The marauder isn't really that difficult to play once they have all their tools. You aren't even really parsing more information then another class, you just have more inputs. I have a feeling that's going to become a very frustrating myth over the next few months. Anyway that wasn't the point. Sniper is lacking skills that would set it on par or apart from other dps classes.

Honestly, I feel like a slightly more bursty sage/sorc with slightly less survivability/less mobility and -significantly- less uptime with lethality. With marksman I feel like a merc who traded in his damage stripes for a couple tricks and no added survivability. As a sage it's not unrealistic to die 0-1 times a match and be DPSing literally the entire time. Your resource pool is simply massive in comparison and shield is easily the best ability in the game. A consequence of this is the most glorious uptime ever. As a merc your platforming role with arsenal is both simplistic and stronger then platforming with marksman. This is in no small part due to snipers horrible typing issues versus armor and possibly the most lackluster top tier talent in game; rapid fire. It's not uncommon to see a stimmed 6 second x3 rapid fire barely scrape 2k from a shield tech power tech if you are into masochism. Frankly marskman almost feels like it needs an acid blade effect to apply on ambush. Either that or just replacing the 3 point alacrity talent in marskman to something not borderline useless like 30% armor reduction across the board. With lethality, I'm not sure why weakening blast is significantly worse then deathfield, the comparable sorc ability, but I can deal with that. On the other hand as one of the most dot heavy specs I'm not sure why we don't get a 1% health regen on dot crits. Yeah, it would be pretty epic, and put it on par or better then the marauder 100k end game healing per warzone, but we need something. For the sniper in general, I think giving us one of the get out of jail free cards in instant stealth isn't too much. In terms of group utility, we should've been given the sage ability rescue but that's a different discussion. Edit: Don't even get me started on the supreme ease with which pre-mades with competent healers can dispel dots. 2 good healers can virtually nullify lethality spec across an entire match. Oh what's that you spent a third of your energy and 3 GCDs to prep a target for culling and sustain? Let me spend 1.8% of my energy bar and one GCD to remove any chance you have of killing/damaging me or other things. Did I mention that if you try to setup again I'll be ready in the next 4.5 seconds? It immediately and reactively negates roughly 7k damage. No idea why it exists. Engineering is just bleh for anything other then afk door guarding/big numbers on voidstar. I'm definitely not unhappy with the class, but for sacrificing the ability to spec into any other role I definitely feel marksman and lethality should at least be on par with arsenal merc/lightning sorc and madness hybrid/full madness sorc respectively.

Could you elaborate?

The problem with sages/sorcs is simply the force shield. The CD and lockouts are tiny in comparison to the instant 9k heal (non respective of max health) it amounts too. It turns the casters into tanks and the healers into shieldbots. Increasing the CD to 1 min and checking where things stand seems like an obvious solution.

There's absolutely no reason aside from laziness that you can't just math out the max DPS builds and rotations if min/max is your thing. The game already gives you the numbers and percentages. For outliers you'd just need a few baseline results. It's really not that complicated; there's maybe 10 variables and none of them extend beyond your basic arithmetic functions. It's an argument of convenience, not personal growth. If it was personal growth you'd find the numbers and figure it out yourself rather then wait for someone to make a mod or the devs to include a combat log. I think I could care less either way, but to argue it provides some otherwise impossible to achieve data and thus the only way to achieve growth as a dps class is absurd.

3 feels ridiculous and looks good solely on bounty hunters and sith classes unless you like playing a sack of meat. 2 feels a little bit small in comparison (revan is a 2 and looks cool), but once you start getting the shoulder pauldron type things on the robes you look pretty awesome.

So your argument essentially boils down to change it to the way I want it, despite the tens of thousands of people who have picked it for a specific reason contrary to your whim. You do understand how ridiculous you sound right? The class isn't going to be overhauled simply because you want to see more lightsaber animations while being a sage despite the 3 other ACs that give you a plethora of acrobatic sabering. This is reality, you can't have your cake and eat it too then demand the next guy's cake.

I'm not saying it's right but the whole tack of your argument is delightfully ironic. You claim you are being punished for making the choices you want to make when that's exactly what choice actually entails: consequences. The fact that you know about the consequences and continue to play the way you do says something about the appeal of making your own choice. Until BW implements neutral gear, it seems you have placed your immersion above your meta game; a noble choice until you complained that the knowing consequences of your personal choice actually affected your game.

I posted a comment about the healing bit not making any sense to me and provided my rationale. I'm sorry if you took it personally. I don't religiously pursue the forums and common builds people run, it wasn't meant to offend.

Putting points into the healing tree looks really awkward. Your DPS is barely compensated and you end up essentially wasting a ton of points to make yourself a mediocre healer. I'd definitely put another point in lightning barrage so you can bounce between instant chain lightnings and half cast time force lightnings. You'd then spec up to creeping death in madness avoiding corrupted flesh and devour. This tremendously boosts your fire and forget dots while providing you with a convenient if somewhat nominal form of healing. Also allows you to switch from multi target mobility dotting to single target nuking with relative ease. I just can't see a 10% increase on chain lightning coupled with a +3% crit chance matching a roughly 40-50% improvement in your dots and giving you access to another instant cast CC. It's worth noting that death field becomes a worthy cast even for a single opponent. If someone has actually played the build, I'm curious to know how it performed as it's what I'm currently looking at speccing as for pvp. http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#201ZksMMdZcMfRsMkrc.1

This looks really good to me at a glance. The base damage of your TK throw will end up being a lot stronger (though you sacrifice crit +50% spikes) and between presence of mind and psychic projection bouncing you back so to speak between trees with double speed TK throws and instant +20% TK waves (not to mention force in balance, wave, and quake together giving you an aoe suite) it seems to more than (?) make up for the loss of turbulence or sever. It also seems to effectively blend the fast and cast strategy of balance dotting multiple targets with the channeled nuking of single targets telekinetic allowing you to switch on the fly based on the needs of the moment. I would drop 1 point each from mental lonevity and inner strength; putting them into clamoring force instead. Strictly speaking 99% of the time you won't miss the extra resources, but you will miss the extra damage.

Any thoughts or verdicts on the 0/13/28 build yet?

Oops, anyway endurance is primarily a function of gear. Take it off and you at least halve your health; the math is relevant but arduous and I'd rather play then post.

Actually the difference between a geared bolstered 30 and a geared bolstered 10 is about the same difference between an unbolstered geared 15 and unbolstered geared 30. Your total health is primarily a function of your gear as is to some extent your damaging stat. There's also abilities to consider. The difference is pretty vast, however with level breaks you'd run the risk of isolating the higher level players so they can't get a game what with there being so few of them. Sort of a lose-lose for everyone until the leveling distribution balances out (read not the 3rd day before launch).