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?

I am not directing any personal attacks at you for wanting a fair playing environment. To that point I have noted to you that this is NOT that kind of game, and I feel for your disappointment in that respect, but the game is not going to change to fit your needs so you should either get used to it, or stop playing. Unfortunately the majority of players do not agree with you, and that is the way business works. I am attacking you for constantly belittling players that have grinded up pvp gear as skill less and pathetic, because a large number of us have put in that work because we want to play at the highest level, and have spent the hours pvping to better ourselves, gear or more gear. And I don't understand your last point. This game starts you out at level 1 with white gear as well. What's your point? Both involve a grind to get the the max point. If you're going to compare a fresh 50 to a BM 50 then I point you to a fresh 30 in LoL with 0 runes vs a fully runed 30.

Maybe you didn't make that claim but you did directly claim that all of us who have put in the time to get gear, are unskilled. I'm not saying having gear makes me better at all. I never ever said that. I'm saying that I want to compete at the top level, and so I put in the effort to acquire the gear that will put me at equal footing at the top. Anyone serious about pvping will have done the same. Does that mean everyone who has done it is a good pvper? No of course not. But I bet the majority of people who are and care enough to put the time in for it, have put in the very small amount of game time to be adequately geared to compete. And your last argument is such a pathetic twist on my words. Obviously with gear I am much more likely to be able to consistently 1v3 players of any skill level than if I were on equal footing with them. Of course having gear on means I have an advantage. Do I consider myself better than them because I can 1v3 them with gear on? No. I realize it's not a fair measurement. You know what means more than gear? Levels. A naked level 50 will beat a fully geared level 1 every single time. So are people who levelled to 50 also looking for gear? Should we take levels out of the game as well? Your argument makes no sense. Your problem if I may hazard to diagnose, is that you're so full of pride that you cannot take losing in any form. For some reason you seem to think that we with gear preen ourselves and give each other gold stars when we kill those without. If I see someone that is obviously in fresh gear, I know I will beat them, and if I don't I realize I've been massively massively outplayed. When I do beat them, there's no afterthought, I just took out an opponent I have a big advantage over. Do you wait for opponents in a warzone who are at low health to heal up so you can have an "honorable duel" with them on equal footing?

LoL does NOT start players in an even playing field. It takes advantage of the fact that people enjoy progression and keeps them playing with levels and runes. The fact that many players are max level (although the vast majority then don't have their optimal runes) is equivalent to having to play to get battlemaster here. What they DO have is the matchmaking system. But that only works when the pool of players at any given time is much larger than on an average swtor server at the moment. If they turned swtor pvp into an esport, you bet they would start players off with their choice of gear. The game in the servers we play however, is not an esport. It is an mmorpg. Mmorpgs of this type are based around progression.

I'm guessing you levelled to 50 huh? Decided you needed that crutch of being max level and buy all your abilities? Scared that if you faced my level 1 with my autoattack that you might lose?

Lol reading all of your posts are hilarious. You're one of those people who seem to think that just because someone is better geared than you, they must be a worse player because you're playing without their "crutch". Based on your ability to assess situations and think deeply, I'm fairly confident I could beat you with only weapons equipped on my characters. The reason themepark mmos are made with these token systems, is that the game play does not actually lend itself to deep, high skill cap, pvp. There are a very small number of classes and specs, each of them have a very well defined way to deal damage, control opponents, and heals. Add in the fact that there is no true lasting effect to any of the pvp that we do, and the result is that there is in fact, very little to play for besides the fun of the warzones. This fun is not sustainable, because there is very little challenge or variance in it if you've put in the time and effort to understand the game and the interaction between players, especially since there is a complete lack of competitive options. Thus the grind to give people incentive to play. If you don't like it? Too bad for you, but this game is built for the majority of people, and those are the ones that appreciate having a goal to work towards. The more you think that geared players defend the advantage because we're afraid of what would happen without it, the more we understand that you're just self entitled and looking for excuses to lose. You forget that everyone at one point or another had no gear, and only a very small percentage of the population ever hit that point without there already being champion/battlemaster geared players on the field. When I was a new 50 could I perform well in a 8v8 premade where everyone else was in battlemaster? No. Could I have fun and contribute in 90% of warzones? Yes. End result? 2 weeks later I am in full champion, and battlemaster players have only a slight gear advantage in me that can be overcome by outplaying them a little bit at any given time. I could probably 1v3 fresh 50s with relatively little experience now. Does that make me feel good? Well it's obviously fun to feel overpowered but I don't take it as any measure of my ability. In truth it is you who are scared to get the easily obtainable pvp gear and put it on, because you're afraid once you're all dressed and ready for the dance, you'll find out that you can't hack it. And at that point you'll have no one to blame but yourself. The gear system isn't perfect, but in the current themepark game design that is so popular, it is extremely necessary. I, like many other gamers, probably wish that we could take a game similar to this, and turn it into a sandbox with true world objectives to pvp for, where accomplishments were not measured in gear. This game is not, and will never be, such a game. Having no identity crisis, it applies the gear and scaling model. There is no barrier of entry to new 50s. I'm positive I could win games naked if I so choose. I probably will not be a major contributor, but even afk there will be games that my team wins. That is the nature of random group theme park pvp. If you don't like it, tough, go find another game to play. If you're truly as awesome skilled as you claim you are, you would have no problem still dominating the game while you gear up.

Since no one has any numbers yet, I believe you are correct in saying it's pure speculation how we stack up. However, the primary difference here is unreliability of our sustained dps. Between positional requirements and kiteability against our lack of mobility, we have a much more difficult time outputting our optimal sustained dps than other classes, hence where we fall behind in this time period out of stealth. Since it we cannot leverage a similar advantage against other classes (exception of kiting melee classes with no ranged abilities, but that doesn't really last and your quick shot/flurry of bolts spam isn't killing anyone), in any kind of matchup where we're out of stealth for a significant amount of time, we are at a large disadvantage. Side note, nice gear bro =| Edit: Now that I think of it, it's a possibility that Bioware nerfed our burst because our PvE sustain was on par with other classes. If that's the case well then gg understanding classes. I imagine this is very difficult to get right though.

<3 Same message I'm trying to get across.

Thank you for a very reasonable, well thought out post. I agree with your analogy, except I wish to expand it further. A tank with no cannon, can serve as an APC, but a very poor APC because of it's very limited space inside. While it can serve that role if forced to, nobody in their right mind would want to drive it when they could be driving an actual APC. You are correct in what we are capable of doing, but the thing is you've outlined what every single dps class is able to do, and much better than us. Also the role implies that we are only useful if our team is very useful, and that is not the role I'm sure most of us who rolled scrappers intended to play. Certainly even prenerf, all scrappers should have been opportunistic. The chance to lend your burst to finish off a target is always welcome, especially because it means a dead opponent just that much faster, and the high likelihood to restealth afterwards and try again. In fact in team fights that has always been one of our roles, to assist on the focus target, or to remove support (read heals, maybe guards) from the equation on our own. The nerf made us much less effective in the first role, and nearly ineffective in the second (and please don't start again with the "i kill healers just fine" nonsense. we get it. you're great. you as in general trolls, not you the quoted poster). However, like I said, 2 main problems. First is that if this is our only role, well then that sucks. All we can do is attack nearly dead targets. Would anyone really miss us if we were gone? The rest of what you said is very much correct, and very good WZ play, but they're not really about role, they're just generic strategies that should apply to all characters. Focus fire down targets, try to draw enemies away if you're being targeted, cc priority targets that aren't being killed or to prevent them from doing certain things (interrupt caps/heal etc.). This is not a role, this is just intelligent play. Second, any other class can do it MUCH better than we can. Ranged classes have the ability to swap targets much faster, while doing more damage and not exposing themselves. The knight and warrior lines have their superior mobility and survivability, and assassins have our same stealth advantage but much more reliable damage, and better survivability options. Honestly even if we were to be buffed to those melee classes standards, increased sustained damage, a gap closer etc, I would not be happy. If I wanted those things I would've played those classes. The crux of the matter here is that scrappers were made to be the burst class, and to have the strategies and playstyles that came with it. I'm all for adapting, but telling me to adapt to basically playing an inferior version of another class? That's just not cool.

I still shine plenty bright. In warzones I can still often get top damage, top kills, blah blah blah blah blah blah NOBODY TRULY COMPETITIVE CARES. I know if it were an 8v8 premade of all battlemasters, I would not be shining, because the class without burst is now a neutered class with no feature that stands out to give it an edge. I get destroyed by all melee classes, kited/destroyed by all ranged classes, no longer have the burst to kill a healer alone, much less a supported healer. Again, I don't care if you wrecked that healer in that one WZ. I don't care if you still put up 500k damage in a warzone. Why? Because warzones are full of players that are far undergeared, and warzones are full of players who don't understand to the full extent how to play their own class, and how to play against our class. Is our initial stun longer? Yes. What does it mean in any fight that lasts longer than about 15 seconds? We don't have dirty kick up again, and that is a huge disadvantage from before. Can you still kill people before they come out of stun? Yes, but these are the same people who whined about getting bursted down in the span of our knockdown. If killing those people is your goal in this game, then by all means, don't let me spoil your enjoyment. Just don't spoil mine by telling me that our class is fine because in a competitive situation facing equally geared and fully competent players, we are not fine. Why? Look up any of many detailed posts laid out by me and many other players. Just be prepared to sift through pages of posts similar to the quoted one. Also anyone who thinks we now require "more skill" is deluded. Now when someone gets up, we kick them in the groin (or stab them with a sparkly knife). Big whoop. The people who thought that the "skill" of an operative lay in it's ability to execute an opening combo that we've all done thousands and thousands of times are probably the same ones that think this is a huge new barrier of difficulty.

Personally I'm fine with having mediocre sustained if it means we have high burst. It separates the class, and give it a unique identity. Having no burst and just good sustained damage means we serve essentially exactly the same role as assassins, with heals instead of utility and guard. That sounds very much like less fun for me, not only as a player of the class but for the game as a whole. Why do we want to have all the classes operate the exact same way? It far simplifies the game and reduces the number of strategies and unique plays that are possible.