe, Ambush, takedown and seeing "3.5k + 5.6k + 4.9k" damage numbers pop up over the por guys head in the space of 1.5seconds. The problem is, there is still no reason to take a sniper over a merc or sorc if you want to consistantly win games.

Saving CC is a bad idea. Use your stuns and cover pulse ASAP so they come off cooldown again later in the fight. Disable Kaliyo's leap skill!!! Coverpulse to help you companion at the start of the fight, and then having her leap onto him to get pummeled is not smart =). Coverpulse, leg shot, stun, gives you and Kaliyo a good few seconds to DPS stress free, and Kaliyo still dies ofc, but then you should have stun back at least, if not Coverpulse again.

Exactly. And my sorc has a 2second root as well, not to mention her other 2 instant cast CCs affect her target immediately (no travel time like flashbang). Dont have to be in cover to use her skills (makes gameplay MUCH more fluid, plus I can hit people underneath me when i stand on a ledge). Oh, and the sorc can heal. While snipers are far far far from useless, they have less utility than other classes (my BH has a 15second AoE knockback with a 60% snare for 4 seconds, and a single target 9second cooldown knockback = FAR more utilit than my sniepr already!) Snipers need to do something BETTER than other range DPS so they are wanted, but.. they dont. Merc burst is comparable (explosive dart > tracer/fusion missile > heatseekers and next GCD a railshot). this is the problem, its not about being totally useless! Its about being less USEFUL!

Talking Huttball: My sniper is extremely well geared (Full champ). I play MM spec because I want to destroy my target. If a tank is the ball carrier, I kill his entourage first then him. I can combo explosive and ambush on a sorcerer for a consistant 7kish damage. I tend to look for people to finish off, I do NOT try for 1v1s. I basically execute people who dip below 40% hp while fighting my teammates. I do enjoy my sniper, but I feel that other classes do my job better. Sorcs can heal, have extricate, shield, run speed, over all so much utility and great damage. My BH is SO much more survivable and fluid than the sniper. Already with just 4 champion pieces and the rest lvl 49 epics, my BH is critting tracer missiles for 2.2-3k depending on the targets armor. I have yet to try lethality spec on my sniper, but I will do so soon. I just dont know if losing the burst is going to be good (though maybe an engineer/lethality spec combo would be good, cluster bombs etc for a bit of extra burst). to me though, the success of lethality snipers over MM just shows you really NEED lethality to PvP effectively. As I posted in the other thread.. snipers are not useless! BUT! There is no reason to bring a sniper over a Sorcerer or a Bountyhunter. getting my daily/weeeklies quests with my sorcerer was such a pleasure! I played in a 3 sorc and 1 juggernaut group. We literally never lost a game of huttball. Once I switched my to my sniper, we started losing some of the games, my burst was better, but I had no support heals anymore, no extricate, no force speed etc. Those things are so vital! Snipers are a pure DPS class, that doesnt out DPS other classes with FAR FAR more utility. = we are a 5% crit buff machine. Its not that we are useless! stand alone we are not actually "bad" but compared to other options, we are a poor choice to group with! This is an issue that has to be fixed.

I assume this is a troll thread, taking a class to level 15 does not prove it is fine in pvp, come on now, no way this post is serious! do not feed!

Yes it is a trap. Snipers are, imo, a great raiding class. We bring really great burst on demand (great for SoA and some other bosses), and excellent steady DPS. Also for the first boss in EV for example, being able to debuff the bosses hit chance 45% while he AoE rockets your raid, really lets your dps stay in full time no worries about losing hp and really helps with NM and HM runs.

This... You need gear at 50, but gear is so damn easy to get. PuG the two normal raids, then do weeklies. It will take you roughly 3 weeks tops to gear up ONLY doing those things. My sorc needed 2 weeks of raiding EV and 2 weeks of weekly/Daily PvP quests to get fully 56 epicced out minus her MH which I dont believe exists =).

The only argument against damage meters is: I suck at my class, I play badly, damage meters will give people proof of me playing badly, I dont want that.

Never heard of this from any of our operative friends, and I never experienced it either. Really sounds like a weird issue, good luck =/.

So.... Snipers are a broken class in PvP. I have all range DPS classes at level 50. I have completed EV on both my sniper and sorc (BH is new, no raids on her yet). I see my Sorcerer as a class on a whole different level to my sniper. The fact is, my sorc can dish out great damage while being extremely mobile, has good CC, an interrupt, can heal VERY VERY well with only a few points in the healing tree and I feel so useful to my team (I have literally NEVER lost a game with my 3 sorc and one juggernaut team in huttball, never). With the Merc, I was out DPSing my sniper in the 1-49 bracket. Comparing my snipers DPS when he was 50 and I was in the 1-50 bracket. Its not that tracer missile spam is so effective (it is, but not as effective as you can be), its their talents! The arsenal tree is based around tracer missile. There are talents to reduce its cost, that give buffs when you cast it (up to 10% reduced damage is a buff I never knew Mercs had till I played one!) Mercenaries are just so... polished. The rotation is not so complex, heat management just seems so much easier than energy management as they have so many talents that help with it. The Sniper, well, I see the biggest numbers on the sniper, but the merc already does similar burst. My snipers Exlosive probe > Ambush combo is about equal to my Mercs Explosive Dark, Tracer missile, Heatseeker combo (both combos, all damage hits at once, merc needs an extra GCD tho). I can actually say having now actually played all range DPS at 50, the pecking order is as follows: Sorcerer Mercenary Sniper This isnt a whine, its a plain fact. And Snipers are WAY below the other 2 classes. our burst really is decent, but not better than a mercenaries (but quite a bit better and much more on demand than a sorcs). Snipers have next to zero utility and are plagued with issues. Snipers are extremely non mobile, far more so than my merc! My merc can... instant cast tracer missile and explosive dart (also for NO heat cost if the skill is ready), then heat seeker missile and railshot, all on the move. My Sniper can........ overload shot. Yay. You know, on the merc, just being able to stand at the edge of a platform and shoot people below me is so nice instead of constantly seeing UNKNOWN EFFECT! Not having to click my cover button FOR EVERY SKILL is so nice!! Once you play a range DPS that doesnt have this mechanic, you TRULY see how clunky cover is! In PvE, snipers do well. the 45% miss chance ability is fantastic and probably the main reason Im invited to raids since we got an operative healer. Out steady non moving DPS is respectable, but I wish I could parse myself against equal level bounty hunters. What about the item set bonuses? Sniper columi set bonus is that I regen 10 energy every time I use a 2minute cooldown, kinda useless skill (20% alacrity increase is only good to burn down bosses, i.e. SoA when his shield drops and only if adrenaline probe is up, Snipers are FAR more energy restrained than cast time restrained! And that 10 energy is so.... worthless). Mercenary 2 piece is 15% crit on tracer missile. As you cast tracer missile 2/3 of the time, thats like giving mercs 10% crit for their 2 piece. Snipers get 10 energy regen every 2mins. Seriously? FYI, my sniper sits at 102% accuracy, 41% crit and 82% surge or so and 17k hp. My sorc at 50 in greens immediately felt more useful to my team (though I died so incredibly fast it was a bit lol). Snipers can do good burst against low hp and low armor targets, but against heavy armor and tanks, Mercs do far better burst. anyways, its not a case of the grass is always greener folks, its really a case of snipers are broken in PvP. Cover is also a broken idea. It really makes gameplay clunky. anyways, rant off. TLDR Snipers are not the best burst DPS class. Snipers are not the best steady DPS class. Snipers have to deal with the clunky cover mechanic (cant even stand on the edge of a platform to hit people below us) Snipers cannot heal to help someone on our team, whereas Sorcs/Mercs can. Sniper has no extra CC than other ranged DPS. Mercenary has MUCH better survival abilities (25% damage reduction for 12 sec, 10% less damage after casting 5 tracer missiles, 2 self heals if you spec for them that heal about 20% my hp) Why bring a sniper to your WZ group over a sorc or a merc?

You will be pretty useles in PvP till you get some gear. Just do the Daily and weekly quests, save up to buy Champion gear bags, and do some instances or PuG EV runs to get Columi. My sorc went from fresh level 50 to fully geared in level 56 epics bar her main hand in 2 weeks. Gear is far too easy to get.

True, anyone can make up statistics to prove a point, 89.7% of all people know that.

Tips for any boss: Bosses get fixated on casting a specific spell, they often will try to repeat cast that one spell until they get it off. If it is a healing spell, it means you are going to not be able to permanently interrupt it. However, if they ever try to cast a nuke on you, and there is someway to LoS their cast, you can easily beat them. Boss starts to cast his nuke. Youi dodge out of LoS and nuke back. Note, you only need to break LoS for a fraction of a second, the boss will fail his cast and then immediately retry. The above trick works on any class against any boss or mob that has this spell fixation. Just dodge out of LoS for a split second, then when you pop back in shoot off your own nuke. Secondly, sniper specific tips, its so easy to burn your energy against healer bosses. Once your energy gets to low levels, your energy regen is so incredibly slow, he will outheal your dps. Find a good rotation, keep your energy regenning at max speed and you will find the fight easier. Sire, you have less burst at the start of a fight, but you will find you win more often. Also, dont forget to leave and re-enter cover for the dampener buff, use med packs, iof a boss hits hard, use the blind debuff. 45% miss chance for 9 seconds basically means Lokin will heal you to full in this time (oh, fyi, that 45% miss chance working on bosses = priceless, makes first EV boss in NM mode pretty cake). Ive also leveleld up a BH Merc and a Sorc, both had such rediculously easy fights compared the my sniper and lowbie operative its a joke.

So after trying to get the daily on my sniper today, I can honestly say, snipers are broken. Please PLEASE if you think the class is fine, answer this, given equal gear, why bring a sniper over a merc on any raid or in a pvp group? Mercs are more damage, in heavy armor, can heal, ranged stun. Snipers need some loving. Maybe it has rto do witht he fact that we get no new spammable skill like other classes do? Mercs get talented skill tracer missile. Operatives get backstab. We use the same spam skill from lvl 1, snipe. While the class is fun, it is not in the same league as Mercs and DPS sorcs. It really isnt. My 23 merc equals my damage no problem in warzones, and doing the damage is so EASY! My 50 sorc in green gear with 11k hp was more useful for my PvP team than my sniper in full champ epics. Snipers need a rework. We are the only class to be affected by shield generators too. While my Merc can DPS a tank, as a sniper, there is zero pont to even try. DPS tank class? Good luck! Im doing 47% mitigated damage while taking 3k crits. Snipers are broken, sorry.

So... Im level 50, full PvP gear. I even remodded all my gear so I sit at... 16.5k HP. 39.5% crit 83% Surge 99% Acc on ranged (Tech never misses) Over 10% attack bonus/mitigation in PvP I can take a good beating, I do fantastic burst against people in poor armor. I have absolutely ZERO chance to win against an equally geared bounty hunter. He can spam tracer missile, I can interrupt it, he can then spend 4 seconds doing NOTHING or use a diff skill, regardless, I will still lose every time. It takes a Merc 4.5 sec to reduce my mitigation by half, I can only reduce the Mercs by 20%. tracer missile Crits harder than my snipe, even with the stats above! A Heatseeker + Railshot combo can eaisly do 9k damage to me. Yes, snipers can snipe then followthrough, but the FT triggers a GCD. In the same time a Merc can cast 2 tracers, hitting for the same, as well as setting up his combo which nearly always kills me if it double crits. Against tanks I feel useless. My damage is just flat out bad, they can mitigate me easily. And ALL I can bring tot he table is my damage, which is mitigated more than ANY other range class, who can also heal. My 50 sorcerer at 50 in full greens with less hp than a level 12 was more useful than my sniper.. now ofc the sniper still does great damage, but yeah, lets see how this changes once I only play vs level 50s. Snipers just fall further and further behoind because ALL we do is bring damage to the table, and when we are not the best at it, why be that class? The tracer missile debuff should be on snipe, and we should do only kinetic damage. Oh, and lets look at the columni set bonuses! Mercs 2 piece = 15% crit chance on Tracers. Operative 2 piece = 15% crit chance on backstab. Sniper 2 piece? Useless! extra 10 energy back when we use a 2min cooldown.. ***! Im really not trying to QQ here, but there are problems with the class. its just a facvt that mercs outclass snipers, the main diff between the classes is mercs have heals, heavy armor, and backloaded burst damage. Snipers have front loaded burst. please do not consider the extra 5m range snipers have as a huge benefit... many MANY of our skills (explosive probe for example) are still only 30m range. Sorry, im kinda just listing my gripes here =) But fact is, snipers need help. They really do. Sure, we do ok and oi really do enjoy the class, BUT, other classes do what we do better, with more utility, so i dont really see the point of snipers compared to Mercs or Sorcs.

Agree..this needs to be fixed.

WoW came out 7 years ago. BW have made some similar mistakes. There is no excuse for that sorry. The issue with the queueueues comes from one thing. BW dont want to open up new servers because they know they will lose a significant % of their players after the free month is up. WaR had this issue, lots of queueueues, then they pened new servers, once the free month was up... half the servers were empty. Im offering no solutions here, ki do that at my work, this is not my job =). Im just bored as i seem to spend most of my time every day staring at the queue... damn my friends for choosing Bloodworthy.

The old UO days, where killing someone forced them to drop EVERYTHING.... including keys to their house. the number of times I killed someone, and was able to steal a years worth of work? Priceless! EQ where dying cost you 6hours of grind! nom nom nom, good old days!

Ok, firstly... people should stop using the excuse of "When woW was released it was also buggy/unfishing/whatever" This argument I am afraid holds no water whatsoever. WoW was released what, 7 years or so ago? People learn not only from their own mistakes, but others too. You cant release a buggy PoS and expect it to do well, people are used to playing polished games, release it in a polished finished state, or expect to fail. So anwyays, having said that, i think while SWTOR is far from perfect, I still think it doesnt fail and I am enjoying myself =). I just think we cant use the same old arguments anymore, MMOs are no longer a "new" thing! As for bosses..... Here is a link to the final boss fight of directive seven.... i will NOT be doing this with pugs =) and it is not quite tank and spank.

ahh actually.... I kinda see his point. Im also one of those gamers who sees te real game begin at max level. It might be a weird point of view, but yeah, some of us have it =). I foudn that multi monitor displays helped tons though! Put a movie on one screen, grind on other. Profit. The problem is though, SWTOR seems to hate multi monitor displays and likes to crash whatever player I have on my other screen(s). time to buy a TV..sigh.