If you want a multiplayer game, why would you want LFD? I think you're looking for a single player game to begin with. LFD did more to eliminate any connection between players than anything else. When LFD was first put out on WoW, I loved the tool, but it didn't take me long to figure out that I had stopped interacting with other players entirely - and the problem only got worse when LFD was made cross server. For all intents and purposes, I was playing a single player game with forced 4 other random quality AI companions. It was hell. the LFG channel in ironforge during classic (and the fact that the player pool was limited and you got to know people) made me interact with folks and ... *GASP* ... make friends. This was not the experience I had with LFD. I do, however, agree that the flashpoint entrances should be on level appropriate planets. Not because of travel time, but because the current system forces you to STOP playing the game while you look for a group (which, if I am not mistaken, is actualy the problem here.) Complaining about out leveling the content is a strange complaint to me - my characters did every quest (including the bonus series) on every planet single player, and I had to do PvP dailies and an occasional flashpoint to struggle to keep up - I finished Correlia at 48 on my sniper, and 49 on my operative (yes, I played the agent twice). I imagine that you are a less focused player, though, and accumulated a fair amount more of the rested xp bonus. Regardless, because of the way xp is assigned by the quests, if you outlevel them a little bit, they start rewarding heavily reduced experience. Even if you did outlevel the content for a bit by going on some flashpoints you'd be adjusted back down fairly easily. And if you finished voss at 49 and were 50 half way through Corellia? So? That just gives you the option to either have an easy, casual fun time romping through the corellia quest line, or you could just finish your class quest ******y split and ignore the rest.) And the final point is a reiteration of another poster - if you want to group so badly, why don't you go do it?

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#400ZrI0bRRbZhrbkrMhz.1 Think about it. No. Really.

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#400bsrddRoRgzZMIZb.1 I use this spec, and I absolutely destroy everything. My AOE options are just plain bad ***, espescially with the 2pc PvP set bonus (Gloves, Boots to minimize stat loss for the best set bonus for snipers in the game - and the ONLY one that matters). If I am moving I can rotate my grenade and rifle shot for filler damage (unless AOE is unacceptable) and my single target DPS is rediculously high. I never run out of energy, because I don't have any alacrity talents to **** with me - I can chain cast my abilities on cooldown without worrying about droping below 60 energy if I keep my rotation exact, which includes only one rifle shot every minute, and using AP when I eventually drop to about 35 energy. AoE is Energy Intensive (OS->FG->RS->FG etc.) but that doesn't matter because it does SO MUCH DAMAGE that I can solo entire pulls in HMs with proper CC so long as the group has no more than one gold star.

I am Cipher Agent One theme song? oh yes ...

1. The best AOE in the game. Period. Other classes have AOE abilities that seem bad *** (Death from Above) but pale in comparison to Orbital Strike when you realize that you can then lay ANOTHER AOE on top of your OS. I've removed all alacrity-providing talents from my build, and used the extra points to spec into the AOE improvement in Engineering, and use the 2piece bonus from the PvP set to give me an extra tick on my OS. The result is what my guildies call my "tanking laser" - in HM pulls, it completely negates anything without a silver or gold star by it's name, and even the silver stars are brought down to 1/4 life by the end of it, or are just plain dead if I lay down my Suppressive Fire on top of my OS. With thoughtful CC and ability usage, I can solo any pull in any HM with 1 or 0 gold star enemies, and can solo most pulls with 2 gold stars. 2. Top Tier Single Target Damage that can be maintained indefinitely. So long as you make sure you don't chain abilities together in an order that will cause you to drop your energy below 60, you should have to use your basic attack once every 30 seconds or less. Other than that, you are slamming your enemies with very high dpct abilities. As far as I can tell, I'm doing over 2k dps consistently in single target situations with no slow down or drops in that number ever. Including my OS on cooldown and the number is probably higher than that significantly. The only case this is not true is when I have to move. Movement fights do suck for us snipers. 3. Ballistic Shield. Seriously, a bad *** ability.

I've only ever had issues with 1 mara on my sniper. Frankly, the number of people who can play Mara's well are very very small, but these folks are quite amazing.

If you outheal their damage they are bad players. At minimum they could interupt a single one of your heals and kill you. LoS is a lot more difficult to deal with, if someone has good tips for handling the LOSing DoT classes it would be awesome.

Sweet, one less complainer on the forums! This kinda stuff always makes my day! Thank you bioware! I have an op and a sniper, and thank you deeply for this nerf to operative. Please don't listen to the folks with no skill that don't still completely own on their operative anyway, like myself, and like I do on my sniper as well. The operative was just silly with my ability to kill people without them being able to do anything at all. And then I hit Cloaking Screen, and ghost away. Could use a little bit of survivability on the sniper, even though it's DPS out is better than the op, it's just flat out much squishier, and the BH one button win kinda rubs me the wrong way, when I have a complex rotation that must be worked out for my DPS that is then mitigated by their armor, and they have one button for burst dps that completely ignores mine, it would be nice to have something to counter that.

Important! Bump!

Both Orbital Strike and Suppressive Fire suffer from this on Imperial Agents. It affects every AOE that I am aware of.

Kaliyo is awesome. We get along great. She's evil, I'm evil, we both love drinking and throwing kidneys at people at the black market organ auctions. If you equip her properly she holds massive aggro and is impossible to kill. I shoot high, she shoots low, and then she takes all my grey items and vendors them for me. What's not to love?

I'm having loads of fun in pvp, doing near top damage out (our mandalorian friends seem to beat me when there's a good one about) and always the top kills. In instances I seem to murder things very very quickly, on a more reliable basis than Bounty Hunters, who seem to be one trick ponies. DEATH FROM ABOVE! Lol, that ability is amazing, but it's on a minute cooldown. So yeah, we bring some massive amounts of damage to the table as snipers, both AOE (Cover Fire/Grenades and later on Orbital Strike) and Single Target (Ambush/Snipe with proper energy management, haven't got series of shots yet but I am looking forward to it with all the talent improvements it seems to get.) We bring that 5% crit buff, but so do operatives so it's not all that boss. We have plenty of options for crowd control though - Leg Shot, Flashbang, Debilitate, some hefty debuffs and some very nice survival cooldowns. DPS is not going to be much of a topic in this game though - no mods? no damage meters - which means good dps is invisible.