Yes and that is the problem. The warzones are about objectives and if a class sucks at playing the objectives in a zone, then the class sucks at the zone. Snipers are not particularily good for anything besides aoeing people in Voidstar and a lot of classes that are great for all warzones can fill that role just as well. Just damage or even killing people doesn't achieve much - in Huttball, it's actually often counterproductive to kill opponents and give them a fast ticket to meet your ball handler at the score line. Snipers are perfectly fine on the total damage they can pull in a zone full of random pugs. Their problem is lack of team utility, bugs/terrible design flaws in cover (like immobilize stopping you from taking cover, any half decent player starts laughing at the sight of a Sniper once they learn about that) and being the class whose damage is most easily negated by skill. Snipers are great against slow reacting people who might not even understand losing or pushing an Evasion-like button when they see that giant flashy warning sign that they're being targeted by a Sniper. And how many of those people are playing tanks and healers? How many are melee DPS who are not running a premade where they're backed by healers? As ranged you can hang back even in a healer-less game and do a good amount of damage with slightly higher deaths. The appropriate comparison is other ranged DPS which is Mercs, Sorcs and to some extent Pyro PTs and geared ones do indeed generally hit 300k in a full length Huttball - and anyone who doesn't regularily hit 300k in Voidstar is just plain terrible, I can do that in damn tank spec on the PT. You must not have played Huttball much if "unknown effect result" while trying to crouch hasn't hit you at a critical moment. And it all gets much worse if you start playing against people who know where Snipers bug in the Huttball map. You're playing in a premade against random morons. Snipers are fine in a premade against random morons. How about you show us some reason to take a Sniper to a high level premade vs premade once rated play is in? You know, playing at a level where everyone knows how to los, everyone knows that immobilize prevents cover, everyone knows simple pillar humping and that the pillars in Huttball catwalks screw up cover, no one is keyboard turning and no one is clicking their skills..? Basic **** that most randoms can't do but any decent player can do. Once you have full teams of people who aren't half useless the Sniper will be screwed. I love playing the Sniper for fun but I'm gearing a Powertech backup in case the rated warzones actually come soon as without some changes the Sniper will be really badly gimped in rated play.

Sniper is fine for ranking on the scoreboard, rather lacking in ability to actually contribute to the team and severely gimped by bugs against good players who don't just let you pretty unharassed in the middle in Voidstar. This video of you being an average damage farming baddie is just more evidence of what we already know. "I can make big crits, I get top 3 damage and I put heavy metal in my videos! PWNAGE!!!" yeah, we've never seen this before.

Yes. It's a bit confusing since a lot of sites mess up the Operative and Sniper skills and list a lot of things as 10m range but every core skill of Sniper (except the stun, grrrr) is long range. The hybrid spec with Cluster Bombs and Interrogation Probe in Engineering and only up to Cull in Lethality might still be better DPS though. It sure feels like it at least. It is a bit lacking in burst though, except whenever you can use Explosie Probe.

You cannot lose badly enough to not be able to hit 300k in a full length game as a Gunslinger. In Alderaan, perhaps, since there you really might not get good opportunities if the opponent defends properly and your team derps around getting slaughtered attacking 1 by 1... but not in other zones. I have a Shadow at 50. On my server Republic is perfectly fine, wins Alderaan almost always, Voidstar is 50-50 and loses Huttball. (Funnily enough the problem Republic has in Voidstar is that it usually has waaaay too many healers so they fail hard on offense.) The main difference is that the Empire has individually more skilled players (by far, seems like good players just don't play Republic) but Republic has more teamwork, as in people actually talk about a plan, call out incs and so on...

Ah, so you couldn't kill Ragnaros HC pre-nerf, the most difficult boss in the game so far. That explains your bitterness. It is funny how many people from the time when raids didn't even have a hard mode yet quit once Blizzard introduced actually hard mode raids. The truth is, WotLK made the raids harder but gearing and actually entering raids easier. TBC loaded everyone with obstacles like attunements and the need to gear grind through all the tiers before getting to the last bosses so no surprise there weren't a lot of people in Sunwell. WotLK relaxed the grinding and gearing but made the raids harder. Not surprisingly, WotLK angered a lot of people who previously had "elite raider" status not due to ability but due to willingness to grind and the security that all the blocks completely irrelevant to player skill (like having to personally progress through the tiers) offered. In Wrath, they let everyone jump almost straight to the difficult content, and you know what, not a lot of people cleared it, but a lot of TBC/vanilla were upset that so many people got to *try*. Cause, you know, when more people get to try more people kill the stuff and it makes raiding seem less prestigious and exclusive... (Well tbh if they had made Sunwell similarily accessible, what would have actually happened is a lot of guilds would have killed a few bosses and then a lot of guilds would've gotten permanently stuck somewhere, at Muru if not earlier. Not very different from the "a lot of guilds kill a couple of hard modes, very few kill clear it all" mode of today.)

It's the same class, just a different name... You really have a lot to learn, don't you, eh? If you're not hitting 300k damage in basically every full length warzone with a Gunslinger you simply suck at this game.

The first boss would be tricky since the companions can't click the consoles and he has some nasty aoes. I tried D7 normal with a tank, healer and two companions and we got up to Bulwark without much problems but there was no hope on that fight, the companions would just die almost instantly. First of all you have the problem that companions can't move from stuff and then you have the problem that targeting the companions for heals is really annoying so they're hard to heal. The trash should not be a huge problem in any of those dungeons, just a bit slow. It's the bosses that would stop you. Kaon actually has really simple bosses apart from the first "boss" event and perhaps the optional bonus boss; the trash would be very annoying to clear with companions who can't use stuns and ccs intelligently but it shouldn't be too hard to clear, just a lot of tedious work. Mechanics-wise Black Talon hardmode would actually be easier on the companions but it's doubtful they can pull off enough DPS, at least the last boss has a pretty tight enrage and once she hits it it's all over pretty fast.

108 % accuracy is what some claim is optimal for PvE since operation bosses apparently have 8 % defense, at least according to some obsessive testers. In PvP, most people have a defense chance of 5 % and to negate that you need 105 %... but your special attacks (everything besides Rifle Shots) come with a 10 % accuracy bonus so you need only 95 % accuracy to counter the base defense chance. It's damn hard to keep your accuracy that low so the general rule is just rip off any accuracy mods and put in something else. Note that putting in a low level crit/surge enhancement from the Ilum daily is almost always better than letting that Champion/Battlemaster level accuracy **** stay in the socket...

Sounds like you could use some practice. I'm 50 with less expertise than you (no BM gear yet, not even full champion geared) and I hit 300k every single match that doesn't end super fast. A typical Huttball match gets me 400k. I've gotten close to 600k in Huttball by playing full damage whore and ignoring objectives completely but I usually don't play like that. Here's the "best" match today (took a screenie since you very rarely see 3k defender in Huttball): http://img860.imageshack.us/img860/9017/screenshot2012022616304.jpg As you can see from the objective score, I spent the entire match nuking down their ball handlers and not just derping around going for damage numbers (which is pretty pointless since as a Lethality Sniper you end up with really high damage anyway, only a few specs can compete with us). I don't think I have screenshots of 5k damage in single blow. That was really simple before the surge nerf but now I can pop everything I have (Biochem adrenal, relic), have the 15 % expertise buff on and still might not get it on an Ambush crit. It's tricky enough to get now that I generally don't bother and I just play properly without medal whoring.

Cull is 30m range for a Sniper. It is 10m for an Operative. The same for just about everything, anything that's 10m for Operative is 30m or 35m for the Sniper. I don't think the Sniper has any abilities with 10m range (though I might remember wrong).

In other words you got kicked out of a raiding guild when the raids got harder in WotLK with the introduction of hard modes and you couldn't handle it anymore.

The point is your credibility is about zero when your example of a brokenly high class is the lowest sustained damage class currently in the game. Smash is literally the only thing a Rage specced Jugg has and their damage is beyond terrible when they're denied the chance to use a powered up Smash. That one Smash doesn't even come close to killing anyone and after it the Jugg does horrible damage until they've powered up another. Juggernauts have a few things that they really shine in, mainly carrying the ball in Huttball and Rage Smash bombing tight groups. Beyond that they're ignorable. Nerf Smash damage and the class will be useless for anything besides ball carrying. And you know, if anything, the damage output on groups with healers and tanks in them is way too low in this game... It's an easily counterable attack. Everything that hits particularily hard in this game is either something easily avoidable if you know the tricks or a super squishy stealth class burst opener. PvP needs those "high damage but avoidable by skill" attacks or it will be reduced to boring attrition fights. (I'm not a big fan of the standard "useless outside of burst when coming from stealth" MMO rogue ganking spec but they chose to include it and it's the only thing Op/Scoundrel has so can't exactly nerf it without making the class useless. Oh wait, they already nerfed and made the class useless...) So he has an aoe bomb and he ends up topping damage in zones where he gets to aoe bomb crowds. BIG SURPRISE! Guess what happens when a Jugg jumps into a crowd and Smash bombs them? He has to be pretty damn good to survive doing that all zone long. Sage damage isn't particularily high, they just top meters by aoe/multidot spamming. The funny thing is I actually agree that sorc/sage is overpowered and needs a nerf but it's not because their excessively high, it's because they have way too much control, utlitity, snares, offhealing/shielding, cc to go with the damage... Scoundrel, post-nerf? I suggest you stand back and let him wipe out that amazing one third of your health fast. After that do some laugh emotes and kill him...

Assassins seem to be the Death Knights of this game: there are more derp kid free kills among them than in any other class but when you meet a good one, they're both extremely hard to kill and extremely deadly.

In other words, you were a cloud popper and got kicked during Yogg progression and now you're trying to convince yourself that you "moved on".

The problem is it just doesn't work like that. Tank classes with a DPS spec will easily get all the DPS medals and all the tanking medals in the same game. A DPS Powertech, Jugg or an Assassin easily gets 3-4 medals more than a pure DPS class while doing the same DPS and there's nothing the DPS class can do, no matter how well they play, to get more. People who play pure healing spec also tend to get very low medals unless they specifically go medal hunting with some DPS skills which is really not helping the team. My Powertech goes in a warzone and easily gets all the damage medals and scores 3-4 protection medals in addition to them every match. I can use tank spec and only miss the 300k damage medal in DPS medals (and even that is possible for an aoe spamming PT tank). I can use a DPS spec, get all the DPS medals easily and still very easily get the protection medals. I basically get 2 medals instantly by throwing the aoe taunt at the initial zerg of the match and then a third a bit later on automatically if I didn't die in the zerg. Not that I hate all those easy medals but even playing as Powertech I have to admit the medal system is a complete joke and gets DPS Powertechs, Juggs and Assassins automatically to the top of the list. DPS specced classes that can heal have it easy too while pure DPS and actual healers get screwed.

It's totally OK. To pull a big Smash Juggernauts need to power up with several skills and conditions beforehand and they can only even attempt one once every 15 seconds. You can counter his power-up phase with good play and he will be powerless. Not to mention Smash has some silly animation issues which means a skilled player has a chance of avoiding the damage completely just by running. Beyond the Smash bomb, a Rage specced Juggernaut has basically no damage at all and if you're getting killed by them with any consistency you're simply bad. Terribly bad. I play a Sniper and a Powertech and even my damn Sniper can just safely sit in one place tanking Rage specced Juggernauts and win 1v1 as long as I avoid the Smash.

Did you try Lich King heroic 25 at 0 % buff? Nobody could kill him at 0 % except long into the expansion with full best in slot gear. The point is, Blizzard adopted a different model for raiding where the hard mode raids and especially the end bosses start out really, really hard, *much* harder than anything in TBC and then get gradually nerfed instead of getting one big nerf to let more people in. They experimented with this for a few raids until they settled on their model. Ulduar was the first attempt with Yogg+0 "really really hard" bonus mode and Algalon which really wasn't very hard except for the limited time you had to work on it. In TotC they tried a different model where the hard mode raid was easier but there were limited attempts and an added challenge of doing it with a minimal number of attempts. This was hard but it was a form of hard hated by players so they went for the Lich King model of limited attempts and gradual nerfing through the ICC buff where the boss started out as ridiculously hard and gradually got easier so that more guilds could clear him. Pre-nerf (0 %) Lich King heroic was much harder than anything in TBC. Saying oh yeah, he wasn't that hard after nerfs is like saying pre-nerf Muru wasn't that hard. Well duh. That they adopted a different nerfing model with multiple phases of nerf doesn't mean you should compare a nerfed boss to an unnerfed one. And what percentage of guilds that raid actually kill hard modes in Cata (besides killing tier 11 modes in tier 13 gear)? What percentage of all guilds kill the end bosses in heroic mode while they're still fresh and un-nerfed? Less than 1 %.

For some of us, the whole point of raiding or battleground pvping is that it's a reason to get together and have fun in vent. Raiding without voice chat would be like having a barbeque and banning people from talking (it's just about the food, damn it! what's all this chit chat??? shut up everyone!) - what's the point?

I'd trade my Assassins double-bladed thing to two proper light sabers any time. Except that I couldn't even if they gave us that option since I deleted my level 50 Assassin after deciding that I simply can't take the derp animation. It looked like I was running around sweeping the floor with a lightsaber broomstick.

The original poster wanted to know how to kick ***. And really, the answer is, at level 14 you don't, unless you're one of the few classes that gain enough from bolstering even at low level and it mainly works with ranged classes who can hang back somewhat and thus not get affected by the lack of survival skills at level 14. No matter how you play or spec, Marauders are not going to be very strong at PvP until later levels. The class is especially screwed at low level since it relies on cooldowns and camo for survival - a low level Marauder is the easiest thing in the game to kill and a high level Marauder is the hardest thing to kill.

Yes indeed it was. TBC raiding difficulty was a complete joke compared to the most difficult bosses in WotLK and Cata. Tell me when did you kill Lich King heroic? At 5 % buff? 10 % buff? 30 % buff? Did you kill it at all? How about you show us your kill of Ragnaros heroic, pre-nerfs? My guess is you haven't even *seen* any of those bosses, just like everyone else running around talking about how WoW raiding has been easy since TBC. Sure it's easy if you only do the easy mode. Ever since WotLK when they split raiding into a hard mode and a normal mode, the end bosses of hard mode raids have been much, much harder than anything in TBC and the normal modes have been much easier than TBC raids. And then, of course, we have these normal mode scrubs telling everyone how raiding is "easier" than it was in TBC. The first tier of Cataclysm hardmode raids were the most brutal overall progression grind in the history of the game (they backtracked and made things easier after it), it broke a whole lot of guilds that had been around for years and cleared everything in TBC. The problem with SWToR right now is that they tried to copy the WoW model of "easy, casual normal mode raids, challenging hard mode raids" but they tuned the difficulty so low that that normal mode is less challenging than a Deadmines run and nightmare mode is not much harder. When you can easily pug the hardest bosses in game with randoms from trade the game is clearly way too easy.

Most people have a 5 % defense chance. People in tanking gear are the main exception but gearing enough accuracy to negate tank stats is not a good idea. To counter that 5 %, you need 105 % accuracy, but most of your attacks count as "special" moves that have a base 10 % accuracy boost. Accuracy is your best stat until you reach the point where your basic character sheet displays 95 % accuracy. Most people do not take the accuracy talent because endgame gear is LOADED with accuracy and you have way more of it than you want unless you change around the enhancements.

Without any way to gauge aggro level (doesn't need to be an addon, doesn't need to be a meter), you can't tell a DPS to watch their aggro. How would they watch it since there's no way to watch it? It removes the skill element of hovering below the tank's aggro to maximize your damage without pulling and replaces it with a simple rule of "wait x seconds and then start smashing your rotation" that any trained monkey could follow. The aggro cooldowns in game require exactly 0 skill from players. You just push the aggro reduction button whenever it comes off cooldown, what room is there for skill in that? None whatsoever. DPSing in this game is an absolutely zero skill position where you just mash your buttons and you're never responsible for anything. There's no aggro meter so you can't even be blamed for pulling aggro (how exactly could you know you were close to pulling? there's no way to tell! so just mash your buttons). For a thought experiment, let's say there was no way to tell whether you're standing in fire. Would that add an element of skill to the game? Hell no. It would just make the game attractive to the scrubs who can't avoid dying in fire in other games. The forums would be full of scrubs screaming "I'm HAPPY there is no way to tell if you're standing in fire, now there's no difference between me and those ELITIST JERKS who avoid the fires!" The same way we now have a lot of people who didn't have the skill to use an aggro meter properly happy that others can't use them to outskill them (and really, it's such a minimal level of skill that it's pathetic how some people still can't use them).

Generally Snipers are a lot more wanted for raids than DPS Operatives. While leveling and running dungeons healers are in huge demand so if you go healer you'll never be in shortage of groups but in raiding it's hard to compare demand. Operative healers are pretty much the rarest type in the game so there won't be that much competition.

There is an easy counter to charge using ball carriers: don't be bad. Don't hang out in places that give warriors free goals. It's not hard. Even if you're a turret merc you can stop the pew pew to move away from the edge and then the warrior can't charge you while the situation passes. Charge for ball carrying isn't really going to happen in high level play once rated zones come up since it's trivially easy to avoid. I fail to see how jumping to a friendly or pulling a friendly are worth complaining about since they just basically get the same result as passing the ball. They have to get the friendly player to a good position first and if your team let that happen, it means you failed already. Fully agreed on the hazards not doing enough damage, though. It should be a percentage of a players health per second and running through fire with a speed increase while taking hardly any damage is too good. Speeding through fire is not outplaying your opponent like scoring a charge goal is. This will all only get worse with increased gear and health pools, the hazards definitely need to get buffed.