It gives you some somewhat controlled burst and AP/Tactics is hurting in that area. The result is not remotely worth 7 talent points of course, just one of the many little issues with the tree. If you're running in high enery most of the time you can invest just one point into RS/HiB and spend the rest elsewhere, but if you use Ion regularly you don't have much of a choice.

Cross server PvP queues would solve only a fraction of the many and massive problems the huge list of dead or dieing servers cause. BW needs to consolidate empty servers, bad PR or not, then cross server PvP queues will simply not be necessary.

Marauders are based around the use of cooldowns, offensively and even to a greater degree defensively. With his cooldowns up a Marauder will be substantially more survivable than a DPS Jugg. Not everyone likes that playstyle though.

Hyperbole in either direction doesn't help.

The damage of the tree is designed way too much around Pulse Cannon/Flame Thrower. It's fantastic if you manage to get it off fully charged and actually hitting several targets, but you're more likely to win the lottery twice in a row than that happening more than once in a match.

That is an increadibly bad trade off tbh. Gut isn't that great to start with and it really doesn't help an Assault build at all. With the little survivability and mobility you have you rely on bursting down opponents and you'll want to be in melee range as little as possible. Going into the the thick of battle to apply Gut will only get you perma snared and subsequently killed, more often than not before you even get to the target. Don't use builds heavily utilizing melee attacks without either Storm or Hold the Line. The shorter cd on interrupt is really useful otoh, but if you're looking for a caster harrassment build in Plasma Cell something like the 0/23/18 is the better choice. You'll lose some burst but gain an option to actually get to your target or disengage if necessary in Hold the Line. Personally I think Gut and the 3+1 talent points "improving" it are the main reason the middle of the Tactics tree is so terrible. It really does look a lot better on paper than it plays out in game.

Not sure if serious Anyway, 10/10 for the OP for scoring 13+ pages of drivel about Vanguards/Powertechs when it's really obvious he's actually talking about Commandos.

Newsflash: They already are on live, though certainly not because of Master Strike...

Either way Pulse Cannon not doing diddly-squat happens entirely too often and adds to the issue of Tactics just not getting the job done against equally geared players.

Until you wake up and realize your client was out of sync with the server again and you hit nothing but thin air, while the opposing team was happily disposing of your friends

Resource management is what prevents more sophisticated rotations for Pyros more than anything else. The current changes on the test server further aggravate that issue.

I'd argue that ammo management, or rather the lack of need for it, is the primary benefit of Tactics/AP. Still, the package is pretty meh, afterall the yardstick are other actual specs, not 0/0/0.

I'd be all for removing the RNG entirely. The way it's on test now you either lose the gamble or you don't win because the cooldown is in effect. *** thought that would be a fun game ?

I cringe every time I'm specced Tactics or Assault on my Vanguard and top the protection charts by using taunts alone. Which happens more often than not...

You sound like you haven't been at the receiving end of a glowstick jockey melee train yet. And no, it's not just Sents/Marauders...

Take a couple moments and think about what determines survivability in this game.

I'd be more excited if with all the setup required I could actually trust Pulse Cannon to hit someone standing right in front of me. With the Empire melee train really taking off by now standing there heating up the air only is just not a good idea.

The advantage of using Pyro while leveling is that you can get the most important stuff relatively early on. 18 points ( i.e. lvl 27 ) and you're set, additional points in Pyro or AP are just bonus at that stage. Shield hybrids ( Iron Fist as well as Parakeet ) are high level builds, you really need those 21-23 points in Shield and a substantial amount in either AP or Pyro to be worth it, so until you're 40+ you'll essentially be looking at a Shield build anyway.

People still tend to overestimate the impact heavy armour and the ability to shield have. Even tank builds aren't all that tanky as long as a very large portion of all the attacks flying around simply ignores your defenses. The tank stance makes a big difference and the flat mitigation you can spec for helps some as well, but the best defense by a huge margin in this game is provided by cooldowns and in that regard Vanguards/PTs kinda got the short end of the stick. Obviously a full BM geared PT with 20k+ HP will be difficult to take down by the usual mix of Cent/Champ geared players, but that applies to pretty much all other classes as well. So while the guy claiming everything but Pyro is a waste is certainly exaggerating it's important to know the limitations of the IF build. By the standards of other games it's more of a utility build than an indestructible juggernaut.

With the current PvP content "hard counters" and 1v1 in general don't matter much either way. If I'm in open field with no ******** LOS obstacles, don't have to care about objectives or teammates and know someone is coming for me I can take pretty much anyone, barring a Pyro PT getting lucky on the RNG. That's not a situation I find myself in, like, ever though.

It is. I sincerely hope you're just trolling us here. On a class with no stealth, no gap closer, very limited defenses and no escape mechanism, just how close do you think you'll get to a healer at the backline of an enemy team with even rudimentary coordination ?

The problem of the Sharpshooter spec is that the playstyle BW envisions just doesn't go well with most of the current PvP content. Rather than adjusting either the content or the playstyle they just make the spec overpowered in the role they want them in though, hoping the players won't look past big numbers and be happy enough. For all the respect I have for them for their excellent initial balancing this extreme pigeonholing of SS and quite a few other specs is really annoying. No opinion on the Sab changes yet, will have to have a closer look on the test server.

Or just increase the time window from the current 6 ( ? ) seconds to the 15 seconds many other procs have. That should happen anyway tbh.

While designing everything 8 men and up in PvE around 1 tank ( if even that... ). Really smart.