Because the GZ quote has been posted in here repeatedly, but people keep skipping it because it's not yellow, I think. Sorry for the caps - but it's painful to watch people get mad unnecessarily.

Oh wow.... Please lock this thread - Anyone new posting in here, please READ THE DEV TRACKER

Wai-what? Pacify works better than taunt for protecting a single target? Maybe if you were in a warzone full of snipers/gunslingers...

Thread outdated and answered...you're raging for no reason, like most of the people on the forums...

Was already answered yesterday, change isn't going live and wasn't intended.... Please read the Dev tracker.

Actual valor gains weren't trivial...on some servers there were insane amounts of valor gained. That being said, Valor's been so easy to get since 1.1.5, and on Ilum if you're the overpop faction that it really shouldn't matter. It wasn't THAT big a deal in the grand scheme of things, though it was a big deal in the short term immediately following it. I suppose what people are upset about is that there's no skill involved in getting it anymore, but some of them still don't have the time to invest in getting it as a new player, so they're not going to be on par with everyone else come 1.2. How much time people have to play isn't a variable BioWare can control, so I don't see how it can get any better.

The conditions for Watchman to get there require the application of multiple stacks over a longer time frame than the 4.5-6 second snapshot your taking. Maybe if you freeze frame the end of a fight that's been going on for a while with a Watchman, you can call that Burst, but when you consider what it takes to get there in terms of Juyo stacks, Overload Saber stacks, Cauterize refreshes, Merciless buffs, I still disagree with you. Watchman (the popular spec) Sentinels kill you with patience and a slow burning death, maybe I'm just too stubborn but I'll never consider that burst. I'm not saying it's weak, but I think your view of the average Marauder/Sentinel's burst is not taking into account what it takes them to get there. I totally agree though, with all those conditions met, your DoT ticks and Merc Slash/Dispatch if you get them low enough could add up to a tremendous amount of damage in 4.5-6 seconds.

Yes, Carnage is the bursty tree, but I was referring to the class in general in my original post that he quoted. Since 80% of marauders/sentinels are annihilation/watchman specced, the average Marauder isn't very "bursty"...just steady, high damage. Carnage/Combat, during the brief period where the ArPen debuff is up, and Rage/Focus, during the bomb are about the only times Marauders have any burst. Compare that to the way PowerTechs/Operatives have been, and the average Annihilation Marauder is a lot closer to steady sorc damage than strings of big crits. That was my only point, not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

Don't know where you got your concepts on burst - but the definition of burst damage is weak regular DPS, with sudden spikes of one or more very heavy hits that kill someone - basically what the original Ops were, pre-original nerf... Burst classes tend to rely on massive criticals in every other MMORPG...maybe you're from the WoW generation and still learning this? That is NOT the description of marauder damage, which takes a long time to build up, and whose top hits are outshined by many other classes. The reason "burst" damage has been desirable in PVP for years is that it's unpredictable and messes with healers. They'd rather heal off steady damage (especially when being interrupted) then a few surprise massive damage spikes. I guess we'll agree to agree that the other is flat out wrong.

He was saying that losing the ArPen in Carnage/Combat would kill the DPS in the spec - as it is one knockback after the debuff and you lose a chunk of your dps - you can still get off the crit Blade Storm/Scream, but not the Master Strike/Ravage or Blade Rush/Whatever you normally work into the combo. It takes an ArPen debuff to get Carnage/Combat's "big hit" up to 2.5-3.5k. I think what he was thinking was that Ataru Procs doing weapon damage would be hurt even harder by losing the ArPen debuff on your target, but really Force/Weapon damage is mitigated by armor the same way IIRC, it's just that weapon damage is subject to evasion. Marauders/Sentinels are one of the least "bursty" classes in the game, IMO, they just do great steady damage, and tend to get more beastly the longer you leave them alive. I don't think it's too much of an issue because after healers they're probably the most focused class in the game. With a great healer keeping them up they can be pretty insane, though. I don't know how I feel about the "unlimited resource" thing. I can see both sides of the argument there, but I can tell you from playing every class that Marauders seem to run into resource issues more frequently than most of the other classes, and have no resources frontloaded, which is a disadvantage in a lot of situations, though it can be pretty easily overcome.

I have too...the comments about not making another Sandbox game could easily be taken out of context, but it makes me nervous that it could be a way of saying they have no plans to add player driven elements that sandbox games are adored for. I will be sad if we never get that ability. Still waiting patiently for those Guild Capital ships, seems to be the best hope on the horizon on that end.

You raise a good point...this is one of those many "lose/lose" situations for developers in an MMO, because they can't make everyone happy. Their crafting system was seriously ripped, especially armor-wise, for months, because none of the items you can make with it were desirable at end-game, with the exception of BioChem items and Magenta Crystals probably. They're trying to answer the call with something that's a rarely used, often flirted with concept in MMORPG's - viable end-game crafting. The result is potentially (not sure the status of augment slots on the War Hero Gear) invalidating PVP rewards, which would then be worn for *only* cosmetic reasons, and never in battle for seriously competitive players. I guess the flip side is that if they do give Augment slots to the War Hero gear, with how accessible it is, they will probably have crafters up in arms that they created this new system and then gave people a way around having to buy the crafted goods - which they will surely take - and that it's a slap in the face of crafters. Welcome to the world of rage that is the modern MMORPG.

If I could improve one thing I would give us the ability to fight over the different planets. It would bring a sense of life to the planets, and factional pride to the servers that right now doesn't seem to exist. Give us something to fight for, even if it's the basic flipping of towns/outposts like SWG.

In the age of false statistics, facts, and mass mental manipulation, if I were you I'd form my own opinion. Just sayin'. Who knows, you may love it?

I know what you're saying - here's why - because the Force damage skills aren't susceptible to dodging - now Ataru strikes are. May not be as big a deal as I'm thinking, but unless you're boosting your accuracy to a higher level than previously required, your Ataru strikes won't still hit automatically in the pacify situation, because they're getting dodged now. Like you said, Combat log will be a big help. I'm not dumb enough to claim I know this is making Ataru worse without actual data to back it up. I just know that good, well geared protective classes will be harder to damage than they were before for Combat with that change to the damage type, and I feel like the 10% damage boost isn't going to make up for what's lost in mitigation to white damage. It's been a longstanding complaint of Gunslingers and Combat sentinels, most white damage means you're the most avoided damage dealers in the game, and Ironically you're some of the only pure DPS specs, who should be slightly better at dealing damage, if anything.

Yeah, I phrased that poorly - Combat needed a buff to damage since it can't heal. I would love to see raw data against geared opponents that says Ataru didn't actually get nerfed. I don't understand how changing its damage type to the most dodged/mitigated type of damage and buffing it by only 10% is going to anything but hinder it as you face opponents with good equipment. Maybe there's something I'm not getting about that, I just don't see that as a buff. You could already Pacify a Combat Sentinel and laugh as you destroyed them as a Watchman. Now it's even working on the Ataru strikes. Only thing I can think of is that Combat Sentinels are supposed to be the new Arsenal Mercs, pop Zen, and spam Blade Rush and Cyclone Slash til they vomit. Maybe Cyclone spam is going to be some new hidden OP jewel.

Problem is that Watchman does a decent amount more damage than Combat, probably 5-33% depending on your skill with either spec, AND heals your team for a percentage of that already larger damage. I don't care how much control and mobility I used to have as a Combat Sentinel (and it was a lot, nobody could get away from you) I sacrificed a good chunk of healing and interrupts (you have a min range on your leap, plus longer CD kick) to get that. For competitive team play most would agree team healing based on your damage output and the ability to frustrate a really good, geared healer are much more useful than keeping someone from running away. That healing also makes the defensive cooldowns a lot more useful.

Combat/Carnage needed a buff and didn't get one. At least one tree that needed it got something, though I still don't see Focus spec being super useful in PVE (Maybe a Focus Sent/Marauder has a better opinion on that than me). I wouldn't say Annihilation/Watchman really got a buff or a nerf, just changed. Everyone got some damage immunity on their Force Camo, just half of what Watchman talented to, but their Force Camo is still better than the other specs..to compensate they got a buff to their slow. Making Master Strike uninterruptible was probably BioWare's way of saying "My bad" for giving Sentinels' top damage non-spec move a channel effect in the first place. It will still be outranged easily for those who aren't specced Combat. Force Kick and Awe/Pacify losing their focus cost/GCD is great, but it will just mean we don't sacrifice as much DPS to properly try to lock down a healer. As it was you could destroy any bad healer, but good healers could still laugh as you used every interrupt you possibly could, and you were costing yourself enough focus and GCD time that you weren't able to finish the job.

Ex-Combat Spec player from before launch that was really hoping to go back to Combat Spec. I'm not overly excited about the changes, in fact I'm very disappointed. Combat Spec's Zen just encourages you to spam single moves - Blade Rush or now Cyclone Slash to try to remain competitive. The same thing they just tried to fix in BH/Trooper. It's a lackluster, poor implementation of a cool utility concept (Zen), just like the talents in the Combat Tree. It takes 31 points to get the utility/power boost of 15-20 points in any other Class' talent trees. Great changes overall for Sentinels, but all they do is make Watchman spec look more overpowered, while only making one more spec viable for Sentinels (if it even does that, I'll wait for the verdict from the Focus Sentinels against real opponents). The changes to Ataru form seem like a (very unnecessary) stealth nerf to me. Change the damage type to the kind that is mitigated by every class/defense skill easily, and majorly affected by Pacify. So now a Watchman Sentinel will laugh even harder if they come up against a Combat spec Sentinel. I'm just not seeing the Combat love. Yeah, Blade Rush spam is very powerful, but also very boring. I like Sentinels not being a button mashing class. I would've preferred a Zen effect like "increases the duration of your precision slash" to be added instead of having Zen affect Cyclone Slash. That's just me anyway. Maybe someone playing Combat on PTR can bring my hopes back up.

Totally agree there. I enjoy Alderaan but it's very simple, and would be a lot more fun if it were 16 v 16 with 5 nodes and a bigger map, IMO.

Thanks for posting!

It's not the casuals ruining MMORPG's, it's the graphics, and what the audience demands out of them. Developers are expected to do everything they used to do and more (and still can't) all with up-to-date graphics and networking technology that is way out of date. Nobody wants to change their infrastructure due to the expense so we continue to live in a Cisco/Ethernet world. That limits what MMORPG's are capable of anymore. The games HAVE to be instanced, because when they aren't you see terrible server performance, and even worse examples of the PVP lag we have in TOR. WoW made battlegrounds out of necessity, because they saw that open world PVP was bringing their servers to a halt, not necessarily because they wanted to make all PVP a theme park. You're not going to see a big change any time soon until networking gets redesigned on a grand scale.

One of the things I love about MMORPG's is the "Piano Playing"...one of the reasons I hate ability macroing. But then again, Piano's one of the instruments I play so maybe it helps/has something to do with it. My favorite part about the Sentinel class is the sheer amount of keybinds I have to use to succeed. It gives a lot of room for variation in skill level. When you can break down the most powerful way to play a class into a few simple moves everyone you play starts to feel the same. Makes it more boring for me as a PVPer.

Not at all ; ) Just amused.

Oh no, he doesn't have to - remember, Marauders are OP but Mike instagibs them all and has mad PVP street cred. Just stop feeding the troll...he's increased the amount of incoherent drivel in this thread by a large factor in the last 24 hours, and thinks excessive smileys are a substitute for actually having a point, or facts within your posts. It's pretty obvious with this thread of thousands of views and only a dozen or so supporters of the idea that nothing's going to happen. And if it does, as others have said, just wait for 1.2 and find out. That's for BioWare to decide.