The role of both Marauders AND OP/Scoundrels is to find, seek and annihilate repeatedly all lethality snipers on the battlefield, then to rush to the entrance to catch them there and utterly destroy them yet again with no chance to fight back. Mara/OP vs. lethality sniper is the least balanced matchup in this game where both players are present at the keyboard.

This isn't about Marauders being OP, this is about general game design using a couple of skills as examples. The fact that maras have those skills is coincidental to the fact that each is problematic. Invulnerability The thought process in design is "Without giving them a stun, how to we give these guys something to compensate". Well, if you're fighting 1v1, then 5 seconds of invulnerability achieves the same purpose as a stun. The problem is that PvP isn't a 1 on 1 envioronment, so this skill is the equivalent of stunning everyone with no offensive penalty. The closest equivalent to this (and it's still not as powerful) is snipers' blind, which blinds all nearby characters within a given range. That blind has MANY limitations: 1. It has a range limit 2. It has a limit to the number of opponents affected 3. It fills OVER half of a resolve bar 4. It breaks on a single point of damage. Invulnerability skills have NONE of these limitations, yet do not add a single point of resolve, and has far greater benefit. I don't care who the class is that has it, or how many threads there are about them being OP, the skill itself is a major problem in the context of other CC skills and the resolve system. Melee classes with high damage ranged attacks and high damage gap closers Not limited to Marauders at all. Melee should be melee and ranged should be ranged. Melee ranged skills should be the equivalent of ranged classes' melee skills, on the extreme low side of damage. Gap closers should be on a longer CD than CC breakers, AND there needs to be gap increasers to counter. Currently melee is an "IWIN button", simply because the "moving forward vs. backpedaling" speed advantage, along with the requirement to face your opponent to attack auto-snares ranged if they want to do any damage, along with the lack of proliferation of usable snares or gap openers.

Actually, the worst thing is skills which are in place, such as Mara's 95% defense, which is supposed to cover a lack of stun having no effect from and actually benefitting from resolve, along with being infinitely scaling by the number of people attacking you is beyond OP. Add to that being able to duck out of combat having 0 negative effect or real counter, and melee classes with high damage ranged attacks and high damage gap closers, and you have the real mess we have. There needs to be MORE ranged CC as long as there's so many counters to the benefit of range, or less counters.

This thread reminds me of politicians arguing whether a decrease in the rate of growth is a "cut".

Tab targeting is awesome, when it works logically. Someone please let me know when that happens in SWTOR please. If it doesn't target from nearest player in your FOV to furthest, then it needs to go back to the drawing board until it does.

Time IS telling, there's no denying it. It's a bleeding artery, and that means drop everything and save the patient's life, STAT. There is no company on earth that cannot step in and prioritize, do an urgent resource allocation, resolve the problem, then go back on schedule. I keep seeing from you that this is their game and they know best how to address these issues. This is only partially true, because this game, like any other subscription based service, is subject to market forces, the market is it's boss, and the market RIGHT NOW is dictating their schedule. They can disobey, but just like any boss, the market will dictate the future of the game, not Bioware, and the market is screaming to change tactics, right now.

And you're living in a pipe dream if you think that the rate of attrition can hold out for a full beta of 1.3, the game is on the verge of collapse, due to population issues.

The "problem" is that we are confusing stuns with classic CC, that BioWare confuses the two and gives stupidly poorly thought out values to their one system which sort of covers them all. Classic CC is fine, and it works great. It could use a couple of tweaks (CC breaker refresh is way too long, it should simply be long enough to prevent using more than once in the same fight). Any classic CC is control which breaks on damage. There is ZERO danger to this kind of CC, and it should add pretty much zero resolve, as all it really is to the person under the CC is a limited annoyance, to enable a getaway attempt or to enable the achieving of a goal. The only ACTUAL problem with this is that BioWare was dumb enough to give it to people whose damage relies on DOTS, meaning that the duration is basically until the next dot tick, or 1 second. They need to make these cleanse dots so that they don't auto break, or to survive through dot damage, since an equivalent user would've already DONE the damage that is still being delivered through the dot. The real problem is with stuns, or any kind of CC that allows you to cause damage to a character without breaking it while they have no control over their character. This isn't actually crowd control but a combination of offense and defense that should always strive to be minimized in an MMO. The problem with this is that it's imminently scaleable, the damage allowed to you while you're in this state isn't limited in any way, shape or form, so one stun and 3 people on you and you're insta-gibbed. Stuns should have the highest resolve and their use should be limited in PvP as much as possible. The solution is with a "diminishing return" system. Each subsequent stun only works half as long as the previous one. The other major problem is when you combine the most powerful stuns with the lowest resolve and highest burst damage into one AC, you will NEVER get it right. Ops/Scoundrels need fundamental changes to their class to reduce the "stunlock/auto kill" especially of certain members of other AC's, who you've short changed on CC/Survival in the face of burst onslaught. They are seriously low on sustained damage, and the longer a fight goes on, the worse they are in terms of performance in it. This needs to be addressed and changed, as does their innate survival outside of stupid vanishing tricks to let them survive while not having an "IWIN button" over so manyAC's based on stuns and high burst damage.

Clearly someone's never seen what 3 competent snipers working together can do. The WZ is irrelevant, there is no way to escape the carnage of 3 good snipers working in tandem in AE. It literally rains ground player parts.

Since the WZ adrenals are superior in every regard in PvP, and the choice is "Which inferior stim do I use to gain lesser effect", there's no issue here. Even BW's reuable concern is nonsense, since EVERY SINGLE crafting skill in the game makes their crafting product permanent. As soon as augs, armor, etc revert to lesser stats when you die, and every hour, then you can start on me about how I actually have a reusable effect.

Intents and purposes

Is anyone asking for more damage? No, not at all. How can people be so seriously dense? If I have the opportunity to get X number of trophies in one spec, and X+2 in another, JUST because the method of damage delivered doesn't fit the poorly planned trophy reward system, then the problem isn't with the play, it's with the trophy system, which should not favor one spec over another, which it does. Playing better doesn't make a dotter able to deliver a 5k blow. A lucky 2.5k yea, but being a given for one and luck for another is still wrong. Please understand a position before you try to argue against it.

That's right, and yet here you are STILL arguing against a very innate basic fairness level whereas those two medals you didn't list (and all I asked for was "a couple", which is if you'll note... 2) be reserved specifically for burst players, and dot oriented players be limited to whatever a burst player can get minus 2. You're not even justifying it, you're just saying "accept your innate inferiority" which is a terrible argument. No one's asking for an innate advantage here, just the same opportunity as any other DPS class. So come up with something substantive where I've gotta actually form a thought to destroy or just go away, you're at this point just making noise to be opposed to something just out of contrarianism.

RIght, the two DPS oriented damage medals, as well as all the healing medals, as well as all the tanking medals. Healers and tanks generally don't get the higher end damage medals, so there's a tradeoff. A DPS player should however, have the same access to the same number of medals that another DPS player does. Anything else is wrong. So is "accpeting your inferior place" which is the position you'd like me to take. Further, what on earth would make you think this is a "causal" player issue? I probably play a lot more often and am higher ranked than you, it's a very basic "fairness" issue, and there's no argument which you can make which validates the current design.

BW, please implement a couple of DoT oriented trophies into warzones. Damage oriented trophies shouldn't be biased toward burst damage specs.

There are still a few things that I think should be done. 1. Most important in my mind is that Orbital Bombardment should, if channelled, always go off, even if you die. There should never be a "Must channel long time and THEN stay alive throughout the whole phase of damage" skill in this game. It should be just like a dot, once it's channelled, you've met the requirements. IF it's channelled and doesn't go off completely due to death, then the timer on the skill should reset immediately. 2. Seriously, there should be a couple of dot based warzone trophies in this game. Why damage trophies so heavily favor burst damage is just plain wrong. 3. There needs to be a skill in the Lethality tree that allows for a blinded person to remain blinded through dots already delivered. 4. I am still of the firm belief that there should be a skill which allows you to drop a ground pulse (a small trap on the ground that has the same effect as cover pulse to those who come into proximity of it) on the same timer as cover pulse without the cover requirement. This would fulfill the important "escape" requirement that mobile snipers do not possess to help counter the plethora of gap closers that melee have.

Greatest Huttball match I've ever been in was one where there were 4 snipers, who turned mid into a complete meat factory. Orbital bombardment devastation, frag grenade showers and combined burst was the order of the day, and I've never seen anything like it. The other team could never get a foothold, ever. Fastest voidstar I've ever done was also with 3 other snipers.

Why would they want to buff marksman only? The idea is to compensate for the armor debuff changes, so they targeted all attacks which are affected by armor. MM gets the most benefit because they use those the most, but it's really amazingly presumptive to think that this was done to buff marksmen somehow.

You act as though this is a problem.. this is the entirety of balance. You NEED to be able to be killed by a DPS type when not being protected by a tank. The entire point is to make tanks desirable and valued in a WZ environment as tanks. Then answer isn't to turn tanks into more DPS types, reduce their effectiveness as tanks in pvp, and make healers immortal so that DPS can be emasculated like you prefer them. TTK is fine now if you have a balanced team (balanced isn't 6 DPS and 2 healer invulnerable yawnfests of no one dying like pre-1.2). WHat you need to do is get a couple of tanks, a couple of healers, and the rest DPS. This way everyone has similar opportunity. The point here is that a healer is very effective with a tank, and very vulnerable without one. DPS isn't just a pea shooter who doesn't accomplish anything, nor should they be relegated to be.

Because people who are the most skilled happen to always switch to the god class at the exact same time, making it the god class based on the collective skill of the players who play it. Because all people who play marauders are just plain awesome.

Except that it doesn't work that way. Burst damage isn't "Damage all at once", it's "Damage at will". You don't compare an ambush to a Cull, you compare a "drop/SS/snipe/followthrough/SoS/EG/Ambush/FT" to a "CG/CD/WB/Cull", two things which take similar time, with dramatically different results. Whether burst damage is crucial against end-game bosses isn't relevant, the game doesn't consist solely of end-game bosses, nor is the balance the same regardless of situation. There is PvP, where enough burst damage is king, there's levelling, there's random flashpoints, where CC is more crucial, etc etc etc. I absolutely agree that the gap widens if you can maintain a couple of rolling dots on adds, however with that kind of energy management (and if you're rolling dots on more than one add, you're not optimizing your energy management), then you cannot rule out the dramatic AE difference that a 15 second refresh advantage on OS accomplishes. You have to squeeze differently on MM and you'll get there. I've been testing and certainly not noticing a 15% difference, more like 3-9% on single targets heavily dependent on enemy armor and your use of SS, which is vastly more powerful in the hands of an MM sniper than a lethality one.

I'd probably agree with this, particularly considering Lethality has a significant amount of drawbacks to compensate for it's obvious strengths of sustained damage on a single target and the ability to ostensibly eliminate armor/defenses as a factor. - It's burst damage is wanting relative to the other trees. Sustained damage isn't everything. - The manner of Lethality's damage negates or shortens several of it's forms of crowd control - It tends to be a little weak in the AE department relative to Eng which is self explanatory, and MM which has a tremendous advantage in cast time and refresh of OS. - Sustained single target damage range between specs isn't enormous. When there's gains in one area, as long as there's offsetting advantages in others or offsetting losses in others, then things pan out nicely.

The entire premise of this misses the point that healers don't only heal themselves. They are "force multipliers", by keeping both themselves and their entire teams alive, the effectiveness of the amount of heals per second are multiplicative relative to the damage caused by a single DPS person. The idea that in a 1v1 scenario, a healer must always win to have any kind of value is absurd, especially in a game which has tank protection via both taunt AND shielding, which means simply that if healers had their 1v1 invulnerability (i.e. stalemate) then tanking makes them unkillable. At this point, there's no point to a DPS character whatsoever, as one who is designed to die easily in exchange for efficient killing, without the ability to kill, they are without value. A healer who can keep their entire team alive while protected by another has innate value, EVEN IF they can be killed 1v1 efficently by a toon who is designed to be an offensive killer. The design goal should be that a healer should be able to keep themselves alive without a lot of effort, if properly guarded by a tank type. If not guarded, they should struggle hard to remain alive and be completely preoccupied with the task of staying alive that they are forced to neglect their team entirely. If they err, or are outplayed, they should die, period. With tanking as an aspect of PvP, the only proper scenario should be that the tank connection must be there to enable to healer to be truly effective at keeping both himself and his team alive. With it missing, then there MUST be a choice of team or self and it should be tricky to keep either up without the protection of a tank. Healers without a tank should be MORE fragile than DPS types, who have no heals, thus MUST rely on physical or active defenses or healers solely for their survival. The paradigm "If a DPS can kill a healer..." is simply put, invalid as an argument in an environment where healers can be protected by tanks, and there should be an innately valuable role for tanks as tanks in this game. Their absence should be easily noted and recognized.

Bzzzzt! Wrong!! It's class/spec based faceroll "free kills", not based on the skill of your opponent, anyone who plays an ops/scoundrel should know, it's a piece of cake, any light armored ranged class is a complete free kill, especially those who rely on dots you can cleanse with ease. There's no "skill" difference, it's a class specific free kill, and wanting this to remain is encouraging nothing but continued success for zero skill, but the existence of stuns and high burst damage.

No, really, it's NOT OK to have "free kills", the sense of entitlement pervading the operative class is astounding, in part because they were so grossly OP at release, that even after several nerfs, they're STILL OP vs. several classes. Bioware doesn't seem to get the idea of of class balance, they've never evolved past Everquest original release in pvp class balance, where any necro pet could destroy entire teams while the necro was out to dinner.