If you have any interest in anything beyond the story, then probably you want to lean towards Sniper. Operative dps is a very specialized class. You will do fantastically well on some fights, but many fights you fall behind. If you ever plan on doing NiM ops you will face a severely uphill battle in both dps and survivability terms when playing an operative. A skilled sniper in PVP is very very dangerous, as is a skilled operative. Both can be very annoying. However my strength is in pve and that’s what I’ll talk about. Sniper will outdo operative on almost every fight that matters. And will take less damage doing so. Concealment and lethality both suffer from horrendous target switching. Their insane dps prior to a few patches ago (or rather lethality’s insane dps) allowed them to compensate for those, but unless you are at the absolute peak level, you can’t really maintain those numbers. Lethality is fine for HM/Sm ops, but in serious raiding, neither spec is ideal. Most other Classes and specs will do better. For snipers: engi is the 2nd most mobile ranged dps spec in the game. Marksman is the single least mobile. Marksman’s immobility comes not from a lack of instants (almost every other ability is instacast) but because they need to be in cover for optimal energy regen, unlike other specs. Virulence is quite mobile, for short periods of time, but constant target switching or mobility will cause the spec to suffer greatly. To be the best sniper you can be you should master all three of them. Doing this will also prolong your enjoyment of the class because if you don’t feel like playing one spec you can always switch. Most other classes do not have this luxury anymore with all the nerfs. All three specs possess incredible aoe. On the other hand, aoe as an operative has been a joke for a very long time.. Neither specs have the God Cd’s of a Merc, but have a number of small cd’s which when used properly can negate some of the largest hits in both pvp and pve. On a dummy lethality may pull ahead of snipers, but in reality, snipers are more valuable to a raid team. For leveling purposes Mm or engi sniper will be fastest. Suppressive fire melts through most enemies. As for the story, it’s purely up to you. If you like intrigue, the spy game, bond or Bourne movies, then you’ll probably like the agent story. My personal recommendation is to play as a chess: you get some extra dialogue here and there.

So. In addition to the fear of not even being able to group with friends because of personal story decisions (I.e being kicked from the group for choosing republic on an empire toon), there is now a new glitch that is preventing my raid group from basically doing anything on iokath. Once our characters descend to Iokath, whether by guild ship or by going there on our own personal vessels, we noticed that none of us had guild tags displaying. And yes we checked our settings on that fact. While weird, it was nothing too bad. We all quick traveled or were summoned to the entrance of the operation, only to hopelessly continuously run into the entrance for the instance without anything happening. We couldn’t enter. We tried all 4 modes. Then, we all decided to hop to strongholds and back, or our guild ship and back, we hit the button to travel, and it changed registering that we had hit it, but we didn’t go anywhere. Some of us were able to escape using priority transports, fleet passes, or going to our ships, but some of us were literally trapped on Iokath. I have a character that is literally trapped on Iokath. The only thing I haven’t tried is starting KoTFE on that toon. We have attempted to enter the raid on both Tuesday and Thursday to no avail. And yes, we tried turning it off and on again.

I caution against making it so that if a parse uses CL more than once every 8 seconds it becomes instantly invalidated. There are a number of bosses where you're just waiting and have time to precast things (TC, Op IX, Tanks, Styrak) and so on where you might hard cast CL. I know for a fact Malocath does that on Styrak, so even though he doesn't use the bug, would that invalidate his parse because he used it more than once every 8 seconds (he hard casts it like twice btw) I know that to the human eye looking through the parse that's really easy to determine, but when you have a blanket statement in coding it might not allow for those exceptions. I agree that parses where sorcs are using the CL bug should be invalidated. It's not fair to the small percentage of sorcs who play the game as it is meant to be played that they should be thought of as inferior simply because they do not exploit.

The glitch is very repeatable and no, they are not hard casting chain lightning. Unfortunately hardcasting CL is a dps loss, except in very specific circumstances. If you want a rotation that doesn't include CL bug, then look up Malocath on Shadowlands. He's cleared all content as a lightning Sorc. No CL bug.

Operatives may be great on dummies, but they suffer greatly for a large amount of raid bosses due to ramp up and target switching. Lethality is also a joke in pvp for all but the most experienced operatives. Same thing with concealment. Although they are a melee burst spec they suffer greatly from target switching. If your only point is that operatives can parse 11k on dummies then you are severely lacking in evidence. In middle school you should have learned to do provide multiple reasons for your conclusion. Also parsely is not a valid source of evidence to prove class balance. It suffers greatly from responder bias. People do not upload every parse they do. They tend to upload their best parses, meaning that the overwhelming majority of parses on parsely are outliers and do not represent the class's average dps, but their optimal dps While lethality operatives clearly overperform on some fights, they do not on a majority of fights, including many Apex bosses. I rarely defend bioware because they keep destroying my favorite classes (of which operative is not) but their balance numbers are based on a sample size a thousand times the size, if not more, than what is available on parsely. When you get wrecked by a lethality operative in ranked, or see them outperforming other classes by 2k dps in Apex NIM bosses, then you can come back and complain. (Both of these must occur to a random sample of at least 30 different raid attempts in order to be statistically valid). But I'm tired of people crying nerf on classes whose damage output is even slightly out of balance just because they can't do those numbers anymore. People look at players like Radley-Walters, Iris, Malocath, Beastfury, Jami, Veldix, Mac, Jaymis, etc. as reasons to nerf their class, just because they can perform as well as they do. But these players represent less than .01% of the player base and so basing decisions based on the performance of the absolute best players of their class is just absurd.

I really wish that I had uploaded my parses that I did to test this. I've done about 40 parses to test this, which satisfies n>30 making my "survey" statistically viable. PPA is not properly affected by alacrity. For example, with 1600 alacrity or above, every 5th or 6th PPA prof requires an extra GCD. However, with 1500ish alacrity, the frequency of this issue is reduced to a point where it's only an issue while parsing. I'd have to go through and do a lot of math to determine whether it's even affected st all by alacrity. I've tried out 3 builds: 2k crit/1450 Alacrity, 1850/1600, and 1800/1500 with 2 mastery crystals. I saw a noted dps increase in the last build. Also I'm getting 30-32k energy bursts without raid buffs in the opener more frequently. Basically I got to 45% crit and dumped the remainder of my stat budget into alacrity. Given the history of BW not having internal CD's properly affected by alacrity (IO STB) I would not be surprised if this was something that they overlooked.

Between reflect and Survivability and now that IO is the highest of the remaining ranged dps specs mercs will be more than viable for nightmare operations. While I understand that reflect is not a huge part of your dps but now you get to learn what powwrtechs have been spending years learning: how to pyro shield properly. As for Arsenal's viability, it was clearly overperforming. Now it will be in line with the other ranged burst specs. While arsenal's dps may be lower than the other specs it's survivability, versatility and mobility make it perfectly viable for endgame raids. Previously people were running Arsenal on fights where they should run IO just because Arsenal was easier and the dps differential was so small. With the dps differential changing, you won't be able to get away with using Arsenal for every fight. And in the end it'll make you a better player for it. As for all the people who say that defenses not dps is what needs changing, they have stated that utilities and possibly the remaining specs be addressed in 5.4. So just hold on.

Virulence is not the hardest spec, true, but to master it does require more work than many other specs in the game. As for Carnage, it's an easy spec to learn, but difficult to master in a raid environment. It has a very high skill cap, meaning that the maximum potential dps in a raid environment is harder to reach than with some other specs. I've read veldix'a guide many times. Notice how I used the future tense in my verbs. I was talking about how after the patch MM will be better for many fights than Virulence is because virulence will be 100-200 dps above Marksman on a dummy, meaning on a variety of fights it will be significantly less viable than it is now. Virulence is justifiable on some fights now because of its vastly superior dps to marksman, but after these changes, if they occur as planned, that differential will end up with virulence being less dps than marksman on many fights. I'm very familiar with multi-dotting. I've cleared almost all the PVE content in the game on my sniper. I'm not the absolute best, true, but I'm more than capable. My point with this is I do know what I'm talking about. On multi-dotting fights like warlords, or Dread guards, possibly writhing horror, virulence will be superior to marksman. But on fights where Virulence currently surpasses marksman and there are no targets to dotspread/multidot, it may be the case that Marksman wills surpass virulence after the patch drops. I appreciate that you found something to agree with in my post rather than just writing the entire thing off.

2 things. Pyro dps is squishier in pve than sorcs are. Pyro dps was basically only good on add fluff fights like Bestia and C0, which coincidentally you could bring a dps Sorc of either spec and do more dps on. Also, all pve content in game has been cleared by a Lightning Sorc without using chain lightning bug. I was there for most of it. Granted we can't all be Malocath and I'm not saying we should say because Malocath can outdps Viru snipers and AP PT's that lightning is in a "good" place. This change to madness does nothings to help its viability. The damage is subpar (although will still be better than virulence, which thanks to the changes will not be a burst spec at all but is still labled as quasi burst). It's sill squishy as heck in PVP and PVE and the amount of DCD's they have in comparison to other healers/RDPS is laughable. Lightning and madness both take extroardinarily skilled players to pull off. Same with AP PT and Pyro PT (also, the changes to pyro do not bring it in line with their goals) although there are a few more players who can pull that off instead of the like 4 or 5 they can do Sorc dps. If they don't change things with 5.3 for a lot of these class changes you'll see a lot of people re-rolling Sorc for pve because it will have the best ranged dps. And that's scary. Its less that sorcs will be the strongest and more that all the other RDPS are just so weak in comparison. Given the public rage against pretty much every one of these changes I doubt they'll keep all of them. But it's Bioware, and it seems the more we rage against something the more enticed they are to follow through with the changes.

Whoever it is, they are guided by Calphayus. Or maybe it IS Calphayus. For the portion of the story which is considered cannon and upon which all other story decisions are based, Bioware uses the JK story. In the end of the Jedi Knight story on Oricon, Calphayus is the only surviving dread master, Packs have always been based on the story content in some form or another since the launch of 4.0, and perhaps before. (I wasn't playing in 3.0). The Dread Masters are not only a recurring theme in almost every raid, but they are among BW's most finely crafted characters, from when you meet them on Belsavis to when you defeat them on Oricon. Last we saw, Calphayus was under the care of the Republic and the Jedi Order. In the chaos of Zakuul's invasions, wouldn't it have been easy for him to escape? Without his mask he could have easily infiltrated the Alliance, and with his visions of the future could have manipulated both the Empire and the Republic to Iokath. It was Calphayus's visions which lead the Dread Madters to attempt to spread terror and fear throughout the galaxy. But wouldn't Arcann's invasion qualify as spreading fear and terror to all the main worlds of the republic and Empire? Seeing this, Calphayus realizes his visions have come true and escapes to complete the work that the Dread Masters set out to complete. And my last point is that Bioware loves re-using old villains. These are my theories. I don't care if you agree or disagree with them. Just throwing them out there.

When you look at things like swing certain specs at top dps all the time and thinking, "Oh, lets nerf the crap out of them" you probably know very little about those classes. Virulence is over performing, but it is certainly not overpowered. Any fight wit a huge amount of target switching virulence suffers greatly from. Arsenal in its current state is overpowered. As a ranged burst class it puts out more damage than most melee burst classes. I'm not even going to mention survivability. Operatives by far now are the "top dps spec" from a pure dps spec but many raid teams do not consider bringing operatives to apex bosses because ops are literally garbage for some of them. They possess some of the highest dps capability in the game but their ability to target swap is appalling. it takes a great player to make these classes work in those situations. And that's the problem that people today are running into. You see specs like virulence, lethality, and carnage being too specs for many fights. But the truth is that these classes have much higher skill caps than others. There are maybe 12 players in this game who can play carnage at its maximum potential in pve. And that's being generous. Arsenal, on the other hand, has an incredibly low skill cap for the damage it can do. I digress however. My point is that people are judging classes to be overpowered based on what the absolute top players in the game are capable of. These aren't people who are just talented gamers, but they put time and energy into mastering their classes. When a class is consistently performing beyond its expectation for the vast majority of players of that class, then it is in need of a nerf. Playing a ranged class in both pvp and pve, as well as playing melee and clearing nearly all the content in the game, I will say this. There is not a single melee spec that is in need of a nerf. Most of them need buffs. The only ranged class that needs a substantial nerf is Arsenal. IO, Engi, and Virulence need slight nerfs. It not as hard as bioware is currently giving them, because if you look at fights that are dummy parse fights, like writhing horror, tyrans, dread guards to an extent, kephess the return of the meme, etc., then those specs will be overperforming, it's true. But a majority of fights in this game ranged sustained specs suffer greatly, and with the current way these changes are going, I'll have to play marksman on my sniper for more than 60% of fights because virulence and engi will simply be too garbage. The advantage of sustained classes in general is that they are great when they can just whack the boss, but when target switching or a heavy amount of movement becomes a factor, they fall much closer to what should be expected. TLDR Don't judge the entire class based on what the top 1% of the top 1% are able to do. There are many more factors besides just "numbers" to consider when balancing a class. Such a show these classes work in real environments, not just on a dummy. All of these factors must be considered before balancing a class, which I'm almost certain is NOT what bioware is doing right now.

While I agree that the dps nerf is a little too much, and I don't even play Arsenal (I used to, still know it very well). Yes utilities are an issue. From a pve perspective Marksman and Lightning are technically viable for endgame fights. Even without the chain lightning bug. Unfortunately, it takes skill to perform at those levels. There are videos of both lightning and marksman being used on nightmare Brontes, for example. And they weren't being carried. My point is that this is not the end of the world. In pvp they will still be perfectly viable. We will hopefully see less games where over 50% of the players are mercs. In pve it just requires people to step up their game with Arsenal and also to learn IO. In the end it'll make them better players. Again, I do not agree with how drastic the dps nerf is. Instead it would have made more sense for Mm and lightning to receive buffs and Arsenal to receive a slight nerf. Hopefully they'll address the utilities in 5,4. For now, we wait.

If you're looking into nightmare raiding then you should also consider what buffs you're bringing to the table. If you (for whatever reason) don't run with an Arsenal Merc or don't have a PT/Sin/Jugg dps in the group, carnage brings the much needed sunder. A lot of classes provide the internal damage buff from anni, and almost all of those classes are commonly used in Nim. If on a fight you could do equal dps with both carnage and anni, but no one else in the group is running sunder, then you should do carnage. Sunder is among the most important debuffs to bring to raid. Carnage takes time to master. But in the end the payout is worth it. There are a few specs in this game wit high skill caps, and carnage is one of them. You may not be Radley level, true, but few people are. And if you aim for the moon, even if you miss, you'll land among the stars. With that corny saying out of the way, best of luck!

Although Virulence and Engineering (in specific situations) are top-tier specs for PVE, there are some situations (NiM Brontes) for example, where the sniper class falls far behind other classes in terms of viability. Yes, with top-tier players it is feasible for you to be carried for the parts of the fight where you are not viable, or what not, but why not be like a Marauder, merc, operative, etc. with a spec viable for every situation? This post and discussion will survey opinions of what is wrong with MM, and possible solutions to not only make the class viable, but to also make it fun and interesting to play in PVP and PVE The Current State of Marksman/Sharp Shooter (for terms of this guide, I will be using MM terms, because I play my slinger once in a blue moon). PVE: Strengths: Moderately High Burst Damage Incredibly Effective Target Switching Strong AOE Potential Relatively Easy Energy Management on most fights Relatively Simple Rotation Moderate Survivability Weaknesses: Immobile Turret Incredibly Low Sustained DPS Reliance on Cooldowns to Manage Energy Boring Rotation PVP: Strengths: Good solid burst Trauma Good CC/Control (KB's, stuns, roots, mezzes) Fairly Survivable Long Range CC Immunity Excellent Execute potential Not Interruptable/Chargable while in cover Weaknesses: If you have to move, you're screwed. People think you're squishy, so they'll try and kill you, making it just annoying to deal with. You can't keep up the pressure for long. If your opening burst doesn't kill the enemy, it becomes significantly more difficult to manage them. The list of strengths does outweigh the list of weaknesses, but when you compare those to the mobile tank that is the merc, who can walk around, be more survivable, and do more dps than a sniper, it becomes much more clear that MM is not in the best place in either PVP or PVE. I've got a couple of "quick fixes" in mind, and some more elaborate fixes. I do not reccommend *all* of the quick fixes. Pick a few. It's important that the class still require some skill. Quick Fixes: Headshot now reduces the energy cost of takedown by 10, up from 3. Muzzle Fluting has been redesigned. Followthrough reduces the energy cost of snipe by 5 for the next 20 seconds. Marksman's Finesse has been changed. The buff from Marksman's Finesse is no longer consumed upon use. Zeroing Shots has been changed. The buff from Zeroing Shots is no longer consumed upon use. Precision Ambush, in addition to its current effect of increasing the armor penetration of Ambush, now grants Corrosive Barrage, allowing your next Followthrough to refresh the duration Corrosive Dart and immediately trigger damage from Corrosive Dart. Lasts 5 seconds. Elaborate Fixes: Sniper Volley now allows Penetrating Rounds and Ambush to be used while mobile, but with 30% reduced damage. This talent would be tacked on under Marksman's Finesse. Sniper Volley is now a baseline skill for all snipers, which increases base energy regeneration by 2 per second, and alacrity increased by 10%. This no longer resets the cooldown on penetrating rounds. Finish the Job, in addition to its current effects, now allows Sniper Volley to reset the cooldown on penetrating rounds. (I'll explain this later). New Ability: Level 58, Coordinated Strike/Rob 'em Blind: When this debuff is placed upon the target, it stores the energy of incoming attacks for one massive strike at the end of its duration. Deals 5% of the total damage dealt against the target at the end of the duration. Lasts 8 Seconds: Instant Cast. 15 Energy. 1 Minute Cooldown. The top four sources of damage during this time produce no threat over the duration. Now, the whole thing with sniper volley was to essentially keep it how it is now, but without providing the reset on SoS that would totally screw with engineering's and virulence's rotations. It also was to free up a space for the new ability. It's inspired by the ability "Death Mark" in the Dragon Age games, and were it to do the sum total of all damage dealt against the target, would be incredibly OP (something easily over 100k, if not 200k). The goal would be to make it about a 25-30k, if not a little more, in the current meta. This gives MM snipers a valuable raid cooldown, as well as a way of helping with raid threat. As for the simple fixes, the goal is to make it so Marksman, while keeping the burst that it is known for, to have respectable sustained dps. Also, it is incredibly irritating to continuously apply corrosive dart. Like Lightning and AP PT, we should be able to have its refresh as a part of our rotation. It serves a similar function for all of us (buffing damage) but is not a central part of our damage. We are *not* dot classes. The dot is just a bonus. On target swapping fights, unlike with AP and Lightning, we will not have to reapply our corrosive dart, because more likely than not you have a merc with priming shot for the ranged buff. The only rotational changes that this would bring about would be that you would prioritize using followthrough every time that it is available, and that you would have a "filler" spot in the rotation where you used to put Corrosive Dart, and you could fill that with a snipe, Coordinated Strike, cybertech grenade, etc. Let me know what you think. Again, the goal is not to make MM more powerful than Vir or Engi, but simply to make it a viable option for snipers. By no means should it parse higher than Vir or Engi, but the relationship should be closer to the relationship with IO and Arsenal, or Concealment and Lethality, etc. The dot specs are technically higher, yes, but the burst specs are viable as well! It is my hope that constructive discussion on the flaws of the classes in this game can usher in a new era of class balancing. I am highly aware that some of my changes may not work as well for PVP as PVE, such as the new ability, and while I do PVP as marksman almost exclusively, my experience is primarily in regs (I'm a casual PVP'er, or in this era, a Command Crate PVP'er). I welcome the input of everyone though, but remember that this should be constructive. If you don't like something, then say how it should be different. Like I said, these are my opinions and ideas. Thanks All!

Rydarus, I'm curious. For whatever reason, Hew isn't being consumed by Warbringer. That means that you could (if you did charge follow by hew) get 3 Hew's in before warbringer fades, esp. if alacrity is higher. I've done it a few times, just depends on when hew procs. Thoughts? It does more damage than slam, albeit it does consume more focus in this rotaion. Might be worth it for a burstier rotation.