I solo every single Heroic 2+ quest with Mako by my side, as Arsenal. Compared to my sentinel, this class is complete and utter faceroll.

I zerged him and he died. What's hard again?

One word answer: PRESTIGE. Longer answer: it's the same in WoW. 10 man and 25 man have the same loot. 10 man is considerably easier. So then why do top guilds raid 25 mans? Why do people mostly care about 25 mans? Because of prestige. Because it's harder to do the content on 25 man. It's the same in this game and I don't see a problem with that.

Yes. Having melee makes some encounters harder and most of the time is a nightmare for the healer. The only reason to ever bring melee dps is for interrupts, and even that can be handled by tank+ranged (other than BH/Trooper at least). It's even worse in Ops, with bosses having aoe damage which only hits melee, Bonetrasher roflstomping them by random target switching.. In this game, there is no "bring the player not a class". It's "bring ranged not melee if at all possible". Sad.

Most likely a viable spec but annoying to play without proper dot timer addons..

When are we getting addons and features they use, like combat log? A date more precise than "soon" or "eventually" would be great..

6 weeks is more than enough time to hit level 50 lol. On more than one character too. If you started at the release and ain't 50 yet, you probably play like an hour per day tops. So, bad excuse.

Your dots will suck without Firebug, and you lose execute phase without Burnout. Using tracer just for armor reduction becomes moot when you group up with someone who can provide the same debuff. Some classes get good results from making hybrids, but I don't see bounty hunters are one of them.

It's the opposite. Only baddies are against the addons, because if we get damage/healing meters, suddenly it will become clear that they're bad. And they're sooo scared of that.

I totally aggre, the animation just looks silly, and since we use this skill a lot, we're kinda forced to spend most of the fight.. well, bend over ;p

Remember that melee classes usually have more mobility, since they generally don't have abilities with cast times, and can dps while moving as good as stationary. I don't know, I kinda got used to melee being handicaped (it's the same in other mmos I've played) so it doesn't bother me that much

That is a very good post, I totally agree. Look at this. When you play a dot class, and there is your mirror in the group, you have no way of telling which dots on the boss are yours, and which belong to the other guy. I'm not sure how am I supposed to play like that. There is no way to gauge threat, and when you do serious content and a boss faces you (and you're not a tank), you often go SPLAT. Important, especially considering that tanking is not a cakewalk in this game. When I'm playing my class to the fullest, I have to choose - do I look at the screen, or do I look at my bars? When I'm using 10 or so abilities with different cooldowns and have to monitor my buffs and boss debuffs for maximum performance, I need a third eye to actually see what's happening on the screen. Again, how am I supposed to play like that?

It is, but you fight NPCs, not actual players.

You can force leap to the turrets to tank them. You have armor debuff ability which is HUGE if your raid group doesn't have a sniper. You have arguably the best defensive cooldown in the game (Invincible/Warding Call). Bonetrasher requires 0 tanks because you can't really keep aggro on him anyway - and you won't get knocked into acid if you don't run close to the edge. Your aoe threat doesn't matter because there is barely any aoe tanking in this game, there is usually no way to get a whole group of adds in one spot and aoe them down like in other mmos - it's also not needed because most trash mobs even in raids can be easily offtanked by dps. Also, every single mmo I've played favoured ranged dps, so that's nothing new - it doesn't mean melee is not needed or not viable, even though Bioware doesn't seem to compensate for this. Yes this game has a bunch of problems. Guardian/Jugg tanks not being one of them.

You can use the actual intended mechanic to disable shields on turrets (that guided rocket thing you randomly get), and just kill them after the boss is dead. That way you don't waste time running out and back.

Level 50.

Commandos are awesome. Great dps, awesome debuff and amazing aoe. Also not reliant on cover. They have everything you could possibly want from a dps class.

But of course it does. How could you presume otherwise!?

Yeah, that's probably why keep getting Smuggler gear with no Smuggler in the group. A few times in a row too. Damn sneaky Smugglers...

What kind of parse programs are you using, something from around 2005? Because current parse programs update themselves in real time. Obviously if you had to do it manually they'd kinda lose their purpose... Heroic 4 are faceroll and doable with pretty much anyone. If you mean hard mode flashpoints, am I supposed to bring every single guild member to a run just to see how he performs? Or should I keep wiping on a boss to see how much % will someone do before a boss enrages? Comment about training had nothing to do with parses, see what I quoted. Obviously you don't need parses for practice but they help to see if you're doing it properly or not. By "executing" I mean doing a proper rotation. Not for 1-2% more dps, that would be silly. But for doing 2k dps instead of 1k, yes. That's the usual difference between good and bad players - HIGH. Who cares about a measly 1% really? Do you seriously think this is all about doing slightly more dps? It isn't. And yes, I'd rather place my bets with a so called "unknown variable" than someone who I KNOW is bad. Maybe I get lucky and find someone decent? You never know.

Assuming I do that, what next? As you probably noticed (or not considering how short sighted you are), operations are a group effort. Even if I do all the math, it won't matter if the other 7 people don't. And even if you do all your theorycrafting, it's not worth anything if you can't execute it properly during a fight. Which is what training dummies are for: so you can PRACTICE what you learned. Practicing is hand holding now? Tell that to people playing competitive sports. Messi you noob, stop training, it's hand holding! The point is, even if you do your math, it won't necessarily mean that you'll play properly - all you get is theory which you might not be able to execute for one reason or another. And when it comes to execution, you want to be able to see which people in your group are capable of doing it. Not to ridicule them. To replace them with someone better who actually contributes to the kill. And there is NO WAY to see if someone is doing proper dps or not without meters. And you can't prove otherwise, because you DON'T know if a particular player is spamming two buttons or actually trying just by looking at him. You just can't. @up Or he could check the parse after a fight so it doesn't affect him at all. No, wait, that would be too difficult. And probably hand holding.

This is not about fine tuning rotations or anything. Honestly. If we're hitting enrage timers, we NEED to know WHO is underperforming and WHO needs to be replaced so we can actually DOWN the boss. So far there is absolutely no way to check that unless you have your whole guild go to Infernal Council encounter with a timer, keep resetting it and record kill times >_> I can see how it doesn't matter for people doing normal or even hard modes, but for Nightmare, it's necessary unless you play with people who you KNOW are good (like old WoW guildmates or whatnot), which is not the case most of the time. Not giving us a combat log makes about as much sense as releasing new content without fixing game breaking bugs in the old one. I mean, which serious company would even consider doing something like that? ...oh wait.

Everything except Directive 7, Battle for Ilum and False Emperor can be done solo as long as you outlevel it.

Stab him with a lightsaber. He dies. It's true, ask Meethra.

It would be easy if we had addons, we could concentrate on watching the floor without having to eyeball action bars all the time. Sigh. Generally that fight isn't very hard though, especially for melee, most problems can be solved by moving all the time and dancing around him. If I do that (usually cba but I sometimes did) I always get enough time to move out.