Played almost everyone up to chapter 3+(and watched the rest ) I'd rank them as follows: Republic: Smuggler >> JK >>>>> trooper >>>> JC Empire: SW >> BH = IA >>>>>>> SI (too many "ghosts" for me) Overall: Smuggler >> SW >> JK > BH = IA >> SI >>>> trooper >>>> JC Many people love IA due to large number of endings, but the companions are awful as said before and the writing has many weak points imo. I loved the IA story at first (was my first char), but after I actually played the other storylines, my opinion changed. All of the highly ranked stories have interesting twists, smuggler has the best lines in the game hands down. Also, going SW is much more interesting as gray/light.

I agree a lot of people have different opinions, hence I wanted to add mine Not at all. I would expect the game to leave me at 1 hp, maybe give me a debuff or so instead of flat out killing me. Imagine reading a book and your character dying and then self rezzing 2 hours later. Why not self rez again?

This is gonna be long, no tldr and with MAJOR SPOILERS from other stories, primarily smugger/jedi knight/sith warrior and bounty hunter. E.g. stories which are all imo better than the IA storyline. I've warned you A lot of people posting share the quoted sentiment, I do not and I often get the feeling these people did not play the other storylines. IA was my first storyline and I was fairly amazed by it too at first. After playing/going through the rest though, I must say my initial 9/10 dropped to about 6/10. After playing through almost all the stories up to at least chapter 3 and beyond (and watching the dialogues for the rest), i'd definitely rank both warrior stories above the IA one and the smuggler one just stomps all over it. There is a lot of unexpected in many other stories as well(more on that later), the one plus of ia's story are the 5 different endings compared to the usual 2 or 3 by the other classes. However the characters and writing is not up to par and the only thing that IA story has that the others do not are the few major decisions one can make which affects the set of possible endings. The reason I would rank it at 6/10 at best is due to poor characters, overall lack of choices and character influence and weird story twists that, imo, do not make much sense. Also, a lot of things in the story are predictable and in fact hinted by the dialogues if you listen/read. A perfect example of this is when you talk with watcher X about "conditioning". The whole chapter 1 as well as majority of chapter 3 are basically following this pattern of hint/hint/hint "big surprise" (well not that big if you actually went through the dialogues ). The following wall of text will compare a lot of class stories, so be warned if you intend to play them! Overall, the IA story has good endings and has choices that can affect them. However, it lacks in characters and the writing and dialogues simply aren't as good as in the other good storylines.

I wish I had 2 minutes cd on my ballistic shield... But then again, the poster has a lvl 50 sent and a lvl 50 pt so he's just another fotm reroller. Both MM and Eng have their uses and are good specs. MM is good against other snipers(diversion) and has very good burst and single target damage against non-tank classes. Eng has improved defensive cds and has much better aoe which can be used for area denial and seems to be much more useful in rated than MM(just take a good pyro instead). Personally, I think MM is amazing for regular wzs without a full 8 man group/solo. In competitive play, imo it just doesn't offer enough compared to a mara/pyro. Engineering on the other hand is much better for objectives and has better defense, being a much better choice for rated. In NC or voidstar, engineering is amazing to keep people off the nodes/doors. That being said, I think they should change the plasma probe/ig to simply apply a dot for as long as you are in the area. That way it won't break caps. I don't like gimmicky specs and sadly eng is one of them atm. It just limits the class potential and pushes it into that particular spec to get that extra utility.

No one is asking for perfect balance, other games have shown how hard it is to achieve, just look at wow. What people are asking is for it to be fairly close. As such, a 3:1 ratio is kinda acceptable, since that means a sorc/comm/insert x here have a much better chance to get a group and can perform their role instead of being outclassed by a pt in almost every way or pigeonholed into a specific spec to even by viable(such as snipers, and it will most likely get nerfed since the 18 second fire and forget probe is OP). A 20:1 ratio is a joke.

20:1 class ratio. Even if we throw away the OPs team, it still comes down to at least 10:1. I would say 2:1 would be acceptable, 3:1 kinda pushing it. 10:1 is just godawful. Imagine if in sc2 zerg won 10 out of 11 matches vs protoss. This is how bad it is atm. I had a lot of faith in bioware, but sadly the above post is spot on. Even blizz is now admitting their mistakes iwith regards to certain other well anticipated game and is attempting to fix them. Bioware is the exact opposite. Complete silence and every patch just seems to make the matters worse. The pvp in this game was considered extremely well balanced. Now it really has worst class "balance" I've ever saw in any mmo and I can't even bring myself to use the word "balance" to describe the strength of different classes in pvp. 20:1 class ratio in ranked warzones. Never thought they would even let it go that far...

Excellent data, despite the fairly small sample side. I really hope the other guilds will add up their numbers. 20:1 ratio for maras vs snipers/mercs. Remember all the qq in wow when 2.2k+ arenas had some classes at a 3:1 ratio? In this game, we have a 20:1 ratio in competitive play. Can you say best balancing team ever? Also, I can't believe some of the claims in this thread like "snipers are fine" or "mercs are fine". I mean, look at the data. There are 20 marauders for each sniper/merc. Not to mention, snipers are only really useful using their aoe node denial spec and dps commandos are most likely pyro. If they were "fine", you'd see way more of them.

Heavy armor (~31.5% mitigation in wh gear) and 25% damage shield on a low cd (usually very close to 1 min). Plus several talents to further improve their mitigation that can be taken, depending on spec. The shield bonuses are additive and provide 35% mitigation vs elemental/internal(with the appropriate class buffs, can be talented even higher) and 56.5% mitigation vs kinetic/energy, which are pure tank levels of mitigation. The shield cannot be countered in any way unlike for example evasion or saber ward, where 1 stun completely negates them(since you cannot dodge/deflect/parry while stunned). The shield is equivalent to having around 35% extra hp. On a 1 minute cd... And before this "heavy armor does not matter nonsense", the only class that more or less ignores it are pts. Even annihilation mara's bleeds are only around 35-40% of his damage, and everything else is mitigated by armor. Sorc's force lightning is energy damage btw(sages do primarily kinetic), as some of the posters in this thread are apparently unaware of. The only spec doing primarily elemental/internal damage and/or that ignores armor are pyro pt's. Everyone else, including ann maras, leth snipers, ops etc. do primarily energy/kinetic damage. Operatives can also bypass a lot of armor, but in their current state it takes a good player to use them effectively. For comparison, full wh medium armor is just shy of ~26% energy/kinetic damage reduction. So yes, heavy armor does matter. Also, personally I'd prefer pt's changed rather than nerfed. Make it so that it takes much more skill to pull the numbers they do now. That will be more than enough to 'fix' the class.

Nope. Pts are one of the easiest classes to play with only a few buttons. Not saying any class in this game is hard, but pts are extremely easy to play, if not the easiest class to play. All major pt skills being instants certainly doesn't make this class harder, on the contrary. As such, even a bad player can do well with a pt. A bad mara will do much worse. Not even close. Only a lethality sniper would put out better numbers, but a lot of his damage is from dots and his burst doesn't even come close to pt's burst. MM does weapon damage and as such any target with armor and possibly a shield mitigates a ton of their damage making their effective damage much lower. Unlike pts who rely on attacks that either ignore armor, or are elemental. Not to mention, a sniper dies much faster when focused and has to be stationary to do a lot of his damage. The only specs harder to kill are actual tanks and all marauder specs due to their insane cds. Everything else dies faster and has worse defensive cds. Even a dps jugg is easier to kill than a pt. 25% damage shield on an effective 1 min cd is simply too good. Juggs saber ward can be negated by one stun and relies on rng for weapon damage mitigation, pt's shield is always active. Add in heavy armor(~31% base kinetic/energy mitigation from armor with good gear) and full mobility(everything is instant). Not to mention if you are being focused you can just swap to ion cell. As said and explained many times before, a pt is not squishy at all. You have heavy armor and the best defensive cd outside of tanks and maras. Master strike/ravage are weapon attacks mitigated by armor and shields and are channeled with a long cd. Rail shot ignores 90% of target's armor, is instant and has lower cd which can be reset. On medium armor and higher, rail shot hits significantly harder than the last ravage tick. Not to mention, you can see that ravage hit coming for 3 seconds and use a kb/cd to counter it. That being said, pvp in this game was never close to balanced (maybe pre 1.2 but there were still outliers) and bioware had made next to no effort to actually properly adjust classes in pvp even when backed by hard data and evidence. The test server has been a joke that they did not care about at all(pts doing 800k+ damage a match? who cares...). So everyone's best bet is to stop qqing and reroll a pt/vg

Yup. The only tankier classes are actual tanks and maras with all their cds up. Heavy armor actually matters because most of the attacks in the game(such as force lightning which does energy damage) actually do get reduced by armor and unlike medium armor which is only a few % better than light, heavy armor actually is a significant upgrade over medium. Even for classes like Anih maras,bleeds are only about 40% of their damage, the rest are mostly weapon or force attacks reduced by armor. Their shield is an amazing cd that adds a flat 25% damage reduction against all types of damage. So against energy/kinetic damage, they can have close to 60% mitigation(35% against internal/elemental) as long as the shield is up. Not to mention, they have amazing mobility. Everything they do is instant so they can actually freely move around unlike snipers/sorcs who have to stand still to do real damage and as such can kite, los etc. while doing 100% of their dps. What's not to like? With no signs of nerfs in sight, it's time to reroll one

It's too early to tell yet, it's still on the ptr. From the looks of it, most of the ranked games have 3-4+ maras per side.... Lets give it a week or so of ranked matches on the ptr and we'll see. I doubt the adrenal nerf is the only damage nerf of the entire patch, given current ttk times. But maybe it is. 1.3 is not live yet and i'd expect at least some changes will be made. Atm, your best bet is to copy your pt/mara on the ptr and start owning people

Not trying to compare sniper's/pt's, just trying to give an example of a similar ability. Again, the problem with rail shot is that for 16 heat, it is a 30 meter range nuke that does amazing damage that other instants, outside of talented smash(and even then, smash costs much more than 16% of your resource bar.), can't even dream about. Hidden strike used to be close, but we all know what happened to ops. Other ranged abilities that can do comparable damage, like sniper's ambush, or sorc's chain lightning, have much higher resource cost and also have a cast time. I understand rail shot has a requirement of the target being debuffed, but this requirement is more or less non existent for pts. The idea of simply increasing the heat cost of rail shot is also a good one, as that would mean a pt has to be more careful with his resources. As is, rail shot (and HIB ofc) is just way to good in it's current form. Low resource cost, instant, 30m range, exceptional damage. Something has to give imo.

Railshot is a completely overtuned ability. It has very low resource costs, hits harder then any other non-execute type attack, and is an instant. Sniper's ambush has 2.5 seconds cast, does less damage, and costs 60% more resources. Simply put, railshot's damage should be reduced by roughly 35% percent to put it in line with similar abilites. After that, i think flamburst could use a 1.5 seconds cast.

It doesn't have to, just has to be timed right so he can't finish the big nuke cast/channel cull etc. Snipers do not have a 1 second gcd cooldown, so they can only do so much. If the mara is close to dead before he reaches the sniper, the mara is bad and did not manage his cds properly (or, did not los away forcing the sniper to move).

If you use leg shot, he just force camos onto you. If you knockback after, he can either pop a defensive cd, or if he was smart and you are obfuscated, just wait it out. Even if you do 10k-12k burst before he is back on you (not gonna happen as anything but MM spec and him being bad), after he is back in melee range you will die before the 12 sec cd on leg shot is up or shortly after. Again, talking about decent maras here which are fairly rare given all the fotm rerolls. Bad ones you can often 100-0 before they get to touch you.