Just ask yourself one little question: Does spending the time to fix this bug generate any revenue via subscribers or Cartel Market? If you answered no to this question (like Bioware undoubtedly did) then you have the reason that this bug has been around for so long, and why noone has taken the time to fix it. The danger of games that use a F2P model is always that they will focus development time on items that they can sell to their users. I mean do you think BioWare spends more time coming up with cartel packs, or do you think they focus on class balance? Do you think BioWare is developing the upcoming Casino event so that players can have a great time and win amazig prizes? NOO!!!! Of course they aren't. The casino event is a massive credit and cartel coin sink designed to reduce the amount of currency that players have when the player housing expansion is released. And if you believe that adding additional rooms, putting up decorations, and designing the floor plan of your house will be given to you free of charge (or even if you pay a subscription) then you are sadly mistaken. Plain and simple. No bug fixes cmoing for this any time soon, just like no cross server pvp queues. No profit gain, no time spent.

Finally, someone who understands that pvp is a numbers game and that individual performance CAN and IS measured by your stats at the end of the game. Sure, stats are not everything - but Capt Beers lowest acceptable limits are a bare minimum for average performance. Good players will go WELL above those numbers on a regular basis, and great players will just look astronomical. There is never a good excuse to have multiple games under the stats he gave.

They announced yesterday that defending against and dodging attacks will provide energy regen in the future. This was announced in the 2.8 patch notes that are currently on PTS. This should make the 4pc set bonus more desirable. This change applies to the resetting rocket punch proc as well

Any time, All of my characters are currently on Harbinger Server if you ever want to play in game.

Alright time for the Saboteur spec I use for pvp http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#700rk0zZbIMbRRbRrdGzZh.3 Optional Talents: 1) Pandemonium - This is really cool in theory, but I tend not to take it for one reason. Energy management in this spec is very limited since your sabatoge charge is on such a long CD. Charged burst is usually not worth the energy it costs to cast it, but can be handy in a pinch. I tend to like the tier 1 and tier 2 skills I selected in my spec a bit better. 2) Hot Pursuit - This talent is always one of the hardest for me to pass on. It is the only way that using Quick Shot is ever energy efficient; however, Quick Shot is really awful. The damage output is so bad that you are usually better off trying to use something else. This makes this skill only useful when you are chasing other enemies. And lets face it, you are ranged, so you are normally the one being chased. A very cool talent, but I don't find much use for it. 3) Press the Advantage/Seize the Moment - These skills buff your Sabotage ability. unfortunately, Sabotage is on a pretty long cooldown so these talents don't always feel like they are worth it. You can drop both of these to pick up Hot Pursuit and Pandemonium if you like. I tend to take them because I use Sabotage very frequently in this spec, and energy management is pretty difficult as well. Seize the moment is almost like a free "cool head" if you use it with your sabotage charge 4) Riot Screen/Scatter Bombs - Riot Screen gives the only realy good base utility ability that GS players have a pretty nice boost. It's usefulness is arguable and these points can be traded out if you like. Scatter Bombs is more just a really fun talent. It can be used offensively to burst people down if they are standing near a wall since all of the charges will fall on the same location if you roll into the wall, but this doesnt happen all that often. It feels amazing to pull it off though. 5) Percussive shot - This point just adds a small knockback to aimed shot, which you will be using a lot in this spec. Kind of a nice little survivability boost, but not necessary.

Thanks for the input! Ya I think the changes to Defense Screen (Shield probe) in 2.7 have been really good for the DF spec. I think you are correct about that defensive analysis. I will change it in my comparison.

Here is my spec for Dirty Fighting. http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#700rZbczZGboRrrRoMsuR.3 This spec has a LOT of optional talents that you can tailor to suit your needs Optional talents: 1) Black Market Mods: This talent kind of sucks. But you have to pick between this and Holdout Defense. HD is slightly worse in my opinion, but this wont make much of a difference regardless since they are both pretty bad talents. 2) Hold Your Ground/Hotwired Defenses/Dirty Trickster: These 3 talents make up most of the pvp defensive capability that a DF GS has. I usually go with Hold Your Ground as the 5 second reduction to your AOE knockback is and the 30 second reduction on your CC breaker are really good. Hotwired defenses is a bit better now since Defense Screen got buffed in 2.7. This can be great if you find yourself lacking some defense, as DF GS players usually do. Dirty Trickster has been pretty bad in the past, but with the more recent patches, classes are getting a large number of roots and slows added to their arsenals. The most recent was the root given to Master Strike for Vigilance Guardians. This talent is getting better and may even be worth taking now. 3) Cold Blooded/Concussion - Cold Blooded is a dps increase talent, though it is not very good for 3 points. Usually a 15% increase to your DOT damage is not very important while trying to deal killing blows. I take it usually, but there is nothing wrong with skipping this for some of the more defensive talents I listed above. Concussion is a strictly support skill that allows you to use your flashbang on targets that you have already hit with DoT's. This skill became less important with 2.7, as the flashbang grenade was nerfed for GS players. It no longer has an AOE effect, which reduces its usefulness. You could take the 1 point from this and the 3 from cold Blooded and pick up both of the additional defensive talents instead 4) Incendiary Mine - This talent is average at best, I usually take it just for the fun factor

Here is the build I use for pvp as Sharpshooter http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#700rsbbdRkRrckdzZbcMZh.3 A few things, 1) Snap shot, while cool is not really necessary for the spec. It helps to add a little burst but adds nothing to your overall dps. You can trade this out for Trip Shot or Holed Up for a little more utility. I find both of these talents as kind of wasteful though as it is rare you need the additional 3 seconds off your root CD and it is easy enough to just move out of AOE attacks. Holed Up was a little more necessary before Focus spec guardian/sentinel got heavily nerfed in 2.7, but it is not as needed now. 2) I like saboteur's utility belt a lot for pvp since a 3 second instant cast AOE attack works wonders for node defending, but this can be traded for other dps increasing talents if desired I will post my other pvp builds a little later today

scatter bombs wreak havoc when you use them while against a wall or in an enclosed area, like inside the cap points in novare coast. When you roll into a wall, all of the scatter bombs explode on the same area, decinating anyone who is unluck enough to be standing there. Of course there are not always great ways to use this skill, but it has some potential.

The best target you can choose to attack is the same target that the rest of your teammates are attacking. One of the biggest problems faced by teams is not focusing their targets. In order to have the burst required to take down a player, you need to be able to do damage higher than what they can heal through. This usually requires more than one dps on a target. Other than that, The optimal target to choose is loosely based on this structure 1) Anyone out of position - if someone gets away from the rest of their group, they are easy prey. Blow em up 2) healer if unguarded - an unguarded healer should fall to 2 dps if they know what they are doing 3) squishy dps (most fall into this category, but sorcs and snipers are among the best) - if the healer is guarded, this is usually the place to go. Guard is very powerful. 4) healer (guarded) 5) Tank Really the theme here is to try and get around guard. Ways to do it are to: 1) cc the tank and then focus a target that is not guarded (while cc'd the tank cannot switch his guard) 2) remove the tank out of guard range, causing the guard to drop. Guard has a maximum range so separating the tank from the group is a great way to get aroudn it. Force push perhaps? 3) kill the tank - this method is usually bad since tanks have such high defense, but some classes (lethality sniper) are really strong at it due to all of the internal and elemental damage

Damn that was a lot of crap In conclustion, there is no super class for gunslingers, all have drawbacks. If you are looking for team support then saboteur is the way to go, and most higher skilled gunslingers tend to gravitate towards this tree in pvp. This tree has a very high skill ceiling though, making it one of the toughest to play well. If you want great burst, sharpshooter is your way to go, but it gets hard countered by tanks and some defensive cooldowns Lastly, if you want high damage numbers and the ability to chew through tanks, Dirty fighting is your way to go, but the low burst and poor survivability of the spec presents its own set of challenges. Hopefully this gave you some insight into the specs and their strengths/weaknesses

Saboteur Pros High defenseive capability - you get the best set of defensive abilities of any of the 3 classes, due to your 5th tier ability that resets many of your defensive cooldown. This allows for double rolls and double shield probes while in tough situations. Very efficient at 1v1 encounters - This spec is sometimes called the duelling spec, since a player who plays it well can beat almost any other class in the game. The combination of single target damage and high defensive capability makes it very strong at 1v1 encounters Decent against all enemy archetypes - The class has a great mix of kinetic (yellow) and weapon (white) damage, making it decent at engaging most types of enemies. The tradeoff for this is that it is not as effective at engaging them as SS is with squishy targets and DF is with tank targets Decent Team support skills - Team support is not something that gunslingers do well, but this spec gives you one ability that lets it go above the other specs in this category. Incendiary grenade. This ability puts a small AOE down anywhere you like that you can keep down for as long as you are alive. This combined with the large amount of node defense in many of the game types, makes trying to take a node versus a saboteur very annoying. The ability is not channelled so you dont even have to keep line of sight with it to continuously protect a point. Dropping this ability and then hiding is a perfectly viable defense strategy used by many saboteurs and is a pain to counter. the only way the enemy can get rid of this is to kill you, and you have lots of defensive capabilities making this a tough job indeed! Cons Low Burst - Your burst in this spec is dependent upon one ability sab charge. This abilities naturally high CD (20+ seconds) makes your burst never available as frequently as you would like. this usually means you have to save it for necessary situations. And picking the correct ones is the mark of a good saboteur player. Without this ability up, your burst is just awful Difficult Rotation - Compared to the other specs, the rotation for this one is nowhere near as clear and concise. It is complicated and revolves around keeping the dot supplied by your speed shot, quick shot, and charged burst active. This DoT drops after 6 seconds so it is difficult to maintain consistenly. In practice, there is no good rotation for this spec for pvp because it is so complicated. Lower DPS output - You have to pay for your teamfight and defensive boosts in some way and this is it. Your dps numbers will always be lower in this spec than in others due to the increased difficulty and the larger focus on team support. Your main DoT can only be applied to one target at a time as well, reducing your overall dps. Below average target switching - You have to establish your main DoT in order to have any sustained damage on a target, forcing you to refresh it every time you switch targets.

Dirty Fighting Pros Very high damage output - The DoT nature of your attacks means your ability to put out very large dps numbers is great. You get a spammable AOE DoT (shrap grenade) and your standard vital shot. You should always be near the top of the leaderboard in damage while playing this spec. Very simple rotation - shrap bomb - vital shot - hemmhoraging blast - wounding shots - quickdraw - speed shot - wounding shots -quickdraw - aimed shot(optional) - repeat. This rotation is also very energy friendly and rarely requires throwing in your basic attack to control, especially when your crit chance gets higher. High mobility - virtually all of your skills (except speed shot and aimed shot) can be used while out of cover. Most of them can be used while on the move as well, making this a very mobile spec, probably the most mobile of all the gunslinger specs Destroys tanks - Almost all of your damage is internal damage (which is not mitigated by armor) which gives this spec the ability to chew through tanks and heavy armor oh so sweetly. Only assassins/shadows get a decent amoutn of internal damage reduction (and even it is minimal) Cons Very low burst - while your ability to DoT enemies is great and your damage is very strong when sustained - you have very little burst. Higher burst is usually required in order to down healers, making this spec somewhat lackluster for this purpose Fluff damage - Though your numbers will be really high, DoT damage can usually be healed through easily, meaning your class will have a harder time finishing opponents and securing kills. This is tied into the low burst of the spec. Minimal Team Support - Similar to Sharpshooter, your ability to help your team is minimal in this spec. Very slow target switching - In order to use your wounding shots effectively, you must have DoT's present on your enemy, meaning you have to refrech these every time you switch targets. Smart enemies will immediately run for cover when they see your DoT's hit them, since they know what comes next will hurt.

In order to try and answer this question, I will talk a little about the pros and cons of each tree and what it brings to the table Due to not wanting to make massive posts, i will post my information for the 3 trees separately Sharpshooter Pros: Very strong and consistent burst - The combination of your high powered aim shot and skill buffed quickdraw give you very potent burst, especially if you line it up with a saboteur charge Very fast target switching - Your setup requires no special effects to pump out damage. All rotational buffs apply to your character, allowing you to flow from one target to another seamlessly Very simple and effective rotation - basic rotation is speed shot - trickshot - charged burst (x2) - trickshot - aimed shot - trick shot - and repeat. Simple and to the point, plus you will never run out of energy. You can change it up depending on your situation in order to get more burst but your energy regen will suffer. Great escape ability and lockdown - Your forward roll (lvl 51) will provide you with a 6 second speed boost and root immunity if specced correctly, giving you great ways to enter and exit combat. Your root (leg shot) also has a great slow applied to it from your skill tree. Add that to all of the standard gunslinger tricks and it is very potent Cons: Shut down by many cooldowns and hard countered by tanks - The biggest weakness of your damage is that it is ALL weapon damage (aka white damage). Cooldowns like the assassin and guardian bubbles reduce accuracy of weapon attacks by 50% cutting your dps output in half. Tanks also have very high defense to these types of attacks plus they can shield them, reducing your damage further. Try to focus on squishy targets like healers when running this spec, because you can feel very useless vs some classes. Little to no Team Utility - Almost inexistant, the class offers nothing beyond what is given to every slinger Very immobile - Your attacks almost all require you to be in cover, meaning you are very immobile. This also means your class gets hardcountered by people smart enough to just leave your line of sight

Vigilance is a very strong dps spec right now, combining great lockdown and decent survivability with very sustainable damage output. If it has one weakness, it is the fact that its burst is not very strong. One thing to remember about playing a guardian is that your class is inherently a support class. You have very strong support skills in your taunts, force push, guardian leap, and your awe. Using these abilities correctly is always the difference between regular and great guardian players. If you find yourself force jumping into the middle of the melee and getting focused down quickly, then it is time to rethink your strategy. The best thing you can do is fight to keep your healer and your teammates alive. Always be mindful of their position and use your support skills to keep them going. They will love you for it because very few ranked players understand this concept. Damage is only a small part of what you bring to the table. Lastly, you are only 1/4 of your team. Even if you are perfect, bad players can and will bring you down. Try not to sweat a string of losses, it happens. Especially in solo queue. And don't worry about people yelling at you or anything like that. They are usually just trying to cover up their own poor play.

So there is a large disparity between the warrior/knight classes and all other in SWTOR. As a warrior/knight, you never get your execute ability until lvl 46. The ability is by far the most pleasing to use in the classes arsenal and you have to play a LONG time before you get access to it. By comparison, snipers/slingers get their execute at 18, and assassins/shadows get theirs at 32. Beyond this, the warrior/knight classes tend to be very late bloomers, relying on top tier skills from their trees (available at lvl 45) in order to bring together their combat styles. This leads to the classes being VERY boring to level, at least until you reach lvl 46 and your dps rotations are completed. As for me, I found it totally worth it to go through the boring levelling process because those end game skills are so much fun to use. My recommendation is spec focus (since it is usualyl the fastest for leveling) and just trudge through. It gets better.

are you running vigilance or focus?

Still, it would be nice to have all rating gain and loss disabled whenever a mismatched warzone occurrs. That way players can leave at will, or just play it out for fun, but not worry about losing ranking. A pop up message should be added as well, that lets players know the match is safe to leave.

It is important to remember why the queues are not separated. Server populations are not high enough to support splitting the pvp community any further without significantly increasing warzone queue times. The root cause of this issue is simply that BioWare has never bothered to put cross server pvp functionality into this game and they have no plans to do so in the future, which they have stated on multiple occasions. That mindset needs to change if you want separate warzone queues to become a reality. That same mindset is also the cause of why so many other pvp issues have never been addressed. Things like leaver penalties and proper matchmaking are also not possible without a larger pvp player base. That player base population cannot be reached without cross server functionality. Just my 2 cents. But I prefer to focus on the root of the problem, instead of the issues it causes.

Howdy! a rather large amount has changed if you have been gone for that long. Besides numerous class balance changes (waaaaaaay too many to list out here) the game got its first expansion. That expansion moved the level cap from 50 to 55. It also introduced a new planet (Makeb) and added a new lvl 51 skill to all advanced classes. For assassin, it is a teleport skill that allows you to teleport back to a waypoint that you created earlier. Great for guarding nodes or getting out of trouble. SWTOR always returns all skill points used whenever there is a significant change to a classes skill trees. In this case, after being gone for 2 years, your skill tree has probably changed at least 5-6 times. Go through your skill trees and see what has changed. Of the 3 trees for assassin, deception has probably changed the most, though all 3 have seen changes over the past couple years. Deception is still a stealth burst tree, madness is still a sustained damage tree, and darkness is still a tank tree

Howdy! So as some people have stated, madness/balance is really the only way to go if you want to be a sorc dps in pvp. The other specs (especially full lightning, and somewhat the hybrid) are too immobile to be viable. The sorcerer's biggest weaknesses are low armor and susceptibility to interrupts. Both of these weaknesses are extremely easy to exploit if you are immobile. This makes running any lightning or lightning hybrid build very difficult in pvp. The beauty of the full madness build is that you only ever have to stand still to cast force lightning. At all other times you can be moving. Full madness also gets you access to the 9 sec cd root which is one of the most powerful abilities in the game for kiting. In 2.7, full madness is getting buffed significantly by removing the RNG element from the spec (where before getting your procs was based on a a 30% per tick of force lightning damage, now you will get the proc immediately when 3 ticks of damage occurr (force lightning has 4 ticks of damage through the entire ability so only 3 need to hit to get your guaranteed proc). The other major buff they are getting is that lightning strike (your go to proc when crushing darkness is off of CD) is now free as long as 3 ticks of your force lightning hit (which has to occurr in order to get your instant cast proc). This should highly alleviate the issues that madness sorcs had with force management problems and increase their dps output a small amount. In 2.7, the previously healing only talent that allowed force speed to allow you to be immune to roots and slows is now in the first tier of the healing tree, making it available to all sorcerer specs. This will also add a huge amount to your survivability. The final weakness of madness is you have absolutely no burst. The best you can do is stack your dots, pop recklesness, and then use your force lightning, but even this is not very strong burst compared to what other classes can do. The positive is that your survivability is by far the highest out of all dps specs. This positive outweighs the negatives by a large amount so it is the spec of choice for most dps sorcs in pvp.

Try posting something constructive. If you honestly believe that I am completely wrong, then try making valid points. Adults have the ability to listen to constructive criticism.

My point to the above was that if you just walk up and sleep dart and the enemy has their cc breaker up, then it was all for nothing. they would just wait till you tried to cap and then break it and you would be screwed. Unless they were complete scrub and broke your sleep dart before you started capping... lol Now you can open up out of stealth and use dirty kick a short way into your rotation. if they dont break your cc, you get to drop them to about 30-40% health before they have a chance to fight back. If they do break it, you restealth, sleep dart, and then cap. This choice was not available to players if they wanted to keep their opening burst intact (use shoot first as an opener) before this change. It will be now, leading to some fun options to trick unsuspecting node guarders. And yes, the most useful aspect of the knockdown was the interrupt; however, it did not lock the ability being used out, so it never interruped a target for longer than the knockdown duration anyways. Plus your own interrupt is not on the GCD so you can use it immediately after hitting your shoot first opener and still get a similar effect. You will lose one interrupt overall, but I would gladly trade one additional cast of a target for not giving them full resolve. Any good healer will be able to heal to full while they have full resolve, unless you have 2-3 dps on them.

Just a couple of notes on your post. 1st: thank you for your insight into what I spoke about. 2nd: Any person who uses their cc breaker on a root or the opening knockdown of shoot first is an absolute noob. That is one of the biggest mistakes you can make against a scrapper. 3rd: If this really brought you to delete your character then I am really confused. This class has been crap for a long time (till the most recent patches - and even then it is only mediocre). This minor nerf (or slight buff as i see it) really should not have been the straw that broke in your mind. 4th: if you were considering leaving your scrapper for a assassin, then you should've left a long time ago. The deception assassin is in every way better than a scrapper scoundrel, better DCD's, better burst, better control. You will enjoy that class for sure. Even with the buffs scrapper got in the last patch, it still was not ranked viable due to the extreme lack of survivability. They are getting a small defensive boost in 2.7 from one of their DCD's getting a great reduction in CD time. It is still not enough to make the class ranked viable, but it is something. i dunno, I just don't think this change is as detrimental as many people believe it is. Maybe I'll be wrong, but I think it will be fun to find out. Playing through adversity will only make you better. Thats why FOTM players are always crap

I find this entire thread really funny, as well as the general misconception that removing the knockdown is a nerf. In reality, it is a very sweet buff that i am really excited for for my scrapper. See below if you do not understand: The most common opening rotation for a scrapper from stealth goes something like: 1) shoot first 2) sucker punch (maybe backblast here if you are going for maximum burst, but it wastes some additional damage you could do if you waited 6 seconds for t the first flechette round to wear off) 3) dirty kick 4) blaster whip 5) suckerpunch 6) etc... The GLARING weakness with this rotation is that the knockdown from shoot first and the stun from dirty kick will instantly max resolve your target, making it difficult to continue with more cc if needed. We do not get much of a choice here considering we HAVE to open with shoot first for max burst The removal of the knockdown effect is a godsend since it allows us to do maximum damage without giving our opponent full resolve. This leaves the enemy open to great additional cc like the stun grenade or popping stealth and using your sleep dart. Imagine the havoc you can wreak with this. especially in situations like hypergate when it only takes 6 seconds to cap the node. you can shoot first, dirty kick (laugh because they WILL use their stun breaker on it) (wait the remaining 3 seconds for flechette round to wear off and then stealth/sap and get a free cap. There are many more applications than the one i listed above that a good player will easily realize. Bioware even helped us out by allowing our next backblast to be used from any angle, making defense versus a scrapper more difficult. In summary, sure we lost the knockdown, but the knockdown's utility was not very high anyways, and it came at a great cost (when combined with our stun gave an opponent an instant full resolve bar). I, for one, am stoked about the change, and i encourage you to think about the opportunities given to you by this change and just how sweet it could be in the hands of a crafty player