The story line of the smuggler class is awesome. Don't die before you've played this class, that's all I'm saying. After lvl40 though, I felt like a republic soldier rather than a smuggler and it bored me quickly. There weren't enough "greedy" dialogue choices in conversations. Luckily the end was good enough.

Yeah, happens to me as well. Irritating bug. Unfortunately devs aren't doing anything about it as far as I see.

Cheap shot and Headshot don't cost energy. Just 45 sec cooldown.

Ah, sorry. I thought the 10 second internal cooldown was for Round Two, not Flying Fists. Guess I was wrong. This is worse by the way. If you get flying fists proc and realize you had forgotten to dot the target first, then you have to wait for another 10 seconds for the proc. Really, it should be removed or made 100% chance to proc with 9 sec int. cooldown.

I agree. Animation speed doesn't matter since the GCD is 1.5 seconds both for Scoundrel and Operative. No matter how fast an operative does his animation, he still waits for the GCD for his next move. And even though Scoundrel animations may look slower, he can still use his next ability once it's off GCD. He doesn't have to wait for the first animation to end; he can cut it in half. Just press those hotkeys in time. But DEVs need to do something about dirty kick's root effect. They should either make Debilitate root too, or change Dirty Kick into something else that won't root them (I prefer the latter), otherwise they keep losing an entire second being rooted, and almost another second getting behind the enemy for a backblast. That's a waste of a precious 4 second stun.

Cheap Shot does kinetic (yellow) damage. Head Shot does weapon (white) damage. I think Scoundrels do more damage with cheap shot and since it's kinetic damage, it doesn't rely on accuracy (if i'm right). However, I have uses for headshot too. In hard mode flashpoints, I use thermal grenade/head shot combo on weak/standart enemies especially when they need to be taken down fast.

--Gear up your tank companion. --Gear up yourself. --Make sure your tank's tanking abilities are active --Tranquilize tougher enemies and kill the weak ones first. After you clear the weaklings, heal your companion, wait for your energy to reach full, then attack the tough guy. --Try not to miss any interrupts. Use dirty kick and flash grenade if necessary. --Stack cunning, not endurance. --When you solo very hard enemies (like champions), keeping your companion alive is more important than doing high dps. Don't let your companion die. --If a champion is chasing you and there's a big object/wall that you can hide behind, try this tactic: -Tendon blast -Vital Shot -Start running around the object, let him chase you and heal yourself -Keep running -Dirty Kick, Backblast, Blaster Whip, Tendon blast and run -Vital shot Repeat this. He's gonna die while chasing you. --Remove dots before using Disappearing Act. You can use Triage or Dodge to do that.

Well, it works fine for me. If the second punch procs on a bleeding target, it regrants UH and your character chuckles. But I suspect Flying Fists has an internal cooldown which is not shown in the tooltip. I've never seen 2 Flying Fists procs in a short time such as 5 seconds.

Well, the animations' speed don't matter anymore. Because damage doesn't wait for the animation to finish. Imagine you backblast the boss but only miliseconds later he knocks you back. When that happens, the animation doesn't play but the damage applies. So basically, animation speed doesn't matter. Let's talk about animation variety. UPPER HAND/TACTICAL ADVANTAGE GRANTER Scoundrel: Blaster Whip to the head Operative: Stabs with knife STUN Scoundrel: Kicks in the balls Operative: Stabs with knife UH/TA EXPLOIT (Melee) Scoundrel: Punch in the face Operative: Stabs with knife OPENER Scoundrel: Shotgun Operative: Stabs with knife FROM BEHIND Scoundrel: Shotgun Operative: Stabs with knife So... As you can see, you get tired of knives after a while. I have a lvl50 scoundrel (scrapper) and a 30 operative (concealment). In my opinion, scoundrel animations are a lot more bad@ss than operative animations. Since the global cooldown is 1.5 seconds for every class, slow or fast animations don't mean much to me.

I have a Scoundrel and I totally agree with you. This ridicilous stealth detection range not only prevents me from using my opener (shoot first) but also causes the fight start before we're prepared, because once the boss detects me, I need to run back really fast otherwise he aggros whether or not I'm unstealthed. Sometimes I can't help but wonder why Bioware acts so slow to fix the obvious problems/bugs in the game. Last night we quit False Emperor fp (hm) since the turret bug was preventing us from progressing. Don't they ever test the content before they release it?

Some tips for you: Choose gear with more cunning, less endurance (I did this while I was leveling up and I never felt like I needed more endurance. Cunning is always the best. It also helps you heal your companion for bigger amounts, which allows you to take down harder enemies more easily) Stack crit and surge. While we're a burst class, I don't think our sustained dps is very bad. I do hard mode flashpoints with my friends every couple of days. A fight usually goes like this: Tank grabs the big guy. I clear out the little ones. Then I attack the big guy too. After 5 or 6 hits, I can overaggro our tank. So, either my tank friend is very bad at what he's doing (which is unlikely) or my combo sucker punches and backblast are hitting hard enough to get the attention of the enemy. (By the way, my crit is %42 (with Lucky Shots) and Surge is 80%+) Corso is a good tank. In operations, when your leader tells you to nuke the boss, you can use Disappearing Act and Shoot First for a good burst. You don't really need Accuracy. Accuracy doesn't affect tech attacks. It only affects weapon attacks like Flurry of Bolts, Quickshot, Charged Burst etc... Other than those three, all Scoundrel/Scrapper attacks are either tech or bleed, which don't need accuracy as far as I know. If an enemy pushes you back in a fight, throw a Thermal grenade quickly to maintain your dps as you run back to melee range. Backblast is still buggy. In some occasions it won't fire from behind the enemy. If that happens, try backblast from sides, not from behind. If you need several interrupts, start with Distraction, then Dirty Kick, then Flash Grenade, then Distraction again. If you need more, try using a cybertech grenade which knocks the enemy back. Disappearing Act is buggy too. Sometimes the enemy keeps firing at you even if you disappear and that breaks your stealth. Also, remove dot effects from yourself before you disappear. You can use Triage and Dodge to do that. Some enemies have so ridicilously good stealth detections that their detection range surpasses their normal range. Imagine you're 35-40 meters away from the enemy. He doesn't see you. You go into stealth and he detects you. When you see an orange circle around your character, it means he is seeing you and gonna attack you very soon. You have very little time to escape and most of my escape attempts have failed so far. And before you ask, Sneak doesn't help. For PvP, I don't have any advices because I don't pvp at all. That's all I can think of right now. Sorry for my poor English.

Tbh, this was not a suggestion to fix any of the current problems (like knockbacks, gap closing) of scoundrels, but just an idea to enrich the combat; to make it more fun. Because sometimes, between flurry of bolts and quickshot, I feel something's missing. A new ability to squeeze in as we recover energy would be nice. But thank you for your opinions.

If I were you, I'd still open with shoot first. By the way, after the nerf, I switched from Scrapper to DF but it was difficult to get used to, especially with the energy issue. Maybe I just needed to try harder but I missed being a scrapper too much to stay DF.

I'm not sure about splitting the opener into 3 different types. I'm happy with bursting my opponent and stunnging him at the same time. As someone else said, making flechette round passive is an interesting idea but the animation is too cool to lose. Also for rolling blast; we need a gap closer but I'd prefer something like Shadowstep.

--Sorry for my poor english-- Among other discussions about scoundrel nerfs and bugs, I'm not sure if this thread will mean anything now but I'd like to start it anyway. After hitting lvl50 on my scoundrel, I got nothing to do except for daily quests and some flashpoints. So I started lvling a sentinel alt and I have to say, I love Master Strike. "Master Strike: I was thinking... What if scoundrels had a channeling move like that? A move that consists of a kick (or a knee) to stomach, a punch, a headbutt and a shotgun blast? My scoundrel is Scrapper specced and I sometimes use Flurry of Bolts (more than once if I dropped below 60 energy) while restoring energy or Quickshot to burn excess energy. If I had a channeling move with a cooldown, I could use it instead of flurry of bolts. The channeling move doesn't necessarily have to be exactly as I described, but a headbutt would be awesome (we fight dirty anyway), though I don't know how hard it would be to make the animation for it. What do you think?

I don't understand how the testing team works in this game. They change something in a patch, and also they break something that was working perfectly until they touched it. We're nerfed in PvE because of PvP issues. This is a bad move. Now that aside, why did they add a delay to K.O? Now I have to move around and get behind my target in that precious 1.5 seconds to squeeze in a backblast. Sometimes backblast won't fire saying "effect condition failed". As far as I can see, this bug hasn't been fixed yet and it's in the game since the start. I opened tickets for this backblast bug, and they told me to provide more info (although I thought I had). You want info? Ok. I use this rotation: Stealth -> Flechette Round -> Tranquilizer -> Shoot First -> Backblast -> "Effect Condition Failed" It's strange, that backblast won't fire from behind the target but will from sides. Buffs on me: Flechette Round, Lucky Shots, Upper hand and probably a skill stim. Please fix K.O and Backblast bugs. Combined with the latest nerf, it's very irritating. Also, fix Disappearing act already! Yesterday I was soloing a lvl50 heroic on Belsavis (the one where we turn off generators). One of the champions attacked me as I was turning off the generator. I patiently waited for him to dot me, then I cleared those dots and debuffs with "dodge". After that I used disappearing act. Guess what? He just kept firing at me and forced me out of stealth. So please, pretty please, will you fix it? Edıt: Character Name in game: Serseri Lvl 50 Scoundrel (Scrapper) Server: Eye of Ashlanae (EU-PvE)

I'm switching to DF too. I've played scrapper since I started the game. This latest nerf is just too much that I lost my interest in scrapper tree. This is what happens when you nerf a class like this Bioware; people respec to a different tree. Is this what you intended? If so, then I won't be surprised if DF gets nerfed hard in a future patch.

I think the latest nerf is too much. I'm respeccing to dirty fighting. I was looking for an excuse to try it anyway.

Same on Eye of Ashlanae (EU). Last night, me and my guildies got disconnected.

My guild is on this server and I lvled up to 17, also spent long time on crew skills. Now, there's more than 2000 ppl in the queue and estimated time to wait is 2h 20 min. This is unacceptable. Me and my guildies are seriously thinking of moving to another server. Shame on you bioware for this ridicilous server placement.

8-20 and not in.