I for one welcome our new Marauder and Sentinel Overlords!

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Runs to YOUR goal line, ignoring all warnings to the contrary.

This is most certainly not the case on my server, the current "Every other player" class or the commonly stated "Flavor of the Month" is BH/Trooper, in both the 1-49 bracket and as new 50's in the 50's bracket I see far more new Vanguards/Commandos on the Republic side and Powertech/Mercenaries on our side. Point in fact, if I see less than 2-3 Powertechs/Vangaurds alone per match...I am suspicious. This seems to be the new most common single class, oddly enough, at 50 we've had a massive surge in Sentinels (not marauders oddly enough) to the point of having as many as 4+ per some matches.

Could there be any more nonsense on the internet? I'll draw the following conclusions from your post: You are a suffering "loner" who incidentally surrounds himself with other suffering "loners", you perceive yourself as an artist and world critic, anarchy is your preferred overt sense of discourse while you quietly hide your desire for forced government structure. You loathe capitalism and personal excellence, while ascribing to universal suffrage and anonymity, success is your ever present nemesis, anyone partaking of it is vilified. How close am I?

2/10 Problems: No seperation of Premade V Premade (just roflstomping pugs or being roflstomped if you're in a pug) Ilum (Horrible, Horrible) Need to set population caps and instance it if necessary with a queue and give Ilum only daily rewards with purchasable valor tokens or allow the lower pop side to pull companions. The entire current gearing concept is FUBAR'd, a RNG loot table in purchasable/rewarded bags is idiotic, letting luck, or the lack of therein dictate gearing up. Two, 8v8 mini-map warzones that could be made better by two modders in their mothers basement during an overnight Doritos binge, anime infested, sleepover. And (A)Voidstar, a lag laden, error prone map that might have one team planting the bomb before the other's gate even goes down, or the ever popular occasional overpopulation of either side. This is of course without mentioning the flawed nature of putting an entirely FPS map into an MMO. Class balance is unimportant right now, focus on getting out new warzones, improving Ilum by adding incentives to be there. Ooooh, here is a concept, add vehicles/defensive structures circa Wintergrasp, Warhammer, et al to attract the uninitiated by adding anonymity. My 2c

Playing devils advocate as a Sniper, however Merc/Commando have generally all of those abilities, the tanks bring many more defenses, not that much less damage (Rage tree), and no healing, but a plethora of CC and guard. From an IA Sniper point of view, I find Sorc/Sage to be quite squishy in any area they can't constantly break LoS to spam DoT/Heal and contra-kite. As to your final point to the quantitative amount of Sorc/Sage, I believe it's because of (depending on spec) it's mobility and options to spec into healing depending upon the needs of your guild/group. On my server, I would say there are nearly as many Commandos as Sages and Mercenaries as Sorcerers.

Sage/Sorc followed by Commando/Merc followed by Bio-chem followed by Scoundrel/Operative

I would comment that Ballistic Dampers is specifically what he was talking about as a comparison, or at least from my understanding of his post. As to ranged defense, I agree, it's truly only effective (in terms of PvP) against other Snipers/Gunslingers or the occasional Merc/Comm who toss basic fire in our direction. As to the mobility, having played both, and from playing alongside two Mercs in our guild, I would say Merc is far more mobile than a Sniper, but trade off being vulnerable to Jedi/Sith closers, however a veteran Merc will always position himself on the far edge of a walkway/ledge/object where the JK/SW falls off as they reach you (a location snipers usually can't position because of "Unknown Effect" issues with Cover).

A plethora of falsehoods and blatant exaggerations, posted by a player that has nothing to lose in the process. Those that are fed by this, or use this to fuel their "fire" are looking for ANYTHING they can site, the ironic act of quoting one another until the truth is buried beneath a wall of posts like these must bring great frustration to the devs.

My view as an Imperial: I would say, that on our server, where we face Republic (1/3rd of the games are Imp v Imp Huttball) they are constituted of premades predominantly. Point in fact, I would say (pugging) that we lose about 60% of Voidstar (one place where non-premades can and occasionally do get lucky) and 75% of ACW. I've seen no difference in the balance of dps scores or kills from faction to faction when comparing classes. Given our larger population, it seems we have, at least on my server and during my play times, a very large group of sub level 30 players in each match, most of our matches start with less than full teams, and of those matches that do start with full teams, we often have one specific AFK'r or another who simply stealth and hide. Furthermore, BW has listed the win loss ratio for Imperial to Republic as 53% Imp / 47% Republic, that is as close to perfectly even as one can get in an MMO.

I'm not on your server, but I fully support this thread. I wish you the best of luck.

Warhammer Hadn't played DAoC, sounds like I really missed out. I consider the Jedi/Hologrind to be the leading downfall of SWG PvP. World of Warcraft right after the Honor system was introduced and right before BG's came out was extremely active, constant open world unpredictable battles, some involving several raid groups (this on a server that had @ that time 5:1 Alliance to Horde ratio..giving us few Hordelings plenty to do at any time of the day). I have to admit, that as horrible most of Star Trek Online was, being Klingon with constant pvp and the three dimensional space combat was very enjoyable for a while. Worst ever, was the incomprehensibly foolish system Tabula Rasa had, so much potential, with none realized.

As a Sniper: It is very common to be LoS'd, it's a viable strategy against Snipers and Mercs during cast times, there are exceptions, some abilities are channeled and maintain the last bit of their damage even as you break LoS. That being said, I believe you are experiencing latency issues, at any time during my Snipe/Ambush, if another player breaks los, I lose cast, likewise interrupts in the form of ranged CC (watch for the entrench, and avoid using if you see an extended shield over them) work beautifully on Snipers. Hope this helps.

This certainly isn't limited to Republic, as has been stated, we have it on our side as well. Not quite to the degree of the old honor grind days of WoW however.