When someone asks why the ocean is wet, telling them it contains water is a reasonable response. That's 6 more seconds to get the yolo swag train turned around. Getting to tell our pugs they are terrible is just a side benefit. I'll take this any day over a keyboard turning smashbot unable to crack 200k in an extended fight.

Too many 25k heros in regs. Get good at something, and then we can talk. Until then you can stare at a turret and get carried.

Give NPCs the ability to post forum QQ threads, and your (made up) numbers will look a lot different.

Yes, med shield is garbage. Take chem resistant inlays (or anything else, for that matter) instead. 4% damage reduction may not sound like a lot, but it is, especially when you factor in self-healing.

Zucchini and chick peas in chili? That's just wrong.

Oddly enough, this principle also applies to MMO developers, many of whom are below average when it comes to making balanced and fun gaming experiences.

I agree. In fact, anything that makes red bars go up again, or even causes them to go down less slowly, is clearly dirty pool. Those dastardly healers, have they no shame?

Classic. Never thought I'd see QQ over Med Shield (garbage talent), Revitalizers (giving up RN to get a self-hot? fail healer op), being able to cleanse tech effects (not gonna change rofl), Survival Training (self-healing on this talent already nerfed down to the bare minimum that a 3 pt talent permits short of removal), and 4% mitigation. The surgical probe tears are par for the course, but if you haven't figured out how to deal with it yet, I certainly won't be the one to tell you.

I've never been a fan of the 'shadowstep' mechanic, I think it's lazy game design and promotes a boring playstyle i.e. press a button and be right next to your target. I do think operatives need some kind of in-combat mobility, but I would rather see it be something unique, as opposed to homogenizing the playstyles between classes or 'dumbing down' the game mechanics. What I think would be really cool is some kind of beacon/recall mechanic. In other words, you get 2 skills, one places a beacon on the ground at your current position, and the other will recall you to it, as long as you are within 30 meters. It isn't a true 'gap closer', but it can be used as one if you are clever enough. It can also be used defensively i.e. as a 'get out of dodge' tool when you start taking focus fire. In Huttball, it would make knockbacks far less punishing for us, and actually give us some more options for helping move the ball offensively. In operations, it would enable greater uptime on certain bosses, and/or ability to switch targets faster. I think the right cooldown for the actual recall skill would be anywhere in the 30 to 60 second range. I'm inclined to say it ought to be available only to heavy concealment builds, since medics would be ridiculous with it, and lethality has enough ranged setup that I think it's not in need of something like this. Anyway, those are just my thoughts. BW will probably just cave to forum QQ at some point and take the easy way out.

It changes. It starts out kind of weird with more ranged damage than you would expect, but you get more melee-centric stuff later, if that's the route you choose to go down.

Yeah, it's fun pooping on tanks as lethality, even if it is not a good spec for rateds. Makes me feel like a real DPS class for a minute, then I see our juggs and maras rofling people with aoe crits for 6-7k several times a minute, and I just want to go cut myself.

Pretty much. The class is relatively solid in 1v1, 1v2, 2v2, etc. It's not as good in a pitched fight however, like say 6v6. No group buffs, average damage, below average mobility, below average ability to stay on target and/or hard switch targets, and below average survivability under focus fire = rofl go guard the node.

RWZs are a bust. Believe me, the teams that are farming you aren't having very much fun either. Many of these teams are composed of players who already have all the gear they need, so it's not like they are sticking around just to farm comms. On the P5 server, most of the better guilds have either quit the game, disbanded, or stopped queueing. RWZs were good for about 2 weeks before everybody figured out a couple of things: (1) rating is a joke because it is too easy to farm inflated ratings by playing a lot and smashing pugs and (2) there is no matchmaking to speak of. There are too many matchups that simply should not be occurring at all, because they don't lead to good games and they reward the winner with rating that they don't deserve. As so many others have already noted, good matchmaking is critical but the population isn't there to support it, at least not on a single server. BioWare seems to be 2 steps behind once again.

Give them time; they're trying to figure out what the next concealment operative nerf is.

Medical Engineering is a fixed 30% proc rate independent of crits, but other than that, right on.

Get more surge. 69% crit multiplier is low, you want it at least 75%. Farm the WH field tech boots for the mod and enhancement. Get the armorings last because they are a very small upgrade over battlemaster, and no expertise difference. Augment all your gear if you haven't already, and use a stim if you are not. Post your spec so we can see if there are issues with it. As far as playstyle, if you feel like you're not putting enough healing out, there are a number of reasons this could be. Are you dying too much? Are you running yourself out of energy? Are you healing the right targets? Are you starved of Tactical Advantages? Do you spend too much time positioning and not enough time healing? You should be able to put out big numbers even without relying on kolto injection. TLDR version of op pvp healing: 1x or 2x stack of KP on 3-4 targets at all times (even if not needing heals), 2x stack on yourself at all times, RN as needed preferably on big clumps, and chain KI+SP on targets taking focus fire. Don't forget to refresh stacks, and don't ever allow yourself to get into a situation where you are the target of focus fire, have no KP stacks on anybody, and have no TAs. Finally, post your ability keybinds, because that is very often the issue with people who feel like they are underperforming.

I'm referring to ballistic shield, their heal debuff, knockback, roots, diversion (if specced for it). Entrench is also really powerful, especially on node defense.

Our sniper brings great utility (beyond the shared agent abilities), pumps out great damage, and as a healer I find him generally easier to keep alive in a team environment than a DPS operative. I would never swap him for a Lethality operative -- sorry. The important question (from a balance standpoint) is: how would you do if you played a Lethality sniper, assuming equal time invested in learning the class? If the answer is, you would still out-do all of your guildmates, then your statement says more about relative player ability than it does about balance. EDIT: and yes, it is quite challenging finding a PvP tank that both wants to tank and is good at it.

We just run double operative healers, because you're right: the stealth and CC are well worth it. I never suggested stacking healers, that would be a bad thing. For DPS spots we run Pyro PT, Mara, Sorc, and Sniper. All of them bring excellent utility and damage, and swapping in a concealment operative for any one of those would be a step in the wrong direction. We have a lot of skilled players who can and will play whatever is needed; we can basically choose whatever classes we want. Abilities that are available to all operatives or agents in general absolutely are not reasons to bring a concealment operative. You may believe there are other reasons; that's fine, but the shared abilities can only be reasons to bring an operative/agent.

Yep. I'm not sure it's fair to call it a grind though. Getting about 2k rated comms per night on main is just awesome.

I have one of these. 49 assault vanguard fully modded out and augmented with purples everywhere. So much fun. Thanks to legacy gear, already 3 pc WH, will be 5/5 WH + BM accessories when I eventually do decide to ding 50. Good times!

I don't know. I encourage everybody who experiences it (which seems to be many) to create a bug-report for it in game, whether or not BW has acknowledged it.

I still play because I have a good team, but here are my thoughts. 1) PUGs and lesser-skilled groups get paired up too frequently against higher ranked teams and get smashed, over and over, until eventually they decide to stop queuing 2) Higher ranked teams get bored smashing lower ranked groups because it isn't competitive, and they get far less rating from it than winning against an equally rated team 3) The rating system seems a little wack, in that it will continue to award points for winning even extremely lopsided matches. I understand it's based on ELO, but right now it seems like it is possible to continue boosting ones rating indefinitely by winning matches where the outcome is basically a foregone conclusion. 4) Certain bugs interfere with competitive PvP ... the random lag spikes that hit everybody in a WZ at the same time right now are a good example of this. Another example is the 'camera freak out' where your view swings to a random direction, which has been in since release. 5) Class balance is not yet where it needs to be for rated play between organized teams 6) The maps are not ideal for closely-matched high ranked teams, Coin Star specifically, and to a lesser extent Civil War I think what is most urgently needed here is a better matchmaking system, so that people can be reasonably confident that they will face opponents close to their skill level. This in turn basically requires a much larger pool to draw from i.e. cross-server queues. Also, I think the matchmaking system should probably not just look at who is in the queue, but who is playing in games currently. For example, let's say I'm queued with my team that has 2200 rating, and the only other team in queue is 1800. There is a Huttball going on between 2 teams that are 2000, and it's almost over. Once that game ends, 2 games can be made: one with 1800v2000, and the other with 2000v2200. This is better than having 1 closely matched game (2000v2000) and 1 blowout (1800v2200). Obviously there are a ton of gotchas with this approach -- for starters, you don't know that any team currently in a game is going to requeue after, and even if they do, they might sub people in between. Still, I think that anything that could result in more closely matched games is worth looking at.

Concealment Operative 1. How do you think your Operative spec is perceived by other classes? I think most people view concealment as having been over-nerfed to the point of being somewhat of a joke now (in the 50s bracket). In sub-50, they are still competitive, though maybe still in need of some buffs. 2. How do you perceive your own spec? I think the perceptions of most people are largely justified, and concealment needs some help -- I view them as a waste of a spot on a rated warzone team because they have below average damage potential, below average survivability, difficulty staying on target, extremely limited mobility, and bring virtually no utility to the group. Also, the difficulty/unreliability of exiting combat in this game presents a huge problem for a spec so reliant on stealth. Lethality Operative 1. How do you think your Operative spec is perceived by other classes? Broken and unfinished since release, and not a real threat. 2. How do you perceive your own spec? Terrible for operatives. Great for snipers, but terrible for operatives. See above. Has issues with ability ranges and TA generation. Medicine Operative 1. How do you think your Operative spec is perceived by other classes? They are perceived as very desirable healers right now, especially in PvP. 2. How do you perceive your own spec? I think medicine is in a good place right now. Medic Ops have good healing output, good survivability under focus-fire and interrupt pressure, good mobility (as far as being able to heal while moving), and being able to stealth makes them very valuable in objective play. Most importantly, they have a playstyle that is effective, unique, and fun.

Taking cover in place aka crouch does grant immunity to pull and leap, as long as you don't get CCed out of crouch.