Eviscerate hits for about ~800 more than headshot, according to my tooltips. Anyways, I use it when I'm grinding dailies. In a raid scenario, I use it on the Ancient Pylons when the adds are stunned by my Lacerate. Otherwise, its pretty useless.

I WISH I was in Assassin world. Then I could taunt people targetting my healer/ball carrier/etc., Force speed across gaps and away and TO people, knockback people off the catwalks in huttball, could have abilities that actually do damage at 30m, could actually have a GOOD defensive cooldown, could actually put out good damage, could actually have good ways to control the way a fight goes, could pull people.... you know, have all the utility AND the DPS of an assassin. But instead, I will climb my high horse because operatives are way overpowered and I want it to stay that way. (but only when all their cooldowns are up, they can pop adrenals, AND they are fighting an opponent wearing less gear than they are.)

I love that people somehow think that we can stun for longer now. Last I checked Debilitate was on a 45 second (30 talented) cool down. Wasting your one stun to try to kill someone in stunlock has to be the worst way to play, and one of the worst class designs. Furthermore, the stun from Hidden Strike lasts 1.5 seconds. However, the GCD is also 1.5 seconds so they are already out of the stun the next ability you use (almost; the animation time of the ability lets you get off one ability if you are quick). In other words, your next ability better be debilitate, or they are free to run, stun, knockback, etc. and you've basically lost the fight (against an equally skilled and equally geared player). I logged on to check out the nerfs and it is pretty bad. My hidden strike crit for 1.3K, about 3k on fresh 50's (<12K hp). I have much more trouble fighting heavy armor users because I do so little damage. In fact, I was fighting a pyrotech, about equally geared, and while his flame burst was hitting me for 1.8k, my back stab, shiv, etc. were hitting him in the neighborhood of 1200-1600. He then popped his energy shield (which should only be a 25% damage reduction, IIRC), and I was hitting him for 500 (!). It is absolutely absurd that, as a Niche Burst class, I cannot take down an equally geared opponent on a 1v1 fight. We will be doing EV or KP HM, possibly today, and then I can see how the nerf effects PvE.

So, I went through the entire thread and I can't believe no has bought this up: How are you getting the full damage from AB when you refresh it ~3 seconds afterwards on your backstab? The DoT ticks every 1 second for 6 seconds so at best (assuming lag and whatnot) you are getting ~66% of its damage. Anyways, I don't personally use that "best case" opener. Chances are, wasting half your acid blade DoT to get a backstab in will NOT kill the target, so I prefer to go AB+HS>Shiv>Stim boost if not up (off-GCD) > Corrosive Dart> Lacerate> Sever Tendon(root for 2 seconds talented) from this point, If I am still in melee range (people tend to want to move right after they get out of the stun. The root stops them, and they are slow to react) I will drop a backstab+AB (very easy to get behind someone; If you can't, practice!). If I get knocked away, I will cleanse the root (YES, you can do this for most roots/slows!), use Rifle Shot to stay in the higher energy regen area, get back into melee, or use an explosive probe to finish someone off if they are below 20%. If I get stunned, I either trinket, or just eat it. Of course, PvP is all about adapting to the situation at hand, so the most important thing is understanding what all your skills do, and being able to follow a logical flow, prioritizing skills depending on either their burst, their efficiency or some other fact relevant to the fight at hand. Anyways, I am more of a PvE'r than PvP. I think the Hidden Strike nerf was needed in both cases (although the filling the resolve bar thing is BAD) However, the ArPen nerf was not. AFAIK, Operatives are NOT top dps, so nerfing their PvE dps to assauge the fears of the masses is NOT the way to go.