Yay another genius who think he's better than everyone else because he can use the word adapt. Except for one thing he doesn't realize, that the class was not changed, it was just NERFED. The only thing we were "given" was the ability to stunlock off our opener, which also cost our stun for later in the fight, meaning in pvp all we can do is kill badly geared players with more certainty than before. Otherwise tell me, what is your magical adaptation strategy for having the exact same playstyle as before, except all the numbers are smaller? If it's so good, why weren't you doing it before the nerf to even greater effect? I will give that we are viable in any pve group, but only because content is so easy that I suspect companions would be viable. In pvp, we're pretty useless. And yes I get that you probably "top warzone damage" and "have never lost a 1v1" but I'm extremely uninterested in what you can do against your average undergeared opponent so don't waste your breath.

Lol? It proves absolutely nothing. I've had warzones where I tripled the damage of the next person. Do I feel good about it? No. Because it just means I was playing unexperienced players with no gear. Being the best high school basketball player in your district is nice, but it doesn't mean you can play D1 in college.

Just the fact that you think sitting near the top in warzones consistently means anything useful, separates you from the good scoundrels.

I accept your point of views and experience. I am not a sniper player myself so I don't claim to be able to speak for how squishy you guys are in general. I will however, stand firm in my knowledge of a handful of snipers that consistently burst me down very low and kill me within seconds of me making it back to them. I don't know what extenuating circumstances may be causing this to occur, but I do know it happens. We hold regular dueling events on our server and in a wide open field, gunslingers consistently beat me, even before the nerf. I'm certainly open to suggestions to improve my play in that regard, but I warn you that it's extremely unlikely that I've missed a tool or procedure/counter considering the time I'd spent studying the matchup. The whole hunkering down thing to be honest didn't have much to do with this game, it was more of an expression of what ideal class interactions should be, although I understand that in the modern themepark mmo where everyone has to be able to stand on their own and have a chance in 1v1, this will never happen (thanks WoW). Finally I do agree with your final point. I don't want to make it sound like I think snipers are better than ops by any means. I thought prenerf the balance was pretty good, although obviously putting a BM geared op against a lesser geared sniper would be faceroll, although that wasn't a problem limited to snipers. Sorcs on the other hand. Bleh.

I will agree on one thing, kills on bad/undergeared players were handed to us on a silver platter. That needed to be fixed. However, against competent, aware, similarly geared opponents, they were anything BUT handed to us on a silver platter. They were all very even. Less experienced players can scream all they want about us taking tanks down to 40% before they got out of stun, but they should just take the lessons from the better players of their class who then take 100% health off the op before the now out of stealth op gets that last 40%. To that end, the nerf across our ability to fight both of these classes of players, was completely incorrect in my opinion. Nerf my ability to steamroll through undergeared players by changing the balance created by gear. Don't nerf my ability to compete with good ones by knocking down my damage.

Where I lose respect for you here is that you consider consistently 1v3ing imps a matter of your own skill as opposed to a lack of theirs. The very low skill ceiling in this game means that even an overpowered class will have trouble winning 2v1s consistently if their opponents are competent. Also you claim to have more control because of the stun after shoot first, but this control is highly imaginary because you then lose that stun later on in the fight. Anyone who doesn't think there's is a large number of players that are playing the class at close enough to the highest level to always have a chance against each other, is deluding themselves because there simply aren't enough factors introduced in this game that there is room for that much separation at the top.

First of all I'll point out that I understand it's no fun to be able to be killed from full with no chance to react. However, I'd like to point out my disagreements with this post. First of all, an under-geared Operative could NOT have been taking away 60-70% of your gear if you were already in champion type gear. Pre champion weps/200-300 expertise, my shoot firsts used to crit for about 3k prenerf. Secondly, while a similarly geared operative COULD knock you down 60-70% before your knockdown, a sniper could frequently knock that same 60-70% and more off my health before i got back to them from their knockback if I didn't have dodge ready to go. This was balanced in my opinion, if I chose to jump a sniper without my tools available and ready to go, in an open area where I wouldn't be able to LoS him easily if things went wrong, I deserved to die because that was my mistake. In other words, a 40% health sniper vs a 100% health operative out of stealth and approaching was a pretty even fight. Now against these same snipers, I don't have that same initial burst I can lay on them before getting booted away, but I still die just as fast once I am, and do even more mediocre damage when we can get back to them. That's why we think the nerfs were overboard. Edit: Also as an additional note, I know this may be beyond the scope of this discussion but I'd like to throw it in, why should a sniper expect to have equal footing against an operative that has opened on them? We don't expect to live if we're caught in the open getting shot at, especially in a team context. If you're in a spot hunkered down and alone, and an op makes it to you do deserve to die most of the time if an op makes it up to you, or at least have to give up that position and run away. That's the general glass cannon vs. stealth relationship. I realize of course that it may not be how this game was necessarily designed, especially since true vantage points/ranged dps spots are difficult to come by on any map that's not huttball, but darn it it should be =) Makes everything much more exciting for everybody.

I agree it will see very little use in team fighting scenarios (except as a healer stunlock, maybe). However in warzones there are still plenty of times you'll be in small group engagements, and go as far to say that I WANT to avoid those team fighting scenarios, because they don't really play to our strengths. 1v1 or 2v2s alderaan/voidstar points where it's critical to take the defenders down quickly before their help can come interrupt your cap. In huttball due to the spread out layout it's also good to use on those healers/ranged dps that sit alone on the ramparts, just to lock them down and guarantee kills before they can scurry off to find support. Before anyone tells me to stop playing like a solo lone wolf and to pay attention to objectives I'll point out that there's plenty of things you can do in any of the warzones that don't involve being a part of the major scrum, the notable exception being when their ball carrier is getting close to the goal.

No.. it's annoying to listen to people who make ridiculous claims, back them up with absolutely no hard facts. This is a themepark mmo. It's not hard to know what every button on my completely filled up hot bar does, and the situations that I use them in. We can heal, we can aoe mez, we can now stunlock, we can stealth. All of these are duplicated, if not duplicated better, but other classes except the stunlock (which is a different can of worms) and smuggle. Pray tell me how we are any more a utility class than any one else. Go on. An apology for how stupid you sound when you post stuff like this would be appreciated as well. To the sniper's point, yes we probably offer more utility than you. But you have to realize that your damage is much much more consistent, and easy to apply than ours. You should be posting higher numbers than ops even prenerf.

Agree on most points, disagree slightly on a few, mostly to do with the shoot first, vanish, shoot first combo. This combo actually lets you lock someone down for more than 3 seconds because of the time they spend getting up. While it does not prevent instants, I generally can easily weave skills in between ie: Shoot first => blaster whip => vanish => shoot first => back blast => dirty kick Doing it this way gives you a very very long lockdown on a target, and since they're extremely unlikely to turn around to cc you during the gcd following shoot firsts, the only thing that's a problem is letting them get their defensive cooldowns off or vanishing in between there. Though lets be honest, you're not killing them with the straight stuns anyway if they want to get those cooldowns off. Also I find that this combo is forced to be used very often now, because it's the only thing that approaches our previous killing power. It sucks to lose the vanish as a defensive cooldown, but since our role is often to kill that target that needs killing right there right now (esp where capping objectives are concerned) I find that I now end up using it MUCH more frequently than I did before, where I had a decent chance of accomplishing a similar effect without.

I'm also very tired of people saying that our initial opening stunlock is a "buff". Yes it's a longer initial stun, but in any fight that lasts longer than 15 seconds, which is most of them, you now no longer have a dirty kick to use when their resolve bar is empty, and that is a very big deal in any given 1v1 fight or other small scale engagement. Granted in my opinion our ability to do a virtual 10 second stunlock every 2 minutes is fairly overpowered.

True pvpers would be willing to put in the not very large amount of effort needed to at least get champion gear. The fact that I was willing to put in the work does not make me any less of a "true pvper" than you. In fact, I'm probably more of one because I'm willing to put in the work to be ready for more competitive pvp. The word you're looking for is self-entitled. If you want to play a pure fighting game you're in the wrong place. Plain and simple. Wait for the esport version of the game then, or clamor for one to be made. Don't gripe about a system that works for the large majority of players behind your self entitled elitist attitude.

You're right, but that's a hard line to determine. PvP gear is not all that hard to get. You don't need to be a Battlemaster to compete with Battlemaster, and champion gear is RNGy but not difficult to obtain. I'm in full champion myself and I don't notice being significantly behind battlemaster players. Remember that just because someone is a BM, doesn't mean they have more than one or two pieces of the gear. This gear is NOT a significant upgrade over champion either. You're right, PvP gear is not needed in truly competitive PvP. However, the WZs you queue for every day is hardly competitive PvP. The teammates you get paired up with make FAR more difference than the gear you are in in the outcome of the game. If ranked WZs appear, the expectation will likely be for you to have spent the time to get the gear to be competitive at the top level, just like the expectation was for you to hit 50. Gear is simply another carrot that keeps people playing, and gives people something to work for, and is not going away. I guarantee if this is ever turned into a true esport a la WoW arena servers, it will use the same system, you can have any of the gear in the game on those servers so you don't have to grind. THAT is the correct place to be expecting competitive pvp with no gear discrepancies. NOT pick up warzones.

I accept your apology and similarly apologize if I stepped over the line in expressing my opinion. I agree that the exploiting/kill trading is a big problem. For me it trivializes the countless hours of warzones that I played, and the 40 odd more thant I need to play to obtain battlemaster legitimately. I still ask you though, to look at the gear, as just another facet of progression that you have to go through in order to truly reach "endgame" pvp. It's not apparent right now because of the pug nature of wzs being the only thing we have, but it really is not a big deal to gather enough gear to compete consistently. Happy hunting.

That idea is in my head, because in multiple previous posts, you made it very clear that you consider everyone with gear to be unskilled, and the very act of gearing up proved that we were bad players and needed to prop ourselves up with gear. Why do you keep making everything so binary? This is very simple. There exists, an easily obtainable top tier of pvp gear. Since it exists, those of us who want to compete at the highest level, work to get that gear. Do I enjoy facerolling fresh 50s? Certainly. It is human nature to enjoy feeling dominant over others. Do I feel like I am a better player than those fresh 50s because I can faceroll them? NO. Again. NO. I've stated it over and over again but you seem to keep ignoring it. NO. I don't even discuss skill in a situation where it is BM against fresh 50, so why do you keep coming back to it? It takes VERY little effort to get up to equal footing against BM players (I'm not even a BM, VR59. Champion gear is very close to BM gear), and then your matchups there are all about skill. When I beat a player in BM, I then feel good about the fact that I outplayed them. We're agreeing on the same point, gear is indeed a factor. But you keep taking it to mean that players with gear are unskilled and don't know what they're doing. Do I assume that players without gear are unskilled? No. I had no gear 2 weeks ago. I am more skilled now that I've played many warzones at 50, but I was hardly unskilled back then, and I would have gotten clobbered by a good player in all BM gear. It's not like the gear is unobtainable for you, so why are you so averse to getting it? Contrary to your belief, I get the most satisfaction out of beating Battlemaster premades, because those presented the greatest challenge to my abilities. I don't know where you get this sense that facerolling is anything more than enjoyable. It's fun sure. It's not an accomplishment. Do you think I go back into lower level flash points and solo them and feel good about myself too? Get off your high horse. I enjoy competition just as much as you, the evidence suggests more because I cared enough to put myself in the top gear so that I could compete at the existing highest level. When rated bgs come out, I will be ready to test myself. Being too lazy to get the gear does not make you any better than me. It does not mean you care more than me. I give you the analogy again in the hopes that you understand. The far bigger factor in this game is levels. If you're level 1 without bolster, you lose to a level 50. What do you do then to play in the top bracket of PvP? You level to 50. Now. The top "bracket" of pvp involves having at least champion gear. Why is it so hard for you to understand that you simply play for some time, just like you played the game for some time to level up to 50, to get this gear, and then everything is equal? Does a level 1 complain that he can't compete in level 50 pvp because he doesn't have the time to level?