this exactly; you can balance low-end PvE content to be done by an all dps team and still keep the trinity in operations. But imagine if raiders where told that their hard mode ops had to be done in an all dps group; we would have mass riots. Tactical flashpoints aren't trying to push the skill boundaries of their classes. Its mirrored in PvP, regs can have all dps teams and be fine, but ranked is where you push the boundaries of PvP and you can't get away with that **** and still be balanced. Think of it this way; snipers are viable in gRanked because teams are balanced; but everyone wants to solo que so they look underpowered because bioware doesn't design classes for all dps teams, which most of what you get in ranked. Yet if they where given the CDs on par with the top solo classes, snipers would become OP in gRanked (and likely cause riots among solo ranked classes as well). Most of bioware's "class balance" issues would be solved if they didn't allow ranked que pops without healers. At least then classes that are designed like snipers, CDs focusing on CC and Burst mitigation, become viable because they can use CDs to counter large burst damage to stay healed. Other classes win the solo ranked game because if you don't have a healer, than whoever can do the most overall damage mitigation lives longer; and since the objective is to stay alive first and formost there is no counter.

In PvE, Engineers do the best damage in the game against more stationary targets (Because Plasma Probe does a fair bit if you can lay it on a boss) In PvP, Engineers do less burst, and so end up doing less overall damage than MM. However they are defensive beasts (Compared to our other specs) For how easy it is to kite, stun, root, and control melee players that are threatening them. Plus they have good sustained damage and your AoE group pressure is great when people are stupid enough to stand in a group. Lethality in both PvP/PvE falls in between, doing more overall sustained then marksman, more burst than engi, and is easier than engi but harder than marksman. Its a real less risk less reward spec. MM is a faceroll that pays of in the short term, Engi is a high skill high reward over the long term. Lethality is better balanced. I am also saying this relatively; as far as I can tell Snipers are the hardest class to play just in and of themselves. Hope this answers your question.

I use SF to set of EP charges only when 1) EP marked target moves behind a pillar, I use it to pressure them out 2) SoS is on CD but I want EP to go off (when stuns etc mess up rotation usually) 3) as a filler when multiple enemies are standing close together and have been hit/ are being hit by Plasma Probe (AoE damage increase +hinder for additional damage) Things to consider: over a gcd, SF does about as much damage to two targets as a snipe does to one; making it worthwhile to use if two or more people stand together. Especially if marked by the PP aoe debuff or with EC. EP-SoS is still far more damaging to a single target Never channel the full 4.5 seconds; go 1.5-3 seconds max. If you have more than three globals of filler you are doing something wrong, and in any event it uses to much energy --I do admit I ignore this myself, when EP is on CD and the people I am fighting (3 or more) all sit in PP, then I actually spam SF until they get out of PP and use EC when it comes off, maybe a Int. P to stun if i'm being really disrespectfull; the pressure is amazing when people forget that standing in the fire is just as bad in PvP as it is in PvE. Never do this if Adrenaline probe is on CD though because then you f yourself.

There are two things at play here; (1) snipers/slingers are squishy in general, and (2) snipers/slingers have to utilize a style of cover/hit/run play that is very difficult to utilize what defense they have. I always top dps charts and vs. melee are the most fun, so let me show you some things to utilize. First, make sure you have the right utilities; a lot of the slow/ escape option utilities are awesome and necessary. Look them up for more detail. I could give them to you in a seprate post but I want to keep this one short. Use Diversion on yourself when vs. melee, it will keep them off you because the accuracy reduction hurts their dps so bad. Use CDs like evasion, roll, roots, etc. to keep them from damaging you while you pile damage on. When those CDs are OUT, run like hell. you are pretty mobile as a dps with the hunker down utility (6 second 50% speed boost when exiting cover). Melee cant catch up to that over the long hall, especially if you used cover pulse and your other knockbacks to force an approach earlier. Basically unless you expect a CC to be incoming only be in cover against melee when you can't escape them (to have balistic dampeners tank some damage) or to cast speed shot (time it right, and you can use the utility knockback to get them away anyway). That's how you survive on a sniper/slinger. Of course, we are still pretty weak in arena's anyway; and because we don't have hugely helpful CDs gear matters more, so that might actually be your biggest issue.

Forgive me if this is wrong/they changed it but doesn't PP ignore alacrity, thus always being 9 seconds? As for me I get good results from having 10% alacrity. My rule for PvP is only take enough alacrity to be noticeable, don't try to min-max alacrity. I use SoS as an alacrity reference. with 10% alacrity I get .3 seconds off the cast time, so its worth it if just for getting the cast to finish faster thus increase the chance it finishes before it is LoS'ed. Before I took less alacrity because the only thing I saw a difference in that was noticeable was the GCD (.1 second off in 3.0). Basically, use the PvE min-maxer DPS stats as a Maximum alacrity level, measure that against what the minimum amount of alacrity is to see a measurable difference is, and pick a point between the two that facilitates utility compared to how much critical rating you are willing to lose.

This is why I don't want it to change to much, I love the utility of it to much to take that trade off

One more piece of advice, always take compounding Impact and Series of Snares. If you have that and Interogation Probe, they are sooooooooo slow they simply cant escape PP/EMP stun to save there lives.

Man I'm so glad I'm done moving. Now if ya'll would kindly direct me to the best Ranked PvP days and times that would be great

If you guys are still doing this, I have set up Remnants of Hope's Ranked Night to be on Fridays. Hopefully we can field more people for you all during these events

Joy, then I am the best sniper on my server Big whoop, still can't play enough ranked to get a decent rating, and what ranked you can play trashes snipers. Why are rewards given out based on global population when only servers compete in themselves? this is a huge problem, especially for classes that rely on teammates in the solo que on servers that don't pop.

So after hours of playing on a jung ma engineer sniper, I get to find out that I don't qualify this season for anything I didn't get last season. Great. Take a look at the leaderbords, exactly 40 snipers across the world get silver rewards, out of how many? Lilith, the best sniper on jung ma (for rating) with 1288 gets bronze? Khronik, 1250, Bronze? And me, Blackflyer, at 1235, also bronze. And the best part? Blackflyer, 32 wins Khronik, 2 wins Lilith, 2 wins Lets break that down. I win more ranked then any sniper on my server, and get a lower rating. Add to that the fact that THE HIGHEST RANKED SNIPER ON THE SERVER GETS BRONZE and now, you see how failure in class balance and failure in managing ques and a failure of population means **** all on low tier characters, and wonder why everyone rolls sages and transfers to the bastion. Check the sniper leaderbords, this isn't a lie

Its mostly been between 5-7k damage, or about a full GCD worth of incoming damage to you, in practical terms.

yeah I was peeling and poping the big shield for nyssa as often as I could. we won that mostly because they where out of breakers by the time they actually got her down.

Its fine that everyone wants to ask for help for things or figure out what to buff and all, but I think it can get pretty repetetive. So I have a vid of my favorite ranked match so far. forgive the laughter the adrenaline made me high. Its a 3 v 4 where the sniper's team still won! Maybe we where playing three v 4 against a bad group of four, but honestly If your 3 v 4 you have no excuse except the people you played against where just awesome.

especially post 3.0, scoundrel healer dps 'feels' less cool. with the removal of explosive probe and orbital strike. If I had to say, simply use backblast from stealth as an opener, grenade another target, Vital shot, pistol whip, then blaster volly for aoe groups. I hate to say it, but thats about all the meaty dps abilities you have. I would highly recommend you switch to a dps spec to level, or really gear up a dps companion if you cant stand how long/boring it is. It doesn't get much better unfortunately.

Don't count out a good concealment op. The skill threshold needed is much higher to preform well but preform it will. I would say most of the top ops are concealment and maybe healing. Its kind of hard to gauge the healing part though, as its so dependent on everything else. Gun to my head, both disciplines are good but require a much higher skill level to use well, thus their presence but under-representation in the upper echelons of the leaderboard.

The thing that Engineering has over marksman is better overall damage (sustained), better mobility, and a lot of crowd and situation control (PP hinder spam on melee). The reason why people much prefer Marksman over Engineering is because the burst is actually possible to get off before you die, whereas with engi you hardly get through laying on your dots before you have to play defensively and, before long, die. understand that, as a dedicated engi main in solo ranked, I highly recommend you take up marksman if you want the best rating. Its not that snipers are a bad class, its just not having good enough defensive abilities and nothing to force a target switch means we are heavily reliant on our team to preform well. In granked and certain solo comps any sniper can preform effectively; that is, a good healer and a tank guard will let you use what DCDs you have effectively, and engender less focus. However, solo ranked viability should assume the worst comps, all DPS vs DPS. In these situations, its who melts whos face first. Most other classes have defensive or self-healing cooldowns to stay alive through that massive dps; we dont. So, the only real viable spec is the one that will take someone down before you go down, marksman, But since you say you don't want to play marksman, I'll first applaud you; I like people who don't push the burst meta. So, between Lethality and Engi, I'd have to say I like Engi better in PvP even while admitting i'm no where near as knowledgeable of lethality. As I understand it, lethality has the least burst of the disciplines, but the most sustained as its the one that most heavily relies on dots and such. Its mobility is somewhere between marksman and lethality, so if you know how to move and when really carefully you'll have a better time of it. Engi, my main, Is somewhere between lethalities sustained damage and marksmans burst. you have three sizeable dots to stack on a single target and Exp. probe into-SoS does moderate burst. After that, you have Plasma Probe to keep people traped, and if you take certain cc utilities and get good at geting the stun on PP-EMP, you can get really good at controling people ans situations. Combine with the how hard it is to LoS an engineer because our EMP skill doesn't need LoS and our AoE skills (made considerably stronger by AoE buffs in our tree) shoot around nooks and cranies, you can always keep up a steady stream of DPS. Again, our biggest drawback is that snipers have so little survivability while engi needs to survive long enough to really warm up. If you play sniper, you need to get good at utilizing your defensives to the max. If you play engi, you need to be even better at it. Also, fight the urge to always be in cover, you have all those instant casts for a reason; fight and kite and los.

I would like to see a developer post on the reasoning behind Sniper/slinger changes and design philosophy like maras/sents got. I can't promise I'll agree with what I see, but I can promise I will engage with it thoughtfully and respectfully. I'd simply like to know so I can post what I want with the knowledge of what is balanced/unbalanced suggestions. In return, I'd like to be the first to promise that whatever we may disagree with you on, we won't repeat what happened in the marauder threads. I hope everyone who agrees we want to hear the reasoning behind our classes and wants to support quality discussion and show the devs that even when we disagree we care should also show their support here.

post 3.0 both do fair ST. MM has better burst, Engi has better sustained. Engi also has better AoE still. Leveling wise, Engi wipes up mobs real quick since most solo content has groups of adds. DPS wise, Engi is better if targets stand in Plasma Probe, but SS does better if you have moving targets. Engi is also more mobile, so if you know how to kite and shoot do engi.

So right now I'm at 109.55 tech accuracy and 99.55 regular accuracy on my engi sniper. However, I have heard people say that for most cases, especially since engi is almost all tech damage, bringing it down to 105/95 is acceptable. However most of my damage done is by Series of Shots, and my best burst is EP-SoS, so missing a shot on SoS would be a sizeable damage decrease. So I was wondering; If I took out my accuracy augments and replaced them with power augments, would I see an increase in Damage against healers/dps (base 5% defense) in PvP or would the reduced hit-rate hurt my dps? are their other considerations for damage?

Saboteur, I believe.

In any warzone not a ranked arena, I consider Engineer superior for this reason. The zone is your oyster, and you have complete control over what happens, to melee players especially. However, Marksman is better in ranked because Bioware didn't consider how to balance burst; so entire teams are built around who can burst down someone else the fastest. Engi is terrifying if we are even given a little time to set up, but you don't get that in ranked. Its burst or be burst-ed.

5 months is enough time that you have to say something. We can't do this right now because we found it wasn't possible We can't do it due to lack of resources We are doing it, it will be here we are doing it, here's more information. Even "we know this is something that exists, but we aren't ready to go public with anything yet" is marginally better than silence

Do I summon Dulfy through ancient rituals or is their a way to contact this person because I can't tell from the site. Also I don't know how dulfy will want to format my piece, or even if a pvP centric approach is grounds enough for a new guide. I'll check into it though

I can't think of anywhere else to put the guide, nor do I see any requirements to download the link. Is their a particular hosting service you would be able to access that I should try?