Some of the old tree's skill were also often skipped, or you had to choose something you didn't want in a tree just to get higher. Nothing new on that. You can try and take shots at it however you want, the advantages of the current skill path far outweight the downsides if we'd kept the classic trees.

DoT specs are always less ideal for leveling as things die to fast for dots to be worth it, and anni's not getting any impressive abilities till Annihilate at 42. Carnage always did pretty fine for me, but fury works pretty well also.

They bring surprising durability and self-healing that doesnt gimp their dps. They have a raid wide buff if you don't have a sorv heal (altough most teams do) and if so, their bubble is a great utility. Your force barrier works just as well for cheesing mechanics than a merc. Whats important for an ops team is that you can pull the numbers. Sniper's ballistic shield is great in some fight, useless in high mobility scenarios. Good to have it along, but merc vs sorc, I'd say sorc brings plenty argument to be a good contender at equal skills.

If vette still has her shock collar when you recruit jaesa, you have an option in the conversation to pass her the remote. If you flirt with both Jaesa and Vette, Jaesa pops in in Vette "a serious look" conversation, and its pretty reminescent of Mass Effect 1 Ashley/Liara confrontation. Don't know if she pops farther in a conversation or if you pass "a serious look" THEN romance Jaesa if it voids the conversation. No idea how that gets flagged for an eventual kotfe/kotet transition either.

Yes you are wrong. The difference you have trouble making is melee/ranged vs force/tech damage. While melee/ranged (white damage) is countered by.defense, which class have baseline 5% safe of inquisitors/consular classes that have 10, force/tech are opposed to resist, which baseline is 0% for all class, with some specs having a small ammount in their trees, or some dcds giving a few. But its not worth using accuracy in pvp on a sorc for those few instances someone has a dcd up, or that single opponents that has 2%.

The timeline if I'm not mistaken from start of class quest to where we are is 13 years passed. So she'd be in her early 30s. But no one ages in star wars it seems

The change between the classic skill trees, to the current skill tree with utilities is actually pretty logical. It kills hybrid, and allow for earlier potential of each tree. In the old skill trees it would be impossible to give the early utilities and abilities you now get before lvl 20, or it would make extremely powerful hybrids in pvp. If it had not been made that way, the lower tier of each skill tree would be extremly slow paced, with most of the good stuff relegated to the top of the tree. You couldnt get say death field at level 10, it would be lvl 40+ till abilities appear. The tailoring you do is made through utility, and when you think about it, this is what we used to do with the old skill trees, hybrid aside. We all took the same "must" of the spec, and chose utilities in the trees, and some at the bottom of the two other trees, we wished with our spare points. Now the 3 spec share a bunch and you take those you wish. As for stats, as someone above stated you have a very bad understanding of them. Alacrity, accuracy and crit never competed with the old resolve strenght aiming and cunning. They competed with each other, and the 4 core stats were a no brainer. The replacement of them with mastery simplify the mods ammount required for crafters, allows drop in operations and flashpoints to.be universal, and make it overall easier on all. There are still the lettered.mods and enhencement variation availaible if you wish as well, altough a lot of them are not a very good idea. But if you want to stack endurance, you still can. Game isn't perfect, but the issues you identify in your post are not the cause of the problems.

madness works just as well in solo pve, you still have force storm its just a bit less potent, and no instant chain lightning. Otherwise it works fine. I personnaly use lightning (even in pvp, where its far from being as horrible as people say) but both have their strong suits and very different playstyle.

Marauder is significantly sturdier than a dps jug actually, assuming you use your dcds. That said, if thrash pulls are what you are struggling with, obviously you cannot use your dcds every 20 seconds. Always make sure to kill the thrash asap and solo pve dont have a rotation per say. You choose what ability to use based on circumstances. Its not a big boss fight where you sustain dps. But I never use my companions in healer or tank mode, and I typically have to heal up every 3 pulls or so.

Not like say Jaesa. When recruiting her you can see her "give in" to the dark side but it doesn't change the quest, nor the character. She is more greyish than the average light side companion, some dark side choice gets approval from her, but if you choose to murder someone for fun she won't like. Altough since KoTFE you still gain influence for a disapprove, just less than an approval. Some people say it was in the plan but got scrapped in the game, for whatever reason (I suspect time or they ran into a snag). I'd guess so as well from the recruiting dialogs.

You do know "Beta" was 6 years ago, not 6 months ago right? Just checking. Snipers were notoriously not very good for a good part of their history. Sure, fun turret, but 0 mobility or survivability for quite a bit of the game start. Take current sniper, and strip from him the healing ballistic shield, the roll (and obviously the heal on roll), the cd reset, well basically shred everything safe Evasion (once a minute) and shield probe (once every 30 sec, laughable). Alternatively, go run a warzone with those utilities selected. Then take countermeasure, imperial prep, and the roll off your bar. Thats how your MM sniper was in 2 and 3.0.

The difference is, we don't "defend" or try to "sink" a class. I don't at any rate, and a lot of the people who answered you in this thread don't either. Many are experienced players, who've been around for a while, knew a few metas, knew each spec time in the sun, figuratively speaking (or their FoTM shining moment before batnerf hammer happened, often wielded by hulk on steroids). What we defend, is a balance between classes, so that they are all enjoyable. Not the domination of one, or a FoTM of our favorites. Its very hard to take you seriously if you only show ignorance of various strenght the class has, or purposely ignore mentionning them in the hope of making your claim looks better. Anyone with a shred of knowledge about the game spot those people very fast, who downplay their classes strong points and make every small weakness looks like it causes you to single handily drop dead vs a kor'slug on korriban looking at you wrong. And no matter the flipping comment about dev's decision, or some of their concept, they know the game, they coded it, and Keith has been known as a very active player in the dev team even before he took the lead this year. This mean, that like me, hoppin and others who posted in this thread, he is pretty good at spotting horsecrap points, and should among the horse crap there be a diamond hidden (an actually good idea) well its going to stay unoticed in the pile.

Actually, the dps difference is too small to consider MM superior safe in pvp due to one big kicker in lightning favor: Mobility. The spec is great at keeping its dps on the move for a short bit, something MM struggle at, even if you spec your utilities for it. When you are allowed to just stand there and shoot with some target switch, certainly MM will fare better as its their figurative "home field". In general, sorc lightning will do better in pve tough. As you stated, in the sustained aoe department sniper is not really capable of it, unless you add generous use of rifle shot. Suppressive fire hits like a truck, but is very costly. Still, on short to mid aoe the damage can be damn impressive. it always depend on how you do it, I wouldnt sell a good MM sniper short too fast tough. Its not engineering or Virulence, but it can hit decently a group of thrash. Sorc wins when rotational aoe built in the single target rotation is concerned tough. As for merc vs sorc dcds, while merc's dcds are very powerful in pvp, not so much in pve. They coded an ignore of responsive safeguards (along with most reflects, but sadly for merc, it was also an absorb for them) to most fights mechanic after people went a bit too happy on cheesing fights with those, and anyway you need to be directly targeted for most of them to work. Same for Trauma Regulator. No charges for raidwaid aoe. And same for the cd reduction on energy shield Meanwhile, sorc's suit of defensives still work pretty well, with good self-healing still there, and some mild DR dcds on fast cooldowns. PvP is obviously a whole different story balance wise, pretty sure you can see for yourself looking at all the "**** nerf sniper/nerf merc" threads abundance in the pvp subforum). At OP, as stated in this thread, don't sell the class short. Now if you absolutely want to be FoTM, well then obviously no one is saying lightning sorc is, in fact we pretty much all agree it isn't. Its definitely viable, mostly well balanced (could use a tiny bit dps increase perhaps, but hard to say with all the changes to other classes) but its not rolling anyone in pve or pvp. Go roll a lethality operative or deception sin I'd say for pve, and as stated, MM sniper or arsenal merc are still pretty king of pvp. Safe 1vs1, No beating an operative there yet.

for sake of sexual diversity, long standing BW goal, we needed a cougar

Ok there are a lot of very bad advice there. 1st, for pve, you want 110% accuracy. If that one percent is your TB that miss, its a huge loss. Its not like alacrity and crit will hit not hit DR anyway. Next the crit value were DR becomes noticeable is not 1500 but 1800 really. Alacrity around 1500 is fine as well. 2nd, in pvp accuracy does not increase armor pen, it reduces defenses, as in resist chance, not armor mitigation. Since character player do not have a baseline 10% resist chance like pve mobs, and rather have 0% with some having very slight baseline resist, or hard cooldows 10% accuracy wouldnt help much again, its mostly not useful to run any accuracy in pvp on a tech/force heavy class like sorc or conc operative. PvP is a different beast also, as different school of thought exist, and its hard to say which one is really right. While high crit/power builds (all crit/enh safe maybe 1-2 alacrity, and power augs), or even exclusive power/crit build exist, even in class that could use 5% accuracy, or some use similar setup to pve for simplicity sake (thats my case), the idea is probably a bit of alacrity same crit, but high power (mostly comes from switching alac augment to power ones). The idea is you consider with the uptime you typically get, alacrity has less value than the hits you do land to be higher. The first few hundreds point of alacrity tough are extremely effective, and I do believe a basic ammount should be ran.

tbh I nearly never have my companions in heal/tank mode in solo pve. Including heroic. At lower level you have less survivability, granted, but the enemies are also noticealy easier, and do not tax your survivability quite the same as H2 level 40+ will. Sorc, for all people say, do not lack in ways to keep themselves alive. while hard constant focus fire is not exactly something you want, very few instance will the group of enemies that is firing on you will include more than 1-2 strong and above. Anything normal or weak will be wiped very fast by your aoes, and you can just send your dps companion on the elite of the group to hold his attention while you nuke the thrash. Tbh with the recent bug that companion kept not being re-summonned, I just ran mine without a comp due to a lack of patience lol.

doubt its JC then lol. Always alone in pvp instances there =(

lots of things we don't see in his post. 1st, was the shadow augmented full power? we only see one stat here. 2nd was HE augmented at all? Unless i'm mistaken augments were always "left out" of bolster. So it would be a very easy way to make a bolstered toon look really bad next to a BiS one. 2nd, already covered the option to get into full 246 is there, via crafters. Can be a very short time. 3rd As said, its not douchebaggery to say "we should work for something in an MMO". Thats laziness not to want to. And also, hilariously enough, the comment about tier 3 to make a difference, seeing as the bolster is above tier 2, and will soon be at max tier 3 level, yes you do have to be tier 4 for gear to make a difference, because you're bolstered to that level regardless of what you are wearing.

notice how they are all operatives? You never get duel request for a jug, sorc or PT strangely. Some people need their advantages I guess

depends on what they nerf and how. If its a blanket nerf like sorc, ops just became unviable, as currently sorc's capacity in both pvp and pve are roughly at their level, ehps+aps wise. Mercs heals are probably good as well, simply need to confirm what comes from their actual heal, and what comes from their cooldowns. Roughly, you can do -1k hps to any merc's total hps in a WZ that comes from the trauma regulators and the Kolto overload. They need to figure out the difference between hps and ehps, the various restriction a HoT pro-active healer faces that the other 2 dont, and then establish how much of that trade off of burst healing is worth in extra ehps. People have said it, situation where an ops heal would be **** OP never happen in any game mode. Unless you get into a wz against 8 sorc spamming force storm on your tightly grouped team. But any target that is taking sustained damage needs to be set up with 2 GCD (2 probe) before sustained healing can began for operatives right now, as Surgical Probe is balanced around the fact it will also force a dual kolto probe tick. I personnaly like the way ops is right now, its different, its fun its challenging. But any blanket nerf cannot happen and be balanced unless they also change the way it operates, and gives it a way to heal under pressure in pvp, has in this it is the most fragile and easy to shut down of the 3 heal spec right now. Since it also has less readily availaible burst, those 2 flaw makes it the least played healer in ranked WZ, where you'll most likely face seasoned player who know how to shut you down while they burn down your team mates, or you.

its really just design flaw. Basically, if you attempt to use it when you cannot (either by being hindered by Enet, or gore/lance, or just being out of range) it will remove the point you previously laid down, and your next use of it will reapply it where you are. Potentially wasting your precious escape. Your cue to knowing you are able to use it, is its lit up on your bar, otherwise its "dark" like abilities you cannot use like Railshots on target not dotted or with an heat signature, or a sniper's followthrough when none of the abilities that trigger it have been used. Tbh while clicking it off can be annoying, that mechanic is even more annoying.

1st - Where the hell have you been 2nd - Its baseline on crippling slash for maras now, and on shatter shot for sniper. The utility extend the range and lower the cost of the 1st, and the lenght of the 2nd if you so choose. No utility for it on operative or any other non-tank class sadly. Tank able class have it locked into their tank tree, on their filler basic attack and basic spammable aoe (thrash/lacerate, vicious slash/sweeping slash, flame burst/flame sweep) Tbh I'd simply remove it from marauder and sniper as well, or at least have their version be less potent or shorter/with an internal cooldown of how many time it can be applied within 10-15 seconds. The rest of your post is spot on. Even when operative healing its amazing how little I get interrupted other than stun locks.

That post is a massive exageration of the current situation, and a gross intellectual shortcut and falsehood. Nothing else to say about it.

` Midbies and lowbies call BS on that, all by themselves. They are dead, because no more carrots. Seriously try a little harder to bring an actually valid argument. If that was true, they'd be full of happy pvpers gaining their skill carrots. ` You'd use to get a certain entry level pretty much equal to current Bolster, or what it will be, that is the rating just under BiS. We are far from 1.0 days were even before they gave us the basic blue set to "bolster" ourself, you'd get nuked by battlemaster gear with 0 expertise. Even 3.0-4.0, you'd get nuked in pvp with no gear, however you did acquire the first tier fast enough. I agree you don't want people to think they are a burden, but there is a difference between bolster to above max, and bolster to adequate. you keep actually talking as if there was no bolster at all. Thank you also for saying that you like "abusing" bolster to get the best stat. That goes straight into my argument about why too much of it is bad, and you sir a prime exemple of it. In no shape or form should it be logical to use "less" good mods in your actual gear because of how bolster work. Point. I'm all for a reasonnable bolster to help people start into PvP, and this is what we actually have, much better than any other age. Wrong. You'd only need 230 which are ridiculous to get since the change where command token buy them directly. There is absolutely no gear grind to be had there. Empty words. Tbh imo all aspect of end-game should have crafting factored in to a decent level. Choice to buy or make mods for yourself for a price, which are above the entry level (either 1st easy to get set or bolster) but below BiS. Basically "P2W" but in game currency and economy. Because it wasn't like this before doesnt make it wrong. Actually your whole post is filled about how it was bad before. Augments are freely availaible, I'm talking about harder to get mods through RE or schematics. Obviously not ALL the economy of the game is gear or mods. Lot of aesthetic and consumables to be found. Doesnt mean crafted gear doesnt deserve its just place among that. The gearing method can certainly be discussed, and you'll get no argument from me that gearing ONLY through components is wrist cutting inducing. GC boxes itself is just random luck, and not a real primary gearing way. The actual issue is by having only 1 set of gear, there are ways that make gearing to full the fastest it has every been in the 5 years of the game, assuming you do more than just pvp or just pve. If you do just pvp, you'll get to 248 with probably a depression along. If you do just pve, unless you are in a top ops team, you'll never go above 242 other than through crates, altough you'll go fast there. If you do both, you get a 242 shell from HM ops, then turn it into 248 with components. How to go from 0 to BiS in a month. As for making things more alt friendly, you see it in their stated intention to make all currencies legacy wide. So you'll be able to play your "bis" to gear your new toons. But making gear matter absolutely not is just laziness on your part, I'm sorry. It already matters very little. The end goal of bolster is not similar stat, but an entry field that gives a decent fighting chance. Also, if bolsters is not above the max gear tier, it totally cancel any unplanned effect. Also, talking about "even" leveling field, not everyone has a pvp guild that will run a crapload of test and keep the info to themselves should they find a flaw. Are you sure YOU are not the one trying to get an advantage few can have? its currently 238, they'll slightly up it to 242. The difference in dps is roughly 5-7% from 242 to 248. I'd suggest you go with that other guy back on the 4th grade math class ASAP. Assuming a somewhat similar gap from 238 to 242, you get roughly 10-14% difference in raw output. Maybe a bit less, as 242-248 was a pretty big leap power wise. Again with set bonus, which are child play to get, much more than ever before. And again, expertise ensured that while "stat" looked close with 2.0 bolster, they in fact were vastly inferior, and pvp geared people would eat pve geared newcomer with bolster. Again, lowbie and midbies were thriving from the carrot of getting gear before reaching max level. So far, all I've seen are argument for easy, theories which were proven false by practice, and lots of unbased facts. That last little jibe to try and turn this into an epeen skill contest does you no credit. The very "old" carrot argument has been proven time and time again across the ages of our history as a civilization, not just in game, but also in this game. If you don't believe me, then may I refer you to 2.0 16m runs, 16m xeno when gree event came out (there was a reason we wanted 16m and not 8m, even before the leeming rush bug), the more recent 5.0 dead ops that brough back to life when they adjusted their cxp, the uprising that got brough in line and are suddenly ran a lot less. Its human nature to want reward for your actions, and given the choice between 2 actions you'll take the most rewarding one, among other factors. So yes, the "carrot" always was and will be important. Yes in game economy should always be taken into account. Yes, gear should matter, without being a rolf-stomp of the new player that has not acquired it yet. This is what bolster is for, setting an acceptable "floor" level vs the BiS "ceiling" level, not punching a hole through it.

TBH trauma should only be availaible to tank spec, to make them a bit better in their role of reducing damage to their team, and reducing opposite team effectiveness. As far what kind of balance single target heals vs single target dps must be, a great dps cannot kill a great healer alone, but a great dps vs a decent one should assuming they use stuns and interrupt smartly. Currently, healer are able to sustain a bit more than what 1 dps can put, but not that much. They can delay 2 for a bit, but eventually will fall. With a guard, this obviously increases, as the healer's capacity for healing 2 person is greater than for one, most of the time. I'll turn your "2 healer" 4 man group exemple around btw. whats the point of bringing a healer if a dps, which normally better survivability from dcds, and some self-heal, also does more dps than a healer does hps? The tank also massively reduce lethal spikes, and are less vulnerable to mez tactic (focus a healer with interrupt, hardstun and constant pressure while chain mezzing the 2nd one)