....Yes? Pinpointing which element (or in this case, which class) either over-perform and under-perform and then directly changing them to fall in the line while trying to minimize overall impact those changes have on the greater whole is pretty much basic way how to balance game. In this case a certain class (Rage/Focus knight and warrior) are clearly over-performing compared to all other classes so they should be changed to fall in the line. Its absurd that you take what is pretty much the most reasonable approach to balance and try to make it sound like something outrageous or insane. Yet again, you use pretty much a text-book Strawman argument fallacy. I have neither said, nor implied anything close to what you have written there. You have taken the worst-possible interpretation of my arguments, grossly over-exaggerated it and use that as a basis of your counter argument, instead of anything I actually wrote. I mean it it sure looks good arguing against something silly like "So I'm guessing you want to play an easier game where nobody can do more than 2-3k damage in a single hit, give everybody a ton of hp so that they have no risk of dying" instead of the actual argument, except for the fact that it is completely made-up. You do realize that there exist such things as "buffs" and that they were implemented fairly often in SW:TOR, right? For example for Operative Healers (playing one at launch and playing one now is like difference between hell and heaven), Marauders, Juggernauts, Assassins , etc? What you say sounds indeed terrible, but the only way it could happen would be if you ignored the very existence of buffs. Which is...stupid. Also the fact that you seem to consider Rage/Focus Guardians/Juggernauts (and from context of your post pre-nerf Sorcerers and dps Operatives, as you are generally talking about nerfed classes) as " one class starts to shine as a decent/fun class to play" is really eyebrow raising. So a class is decent/fun to play only once it is so ridiculously overpowered it is breaking the game? Really? ....The Assassin tank is the best tank in the game, both PvP and PvE. What are you talking about? Again, Assassin tanks are best tanks in the game, both PvP and PvE. What the hell are you talking about? Buff Vigilance? Since it is slightly under-performing at the moment as opposed to the grossly over-performing Focus tree which needs to be nerfed? Again you seem to ignore even the possibility of existence of buffs as long as said buff is not your 50% AoE damage reduction skill. Yeah, there is undoubtedly a certain amount of players that left the game due to nerfing of classes. If said amount of players was significant or even noticeable is another matter entirely. Majority of SW:TOR players are here for PvE (class stories and things to go with them) and give rats *** about how certain class performs in PvP. PvP players are just loud and annoying minority Buffing everything without nerfing is horrible idea. Both buffs and nerfs are tools that are necessary for balancing the game. Trying to balance it just by using buffs is like trying to build house alone, with just one arm. Sure it is theoretically possible, but it is far more difficult and in majority of cases, you simply wont be capable of building that house. Few juggernauts, power-techs, mercenaries, operatives, marauders, snipers, sorcerers, assassins, guardians, vanguards, commandos, scoundrels, sentinels, gunslingers, sages or shadows would be opposed to buff. This does not make blindly buffing them a correct course of action. This game needs balance. And you wont achieve balance without using nerfs.

Yes, reducing the efficiency of Smash without completely breaking Rage/Focus tree would be preferable. The problem is that your suggestion would have consequences that would leave the overall balance in worse place then by simply nerfing Rage/Focus, even to the point of breaking the spec. As was pointed before, just because Vengeance/Vigilance is not on the level of Rage/Focus does not meant it isn't viable in pvp or pve. And even if Rage/Focus tree would be simply deleted from Marauders/Sentinels they would still be an extremely formidable and powerful class. So.....no. If you have such keen and precise future-seeing skills, why not use them for betterment of mankind, or at least to win national lottery, instead of squandering them to predict changes inside a video game? Because increasing the damage of key tree abilities of say...engineering by 50% will surely leave no repercussions in PvE, right? Not to mention the fate of those poor shmucks who for some reason wont have that 50% AoE reducing skill. It will prevent any use of AoE in the PvP outside of Smash and those which were specifically buffed to counter that skill. Plus those buffs will create huge problems in PvE and in fights against those lacking that 50% AoE Damage reduction. So yes, that skill will break any AoE skill in the game. Which is by order of magnitude worse than breaking of single spec, which is the worst possible outcome of nerfing Rage/Focus. Ok. Lets clear something up. I am not attacking your suggestion out of some perverse lust of seeing smash nerfed (In that case I would be actually supporting it like crazy. 50% reduction in smash damage plus 50% reduction in all other AoE damage for 2 skill points? Where do I sign in?). I am attacking your suggestion because it is an utterly horrible idea. See above, and also revisit that wiki link in my last post about Strawman argument fallacy. You seem to be really fond about using it. Yes. Despite their current state, the way they were pre-nerf was far more harmful to the over-all game. Especially Operatives. And I am saying it as someone who was playing Sorcerer and Operative at lvl 50 before those nerfs hit.

What is better 6% increase damage on one of my skills, 3% increased critical chance or 50% AoE damage reduction? Gee I wonder. Did it ever occur to you that the reason why there is 500 threads that rehash the exact same stale arguments is not because people lack your genius but instead because thats all there is to discuss? If smash spec is a problem than the simplest and best approach is to nerf it directly. If smash spec is not a problem than nerfing is not necessary. Breaking every other AoE in the game by introducing a skill that halves received AoE damage was not discussed simply because its a silly idea. Yeah, because they are 2-4% damage reduction or 2-4% increase in endurance. Not basically doubling your survivability against a whole type of attacks. No, it will just make all AoE in PvP useless. For 2 skill points. Yeah, you are right, why would anyone use it? Yes, which is filled with almost nothing but people disagreeing with your idea and you defending it. Why does that make you proud? What has that to do with anything? Like, at all? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man. To be precise, look under Structure, Step 2, point 4. It is "compromise" that creates far more problems than it fixes, which makes it a nonviable choice. Nothing more, nothing less.

That is assuming that they wont add extra skills in every skill tree so that ever tree peaks at 36th skill point. And considering that almost every level increase in similar MMORPGs went hand-in-hand with new skills, I would bet that that assumption is wrong. Yes, because 50% AoE damage reduction is of course completely useless outside of reducing Smash damage... ....You REALLY don't see what is wrong about creating an extra skill solely just so you can...not even counter, more like survive, against a single build in the game? Instead of simply, I don't know, nerfing that particular build? Why would they adjust AoE damage reduction? Again 50% AoE damage reduction is flat out better than ANY OTHER OPTION you could get after getting your 31st skill point. I have really hard time grasping how can you be so naive. The only one who would not always take this skill would be those poor clueless newbies who don't read forums, guides, dont get how PvP works and don't read world chat. Sorcerers. Roughly 40-50% players played them at launch to the point where I regularly saw WZ with 8 and more Sorcerers per team and they still nerfed them. Also you are discussing the current FOTM spec, trying to fix it with a heavily flawed and controversial idea and are sticking around to defend it. If anything this thread moves surprisingly slow for PvP forum.

Removing autocrit is a no-brainer and something that should have been done a long time ago. And you are dramatically over-exaggerating the state of jugg/guardian ignoring Focus/Rage tree, number of smashers AND their reaction. There is nothing optional about a 50% AoE damage talent. I don't think you really realize just how a big deal 50% reduction in AoE damage is. Those 2 skill points doesn't matter - with exception of some poor unfortunate hybrids, changing 2 skill points wont break the build, and 50% AoE reduction is literally better than anything else they could get after getting the 31st point talent. It doesn't matter if PvE or PvP 50% AoE reduction would be such a ridiculous boost to survivability that you simply wouldn't be competitive in either if you DIDN'T have this skill. Its a band-aid that breaks the game against anything else than smash. Yeah, Juggernauts/Guardians don't really have have any other specs comparable to Rage/Focus. Well guess what, other classes don't have any comparable specs either. Heck Vigilance/Vengeance, despite needing a buff or two, is actually competitive in both PvE and PvP even now, instead of being broken like, say, Operative Lethality. Really, its greatest flaw is basically not being overpowered to the point of breaking game, like their other dps tree.

Ok, so let me get this straight. First you want to basically reduce all AoE PvP damage by 50% (You meant just AoE damage made by players, right? You wouldn't just flatly reduce all AoE damage by half and turn many PvE bosses into jokes, right? RIGHT?) And then increase AoE damage of AoE dependent specs on the level of Smash to compensate. So instead of of nerfing of one tree of two advanced classes, we first nerf ALL AoE abilities, and then buff only some of the specific ones back to be competitive. Which just by the way completely breaks balance in PvE and still makes dozens of currently often-used and useful skills (Orbital Strike? Acid Grenade? Frag Grenade?) completely useless in PvP. And all that, just to avoid nerfing Smash. (which is one tree for two advanced classes) ........GENIUS!

Why would you ignore Waylay and Energy Screen? Both are hugely effective and pretty essential for Concealment build. In comparison, Culling and Scouting..... aren't. http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#4010cZGhGodkrbfzZhr.1 This is roughly the cookie-cutter Concealment build. Those 3 points in Inclement Conditioning may go into Survival Training, Culling or Scouting if you REALLY want to (despite the fact that each of those choices, possibly with exception of Survival Training if you are often grouped with attentive healers, are far worse than Endurance boost), but outside of that you shouldn't move a single talent point.

Thanks for linking that blog, I was looking for something like that for long time.

Put those 2 points from Scounting to Pin Down and we talk. The 3 points that are in Culling can go into Inclement Conditioning too, but thats a little more subjective. But using those 2 points to have a better stealth detection and a 2% increase in useless stat instead of 2 second root? WHY???

Doesn't using combat ress gives everyone a party-wide debuff that prevents everyone for using combat rez again for about a minute or two? It might have been that.

Three things to point out first: 1) Take Cover is a notoriously bugged. I have Sniper, and I cant count the number of instances I couldn't move into natural cover despite the fact that I should be able to. Or the amount of time getting into cover took 1.5-2 seconds thanks to activating it during the lag-spike. 2) There is not cover everywhere 3) I am pretty sure that "gap-closer" was not exactly what Bioware intended when they designed this ability, thus classifying this tactics as "mechanic abuse". Its not an issue for now, thanks to how rarely it is used, but I would bet a good fortune on Bioware immediately nerfing it once it is used often enough to warrant the attention of the forums. In short using taking cover as a gap-closer is unreliable, limited and not even an intended use for the ability. While it can be situationaly useful, to considering it as a cure for Operative limited mobility is ridiculous. In that case you can consider enemy Sage accidentally knocking you towards another enemy player a "gap-closer" as well. Does "jack of all trades, master of none" ring a bell? Even then, its not true. Operative are hardly more versatile than other classes and in many cases, there are actually LESS versatile. Concealment Operative suck at ranged and healing, Medicine Operative suck at damage (unless you spec hybrid, in which case you underperform in BOTH damage and healing) and Lethality Operative suck at everything. Do however note that (as a poster above me said) when someone says "Operative sucks" it does not mean that Operative is not viable to play - that he cant kill enemy or heal or something. What it means that he under-performs compared to any other class. Marauder, Juggernaut and even Powertech are better at melee than Concealment Operative, with better mobility, damage and survivability. Sorcerer, Mercenary, Sniper (and probably also everyone else) are better at ranged than Lethality Operative in every way. Mercenary and Sorcerer are better than Medicine Operative (Mercenary at survivability and utility, Sorcerer at everything) and Assassins are better at stealth than Operatives (by virtue of Force Sprint that can be used in Stealth) And if all other melee classes are better at melee than Melee Operative, all other ranged classes better at range than Ranged Operative and all other healing classes better at healing than Healing Operative..... Whats the point of the class exactly and why would someone, say in a rated Warzones, brought Operative instead of someone, ANYONE else? To be honest I utterly loathe whenever someone comes into the forums and posts something like this. No matter how friendly or well-meaning he/she is, in the end the general impression of such posts always boils down to "You all suck and should l2p". To say nothing about the ego to think that they alone out of god knows how many dozens or hundreds of Operatives reading those forums know how to play the class "correctly" and that such a basic advice as "use pillars/walls to LoS" or "Pick target which are attacked by other players" can somehow solve all complaints about the class.

That would be a buff to operative/scoundrel, so the answer is, of course: LOL, NOPE!!!

THIS Cull http://www.torhead.com/ability/4Z6qJC1/culling not THAT Cull http://www.torhead.com/ability/dZW3AiK/cull One would think that all that talk about 3 talent points would have tipped you off...

The problem is that you have to invest 3 talent points for 3% increase in damage. Which means that you get 1% damage increase per talent point which is just bad. You will get more bang for your buck by investing those 3 points anywhere else.

So, your idea is to penalize healing in a way where 4 healers will be just as effective as 2? So basically when my team gets 4 healers and enemy 2 we automatically lose, because those 2 healers are just as effective as our 4, but because they have only 2 of them get two extra slots they can fill with dps or tanks, while at our side the two of our healers are basically useless without it being their fault, because they cant heal effectively, but also cant deal damage because they are specced in healing, turning the match into effectively 6v8? And that in the game where team composition is at best 50% (when having a 4-man premade) and at worst 100% (when having PUG) random and no player can affect it in any way? And this didn't strike you as HORRIBLY BAD IDEA?

So basically, what you are saying: I, subjectively think that the class is fine. Therefore the class IS fine all the other people who don't think think so, are clearly horrible players who don't use it to full potential and need to l2p. Is that it?

You mean that spreadsheet in IA class forums that a) uses numbers from before Concealment nerf b) says that while Concealment has a higher burst, and sustain, its higher only by about 100-150 damage c) and focuses only on PvE ? Because I couldn't find any other number-crunching related to Lethality vs. Concealment on that side. If I missed something I would greatly appreciate if you could link it, as stuff like that is relevant to my interests.

I would gladly sacrifice Kaliyo and Temple on the altar of the Dark Gods, if I could have a gender-swapped (that is, female) Vector as a male romance interest. He is that smexy. Must be those pheromones.....

Lets see.... Better story, better companions, better voice-actors, better looking animations, better character theme, better faction, less bugs, better ship.... Did I forget anything?

The misconception comes from the fact that extra accuracy reduces the enemy DEFENSES. However defenses actually mean enemy dodge/parry/block/whatever and not armour rating. And, just like accuracy, defenses only work for white damage, which operatives don't use... So Yeah.... Accuracy is 100% useless for Operatives.

http://www.torhead.com/ability/53WrvAw/avoidance-training That is all.

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#401rffMzh0ozZZGbrkMM.1 This is probably one of the better Operative healer builds around. You may notice that its extremely simmilar to yours, so you were on the good path. A few pointers. -Medical Therapy is bugged and doesnt work for now, so any points there are now wasted. -You have 2 free points, that you can invest wherever you please. Vanish will give you increased PvP survivability, Lethal Dose will give you stronger DoTs and greater chance for energy regen and Adhesive Corrosives will slightly annoy your targets - the choice is yours. Once fixed, those 2 points should obviously go into Medical Therapy -Cut Down is fairly useless talent for a healer, as you wont really have enough energy OR time to be throwing Overload Shots or Carbine Bursts around. Flash Powder is far from stellar, I agree but it increases your survivability a bit which always help. The rationale for this build is that after taking Surgical probe and Surgical Precision, there is not really anything else worth taking in Medicine tree. With Lethality, you get 2 30m Fire-and-Forget DoTs to throw around between heals (to weaken enemies, and regenerate energy), increased utility with shorter CD of deliberate and superior energy regeneration from Combat Stims (which you should use whenever possible, as it's 10 free energy every 30 seconds) and Lethal Purpose (2 energy per critical tics, doesn't seem like much, but when you have 30 or 40 (with Lethal Dose) chance to crit and you DoT 3-4 targets... The energy regen is equivalent to that of talented Diagnostic Scan WITHOUT you having to stand around and channel like idiot)

http://www.nerfnow.com/ Relevant.

And? What exactly do you want them to say? It actually doesn't matter because you would just moan and complain about THAT instead of their silence. And you can get pretty good idea about what are they doing from listening to interview and observing the situation on Public Test Servers. The fact that they don't bother to add fuel to fire by posting on this pile of bullcrap that masquerades itself for a PvP forum does them credit. Silence is golden, especially if you consider alternatives.

Uh, are you saying that the way how you can counter the whole spec with dispel is OK AND that you abandoned the spec because of how easy it is to counter? I'm sorry but that does not compute. Dispelability of Lethality DoTs makes the whole tree useless in any kind of organized PvP, which is kinda a huge issue.