Question was mainly for a dev. But since you replied. The non-AOE DPS, specifically ranged DPS go target by target. If we happen to keep hitting the same targets one by one, they get killed b4 i get a smash off. This leaves 2-3 enemies close enough around me up that I could have gotten with an AOE Smash initially. Now what I have to do is target one enemy in the mob, then hit Force Crush to get the 3 stacks of Shocwave built, switch targets (and hope it stays alive) maybe skip the normal filler while you wait for shockwave to get to 3 stacks and then smash. Wastes a second or two. Keeping the 2-3 enemy mobs members up (not targeted by the ranged dps) for an extra 1-2 seconds that are doing damage to the group. Hence the speed and rhythm have been thrown off. Don't care what you say. Hitting "tab" to switch targets and then Smashing is not as fast as just hitting Smash. It slows it down and throws off the rhythm.

Please explain to me why you decide to nerf the Rage Mara in PVE when you want to "balance" the PVP aspect of it? The 2.7 update has completely thrown off the rhythm in PVE for a Rage Mara. It's hard enough to get respect as a Rage Mara in PVE Raids. I out DPS 80% of Carnage and Anni's in Raids and Ops...even on single targets. Yet now, there are 2 problems. 1. I jump to a mob, hit Force Crush, wait for the 3 ticks of shockwave to build, add a quick filler, and my target gets killed by ranged DPS, no Smash. So I switch targets and then that one dies. And again and again. So 2-3 seconds have gone by and no Smash is gotten off. Where had I been able to get it off initially regardless of the death of my target, then that would subsequently kill most if not all of the mob around me so the group can move on. and less damage is being taken by the group. 2. I can no longer stay on target on the boss and quickly move to Smash an incoming mob or a mob surrounding a healer...now I have to switch targets to the mob and cycle back to the boss. Doesn't seem like a big deal but the rhythm is completely off and over time, the Rage Mara will do less damage. This class seems to be consistently nerfe'd every major update. Why not let the Rage Mara build up the 3 stacks of shockwave instantly through Force Crush?

You are too stupid to reply with a concise counter point. Did you actually read the post. Sooo dumb

They completely have thrown off the Rage spec rhythm in PVE and made it virtually useless in PVP. Yes, I have played the others and I out damage 80% of the other Marauder specs with Rage even on single target. Burst with Rage is killer! Or at least it was. Now I stopped playing PVP with the Rage spec. I still do large amounts of Damage but it's taken some of the fun out. In PVE....forget it. You jump to a target, build your shock wave stacks, throw in one filler and your mob target is dead so you switch targets, then that one dies, again, and again. Meanwhile you have lost 3-4 seconds to do Smash damage. Where before you could have killed the low HP targets quickly and have your ranged dps move on to other targets. Over time having to wait an extra 1/2 second/second switching targets to get a Smash off SUCKS!!!!!!!! Not to mention that you cant build up a Smash and move to help a mob crowded healer over to the side and quickly dispatch them....now you have to switch targets and cycle. Completely unnecessary nerf. Every major patch this spec gets nerfed so "waiting" for the correction buff that is never going to come is pointless. How about letting Rage build up 30 stacks of Fury ala Carnage for a quick one time Smash right off the bat OR making the Force Crush build up of Shockwave instant and not have to tick??? Or why not just LEAVE THE DAMNED SPEC ALONE!!!!!!

Well I've played a few classes and none of those have that consistently intermittent problem. The other Marauder abilities that are insta-cast don't either. You lose DPS as you have to let it catch up to effectively cast. If you wait and cast it at the end of each succssive one, it doesn't do it. Seems counter intuitive as to why would you activate an ability before the other one finishes? But it's nice to be able to spam an ability to minimize in between time so you know you get it off as soon as the previous one finishes and in this case not lose DPS. Btw are you a dev? Or do you program? As you seem to come from the angle of knowing about the programming and what it would take to fix it.

Yeah sorry. Viscous Slash. It has a stutter. I don't have fps issues. This was a problem since the inception. If you cast it and then press the button again (before the 1st cast finishes) my character pulls back goes about 1/2 way through the cast and then draws back again and then follows all the way through. Sometimes the this happens 3x. It can happen on the very 1st cast or the 2nd, 3d etc. I have the ability stacking timer thingy set to max I believe is 1.0 seconds? Above link is an example. I don't know if they fixed it and I'm the only one. If you wait until it casts before you cast the next one it doesn't happen but in a fight, that's one more thing you have to worry about when you shouldn't. I never put in a service ticket. Maybe I should. I think people who play Marauders just live with it.

I have run all 3. For me Rage is the most fun. With full 72's I am in the 2800-2900 DPS range. Burst damage (first 12-15 seconds) I get about 3700-4100 DPS on single target. It does about 2-3% less damage one v one but it is the easiest to run. The only proc you have to wait for is a direct cast through Force Crush. Carnage and Anni do about 2-3% more damage on single target but it's % dependent. It requires more head down vision looking at the procs and buffs that have a % chance to come up. They are not "guaranteed" like in Rage. It involves more monitoring and waiting to cast, leaving you less time to focus on the raid and what's going on. Many boss fights have multiple boss fights where if you play with an "aware" tank who can taunt them close together...Rage does ALLOT of damage and beats the other two specs. For PVP....hands down Rage is the best. The only thing is you are target #1 as soon as you do your first Smash. Like one of the other posts (and some dev blogs Iv'e read). More people will be able to master the easier Rage spec than Carnage or Anni. Therefore, you might see people doing more damage with Rage overall one v one since the Carnage and Anni specs are harder to master. My guild has completed all the content including HM DP and DF. We have tried but not completed Nim S & V and Nim TFB. I run with them using the Rage spec and am at the top of DPS parses.

The bad part about this is that when they Nerf a spec or class because of PVP, PVE suffers. I don't play much PVP...since it's kinda stupid and broken in this game. Now, there's no point in having 2 Marauders for any raid. One of the things that made a Rage spec viable in PVE was it's undying rage cost of just 25% and being able to do it a few times during a fight. I don't get that they just moved the passive 2% damage reduction (which is basically useless) from one skill to the other. How about giving us a carrot with the stick? Like maybe making the 3 stacks of Shockwave an instant buff, not having to wait for them to "tick" when using Force Crush. This mechanic is broken as I know it has to "hit". If you stack too many casts during the build up of Force Crush to wait for the 3 stacks of Shockwave...they never come and you end up with just one. Oh and while you are at it......FIX THE STUTTER ON VISCOUS SLASH....this has been a problem since day 1 of this game. If you queue too many casts of Viscous Throw...it stutters. You have to wait until it casts, to cast the next one. SOOOOOO ANNOYING!!!!

There is no such thing as a free lunch. The entitlement generation needs to figure that out. You get something for free and then complain about that it's not what you wanted. If you are a sub this is the reality of all of those people who pissed and moaned and left in droves. Those of us that stuck with it have to deal with this being a F2P game 1st and foremost and hope they give us enough to make it worthwhile. Entitlement + Instant Gratification=The demise of the world as we know it.

Wasn't complaining. Just sharing a thought/observation. I love the game AND managed to get some of my lowbie level alts up higher. Sorry it came across to you that way. I can see how Forums can make people Jaded and assume that every post is negative and or a flame. I meant it kinda jokingly. You are right it's a good thing overall.

I think there's going to be a glut of new extra fresh and extra stinky inexperienced 50's running around with X2 XP. Ughhh. AND I wish Bioware would make an app for smartphones or for lesser powered computers with just the companion crafting/gathering game mechanic/part so we could do that on our "off time" part of the game. People could be sending their comp's out on missions from their smartphones or work computers and get updates when they come back and then rinse/repeat. It gets tedious during in game when the comps come back every 2-3 minutes from missions. It would help the players with limited amount of playtime who would rather spend it playing than administering. Maybe even access to the GTN and inventory too?

Exactly why I don't do PvP anymore in any MMO. They can't control it unless they have so many restrictions that it's not fun to play.

I don't know if this is already possible but being able to look at the breakdown of mods before we buy in a particular mod-able piece of armor, clothing, or weapon to tell what pieces have what stats. I know we can buy it and then look, but you can't have two mod-able pieces open (weapon or armor/clothing) at the same time to compare. I know this would mean you would need 3 windows open at once including inventory to strip mods but you should be able to move them from one piece to another directly.

I wish the article was in English. I cant understand Viking!!!!

Speaking of specs...the guy who originally told me I was spec'd all wrong said he had 1600 Power (non-buffed) and 2300 with a cube. 1st that would mean he would need an average of 114.29 points of power per slot of equip-able items (there are 14). Assuming he augmented everything with a +18 Power Augment that still leaves 96.29 avg Power rating per slot!!!! 2nd he said his strength was 1700ish and crit 30% with surge around 76% and 21k hp's AND accuracy around 106%.This doesn't seem likely with that much power 3d is there such a thing as a +700 Power Cube? All with 63 level mods. This seems kind of high for 63 level mods. I'm mostly 61 and would have to give up ALLOT to attain 1600 Power. Was he full of BS?

They must have b/c I just saw this reply today. Yeah, it's something that I have to deal with. I probably take more threat than I should just b/c of that. When the tank sucks and the healer doesn't keep up, I have to stay out of the fray more which is counter to the spec I play. The weakness is when enemies are cc'd and its close quarters. I have gotten quite adept at moving just far enough not to catch the napping enemy with smashes. Sometimes people panic and yell no AOE's!!!! but 99% of the time nobody wakes up. It's all about enjoyment. I tried the other specs and they weren't as fun (for me).

Was waiting for a group to go through Aurora Cannon in Section X. The first two to arrive were me and another Marauder comparably geared except he was more on the PvP side. I decided to stand on one of the 4 pillars by the statue nearby the Imp Medical Droid. It's not very wide and started dancing.. He jumped on the other one and asked me to duel with one caveat. We cant fall or jump off the pillars. We were both just out of melee range so here we are Force Choking, Force Screaming, and Force Crushing each other...one after the other and just as we were coming to the end and the rest of the group came in, we both stopped as i think we both ran out of rage points and I started dancing again and so did he. Must have looked ridiculous.

I know I sound like a broken record but thanks for all the input. My faith in forums has been bolstered by this thread. Having played this new sort-of re-spec, I can pretty well see the difference. I was able to (with some help from heroic boosts) complete the 2 Belsavis endgame Heroics by myself w/ companion. Never could do that before. Since then I've added more Power and sacrificed some crit and endurance and it's made a big difference on the shockwave smash as well as in the between focused damage. The 3k HP is not worth it. You are all right of course. Thanks for the back and forth and constructive input. Will make the game more enjoyable now.

I don't PvP....at least not for now....never been a fan of the free for all MMO ala kill each other including other games of this nature...so strictly PvE. Part of the turn off is the hackers and cheaters. Don't know if this game has them but I just stay away. Thanks for the input and yes you are perceptive as it's my first (and probably only MMO). I have seen some high HP Marauders and thought it was weird. Yes in a perfect world with on the ball healers and tanks and a DPS that doesn't stand in fire etc. yes max DPS is what you want. However, the longer you can stay alive the more damage you do over time. Simple logic. Sacrificing an extra 400-500 damage for 3000 HP? Or vice-versa? I'm in the process of changing the mods to being more damage heavy. I've started to see the benefit here in the last few days. I have found just about as many people who think a Marauder Rage spec is just as viable as Carnage and Annihilation. I've tried all three and the Rage is the most fun to play and if played well, the Rage does just about as much damage. Like I said I agree with the do as much damage as you can and have a low but respectable HP count....20-21k. Thanks again.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121442&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleAdwords&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-_-pla-_-Desktop+Graphics+Cards-_-N82E16814121442&gclid=CNre5fH027UCFQSnnQodOC8AkA I built a comp for my son on a budget and I used this card and it runs the game on max/high (not all max) with about a mid 20's to mid 40's frame rate depending on where you are. I have it mated with an A8 3850 AMD CPU running in dual graphics mode. It actually ran better by itself. Have some stuttering when the fps dropped below 30 but if you turn shadows off you barely notice it. It's 89.99 on newegg. Imagine it's the same or close on Amazon. If you turn shadows off the fps jumps up about 10-15 average. It has it's own cooler and gets it's power from the PCI connection to the mother board (doesn't need a cable direct to the power supply.). I did ALLOT of research. This one had a allot of features for budget card with 1GB of GDDR5 memory.

I pretty much gave up on people when they started giving out 12th place trophies.

Thanks for the reply. I get what you are saying with the specialization aspect. To be fair I've only played this new semi re-spec version for a little while. And with a few PUG's where I think one in particular the healer and tank were sort of lazy. I never jump in first but when I do and do the shockwave smash, all aggro goes to me since the total damage done is in the 20k plus. If the tank doesn't recover aggro and/or the healer isn't on the ball I'm toast, but really it's my main (and really only) massive damage dealer. I thrive on KuS and some of the other flashpoints where stuff swarms and surrounds the group. It's also probably my fault since I was used to having that extra 3k HP to pop off some damage mitigation powers to buy more time. The thing is no one ever complained about my play in groups as to not doing my job with the higher HP. I was always one of the first to finish off a single enemy or a group. It was just that I was part of large OP group on Ilum taking down world bosses and one guy whispered me that my Marauder spec was all wrong so of course it got me to thinking.

So I have a Rage Marauder combination Black Hole/Columni Gear. about 75%/25% respectively. With a stim I had about 23,600 HP's Was told that my build was off and HP was waaaay too high and I didn't have enough in Power. The main attack is the shockwave smash. Before it did about 4300-4600 damage to up to 5 targets. Cycling every 15 seconds or so for another smash. Now I have 20,600 HP's and doubled my Power rating and the shockwave smash does 4700-5000 damage. BUT....I noticed I get killed allot easier and more often mostly b/c I think I attract more aggro now that I do more damage. Like I reached a threshold or something. So what's the point? With the higher HP I can survive longer and thus do more damage. Can't do any damage lying dead on the floor. Any input is greatly appreciated. Before I kind of played a hybrid dps with a little of tank due to the higher HP.

Did you play the originals? Part of it I think is nostalgia as It was a fun side game WITHIN the world where you could make extra money. It gave you something to do in the Cantinas compared to where there is really nothing to do now. Because of the fact it's an MMO I think it would make the possibilities endless of what you can do with pazaak. Here are just a few off the cuff 1. PvP betting credits, items, etc. (although I don't know where Bioware draws the line legally about gambling) 2. Pv NPC's to earn credits and/or items. 3. You could make playing as part of a quest or story where you have to play in a tournament to get into a certain organization or to a certain person. 3. Tournaments between Players and NPC's or PvP. 4. It would make the casinos on Nar Shaada viable for other than a story mode area. 5. Play vs your companions. (Lets face it companions after lvl 50 are not as useful. 6. Quests to get special cards that give you an advantage in the game to earn more credits. etc. etc. etc.

I know it'd be difficult but it would be cool if this somehow affected the way NPC's react to you. Same people that you have visited or gotten missions from have an extra conversation option maybe based on the rep level?