The idea: After paying Cartel Coins to unlock an item or set across our Legacy via Collections, those items should be Bind on Legacy when re-acquired through Collections. Why I want it: This would allow greater customization of Legacy armor sets and vastly increase our choices for Legacy weapons. Ultimately, a weapon slot in the outfit designer would be ideal. If the entire weapon-slot itself is problematic, a color-crystal outfit slot would be nice - especially in combination with BoL weapons from collections. For those of us with lots of characters, managing Legacy sets of gear can be a hassle when all the sets look alike, especially with the bug where set bonuses don't show up on items in legacy storage. (I thought of this idea while trying to figure out how to easily distinguish my new Mercenary/Commando DPS set from my PT DPS, PT Tank and Merc Healer sets.) For those of us who consider outfits carefully and certainly for role-players, the limited options for BoL weapons is especially frustrating. This improves both issues. Why you should want it: In making items unlocked from Collections more useful, you incentivize use of the collections system (i.e., more CC spent). Even players not concerned with cosmetics might be inclined to unlock items just for better inventory management, widening the market for CC. Players who don't want to deal with the hassle of managing extra sets of Legacy gear, or with losing their preferred cosmetics, might be more inclined to create new characters and thus spend more time (and money) in the game. Before I end, I'll add yet another plea for a legacy unlock for a shared bank account. Pretty please? Lots of great QoL stuff in the past year or so, thank you for your work!

I promise I won't rehash any arguments about Marksmanship, but I've been interested for a long time in trying to rate the "burstiness" of each spec, but I've not managed to nail down a useful and reliable way to work it out. There's too much variability in definitions, conditions, and in the parses themselves - especially given the inherently short time window. Would it be possible to use the same method used to generate the expected sustained DPS numbers and optimal gear stats to generate an "expected burst damage" rating for each spec? How to define/rate burst? A 5, 10, or 15-second window? A simulated TTK (i.e., how long to deal, say, 100k damage?) A variable time-window? (since different classes probably have differing lengths for their "burst phase") A rating (e.g.,"115% of baseline") or number ("15s @ 7000dps")? Other complications: Include pre-cast or pop-out-of-stealth abilities which might not be possible to use in a boss fight? Would the optimal stats be different for burst damage vs. sustained? (That information might be quite useful for NiM, come to think of it!) Speaking of NiM, should consistency be considered or rated? (E.g., Auto-crits) Perhaps like tanks' "spikiness"? While I presume raid buffs should be excluded, they are still worth mentioning, since classes with a raid buff are guaranteed to have that ability available to them. They can also, perhaps, time the buff better to benefit their own damage. Anyway, I don't know how difficult this would be, because I don't know what your tools look like, but it might be useful information - interesting, at least - if it's feasible.

Thanks for the replies. I understand the concept of multiplicative vs. additive in and of itself, and your calculations all make sense to me when I read through them - but I still don't quite get why my simpler way doesn't also work. But apparently it doesn't, so I'll drop it. I am, however, still seeing a >10% drop in my own DPS in parses. Your list does not show any difference in optimal gearing, so it shouldn't be a gearing issue. It may be nothing more than my own demoralization from watching my close-to-BiS toon drop to nearly the DPS levels I used to get out of comms gear. It's hard to care about maximizing a parse when you watch such low numbers roll through. Where's my weeping rakghoul emoji, BW? A dummy parse is the epitome of a no-target-swapping situation, so the number of times you have to reapply it there is not relevant to target-swapping penalties. My point is that Marksmanship DOES have a penalty, and depending on the situation is either minor or enormous, like other classes. You're missing the point. If AoE damage is too much, then nerf that - but Marksmanship already has to sacrifice single-target DPS in order to use Suppressive Fire. It doesn't make sense to double-tax Marksmanship. For that matter, BW has stated that they don't want to penalize any spec for having good AoE, but that every spec should have an appropriate amount of AoE. (I really like that every spec has different types of AoE. Not every type of AoE is equally useful in all situations, but each has situations in which it outperforms the others.) In short, I'm not arguing that Marksmanship doesn't have any burst damage, but that it doesn't have more burst damage than other specs. Both Lightning and AP have auto-crits in the rotation without having to use cooldowns AND have crit-boosting cooldowns. Recklessness is only a 60% boost, but considering the auto-crit Thundering Blast, that it has more charges and can be used up consecutively - it's a more potent burst-damage cooldown than Laze Target. Even Annihilation, the quintessential non-burst spec, has Annihilation (that crits for very nearly as much as our super-crit Ambush w/ half the CD once it's rolling), Berserk and Bloodthirst. In short, I think you're overestimating Marksmanship's burst relative to other classes. That's really my over-arching point as well. The argument that Marksmanship should be the "lowest-parsing spec" is based off a series of assumptions about the relative strengths of Marksmanship that I believe are significantly over-estimated. I think it's more fun than any other class, and its popularity suggests I'm not unusual in that, but surely no one would claim a class should be punished for being fun? It's hardly the alpha class some folks - including BW,, based off this patch - seem to think it is. Maybe when I'm not dealing with a cluster of real-life troubles I'll do another meta-comparison of relative raid performance compared to dummy parsing. Last time I did it (2.5 or so) I came up with a 3% gain for MM in raids relative to dummy performance, compared to other classes - with a 5-6% best-case gain. Then again, math clearly isn't my strongest subject so maybe someone else should do it. It occurs to me that this might not be the right thread to debate a specific Discipline, so I apologize if I'm out of line. In any case, I'll drop the whole thing. I don't expect any changes based on my complaints anyway.

Marksmanship may have less target-swapping penalties than many classes, but it certainly has noticeable penalties - and no benefits like DoT Spread. First, Corrosive Dart: not re-applying it is a 5% loss, while re-applying it spends a GCD and is costly in terms of energy management. Second: Movement. Marksmanship is easily the least-mobile class in the game. Not only is almost every ability a cast or channel, but leaving cover erases our defenses, reduces our energy regeneration, and takes time to enter/leave cover. In many cases, this penalty significantly outweighs any benefits to being ranged. With the ninja-nerf to Entrench in 4.0, this is an even larger issue than in the recent past. Regarding AoE, you're mostly right - but it's not without drawbacks. Suppressive Fire is powerful, but extremely costly in energy and single-target DPS. Contrast to Disciplines like Vengeance and Lightning which have powerful AoE abilities in their single-target rotation. Which method of AoE is preferable or more powerful varies on the situation, but it's unfair to simply claim that Marksmanship ought to lose potential single-target DPS based on access to a strong AoE that, in using it, already sacrifices significant single-target DPS. Survivability is good on Snipers in general, but it already comes with costs: a lack of mobility and utility. Our only raid utility is Ballistic Shield - which is an excellent and under-utilized ability - but we have no mobility, no battle rez, no heals, no self-heals, no cleanse, no other role, etc. Is taking less damage in fights with unavoidable AoE is worth giving up flexibility and utility in every other fight as well? I think it's an even trade and I believe the intention is to incentivize raid leaders to bring a variety of classes. But again, it's not fair to ask us to give up our single-target DPS - our primary and only role - in return for a small incentive to bring us to a handful of fights. Finally, while Marksmanship has moderate burst-damage potential, it's hardly as potent as AP or Lightning. Our offensive cooldowns are not as powerful and less frequent and our cast times are longer. In other words, we are not "more bursty" than any other burst spec. Certainly less burst than Lightning! Maybe Marksmanship shouldn't be at the top of the chart, but saying that it should be the lowest parsing spec in the game is unfair - especially by as large a margin as it currently sits. Speaking of that margin... how do you figure on only a 7.8% loss on Marksmanship? We lost 20% crit damage off 90% of our damage with an average crit rate of 50%. That's a 9% DPS loss without even considering the reduction on Penetrating Blasts (at least another 1%). That would more closely match the 11% loss I'm seeing in my own parses, and that others have reported as well. The top parse on Parsely (6097) since 4.0.3 is almost 13.5% below the top parse from earlier (6927), and (presumably) even with adrenals and good RNG hasn't managed to match your number yet. I recognize the small sample set there, but even the top-parsers own personal best (on Parsely) has dropped by 11.8%. Anyway, I think your calculation may be optimistic unless there is some adjustment I'm missing. EDIT: Oh, just in case I came across a little belligerent - I'm not "calling yall out" or whatever, Bant and KeyboardNinja. I really appreciate yall's work.

Goblin_Lackey just updated his thread on optimal stats; his calculation for optimal stats appears unchanged for Marksmanship. The new DPS rankings puts Marksmanship with a 8.6% loss in DPS, now at 5.52% below average. That's less of a loss than I'm seeing, or calculated, but it's still pretty huge. (I average close to 50% crit rate, and we lost 20% of our critical damage bonus on 90% of our damage + the nerf to PB, so anything less than 10% seems pretty optimistic to me.) To put that in perspective, a Marksmanship sniper in fully optimized 224 gear today can expect less DPS than a MM Sniper in comms gear was running yesterday. We took a substantially larger nerf than any other spec, despite not being anywhere close to the top-performing spec to begin with. Normally I would suspect a PvP-related concern to be involved, but just looking at the scores on the Ranked Leaderboard, that seems unlikely - since Snipers are the lowest-scored class there as well.

Marksmanship has gone from a middling spec to the worst spec in the game by a large margin. Even poor Rage and Fury are better now, and they've been the red-headed stepchildren of specs since at least 3.0. It's a good thing I didn't funnel all my best gear to one toon, only to have it made worthless in a single blow. /s EDIT: Melodrama aside, I'm seeing a 10-12% loss.

Seriously? That would be hilarious if it weren't so depressing. Progression raiding isn't about achievement points and e-peen contests, it's about learning to work as a team and overcoming challenges with your friends. Without a clear progression though, there is no "progression raiding". It's the difference between taking a road trip with friends to the mountains (or wherever) and taking a road trip with friends around the neighborhood. I really do appreciate the new story and all the hard work yall have done in 4.0, but if the complete lack of attention to progression raiding wasn't destructive enough, this announcement just adds insult to injury. Please reconsider - not just eliminating progression from Nightmare Mode, but also your apparent complete disregard for group content as a whole. It really is more important to us than you (seem to) think - and if your metrics show that not many people participate in progression raiding, that's because they've all given up. Some are gone for good - you've burned some bridges, frankly - but many will come back if the content is there.

Punctuation is your friend.

I appreciate your asking for feedback, and particularly explaining design goals re: difficulty, but I feel sorry for you having to read through all this Eric. Fortunately for me, I can safely ignore the other fifty-whatever pages! You can skip to the last paragraph for the summary. Level 65 Marksmanship Sniper 220-224 gear, HM/NiM Ops-experienced player Rank 50 Weasel, er... "Dead-eye" Leyta I ran Heroic Star Fortresses (solo) in all three companion roles this morning to test. Alliance rep is 16 on each - using all bonuses and crates. Healer role: I'm only getting about 1500 HPS from my weasel on average, topping out around 2000-2100. This seems a bit low for a rank 50 companion. In fact, this is noticeably worse than pre-4.0 companion healing and certainly not worthy of "companions should still feel powerful." DPS role: I'm seeing an average of about 3k-4k DPS on average, with single-target peaks of about 5-6k. DPS seems surprisingly variable, but that's to be expected in short fights. DPS role was, by far, the easiest way for me to run Heroic Star Fortress, even without any self-heals beyond the sliced-crate Medical Probe (while heals for about as much by itself as I was getting from a healer companion!) Tank role: Trouble holding threat, self-heals negligible (100-200 HPS), DtPS roughly equivalent to my Sniper (2k-3k DtPS) but without the sense not to stand in the stupid. I love the mass-grapple, but otherwise running with my weasel in tank stance is mostly frustrating. DPS is pathetic - about 1k - and she just dies too quickly to make much difference in terms of my own DtPS. It looks like there's a known bug re: armor rating and defense on tanks, though so that might account for some of my trouble. It does feel like tank-stance DPS should be improved noticeably, as this would also help with threat. The heal nerfs - needed as they were - were probably a little too drastic. I would expect a rank 50, level 65 companion to manage 2500-3000 HPS, with the numbers I'm getting now (1500-2000) at rank 1. DPS numbers feel pretty good to me. Deadeye doesn't outshine me, but she definitely contributes noticeably and feels appropriately powerful. I'll revisit tanking once it's actually been patched, but tank DPS is somewhat too low.

I had something similar in mind - take the steam-punk spider legs from contraption in Wild Wild West and put them underneath a platform for the player character to sit on. Like a wheelchair with spider legs instead of wheels. (I'm sure I've seen such a thing somewhere before, but I can't figure out where, and the Google has failed me!) Bonus points if it jumps via rockets and/or has 'fangs' that can attack on Flourish.

For the sake of my time and (mostly) sanity, I'm going to skip reading the other 57 pages of replies here. And while I hope you're reading this Eric and/or George, I'm really sorry that you have to wade through what I'm guessing is a toxic swamp of poorly-written outrage. Don't worry, I'm here to save the day! (that's a joke; others have probably said something very similar.) I'm really excited about all the old content being bumped to level 65, and it needs to be done! I'm sure it's also more work than it may seem to re-balance everything to a new level, but I appreciate it because I really enjoy the old content as well - so it's great that it will be non-trivial again. However, I'm sure you anticipated the disappointment over the "no new Ops" announcement, but maybe not the degree of disappointment? I lead a progression raid team, and this announcement may actually spell the end of my team - just as the last drought of new Ops ended my last team (and guild!) I'm not being melodramatic, that's just the way progression raiding works. The progression itself is a large part of what people enjoy about progression raiding, and playing old Ops - even if they are suddenly hard again - doesn't offer the same sense of "progression" as learning completely new fights. I appreciate the quality of raids we've had, and I understand that quality takes time, but the pace of new Operations indicates a lack of staff, which indicates either a lack of funding or a lack of interest at the management level. Since EA has pointed to SWTOR as a major profit source, I suspect the issue is interest rather than funding. To the managers then, who I suspect are looking at the number of players who actually raid at the Hard/Nightmare mode level and deciding it isn't important, consider two things: First, progression raiding is a bit like a flagship product. Companies often sell flagship products at a loss because it increases the appeal of the lower-end, profitable products. Progression raiding may represent a smaller percentage of players, but those are also the players that most support the community: theory-crafters, fan sites, and - most importantly - guild leadership. I've been in three guilds since launch, and two of the three collapsed as a direct result of progression raiders leaving the game because of a lack of progression content. One shortly after launch, during the Dark Days, and the second when DF and DP were about a year old with nothing on the horizon. We had many non-raiding, active members who also left the game when the guild leadership all but vanished. It's not that progression raiders are more important people - in the philosophical sense - but our presence or absence has a larger impact on the community than the numbers alone may indicate. Second, progression raiding is a critical-mass type of activity. If you can't get eight (good) players together for a raid, then nobody gets to raid. Raid participation isn't linear; if there are seven people on the server who want to raid, then 0% of the people who want to raid are going to get to raid. If 799 people want to raid, then 99% (792) of the people who want to raid will get to raid. In other words, since both quality and frequency of new operations determines how many players want to raid, a higher percentage of players will participate in progression raiding when new operations come along more frequently. To put it yet another way, devoting fewer resources to developing operations due to lower participation is a self-fulfilling prophecy - a downward cycle - because it ensures that even those players who do still want to raid have a harder time finding enough other players with whom to raid. So, for damage-control, please consider answering a few questions (with favorable answers!) while people are still around to hear you say it. First, when are we going to see Nightmare-mode ToS and Ravagers? (The correct answer is "this summer", next best would be "4.0 @ level 65" Second, we need to hear you say that new operations will be coming ASAP after 4.0, and that you haven't given up on progression raiding. Names and/or Episode/Patch numbers would be ideal, since it makes people more likely to believe you and gives us targets. I really enjoy this game, and I play it over other MMOs because of the story - so I'm really excited about Knights of the Fallen Empire - but I play an MMO rather than single-player games because it offers more to do than just a single-player story. Like many others, the main thing I do other than story content is raiding. Without raiding, why bother with the inherent challenges of an MMO over single-player games? EDIT: One little suggestion: there will be enough HM Flashpoints in 4.0 to comfortably generate two tiers of difficulty. Take at least a handful of the re-balanced flashpoints, separate them into a separate group-finder category, and balance them much tighter than the others. Original Lost Island-level difficulty, or like Blood Hunt HM now. This is could be an excellent stepping-stone into raiding, and give raiders something else to do to satisfy the need for a challenge. (And by separating these in groupfinder, we avoid the "fresh 65, still in greens, trying to run the hardest flashpoint in the game" problem, without balancing for the lowest-common denominator.)

Just to repeat what others have said: the real issue with Pyro right now is the change to Flame Barrage causing heat management issues. This is the only change that really needs to be rolled back. Unload was useful in certain circumstances where you either couldn't stand in melee range or when an add would die from Unload (so you didn't need to take the time to run over), but otherwise not really important for Pyro. As a mid-range class with significant ranged options and Hydraulic Overrides, we don't need a gap-closer like Force Leap. I miss it too sometimes, but it just isn't appropriate for the class. Moving damage off Immolate and Rail Shot and on to Flame Thrower is appropriate and useful for AoE, even if it is a net loss in single-target DPS. The new bonuses to Kolto Overload are better than the old version, even if it had worked. The surge bonus to Scorch makes crit a little more valuable for Pyro (bringing it closer in line with AP) and moves a little more damage onto an otherwise underwhelming ability. Pyro isn't really a burst-damage spec anyway. Again, the big issue here is the change to Flame Barrage completely breaking heat management, and thus the rotation. Pyro isn't a difficult rotation, but it does make you pay for mistakes. Now you have to pay for doing it right . Having to spam Rapid Shots in between every ability is irritating and throws off the timing of Scorch and Incendiary Missile. Alternatively, skipping a Flame Burst and using Flamethrower with only two stacks is unsatisfying and clearly not how the spec is intended to be played. I don't think petitions ever really work, but for whatever it's worth... /signed.

Definitely viable - very good, in fact. Utilities will vary from fight to fight and from person to person. Check out Shulk's guide here: http://dulfy.net/2014/12/21/swtor-3-0-marksmanship-sniper-guide-by-shulk/ (the same guide is here on the forum, but I find Dulfy's presentation easier to read.)

A little additional thought on #7: Cutscenes don't need to run at 60fps; in fact, locking them to 30fps would probably give them a more "cinematic" feel, since it would better replicate the feel of film that people expect from a movie. Having the option to cut the expected FPS in half for cutscenes could allow better quality modes.

Actually, Bloodthirst is only 10% now.

I've never read the suggestion forum, so some of these may be repeats of other people's ideas - but for whatever it's worth, this is my own list, not a compilation of others' ideas. In no particular order: 1. PvE Operations via GSF; beyond the obvious capital ship "bosses", here's a rough idea: navigate an ancient Gree space station and defeat the security system (puzzles) to land inside. Even a simple PvE "endless waves" mode would be fun to see which squadrons can last the longest. (Basically, I love GSF but I hate PvP. I still like the classic Star Fox mode space quests!) 2. Asymetrical Warzones; Life isn't fair. Who says warzones should be? Take the top four highest-ranked players and pit them against eight random players. Give one player "boss mode" - immune to stuns and whatnot + two million HP + new abilities (I've always wanted Malgus' AoE force choke!) and pit them against an eight-person team. (Allow only highly-ranked players to queue as boss?) Kick that up a notch and have a player take control of an actual boss! Who hasn't wanted to play as a giant-mecha-spider-Hutt before? "My turn?" "Your turn!" GSF matches could also be asymetrical: give one team control of a capital ship and its turrets, or even a space station. Copy "boss mode" from above but with starfighters. 3. Here's a relatively easy way to push out additional Operations content: Cartel Arena. Entrance in the Cartel Bazaar on fleet, spectator mode available! Only one room to create, no storyline necessary (boo! but easy). Boss spawns could be randomly selected, or even rotated on a weekly basis. Inspiration from Thrasher fight and from Geonosian arena in Attack of the Clones, obviously. 4. Companion gear-type customization via item or story decision. Jorgan talks about being a sniper, but carries an assault cannon; why not give us a way to give him his rifle back? I would pay good money to give Tweek (that's what I call her) an assault cannon - now there's entertainment! 5. A way to cheat lore and/or continuity: "Force Vision" flashpoints/operations/quests. A powerful Force-user (Spindrall?) offers to project the player into the past or future (alternate history?) to play out some event as though they were there. I never played them, but apparently this is quite similar to Assassin's Creed - and, obviously, the Holodeck. Anyway, you might even get away with tying into the original trilogy or the new movies this way. At the very least, it would allow some creative stories that might not otherwise fit into the "present" storyline. 6. Hard-mode class storyline. I know I'm not the first to ask for a way to re-do my class quest, but here's my idea for it, inspired by how Mass Effect allows you to start over from the beginning after completing the game (and, in my playthroughs, to bump up the difficulty at that time.) Hard-mode class quest would, after a stern warning, make your companions unavailable and transport you to your starter planet. (Companion gear could be wrapped up in boxes and placed in your inventory perhaps?) All your instanced quests could be raised to max level and greatly increased in difficulty (think Story Mode Ops vs. Hard Mode Ops.) A bonus - a title at least - could be given for completing the questline in HM without a group. 7. High-Res Textures: textures in SWTOR look great during regular game play, but often look pixelated and flat during cutscenes. Giving the option to run higher-resolution textures - at least during cutscenes - would be a simple way to make the game look much better. This may necessitate a huge download, but not much larger than the PTS or initial game download I imagine - so put the option in the launcher a la the PTS option. Alternatively, when you release 4.0 as the first boxed expansion full of lots of goodies for all (right?) you can just put them on the Blu-Ray or USB Collector's Edition. 8. Hire Jeff Kurtenacker. Seriously, he's amazing. Steal him from Carbine; be heartless. Go listen to the music from Wildstar and tell me if it isn't the best video game music you've ever heard: Imagine having "Thieves, Bandits, and Epic Loot" as the theme for Rishi. At the very least, consider re-investing in proper orchestral music. It can't possibly cost more than it's worth! 9. Speaking of Rishi - I really want a Rishi stronghold. A jungle mountain palace is just my style. 10. Return Skill Points (but not by getting rid of Disciplines!) Give us a few branches in our Discipline tree to give some additional flexibility. For example, a choice between +3% alacrity or +3% critical chance, or perhaps even a choice between X giving a proc for Y or Z. This should allow for a little greater customization without becoming a burden on balancing. This is similar to utility points, but more integrated into each specific discipline. 11. Mini-games. Copy Wildstar and include some mini-games as part of quests, it adds a little flavor. if overdone it becomes stale and repetitive - but so do "Kill X mooks" quests. Likewise, consider using a % counter for kill quests, also like Wildstar, where tougher mobs count more. 12. Account-wide friends list. I know this has been brought up before, just like legacy-wide credits, but both are very high on my "need" list. To allay privacy concerns, just copy Wildstar (last time I'll say that, I promise!) and use an invite system for account friending. 13. Name-checker. A website or in-game system for checking whether a character or guild name is available before purchasing a name change. 14. Ilum is a really cool place, but there isn't much to do there. Pretty much any reason to go back would be great! Here's a half-baked idea for you: a Journey to the Center of the Earth-style questline or Operation where we travel ever deeper into Ilum looking for some special crystal or whatever. 15. Mentoring System. Many of us long-time players have also long-since maxed out all our character levels and slots, or at the very least are not anxious to start a new character at level 1. This makes it difficult for us to welcome or help out newer players when our involvement trivializes the content and eliminates XP rewards for those players. Perhaps inverting the Bolster system to lower our level and stats to a lower-level group member wouldn't be too much work? It would greatly benefit those us wanting to invite new friends to the game. 16. Sell Collected Items Button. Ever pull an entire set of armor out of your collections just for one piece? Manually dragging the extra items over to delete them one at a time is annoying. A button that would delete any bound item in your inventory that's also available via collections would be awesome, and may encourage use of the Collections system. Sorry for the length, I hope you find something useful or at least interesting in there. If not anything new, at least you can put another check mark beside the "number of people who have begged us for this" list.

And for my part, I was saying "good" as many times as I could just for emphasis. Not the best writing decision I've ever made, but it was quite late after a long day working. Anyway, I hope SF isn't overpowered because I don't want to see it nerfed! I haven't done a comprehensive comparison yet with all other classes, either, so I'm not making a definitive claim - but I'm seeing better numbers in the parser than with other my other toons. What I'd rather see is disciplines like the new Pyro get better AoE instead. Flamethrower used to be, and ought to be, an amazing AoE ability and now it's barely more than half the DPS of Suppressive Fire fully buffed in Pyro. Anyway, that's another discussion entirely. I'm really liking Marksmanship and Sharpshooter. It's always been my favorite spec, and now it's even better.

The fundamental flaw in your reasoning is that you assume Snipers ought to be as mobile as Sorcerers or Mercenaries. As a class, Sniper isn't supposed to be very mobile. Target-swapping is our primary strength, and managing our mobility is the primary challenge for Marksmanship sniper. Entrench is hardly over-powered. It's not even as good as Hydraulic Overrides! It's crucial to the class, and the change that allowed us to jump up and reposition without losing Entrench was exactly what it needed. No additional changes are needed - other than bug fixes (or at least clarification) on the instances where it doesn't work as expected. Also, it's not fair to complain about mobility while completely dismissing one of the primary utilities designed to improve mobile DPS: Calculated Pursuit. It is a little underwhelming, but if a fight requires a great deal of movement, it may be worthwhile after all. Again, Sniper isn't supposed to be mobile - is it any surprise then that this utility isn't remarkably powerful? Likewise, regarding DieGhostDie's comments, Vital Regulators is weak because Sniper isn't intended to be able to heal. We have an excellent kit of tools - especially with some of the utilities - to absorb some damage and keep enemies away from us, but if you expect to face-tank anything as a Sniper you're going to have a bad time. That said, Vital Regulators probably still wouldn't be overpowered even if it were doubled. Still, at current gear levels, it's about 150 HPS - that's equivalent to your healer getting a new mainhand barrel (one tier) - so it's not nothing.

Ditto to OP. The changes were really pretty minor in terms of how the discipline plays, but I think they've been overwhelmingly positive. It's awesome to have good AoE again, for example. The change to Lazy Target/Smuggler's Luck is an easy win: A+. Frankly, my only concern with Marksmanship is whether or not Suppressive Fire is too good. It's really good. It's our only really decent AoE now, but it's really good. Is it too good? Maybe. I haven't run numbers on all the other specs yet. But it does tons of damage, is very convenient, and only really eats up energy if spammed more than two or three times. Intelligent utility-swapping can make us relatively survivable and mobile in PvE content, at least, and the loss of our Purge really isn't as big a deal as I feared it might be given Evasion's new ability, and given our ability to choose other utilities. I don't yet know how the final numbers for potential sustained DPS will fall, but at the very least, 3.0 is a definite "win" for Marksmanship/Sharpshooter in other ways.

Is it a bug that level 60 Hard Mode Flashpoints drop only Basic comms, while level 55 HM FPs still drop Elite comms? That seems a little backwards. I searched and didn't find anyone else bringing this up, which seems surprising given the even more trivial things people have been complaining about. Anyway, bug or not?

I'm only managing about 3500 DPS on the Ops dummy (1mill HP & armor reduction mods) in 180s that were optimized pre-3.0. (So I'm missing 2 or 3% accuracy). I suspect there's another 100 DPS to be found in there with some tweaking. This sounds about right, since they said DPS targets with 198 gear for sustained ranged was about 4125 and generally each tier of gear is worth about 5%, so 180 -> 198 should be about 15%: 3600 x 1.15 is 4140. I know others consider MM a burst spec (target of 3925ish) and it might be fair to include our advantage in target-swapping (~3% on average) so it's possible that our target DPS is lower. Has anyone managed to get the 6pc bonus and optimized gear at 192 level yet? I'd be very interested to hear what you are running.

Is it really a burst spec though? In PvP, Laze Target + Ambush + Followthrough could certainly be called "burst damage", but in PvE, I'm only showing about 10-15% increase in burst DPS over sustained DPS over the 20-30sec range usually important for Operations, including using an adrenal, but not the new 6pc set bonus. That's a little better than what we had prior to 3.0 (but after losing OS) and the set bonus will give another percent or two to that on average, but it's really not a big ratio. I haven't tested burst on other specs or classes yet, but do you think that's enough to qualify as a "burst spec"? I mean, Marauder Bloodthirst alone is 15%.

Yes. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=779875

I've also experienced this, but I can't reproduce it at will. It does seem to be associated with server lag though, so perhaps it will clear up when the server hamster is feeling better.

I started a thread on the bug report forums here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=7851659 Of course, if you haven't already submitted an in-game ticket, you should.