Is there really a new WZ? Ran WZ's for two days and yet to see it pop at all. Does it like only pop after you do 20 Novare Coasts and Alderaans in a row?

My "main" is a concealment operative. So stomping people wasn't something that was happening very often (Unless you count that window between when AB was changed near the end of beta to the start of nerfs at 1.2 ,or you find that odd fool in the WZ running full PvE gear.) BIS WH gear put that specific class/spec on a somewhat even playing field with others. They did lessen the gear gap and it's much easier to get, but it's still there and you still HAVE to get it.

There used to be a time when you would play with friends, have fun, and get a small sense of accomplishment when you beat a hard dungeon/instance/end boss. It was the challenge of solving the "puzzle" based on your groups skill and strategy, not so everyone could grind out dailies/tokens and what not. It was the essense of exploring new places in a virtual world. Loot drops were rare, no lottos or tokens for trade. So only a handful of lucky folks would get a peice of gear at the end of a big raid. The gear they got looked very unique, so they stood out in the crowd, but the stats didn't give you any real edge nor was it needed to compete. Remember 10+ years ago when MMO's were something like that? Then, at some point that model was lost, either through expansions on existing games or new releases. Many just took the gear grinding model too keep that carrot in front of you. Some of us are not mindless lemmings, we don't need a carrot on a stick. We just want more content, bug fixes and class balance. For some reason though, many think content = more gear to grind.

I am, sub is up in 2 days. Time for a nice MMO break until maybe TESO comes out next year. And no, it's not the "nature of MMOs" it's just the model that SWTOR and WoW take. They should have capped the gear stats at BM/Rakata. Add more sets? Sure. Want to look different? No Prob. Maybe even add different set bonuses or move the stat distribution around, but stop with the stupid stat increases on every freakin' new gear set. This just forces folks into more mindless grinding just to compete in PvE and PvP. It also makes the game less Alt friendly every time they do it. You've got to put a cap on that at some point. It's gone from a MMORPG to a MMOGearGrindFest.

Whatever the designers are smoking ain't pot. Even a stoner knows how busted class balance is in this game. Makes you wonder if these guys have even been on a live server in a WZ or they just look at "metrics" and play with each other on a closed test server, oblivious to the state of their own game. Have they even played a MMO at all before?

Can say I felt ripped off with the changes they made. First the BM gear, going from hardtoget/random/rare to everyone and grandma has a set. Now this crap. We took the time to grind out the WH gear for ranked comms and now are pretty much giving it away free now. How bout we get a refund of the difference since those same sets now cost regular comms? Or why not give those of that grinded the EWH gear, since we paid the full price anyways? Grind it out again you say? Yea, that will be fun Or should I just wait til the next patch, when they give away EWH for next to nothing and the Ultra Uber Elite WH set is released? For some reason it wouldn't surprise me if they did that, seems to be their model.

Grind it out, regular comms are easy to get...

Yep, it happens. My Operative is in full WH w/ EWH weapons. Expertise is around 1310 or so. Smash/Sweep usually hits me between 5000-6000 from most players. There are maybe 3-4 Jugs/Guards on our server that seem to always hit me for well over 6000 though. Maybe the medium armor? Or not, because everyone seems to get hit for this much. Still waiting for them to make Hidden Strike an AOE so I can hit everyone around me for 5k....oh wait, HS only hits for about 3k on someone in full WH gear because they nerfed the piss out of it.

Been playing an Op since about June 2011 in Beta, went full concealment in about August 2011. Back then Acid Blade was a very bad direct damage attack w/ no armor pen buff. I've seen our lows in beta, our highs at release, then once the FOTM crowed figured out our burst when buffed with adrenals, we saw the ultimate decline of the concealment as listed by the OP. Yet I stuck with him, even when denied raid spots because "DPS Ops just suck man, we won't beat the enrage timers. Respec heals or bring another DPS class." I did respec heals a couple times after the spec was buffed, but always went back to concealment after a day or so. Never like playing healers before, so just didn't stick with it. Why stick with a broken, nerfed class? - It's a challenge, you need to bring your "A" game to every fight in order to compete. Being an underdog is fun...sometimes. - I played mage/range classes in every MMO to date. I wanted to try what is usually the bane of those classes. So I did and loved it. - No playtime, RL stuff, ect. need to now focus on one toon. When the game lauched it had minimal grind, especially compared to other MMO's. Then patch after patch, we see nothing but grind added to the game. So now, I am just sticking with the toon I had the most accomplishments on along with the most playtime. I still can do fairly well with concealment, but it took a bit of adapting over the patches with some of the nerfs. Other were not so much a big deal for those of us that had alwyas played Ops and were not on the FOTM bandwagon. Sadly no dev will ever respond to this thread, they never do. They are content letting Ops die out since we stunlocked so many players into cancelling.

OP, one of the best posts ever for the current state of PvP. BW should really take a look and consider much that you said, unfortunately and sadly they probably won't.

Pretty much how you do it and why I've stuck with my Op since beta, even through all the nerfs. (Heck I remember when Acid Blade was just a gimped melee attack and not the AP buff/DoT it is today) Its' probably one of the most challeging classes to play now to be effective. Once you're in full aug'd EWH/WH it makes a huge difference in both damage and suvivablility though. I usually try to stick with healers and ranged dps and drop them out of the fight first, since that hampers the other team the most. If you hit an equally skilled and geared PT or Guard with all his abilities off cooldown you'll may get mashed more often then not. Also Mara/Sents can be very challenging until you work out some good strategies and rotations. You can put up some good DPS totals in stuff like Voidstar when you have a constant stream of opponents charging the door you're guarding, and you can cap off Oribital Strike when it's up. You won't top the tables a lot of times though unless you're Lethality spec, but what you gain in AoE you loose in up front single target burst. We are an assassin class and should be played as such. Be smart and pick you're targets and fights. You'll know you are doing good when people QQ and throw lame insults at you in /say during the WZ. Even better when they log onto their Imp toon just to flame or hate mail you after you destroyed thier Rep in the WZ. Btw Theron, Good fights last night in those imp vs. imp WZ pops. You're feeling the effects of the new resolve changes they put in place. It's much easier to keep someone locked up now, and if your CC breaker is on cooldown you're screwed. Fully aug'd and geared you can still come close sometimes. People don't seem to take into account the AB DoT. It ticks through fast, mine I think says its around 2.1k on the tooltip. 2.5-5k HS + 6 sec 2-3.5k DoT depending on crits. If you roll with 2pc PvE set bonus, backstab will hit almost just as hard. I see a lot of ops/scoun use BS right after HS too and that is where they loose the chance to apply a second full round of ticks of the AB DoT.

That about sums it up. CC's in this game remind me of Age of Conan at launch before immunity timers were put in place. PvP was just a massive stun/root/snare fest. Before the resolve change it was somewhat bearable, as it is now you really wonder what BW was thinking. Not that I'm complaining At least the change inadvertently helped Operatives/Scoundrels, but now that I said that they will probably change it back since the devs hate anyone that DPS specs those two classes.

Myself and a few other found running the Enforcer set gives higher heals than using the Medic set. It's all about power and cunning. You should still try to keep your crit rating around 36% and surge around 75% or so, but the Enforcer set has a good amount of that. Just swap armorings in for the 2 piece PvE or PvP medic set bonus if you want as the other poster mentioned. I didn't bother and still did fine healing. (I do have some mix and match mods and enhancements from the field tech suit on a couple pieces to ditch accuracy) Of course you can mod out a WH medic set with mod/enhan from the others, will just take longer. I prefer the DPS set though since I can respec DPS or heals depending on my mood and what the team needs most and still be effective. Not at home now so can't login to give you the exacts, but ballpark - Running the Rakata stim my cunning is around 1950ish with full aug'd EWH/WH. Heal bonus was something in the high 600s. Power is around 580-something. I found alacrity fairly useless, it only really helps our 1 heal and I really think the gains are marginal at best.

I stopped reading after he posted this.... I guess he didn't get the memo that dps spec agents were nerfed into the ground ages ago. Agents are squishy, and don't put up as much burst as some other classes. Pre-1.1.1 maybe before AB/FR and Biochem was nerfed, but not now by any means.

Wearing full WH, I get hit with smash/sweep from an equally geared opponent for low 5k to mid 6k in damage. I remember when Operatives/Scoundrels were hitting people for 6k+ there were rivers of QQ on the forums. So I'm confused as to why they further buffed the spec since it was already hitting very hard.