Lets face it guys, 5 energy as a 4 piece bonus is terrible. An operative would have to max out 100 energy to make any use of it. There is no 2 or 4 piece bonuses that help Lethality operatives. Currently it looks like the sniper set bonuses are the most applicable to Lethality operatives and that is pretty messed up to begin with. The only operative bonuses that I consider good are the 2 piece pvp and pve bonuses for healers, the rest is pretty terrible. Recycling bad bonuses across multiple sets is really disappointing guys. But, carrying those bad bonuses across builds is worse. You guys are making a lot of changes to improve the game and it's time to take care of this. Please, take this opportunity to make set bonuses that matter for the different roles equally. Increasing the range on Cull and Shiv would be a pretty sweet quality of life change for Lethality Operatives. Not having to get to 4 meters to have the spec work should honestly be a passive change, but even as a bonus I would take it. It is an area that needs to be addressed and this is one way to do that. Setup time: This is a difficult area for the spec, especially in pvp. Weakening Blast, Corrosive Dart, Corrosive Grenade, and Shiv or Hidden Strike have to be used before Cull to get the full effect. This requires me to get within 4 meter of the target often requiring me to snare them which burns more energy and time to get my Tactical Advantage for the Cull's needed to do any kind of burst with this spec. In this situation I would suggest removing the GCD from Weakening Blast to help with the setup time. Other classes get similar 30% bonuses as a passive ability (sorcs) so I don't believe this is an unreasonable suggestion. Guys it is time to recognize that Lethality and Concealment are different. This is the real reason we don't have bonuses that matter; because what matters to one DPS spec doesn't matter to the other. So we end up with non-dps bonuses like improving infiltrate and evasion duration or the ever present 5 energy as the 4-piece bonus. Operative get those terrible bonuses instead of 15% crit or lower reuse on attacks, or increasing the range on attacks like the other dps pvp sets. As for the PVE sets, there is more of this middle-of-the-road bonus business. Backstab gets a 15% crit bonus and once again the 4 piece bonus is 5 energy. Backstabs reuse is 12 seconds, and it wont be free even if you spec concealment, so why would a Lethality operative care about it? Compare those 2 bonuses to the other classes; 8% damage increase or 15% crit to 2 common attacks or reducing the resource costs of abilities or DoT damage procing passive buffs, lowered reuse timers ect. Comparatively the operatives bonuses are the worst. The solution is to create 2 dps sets, one focused on Concealment and another focused on Lethality and use appropriate DPS bonuses for those sets. Trying to find and buff the common ground between these 2 builds isn't working, please address this.

The thread is about Oil Slick, not alwaysalone.jpeg telling me what I already know and playing the role of contrarian. People are going to do what is in their nature to do. /shrug

Actually, Kitru, Lifewontwait got exactly my meaning.

Wow, ok. Here's the deal, I'm going to reply to this in as few lines as possible. block of text #1 When I said weapon attacks and then bracketed ranged/melee that was allowing me to say weapon instead of typing ranged/melee a ton of times. Yes, I'm aware that white damage is what I'm talking about. block of text #2 Change the word roll to "checks against". Yes, I know about the accuracy vs def check. Yes, I know about the shield vs block check and the ability for crit to push shielding off the table. No, I did not claim that armor rating and DR was pedestrian, i said that the residual damage that made it passed shielding/absorption was pedestrian after hitting the DR and armor rating. My DR is 9% passive, 4% active and my kinetic/energy defense is 43.55% from armor rating on top of that. Even if my 17.75% defense 52% shield chance and 46% absorption didn't matter, white damage still gets 56.55% of its damage mitigated. We REALLY don't need additional defense against white damage. block of text #3 (much less blocky, yay!) White damage is the most mitigated damage there is. So when you say they're not It makes me think that we had another communications breakdown somewhere because it just sounds crazy. Yes, I understand debuffing the targets accuracy means he will have a harder time making his hit checks. No I don't think that matter at all because mitigating white damage is what the class does best and bypassing that with avoidance should not be the focus of our defensive CD. No I don't think a tanks emergency should be altruistic in nature, nor have I ever saved or wiped on an encounter because of it. At best Oil Slick is a "win more" ability. block of text #4 We have a very different view on the meaning of white damage in end game raiding. I left that to the dev team who will have to look into what can actually be done. Every defensive skill, ability, and check we have works on white damage, we don't need our tank line defensive cd to focus on that too. You're seriously over valuing this CD and its importance. Lemme explain, even buffed with the set bonus it is 20% accuracy 30% of the time against melee/ranged attack check. Means a constant of about 6% on average, so at best case it is a 6% DR against only white damage as far as the tank is concerned. But then you have to consider that I can already mitigate ridicules amounts of melee/range/kintic/energy damage, so only the differential which is less than half and probably closer to 75% would matter. So 2% maybe 3% dr against white attacks is what were actually talking about. Terrible, terrible ability. 1 point in combust will yield better more reliable results. This ability is a joke.

In an 8 man setup I would go powertech and in a 16 man I would go powertech and assassin. Juggernauts have aoe agro issues and don't outshine powertechs on boss fights so while it is doable with a jugg I wouldn't say it is better. My guilds other tank has rerolled from jugg to assassin and he loves it. No agro issues, tons of utility, self heals, spike damage, constant resources, ect. Every day he is coming up with another reason to play the class over juggernauts.

I'm a level 50 Powertech tank in a raid guild on Mind Trick. My issue with Oil Slick is that it only reduces ranged and melee accuracy, which is already our most heavily mitigated attack type. A weapon(melee/ranged) attack will have to roll accuracy against the tanks defense, then if successful it will have make a roll to see if it crits, if not it has to get passed shield chance and absorption before finally being reduced to a pedestrian amount by armor rating and damage reduction. This is not counting Combust, Energy Shield or Rakata Absorb Adrenal which also mitigate this damage. These attack types are heavily mitigated so the benefits from avoiding them are reduced to the point of being trivial. This is the shield techs defensive cool down and it fails completely. I get that beta testers complained, because they wanted something unique instead of sharing invincible with juggernauts, so you came up with this. Guys, I love your product, but you can do better.

I find your lack of faith disturbing.

Cost increases quickly.

Another way to phrase that is an average of 3% is smaller than a average of 3.9% (which doesn't factor in damage from 15% of critical attacks avoided, or ANY absorption armor)

Mitigation > Avoidance You're assuming the mob will miss an attack. It isn't a buff to add to your standardized mitigation, nor is it a reliable emergency, it is just terrible. It may stop an attack, but ya know what? If it doesn't I wont take half of that damage anyway. People are overvaluing avoidance, it loses value as your mitigation increases. On a single target it will only save you about 3% damage on average. In AE situations it gets pretty boss, but I don't want a trash only emergency. I would much rather have 15% shield chance which will provide similar results immediately, and constantly. 20% damage reduction * 30% of the time = 6% damage reduction But, you would mitigate over half the hits damage, but even assuming only 50% mit it is just 3% reduction. Sorry 15% shield chance is more reliable, has more synergy with our lines, and will result in less damage taken. Oil Slick is terrible.

Very interesting. Thanks.

Make Luke less whiny.

The idea behind it was that it would provide more mitigation through having energy shield active up to 30% of the time, which is a 7.5% increase per hit on average. The heat control, hp and damage were just gravy.

Eat some popcorn and watch Empire again.

Ok, it seemed really high based on the operation loots i have seen, so I wanted to find out. Guess I will do some experimenting at 50 to test this out. I also want to see the legacy abilities. I would really love a second emergency I can count on.