Ha ha, you're so angry; thank goodness, because otherwise it would be sad that you derive all of your confidence and unwarranted self worth from how much time you spend on a game. This has nothing to do with appeasement. It's a bug fix. This has to do with making things work the way they're supposed to work. If you think catering to the "hardcore" means not fixing bugs that allow for an unintended 25% increase in HPS, then you're not hardcore; you're a casual trying to be hard. Run along troll. We have no need of you.

Let me translate that out of PR BS, just in case:

I came here to post something about how I felt, but then I stopped because I realized Zellandine had already beat me to it. Stop comparing apples to oranges. It's the equivalent of saying "Truck and Planes are balanced at transporting people across the country. The numbers show that Trucks are clearing current cross-country content." Sure, I CAN drive cross-country in a beat-up old pick-up truck, but I'd much rather fly there (since this is my metaphor, I'm making money a non-factor, so suck it). But I think RuQu is right. Georg's posts very frequently have a dismissive and/or defensive tone to them (at least that's my impression) but that doesn't make him incompetent; and his fanaticism regarding data and metrics is evident from the tools he's insisted on building. The fixes we need will happen. That has been a known quantity since we've started this discussion. Our unknowns, the thinks we've been fighting for, are "How Soon" and "How Much". We now know how soon - March-ish (est. on 1.2 release). Given that is a significantly short period of time from release, I can only imagine that Georg's numbers are reflecting out claims (I sure know that the Youtube videos on Operations strategies do). That suggests that the answer to "How Much" might be just as significant. Keep the faith. Amen.

The "all" = "random target limit" thing pisses me off too. The Operative/Scoundrel AoE stealth says it covers "all" party members within 10m (or something close, range might be 15m). So if your whole Ops group stacked up on you, you'd expect all of them to stealth. Wrong! It stealths 4 party members, not including the Operative/Scoundrel (it might only be 3, I'm (again) not remembering). When you have more than that limit in range, it just trades off between who gets it, constantly stealthing and destealthing targets. I mean, it's not a big deal because party-stealth is practically worthless and next to impossible to get 7 other people to move in concert with the Operative/Scoundrel (I personally think it should be usable in-combat for a different effect - say X% accuracy reduction on party members?) but still, was it too hard to make the tooltip say "Stealths 4 party members."?

I like this from a philosophical stand point, and it really is a shame we don't see more of it. That I argue against it is either a certain form of cynicism or a lack of imagination on my part. Punny. I don't mean to say I expected the Operative to function exactly like the Druid (though some of my efforts in how to fix the class borrow liberally from that playstyle), merely that I was expecting the majority of our healing to be based on the HoT (which it could be if the TA/UH stack wasn't so limited and the HoT procced more reliably such that we could replace Kolto Injection/Underworld Medicine with Kolto Infusion/Kolto Pack) Yes. I had considered being constantly moving as what you and Xaearth were suggesting, but hey, what fun is an argument without being a little obtuse. This "skirmisher" concept certainly has place in PvP; what do you feel it adds in PvE? Or does it not currently add anything and thus the basis of your suggestions? So given a skirmisher playstyle/achetype, you want to create incentives. Can't argue with providing proper incentives, given that's the whole purpose of this entire issue - making rewards match strenuous effort. [iDEA] Kolto Infusion/Kolto Pack becomes a 2 purpose heal. Outside X range (lets say 4m to make it interesting) KI/KP functions as it does, though with something fun added (at least a heal + HoT, jeez!). Inside melee range, instead of a cast it becomes an instant that doesn't trigger the GCD (and if it's a heal + HoT like I've recommended, it heals for HoT heal directly, rather than over time). Programming complexities aside, that sounds like fun doesn't it? Mine isn't. After a strong start, I just can't get into playing my Sorcerer (I think I'm burnt out on the Empire, but that's another story). I've thought about rolling a different role, but I've just never been much of a tank or DPS. So here I am, paying $14 a month (I subbed for 3 months) for access to forums . . . sweet!

I think you got trolled - they don't want us asking for numbers and such, so the mod picked a forum rule to use against you. There's no reason. We ought to be allowed to ask for something (even thought we know we'll never get it) without getting slapped by the mod stick.

Says the lulzbot . . . Your "SLIGHTLY" statement is completely false. And I don't even have to debate you because I brought my friend MATH: Full proof below.

Since the previous thread asking for this was nonsensically closed (yes, you have rules about titles; yes, you can edit titles), I'm adding my voice to the publishing of these numbers. It is not a bad thing to ask people making statements and assertions predicated on numbers to release those numbers (or at least some subset). It would give us the ability to test those claims against our own conflicting beliefs. The problem is that Georg's Q&A answer poses as many new questions as it answers, leaving many of us unsure of where we stand moving forward. Knowing whether or not this is a wide-spread problem as we believe it to be or whether we're in the minority would give us guidance as to how we wish to consider playing the class. I understand that raw figures are unlikely. Give us a random, unnamed sample; or the number of clears and group-healer composition from the week (more recent is preferred); figures from one large server, etc. Let us see the numbers from your internal testers and their results. We're asking for these so that we can continue to raise the level of our discussion; we're working half-blind while trying to be a constructive as possible, not to sow dissent and challenge Georg. Seriously, we're easily the most constructive community of players on these forums - just let some of us see the numbers (i.e. RuQu because he's trustworthy and our de facto leader) and confirm the results.

No, it is targeted. You can cast it on any person in your party and it is 10m around that target. Mind you, that still doesn't make it good enough. I'm hoping they change alacrity to have an effect on HoT tick time; that would be really nice.

No, they are objectively worse healers. We have the math on this (sorry!). To wit, the best played Operative healer will never be able to outperform a skilled Sorcerer. It's not right, and it needs to be fixed. We've got a rather large discussion going on about how to fix it over in the healer forums, but we've also collected all of our ideas in the Healer Request Compilation. Check it out and give us your ideas so that we can make this class equal to the others.

Hi! We've gotten a small community discussion going on in the healer forums regarding how to fix the issues you've identified (and many many more!), and it'd really be nice if you'd join us in our Healer Request Compilation, I think you might like what you see. Cheers -Bobudo

@RuQu I think you've got it spot on, especially about it sounding better as it sinks in. It's clear that Georg's statements likely were sent to PR before released, or he himself has a considerable talent for PRspeak; notice the framing - in every instance he acknowledges an issue, he first has to say that it's not an issue immediately before hand. It makes us angry because we know it's not true. But to the masses, it sounds like everything is fine, and that's what the Q&A's are about. I'm excited for 1.2 and the changes Georg made. Sure, it might take something more than 1 patch (it likely will) but I think it means we're being heard. OR this is all post-rationalization and 1.2 will be a massive let down. We'll see

Sons, I am disappoints! Stop being *****! We begged and pleaded for a response. We got one. We got the one thing we were all sure that we'd never see. HOLY ******* **** we got acknowledged! And you guys are ******* like a bunch of ****s! I'm not saying be overjoyed. I'm not saying resub today. But FFS, don't turn into everything we've been trying not to be the first time we get anything. You guys are worse than the PvP forums. We accomplished something today. We proved that intelligent discourse can get recognition. So I expect to see the lot of you shape it up! That was fun, back to work

Not so fast Mister! That's PR speak for "We ****ed up." That "a sizable chunk" of improvements is in for 1.2 confirms it. (Druids didn't start getting fixed until 1.6)

The "nerf" is just fixing a current exploit whereby 1 proc of Force Bending/Clairvoyance can be used twice by lagless casting. Try spamming your Dark Infusion button to get 2 1.5s casts; this is being used (from my understanding) to cast short DI and then extra crit Innervate with only one proc of Force Bending.

At least we got an answer! I agree, I hate Georg's tone in just about every post he makes, but that's fine, because I'm pretty sure that most people don't like my tone. Plus, at least he's competent (I make no such claims about myself). I wish he'd publish those numbers that are telling him everything is fine, but that might just be PR speak. I consider it a coup that he said "room for improvements", as that's PR speak for "Yup, it's currently ****ed". It's not enough to make me resub, but I'm glad I'll be around to see the first round of fixes, hopefully they'll fix things enough that I can start playing again.

And I commend you on your positive outlook, but you're still wrong. The content you've "done" is easy. It's a joke it's so easy. Go try to do Nightmare with your Mercenary teammate: good luck with that. It's the "gets the job done better" part that we're all concerned about. That's not balanced. If I could get the job done just the same with harder work I might call us "fine", but I can't - as you admit, even the hardest amount of work done by an Operative can never equal a lesser amount of work from a Sorcerer. That's the problem, and your misinformation makes it all the more difficult to demonstrate to the masses that we have a problem that needs to be address in a timely fashion. That's why we're attacking you. Not because you don't seem like a perfectly nice person who'd be a joy to group with, but because you're undermining our cause to bring balance to the healing classes. I hope there's a time where your tips can be useful for incoming Operative Healers, but at this juncture it's just not true (1) because there should be no incoming Operative healers given the imbalance and (2) because it detracts from the balance that we're trying to get attention for.

Ugh, I hate you

Let me preface this, I have the exact same experience as you do, except I started the second day of early access. That's because you're not doing Nightmare - anyone can heal everything up until Nightmare at this point in the game. You realize that in order to keep KP stacked on 4 people at a time, it will take you 6 seconds, right? That you'll then have time to cast three KI+SP before you'll have to refresh all of those over again. So what you're saying is that you spend a majority of your time refreshing HoTs, and you think that is how the class is supposed to work? It's a net loss of 7 energy. (3.5s of casting + GCD = 3 ticks of regen X 6 EPS = 18) Agreed. This doesn't happen in Nightmare. This isn't true. The Sorcerer/Sage AoE heals for twice as much as RN over almost half the time, and that's only when there's only 4 people - since it doesn't have a target cap like ours, it actually far outclasses our skill: the results are no where NEAR the same. Know what is better and preferred for each of those instances? The Sorcerer/Sage AoE. True and False. Comparing it to a Mercenary makes it sound nice. But look at the Sorcerer channeled ability. Free with Crit, and heals for 3x as ours. True. False (see above). If you have time to DPS during an encounter (that isn't trash) then someone is pulling your weight for you. As to the bold: True, but only a .03 difference. Just because you have had success in your limited experience does not mean we are fine. Your common sense tips don't change the fact that, in literally every situation a Sorcerer would do a better job healing and be a preferred part of the group. If you're fine being literally inferior to another healing class, ok; but don't go foisting your nonsense onto the rest of us.

I'll stop you right there. You're wrong. I'll break this down point by point later, but you should read Alacrity is Terrible for Scoundrels/Operatives. An analysis by RuQu so that you can understand how alacrity really works.

No. Healing is already broken. You cannot have role-based (or niche based) healing in a game where one of the healing classes can already fill all niches (a jack-of-all-trades master-of-all-trades as it where); this is especially true when the most difficult encounters in the game seem designed around the Sorcerer/Sage AoE - if you don't give the other classes a similar ability, they'll continued to be unused. As we do not advocate for Sorcerer/Sage nerfs here (take it to the PvP forums) our goal is to bring all 3 healing classes to parity. That doesn't mean "same". In my ideas I've tried to promote turning the Operative/Scoundrel into a HoT based healer. The Mercenary/Commando is already an effective nuke healer, but needs more flexibility with healing raid damage. I seems like you must play a Sorcerer or Sage to not understand just what end of the stick the rest of us healers got. Have some compassion.

I nominate this idea for the Healer Request Compilation.

I wonder when Georg shifted from that to the no-hybridizing approach I quoted from. I'll come clean: my dislike for this idea is mostly personal, because that's not the sort of healer I want to play, but I can't play a class as anything less than effective (in another thread someone accused me a being a min-maxer, they were correct ) I rolled the class because I expected it to be the HoT healer (ala Druid ), and that's the design approach I take towards fixing the class, because that's the healer I'd most like to play. That said, I don't think the current toolset and mechanics lends itself to range or "melee" healing, and that the class needs a serious overhaul regardless. As long as it gets that attention, I'll consider our efforts here a success, even if I have to find out that my design paradigm was wrong. But don't think that doesn't mean I'll argue this to the death. I want the devs to be able to look at our threads and see the pros and cons listed out and refined down to perfection. The simpler we can make the conceptual phase of the overhaul, the faster we'll see the fruits. Mmm, fruits.

I haven't gotten to raid since before the surge nerf, so I wouldn't know Yuck! I hope you feel better (and I'm glad you don't live near me!! )!! Like I said in my previous post (my post-post post?) I know that you and I are approaching this from different directions. To me, that we can look at once class and see two different designs shows just how broken it is. But it also means there's hope. That's why I'm so much enjoying this discussion/argument; it means that as broken as this class is, it's not hopeless. I'll concede that my failure to see the benefits to the design you're talking about might just as easily be a failure of imagination as anything else, but hammering out the pros and cons of this idea is really a blast.

Awesome for who - the healer or the group. Because if it's not the group, then the healer will be sitting on the fleet doing nothing. Given that every class has access to these abilities and doesn't have to sacrifice their viability in their main role, I don't see how this is relevant. Yeah, but they also don't have the same cooldowns that the Sorcerer version does. There are trade-offs for the range requirements (that they don't do enough to make everything function (Sleep Dart) is a mechanics issue, not a range issue). A healing Operative (to the extent that it functions at all) does[/] fully function at healing when @ 30m. No, it would not (see above). No it would not. You'd have to close ~20-30m to use it. Unless you can do that in 1.5s (or Kolto Infusion's heal gets buffed by a significant amount), you would have been better off casting Surgical Probe, rather than not casting for the time it takes you to get close and move out of harms way - and that doesn't even account for the damage you'll take while you do that. No. Our other abilities are not healing abilities, ergo, they are irrelevant to the healing conversation. The design goals of this game were to turn you into a Main (Tank/DPS/Healer) depending on your spec. That means that classes all have abilities that they aren't going to use in their main role; stated another way: just because you have it does not mean you were supposed to use it. A Tanking-Specced Juggernaut has a DPS stance they could use; that does not mean they were intended to leave their Tanking stance to do so. Similarly, a Healing-Specced Operatve has DPS abilities, but that doesn't mean they should be using them.