Pros: Higher AoE damage Higher up front burst Obliterate is nice for Z-axis maps 20% armor pen 30% crit increase on force attacks (FC + Smash + Scream) Cons: Lower sustained damage Lower ending burst (executes always crit as Vengeance) No bleeds (bleeds reveal stealthers and stop people from capping) No immunity/damage reduction after charging No 20% damage reduction from intercede Rage generation *Smash animation is too long * This right here is the biggest thing and why until SWTOR fixes animations, rage will be inferior to Vengeance.

Really? How do you counter Vengeance? All classes can interrupt the animation for Smash. It's really long. All they need to do is be aware of 4 charges and watch for the animation. It's very, very simple to do. Vengeance doesn't have to worry about that. The only thing Vengeance has to worry about are tanks because Jugg damage doesn't bypass defense/shields like other classes. In which case you should never be on a tank anyways. Also the taunt thing is more as the game goes on. The one thing you're looking to do as Rage is Smash a group of people for 5k. That's the bread and butter. One tank class can reduce that outgoing damage by 30%. It sucks and becomes apparent once you start playing against good players. There's a difference between countered cause you got outplayed and easily countered because the animation on an ability takes 10,000 years to go off. If BW ever decides to take damage > animation, I'd even give rage a 2nd thought. But since the changes to stacking % increase modifiers, more people have Expertise, and the animation delay being long, Rage is just lack luster. Good vs Bads Bad vs Goods.

You don't do 5k smashes every 9 seconds. You can only do that every 50 seconds. Other than that 5k smashes are every 18 seconds, after you use Force Crush. Force Crush does kinetic damage, which is affected by armor. At 375 bonus damage and in Shii-Cho FC does 387*5 + 1030 at the end. Total of 2965. At 4527 armor that's 29.54% damage reduction. 20% of that is 900 armor, which is about a 4.5%. So your FC has 25% damage reduction vs heavy armor Juggs. So 2965*.75 = 2,224 damage done over 5 seconds. For sorcs it's about 21% damage reduction So 2965*.79 = 2,342 damage done over 5 seconds Shatter does internal damage. Which means people will only have 10% (sorc buff) to this type of damage. At the same stats it does ~1100 average hit in Shien form followed by an extra 1418. Total of 2518. So 2518*.90 = 2,266 damage done over 12 seconds. Same stats, Impale does about a 2k average hit followed by a 463 dot. 2000*.75 = 1500 + (463*.90) = 1917. Then take that FC is an 18 second cooldown. Impale is 9 seconds. Shatter is 12 seconds. You can get 2 impales in for one Force Crush. Impale does more in the end. You can get in 2 shatters for one Force Crush. Shatter does more in the end. But let's go into the real issue with Rage and why it's good vs bads and bad vs good players. Smash animation timing and how SWTOR prioritizes animation > damage. I known you've experience this. You get the PvP buff, FC someone, pop adrenal/trinket, charge, smash, only to get knock backed during the animation. *SMASHES KEYBOARD* They call it "Rage" spec for a reason. Once you start fighting skilled players, you will see how awful Rage is. As a Vengeance Jugg I've never lost to a Rager 1v1. Smash? choke Smash? Push That is more than enough time to kill you without your big 5k crits coming out. It's the same for other classes. Everyone has stuns. Most classes have knockbacks. Fighting good players as Rage makes you wanna shoot yourself. Then take in that Tanks taunting you during the one thing that Rage does well (high aoe burst) and it's just beyond annoying. Rage is good vs bad players. End of line.

The test isn't launch. The test isn't the next month after launch. The test is 3-6 months down the road. Did you keep your launch population and continue to grow? Or did you fall into the pattern of every MMORPG after WoW, in which 70% of launch population is gone and subs are static/declining. No AAA MMORPG has been able to break that barrier. Not one. Will SWTOR? Maybe. I doubt it though. It's more of the same.

I'm not arguing in the current state of stacking tanks/healers As I've said, stacking tanks/healers is a great way to Pubstomp. But tanks are hardly broken and causing balance issues for the game. This will become apparent if they ever implement rated WZ's.

Once again, a non-factor in any organized game. You can't just bring tanks/healers to a Voidstar. You will lose every time. They will just AoE CC, trinket, wait for resolve to fall off, then 2x CC again. Grats. All they would need is 1 door because a team of tanks/healers won't be able to out DPS the defense re-spawn rates. Bringing tanks/healers into pubs is an easy form of Pubstomping. That's it. Against any organized team though it's not broken. So why fix it? Then again Operative damage was fine and that got changed because the OP dev is too green to see through the whining and understand why they are crying. So who knows.

Nothing is wrong with it. It's the best PvP spec. Just the kids who play Rage think doing 5k damage every 18 seconds is awesome cause your numbers are so big. "YO DOG CHECK MY NUMBERS IN THIS VOIDSTAR PREMADE!!!" Rage was great before they fixed PvP so you couldn't stack tons of % modifiers and could crit low levels for 9k+. Now it's just a 1 trick pony against bads.

Wars are organized duels as well. What's your point?

Because it's not true. Tanks don't mitigate guard damage. They receive the damage taken from the person they're guarding. So if they're guarding a healer and you have 1 DPS focus the healer and 1 DPS aoe the healer and tank, the tank will go down extremely fast. Add in interrupts to the healer and it's very easy to work around guard. But that requires you to coordinate interrupts and damage on two targets, which is something PUGs cannot do. Play any organized group and it goes like this; -focus healer -aoe tank/healer -interrupt healer -stun/toss healer, finish tank sitting at 20% Will take PUGs at least 6 months to figure this out

You're overrating the effectivness of tanks. Just how people overrated the burst from Operative/Scoundral What you're complaining about the ease of being able to be effective. Operative/Scoundral damage was fine. Any class could 1v1 an Operative/Scoundral, you just had to know how to properly play the fight. Close fights down to the wire? Absolutely. Broken damage output? Not really. That's for a 1v1 setting though. Then you add in a group setting and to be honest Operative/Scoundral damage is largely useless UNLESS you're focusing healers because of all the teamwork and CC you can pull off (Resolve meter in this game needs to proc 1 tick earlier). Preventing damage is easy. You guard and stick near someone and they become harder to kill. But it's not broken in any way. AoE is what kills guard. Doing as much damage to the tank/healer/DPS and forcing them to choose which one to heal, while tossing out interrupts will end the game. But currently that's not the meta game of SWTOR. Everyone is focused on "*** IM STUNNED AND SINGLE-TARGET DPS'D DOWN!! NERF NOW!!" If tanks become a problem people will simply bring more AoE. AoE destroys guarded targets. Tanks go down extremely fast with 1-2 single-target DPS on the guarded player and 1-2 AoE'rs. Toss out interrupts/stuns/knockbacks to healers and tanks are easy to kill. The problem is it is extremely easy for a tank/healer/2 DPS premade to pub stomp all day and never lose. But it hardly qualifies as being broken. There are counters. Just not availble to uncoordinated PUBs who don't know how to focus targets and interrupt.

Currently running: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#101crZcrroruddGR.1 Needed the extra accuracy to be at 100%. Do yall not like using ravage? I mean outside of the animation bug where you stun yourself for 3 seconds if you use it on a target "in range" but they're technically "out of range" it's a great ability. To comment on the first build. You don't need malice. Only thing you use that's force is scream and it's already gonna crit. You also don't need Ravager as Rampage is a better investment for damage. To the second build: You should go 7 into immortal for the free screams and free AoE slows. Slowing targets is key for melee DPS classes. Eviscerate is a 25% damage increase to Impale. See above for Malice and Ravager comments. I've found decimate to really not be worth it. You'd be surprised how much Rage you gain from Deadly Reprisal.

I'm maxed on crafting. Don't know how you're not at 50 yet. Other than that sending my guys on slicing missions every 30 minutes hardly qualifies for fun to me. There is no reason to do Flashpoints. As I said I already do EV/KP once every week. Sure, you can go and level another class, but I like my sith warrior. I enjoyed the quest line. I really don't want to spend time leveling another class for the sole purpose of a different quest line. I want to progress my Jugg. Unfortunately there is no way to progress my Jugg anymore which is why this game isn't worth a monthly sub.

I thoroughly enjoyed SWTOR when I was leveling up. From logging in and doing all the quests, the random PvP, the space combat, the flashpoints, etc. It was fun. It's only now at 50 that I find myself bored with nothing to do. I am a Battlemaster. I can only randomly obtain gear twice per day. After that there is no reason to do warzones. The ilum daily is accomplished by riding around middle for 10mins to grab arms. Raiding is also dull. The PvE content in this game is mindless. For some guilds it's difficult (I watched as a mara missed interrupts every time, or a sorc stood in fire and died), but for me this is absolutely boring. There is no reward for doing hardmodes in this game other than to say "did it", which really is like bragging you've completed LFR Dragonsoul in WoW. 140 gear is a downgrade compared to 136 gear and even if you strip the mods and xfer them you're talking a literal +5 upgrade to all stats. Basically I log on, do PvP dailies, find a pub for EV/KP once a week, and that's it. That is what this game offers at level 50. It's a complete drop off. There is no more progression. Then you have the ever persistent bugs that are slowly chipping away at my sanity and makes me wonder if BW is even aware. Did you know that the 140 weapons are still bugged and remain level 126. Animations still lock you. I constantly "stun" myself for 3 seconds because of animation delay. This game's graphics are awful compared to the Unreal 3 engine, which makes me again wonder why any company out there doesn't use it. I've never seen one complaint about Unreal 3, from infrastructure to graphical beauty. All in all SWTOR was worth the box price. It's not worth a subscription.

Anyways DAOC PvP cannot work in this game. This game has 2 factions. It is impossible to have a good open world PvP system with just 2 factions. One side will eventually destroy the other. It's happened in every single game with 2 factions so far. The games people enjoy for OWPvP had 3 factions or no factions. The games people hate for OWPvP had 2 factions.

... You do realize that Blizzard announces what a "subscription" is right? Can easily go look it up. Also 12mil was a year ago. That number is now under the 10mil mark. Still a great game. Still raised the standards for MMORPG gaming. Still the company others want to be.