A good melee dps train can chew through sages and operatives like they were butter. Harder against a Commando/Trooper healer, but then the latter can get locked down if his cd's are not up.

OP healers are great in wz's that allow us to kite and LOS ranged classes, as well as having enough opportunities to restealth. (Alderaan is a great wz for us, b/c its very easy to sucker opposing teams into attacking a strong node). Huttball is a terrible wz for us, b/c we do nothing that another class doesn't do better (in other wz's we are essentially balanced).. Escorting flag carriers works great against newbie teams, but doesn't work at high levels of play (things move too fast, and is almost entirely determined by pulls, knockbacks, leaps and so forth) and a sage healer is more important for that role anyway. We are ok in healing and patrolling mid, where we can los and kite a bit more freely, and that's fine, but we are limited to only those roles and ultimately hinder a teams strat options.

So hybrid tankasins with the right gear are tough, but they are not so tough that it feels game breaking except perhaps in Huttball (where imo they are the best class in the game for that wz). Generally speaking, there dps is manageable to healers. Contrast that with Juggernaughts, PT Pyros and Marauders.. The first two have burst that is just brutal, and the latter has a sustained dps that a tankasin can only dream off.

Yup, Operatives are great against ranged dps. They make sages/commandos and slingers look ridiculous. However, like all healers, they readily go down against decent focused melee, which is why melee is going to be the most dominant force in rated wz's.

I agree with the OP, and I do not play the class. Sages/Sorcerors are being way overnerfed. In particular the DPS specs that are great for PuGs, but not so good against any team that has decent players. The Healing specs are the weakest healers in most rated play, however they are so godly in Huttball that it kinda makes up for it. The problem is they stay godly in Huttball in 1.2, and their abilities in the other WZs are nerfed. It should have been the other way around...

All of this has been done before in 3-3 and 4-4 tournaments. Healing heavy groups never win! In fact, many of the best teams don't even include a healer at all and go all out burst. The groups that do tend to win typically employ solitary trooper healers who are eating a nerf in 1.2, so its completely unclear how things will turn out in that regards..

That's b/c you have never seen proper coordinated dps assist training. I assure you, nothing in this game can live through 3 Juggernaughts all relic/adrenal crit smashing for 6 or 7k at the same time, often against multiple targets. I've seen geared players drop so fast, that my healing bars don't even update fast enough. You simply can't heal certain types of damage in this game, you need tanks to help even out the burst and only then do you have a chance..

Centurion gear... Sorry but the game is quite different when you are in properly spec'd BM armor and play in tournies etc Every quasi decent healer in the game can keep themselves up arbitrarily long against bad players, even 4 or 5 of them. The problem is what happens when you go up against 2 or 3 good players who play off each other properly. Operatives and Sages drop incredibly fast under those circumstances, and only Troopers can keep themselves alive long enough to really influence the course of an encounter (even if it means burning full CDs). The actual healing done is often not a good number to read either. For instance, a Sawbones might pre double HOT 5 players on his team, and be dead within 3 seconds and still outheal a Trooper who stays alive for 20. The difference is the later will keep his full team up during that time, and probably win them the encounter. That's why I don't understand all the nerf cries about Sages. Yea sure, with their AOEs they can outheal every other class. But, imo they are the weakest of the 3 against good competition outside of Huttball. They are just too squishy, and can be completely shut down.

Good luck in rated..

There is so much misinformation about what is, or is not damaging in this game. 90% of posters literally have no clue, b/c they've never seen or gone up against competent players playing as a team before. It reminds me of the bs before WoW put arena in. Simply put, 2 geared juggernaughts or Pyro PT + a Marauder will drop any healer in the game in about 6 seconds flat.. Even with an offhealer, and even with guard + taunt. The only thing that will save you, is the guard slow, or an area cc, and even then its only going to buy you seconds. Similarly 3 concealement ops can open up on a healer and they will be dead before the 3rd has time to backblast. Maybe 3 seconds tops... 1.2 actually makes it worse in that regard, as they become even more bursty. Pure healing teams will get absolutely wrecked when rated goes live. Its going to be all about heavy tank groups with multiple guards to try to ease the excessive burst of coordinated and timed attacks. Tanks in this game, are absolutely the most essential element to high level play.

I've seen Rage Juggs go over 800k before, so this does not surprise me in the slightest. They do obscene amounts of damage, and the burst is just insane. Tankasins are tough but seem ok dps wise. However the geared Juggs/Maruaders and Pyro PTs can put up lol ridiculous damage.

What you describe is exactly how I play it. I'm also your spec. Again all of that is fine, but at the end of the day the point stands that our role is better served by a midfield sage healer. This same problem shows up in PvE. It's not that we suck, it's just that bc of our lack of utility, we're pigeoned into dps or healing and other classes objectively do those narrow roles a little better (eg slingers for dps and sages for raid healing). This would be much less severe if we brought some other abilities to the table.. Like debuffs.

Stats don't mean much in this game. I've had over 750k healing and 200k damage before. It just means the opposing team is terrible and full of new players. In general against scrubs, Sage > OPs > Trooper. Against quality competition Trooper >>>> Sage ~ OP. In Huttball, Sage >>> Trooper > OP. You won't see the problem until you go up against top quality teams with melee assist trains and proper interrupt and cc. They are able to shut us down rather trivially relative to say a trooper healer.

The real problem is that BW seems to be catering to whining from the worst PvPers, and meanwhile neglecting feedback from the top PvP guilds. I assure you, no PvP guild really feared any dps sorcerers, concealment OPs, or dps Mercs. All of there damage is trivially LOSd, unsustained or interruptible. The real problem were Pyro vanguards, Marauders and certain Juggs who are able to assist train and face plant any class in the game in seconds. They make a mockery of sorc and op healers. Pretty much the only deserved nerf was to Trooper healers, who are probably the only class capable of living through the above. Anyway, for weeks now weve had to listen to newbie whining about the WRONG issues. This is not going to end well

First of all, stealthing to the goalline and waiting for the pass all game is a newbie strat in 99% of all matches. You are leaving your team a man short for most of the match, and isn't worth it. Second of all, even if you were going to do that, its better to be a tankasin where your stealth movement is both faster, harder to break and crucially once you catch it, you can't be pulled back into the pit b/c of your anticc. This goes right back to the main problem. There is absolutely no role that you can fill, that another class can't do better. ps.. A sage *healer* escort is more valuable than a dps operative escort. Not only b/c of the heals and bubble, but in the time it takes the op to drop someone. A sorc can overload 2 people into the pit, and/or pull their own teammates to safety. Moreover, that person you just dropped is now going to be present for the goalline stand, which is why its ten times more valuable to throw people in the pit instead. This has nothing to do with being the ball carrier perse.

Sorry, but again no! And you are missing the point. There is nothing you can do while escorting that a sage healer can't do better. Further, unless you are escorting newbs in a pug, who are walking to a goal, you will never keep up with force carriers who will speed or pass out of your los within seconds. The only healing class that has a chance of keeping up are sages, and they are vital anyway, b/c they can pull and bubble (which prevents the fire slow) The whole imbalance here is about high level play, not newb pug play. Anyway, all of this is going to be painfully apparent when ranked goes in and the obvious point will become apparent that no good team will ever use any smuggler or agents at all.

Good luck with that. Btw, i've seen the OP's strat in action before with 3 tankasins. They can score in literally 7 or 8 seconds with absolutely nothing the opposing team can do. They are unccable, they move too fast, and the only way you can stop them is by anticipating where the stealth is, or getting a pull/knock off right when they unstealth to ruin the placement.

Sawbones healing is really incredible, up until you hit full battlemaster groups that focus. The problem is when you have a BM Juggernaught, Pyro PT and say a maurader on you its more or less over. You get cc'd and are dead in like 3 seconds, even with guard and another healer healing you. Its the same problem for sages actually. Meanwhile a Merc/trooper healer can trivially survive that type of focus fire, which is why they are the best pvp healers in the game atm. It is what it is...

Sorry, this is just incorrect. First of all, stats in Huttball mean nothing. The other day, by trolling the middle, I pulled off the 2nd highest damage and highest healing of the wz on my Sawbones. (mostly ae's in the middle) Despite this, I was far and away the most inneffectual player on the team (we had 8 great players, 5 of them on vent against an Empire team that was also stacked with two premades) Almost everything is about speed, pulling, leaps and knock offs. Thats the name of the game. The biggest problem was the second I died in the Middle, I was put in the situation where I had to goalline stand defend. Very promptly I was knocked off into the pit, and had LOS problems healing my teammates. My class is useless in those situations and I had to slowly stealth back to middle (wasting precious seconds repositioning to be effective). The point is, even if I am say 3% better than an equally geared/skilled sage at healing the middle (I'm not, but lets say that I was). I would still come out behind, b/c in every other circumstance i'm 1/10th of what they bring to the table. So, sorry. Anyone who thinks its ok playing a dps scoundrel, I recommend getting a dps shadow to 25 and compare and contrast. Anyone who thinks its ok playing a Sawbones in Huttball, then I recommend doing the lowbie wz's on a sage. I assure you, the difference is so night and day, its a marvel that people are actually making an argument about it. Having said that, I want to emphasize that this is really *only* about Huttball. I have no problem with the balance in the game in other wz's.

This is the type of reply that say's that you have never seen what high level competition with full BM gear amongst pvp guilds looks like. There would never be a situation in ranked play where you would have the ball, waiting around while an op stunlocks you waiting for the rest to spawn. For that matter you would't be alone, and you would be pulled to the goalline if you were stunned. High level Huttball play is so fast that it basically is entirely about who gets the ball first.. Once that is done its speed, speed, pull, pull score 10 seconds max. Very little the opposing team can do once its out of the center and they are going up against tankasins/mauraders etc The problem with this forum is there are a bunch of newbies who have no idea how to pvp, and they're arguing over aspects of the game that they simply do not understand.

Look, you can be fine as a smuggler or gunslinger in Huttball against pug teams. However there is nothing you can do with those classes, that you couldn't do equally well or better if you played something else. For instance, people tell dps ops 'use stealth, go and stealth to the endzone'.. Well leaving aside the fact that thats a pretty terrible strat in general (for many reasons).. But guess what, you can do that as a tankasin, and in the offtimes when you aren't doing that you have ten times more utility. As a smuggler healer, I often top healing charts on Huttball as I lurk around the middle and get HOTs on ballcarriers/advancing classes. The problem is there is nothing I am doing, that say I couldn't also do on my Sorceror.. And in the downtimes when I am dead and back to our endzone, i will actually have some utility. I've played a lot of mmorpgs, and rarely have I seen a dynamic that is as badly skewed as the current state of Huttball.

Huttball is currently the most imbalanced part of the game right now. Force users dominate this event to the point where its not really possible to be effective as another class (maybe a vanguard, but even there i'd take a tankasin anyday). In particular agents/snipers/operatives/slingers are worthless. Their movement and utility is nill for this warzone and so they are relegated to fighting for the center. In so far as that fight at the center goes, they are ok (well los for slingers is always a problem, but whatever). The major problem is if something happens (like death or a strat change) they will be forced into a role where they are at a massive disadvantage. It will be clear once ranked goes in that there won't be a single rated team that uses one of these archetypes, and thats a problem...

So assume you had multiple sets of Rakata, Columni and Champion and BG of all 3 varieties. Our suits are currently really badly spec'd, so the assumption is you would have to pull out some mod/enhancements from the BG sets and replace them judiciously (for instance by getting rid of useless alacrity). Which ones would you do?

Smugglers in general are just really bad in Huttball.. Anyone who claims they are l33t, really have never played with BM premade teams who know what they are doing. They can literally score in about 8 seconds with judicious passing, grappling, force push etc. The action just goes much, much too fast for our movement abilities. If you are a healer, you will find your marks out of range within about 5 seconds. If you are a DPS, you will find that you can't burst down protected tanks, and worse they will be grappled away even if you do by some miracle happen to be at the right spot. Instead our role is centered around the middle, where we can heal/dps with some amount of success. The problem is if there is a strat change (like all retreat to guard, or push forward) our movement precludes us from being effective. It just makes more sense to have another class to take our spot (like a sage for healing or a shadow for stealth/offense) where their versatility will shine.

As an operative healer, I am generally speaking completely worthless in Huttball. At high levels of competition, Huttball teams basically fly around the map and even players at sprint speeds are basically completely out of play unless they have some sort of pull or push. I can't even keep my teammates healed, b/c things move so fast. At best, I can troll the terraces and fight for the center, but if there is a sudden strat change I am the odd one out. As it stands, no ranked team in competition would ever pick a scoundrel/gunslinger. Yea sure, I am fine against Pubs and crappy players, but once things are organized its just a joke. Anyway Huttball easily has the most glaring class imbalances in the entire game right now... Right up there with melee in Ilum! You could nerf ballplayer movement, but that wouldn't improve things either. At the end of the day, BW one way or the other will need to rethink the dynamics and give some sort of unique and powerful abilities to the underpriviledged HB classes. (eg the ability to throw the ball twice as far or somesuch)