It depends on how you do it. I both dps and heal in wz, and I can tell you a powerful and smart pressure dps can make life very hard, and that sorc being nearly immune to that pressure was what made it OP (due to how roaming mend worked) Typically if you AoE heal you are not single target healing. If you apply a certain aoe pressure, you do kinda force the healer to throw some aoe around and not its best single target rotation. Yes it allows higher ehps, but you are also dealing more dps, and should team mate switch focus target, the new focus target will typically not be at full health, giving the healer, tank, and the target iself less time to adjust (pop dcds, burst heal the new focus target (especially operatives), or switch the guard) THe key here is, even if you spread your dot, you'll still spend most of your time focusing your damage on one target. If you dont, and you just keep on aoeing for "more damage" then yes, you are effectively doing it wrong, even if it looks really impressive on the end of game board. Its however hard to discern easily the good players from the bad just by numbers. You know by playing alongside them. But I know a few jugs who play veng, and do awesome pressure dps while keeping very high single target pressure. So certainly, pressure dps have a place in 8vs8, and somewhat in 4vs4. But the real heavy lifting to beat good tanks and healers is a team's ability to suddenly and brutally switch their dps to another target. And in this, sustained spec are simply not capable off, and yes the OP is right that fury is the main pvp spec of choice for most marauders vs carnage, because the burst is protected a lot better, and is harder to shut down.

not really. Burst dps taxes the heal, and in a short time frame (or on an average player health of 125k) most burst spec can sustain more damage faster than most sustained spec. Not saying it doesnt work, or that smart use of cooldown cannot be very harmful to some burst class (like keeping a carnage mara off its ferocity windows) but most of the time, a burst class will perform more efficiently in that type of setting, and be harder to quickly heal the person that is getting bursted. In 8vs8 its perfectly doable to do well with sustained class, because the true TTK is longer from dcds, healers and tanks. But, the true kings of pvp will always be the good burst spec, regardless of sustained. See Marksman. And I'm going to assuming your numerous upload means "frontloaded" and not uploaded While it matters in control and predictability the actual damage just needs to be together.

If you are talking about "midbies pros" which have perpetual 69s, then yes you are correct. They melt the second they are in 70s. But the second they face someone who is competitive in the 70s and leveling an alt, they melt. Such a guild was having fun in JC a while back. Premade on 60ish toon with some friends, and stomped them something harsh.

If RNG smiles upon you and you get a bunch of crits and secondary hit procs in a short ammount of time, lightning still has pretty fearsome burst. Madness is pretty survivable, and while its never as satisfying to dot someone to death, its efficient in what it does. A good madness sorc can keep single and group pressure dps if he's doing it right, and left mostly alone. Someone said they were forced to "Stand still" using force leech, force mobility is a must, and some utilities are key to being able to somewhat take some focus without losing a lot of dps. In short, both work well, but if you expect something like sniper's facetanking and big hit, you won't get them. However planned right a sorc will win any war of attrition with any class, safe perhaps a good operative. Actually a somewhat decent operative will most likely kill a great sorc 1vs1 in most cases, if he plays his self-heal right, and counter the sorc's escape correctly. Might take a while tough.

Clearly you do not understand the basic that most spec optimal rotation does mean you have basic attacks there and there for ressource management purpose. It does allow them to go for extra dps by going energy negative then using a recuperation move like vent heat. Other classes, like sorc, are balanced around a rotation without basic attack, because frankly when is the last time you tought "good idea to rush into melee range to saber strike" with a sorc. If you are not smart enough to figure out where and when to use basic attack to manage your heat, its your own fault, not the devs. Also, you clearly have a view that PT should be a ranged class. Roll a merc. PT always was meant to be a melee with some mid-range option in the 10-15m, but that needs to be in melee range to deal most of its damage. Not 20m away to deal 90% of its damage.

while some class have some tech resist, not too many does, and its often for a small bit of time, or a very high ammount that accuracy would not do much against (like mara's unrelenting utility, sin's shroud, merc's absorb, etc) Therefore its discutable to run accuracy or not on class that are heavily dealing yellow damage, like engi sniper, Concelment operative and sorc. All other class should be running 5-10%. The exact ammount is personnal preference imo. Might be some game you're happy to be running 110%, and others were you feel you'd have been better at 105% or even not bothered. I'm considering increasing my sniper's accuracy from 105% to near 110% on MM, seeing I deal pure white damage, and sometimes its annoying to shoot through some classes defenses without Target Acquired.

And you be like "PT be like I want my past glories again!" Seriously this isnt asking for balance thats "I want to be FOTM faceroll on keyboard". AP PT already have one of the simplest rotation in the game, you want to give them the current merc's broken defensives, and make them ranged again (thus having the dps of a carnage mara, but able to kite the melee, and nigh on impossible to kite for ranged like sorc that depends on kiting, or make about every sniper kb not really matter). While I agree PT needs some love, this is plain ridiculous. Also the whole whining that ppl shouldnt whine because you have it worse just places you right along BraverDe and all the other sorc whiner (which you'll notice I freely criticize as well on sorc forum) who have no clues on balance and just want their class of choice to be OP. Because your class has issue doesnt matter you should angrily lash out at another that has issue to try and claim the attention to yourself like a four years old todler jealous of his brother. PT has its issue, sorc has its issue, Jug has its issues, and all three also have some strong points. Also take into account that any too defensive utilities might create a monster PT tank if they can grab them.

to put thing into perspective about chilling scream's aoe... Sniper's orbital strike does comparable damage, with 45s cooldown, and 2 sec cast time, and 20 energy cost. Hard to say which is the highest dps, orbital strike hits slightly harder, but on 1 more second duration.

The sith warrior story is imo the best in the game as far as overall fun to run through. The convos are very amusing (altough less than smuggler's but still), and vette is probably the most fun companion in the game. I found a greyish sith warrior works great to make a somewhat believable story and go for Vette as your main comp and romance option (as she is mostly LS) and still have fun with the best DS option. (roughly: you are still a sith, still a ******, still not a good idea to stand in your way, but you dont enjoy crushing babies) The Sith Inquisitor story isnt that bad, but I do find it less engaging, the conversation bit less fun, and the overall theme of gathering more and more power and secret of the dark side while fitting gets a bit old. As for the classes, there is no question than assassin is currently the best one of the two. While in some situation a jug might be impressive, what the jug can do mostly the sin does better. Than includes tanking, and dpsing sadly, but also PvP, and surviving. Vengeance is still a pretty fun spec, as is rage, and both are capable of impressive things in pvp in the right hands, and veng has a decent sustained dps to be competitive in ops, altough not enough to warrant been taken over a sin or mara of equal skill, if its an option, and the sole criteria is "we must make a FOTM ops team" That said, very few ops team care. They might frown a bit at your choice at start, but if you prove you can pull the numbers (and the spec certainly has the potential for it) and have good ops sense, they'll take you with what you feel good with. Tbh the best choice for you depends on what you expect from your class. If you want pure saber melting, and want to feel a sturdy "warrior" type of tank then definitely jug is for you. If you are a bit more tactical, and want stealth and more control, then sin is for you. Its also worth nothing that currently sin really becomes nice only toward the end of its discipline tree, at least for deception, while jug starts feeling pretty good in the level 40s.

Its hard to say. While it is true that number wise operative are capable of the greatest HPS by quite a margin, their EHPS is also the lowest % wise. Simply, its a proactive healer. It doesnt have a lot of burst healing, but with HoTs being put on the target pre-burst, you are capable of acheiving impressive hps. But by placing those HoTs pre-emptively, you are by definition overhealing, and unless everyone takes roughly equal damage, a lot of your heals are into overhealing. In comparison, merc and sorc have mostly smart heals (progressive scan, roaming mend) and direct single target burst healing, and even their pre-emptive options are depending on you taking damage to be used. So if you just set an equal potential hps target for all 3 healing classes, assuming say 4 target that are never healed to full then in any live situation the operative will be significantly less effective than its counterparts. I find it hard to make the class balanced in its current state. While I really enjoy the fact it offers a totally different playstyle vs the other 2 healer class, buffing to allow more "burst" would make its ehps too high, but nerfing hps will make the class obeselete, as, at least in pvp, its not in a very great spot. It works, but not as well as a merc healer in about any situation, at equal skills. The ressource management is perhaps a tad easier and more forgiving. We'll see at any rate. The class does need some interrupt protection somewhere in their dcds tough.

tbh one massive disresperency is that swtor's sustained spec are relatively bursty still, just less so than "burst" spec and with slightly less capabilities to switch target on a whim. Its pretty easy to see when some sustained class were still very efficient in pvp, madness being first in line. Even say vengeance Jug, classifying that spec as a sustained is a bit of a strech, as its just "less bursty" than rage, but a burst spec in its own right. And leth ops. Lol (altough I guess using them as comparison is a bit unfair since I think they are above intended by a bit of a margin) So making madness even more bursty, as you say, will only widen the gap of efficiency that bringing a lower dps but high burst/target switch friendly spec is supposed to bring to the table. It should be limit to clear a burst dps check with 4 sustained, but its not really. Currently a burst spec, even target switch friendly, that gets caught to having to burst dps a target after just having used their 2 big hits is less efficient at it than madness going for a FL/LS combo spam. Lightning's sport probably the most fearsome burst in the game...once a minute. Nice when you can line it up with a burst check phase, but if you have to "keep it in reserve" you lower your dps even more overall. But its a design philosophy, and its the one we got. So yes in practice it means the burst/sustained dps difference should be minor, and yes some sustained spec could have a tradeoff of much higher dps once going, but significant ramp up time. 1% every 15s seems a bit extreme tough, especially if its target locked.

It is a bit of a weakness, but tbh with the potentially combo of both short cd stun and the short cd 30m instant mez, sniper is not lacking in the controlling department. And stunning shrouding shadows always bring a warm feeling to your heart.

issue is some classes are noticeably sturdier in their dps spec than others. Deception sin is one heck of a skank guard, and I'd bet in a group the hatred sin self-heal like mad. Specs like Rage really dont offer as much. Veng can be decent. Still you are at a bit of a crossroad. While a single guard with a good healer (especially the very sturdy merc heals) can stall and require significant dps to break, its simple enough to focus fire the guarder. Even a deception sin with a great healer will have issues being kept alive if you are also smart about using ccs, stuns and interupts on the healer at key moments (like you know the sin just used Shroud and deflection). Issue is twofold really: Currently a lot of classes are extremely sturdy, and TTK is very high. Its simple math to realize our health pool have been increasing a lot faster than our dps. Ex in 1.0, we had 1.5k dps roughly for 13k health. Now we have 9k dps for 130k health. So while health got roughly 10x higher, dps only increased by a factor of 6 or so. Also, we now have classes with much more complete defensives. Even the current runt runner PT has an impressive defensive array by 1.0 standard. However, most of the maps have not been updated with that new reality. weither its respawn timers, average mobility of the classes (it now takes a lot less time to move from say spawn in Alderaan civil war, to an offnode). So stall tactics are currently slightly too efficient, this is a fact. But I wouldnt be so quick to point at the guard mechanic, as there is already a hard enough time to say an actual tank geared pvp tank is worth it. Guard allows a tank to prevent team mates from being focus fired, allows the healer to aoe heals and have higher hps to counter the opposing dps, and the part tha is redirected to them is also reduced. Its the sole tool they have really in pvp to do that. Most tank have nice peel ability and such, but not significantly more so than their dps counterpart. The way I see it you can have tank be either controller (have a crapload of ccs in the tank trees) or guarder. The cc approach make the skank even worse imo. So I'd say guard is right now the lesser of two evil, and that the rest of the game has to be balanced accordingly around it. But currently pvp needs incentive to make tanks queue and worth it, without always making it to acid where "playing the acid" becomes the deciding factor, or allowing 3 players to indefinitely hold against 8, or at least delay enough so that when one of them eventually bites it he can run back before a 2nd is killed. The problem is mostly appeareant in alderaan, hypergate and odessen. In Novare, less so because the method to "pop" cap the node allows a much superior number to cap it even on top of the defender. While it has its moment where its annoying with team specialized in dying over the node, and when you yourself are ina team that is just chasing dps, its one of the map where stalls constantly get beaten. Much more than Hypergate or odessen. TL:DR Its no so much guard as we now have classes with more defensives, more escape, more mobility which make guard appear a lot stronger than it really is. And a dps guarding is actually fairly easy to deal with, as they are a valid focus target, much more than a tank or a skank. Skanks are also decently easy to take down with some competent dps and an offensive cooldown. Issue is the maps, TTK, and the increased efficiency of what I call "Lemming rush" tactic where you just throw ppl in sequence to die at a node, and it makes a chain of never ending warm bodies that keep respawning (mostly an alderaan civil war issue) EDIT: as a side note, I have to say JC has mostly very bad pvp tanks. Most just slap their guard on a healer, then forget about it and run off. YOU as a healer have to constantly run after them to stay within 15m, and they typically run into the open, where you have 0 LoS availaible. Even better, they totally forget about it, and run off, and you dont realize it, and another tank cannot guard you unless you click it off yourself. And thats the part that do use their guard. I'd say 80% of my game as a healer I run around unguarded, even with clearly tank specs around. And next is : do they remember their taunt is useful in pvp too? And not on healers?

while maybe a tad too positive about it, he is not entirely wrong either. Lightning does have very good self-heal, mobility and escapes, on top of some pretty good pressure for a burst dps. And yes the burst is there, but not as readily availaible as say an MM sniper, but not as many cooldowns mitigate sorc either, vs the all white damage of MM. But set right you'll squeeze 70-75% of your damage of one "rotation" in a 6 second window, and polarity shift pressure is pretty impressive. overall in pvp its not in a totally bad place, and once the class with overperforming defenses gets brought down, it will shine better, as they too wont be able to just facetank you anymore.

pub side wins some depending on the time of the day. When stim addict run their stall premade, some maps are near sure win for them. Huttball, odessen etc. If imp get good dps on board with 1 decent heal they're toast tough, as they have very average dpsers. TBH I gotta say I saw plenty of thrash on imp side as well lately, so its a matter of luck. Saw a near 100% imp team all run for a not lit point in odessen twice in a game.

DoTs were never meant to be all your damage. Combined they make a good chunk of it, with Demolish being significant to your single target pressure, and your direct attack comes and add more pressure on a target that already as its health ticking down. As for your definition of a pure DoT class, no class fit that. There is no class that has much more than 40ish% of their damage coming from DoTs. Anni has one of the rotation that uses the most abilities in the game, leth has over 50% of its damage from CA, Viru from cull and Lethal shots, (or used to at least, didnt check the new viru), and jugs's "dot" spec is vengeance, where the dots are mostly a byproduct of your direct damage, not the main damage themselves. TBH scoreboard wise DoT spec SHOULD be above the others, and SHOULD be aiming their effort to taxing the healer's and creating opportunities to trickle down someone's health for your burst dps to suddenly jump on him and get them from 60-0 instead of 100 to 0, which less more time for the healer to react. If as a pressure sustained you are doing less dps than a burst, then what use are you?

Actuallt I'd say currently merc are the best pvp healer. Operative type of healing can work, but it doesnt deal with burst as well as merc, and its easier to shut down. They also lack the same ability to heal under pressure than merc does. Sorc are still pretty great contender no matter the tears tough, but I think a merc's output is greater at least for now.

Tbh I have little doubts lethality will be slightly nerfed. Its seriously over the other parse-wise and it does translate decently to most fights. It went under the radar because it is still one of the less played specs in the game. But yah, the OP has erupted into angry tears of angst long ago, and probably suffer from not understanding what other classes do or do not. I guess when you keep getting dead last on a boss fight you start trying to find excuses and blame the other classes and not yourself as a player. Truth is, he'd use a leth op, or a marauder and he'd probably do even less than his sorc.

you can't set the same total hps target (as seen in the optimal gearing thread for exemple) for all 3 class, since they are all wildly different. Operative, for exemple have significant output advantage, but HoTs by their very nature tend to end up overhealing. Now an 8 person aoe, and a 4 person HoT, + the probe which need to be placed pro-actively to cover serious damage spike means an operative healer the way they are must be producing a lot more raw hps to get similar EHPS numbers, as the rate might be 70% EHPS for operative, vs 90% for sorc.

Lightning always had more RNG from the spec than any other in game, so its to be expected that if the RNG gods align, the dps from that spec can vary wildly, both in the negative or positive. A spec where you have crap crit, nearly no 2nd attack proc might very well be 500 dps below your average, or one where you had a crapload of crit on key abilities like lightning flash and Chain lightning, and they kept proccing their 2nd hit which kept critting as well might very well be 600 dps over your average, giving a wooping 1100 difference from worst rng to best rng.

death mark gets eaten only but other sorc's effect, so say a lightning sorc is there, he can eat your charge, and if another madness sorc is there as well, I do believe each of your dot will reduce the charges of deathmark on both stack by 1 without significant damage boost other than the initial 15%. But thats mostly about bug fixing not changing a "working as intended" part of a spec that is proving to be unbalanced.

I never compared lightning to madness there. I compared madness to other spec in its class, sustained ranged. I'm not that surprised you failed to read more than what you wanted to understand to prove your point. So to repeat: Madness is among the sustained ranged dps one of the most mobile and target switch friendly (not holding a candle to MM or Lightning, but seeing as they are RANGED BURST DPS I'm not talking about them. Therefore, whatever the new target dps is, among the ranged sustained dps, madness should be last on a static dummy to account for that. 2nd- Regardless of how good at it a spec is at target switching, even MM and Lightning lose some dps due to mechanic. The loss % is the less tough, as being burst and ranged they can quickly recover and stay out of aoe around the boss melee have to avoid sometimes. Detailing me how exactly you lose some dps in an ops fight (interrupting your force lightning to move etc) is taken into account in all my affirmations here. And I'm not here to teach you how to be a good dps overall and how to deal with mechanic, but to discuss the potential of a class and its place in balancing it. If that is foreign to you, you have no place discussing class balance anywhere, nor do you have any place disregarding the opinion of people who do raid as worthless, or as you did here, write some kind of reply that shows you didnt even bother reading and understanding the point being brought. Either by lack of understanding of the spec, or what balance is, or just from not having really read, I don't know, but its clear you didnt stop to think somewhere. 3rd- To bring back to point 1 a bit, if you are personnaly having issues keeping up with IO and Viru post nerf in a live fight, you might want to look inward before blaming the class. I do not have personnal experience with IO, but I did raid with one fo the best IO merc on JC for a while, and the spec did noticeably less on fights where he had to target switch a lot. Madness have a short burst rotation that can be set up for short target switch, which is not the case for Viru that needs both dot on target to cull, and IO that can suffer massive ressource issues which force a considerable dps drop. A good part of being a good dps in pve is learning how to minize those factor that makes you lose dps, both by knowing your spec and the fight you are heading in. Dummy wacking is nice to prove you can at least in a perfectly unchallenged environnement reach the minimum numbers before a live trial run (because if someoen can barely pull 5k on a dummy, he wont suddenly pull 8.5k on Brontes). Each spec then have their own quirks and particularities that make them ace or sometimes barely scrap by certain fight, no matter how skilled the player (think kephess the undying in TFB, as an engi sniper while tank is dragging him around). But tbh I don't fancy explaining all that again when I know its probably not even going to be read attentively. Suffice to say, you've actually shot your own warhorse leg with that last post of yours.

Madness should be straight forward enough actually, similar to other classes you can get epic crits on upward of the "hit range" of your abilties, when your relic are procced etc etc etc. But Lightning has the 25% chance to proc a 2nd hit for 25% damage on nearly all its rotationnal abilities. And those proc have of course a chance to crit (safe TB's one that is always a crit) etc. So its in part why you see some crazy variance. While part of the fun of playing lightning is seeing those proc go nuts under polarity shift and people panic over the ton of lightning coming their way and their health plummetting (when done right) it would probably help to "balance" the class correctly if they took out the rng from it, and introduced the average extra dps from it as standard damage. A lot of the high legit parses have both some rather nice crit rates on key abilities, but a quite high % of procs. Tbh I'm at the point I mostly discard 2.5M dummy as totally accurate. We should definitely be using the 4M dummy for accurate result over where the dps of a spec truly is, 2.5M is mostly RNG bragging at this point. I lack the patience to wack a dummy other than to train my rotation, and typically am tired of doing it after 2-3 tries, so you won't see me often in the top 3 spot, but I'd like it if more people did the 4M dummy, as the RNG from a 6 minute 30 s parse is not going to be as marked as on a 4 min one. There's a reason when we first started parsing we were aiming for 5 min to get a decent benchmark.

^this. Operative Assassin Sniper in a lesser extent, a sorc can be hindered and no access at all to their bubble But the 3 I named off the top of my head have 0 DCD that work when CCed.

going to depend on a lot of factor actually. -Is it an actual tank or skank? -is he actually using guard (altough in solo ranked I dare hope so) -what tank is it? -what dps are alongside it. and -who are they. So when in doubt, you can try focusing the tank round 1 see if it works. If he doesnt look like he's guard swapping gun down one of the ungarded dps. Also, you can try mez-locking the tank and gunning down one of the unguarded dps. If they have a PT or sorc dps that doesnt know he has to use escapes to stay up, they are fairly vulnerable to that, but in solo ranked it might be hard to coordinate right. Reason why we say "focus the tank" is a good tank will make it very hard to kill a dps asap, but some dps might be squishy enough that its still faster to gun them down even through a guard. If the tank is a skank tough (tank spec in dps gear) then 100% go for a tank tunnel. Not only is he dangerous dps wise, but he is not as hard as a real tank to focus, and assuming a guard and taunts, you'll do more dps overall shooting him than one of the other he's protecting. The idea behind a tank in pvp is so long as they are there, your party will either attack them or deal massively increased damage, and target focus will be night on impossible. When being attacked with actual tanking gear, it can take a while to get them down. Even skank sins are darn sturdy. But it may be your best bet to focus him down asap. One thing I like to do tough with sintank when I'm fighting another tank is rush off the group, pull their tank and cc him out of guard range. Then my group is free to focus even the guarded target for 8 second, as it'll be outside the 15m guard range. TL:DR : depends on a lot of things, but you can neutralize the tank by shooting him, or ccing him if possible might be your best bet if its an actual tank in tanking gear. A Skank is worthy of being focused down 1st.