Don't use mouse for movement just facing and looking often target selecting in pvp. Getting one space away from the alt shift keys opens a world of easily accessible while moving hotkeys on a switch to ESDF. Single biggest no investment improvement I think one can make. Sucks when gaming mice don't fit your hands. Do agree the back row is weird even with larger hands. Lower priority abilities likely not for emergency/urgency use. I find the front 6 and bottom row(4 with 2 redundant to front 6) easy and fast on them which is 8 reaction time hotkeys for me (Other 4 I'm pretty fast). First 6 on the horizontal number line are similarly instantly fast to reach(Move to esdf adds the 6 into that realm) and and additional 10 instantly fast around the moved movement keys. Thats 24 keys I can reach very fast and additional 12 in places it takes slightly more time. Just sharing the approach that works for me. Everyone is different and some technology aka mouse size doesn't work for others. Best advice I ever got was changing to ESDF however.

This is why MMO mouses with 12 hotkeys exist. Personally I like remapping my movement to ESDF - this opens up wqazxcvrtgh as easily accessible hotkeys surrounding the resting hand movement position. Add in a MMO mouse mapping numpad fully (12 Keys) - instant primary combat/heal abilities/CC breaks primarily and then numbers 1 to = (Further distance from primary resting position lower priority abilities with initiation times as can't move and use them. Gives you 35 hotkeys accessible without a double hold keystroke. And I strongly recommend developing a function layout in ones mind for transferability between games. I like my primary cc break here, emergency heal here, dodges here etc..... Burst Damage here spam damage here. Every game needs minor mods to your mental map but better than doing full rewrites of habit.

Cover is a highly underrated utility for both medicine and lethality specs....It's a solid defensive skill..

Personally I'ld fix lethality and Conceal at the same time. Make Cull a baseline operative ability slightly weakened. This gives conceal a damage burst around the second backstab cycle. They would have acid blade(6 second window) and Cor Dart for the internal poison components. Lethality having cull baseline would have the cull talent add damage back to cull and additional damage to Backstab. (High enough to be out of conceals reach). Weakening Blast would get the added effect that BS would have a 100% chance of proccing a poison effect for 10 seconds and shiv a 50% chance of proccing that effect. This would give lethality operatives a proc DOT saving energy and time spent but only for 31 point investment in the tree. Maintaining a broader spread of dot's would remain important for energy return etc...But this would let a full lethality start into burst faster and more efficiently but only at full investment sacrificing healing. The playstyles would remain very different....

Medicine 1. AOK glad he/she is here or KEEL DA HEALER NOW! 2. Medicine was made full functional with the changes to TA capacity and duration in 1.2. Conceal: 1) Undergeared - Ohh Noe's I'm gonna die!, Geared: Didn't crit time to smash, Snare stun and leave him standing out of range and useless. 2) Conceal has 3 issues. Changes have made it so Operatives have no quasi reliable method to boost their opportunity to crit. With the DPS we had at release which was nerfed for it's OP potential when it crit this was understandable, However with the roolback of Damage burst potential as well as the removal of adrenal's conceal operatives are completely at the whim of RNG system with no exterior control method - get lucky have a chance unlucky and your toast as a result. With BS change to 12 Sec CD rotation is awkward. A way to renegage restealth reliably marauders stealth more often than operatives for GODS sakes. Lethality: 1) Lethawhat? Your a sniper? Among the knowledgable - good potential but builds to slow to be viable in competitive play. 2) Med/lethality - TA generation and maintenance issues fixed by changes to med tree for medicine. Builds too slow and allows no synergy with other operatives on the field unlike competitor AC's. Overall burst potential is close to PT with double the build time and no synergy with adjacent operatives. Build seriously needs a chance of getting DOT's active on a target faster via a proc mechanism with Cull hard limited to utilizing 2 poison effects... Conceal/Lethality - Has both build time and TA issues because the medicine fixes did nothing to help it mesh with lethality. I'ld play this if I enjoyed self-flagellation.

I played the operative mirror of your conceal build all weekend and I agree lethality is more fun. If only I could shave another 3-5 seconds off my start up it'ld be pure beast mode. Once it gets to it's wheelhouse it kicks some pain. Conceal is a bit fun for how fast it drops the lower HP contingent but frankly I can kill people at that gear level in full medicine reliably. If we could only mesh the front end of conceal with the back end of lethality:).......

I'ld suggest 2 different fixes. In concealment I would add to the revitalizers talent. "Operatives under the effect of revitalizers will cover charge an enemy target on entering cover consumning their revitalizer.... So it grants health until you burn it to do a rolling charge to the back end of your enemy. For lethality....Tag it onto Countermeasures and rather than a gap closer have it add a buff that extends the operatives range to 20 meters for 15 seconds. So countermeasures removes all movement impairing effects and extends the range of Cull Overload Shot and Shiv to 25 meters for 12 seconds....Time to get back to the target and the range to keep doing damage while you do.

Yeah but as soon as there is a villain from the ocean we'll be baaad! Chioice was intentional batman has a utility belt.

What I always find funny is the DPS players who complain at the players who join with or without recruit gear. Guys, you don't have to try and heal them. Wait full to dead in 3 seconds I don't try either.... And thats pretty much with or without the gear. When I do my pre round check and I see players sub 13K long months of experience tells me you can't target and get the heal on them fast enough for the to survive after the first health drop. Thats @ 2.2 seconds that has been conclusively proven time after time is wasted unless you spend it on a player nearer 14K. Ask your healers, they will tell you it doesn't matter if they have it or not they are blood stains until they get better gear than recruit. GIve em a HOT a bubble if that's your thing but casting the big heals on them is pointless they are dead 95% of the time before it lands.

Define bad. The DPS operatives who do exceedingly well are very good players. Now if you are one of those type A personalities with a large e-peen who can't stand knowing there is someone out there that can burst better than you, do more damage overall than you and do it with less effort DPS operatives remain fully viable if not ideal for PvP. Operatives didn't for example get a gap closer as utility. We got a denial of gap closing ability and ranged defense boost in cover instead. This is largely worthless in a conceal DPS role but quite helpful in our support roles. If your goal is to put together the best ranked PvP team ever a DPS operative within the construct of this current patch isn't the ideal choice of a DPS class. Having had alot of experience with Nerfed Classes I will say I wouldn't expect operatives time to come for a decent bit of time. If you are more casual enjoy the play style and can handle not being superman but aquaman instead you'll be ok if you enjoy the playstyle. If your goal is to be the deadliest meanest DPS on the server, best dueler the class isn't for you at the current moment. The class isn't completely borked, there are better, stronger, more valuable cl;asses for DPS available to choose in the games current iteration.

Black market mods or well the operative equivalent is purely so I cast my TA generator faster for use as a generator in melee range combat the side benefit is a 2-4K heal. The heal is a bit more energy effective than you'ld otherwise think because cast time abilities take their energy when they complete casting. Scar Tissue - I consider a must have in any healing build. It essentially increases the value of all self healing by 4% and makes your total health pool 4% stronger as well. At 19K HP it's effectively an extra 760 HP. In my healer builds taking and healing off a large share of about 200K+ in damage on myself a warzone yeah I find it valuable. If you run a guild group with reliable healing it's a good talent as well. Far superior to the endurance boost in concealment;). In BM gear I probably wouldn't sacrifice a crit% - operatives would be considered as godly as PT's if only we had their crit ability. God I love that thing on my PT. I'll be putting that point back operatives/scoundrels need every ounce of crit to get to our damage boosts in crit damage;). 1 stim boost point to there. Anatomy Lessons - Love it, wish I could afford it, slows down opening set up on offense not having it, but prefer the overall performance boost of the +9% cunning, Need the guaranteed TA generation for my desire to be energy reckless on occasion and playing this build with 14 second duration TA/Underhands is much much better IMHO. Simply can't find points for it. The 14 seconds is quality of life. Cool Head was definitely better when you had clickable relics. If you DOT up alot of people it can return good energy with our DOT crit rate. 4 darts out + a grenade on 3 is 7 tics every 3 seconds. On average 2 energy a second. But we also know this games RND system you get dry and wet spells. If you play lethality more like a conceal- ambush mode fewer darts out I could see devaluing the talent. Yeah there are better slows but I don't have them this ones my option. It's my ability to be heads up at middle and go stop the return at the drop down And since so many clearly can't master obstruction instead of killing I like having the option. I PUG alot.

generally my builds look like this. Every time I respec I try something modestly different. Next round I'm foresaking stim boost. improvement. Activating my stim boost primarily out of combat due to having the heal makes getting an energy shot from it not that relevant. http://db.darthhater.com/skill_calc/smuggler/scoundrel/#::f2efdf2ef21ef10e3fe6dede3fefe: I go for 14 second duration on TA for sanity. It makes it doable to get 2 TA up then simply maintain at objectives with 1 button every 13 seconds. And as a lethality if you get jumped with 2 TA and stim boost up, your not a slow start or a bad 1v1 class. 2 dots and your bursting. I've tried the utility builds, you get decent performance but feels lacking to me. Functional not my thing. Can't believe you foresake the AOE snare. I know it's only 3 people and 30% but giving your team a positioning advantage is nice. And voidstar breakaways using it with a cybertech snare nade can blow open a fast break or prevent one from being blown open. Use it to mess up cap prevention counter rushes etc... Alot of winning PvP in this game is team response time when teams are evenly matched and the travel pathways aren't that varied. Ok they are rather nicely pinch pointed. Just like marauder speed is a huge benefit to winning games slowing the enemy forces is likewise valuable.

Asside from the fact you've probably already invested 10-11 points increasing the efficiency value and benefits you receive from your DOT's the main value I found testing as a lethality operative to extending the DOT was in not losing cull/wounding opportunities due to the snares spin dance stun fest that is pvp at 10 meters and under. But that was based on how I set up my dive bombing runs and my timing between the dot on victims being applied and arriving in melee for the 10 range and under rotation. So depending on how close your vital is in your attack sequence to your woundings the extra 3 seconds can be a safety margin to getting it off and not wasting losing a TA perhaps. I put the alacrity talent in my preferred lethality builds because I use healing for TA generation and having a TA and heal in 1.7 seconds is helpful(My gear is WH medicine field tech combo so have extra alacrity). No reason to have it if you aren't generating TA with it IMHO. If you are it's valuable. Other than noteing I ended up using flashbang much more offensively in lethality with the accuracy debuff quantifying it's benefits is dificult. If using it as a self defense tool well lets face it this game for whatever reason wasn't designed to support being a dodging evasive hard to hit fighter. Only way I could see the accuracy debuff as beneficial was getting it on as many people as you could at a point of maximum conflict to give your entire team a slight advantage based on the number of RND rolls over the period of time. The disruption of the CC itself is still a greater obvious advantage.

There fixed it for you;). Ok If I was his boss and he'ld made that salt in the wound comment my changes would be accurate. One does wonder if the running joke those words had become played a role. Lets nerf the individual because of the actions of a team isn't good PR for any game. Cause lets face it teams of Railshotting PT's pwn as hard and fast as operatives ever did.

Well healing you do love the 20K HP targets and SP. One of the reasons medicine is considered strong is quite frankly our goto emergency heal gets more and more usable for free as HP levels climb......And very few classes can take 6K+ hp in 1 GCD. particularly as targets with that HP level also have the highest mitigation potential. Medicine has benefitted greatly from gear...

With the adjusted talent for weaker DOT versions to stay in place your sequencing needs to be precise and 1 DOT remnant remains active or did when I tested it. AKA step 1 normal cleanse - now you have 2 weak dot's active step 2 evasion 1 weak dot remaining. At least that was the result of the operatives skills. I'll assume at some risk the dev's mirrored properly.

It also works very well against lethality operatives. Even better than on a conceal if you ever run into one. Shuts down cull whose to hit component is white damage. And if that doesn't hit the tics don't follow.

Exactly. It should be no suprise to anyone medicine is considered the strognest spec it is the only spec with 100% control of entering it's maximum advantage position and it can do it easily and on demand. Maximum advantage positions for the specs are achieved at the following points. Conceal - In Stealth preferably with stim boost up. Medicine - 3 TA, 100 energy stim boost active - 3+ probes out Lethality - 2 TA, 100 Energy, stim boost active, 3+ DOT's in play Conceal initially enters all WZ's in strong position, medicine can leave the gate at 100% potential and lethality depending on spec can leave the gate at about 50% of maximum threat potential with another 10 seconds or so to get there fully on entering combat or at 1%(100 energy) and somewhere aorund 22 seconds to maximum potential on combat opening(Builds slow). Our lethality debates are about what we need to more reliably be in maximum advantage position(Your perception of that varies a bit as lethality plays 2 ways), Conceal struggles to reliably re-enter maximum advnatage position which if they could would indeed provide a reliable reengagement mechanism and utilization of HS, and lethality well you either work your rear end off with a medicine sub spec to stay there, or if going the ambush more melee route rarely if enter fully enter this position. Which is of course why I prefer lethality medicine specs as you have control of entering triple threat territory. Comparitively other classes get to their maximum advantage positions easier than lethality and conceal. Many people spawn into WZ's functionally at that position. And of course there was also a time for conceal when that extra effort to get to maximum potential offered additive DPS rewards which have in many ways been normalized to other DPS classes inherent no/low effort potential.

If you get into a WZ with 3-4 marauders in it you won't hear anyone say too many marauders. If you get in a WZ with 3-4 PT's in it you won't hear anyone say too many PT's. .... If you get into a WZ weith 3-4 other operatives you will hear too many operatives we are going to lose. (same for mercs). That's probably the best way I can sum it up for you. The good news is the class on the DPS side is as nerfed as it should get. It will start climbing in ability from here most probably and a person beginning today may have a different experience under 1.4 or whatever game version is active 2-3 months from now. As it is really good players get good results from the glass and help their teams. Those results don't compare to the results really good players are getting with assassins marauders and PT's.... Both in output and impact on outcomes.

When you've been playing since december you have kind of alot of time to have put in lots of hours on multiple specs. Lerthalities problem is Not TA generation it's energy. I've taken the time, I've used medicine to add the extra TA you feel your missing. Using those extra TA's is an excercize in tanking energy in exchange for the kill where you get unlucky on initial crits. I happen to like having that tradeoff for when the crits don't go your way you can get another quick shot in at the expense of energy. I also like the tactical advantage gained by being able to keep TA active, stim boost active etc... But that only comes from an out of combat TA generator which medicine provides. If you were to improve lethality you'ld want to create better energy management for it. In the end energy is the limiter of lethality not TA. my wish to buff lethality; A crit ability like PT's have. C'mon let me maximize my stacked culls and energy regen from poison dot's at the same time;). A way to strengthen flash bang from breakage on DOT damage. Have Weakening blast refresh the duration of your dot's on the target in addition to it's other effects. No more emergency resets and resultant energy (GCD) costs in your kill string. Who hasn't played lethality and cursed on seeing their CD about to expire. That said lethality is still a good spec. It's fun and challenging to play because you manage multiple items. It has the killing power although it sucks when crits don't go your way(Conceal knows this one well). It plays as a nice halfway between the melee conceal and the ranged medicine. If your gonna improve it it's not by another TA generator it's by making it more energy (GCD) effective.

Coming from healing the Kinj corrosive dart corrosive grenade pattern is second nature. All that changes is you mix in red targets with the green. The way lethality works subspecced in medicine is functionally the same energy management pattern a healing spec uses balancing Kinj with Kolto probes. Corrosive dart costs 2 energy more best case but the timing is close enough it comes natural. Set up phase is second nature coming from healing as a result. 1) See above 2) Why I get the talent to extend duration to 14 seconds. The 10 second timeframe main disadvantage is energy sequencing 14 seconds gives better energy control and prevents lost TA and is more than enough to cover a full 30 meters on the charge with a slighlty obstinate target). Opening sequence for me is get on location with stim boost active and preferably dropping a couple DOT's in transit and drop into cover/crouch, go into a CD kinj alternating phase using target of target jumps to get dots active plus 2 TA, fixate on a target another DPS is already on - corrosive grenade weakening blast charge bs cull shiv(timer refresh stay at 2) cull cull (If needed kinj cull), rifle spam as needed for energy (This is the weirdest part of lethality the random energy enhancement off crit is unpredictable so in a heavy energy instant ability attack phase losing track of your energy is easy to do and bad to do. After that just transition into skirmisher. 3) Not a factor, been playing since release as a primary healer and I can count on 1 hand the situations outside a 1v1 fight I've been interupted in a match with such abilities in a dedicated and effective manner. Side Note: heals and energy - operatives increase the efficiency of healing by increasing the power of the heal not reducing the energy cost. Cast times have the advantage of withdrawing energy at completion of cast which maintains energy regen at the phase in which the cast started during the cast. Instant abilities withdraw instantly causing regen to instantly change to the adjusted energy bar value regen rate. As a result it's actually helpful to have a cast time ability to use to keep energy in the high phase longer. If your using Kinj right it's real cost to your energy bar should be 13-15 energy(regen plus 2/3rds of stim boost value) not 25. An overload shot has the instant impact of dropping your bar 17 energy and changing regen to that point instantly. This can be the difference of maintaining good regen or getting into a death spiral before you planned to dump. Of course Kinj as you drop regen levels can also end up impacting your energy bar level worse than a 17 energy instant would.

It really is awesome. Your build is fine for PvP. Slip away is a very helpful talent. You'll still want/need to stun more than you can more times than you like.

What I like about the talent is it creates a 25 second maintenance window for my enhanced energy regen. As PvP combat isn't generally a ongoing 45 second slog but a series of punctuated 16-25 second engagements with new target aquisition phases having that larger window to say ok have a spare TA not hitting anything in the next GCD refresh and maintain and get the bonus energy and move on. And the ten energy back is a nice free boost off the kill where you may have pushed a bit into the low to end the fight now. In short it increases the odds you will be able to refresh stim boost while there isn't something better to be doing with a GCD instead of having to do it with a fighting for my life don't want to waste a GCD moment. Not sure I'ld have the talent if I didn't also have medicine to generate TA anytime so as to keep it in maintenance mode out of combat.

Thanks for your thoughts sounds to me like you want a damage dealing off GCD generator if that is your problem list with Kinj as a TA generator. Any other ability would take the same 2 GCD timeframe to stack 2 TA in advance or 1 GCD to create a TA at the back end unless it was off the GCD. To be doing damage during that timeframe it would have to be hitting an enemy(by definition that's not available anytime). Even sans alacrtity talent kinj adds at most a half a second difference to generating 2 TA from an instant with a GCD, and for your 25 energy and 1.8-2 seconds you get a 2-4.8k heal and better energy regen than with an instant. Which quite frankly I find I need alot as a lethality energy and health. right now with Kinj you can easily put together the TA need of a BS/cull/shiv/cull/cull kinj/cull shiv cull - generating the TA for it isn't a problem the energy is.

Don't pay attention to that total damage. It's told me that I've hit for 7.5K in a single hit while playing a lethality operative whose hits get broken into chunks..... I have my theories about how and why and it may have been fixed in 1.3 but after seeing data that says I've had a single hit of a magnitude that could only come from rolling 2-4 simultanously hitting things together it simply isn't trusted by me. At least not as a measure of single strike damage capacity. They clearly have things wrong in the back end of that calcualation or have in the recent past.