Okay, this insane number of stuns that stops you from getting away is... two. One of which lasts 1.5 seconds, the other one a whole 4 seconds. also, you're at full resolve after this and immune to CC. Just saying. Now, concealment ops are just annihilating snipers, I'll give you that. But if you get killed by operatives while on your powertech, you are probably seriously outgeared.

Uhm, yeah. I'm not sure if that's sarcasm. In case it's not: You are aware that Shoot First has an 8 second cooldown now? Has had for a while? So even if he was crit for 7k (which, in all probability, he wasn't, if he wears recruit MK2), those 2 hits would have come in over the course of 8 seconds. That's not exactly killed in the blink of an eye. Unless the person blinking is having a stroke. But then, the game is not the problem. The stroke is. So even if the world's best-equipped operative "chained" two Hidden Strikes like that on a tionese geared pvp newcomer, that means he killed someone infinitely less geared in 8 seconds. See how long it takes a combat sentinel. Or a deception assassin, haha.

"I was recovering from a hard battle and standing around with 30% hitpoints and that operative two shot me. How is that possible? I have 1000 exp!" Think that's what happened. *shrug*

No, if noone buys, someone will undercut the others. If that price is acceptable for crafters, they buy. If not, someone undercuts the undercutter. Until the missions are bought again. I mean, as a slicer, what would you rather do? List for 10k less than everyone else and sell out in minutes, or list for the market price noone pays and have timed out listings every day?

My experience with windows 8: First impression was "Oh dear god, give me back my start menu". Really, I felt alienated. However, I was stuck using it for two days, because I didn't have the time for a rollback then. A rollback that was absolutely necessary, because noone can be expected to put up with this ungodly mess of a UI. Fast forward two days later: I'm amazed just how much quicker I can get things done on windows 8 compared to windows 7. The new menu brought up by windows + x keys? Awesome, saves me so much time. The extremely fast search for just about everything (apps, settings, files) on the home screen? Nicely done, in my oppinion even better than in 7's start menu. The start screen does everything the start menu did, and offers more customisation (not in small part because there's more room for it in a fullscreen environment). Now I'll admit: If you are never using any input device but a two button mouse, win8 will at some points be more difficult to use. But if your mouse has a scroll wheel and you can be bothered to press the windows key on your keyboard instead of clicking on a start button, it feels just as much optimized for mouse & keyboard use as it feels for touch-based use. It's different, that's for sure. You may not like it at first, or at all. But it's not bad. Needless to say everything runs pretty much the same on 8 as it did on 7, no problems with anything, swtor related or otherwise.

Holy thread necro, batman. And I'd really like to see that 3on1 against people that are not afk.

Okay, first, you realize that the 8 seconds of stun is the absolute maximum you can be exposed to, right? and that it requires two players that both time their stuns on you. In that case, again, the stun is not a problem, but a symptom. The problem is that you're playing a 2on1. An operative that takes you down during the "stun lock" she can deliver without outside help has 5.5 seconds to do so. Of those 5.5 seconds, 1.5 seconds are essentially lost for damage, because it's the GCD following the stun. That's 3 abilites. There is no way to kill you with 3 abilities.

Can I copy that for the "Ridiculous exaggerations in the PvP forum" thread? Because the longest time you can possibly be stunned is 8 seconds. You can be mezzed for longer, but you're not taking any damage during that time. The longest possible time any scoundrel or operative can stun you for is 5.5 seconds. The end. Also, if you're dead in 5 seconds (let's assume that your opponent throw 4 abilities at you in that time) that means you have about 12k hitpoints and go against an opponent in fully optimized (elite) war hero set. This might be news to you, but your problem is not the stun. In the current game, the ONLY class/spec that's seriously screwed by scoundrels is an MM sniper or gunslinger equivalent. They are such an easy prey, it's sad. And since there's not a single "Nerf op/scoundrel" thread in the forums of both of those classes, rest assured - if they can put up with it, so can you. All of that being said, I also think that the change to resolve was... unnecessary. While it did not change the maximum amount of time you can be stunned, this maximum is now reached far more often - which makes for an undesirable experience for probably all of us.

As an operative player, I'll have to admit that snipers are the rock to our paper. Especially MM spec - if you are not the best player this world has ever seen, in the most amazin gear anyone has ever had, you're going down. It's so easy, it feels ridiculous. Ambush knockback? Evasion. Cover Pulse knockback + root? Well, I eat the knockback, but say hi to my friend the Toxin Scan. Trying to run away? Here, have a 50% snare with attached 2s root.Oh, you're rooting me back? Good thing Toxin Scan is off cooldown now. Well, better luck next time. Did I mention that I share a lot of skills with you, so exactly know how to counter them? Oh, and I kick you out of cover on my opener. Yeah, sucks, I know. I have a harder time with engineering and lethality specced snipers, but Marksmanship is usually a nice, easy and quick kill. Guess it's a good thing I see an average of 1 concealment operative per warzone. Me. Otherwise, playing a sniper would be about as much fun as repeatedly smashing your head on your keyboard.

No, you can't. Since it's a tech attack. Oh, and it's also not a removable effect, so not cleared by using it as operative. Trying to use the Dodge/Cloaking Screen combo to get out while affected by Sticky Grenade/Assault Plastique is a rookie mistake and will kick you right out of stealth again every time. Force Shroud lets you resist that damage, Dodge does not. The poster probably mixed the two up. Or was in a situation where it may have seemed like it prevented the damage, when it really didn't (sorc bubble or shield probe eating the damage, perhaps).

If you choose not to hand out information, that is my only chance, yes. I understand that you don't bother with it, since you already know what your ingame experience is. But look at it from my perspective. "No, that's nice math, but it's wrong. Because I say so." I do not dismiss information. If you say, "I have this shadow with x1 willpower, y1 melee bonus damage and average crit on dummy is z1 damage, and I have this operative with x2 cunning, y2 bonus tech damage and average crit on dummy is z2 damage, and as you see z2 is 40% larger than z1" - then I say, "hey that's interesting, nice to know, helps my understanding" and I might be able to learn more about the game. What you're saying is "I could give you information, but screw you, farm your own stuff, talk to you in some months. Also, maybe I was wrong/incomplete in several cases, but I'm still right"

And since you parsed this with the exact same stats, there's no way gear could have influenced your field testing, yup. I slipped up on the regen part, agreed. It's 12% over 6 seconds plus 10% instant, on a 45 second timer. And you discount the regen disadvantage too easily. The assassin goes back into stealth after a kill and is from 0 to 100% force in 10 seconds. Try that as operative. Yes, you said that you have two characters, and one of them hits harder. If I understand you correctly. I'm happy to believe that this is actually happening, but unless you're kind enough to provide stats, I can't agree to more than the initial statement. Also, don't discount the unmitigated internal damage procc on the assassin. I won't go into "then you do this and that and are at x energy/force" territory, because that's way too specific for comparison - after all, by the time this happens, you might be stunned because Force Shroud didn't make you immune to CC in a critical moment. Or the assassin might be rooted with no way of breaking it. Too many variables to really compare two things. This whole thing started as "Backstab alone does more damage than Maul". Since my assassin is not 50 yet, I can't accurately compare. My feelings from warzones are irrelevant, since I can't objectively compare. But to overcome the difference in scaling according to torhead, you'd have 22% more damage from gear/talents than the assassin. Again, I'm happy to revise my oppinion, but I'm in a situation where I only have the game files to judge.

While I agree with you that the effective cost/regen ratio on assassins is probably roughly on par with operatives, you also need to take into account that operatives only have an effective energy pool of 40 points when Adrenaline Probe is on cooldown, if you don't want to dip into low regen desert territory. A Backstab/Acid Blade combo costs 50% of that high regen pool, Maul costs 50% of force pool. Yes, Adrenaline Probe lets you dip below that by restoring 50% energy over 3 seconds on a 2 minute cooldown. Then again, Blackout restores 34% of force over 6 seconds, on a 45 second cooldown. As for "Backstab alone does more damage than Maul": Maul: WeaponDamage: StandardHealthPercentMin=>0.236, StandardHealthPercentMax=>0.236, Coefficient=>2.37 Backstab: SpellDamage: SpellType=>Tech, StandardHealthPercentMin=>0.19, StandardHealthPercentMax=>0.2, Coefficient=>1.94 Acid Blade: SpellDamage: SpellType=>Tech, StandardHealthPercentMin=>0.031, StandardHealthPercentMax=>0.031, Coefficient=>0.31 So Backstab alone doesn't hold a candle to Maul. How about BS/AB combo? Since AB ignores armor and Backstab does not, we can't just add those values up. Let's increase AB's Min/max damage and coefficient by 30%, to account for internal damage (yes, napkin math, but it should be accurate enough for a rough estimate). That leaves us with: Acid Blade: SpellDamage: SpellType=>Tech, StandardHealthPercentMin=>0.04, StandardHealthPercentMax=>0.04, Coefficient=>0.4 If we now add up AB and BS, we get a combined damage range/Coefficient of AB/BS: StandardHealthPercentMin=> 0.23, StandardHealthPercentMax=>0.24, Coefficient=>2.34 That's actually still lower than Maul's coefficient, and roughly equal in base damage. Both Concealment and Deception offer 30% increased critical damage on Maul and Backstab/Acid Blade, no difference here. Now let's assume the assassin already has a Duplicity, and the Operative already has an Acid Blade buff running. You're now looking at 30% more damage vs. 30% armor ignore. On low armor targets the straight damage buff is more valuable, on higher armor targets naturally armor ignore increases in use. Duplicity also reduces Maul's force cost to 12.5, making it a lot more cost efficient. Of course Maul falls short on tanks, since it can be shielded and armor ignore becomes more valuable on high armor targets. Of course there are other differences. The AB/BS combo damage is dealt over 6 seconds (can be a good or bad thing). Operatives can spec for 8% more damage on Backstab and 16% more crit. Set bonus further increases crit chance, though assassins get an equal crit increase for another ability. Maul has a 25% chance to proc a Surging Charge hit (internal damage, certainly good). Deception assassins are almost sure to spec into charge mastery, giving them 10% armor ignore as well. Duplicity is on a 9s internal cooldown with an average 4 to 5 seconds time to proc after it. Twist: You can line up two Mauls, by holding on to a Duplicity buff till the timer is almost back up, consuming it and then proccing another within 4 to 5 seconds. I don't think deception assassins are crazy overpowered beasts now. I just understand how some people might feel like they got the short end of the stick on their concealment operative.

sure, you could theoretically "borrow" items, but that's WAY more trouble than use, usually. Only thing I could see happening is people decking out a new character in birthright equipment, then returning it and doing it on another toon. But even that's only viable for 3, mabye 4 levels and extremely tiresome with all the traveling.

Hi all, I've recently noticed that I can't be bothered to keybind the "Only usable on incapacitated targets" ability that every class gets. I'm at about 30 keybinds already on pretty much every character. Those abilities cost no resources, only take a GCD, are always instant and only usable against stunned NPCs. My idea is to put this functionality into a passive. Something like "Battle Prowess: Against incapacitated targets, your <no cost basic attack> will deal <damage range of former active ability> damage instead. This effect cannot occure more often than once every 45 seconds." If the conditions are met, the usual animation would be used. To better indicate the internal cooldown, the passive could apply a debuff among the lines of "Unfocused: You recently executed a complicated attack and can't concentrate as much on the battle for a while." with a 45 second duration, so you know when it's up and when it isn't. I'm aware that transferring active ability functionality into passives is always a huge step, and often oversimplifies the game. But as it is, I'm really running out of keybinds on almost all characters, and this change would tremendously increase the use I'd get out of these standard/strong NPC only abilites. Not sure if anyone else encounters the same problems, let me know if I just need to l2p or l2ba30bm (buy a 30 button mouse) or if your experience is the same.

Okay, I'll spread my 10 minutes of morning research around. If you suddenly encounter micro stutters ingame, try the following: Select the "Very High" graphics preset, then turn "Shader Complexity" to very low. This will change a few other settings as well. Hit Apply. Are the stutters now gone? If so, you are experiencing the same phenomena as I did. What helped me was installing this DirectX 9 update, suggested by someone in an old thread on these forums. Quit the game, install the patch, start the game, select the "Very High" template again, hit apply. It did the trick for me, I'm now running smoother than ever with nice new shadows and actually improved fps. After this procedure, I get an average of 70 fps. My machine's not that special, so there's no reason you shouldn't be able to do the same. For reference, I'm running an i5 2500, 8 GB DDR3 ram, Z68 chipset, some cheapskate chinese brand gtx 260 XT, nVidia driver version 306.23

Well, of course those things are "extras", and I don't know how much performance tanks when you have less ram. I can only tell you that the game alone typically uses about 3 to 3.5 GB ram on longer play sessions here. I imagine that's a lot of cache, to decrease loading times. It probably doesn't have to much impact on actual fps. But the game seems to (be able to) benefit from a little more ram.

4 gb of ram seem a little low. Sure, you can always quit and restart the game, but when I have the time and play a few hours, swtor.exe *32 occupies up to 2.6 GB in one process and another 0.9 GB in another. That doesn't leave much room for things like a browser, maybe some music or, you know, an operating system. Many people have those, I hear.

Okay, I'll spread my 10 minutes of morning research around. If you suddenly encounter micro stutters ingame, try the following: Select the "Very High" graphics preset, then turn "Shader Complexity" to very low. This will change a few other settings as well. Hit Apply. Are the stutters now gone? If so, you are experiencing the same phenomena as I did. What helped me was installing this DirectX 9 update, suggested by someone in an old thread on these forums. Quit the game, install the patch, start the game, select the "Very High" template again, hit apply. It did the trick for me, I'm now running smoother than ever with nice new shadows and actually improved fps. After this procedure, I get an average of 70 fps. My machine's not that special, so there's no reason you shouldn't be able to do the same. For reference, I'm running an i5 2500, 8 GB DDR3 ram, Z68 chipset, some chinese brand gtx 260 XT, nVidia driver version 306.23

I've had (or first noticed) a kind of micro stuttering this morning. Very annoying. Quick web search brought up a thread in these forums, where someone suggested installing this directX 9 update. Worked like a charm, running an average of 50 fps on a gtx 260 with all bells and whistles turned on.

Scoundrel/Operative: If you see a stack of three Upper Hand/Tactical Advantage buffs, it's a healer. Merc/Trooper: Poor guys run around with a giant green "I'M A HEALER" buff. Combat support cell/cylinder it's called. Sage/Sorc: Does it cast something green or pink, without lightning attached to it? It's a healer alright. Also, for all classes: If you see a green symbol next to a castbar anywhere, just go ahead and assume it's a healer. Worst case, you killed an enemy, best case you killed an important enemy. Really can't go wrong here.

Impressive numbers, that's for sure. Congratulations, and I mean it. There might be an explanation, though - when looking at enemy vs. your team deaths, it seems your group completely dominated the game. They basically didn't kill anyone. You might have simply outplayed them, coordination-wise, outgeared them or quite possibly both. If I were you, I'd keep that screenshot. Forever. My... treeaasure. *gollum*

Hehe, true. I see an average of 1 (one) damage dealing operative per warzone I play. Me. As someone else earlier said, even if they'd hand us an instant kill button - as long as it's not in the patchnotes, it'd probably take days to be noticed.

Yeah, that change to resolve completely baffles me when thinking about why our class was nerfed patch after patch. Now you don't need teams of operatives to stunlock someone - a bunch of anyone can do it just fine. They don't even need to be a team, just be somewhat close to you and want you stunned. Also, when you look at the assassin resource management and opener... yes, spike does less damage than hidden strike, that is absolutely true. But low damage, a 2s knockdown and after that, a 70% snare for 3s? Coupled with increased resource regen while in stealth and shortly after? Which now also comes with 25% less damage? Paired with a regen rate constant throughout the whole bar? WIth knockback, speed and a 10m stun? *shrug* Yes, I'm aware that different classes are different. Of course the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence, but I start to believe they also got sunshine, flowers and a retirement plan. Now mind you, I still have fun on my agent. I don't think Bioware is making us intentionally weaker than any other class. But I do think that things could be more enjoyable, and that this class needs some more work than just adding a 50% sprint and call it a day.

Yeah, they probably want to make it clear that the minimum amount of comms you can buy is 1, not 10. You could always do this by adjusting the item count slider, but this change makes it more obvious.