The developers and management of this game think you are all stupid and beneath them and that they can do whatever they want to whoever they want whenever they want regardless of how cruel or stupid it makes them look. Its like they wake up in the morning and get to work and think, what can we do to make players upset and quit instead of creating actual content. P.S. The new warzone is the laziest **** I have ever seen in my life. Shame on you.

Wow..it isn't that I am lying, its just, that you obviously have an agenda to discredit what I am saying, I cant stop you. However, since I am not lying and the game is real, and other people play it, I have an excellent witness and stand affirmed in every claim. God forbid you maybe, are wearing pve gear instead of pvp gear, are exploiting the bolster system in any way, are a one dimensional pve raider who just wants base mitigation so you can whack a mole npcs, who cares, not me. Next.

...The reason it makes you more vulnerable dude, is that lighting takes 4 seconds to complete, during this time you are standing still, you cannot activate any other defensive timers, you have been force pushed, smashed, stunned, backstabbed, lit on fire, and poisoned. Your opponent has a movement reduction, so as long as he cant force leap, stun, knockdown, force pull, used ranged attacks, dodge, have stealth, be anywhere near los, etc, you will have no problem getting 4 charges of protection. Let me break this down for you directly. I used to, throw wither, shock, thrash, hopefully shock reprocs and then you throw a full harnessed darkness lightning for a 4k heal. I would probably pick up 600-900 health from the charge procs also. THIS IS A NERF At what time and in what place of the game am I going to take enough damage while still on my feet for a 4% reduction bonus to equal a 4k heal? Anyone, that troll guy who first responded?

No they don't increase it by 3 percent, I had 32 percent reduction, I now have 33 percent reduction. You do the math....

I have already spoken out, and very strongly, especially in the galactic starfighter beta forums about these changes and why they are complete crap, but lets take a real look at it all with some common sense and see just how badly we have been screwed, especially for pvp. I see where they are taking the class, it is just, that place is someplace that sucks a whole lot. Keep in mind that I am not breaking out the calculator, and that you don't need one to see how badly you have been reduced, you simply have to log in and fight one group of level 55 mobs. Here we go: -Dark Charge no longer heals the Assassin. The ability now increases armor rating by 130% (up from 115%) and generates additional threat when damaging an enemy target.-- •Swelling Shadows has been redesigned: the skill now increases the armor rating granted by Dark Charge by an additional 10/20%-- In full Obroan pvp gear both of these abilities become just over a 1% armor reduction bonus. •While Overcharge Saber is active, Lightsaber charges now heal the Assassin when they trigger their effects-- An extremely conditional change that is easy to negate or escape basically forcing you to burn your force shroud in order to have any level of assurance that you will gain any of these heals, which you wont often in pvp at least, because your target will have learned to LOS the second they see that initial healing bump. •Maul has had its cost reduced to 40 Force (down from 50)-- Who *********** cares? Darkness •Three stacks of Harnessed Darkness no longer cause the Assassin to be healed when Force Lightning deals damage. Instead, the skill grants Dark Protection, which increases damage reduction by 1%. Dark Protection stacks up to four times and lasts 12 seconds-- This at first might seeem useful but is vastly underwhelming considering the damage you would need to have taken in that buffed 12 seconds to equal the mitigation we had previously, which was a 3-4k health return. Harnessed Darkness was clearly not changed to increase our mitigation, because it fails on this level completely often leaving us more prone to burst and spike damage than ever before because we have to trade 4 seconds of every 12 on an infinite loop just to keep dark protection active which is almost impossible. WHY DONT WE GET A PASSIVE REDUCTION BONUS...WHY? •Conspirator's Cloak now additionally grants 2/4 stacks of Dark Protection when the Assassin exits stealth-- I guess this is ok, but it is like a peanut in a turd. You want to eat it.....? If you wanted to Darth Vader our class, mission success, Palpatine would be mighty damn proud. Bioware you mean to tell me you were unwilling to add even the 1 percent armor mitigation to our class in the live game unless you removed all our passive heals and the harnessed darkness heals from lightning and then placed 4/5ths of our new base armor resistance into an ability that is easily broken or stopped. Bioware, stop being arrogant tools and address this stuff. Let me put this clearly. If the purpose of these ability changes wasn't specifically to place new limitations on our class...feel free to challenge these obvious concepts at anytime. You nerfing bastards.

Yay, class homogenization, this is what players who roll darkness assassin always wanted. Hell yeah! I wasnt already feeling insulted at all by the hideous pink dark ward animation or the two previous massive class nerfs. I didnt feel insulted when I lost almost 10 percent of my armor based mitigation when ROTHC launched because devs felt it would be fun to make us more dependant on a newly balanced and poorly tested proc based shield mitigation. How do I know it was poorly tested? Because Bioware tested it. Also, because it did not work very well, and we had to cry and moan and go on and on about it even though it was really obvious. And noone was willing to take up the cause or do jack crap to fix it until the class representative crap. Heres the question that needs answering, are we going to be removing heals from dps sorc, operative, marauder and mercenary? Because they also diminish the value of a healers group role? No dev response? No talk about how one dps classes heals set them apart from another? Thats what I thought, because the logic of saying that our self heals will cause us to have a huge advantage over other tanks is flawed heavily, they just didnt want to do the math. It is highly illogical. Also, they are self excusing past ignoring fools. Why they would not look at Dark Ward and the way our shield reliance affects pve/pvp spikiness and try and balance that is beyond me, especially when they implemented the damned crap. It lets me know that removing our self heals was either part of a predetermined agenda within the dev team, or a product of being epic lazy. So thanks for that Bioware. Thanks again for another insulting design choice. I like the game, but I have some real harsh thoughts and questions about the people running it. At least I am not alone in that. clap clap...Im out! Caligulas-Jung Ma I feel bad for venting on the game forums, and my apologies to you all, but really the only time I post is when I have something to attack or defend strongly.

Heck whle I am at it let me go on. The animation is completely improper in the first place. For both the shadow and the assassin the dark ward and its corresponding ability should be nothing more than a mostly transparant sphere that hovers around your player much like the sages force armor ability in order to best convey its ACTUAL property. Confusion will be minimal because the double bladed lightsaber really gives us away. If we were going to follow a line of logical or rational thinking the spinning holocrons would belong to the sage and the spinning rocks to the sorcerer and the reason is because THEY ARE NOT WEARING A SHIELD AND WE ARE. It makes actual sense for them to supplant a defensive ability by using something in the environment it makes little sense for assassin/shadow I am not going to try to convince anyone that this is a change that you should actually implement because both animations are unforgivably irritating.... However it would be more appropriate and follow some kind of common sense. According to the ability description for dark ward the ability enhances the properties of the shield which we wear instead of a focus. Whats up here? Holocrons why? Is there a lore continuity manager? Someone who ever loved Star Wars for 10 seconds who can read this? I hope so.

Haha its all funny right, what a joke huh. While your at it could you answer for the ability clipping into everything including the casters lightsaber blades, other characters, walls and columns, the holocrons being lore inappropriate and ripped out of the jedi sage story quest and overall just generally being the single most hideous and constantly annoying thing in the entire game. Thanks. Maybe you could add some more rotating obscuring customization destroying animations for the other classes in the game to make it even. Sorry for sounding irritated but I do have to look at this crap, you know, every second of combat for for the rest of the time the game is live. Ugh!

Are you @#$OIU@#O blind, a dev, or just a troll....GET THIS @)#$( CRAP, OUT OF THE GAME! I hate this animation with an intensity best used as a Padme force choke and rightly so, its so piss poorly executed that it makes me want to delete my character.

Incidentally, during the free xp weekend I was leveling a sage and trying to forget how much this ability makes me angry. That is when I noticed that in the Jedi Academy on Tython, when you access the archive at some point.....the holocron that rests on top opens up and performs the exact same animation as is currently being used for Dark Ward. This just adds to my frustration in a way that is probably not wise to express honestly...so instead.... My rational question would be....what did we do to deserve this as customers and as fans? Why was an animation from a jedi story cinematic then used as a sith ability animation? Changing the previous animation was enough of a priority to allow anyone to commit this horrible travesty? How did it pass through quality control even though it clips into the lightsaber blade when it is ignited and obscures our other active state animations? At a technical level, I feel that it is scrap material straight out since every time we cast the ability it ignites the lightsaber and clips into both the front, and the back blade. I hope it gets removed and I have no faith in a fix since our cloaks still clip into our speeders over a year after release and that is a good place to stop and a good example of why we should continue to DEMAND to have this ability animation rolled back and left ALONE!

The new dark ward animation is an insult to the eyes, and to everyone around this class in general each 10-20 seconds of combat...and for something so irritatingly aweful in every concievable way that is going to add up to being A LOT OF @)(# sdkljfslkd times. It clips through the double bladed lightsaber blade as well as any object near our characters also, so of course, even its implementation is a complete failure. Terminate!

Follow me here, my whole point, is that they continually miss the target now. This applies to both creating and employing... a fluid bolster for level 55. I am not under the presumption that they will have any success in creating a 5 percent beneath margin or any other margin of reduction between gear.. because they obviously dont test the bolster system on every item within the live game. That would be a huge misallocation of time and resources anyways. If it was reasonable to have this gear check, we wouldnt have people even talking about wearing 54 craftables into warzones, or bringing raiding weapons into rated matches to maximize dps. Or previously for example going into warzones naked, or figuring out that removing augments is a larger stat boost than wearing them. All of this actually serves to make an entry level 55 pvp experience more frustrating for new end game players and certainly doesnt make the game more skillful in any way at all. Now the barrier between no gear, and full min/max mixed pve and pvp gear is further than it was previous to 2.0.... The actual skill check for being competent at pvp is playing a ton of matches, against really tough opponents with a lot of experience and then breaking it down in reverse afterwards and learning more about the game. Gaining a reasonable set of gear works in concert with this concept on a fairly natural curve right now. I do not expect to just dive into a hard mode ops with a team of full conq. geared players with minimal devotion to pve and expect our gear to replace the level of boss mechanic competence also required to be successful and walk out with a bag full of loot. I would rather see effort expended on class balance and the overall mechanics of pvp itself than wait around for someone to fix a game system no committed endgame pvper actually wants so dabblers can meet a gear check only to be ground into dust by more experienced players with mic chat, good team composition, and an unquenchable thirst for victory regardless of all the well intentioned stat adjustment in the world. Sorry for the really long reply.

Item bolster when applied to the level 55 bracket for warzones is broken but is also a well intended but ultimately broken concept. I know someone is just hacking away trying to battle against this and trying to control it for the continued good of the game and its players. It will not lower the bar for pve players, or foster skill based equality as intended. If affected by it in end game content a committed player will simply take into account pve gears lack of expertise beforehand, wearing gear to surpass min/max pvp gear anyways. This will just continue on and is a systematic weakness inherent to bolster itself. Without dwelling on all the finer points involved but simply noting the time that has expired since 2.0, and the currently murky state of pvp gear, allow instead for a friendly suggestion....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEblfSKCXM0 Remove it and move on, before this video becomes good advice for us as pvp players as well.

If they will not or are unable to fix this issue an ethical solution is far simpler. Adjust the preview window so that we can see the clipping issue beforehand. Preserving our resources for other content in creation and our trust. It would only be fair. I suggest that currently this system is akin to a virtual automobile retailer that exchanges an intact car with a seriously damaged one at the point of purchase. While able/forced to give up using seated vehicles out of frustration....for a new or unaware player it is a theft of sorts. I write this not wrathfully, but from my personal sense of justice and empathy. Also out of curiousity, I started looking through the different update previews and trailers. I have noticed that not only does the preview window encourage the purchase of a falsely advertised product, but that these videos conceal this problem as well. Is this an unjust presumption of overt deception, or an inadvertant case of bait and switch? A deductive answer could be that it is both.

Because this problem is visible everywhere.