Why would they remove Unload/Full Auto? I mean, sure, I use it once in a blue moon (well, more often than that in PvE, actually), but why remove it? Is it breaking the PvP game? Is it to reduce ability bloat? Why? I'd honestly rather lose Shoulder Cannon than Unload/Full Auto. I like SC's damage and all, but the model is ugly as sin (Vanguard), and I don't like the functionality of it - also, it's not exactly in line with the developers' vision of "no damaging ability off the global cooldown". Pointless removal of flavor in the name of homogenization. Game is getting more stale every damn time I log on.

Surgical Probe has a cooldown, so it shouldn't cost a TA either. I think it's the end of the TA era. It was a cute gimmick that tried to mimic combo points, but putting a TA cost on our only sustainable AOE is stupid. It makes it not sustainable. The energy cost is incentive enough for us to not spam it, unlike other classes who have unlimited resources, and the TA requirement just makes it useless.

If they nerf Operatives/Scoundrels after the 3.0 stunt, they're officially clueless. The Kolto Probe and Shield Probe heals are meaningless. You don't have time to setup Kolto stacks while in combat, and you can't do it in stealth, so you're not going to set them up before combat. And the heal on Shield Probe collapse is pitiful, considering the cooldown on Shield Probe and the amount it absorbs. I agree that Concealment feels a lot more fluid now, and you probably don't realize it, but Concealment gets an Explosive Probe replacement at level 57, and it doesn't require cover. I'm still sad they removed Explosive Probe, though. Not only was it the main part of our ranged burst, it also added flavor to the class. The only way you get to summon a probe at an enemy as an Operative now is during scripted encounters, like the warheads in Kuat Drive Yards, or the door in The Esseles. Meh, like I've mentioned other places, I still like the class, although I'm a Scoundrel person myself (the knife sound effects got a little boring, to be honest). I just wish we had reliable, sustainable AOE. Grenade requires a target and has a not entirely insignificant cooldown. Carbine Burst is just *********** awful. The two other healing classes, Mercenaries and Sorcerers, get a spammable AOE attack. Don't know if you've played a Sorcerer recently, but Force Storm with the +25% damage utility packs a mean punch. Does crazy damage and stuns. What does Carbine Burst do in comparison?

This is probably my biggest gripe with Sawbones. Aside from the odd Back Blast, there's no room for damage dealing abilities. Meanwhile, in Camp Sage, they can blow their entire resource pool and never lose regen on it. Telekinetic Throw is resource neutral, for crying out loud! It costs no Force when you're Seer spec'd. What kind of crap is that? Can I get a 3-second channel on a short cooldown that doesn't cost energy and does a respectable amount of damage, please? No? Okay, I guess I'll stick to my Back Blast that costs 10% of my resource pool, risks putting me into the red if I suddenly need to burst heal, and requires me to be within melee range and BEHIND THE DAMN TARGET! But sure, let's remove Flyby because some developer felt it didn't fit the theme of the Scoundrel. Because obviously that was important.

Shiv and Veiled Strike both cost 15 energy. Veiled Strike does more damage (and has a cooler animation, hands down). Veiled Strike should replace Shiv on your action bar - developer said so himself in the livestream. Backstab costs 10 energy.

Large scale PvP (Warzones) is a ranged man's game right now. Operatives/Scoundrels get to skirt the edges and dip their toes in the pool once in a while, sometimes just to get said toes flattened by the big fat Vanguard/Powertech steamroller. It's pretty disgusting, really, and I feel your pain. Not just because I've got a Scoundrel and Operative myself, but because I've played the other side. My ranged classes are a treat to play in Warzones. You stand 30 meters away and just blow **** up with AOE nukes ad nauseam. If an enemy ranged player attacks you, it's a gentleman's duel to the death where you mash buttons and see who wins. If an enemy melee player attacks you, you just run to your own melee guys skirting the battlefield, and they'll jump on him like a pack of rapid dogs on a bunny. Compare an Operative/Scoundrel to an Assassin/Shadow. One gets half-assed healing, the other gets taunts. Which is more important in a PvP setting? One gets a resource type that penalizes reckless use, the other does not. One gets a spammable nuke, the other does not. Operatives/Scoundrels have an extra resource to juggle (TA/UH), and way longer setup times than an Assassin/Shadow. Our heals are next to useless while taunts can turn the tide. If you've compared 3.0 notes, you know that Operatives/Scoundrels got the stick this time around. The class appears to be the red-haired stepchild of the SWTOR family. Edit: I still enjoy my Scoundrel, though. I just don't do PvP content on her, anymore. I leave that for my Sorcerer/Sage, because who doesn't want to win games?

Having no ability to use off-GCD makes Guardian/Juggernaut gameplay VERY clunky, especially when tanking. Long GCD is long, even with alacrity out the wazoo. Guardians/Juggernauts had some of the biggest AOE aggro issues in the game, and they decided that being able to grab aggro on +1 mob in the same amount of time wasn't needed. Good call, Whatsyourface designer guy from the livestream.

Pretty happy with my Vanguard's damage output in Shield Spec, just found the tooltip misleading, but good to know they're aware of it.

Vanguard (57) - Shield Specialist Ion Storm with NO CELL active = 6442 damage Ion Storm with ION CELL active = 5135 damage 5135 / 6442 * 100 = 79.7% So roughly a 20% drop in damage when Ion Cell is activated, yeah? Tooltip for Ion Cell says 10%. Do I suck at math, did they forget to update the tooltips, or what?

I don't like Retaliation/Riposte being on the GCD now. It feels like Slash with a cooldown, which makes no sense. Should roll it into Slash damage - would free up some keybinds. The entire idea behind Retaliation/Riposte is that you avoid an incoming blow and utilize the momentary weakness in your opponent's defense to do immediate damage (off the GCD). With the horribly long GCD, the ability not only makes no sense now, it also feels horribly clunky. Should have removed it. It's nothing but bloat now.

Happens with insta-CL on Force Storm as well. If you load up Force Storm at the last second of hard-casting Chain Lightning, the Lightning Storm proc from Force Storm will get eaten by the hard-casted Chain Lightning.

Congratulations, you appear to not be genetically predisposed to cardiovascular diseases. I guess that's one way to find out.

Force Attunement used to give +400 Force and +20% armor; it now gives +500 Force. We lost the 20% additional armor, and it hurts. It might be a bug, because it seems Corruption still gets the bonus. I have 17% damage mitigation as Lightning or Madness, but when I switch to Corruption, it jumps up to 20%. This is with the +3% from Sith Defiance. Another odd thing is that my Vanguard, who is sitting at 29% damage mitigation in heavy armor, has way more effective health. Talos has no way of keeping me alive on my Sorcerer, but my Vanguard just steamrolls everything with Elara. I'm guessing someone messed up some numbers somewhere. With the lag spikes that are everywhere right now, it's downright dangerous to play Sorcerer. Because of the lag, Khem doesn't attack until 2-3 seconds into the fight, at which point I've lost 1/3rd of my health already. Came across a silver NPC that would CC Khem every damn time. Got killed in one lag spike. Lost 11.5k health to an enemy 4 levels below me in 3 seconds flat. Doesn't help that we lost our healing. Static Barrier is basically pointless unless you're Corruption, because it drops faster than the GCD, so you're better off just spamming the crappy Dark Heal. No idea why they took away our healing and our damage mitigation. The trade-off in mobility doesn't seem worth it. At least not for the first 50 levels.

30-54's were fun when you were in the 50's, yes. When you were in your 30's... not so much. And no one's talking about Warzones dying out. Get with the program. We're talking queue times. Argument A: More brackets results in longer queue times. Argument B: Larger brackets results in longer queue times. Your argument, which is something along the lines of "herp derp, sadface much?" is not on the table.

No one's asking for balance, just that level 30's don't get matched against level 59's. It wasn't fun when the bracket was 30-54, and it's not fun now. When something isn't fun, people tend to not do it. How's that for queue times?

They're going to murder Force Storm next patch, I think. Resources With the new way resources are spent per tick instead of instantly, Force Storm's resource cost is meaningless, because you regenerate it as fast as you can spend it, even if you get interrupted halfway through. There is no resource benefit to using Force Lightning over Force Storm. Damage Force Lightning receives zero buffs from the Lightning discipline. The faster cast time has been moved to Madness. The double-tick has been removed. No damage bonuses applied. Does not proc other abilities. Force Storm gets +25% damage from utility, +15% crit chance and +30% crit damage from discipline path, and it procs instant Chain Lightning. Oh, and Force Storm is AOE. Utility Force Lightning roots weak NPCs and slows everything else. Force Storm has a chance to stun weak NPCs and slows everything else. This is arguably where Force Lightning has its use, because the slow is more powerful than the one on Force Storm. Outside of the odd case where you need to slow someone for 50% instead of 30%, Force Storm does everything better than Force Lightning. More damage to more targets with same resource penalty (none) and arguably better utility. Edit: Oh, and I *********** love the beefed up Force Storm. Just wish Force Lightning had a place in the Lightning rotation, but I feel like I'm gimping myself (because I am) whenever I use it for nostalgic reasons.

Congratulations, aside from EQ, you've managed to play all the non-mainstream MMOs then, because every damn MMO has XP cuts, unless level scaling is involved. It's to prevent power-leveling bots from grinding to level cap on slugs on Korriban. Yeah, sucks when you don't know how to read mission levels, despite having played MMOs since EQ, but that's life for ya. You snooze, you lose.

Lightning Sorcerers have taken a lot of crap over the years for being too much lightning. Telekinetics deserves at least the same amount of crap now, because with TK Throw out, we're down to Forcequake, Mind Crush and Project in terms of abilities that aren't glowing bubbles. Bubble abilities: Offensive Disturbance Turbulence Telekinetic Wave Telekinetic Gust Telekinetic Burst Defensive Force Armor Force Barrier Enough with the damn bubbles, man. And the same damn "whoom!" sound effect that was cool the first 1000 times I heard it, but now that all my abilities pretty much hit twice in a row, it's "whoo-whoom!" every damn cast. It's driving me nuts.

It's really not. A lot of people play the Agent as a no-nonsense Imperialist. The chuckle when you stab someone with a giant blade is more Kaliyo than no-nonsense Imperialist.

I damn near choked on my coffee when I heard their explanation for Carbine Burst spreading DoTs. They don't want a melee class to spread DoTs, unless the melee class is the Assassin/Shadow. **** consistency. Generally, this live stream was full of ****** explanations. Like when Whatshisface (not Musco) said that being able to pop out of stealth and drop an Orbital Strike didn't feel right thematically, so they removed Orbital Strike from Operatives. What? Of all the live streams, this one was the least enjoyable. Much like the class it covered, it felt like an afterthought. Like some developer at one point said "we should probably do one for the Agent/Smuggler" and the rest of the team let out sighs of resignation. But at least we now get to generate TA from 10 meters away. Yay.

We have a winner. Wrist Blade > Retractable Blade. In my opinion, of course.

Did they swap the shoulder cannon models? Because the Vanguard shoulder cannon is ugly as sin.

Sorry to revive this, but seriously... can we get official word on this soon? The Vanguard cannon looks like something belonging on a Bounty Hunter, and the Powertech cannon looks like something belonging on the Trooper. I have one of both classes, and both models clash horribly with the armor design of each class. Unless I stick my Vanguard in Bounty Hunter armor, the cannon just does not match anything.

Perhaps others out there are like me and wish they could mix and match the abilities, story, faction, and weapon choices in the game, so I thought I'd take the idea for a spin. Basically, list your favorite abilities, story, faction, and weapon. Like so: Abilities: Bounty Hunter (Mercenary) Story: Trooper Faction: Republic Weapon: Rifle Feel free to add an explanation as well. I chose the Bounty Hunter abilities, because I love the variety in animations, the sound effects, the "oomph" behind the attacks, and that I can heal and deal damage (although specialization is required to fulfill either role optimally) at the same time. The Trooper abilities pale in comparison, especially High Impact Bolt which sounds and looks like it's being squirted out of the gun. I chose the Trooper story, because while the Bounty Hunter Act I is also about revenge, I think the Trooper story does a much better job at getting me invested in it. And I love the interaction with the rest of my crew members throughout the acts. I chose the Republic faction, because I prefer the bright and vibrant atmosphere on the Republic planets and stations to the gloomy and sterile Empire. I also prefer being on the side of the good guys, even if some would argue that there is no good/evil faction split in this game. The rifle is my weapon of choice. While I like dual blasters as well, I really love the aesthetics of the rifle, especially when holstered.

Define "better", because it ruined the fun for a lot of people when it happened. I was a hybrid (read: Feral) when they decided to chop that spec up into two in the name of PvP. Now I'm locked into one form for 90% of my playtime. Damage parsing and hardcore PvP/PvE has ruined games since as far back as I can remember. I don't blame the hardcore players, though; I blame the game developers for basing their game around that very vocal minority.