Arsenal Merc is middle of the pack as a Ranged Burst class. The other two Ranged Burst Classes are bottom the list trailing off behind. What is it about Arsenal survivability/utility that is so lacking compared to Marksmen Sniper or Lightning Sorc that you think justifies such a huge differential in damage potential?

Well theoretically Arsenal Merc will be way ahead of every other dps class for all round performance. Competitive Overall Damage: Check High Target Uptime: Check On-demand Burst: Check Mobility: Check Ease of Use: Check Survivability: (Not now-but soon) Check! The great unknown is of course BW's response. They may break out the enormous nerf-hammer in 5.1 and smash Arsenal into uselessness, they may completely ignore them for months/years. Their record for balance changes is so bad that there is no way of telling what'll happen next. In all honesty the best advise is probably 'play whatever takes your fancy, because there are no guarantees what the classes performance will be like in 3 months time'. From your initial post that sounds like Sent/Mara

I reckon this is just wrong. Even for most games with a pre-made in there's only one between both sides. So for 8's that's 4 people group queue and 12 solo. That's just my feeling, but for the only data set we have, Solo Ranked vs Team Ranked, the solo queue is way more populated. I just can't see where you get the evidence to support the assertion that more people group queue.

A possible solution to lack of matchmaking would be to have the character names of both teams pop up before the start, like they do for arena's or GSF. So if you see the same pre-made who has already stomped you, you could quit before the game started. The downside would be that half of PvP games wouldn't start because one side would reckon they couldn't win. In my book, some PvP getting stomped is better than no PvP at all...

I agree that vote-kicking for not space-barring is numpty behaviour, but could you explain your thinking regarding groups 'respecting the choices of everyone else'. You seem to suggest that if one person wants to watch and three don't then the three should respect the choices of the one. Why not the other way around?

That's not strictly true. You can contribute to a useful level as a bomber pilot without laser guided hand-eye co-ord. OK, good bomber pilots who can aim will be much better, but there is at least as much 'wiggle room' in GSF as there is in PvP, if you can have decent spatial awareness and think strategically about where to place mines/drones. And you get enough req to buy a bomber by completing the intro mission.

Is there any other way they could disappear? What happens if they disconnect?

Except you're getting the set bonus on a full PvP gear set, which is more valuable than the slight loss of stats in equivalent PvE gear with no set bonus.

So what do Merc and Snipers (the other two ranged AC's) have to End or Remove from combat?

But this a companion for KOTFE alliances. Even the vague PvP stories are less mindless and unguided than that

I really don't understand. Switch off chat and really, what's the difference between PvP and somewhat manic PvE where you die a lot? (But there are no consequences for dying a lot!). If you find drinking tea preferable to combat in a PvP zone, presumably you find it preferable to combat in PvE, since they're virtually the same thing. Same abilities, same animations, just in an entertainingly (for me) frenetic environment. Given the hints that there may be a mission in the next chapter involving successive waves of PvE enemies, a bit of PvP might end up being good practice

So the downtime today has fixed everything? Just got zapped out of the very end of a Warzone and deposited in the Hutta shuttle bay on fleet. Which is very odd considering I was on Dromund Kaas when I accepted the WZ pop. Sort your game out

Marksman lost the 30% crit damage bonus on most of it's hard-hitters down to just 10%. That's made us much less bursty, and way, way at the bottom of the overall dps chart. So the overall value of crit rating (and by extension Mastery) has decreased in comparison to power.

The 're-roll to Sorc' augments? . Seriously tho, power augs were best before and I suspect are even more so since the crit damage nerf.

Yep, Prog seems borked right now