edit: I was reading the combat log wrong so my example is way off. Nevermind me. (Thanks, Wainamoinen for pointing that out).

He was in one of his own imaginary scenarios.

I imagine until the first expansion where every class including scoundrel is given new abilities. Ideally it'll be fixed next patch but I'm not holding my breath.

I have a feeling it was more of a coding issue than lag. But that's not really relevant.

No, it's a bug. Look closer and you'll see that the second shoot first hits twice instead of once. Shoot First > Disappearing Act > Shoot First is a perfectly legal strategy, but the second shoot first shouldn't hit twice (to make up a total of 3 hits). They should hire someone that actually plays and understands the class/game to help develop changes. (Bioware, if you're reading this -- you know my number )

There was (still is? I don't know) a double shoot first exploit. Here's a link to it in action: It looks like the scoundrel is in full pve gear and uses an adrenal and relic as well.

I for one never used this exploit whether accidental or not and still feel like there was a significant decrease in damage output. So I don't think it's fair to pin the classes issues on one bug fix. I think you're giving sawbones a little more credit than it deserves. They may have an advantage by being able to instant cast some of their abilities but they're mostly HoTs -- meaning they need time to reach their potential -- So, that advantage is a trade-off for being unable to heal burst damage or any damage if caught off guard. They also rely on upper hand to have procced before they are able to use their flash heal or emergency medpac, and once they have been used upper hand is consumed. So if their initial Underworld Medicine is interrupted they will be upper hand starved until they're lucky enough to get one from a HoT. And saying that the scoundrel doesn't run out of resources is just silly. If you're having trouble beating an emergency medpac spamming scoundrel you should try either saving your stun for when they are at 30% health, using your execute when they hit 30% health if your class has an execute type ability, or play smart and stop hitting them below 30% while they're spamming emergency medpac and they will quickly run out of upper hands as you just made it infinitely harder for them to manage the proc and stay alive. The other alternative is just keep beating them down while they spam it. Upper hand has a 10 second duration and once that runs out they are no longer able to cast Emergency Medpac at all. Kolto pack costs 1 upper hand proc, 20 energy and 1.5 seconds to cast. I think you mean Emergency Medpac which is the spammable while <30% health one. If you mean the devs envisioned the op/scoundrel to be utterly useless and an absolute burden on their team then yeah, this is what they had envisioned. I'd like to draw everyone's attention back to my two voidstar recordings that I posted on page 13: Here is the link to the 1.1.5 warzone video: http://youtu.be/yYj5EWrWFMo And here is the link to the 1.2 warzone video: http://youtu.be/cqFWww9QZRU I'm using full battlemaster gear in the 1.2 clip with 20% extra damage to players from expertise and in most all of the encounters I have used one of my relics and have the +expertise (red) warzone buff. My shoot first opener doesn't hit over 1800 in the entirety of the clip. I don't care for what anyone says about skill or lack thereof when it comes to this class -- If you're given these kind of tools it doesn't make one iota of difference unless the person you're up against is clinically retarded.

The current state is pretty dismal. I made a post in this thread about it if you're interested: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=423597&page=13&pp=10#122

A friend of mine asked me to show him what scoundrel pvp was like at 50 post patch 1.2, so I logged in and joined a warzone. May as well post the video here as well. I have a previous recording of patch 1.1.5 for comparison. In the 1.1.5 clip I have considerably lesser gear but still manage to hit consecutively higher numbers than the 1.2 clip. Here is the link to the 1.1.5 warzone video: http://youtu.be/yYj5EWrWFMo And here is the link to the 1.2 warzone video: http://youtu.be/cqFWww9QZRU I'd also like to stress that these video's aren't a compilation of impressive feats and weren't intended to showcase anything specific. They're just regular matches so that you can see the average damage output of my scoundrel and make your own connections. Things to note: My spec is 7/31/3 (http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#701McbZMIMRdzRdGRZh.1) Contrary to what the tooltip states -- my Dodge ability does not remove all negative damage over time effects and I am removed from stealth on one occasion because of it. Out of combat timer is significantly worse after patch 1.2. I wait for 15 seconds at one point and still haven't left combat. I have 5 extra energy due to the 4 piece battlemaster set bonus in the 1.2 video and my energy regeneration is still worse than in 1.1.5 while I wasn't using that set bonus. In the patch 1.1.5 clip I'm wearing champion gear with battlemaster main-hand weapon, implants and two pieces of columni for the extra crit set bonus. In the patch 1.2 clip I'm wearing full battlemaster gear -- with exception of the relics, which are champion. I have tried very hard to like this game. I really want to like this game. If only for the reason that if it's successful it will encourage other mmo's to host servers in Australia. But in its current state I'm finding it very difficult to enjoy it.

I feel like it has contributed but it is in no way the detrimental factor. I like being able to experiment with different mods/enhancements & set bonuses but it's really only for some fun. Pre-1.2 I ran with 2 piece columni for the set bonus but it didn't feel like it was a huge difference from full battlemaster. I'm more concerned with which niche the developers want the class to fill because at the moment there is none and they don't really seem like they know which direction they want to go in.

In the description the uploader clearly states it is pre-1.2. They also don't use escape or any other cooldowns, snares or stuns and they are outgeared by a mile. The cost of abilities did increase. Laceration/Sucker Punch had its energy and damage reduced, but costs an Upper Hand/Tactical Advantage to use so the energy reduction isn't all that much useful because we rely on a proc that's consumed when we use it. Flechette Round/Acid Blade was increased to 15 and Backblast/stab was increased to 5 energy (with scrapper talents to reduce the energy cost) and both hit significantly less now. Shoot First costs 17 Energy, Flechette round costs 15, Backblast costs 5 and Sucker Punch costs 10. So, our opener will cost 32 energy, Sucker punch once for 10 and Backblast + Flechette round will cost 20. That's 62/100 energy within 6 seconds to do at most 10k damage in full battlemaster gear to an equally geared opponent. Throw in a blaster whip for another 15 energy and ~2000 damage and now all of our main abilities are on cooldown and we have significantly reduced energy regen due to having <40 energy. All for ~12k of damage. And this is one of the more ideal situations. I'm not even kidding. I'm not sure if this guy was trolling or not but even so -- he is dangerously close to the truth. The "8 seconds" to get out-of-combat timer being more like 30 seconds to never doesn't help but isn't the main reason. The class was clunky before 1.2 to say the least, and now it is just a joke.

This reminds me of a scoundrel I used to see around while leveling on my server... He had the fat body type and used to run around shirtless in warzones spamming sucker punch. Every time I saw him it brought a tear of happiness to my eye.

In my opinion it's not worth rolling one at this stage of the game. Perhaps the next patch will offer something else but I'm going to bet the scoundrel/operative will be pretty clunky up until the first expansion when they offer new abilities to every class. Whatever you plan on doing end game the scoundrel is currently the worst at it.

Don't use back blast immediately after shoot first. Use it instead to refresh the flechette round DoT.

I personally like the wait. It gives me time to level my characters and PvP without being completely out-geared.