what kind of genius thinks putting an AE damage reduction of just 30% on a 5 minute cooldown and tied to a group wide DPS buff is a good idea? Especially after many classes simply weren't considered because they lack AE reduction or generally lack defensive cooldowns against your idiotically overtuned raid bosses that allow for only a few select specs to be played. I'd rather not have any DR instead of being insulted by the sheer stupidity of this design. A smart decision would have been to just either tune down the goddamn raid inc dmg OR give mercs/sorcs even the hint of a chance to come close to agent ae heal or just give all DPS 30% reduce. And maybe give AP Powertechs a single goddamn tactical option that's not just a stupid generic one while you're at it? What is the design philosophy here? Remove all 30% reduces and then just stack melee with an agent spamming kolto inject on himself? Is that your idea of fun? We know you don't play the game. You've shown you aren't capable of doing basic math either. So why don't you just listen to the few people who have not yet abandoned nightmare mode raiding in swtor and went to play FF XIV instead? The raid groups on my server are just breaking apart one after another. And then you come with your nonsense patch, fixing nothing and creating 10 new problems.

As a scoundrel, you take more damage than anyone else, provide zero raid utility and do less DPS than other specs who have better defence and bring stuff like predation/sonic rebounder/shorter interrupt etc. It's great you do 100k on trash packs. Sadly, trash does not count for anything and it doesn't matter whether it dies a little quicker or not. Idk what's great about 24k when others pull 30k either. It's not like the spec is garbage or unplayable - but it is worse in every way from other more viable specs, especially due to lacking 30% ae dmg reduce while only having the pathetic shield probe and evasion every minute to avoid damage. And that is rather sad as I personally really like playing operative but it's just ****. The only class worse truly is Merc which the devs apparently hate because it's so far removed from doing decent DPS, it's not even funny anymore. And both specs could be somewhat easily fixed. Give operatives their ae dmg reduction at the cost of some pvp utility which would be too much in tandem and up their dmg a little while just flat out increasing merc damage.

The encounter would be vastly improved by lowering the health of the boss making the final burn phase much shorter. You have 2 alternating phases, play each twice and then burn. The encounter should not take 10 minutes. That's just too long and the length adds nothing to the challenge. A tightly tuned 6 minute encounter is way more enjoyable than those absurdly drawn out fights you had at times and seem to be going for again. I also find it questionable that you'd add a burn phase at the end. Seems like a lazy mechanic. Why not just an enrage instead? Allow groups to have more damage in this or that phase - allow more variation in DPS specs instead of forcing classes that can do the most dmg in x amount of seconds in that one phase. The fight also just hates melee. You have two patterns that allow range to continue DPS while melee has no choice but to run away and do nothing. Why do all 4 vents around the boss have to light up? Make it 3 - give melee a chance to position themselves and continue DPS. Pattern across the mid section has the same issue - range can continue DPS, melee has to stand around idle. No fun. You have to avoid it all the same but you actually get a reward if you do it well. The cross beam centered around the enemy has the same issue. Leave a spot for melees (with only 4 m range because it doesn't affect those with more range as much). lastly - might want to tone down the graphical intensity of the fight. This will run like total crap on many player PCs while there is no need for those absurd beams of light or that much visual fire. We all know swtor does not run the smoothest for most people so why add to the problem? Visual cues could be sufficiently done with less overkill.

What Tactical are Advanced prototype Powertech Users (and vanguard mirror) supposed to use now? You're removing both ST options. Are they supposed to play with Flying Fists or what? Removing Fanged God Form will straight up murder Carnage because it becomes an ineffective mess that doesn't have enough rage/focus to be played properly. Ofc you could also be smart and make the Ataru form Strike the free standard attack and the rest proc based which would be more fun but I doubt it...

Then you also just assume there will definitely be a new CS and you also assume you won't get to pick a third OR you won't get to change it. They also said choosing your advanced class was permanent and now you get a second advanced class and you can play a Jedi Knight skill set on your Sith Warrior. Things change and they in turn change other things. 7.0 will overhaul balancing of classes and depending on what you want to play, your class might be the next PT or the next Arsenal Merc for nim raiders. How did you ever pick an advanced class then given how well they perform or how they're played changes from time to time? Why not assume a solution will be presented if a new AC was introduced? If nothing else, just roll another character? And when that AC rolls around, then what? You still gonna wait for the possibly next one coming out which might be more fun? Where does it end?

The combat style is literally just what is currently the advanced class. Why would they add an entire new AC / Combat Style when a simple addition of skill tree - like Lighting or Courrption for Sorc on ALL classes and thus ALL combat styles would do the exact same thing? They have not released a spec or advanced class in over 10 years. Why start now? And why - even if that bogus assumption were true - not assume they would let you simply re-choose your CS if that came to be? It's just a ridiculous argument to make. It's NOT a big deal at all. They're just not gonna make 3 new skill trees for an AC. It's not happening. They barely managed to balance - and failed for the most part - the ones we have now. Even with all the PTS feedback, they're still doing a poor job.

They won't add a goddamn new class /advanced class that has no class story, no voice actor, no nothing at all for all previous content at some point when they can just as easily add a new skill tree available to all force user classes instead. Of all the dumb things I've read on this forum, "I don't want to pick a second combat style just in case Bioware creates an entirely new class for no reason 11 years after release that I would then have to level instead of instantly having access to it on one char" just tops everything.

It seems as if too many of these legendary items provide completely boring and uninspired effects to the player. Dealing 3% more damage is welcome because the numbers get bigger and you might want to and need the numbers to get bigger. But what is actually fun about a flat 3% increase - even if it is tied to some ability? It just seems really poor and when it becomes a default bonus choice, then it really has no point whatsoever. Because if everyone plays with 3% more damage, you might as well get rid of the bonus and just increase all skill dmg of the class by 3% or provide a passive 3% to all damage bonus. There is nothing engaging about it. There is nothing that makes the class more fun to play. There is nothing to widen the skill gap to allow for some growth of your own e.g. DPS numbers by better play instead of a flat bonus. The really dumb part about the change is that you have just taken away amplifiers which were literally a flat dmg increase to all DPS specs because you thought it was bad design and replaced it with the same thing but much more insignificant and placed on a single item. And while it ought to make life easier for super casual players who can't be bothered to google and look up basic information on well-established websites, in reality, the same players who asked which tacticals, amplifiers, set bonuses and stat caps they needed in 6.x will ask about implants all the same in 7.x - never mind the massive confusion with all new and different materials for different upgrade paths and such. Quite frankly, to even ask whether there is a good mix of options is either ignorant of your actual work done or ignorance of how anything in this game works. The best and the only good implants literally just took a 4-piece or 6-piece set bonus from a 6.x set and put it on an implant - albeit with awful stat distribution. Everything else is basically a trap for the bottom skill level player who will pick some utter nonsense and then bother random groups with their inability to simply gear correctly or some uninspired yet still meta 3% dmg increase which is so absurdly boring and pointless, one has to wonder whether you have not outsourced this entire 7.x enterprise to people who failed at making mobile games and nobody else wanted to hire.

That's why I wrote 'I would have to' not 'I will have to'. Meaning I'm thinking about letting my sub run out because what I'm being presented with for another 6 months of content does not seem fun to me. Because I'm playing nim right now and when the patch goes live, I would have to play story mode, then veteran ops just to to gear up. But those are boring for people who played nim. They have fewer mechanics and offer no engaging challenge nor fun. I have changed my 6 months sub to a 3 month sub so it runs out in March. I'm playing 1 month of the update and then I'll decide whether it's still fun or they stick with what's currently on the PTS, which isn't fun. Gearing could also possibly be done faster when they stop gating the upgrade mechanism with absurd costs.

Most of the issues were mentioned already - UI not being saved properly, ability positions on bars not being saved correctly (especially when there are multiple versions of the same skill, like the PT Incendiary Missile which can be shifted to a direct damage ability). What I really hate is the autosave feature of the loadouts. I don't want the currently selected loadout to just assume that every change I make is what I want to keep forever going forward. The loadout should remain as it was unless you manually save it. You should also be able to change to a loadout upon double click OR at least there should be a button next to the loadout. Who is so incompetent in UI design they make you click something at the top and then at the bottom of the same screen to activate it? But thank god you can copy a loadout so quickly! That's sure something you need all the time (Beware of sarcasm). But just one example of the idiotic auto save feature - you have your current loadout and you play around. You want to just check something on a different spec for some reason. You switch to that spec. Your loadout is ruined. You have to set it up all other again because your switching a spec just automatically deleted your loadout. Why? Why in the world would you assume you want to save every little change in the loadout? Why not make a button that says 'APPLY CHANGES TO CURRENT LOADOUT?' for exactly the time you want it to do that? I mean, you already made every gosh darn UI screen take up ALL of the screen, why not add this gosh darn prompt? God *********** dammit. And when you copy a loadout, the origin gets changed alongside the copy for some reason. But not the gear, just the spec. I had all marauder specs set up, then switched to Jug and now all my previous marauder builds have turned to jug builds. There is no way in *********** hell you will get all these issues sorted out by February. No way.

Getting gear is grindy as hell. Upgrading a single piece of gear from 320 to the every so slightly better 322 takes way too long considering you will be replacing the 322 gear you spend currency on when you get 324 gear as a direct drop from the higher difficulty Op you can run with 320 gear already. An example would be the cost of increasing Mastery by 0.2%, Critical Rate - not the percentage of actual crit chance - by 0.37% and Power by 0.19%: 170 Decurion Isotope Stabilizers 15 Medals of Commendation 25 Aquatic Resource Matrix You get 200 Medals for your conquest per character. So that's fine. Why the hell do you also get 2 of those same exact Medals for clearing a daily random Vet FP? how is one single Vet FP equal to 1% of an entire conquest? Still, one conquest and you can upgrade 10 pieces of gear or so. That's easy. You get 25 Aquatic resource matrix for doing a set of weekly heroic quests. This isn't too bad either. 3-6 heroic missions for an upgrade is reasonable. You apparently get DIS by running Fps. We ran three MM FPs which now take forever. I'm basically already half geared in 320 gear from MM Fps. I have 34 of those DIS. One piece needs 170. Now somebody tell me what the hell went wrong here. Another major issue is not hitting any caps whatsoever with the gear. As I've said, I have almost full 320 gear from MM Fps - I have 104% accuracy and ~ 3% alacrity. The accuracy isn't sufficient. The alacrity does nothing. It's a totally pointless stat right now. The augments have also lost worth and I can't figure out why you'd take a decent gearing system and replace it with this crap while also not updating crafting to reflect gear progression. There is so much uncertainty around crafting currently. Are we supposed to all save up for the 300 augments? Will they be the best we can get during this 7.0 iteration of the game? Because it takes forever for a rather new player to get them and I fear they might be obsolete once the new OP hits and possibly new augments possibly become available but all we get is silence. The new gearing system overall seems super grindy, convoluted, inefficient and punishes players who actually understand what stats they want and why. Removing amplifiers is the same thing. Punishes players who understand their class in order for some super casual who barely manages to complete his story missions to not be frightened by too many numbers and options. The new gearing system offers zero fun. The new loadouts are totally wasted as well because you'll have to all / most of your gear to other characters you play all the time because the max level stuff is so difficult to get and it takes such a long time. And in order for the loadout to load the gear, you need to have it in your inventory or equipped. If you wanted to reward players clearing Nim Ops or playing ranked PVP and such, you could've and should've done it with bind on pickup materials that allow crafting better augments to set themselves apart. Not making everyone go through this long and boring gated gear progression. It doesn't even feel like we're progressing at all. It feels like getting significantly weaker and then slowly building yourself up to still be relatively weaker than your lv 75 counterpart. If this is the final version of the new swtor experience, I'm not sure I want to play it. Probably not.

The balance of MM FPs on fresh lv 80 characters is terrible. We ran a group of 3 DPS (PT, Marauder, Sniper) with a Merc heal and while it wasn't exactly 'hard', the FPs took forever. Now, we all play Nim Ops on live and our group has an average of maybe 90% + clear on those, so I'd say we know how to DPS properly but you just hit for less than with 306 gear (slightly, but that's due to fully augmented gear) while the bosses have insane amounts of health. Trash has too much health as well. We got False Emperor FP and Malgus had 11.1 million HP. Never mind the provided gear didn't even allow us to hit the accuracy cap for that content level, but it took forever to kill him. Then you can walk into a story mode operation where you have 2 extra DPS, sometimes 3 or even 4 extra DPS and the boss has 13 million health. You might say, MM FPs are supposed to be harder and you'd be right, that's a valid point, but they both give 220 gear level. So where exactly is the reward? The stats are slightly better on the blue MM gear but that's it. Both become obsolete when you enter HC operations and can get loot there. It's just weird that we progress in levels, we're supposed to be stronger but the characters feel drastically weaker. Everyone is worse than what they were while enemies have gotten stronger. But the worst part is that it's not that they deal so much more damage, it's just that they have so much more health. It makes the game so goddamn slow. The current PTS iteration is simply not fun. And I don't see the average non-ops players who doesn't play all that well clearing most MM FPs in random groups either. Which means random grouping will be some sort of special hell once this goes live. Meanwhile, you can still sleepwalk through any solo content like H2 missions on every planet or daily areas like CZ. The way the scaling and gear progression works out is that I feel like I'd need to grind for half a year through story mode ops, MM FPs and Vet Ops just to get back to playing what I actually want to play - Nim Ops.

I now played a bit a few MM FPs and Story Mode Ops on the PTS and I really feel like the Marauder just doesn't offer anything beyond pure damage. You have zero ways to help your group. Let's assume some add is firing on another DPS or healer - what can you do on live? You can stun the enemy. You can obfuscate the enemy. You can disable the enemy when it's not being damaged. What can you do on PTS? Nothing. All those skills are gone and Force Choke would replace undying rage. Awful. It just feels awful to play a DPS that offers absolutely nothing. There is zero skill involved in using some form of utility in group content. The class feels completely naked. I also don't believe we will be competitive in terms of pure damage output. There is simply too much that's gonna be missing. The set bonus was a constant 10% dmg increase with 25% bonus dmg on our hardest hitting ability refreshing every ~ 8 sec on average. Furious Power is now useless without the bonus because a 30 sec recharge is too inefficient and it's also not baseline any longer. We also lost over 20% dmg on dots on amplifiers which severely hinders our ability to AOE DPS and gimps our ST DPS as well. It's just such bad design for how the class has developed and how it currently plays. The latest newly introduced abilities were Mad Dash and Furious Power and both are now optional and tied to choices against much better skills. How do you remove the latest skills you gave the class from the class? The ability pruning just removes any sort of soul the class had. You tried to streamline the experience and you did. But it's more like making yet another identical Fast and Furious movie instead of something fresh and new. Marauder specifically - but other classes as well - feel bland and boring to play because there is nothing to do. You took all the skills that allowed clever play and removed them. So now everyone who could basically play the class or was better is bored beyond belief and the super casuals you're trying to get to spend money on this still won'T be any more successful. Really disappointed with how the class feels in day to day content that isn't an OP. Never mind that things like Obfuscate or Mad Dash or Force Choke were super fun to use in those as well and actually separated good DPS from great DPS if used smart. But apparently you really dislike smart seeing how dumbed down the class is.

While what we currently have isn't ideal, it is still vastly superior to their first draft. They did listen to some feedback at least like giving us a proper predation (albeit as a choice), making Force camouflage baseline with cleanse and not removing Force Choke (albeit as a terrible choice against undying rage and mad dash). And who knows - maybe they played with the Force Lash numbers as well which are obviously way off to be useful and shifted around some choices to make more sense. The first iteration also isn't the last one. Changes can still be made. If Marauder truly happens to be at some sort of bottom of DPS classes, then that'll be just that and you can either stick with it like the operative and mercenary DPS mains have done or reroll and play PT or whatever else will be the best DPS class like many others did. When I look around I don't see any class being super happy overall and there's also a world of difference between PVP and PVE players being happy or upset about the changes.

Could you explain to me how FR dealing 18% more damage overall is better than e.g. 1 stack of it dealing 400% more damage with a guaranteed crit at that (because of Berserk)? Even if FR had 10 ticks of damage and you only hit 1 tick during Berserk with 400% increase, you'd still have a 40% overall dmg increase (1/10 x 400). Maxing our Juyo with virtually your first GCD is really nice but the longer the fight lasts (w/o losing the stacks), the less of an impact it has. 2 minutes in the impact is virtually zero. When you combine Draining Centre with Bleeding Center you'll basically be able to use Berserk every time with Force Rend, so your 400% dmg increased Force Rend will crit for about the same as an Annihilate does every time and ofc with a 100% crit chance. Right now, only the first tick is ever increased anyway. Purely dmg wise, this is superior. It also adds a second high burst damage ability which is really nice for fights with adds that need to go down quickly. You also gain way more HPS for both grp but especially yourself as you heal % of your dmg done on bleeds and the almost constant use of Berserk offers steady heal to the group. It's basically the only thing I like at all in terms of Marauder changes. Agree with mostly everything else you write though. Force Fracture is probably the worst skill ever introduced. I've never seen an ability / talent actually make you flat out worse when you have it. It's worse for single target DPS in every scenario - even burst heavy fights. It's much worse for any type of AE with 2+ targets as you can't spread a second dot. It is the biggest show of incompetence I have ever seen in an mmo. They would need to ~ triple the dmg for it to make any sense for single target and it would play really ugly as you would use it with 2 dots active and then have to use VS or another main ability in between dot downtime.

Force Choke should switch places with Blood Ward in the ability tree. It just makes no sense thematically to choose between a stun and 2 defensive cooldowns on one hand and then choose between AOE damage increase, an improved defensive cooldown or lowering the CD of an offensive skill. Other than that: The bad: Force Lash is still an entirely pointless ability. It's just a worse Vicious Slash and has zero synergy with anything in your talent tree, even going so far as to decrease your proc from bleed effects as you have fewer of them on the target. 3rd level 43 choice still has no tooltip but the Sentinel version says it applies Trauma from cauterize and refunds rage when used during Zen / Berserk. That's just awful. level 47 third choice makes no sense. You get 6 stacks of Zen /Berserk with 3 dots and you gain the equivalent of a VS as bonus damage for melee attacks while it is active. That's 2 GCDs at most on a single target. That's just not worth it. Channel Fury still doesn't build Fury stacks which is just sad. The good: you actually listened to common sense and reinstated Force Camouflage as a baseline ability with a cleanse.

Those are obviously just tooltip errors from a lazy port of the skills from the Jedi to the Sith. Some abilities have wrong names, Force Lash doesn't even have an animation (Or it does, but it isn't properly attached yet - as of now, your character just doesn't do anything and the damage still triggers though). They're also outdated as they're the exact skills and values present during the first round of the PTS Sentinel. But all the other issues persist, like lack of stun/any CC really, making Force Camouflage pointless with missing cleanse and overall just bad choices and abilities that literally just make you worse in every way like Force Lash does.

There are some things that are cool and then there are some things that sadly just ruin the class. I play only PVE content in Nim, let someone else speak for PVP related things. I also favour Annihilation over the other specs because Carnage just isn't fun nor flexible and I can't stand hearing my Marauder throw up in her mouth when some stupid **** procs in Fury spec as you refuse to remove the most pointless and literally sickening sound in swtor. First Choice - 18% dmg increase of Force Rend versus a 400% FR damage increase + 1/3rd of the build-up of 100% crit on all dots versus a ~ 8% general increase in dot critical chance. Well, gee, I don't know, do I want the ability that gives me the only other heavy burst option and more crit uptime on dots which amplifies my ae dmg as well? Maybe my math is off, but I just don't see the talents being competitive on paper, much less on live where you need selective burst DPS which only Annihilate truly offers but now, FR can provide as well with the increased Fury generation to boot. I do love Draining Center though. Second Choice - there is ****, then there's ****, then there's Predation with the old tooltip. Yeah, easy one. Third Choice - has me massively confused. Force Lash deals as much damage as Vicious Slash only if both other bleeds are on the target (so, not all the time), costs 1 less rage to use (that you don't need for anything really) and just makes the rotation totally wonky. Because you can't have both dots up all the time simply due to the CD of FR being longer than it's duration and then VS is strictly superior to FL. But you also lose a damaging ability costing as much doing much more damage and one that you can spread on secondary targets for proper aoe damage. What is the point of Force Lash? Its damage nowhere near justifies losing Rupture (which is another dot giving a 20% chance to gain rage btw, so much for the rage cost being lower than VS), especially for AOE. The other choice is Rupture applying Trauma and refunding its cost when used during Berserk which is random (the tooltip doesn't work, I assume it's just the same as the one on the JK though) and just not worth it. Those 2 rage are just there for nothing and trauma is pointless in PVE. Finally, the third ability is an aoe boost that is needed and which is very nice. I like Flaming Wave. What I though would be there though is the function that Spiteful saber (tactical) had. I think it's a huge loss for the class to lose the ability to tick and refresh Rupture. I don't know whether that tactical might still work (but your recent posts seem to say it won't) and Idk whether a new tactical might do something similar but it really hurts the class, both ST and in AOE situations. And it makes it more difficult to play because you have to keep track of a single dot only lasting 9 seconds as a melee whose other skills are either spamable or have cooldowns. It's just bad design. Fourth Choice - Furious Power is too weak without the set bonus that gives more recharges of the ability. it's like 25% dmg increase on 2 out of approximately 40 abilities you might use in a minute after the initial 4 charges are gone. I understand you can use it on Annihilation and a Berserk FR (as you should) but I think overall just gaining either more Fury or directly dealing x more damage like the other choices provide is much simpler and ultimately just as good. Especially the Fury generation might be necessary for a continuous buffed FR. But the real issue is that Furious Power just isn't a good ability. It's just not fun. It's just something you press before you press something else. It's a nuisance, it has no dynamic, it wastes a keybind for a buff that is only felt in a parse but not while playing. It's one of the least exciting / fun abilities in the game across all classes. Fifth Choice - This is the one where anyone playing PVE takes Defensive Roll because AE damage is usually what hits you hard. Would have liked two charges but there is no way I'm taking things over Defensive Roll. Sixth Choice - Despite the nerf to Cloak of Pain (can't spec 10 second duration, removed 15% damage bonus, removed rage gain as well...), it's still great to have it up so reducing its cooldown is pretty strong. There is also only a 15% dmg increase in a skill that isn't even worth using most of the time and a very situational (like Brontes NIM final phase and... nothing else I can think of rn) buff to Saber Ward. But the choice overall is just underwhelming. It's like you could forget to pick anything and it wouldn't even matter. seventh Choice - this is where you just ruin the class really. But you have been told this repeatably and apparently choose to ignore it. Force camouflage without the self-cleanse is useless. Nobody stays 4 seconds in Force Camo for 50% damage reduce and it's too long a CD just to divert some cast on you sometimes. Mad Dash is super situational, deals no noteworthy damage and is just poor design and the final choice is thus the only one worth taking most of the time unless cheesing some mechanic like Dread Guards NIM dashing Doom. Force camouflage should be a self-cleanse and it should be baseline. This is totally ridiculous and awful. Eight Choice - We either get self-heal or an increase in DPS on heavy AE fights where we get hit a lot? Or some **** nobody cares about in the middle. Well, great stuff really. So, overall, you have one good ability in Draining Center and another in Flaming Wave (which is still the wrong tooltip) and then a bunch of ****. You took our stun, so now I guess I'll log on my PT or Sin to play Grace on Tyth NIM. You also really hurt our DPS with losing the Rupture dot refresh / tick from our most used ability in VS which Draining Center might make up for but overall we're getting weaker. We lose Force Camouflage, Stun, Obfuscate, can't reduce the CD on our interrupt anymore, lose intimidating roar (so we can't do turrets on Nahut either anymore, not even *******r than after losing only Force Choke). I don't know why you ask people to name iconic Warrior / Marauder abilities, people telling you Force Camouflage and Force Choke are two especially important skills and you just remove them from the baseline. The class feels worse to play, less effective to play and also less fun to play than before. I'm not a PVP player myself but others who are playing pretty damn well aren't fond of Marauders on their team and now, having lost any control ability and half their defensive cooldowns, I don't see this improving at all. This iteration of the patch leaves the 7.0 Marauder worse off than the current Marauder. At least for Annihilation spec.

You're not changing anything really, just like with all the other classes You remove maybe 2 or 3 abilities and add some fluff and that's it. This is just incompetent game design. You make us level up more and farm entirely new gear and sets to play exactly the same thing we have been playing since virtually forever. All you've done is consolidate the cookie cutter talent choices into the standard abilities (like recklessness getting 3 charges) and that's really good, that makes sense. But you haven't addressed the individual issues of the classes / specs in end game PVE and PVP at all and your solution seems to be to simply allow any class to play a spec that isn't comparatively much weaker. This entire level cap increase and these changes are very uninspired. It's really just about making players do the same old content with the almost exact same skill set and the exact same stats only we'll be lv 80 instead of 75 and you'll make some classes totally useless with idiotic set bonuses and tacticals. I'll be playing my Deception Sin the same exact way after this patch, no changes whatsoever.

Since the changes were revised, I took another look and there are still major issues that have not been addressed. 15: Critical Melt vs Juyo Melt vs Melting Center So, this boils down to AE vs Burst vs Sustained ST dmg, doesn't it? Doesn't change what anything does, just changes what it's good for. However, theory crafters will figure out the exact numbers and people will just take 'the best' option. Melting Center imo is the only 'good' idea though as it actually rewards timing your Zen use while the others just add damage. 20: here, you choose between doing more ST damage and having raid utility. Every single time Transcendence is needed, you will choose it. This is not an option and never will be. If a Marauder in my group told me he doesn't want to skill transcendence because of his DPS, then he'll be out. 30: Are you changing tacticals? Because why would you use Cauterize when it refreshes anyway? Focus makes no sense. Same for Force Lash. You gimp your AE dmg due to losing a spreadable dot and make your tactical pointless. At least flaming wave makes sense. But Generally speaking here - for class flavour: STOP removing dots from the dot class! What is wrong with you? level 35: I don't understand... I can just not have my set bonus if I don't choose Force Clarity (or we'll be getting all new sets) even though you could make Force Clarity a passive buff and make it still works while removing it as an ability you need to use. The other 2 choices come down to the numbers. You have the sustained option with zen or the burst option with the extra damage. generally speaking: The design philosophy so far has shown me that you want Marauders to just keep switching the skills they choose on a encounter per encounter basis. Because no one choice is generally satisfactory, I'd be switching around for virtually everything which is really annoying. level 50: As anyone can attest to who played something more challenging - the 30% dmg reduce is not optional. This is not a choice. You just removed being able to quickly change targets as a melee more often. Level 60: Jedi Adjudicator is obviously and by far the best choice. 15% measly damage increase for an already crappy skill you barely use because dot spread and then continuing ST damage is way better and same crappy heal every 3 minutes? C'mon people... level 70: This is total BS. You remove the self-cleanse from Force Camo making it a bad cooldown because the damage reduce is gone the second you attack something again. Blade Blitz is a ****** skill with a way too long CD and not enough damage. It's used as a defensive cooldown to cheese one shot mechanics and high dmg stuff. It functions like guarded by the force for the most part. You'd just end up using what makes more sense per encounter. Level 80: Yeah, 2% dmg reduction and more Zen is obviously the best thing for PVE, but you put a tier 1 skill and a tier 3 skill (former) as the level 80 choice? That's lazy. Overall - some good ideas like Flaming Wave and level 15 Melt skills also seem fun but sadly are pitted against each other. Most other choices just make no sense given our Tacticals and Set Bonus. Unless you change those, the skills just make zero sense. I don't understand why you don't make transcendence baseline. This is expected from every Marauder to have most of the time. Removing a threat dump and self-cleanse makes things very problematic when healers can't readily dispel others and you can't control your threat at all. really bad change to Force Camo. It's such a classic and defining ability of the Marauder that has been around since forever.

Am I missing something or is Nanotech Suit actually gone? Is there a standard 30% ae damage reduction now or does the operative - the squishiest of all classes - getting more squishy for no reason whatsoever? Why exactly would I take an (concealment) operative to a NIM ops when I can have a class doing the same DPS with better AOE damage and a lot more survivability or more DPS for getting hit as hard (like a PT - changes pending). Why would you also make the threat dump optional and then also put it on the only defensive cooldown worth a damn for the class? Though in terms of style, it would make sense for the operative to have the least issues with threat management. And for that reason you could expand on the stealth mechanic which right now is only there with Cloak and the standard stealth. Feels a bit weird that the class has nothing worth going into stealth for or can't readily re-enter a sort of pseudo-stealth in combat (which doesn't remove you from combat unlike cloak) to use a stealth only ability (like a long lasting dot for example to replace the Corrosive Dart skill which thematically doesn't fit Concealment at all). Could also find a way to put cloak and stealth on the same button to save a keybind/slot. A really good change is turning Crippling Slice and Sever Tendon into one ability with all the functionality you'd want from it. Another great change is active reduction of Stim Boost to be used more frequently as it rewards good play with even more damage. Speaking of long cooldowns - and what I generally don't understand about the design philosophy: Why not remove those? A 3 minute - read maybe use it 2-3 times in a long ops fight - cooldown that removes the CD of skills with CDs that are already pretty low? That is convoluted nonsense. There is a skill on the bar you press twice a fight, meaning it's a keybind you have to have which you only use very rarely. Just remove it. The active cooldown reduction of skills is way more fun and engaging. At the same time, some skills need a lower cooldown like Holotraverse. It works like a typical 'charge' or 'leap' yet it has an absurdly long cooldown. That goes counter to the design of removing Overload Shot. If you remove a range DMG option, then you need the gap closer to be much more readily available. I don't see any sort of issue with a 20 sec cooldown. Even in PVP, this just makes the operative work like any other melee class that closes gaps more often. I also think Infiltrate should be a baseline utility for operatives. It's a short group stealth. Seriously. It's just a fun ability, it's not an utility. It's all flavour and no impact. Who would ever waste an actual point into it? As for balancing classes - the concealment operative needs better ae dmg. Noxious Knives with Toxic Haze is just not even worth it over just continuing single target damage. I'd look into possibilities to spread some effects like Acid Blade or Corrosive Dart at least and reduce the cost of the Knives to not mess up your energy for puny damage. It's just extremely underwhelming. As it stands now, I just don't see a reason to take an operative with the negative baseline of a melee class in current ops over any other melee and especially ranged DPS class (pending changes). Operative doesn't even get a short CD interrupt and has to play with the 18 seconds of ranged classes. That's just sad. But here goes for every individual choice: level 15: I can take a massive DPS boost, a pointless slow or a 9% dmg reduction which still puts me 20% below anyone else. I'll take the DPS. Obviously. Not even considering anything else for PVE. level 20: Threat dump for PVE, pointless AE dmg which is too low still or a stun for PVP. The choice is obvious. There's just a crap choice, a PVE one and a PVP one (or solo play). debilitate should be baseline. This is stupid. level 30: getting a TA on range and for basically free of energy cost is a must have in PVE for energy management. 20% dmg reduction still not even close to catching up to other classes who get 30% ae dmg reduce which is what you get hit with most of the time. And it's only 6 seconds on a 15 sec CD skill? What in the what? And really? One guaranteed crit every 15 seconds? Why? What is the purpose? You lose damage using the skill to increase your already high crit chance a bit more? This is pointless. level 35: You get an active CD reduce that will probably give you way more stim boosts than the 3 min CD resetting the CD of SB once. Then you again try some crap with ONE guaranteed crit for one attack after stealth? Why? level 50: The stealth should be baseline, same for the movement speed, just a part of the class flavour. The dmg reduce is the only thing worth a damn here anyway. The Stealth offers too little (don't talk about stealth rezz in NIM, wasting 10 seconds 30 seconds earlier at times. That's just silly). Maybe interesting for PVP, so you can cloak out of being squashed in seconds more often? level 60: Escape Plan? Really? We lose Infiltrate but keep the CD reduction. The 5 seconds on the SP are a joke, the Escape stuff is also barely worth it. Evasion CD reduce when being attacked ... okay, the energy from the AP probably isn't even necessary for Concealment. When would you ever drop that low outside of maybe AE situations where you don't even AE because the ops group made you log on your PT because you're pointless in AE situations. lv 70: You take Holotraverse. Should be baseline. This is a pretty dumb choice. level 80: Med Shield is total crap, Jarring Strike and Blow for Blow aren't any better. This is the max level choice and NOT having any of them makes zero difference. That's questionable design. I expected something 'game changing' here. It's really not great outside of the Crippling Slice and active CD Stim boost changes which are really well done.

Speaking as an Annihiliation mara / Watchman Sent If your goal is to reduce skill bloat, then adding a skill in Force Lash into the must have rotation seems rather non-sensical to me. You just added a skill that I have to press when I have applied 3 burns. What is the point of that? You have a skill in Blade Barrage already that does absolutely nothing beyond hard damage on a rather long CD that you could have given this effect as a passive to make it feel more in tune thematically. Some of your choices simply are not choices at all. You don't seem to understand the approach players take at all. What is the choice between Force Melt and Melting center (and you can also choose Critical Melt?)? The choice is determined by whatever provides you with the most DPS. And that's what everyone will take if they're seriously playing this game (ops and ranked PVP). Transcendence is a good buff because you can remove the cost, otherwise it's not only highly situational but also relies on you just having 30 stacks at the time it's needed. So, if you really need it - must have it for some mechanic - then you have to gimp your DPS in order to provide it. But that was all a Marauder did - provide speed buff for the raid without any loss. If that's not there - why take a Marauder on? I could make things go fast and survive a bunch of stuff with defensive cds - that's my argument for bringing my class into your ops group. Now I can only do one of those things thus there is no argument for me to be in your ops group. Snaring Slash only has value in PVP, everyone else takes BB. Everyone. Transcendence with a cost is simply a crap utility and you don't take a crap utility. The Force Lash / Cauterize Focus is virtually the same - in PVP (or choice encounters), take heal debuff unless another class has a better ability. FL for max dps (probably), Flame Wave for AE heavy encounters. This is not a choice, this is just choosing whatever you have to for the given fight, meaning constantly respeccing. Unless the Set Bonus is changed, Force Clarity is not something you can simply not have. Without Rebuke reflecting damage constantly, we're already behind many classes, we can't just throw away 10% of our DPS to have a few more centering stacks or reduce our own damage output - which is what the other choice does by making the burn based spec not synergize with the utility of the burn spec. You cannot - under any circumstance for the vast majority of all encounters - not choose an AE dmg reduce. Defensive role is not optional. If you don't have this, do not bother showing up. End of discussion. Same with force camo - why give up a defensive cd that is also a self cleanse and threat dump for an equally long cd avoiding a single attack or a short CD doing the same? If there ever was a defensive CD to remove, then it was Saber Ward because just being super tanky against melee just doesn't ft all that well with a class that is supposed to be highly mobile and have some gimmicks like ae soft stun / single target stun / combat stealth / run speed buff - just general mobility. You took away the mobility and left the tankiness. That is not what the Marauder is about at all. You basically build a ****** Juggernaut here. Your level 80 passive is idiotic. Adds snares to attacks? You already gave the class a snare for the most spamable attack there is. Why would you need another snare? Contemplation is just bad and thus everyone takes passive damage reduce - of course, because avoiding damage in any serious setting is 2nd only to maximizing your DPS. Again, you either choose the PVP utility with the heal, the max DPS ability for either single or ae. There is no 'build' here, there is just non-optimal choices for specific encounters. Not only did you add another ability I'd have to use thus increasing skill bloat, you have taken any utility the Watchman had away, took away her survivability and just created poorly thought out choices. You also destroyed the one aspect the class had going for itself - the super mobility. The ability to just jump and dash and sprint between targets. You just slowed the Marauder down to a crawl, basically creating a Juggernaut with 2 light sabers that has no defence. Do you even know what the hell a Marauder is supposed to be? That was a rhetoric question because you have screamed out loudly that you have no clue with these asinine hard nerfs.

who cares if the game is a financial success or not? If you like it you'll play it if you don't you don't, it's not that freaking hard. Just because in this facebook and youtubechannel generation every idiot thinks his opinion should be heard somewhere doesn't mean they're right. Like anyone is going to quit or keep their subscription based on some mofos forum post, are you *********** kidding me? Gosh, that's what you get when parents stop beating some sense into their children and make them believe that everything they think of or feel they have to say actually matters -.-

Well, this is already in the game - both Sith classes can go light and through companion quests you can see that they are working to change the empire, now, they are not working for the republic but it's somewhat similiar. Bounty Hunters can betray the empire or at least a representative of the empire and the IA can actually become a double agent. All one can do is hope BW doesn't screw the pretty good stories up like they did in other games...

In the future, plase don't just put a wall of text up, space it out a little. For the actual content: The story will continue, it is not finished, but I doubt they'll implement a new story arc before they give us an entire addon to go with it and raise the level cap to 60 or so. Defection is a nice idea, but people have to realize that the closest thing BW might do is replace your say Sith Warrior with a Jedi Knight with the same name and look but your story would (after the defection questchain) change to the JK one. With voiceacting it would just be way too much in terms of cost and time to add so many new class story varieties for the very few people who actually want to defect instead of just reroll. For the part with LS or DS affecting your future story: I hope it does in any way, my main is a SW and in the end and I certainly don't want to see my Light V character living out this new role the way it was intended, because it just wouldn't make any sense.