I find it amusing that people gave me such hell when I demonstrated that their math was wrong, and data was completely garbage ("it's better than nothing"... not if it's wrong it isn't) and now we have official confirmation that those sites are all completely off base. Funny. I'll take my apology letters and admissions of error from every person who has ever linked a spreadsheet.

There is a damage standard. If one class is doing too much damage in the hands of skilled players (Marauders), or doing damage too easily in the hands of unskilled players (arsenal mercs, hybrid sorcs) it has to be balanced in order to maintain the damage and skill curves. If it is not fixed, then bad players will feel "forced" to reroll into the easy-mode class (to maximize their performance) and good players will feel "forced" to reroll into the god-mode class (the class with the highest DPS / survival when played perfectly). - The only way to do that is with nerfs and reworks. You cannot just allow an imbalance to continue, nor can you arbitrarily buff other classes, because that doesn't fix the simplicity issue, and introduces more balance problems.

The following classes are receiving nerfs: -Sorcerer (DPS specs) -Merc (Arsenal spec - tracer missile) -PT (pyro spec) -Marauder (DPS specs) It's not just Bounty Hunters.

THANK GOD. I just rolled a PT alt. I really like Pyro and decided I want to play a Pyro Merc. I was worried about taking BH based on the "nerf" talks floating around (having played an Operative, which has literally been made unplayable). If they're nerf is focused on Tracer Missile though, I can now level my class in peace. I'm all for Tracer Missile (for Mercs) and Force Lightning (for Sorcs) getting nerfed and having the damage spread across other abilities. The net effect will be that good players do the same DPS, but bad players will not be as competitive. Fine and dandy, leveling my Merc now.

I'm a former pro-gamer. My retirement account was funded by people who asked the same question. As for why I'm good: discipline. Most people just play games, they do not sit down and actively think "I am going to seek feedback on _________ and work to improve ___________ this play session". It's like the people you see at the gym - y'know the ones who go 3+ times a week but look the same every week when you see them? What happened? There's a difference between "going" and "training" that they're missing. With games, there's a difference between "playing" and "improving". Not think, know. The average player is just sitting there playing the game. They aren't actively thinking, aware and making good decisions. You can see it in their play, when you PVP, when you raid, you can see they are just following the same sequence of button presses and movements. They're aren't adaptive, the don't anticipate, they don't communicate, they generally perform poorly. The average player is bad, it always will be that way, because the average player isn't looking to get anything out of the game beyond a thrill. The content being easy is irrelevant. The content will get harder over time, and when it does, the players who are building bad habits are putting themselves at a disadvantage. Look, there's no difference between the smoker who eats at McDonalds every day, and the "health freak" at 18... but when 40 rolls around, I can tell you which one of them is going to get up a flight of stairs without feeling like a 100-year old man. The habits of being a good tank are important to build now. Right now in SWTOR a bunch of players and guilds have gotten used to the idea of clearing all their farm content without a single wipe. You have players right now who I can tell you for a fact are ticking time bombs. They have been 3+ months without seeing a wipe. The idea for them that they're going to go from "easy 4 hours a week get all my loot" to doing actual raiding where they might spend 4 hours wiping on a boss come 1.2? That's going to destroy so many guilds. It's going to be even worse for the guilds that have bad policies in place - where they've been letting attendance slide, building up huge EP totals in points-systems during farm, overstaffing their Officer core, etc... there are going to be some major guild blowouts in 1.2, and when that happens, that's going to create opportunities for players who are building good habits to get raid spots. I can tell you for a fact that we'll be recruiting in 1.2 because the opportunity for sniping some of the players we've wanted is high, and that's a really great time for us to bring new blood on board and test them out. So if you're a Tank looking for a raid spot, and are serious about focusing for 9 ~ 12 hours a week (work hard, play hard) I have a raid spot waiting for you, hands down, no questions.

So, your team did nothing to stun, DPS down, pull away, knock back and distract the other team, threw you the ball... and you expected that you would be able to score while being focused down by eight people? If your team isn't playing protecting the ball carrier, of course they're going to get destroyed.

Nope.

Your companions will send you letters and send you on quests that reference companions you haven't gotten yet, and events that haven't happened yet, if they weren't gated.

What on earth are you talking about? The two DPS specs of Operative / Scoundrel are 100% melee. The healing spec operates at 30m, but the only hybrid heals / DPS spec is PVP-only. For PVE content, you will be mDPS (already disadvantaged) and are the worst mDPS in the game due to mobility, damage and positioning requirements. - OP - I would be careful about taking a "least played" class and thinking that will translate into lots of people needing / appreciating you. Look at how building a raid comp plays out: MAIN TANK - Sin OFF TANK - Jugg HEALS - Sorc, Merc Already with just my healers and tanks, I have consumed 4 raid spots. Of the remaining raid spots, I want to get in ranged, so I build out like this: rDPS - Merc, Sniper, Sorc Now that leaves me with just a single mDPS spot remaining. Given a choice, am I going to take an OP or a Mara? mDPS - Mara You will NEVER compete with a Mara because they have lust, a survival CD, movement abilities and do great burst DPS, especially with the Jugg sundering. That means I actually don't have a raid spot for an Operative unless I go 16m, which isn't happening on a lot of Republic side guilds, because Repub is underplayed on many servers. I would suggest talking to the active guilds on whatever server you choose and seeing what they're actually looking for... a surprising number of guilds actually need classes that are so-called "heavily played", because many of those players are not active in end-game PVE, or they're alts, or they're already taken. Also keep in mind that many of the players who have already leveled a toon may not be good enough for the guilds that you are looking at. There are dozens of Sorc healers on my server, yet I have a trusted friend leveling a Sorc healer right now. Why? Because the Sorc healers I have tried out are not good enough to be my heals lead, period.

PVP LEVELING 1 - 30: Quest. If you PVP before lv. 30 you are "that guy" that everyone hates. Don't be that guy, don't PVP before you have 2+ stuns, a movement ability, sprint, and enough DPS abilities to be remotely useful. It takes 1 day of played time to hit 30 if you spacebar, focus up an do it. 30 - 50: PVP. You should be able to buy your full PVP orange set at 40, and if you save from 40 onward you will easily have 6 bags at 50, which will make your transition much easier. Remember you can buy Columni Implants, Earpieces and decent Relics off the AH, and your Orange weapon with AH mods will be sufficient - focus up your bags on the PVP 4-piece. PVE LEVELING 1-50: Quest. 50: Operations. I buy my pre-raid gear from the AH and immediately jump into Operations. If you run EV and KG for two weeks, you will have full raid gear in just a couple of hours of play. Compare that to grinding Flashpoints where PUGs will fail horribly, and the choice is clear.

Y'know, its kind of funny, I kept expecting this to happen when I played pro MTG, because we came in as kids and dominated... but oddly enough the pro crowd keeps getting older while the new generation has been surprisingly weak by comparisson. I think the "problem" is that the physical limitations of age are far, far less felt in gaming. A 50-year old gamer is not significantly slower in an MMO than a 15-year old. Its not "twitchy". You actually see something similar in cycling, its dominated by 30 year olds because technique, discipline and experience matter more than young muscle. The current generation of 20 and 30 something gamers grew up playing MMOs, so we have a vast experiental advantage over younger gamers. For the OP. 13-year olds are a liability for a few reasons. First of all, most players your age are bad. Don't take that personally, you might be good, but the stereotype of your age is that you are impatient and unlikely to take advice on improving your play. The second issue with impatience is that young gamers tend to be annoying with regard to doing stuff. We all are older and do this as a hobby, so we might delay a PVP queue for someone to check the laundry, or raid late because someone has work. The third issue is reliability. Sure older gamers miss raids, but they tend to know in advance and be prompt in getting it worked out. You never hear about older gamers just dropping off the face of the earth for a week because mom took the internet away. And the final issue is that every 13-year old claims to be the exception which has made most of us jaded. You may really be a totally with it, calm, organized and pleasant person, but all the baddies who have come before you told us the same thing. So you don't get the benefit of the doubt unless we already know you, friend, family member, etc... I know thats rough to hear and not totally fair, but if you work at your toon and relax and enjoy the game rather than try to force yourself on a guild, the guilds will come to you.

I'm a former pro gamer. My wife has zero interest in playing but she has become a spectator over the years. The other day when we were talking about PVP dispels after dinner I realized she basically knows more about MMOs than most of the people I play with, Its kind of weird she has started pulling up a chair to watch raids.

I believe it. My first 50 I hated (OP) so I did nothing end game besides operations and then rerolled. That toon ended with 5K credits at most. My second 50, a Tanksin, just hit 50 on Thursday and after raid repairs I am sitting at 100k in 3 rakatta, rest columni. I anticipate my income after repairs will be about 500K a week, which will get quickly eaten up by gearing out alts and the like.

The OP is completely ignorant of the fact he's not talking about Assassin TANKS, he's discussing DPS who play in Darkness spec, wearing DPS gear, using the abilities of the Darkness branch, or playing hybrid Darkness / Madness. And gad forbid they discuss it purely in the PVP forum, they completely ignore PVE and we wind up with another OP nerf. I already had to shelve my Operative because it was miserable to play in Operations. I have been 50 for all of 4 days on my Tanksin, and I have full Columni / Rakata gear *from PUGs*. There's nothing more to say on it, there's just no way anyone could think that what happens when the PVP community dictates class balance arbitrarily is acceptable.

It doesn't work that way. Balance is balance. I would LOVE to get another 30 buttons if it means my DPS output can be higher. I play the game 40+ hours a week, I have no problem learning a rotation *regardless of how complex* or a priority system that runs 40 buttons deep, not a problem, it's just a curve and at some point I will be on the other side. The problem with giving players that option is: you're forcing all skilled players to play that class (if every class does 100% DPS, and that class does 150% DPS, you literally have no choice) and you're creating a brick wall to playing PVP. Not every player wants a 40-button priority queue, nor it is appropriate for every class to play that way. When you say to a player "because you enjoy complexity and challenge, we'll make the top-end of your class OP", you break the game completely. The good players play that class, and the less skilled players simply quit the game because that one class is unbeatable.

They're easily the most powerful class in PVP. Some Maras have made the argument that "because we have so many buttons, we should be more powerful"... but class balance doesn't really work that way. Right now they're too powerful, as they have some of the best consistency against everything, regardless of spec. The general public tends to obsess over things like stuns (...this isn't Everquest Online Adventures, you're going to get stunned if you try to solo the entire enemy team - hint), tracer missile and force lightning... which is odd because overall these are not the significant issues facing skilled players.

The people who want a game without CC amuse me... because randomly mashing your rotation as fast as you can would be such a great indication of skill amiright? You're getting beaten by people who are *better* than you, get over it. I have had people whisper me during games "omigod u ran away u yella". Like, seriously? Yes, I'm not going to stand there and fight you while you have a pocket healer, nor am I going to dual you, I'm going to get the upper hand, I'm going to yank you into acid, I'm going to stun you when you're out of CDs and leave a trail of your random limbs as a warning to your respawn. But no, I will not stand there and wail on each other like this is Everquest Online Adventures. That kind of gameplay is awful, no one who actually has any skill would ever want it.

Read. The. Post. Before. You. Respond. These discussion forums are absolutely ruined by people pre-forming opinions and then ignoring what anyone else in the thread has to say. As a Tanksin main, I have to say, there is ABSOLUTELY a force-bias in SWTOR, both in terms of "cool factor" and in terms of actual move sets. Operatives lack mobility and get told "stealth makes up for it" - ignoring completely that Lethality isn't based on out-of-stealth openers and PVE doesn't allow for stealth. Snipers get mechanically pidgeon-holed, making them one of the most awkward classes to play well in both PVP and PVE. Mercs are solid healers, as DPS they get great AoE, so of course they are being nerfed into the ground in 1.2 (already announced, not denied at all, simply stated that they aren't the only class being singled out). PTs lack mobility unless they spec into their Tank tree, which means the pure DPS variant winds up being *bad*, awkward, and moreso that their "tricks and cool stuff tree" is basically unplayable. But that's not being fixed while the Jugg's weakness are? I'm not saying that Bioware is sitting down going "don't have a lightsaber? Screw you"... but it should be fairly obvious why *so many of the players are going Sorcerer*. It's not just the Lightning, it's the fact you have 3 viable trees, a complete move set, gap closers, stuns, AoE, single-target, heals, shields, etc... and while other classes have these to a degree (BHs have a "shield" kind of) it's not quite to the same degree, and certainly not as "finished" feeling. It'll get there, but at the moment if someone wanted to argue that Force users are favored, I'd be hard pressed to argue against them. Compare OP, Sniper, PT and Merc to Sin, Sorc, Jugg and Mara... and I think the last 4 are far stronger, on the whole, than the first 4. Best - Mara, Sorc, Sin Good - Merc, PT Okay - Jugg, Sniper Bad - OPs So when the 3 best classes in the game are Force users, it's hard to ignore that they're slightly favored.

The music to Pac-Man

I'm not talking about Tanks. The mDPS lack mobility unless they give up all of their DPS unlike other classes. Sorcs are not killing PTs because they are a "tank killer" its the lack of a gap closer. A Tanksin is literally a soft counter to Sorcs because of their force speed and cloak.

No, it is because the tree with range, mobility and utility does low DPS. The PT isn't supposed to get countered by Sorcs, but to do competitive damage people are using the PVE trees in PVP. The middle tree for PT needs a buff

The L2P responses just show how inexperienced the people making them are. Af launch the OP, a non-force user, was the best burst class in the game. Now its the worst DPS to the point where many raids have cut them entirely. Snipers are good in PVE but they get hurt the most by Tanking stats (unlike Sorcs, Maras and Sins) in PVP. BH were good but in 1.2 they already announced that they will be getting the OP nerf treatment. And just in case anyone wanted to argue Juggs didn't get painted with the brush of awesome powers, 1.2 brings a buff to them. So, if someone wanted to generalize and say force users are favored, especially in how their attacks ignore defensive stats and the same talent trees that have movement and CC also have burst... they might have at least some ground to stand on.

There are no stealth healer-killers and never will be. Bioware didn't want to create some imnalanced class that could solo PVP combat the way Rogues have for years. Anni Maras are the hard counter for Healers. If you engage a healer they will die.

You have it backwards. Shields should be made to affect Tech and Force attacks. The reason Tanks gear in DPS gear in PVP is that everyone but Snipers ignores their Shield. If Shield was made useful against everyone it would be balanced and Tanks could actually gear as Tanks.

My Operative is shelved for the time being because it has nowhere to go. Yeah, I have raided, yes, I have PVP'd but the class just FEELS awful. The argument that you can make OPs work if you are a top notch player is completely off.... its like saying a top racecar driver would make a Pinto win. Painters use brushes, surgeons use scalpels... using rocks wouldn't prove their skill, it would call it into question. I rerolled Assassin ans I love it. I actually want to log in and play now. My win rate has gone from 90% to 99% and I have more fun in Operations. I have tried every class but the Sniper and they are all fun, except for the Operative.