Well, call me a noob, but what would those 8 abilities be? I mean, we're talking regular PvP, not optimized EWH against PvE heroes, right? Because I can't think of anything else hitting as hard. Railshot? Nah. Maul? Nah. Discharge? Nah. Deathfield? Nah. Hidden Strike? Nah. Ambush? Don't think so. Maybe a Ravage from a Carnage Marauder with active 100% armor ignore, but then again, that's a combo of two skills with a 3s execution time, interruptable by stuns, mezzes and knockbacks. Does every single player on my server just suck at putting together their gear, or is that statement a... little... exaggerated?

Problem here is probably that he's in gear from august 2012. Let's say off-the-shelve battlemaster against fully optimized and augmented elite war hero. That's going to hurt, because the operative probably had a lot more stats, a lot more expertise, and a lot more experience. I don't even want to imagine what that encounter would have been like with a combat sentinel. Probably Master Strike -> Dead.

If you don't want to PvP, don't. There's noone forcing you. I've smashed my way through multiple dailies today, right in the middle of other players. I wasn't flagged for PvP, and that didn't change either. You have to use a single target ability on them in order to become flagged, so I don't see the issue. Maybe turn off "auto target closest enemy", that can lead to some unintentional shooting, but otherwise you will not be flagged, no matter what you do.

Stun to prevent the force speed won't work against a competent sage, but for the third time, that's not what this thread is about. I don't care about the stun bubble on the sorc. Nobody does. The issue is the 3 second aoe stun on 18 second cooldown, at 300 resolve, useable at will and even while CCed, on the entire team.

I should have said that there's no way to kill a healing or balance sage with rootkick and stun bubble in a 1on1. My apologies. Yes, if those criteria are met, it's possible. As for the "stun and kill" argument: In case all stuns run their full length, the sage is in melee range for maybe 6 seconds. Afterwards, he's fully resolved and can't really be kept in melee range. 6 seconds equal to 4 attacks, one of which is a low damage stun... you do the math. To quote myself, though:

Sure, I can kill a sage who has blown his bubble cooldown, his knockback cooldown, his force lift cooldown and his regular stun cooldown. Oh, and the force speed cooldown. The only thing that's as annoying are op/scoundrel healers. But it's not about killing a healer as a single DD, which *should* be difficult. It's about an additional 3 second area stun for the entire team on an 18 second cooldown which generates half the resolve of all other stuns. In an already stun-heavy game.

Okay, I crouch and deploy explosive probe on the sage, start to snipe, and... oh, what's that, the focus guardian just pushed me away from his healer. Well, that's a shame. Oh, the guardian cancelled his bubble buff and I'm stunned for 3 seconds... eh, more luck next time. Alternatively: Oh boy, I really hope that sage doesn't LoS me for the next 6 seconds while I point a red laser at him and try to get that bubble down. The frustrating thing is that you need to START the fight from range, or you're stunned.

It really has nothing to do with paying attention. I can't think of any way at all to kill a rootkick/bubblestun sage, either heal or balance as second tree, as operative or scoundrel. Well, assuming equal gear and such, obviously. Maybe I'm just not thinking outside of the box enough *shrugs* Plus, even seeing the bubble and moving away from it to pop it from a distance won't help, because competent players just stun you by cancelling the buff as soon as you pose a threat. That's what makes it most frustrating: The effect is tied to a damage absorbing mechanism, but can be triggered without any damage being absorbed.

Couldn't we find a point of effectiveness for stun bubbles that lies inbetween "nobody ever uses that crap" and "I can't move a single inch without being stunned again"? Pretty please? I understand that sorcs like to have useful utility. I understand that, in a 1on1, there are ways around the bubble. But in their current form, those bubbles are not fun. The stun works on everyone. Even if you carefully stand outside of the stun radius of your designated target, someone else next to you has his bubble popped. You're stunned now. The stun is applied when you cancel the buff. Even if you go in for some attacks, then want to pop the bubble from a distance. your target just clicks off the buff while you're close. You're stunned now. Related to above: You can cancel buffs while stunned or mezzed. So the bubble is actually a CC useable while CCed. For everyone on the team. The lockout is... well. Long for a health preservation mechanism. But incredibly short for a 3 second stun. The bubble stun is the only stun in the game (as far as I know) that doesn't respect the rule of "200 resolve per second of stun". Instead, it's half that much. So you can theoretically be stunned for 13 seconds instead of 8. Oh, and players who have the stun bubble usually also have the 5 second root on their knockback applied. I'm not the best player in this world, so maybe it's just me. But on my operative, going against bubble stun + normal stun + rootkick, this makes me want to commit senseless acts of violence to local wildlife. On other melee characters, it's "only" incredibly annoying. A warzone with stun bubbles all over the place and 2 or 3 sages with root-enhanced knockback is essentially turn-based. Once had a warzone with 4 rootkick and bubblestun sages and 4 smashers. That was about as much fun as flossing with barbed wire, gotta tell you. I don't know how to resolve this situation. I just know that it's about as interesting as going against operatives at launch. You're stunned every other second, and then you're dead.

Anyone can prevent a cap for quite some time, stealthers can prevent it for a long time, and snipers probably only get ninja capped when they take a toilet break. Just don't stand on top of the damn pylon when guarding. It's that easy. Guard behind a damn pillar. You still see what's going on, and can interrupt in a whim, but you can't be CCd from the pylon. Even an assassin with force speed can't mind trap you, then speed to the pylon, then cap before CC breaks. Making other warzones a 6 second cap might be problematic, because the others offer much more objects to break LoS to the defenders. But it works perfectly for AH. Sure, if you guard around a corner and get sapped by a SECOND assassin, you're out of luck. But it's not the 6s cap that's screwing you over, it's the 2on1 you're fighting.

They are OP, otherwise why would there be dozens of "Nerf scoundrels"-threads on the first page. People always think of scoundrels first when they hear the word "overpowered" nowadays.

Nobody's calling them OP nowadays. This thread is one freaking year old. Mercs stopped being OP, or even P, the moment people keybound their interrupt.

I'm not trolling, just curious if things like a whirl wind or a flash bang are widely considered "8 second stuns" nowadays.

I'm confused. Maybe my vocabulary is just outdated, but for me, it's like this: Stun: Loss of character control, does not break on damage, disables movement Mezz: Loss of character control, breaks on damage, disables movement Snare/Slow: Reduces movement speed Root: disables movement So you want to turn all stuns into mezzes? Hey, not that I don't WANT to be completely, utterly immortal as a healer, but did you think this through? You can't stun people in smash spec and take them down. You can't stun healers to take them down. You instantly invalidate every spec that applies any kind of dot (10 or more, off the top of my head), because they can't even deal damage and tactically use a stun (since it's broken immediately by dots). That change would require such a massive amount of other changes, it's mind boggling. Something I'd rather see changed: Don't let a full resolve bar decay, as long as you're in a "safe zone" like spawn rooms etc. - nothing as frustrating as being stunned to death and then watch that precious white bar tick down in the spawn room. I could imagine problems with voidstar and side nodes in civil war, but maybe then people start using stuns as a last resort and be careful not to whitebar their opponents.

Out of curiousity I did that, on a vanguard and powertech. Ion Pulse -> Hammer Shots vs. Flame Burst -> Rapid Shots. Until overheated/out of ammo. Did 4 runs on the vanguard: 31, 29, 32 and 34 Ion Pulse before out of ammo. Only did 2 runs on the powertech, because the difference is so overwhelming: 50 and 60 Flame bursts, and I wasn't even out of the maximum heat dissipation tier. Just stopped because it got so very boring. So, while I don't actively play neither powertech nor vanguard most of the time, this changed my mind. When I first read the thread, my first thought was "People will whine about anything", but I now see this as a real concern, and want to state my support for fixing this. Not that it matters, but anyway.

For most things, you're correct. Yes, Overload Shot isn't worth it, if you plan on fighting a bit longer. Just not enough dmg/energy. Yes, you are supposed to use Rifle Shots in between your attacks. Falling below 60 energy will hurt you, and managing energy and TAs can be a pain. What I think was the point behind a tiered energy regen system and the TA requirement: Allow for burst, but leave the character in a weakened state afterwards. That this comes around to bite you in the backside when you want to go for sustained damage, well... It's still possible to deal okay damage. Of course, if you're dishing out great damage as an operative, you'd probably deal even more damage as another AC, but still - you do ok for operations. The ones I did, anyway. Just takes a while getting used to. Basically, only use Shiv if you have 1 TA, and only drop that last TA if you don't fight anything in the next 10 seconds. Keeping 1 stack of TA increases damage by 3% and allows you to throw in a quick stim boost when it's about to run out.

A well played (and well geared) guardian vs. a bunch of recruit geared peeps who deal ranged/melee damage (to allow for defenses) could actually go on for a LONG time. There's the non-channeled Force Stasis, the AoE mezz, the push, the 4s stun, maybe add in a stun grenade to the mix, defensive cooldowns, WZ medpack + temporary HP buff, area slow.... I've seen it happen, didn't take full two minutes to kill him, but certainly more than 60 seconds. Felt like ages, at least.

It's funny, I use a keyboard and mouse for 10 bucks each, and have never consciously experienced ghosting. Maybe it cuts a keyboard command every once in a blue moon and I'm left wondering why the hell that didn't work, but nothing as extreme as people report here.

Always good to have a nice overview. But does the BiS setup really include willpower mods? Since you list " 2 Force-mystic gloves For Power mod", and the mods certainly don't have our main stat.

I think this is my fault, found a Tionese geared sage the other day, and killed him during the stun. Might have caused him to unsub, not sure.

The MvP isn't voted for on a "democratic" basis, meaning you don't have one "election winner" and everyone else loses. For every vote that goes to you, you get an extra commendation. That's it, basically. More of a symbolic "thank you" to a player who you think has contributed to your team's performance.

The backstab proc idea basically does nothing at all to the cooldown, if anything increases it. 50 energy push you right out of the highest regen zone, so you're only hurting the (already) less than famous sustained damage. To fish up the proc takes at least 1.5 seconds, meaning you could backstab every 11.5 instead of 12 with perfect luck and timing. Might be 17 though, if you fail to proc it a few times. So that change does nothing for sustained damage, but grants even more burst on demand with adrenaline probe. You could get 2 Acid Blade/Hidden Strike, an explosive probe and 2 Backstabs off in around 8 seconds, maybe throw in an extra acid blade. Though you're sucked dry afterwards. That's burst, and only burst. See, one point why procs work well for assassins and not at all for ops is the fact that they have a lot of flurry attacks (multiple hits with one button press) while we only have the Rifle Shot in the flurry category. So it takes longer to fish for them.

Yes, no hardware upgrade. In fact, there's a slight downgrade, since my windows 8 partition is on a larger but substantially slower hard disk, still getting a better overall experience (while all partitions have at least 20 GiB free space). And since I use my desktop at home only for games, there was nothing installed on windows 7 either, save for 2 other games. Which are also installed on windows 8. The changed operating system really is the only distinguishing factor.

150k heal from a shadow tank/balance hybrid in augmented dps WH would require a 12 minute warzone, in which: The shadow is never, ever killed. He proccs everything as soon as it comes off internal cooldown None of his abilities ever overheal Force in Balance always hits three targets as soon as it is off CD He is never, ever stunned during Telekinetic Throw All of this starts the very first second of the warzone. He actually has enough force to do all of this on cooldown If that happens, there's a chance he's pulling off around 163k healing. But I'd say, if you see healing numbers above maybe half of that, it's inflated by warzone medpacks or other players' (healers') abilites, because no way in hell did the shadow do that with class abilities. I agree that they have a lot of healing output, but it's not like they can spam 5k heals on themselves endlessly, like some people make it sound.

Not sure if it helps anyone, but I've gained about 20 fps by migrating to windows 8. Now runs with anti-aliasing and shadows enabled as well as it did before without those things. Even better, in most situations.