I am surprised about this, too. Snipers were already one of the best classes in this game when played correctly.

It used to be Operatives that could kill in a stunlock. Now that they cannot do that anymore, other classes can. That's new.

You can just buy two pieces of the cheapest PvE gear (Tionese Enforcer) and put the mods from your BM pieces which carry the Expertise stat into them. That way you get the PvE bonus which is really powerful for a Scrapper. Your point about surge is pretty valid though (I picked surge mods in a few pieces of my gear but had to sacrifice some expertise in the process), but I would still prefer to keep at least the PvE set bonus. Giving up the PvP set bonus for more surge seems fine to me. Keep in mind that once you get a few pieces of Warhero gear you will have lots of Surge and be reaching the soft cap pretty quickly. Then you might have to get rid of your Surge augments and get Power/Cunning ones instead. But for the best results until then I think it will be best if you take the 2 piece PvE bonus and use surge mods for everything else.

I'm guessing you are talking about non-bubbled Sorcs? They are exactly what they are meant to be: A squishy ranged class that depends on being shielded (guard, their own bubble) and dies quickly once they fail to shield themselves. If you are taking them down from 100-0 in a stun lock, you can be sure that any other DPS class can do the same, but probably quicker.

DPS Operative is probably the squishiest class in this game right now. And they neither have the dps nor the utility to make up for it. Plain and simple. They are not completely useless but they certainly are not en par with the other classes right now.

I would definitely want one or two on my team. I think Sniper is the type of class that is underestimated and will really shine when played in a coordinated 8man group. I predict many "Nerf Sniper" threads once the preseason is running.

I think you are completely right and I hope that Bioware reads this too...

I am afraid that this spec will never work. You can obviously try it and see for yourself but I predict that you will run into serious Upper Hand problems. You have two UH spenders (Sucker Punch and Wounding Shots) and only one reliable way to generate UHs (Pistol Whip). Most Scoundrel players already are complaining about the fact that it's far too hard to generate enough UHs to make a full Dirty Fighting spec work. So it'll be even harder when you are spending half your UHs on Sucker Punches.

It's just bugged. But you can be pretty sure that said Shadow was stuck in combat, too.

I would say that augments are better than the PvP Enforcer Set bonus. However I have the PvE Enforcer Set bonus combined with the PvP Field Tech Set bonus which I will not be giving up for augments.

How exactly has Lethality/Dirty Fighting gotten any stronger? Lingering Toxins/Nice Try is only a small improvement that shouldn't be making that much of a difference. Or did you mean that Lethality has gotten stronger in comparison to Scrapper/Concealment? I haven't played Lethality since 1.2 but I always thought it hadn't changed much. If it really is strong now I need to check it out... But I kind of doubt it.

I am in full BM and have the WH main hand weapon. My impression so far is that we kill slower than we used to, even though the TTK in general has been lowered. When we get lucky on crits we can still make fast kills, but otherwise we don't do any real damage at all. Given that we also are squishier than before (because overall DPS in this game has been increased) it becomes much more of a balancing act. In games where people leave you alone you can still do well. But as soon as people play smart and focus you you will be doing no damage and hitting the respawn button frequently. I don't really expect that to change much during my WH gearing up process because other people's gear is obviously going to get better, too. I also have an Assassin (mostly BM geared) that is much stronger and rewarding to play. Even when you make a few mistakes you are still fine for the most part. When you make a mistake as a Scoundrel/Operative you are usually dead. I don't want this to be viewed as another QQ post. I am just trying to share my experiences with 1.2 so far.

@Ryemfoh: I have never had a problem agreeing (or disagreeing) with any of your posts. What I didn't like was the way that you sometimes seem to intentionally sabotage discussions that aren't going in the direction that you like. As long as we keep our discussions based on arguments (and are open to hear and think about someone elses arguments) we have no problem.

Just about every class can spec into increasing their steath detection by spending 2 or 3 skill points. But nobody did that, everyone picked better dps over stealth detection. Instead those people complained about Operatives being overpowered and now Bioware granted them their wish and basically gave them stealth detection for free. Yay!

Bzzzzz!! Wrong!! Any Operative should know: You can only cleanse tech dots. The dots that light armor wearers (Sorcs and Sins) are doing are force which you cannot cleanse. If you want to blow your evasion (if it's not on CD) to cleanse it: Good luck, you will have another dot on you immediately. Also they can kite. So: Nope, they are far from being a free kill. And if they WERE they would be a free kill for ANY class. My guess is that you probably are a sorc player yourself.

So you're saying a well played DPS Operative is as good as: A well played Powertech, a well played Marauder, a well played Assassin, a well played Juggernaut and such? I would have to respectfully disagree with you.

Yes as I said, we don't usually do off-heals because there are only very few situations where they are better than doing damage. But it would be nice if they were good enough so that we actually would have a tougher decision whether to heal or do dps. Buffing Kolto Infusion instead of Kolto Injection makes sense, too. The suggestion that I proposed is definitely not "the perfect solution" but should be seen as an example on what COULD be done.

If you don't need heals you wouldn't mind other Operatives doing some healing when neccessary I suppose? Noone would force you to heal, you could still do damage the exact same way that you do know. That's what I meant by point #4 in my original post.

As I said, we would be giving up a huge amount of utility and survivability. So while I agree that putting the points into the medic tree instead of lethality is a viable option, my point is that we should be able to have BOTH: Slip Away and Incisive Action. Our utility right now is simply too low. Giving up one utility ability in order to recieve another one simply doesn't cut it.

Yeah I think I agree with you on this one. Powertechs seem to be quite a bit stronger than Mercs so moving Mercs into the "Balanced" group makes sense. BUT their dps got buffed by quite a bit in 1.2 so I think we may be in for a nasty surprise once enough of them figure out how to play now.

Erm... I will NEVER ever try to prove something in regards to class balance with a SCREENSHOT. Any decent PvP player should know that numbers only show a very small part of the picture. If for some reason you feel offended by my post I can tell you that I was only expressing my own personal opinion and you may feel free to disagree with me.

Not true. One example: DPS Assassins can taunt/AoE taunt (same goes for your Powertech if you spec him as DPS). These skills are actually very useful as they cost no resources and have no casting time. Compare that to our heals. Oh yes it does increase PvE performance. During most boss fights there are situations where the healers have their hands VERY full and can use the help. During those times we could fill that role. Now there are also times where everyone has full health and the healers don't really know what to do. They obviously need to do some damage themselves when that happens - which would more than make up for the time that we spent healing instead of DPS and prevent the boss from enraging.

"This wouldn't do anything." You probably meant to write "This would help Concealment a lot while doing nothing for Lethality."? You have a point in that Lethality could use those off-heals just as much as Concealment. I was only focusing on Concealment in my post to keep it as simple as possible. The problem is if they made Kolto Injection stronger for Operatives as a whole, the ones who specced fully into healing would become severely OP. That's why I suggested to connect the buff to Jarring Strike which is very high up in the DPS tree.

Here is what I propose: I think this change would give our class great utility while not making it OP at all. And here is why: Our big problem in PvP warzones right now is that we don't have enough utility to make up for the fact that our class is very squishy and that our dps is only average. We have no knockbacks, no taunts, no gap closer. We all know that. What we DO have is healing. The problem with healing as a Concealment Operative is that there are VERY few occasions where it is actually more effective to heal, than to do damage. When our teammate is under pressure in most cases we will help him more by attacking his opponent, than by healing said teammate. There are a few occasions where I find it more useful to heal than to do damage: - Healing a ball carrier in Huttball. Problem: Our channeled heal takes too long. Often times it gets interrupted in the last moment because either the ball carrier went too far ahead (out of range) or went behind one of the objects that are standing next to each fire platform. - Defending a door in Voidstar. Defending in Voidstar is more about surviving than about killing. So in this warzone I sometimes prefer to heal a tank that is guarding the door than to try taking an opponent down. Problem: Our heal takes too long. We get easiely spotted and interrupted, or our teammate LoS's us and interrupts our heal. Interestingly those two warzones (Huttball & Defending in Voidstar) are the hardest ones to play as an Operative. You might ask: "Why don't you just spec into Incisive Action if you want quicker heals?" My answer would be that I think that in PvP giving up "Slip Away" would be too much of a loss in both survivability and utility. And in PvE giving up "Corrosive Microbes" would reduce our dps (which is already on the low-end) even further. Both skills require you to put 7 points into the Lethality tree. So when you put 31 points into Concealment, 7 points into Lethality and 3 points into "Imperial Education" (those are a given) we cannot spec into Incisive Action. What this would do: 1) It would leave our dps untouched. It is clear that the developers don't want our dps and burst to increase because too many players have been complaining about Operatives (or groups of them ) that can kill "in a stunlock". 2) It would not make us stronger in 1v1 situations. Operatives already are in a decent spot when it comes to 1v1 so we don't need a buff in that regard. 3) It would make us viable in both PvP and PvE. An Operative that does not only do decent dps but also has VIABLE off-heals would be an interesting candidate to pick for your rated wz team/operations group. 4) It would increase the learning curve for Operative players. Great Operative players would benefit from this buff immensely while weak/mediocre players would probably not even be able to utilize on this change. It takes a lot of skill to know when to switch between healing and dps. Especially because given the fact that when we heal someone, we lock ourselves into combat and sacrifice our chance of restealthing and using Hidden Strike. 5) It would give us utility that is NOT dependant on stealth!! All of those times where we cannot get out of combat for some reason we could make ourselves useful. 6) It would fit the role that the developers probably intended when they designed the class: A dps that can do off-heals. Right now our off-heals are not that useful (or only useful for healing ourselves) so most of us only stick to our dps role. 7) It would not make the Medic spec any stronger. 8) It would not make us OP because we lock ourselves into combat when we heal an ally. 9) We wouldn't be using stealth as often. Sneaking up on people and attacking them from stealth is something that too many players complain about right now which got our class nerfed repeatedly. When we could heal better we couldn't (and wouldn't need to) use stealth nearly as often. 10) As I already stated, it would help us most in the warzones that Operatives struggle the most with (Huttball and Voidstar) right now.

Sorry, I don't understand your question. You think I should have put them in the "Strongest" category instead of just "Strong"?