I don't mind at all. In fact I appreciate your responses, especially since they are carried out in a civil manner, which gives this conversation a pleasant atmosphere. However, I still don't agree with you. ^^ This is indeed the main weakness of the spec. However, I also mentioned that this has seldom (if not never) proven crippling over the course of a match. The only time this comes up is if you try to take on a cleansing class one on one. (which isn't that common) In group fights, most dps with a cleanse button will be focused too much on killing, relying on their Tanks/Healers to protect them. Many healers that would normally cleanse your stuff won't because they'd rather raise those health bars than spend a global cooldown on that. Even if they do cleanse, that's time they spend not healing. Another thing you seem to forget, is that Sorcs (which happen to be the most common PvP healers on my server) can NOT cleanse Tech effects, healer or dps spec. Juggs don't stand a chance, even if they're good. My dps is better, even in melee, and consists for 50% of internal damage. My defensive cooldowns are better (you may have to kite a bit if they pop their Parry/dodge buff - during which you can still use tech effects btw). And I regenerate health/heal. I'll give you this - this is one of my three weaknesses, as I listed. It is one of the best 1v1 classes we're talking about, though. One of my weaknesses again, I admitted this. Though it isn't impossible. You seem to think that I'm not capable of melee combat, but I am. Every second I spend outside of melee when fighting melee is a bonus, but stating 18/0/23 can't do anything in melee is a rather rash point to make. Melee attacks/Explosive Probe still hurt, even through that armour. Generally, you can still beat them, and if for some reason you would come to realize this isn't oing to work, you can ALWAYS escape, without a problem. Your interrupt has a shorter cooldown. Your slow is perma. Lightning sorcs (admittedly, rare) can't even kite. Madness Sorcs fare better, but their dots aren't strong enough, and their only instant nukes are Shock (really) and Death Field (powerful, but on a cooldown). Once in range, and their knockback is on cooldown, you blow them to pieces. Easiest class to fight. Healer Sorcs can't cleanse tech effects. You outdps their heals, especially if you force them to kite. Easy fight. If you manage the fight well, you can win this and it is a really fair match-up. Both for my spec and other common operative specs. Operatives are indeed impossible. But three weakness in 1v1 matchups for a class that is centered around group play isn'tt too shabby imo. Quite good - you have heals, absorbs, evasion+cleanse, clease and Vanish. +Sedatives if you can pull it off. Every class -bar sins and sorcs- need to manage their resources. 18/0/23 has it a bit worse, but their spending attacks hit harder. You seem to acknowledge that. Also, enabling dots isn't a waste of energy. Both the hots and the dots -if they run their full course- deal/heal more damage than an average 1 global cooldown attack. I already mentioned that sorcs can't remove my dots. This greatly reduces this problem. KP is indeed primarily a TA producer. But the hot is still okay. 1 stack heals ~2k, and has a 12% increased crit chance. Meaning that it is (over 18 seconds obviously) about as powerful as 150% a resource spending damaging attack. Plus, it generates TA. ^^ I hate those statistics - of course you do dmg... but not as much as you could. Your dots and hots are weaker than they should be to be any good. Its like the sorc that stands in the acid and heals himself throughout the huttball game - amazing numbers in the end that counts for nothing. Your cull eats energy and your KI is vey hungry as well. The only times I spam dots is if I'm not in range of my goal. I'm always on the lookout for Cull victims, and almost none of my damage can be considered "fluff". Which is more than can be said about some full lethality players btw... Heals: the same story. Some hot spreading may be fluff, especially when initiating the fight. But on refreshing, you always prioritze damaged allies/those who are getting a beating. Nuke heals are only really cast on an ally that is under fire/between fights to accelerate the recovery process. I didn't say that. I said that it isn't a build that has 1v1 as its main priority. The build becomes stronger when their are targets to hot/heal. You can't tell a build that actually becomes better in group play that it has no place in serious group PvP. Snipers are easy. Lethality ones especially. You cleanse their stuff, weakening their dots significantly (or if they are Lethal/Engy you actually remove them). You can also cleanse+evade to reset them completely (best done after a Corr grenade). Also, snipers are easy because you just have to LoS+heal them. There are very few tmes in warzones where you cannot do this. See previous points made. yes. ^^

This simply isn't true. The only really valid point you mention is the cleansing vulnerability thingy. But as long as there is none of this taking place, the spec is solid, and possibly outperforms other dps-oriented specs in group situations. You are still very good at staying alive - not as good as full medicine or medicine/conc builds, but still far better at it than the average class - you have heals and reasonably power defensive cd's and escape tools. Your damage is very powerful, and situationally better than full lethality. Let's hit some hypothetical numbers: - Your dots are significantly weaker (no Imperial Brew, Devouring Microbes, or Weakening Blast); so let's say there is about a 40% reduction in dps here - Cull's (your big hitter and the main attraction of Lethality) Internal component is weakened by no Weakening Blast; so let's say there is a 20% (though I'd argue that's being generous) reduction here - Your baseline (~Concealment-y) abilities hit almost as hard This all looks bad, but we come to the good stuff now: The 18/0/23 Hybrid's damage is completely taken over by Cull. When I watch pure lethality videos, I see Cull is used significantly less than I'm used to. The main dps attraction of this build comes from Cull Chains. It isn't uncommon to use Cull (without a doubt the most dangerous dps ability without a cooldown in the game) 5 times in rapid succession. Here's how that happens: - You enter the fight with 2 TA's (which is more often the case than not with this build) - You dot someone up - Cull #1 - Shiv #1 - Cull #2 - Cull #3 (at some point of time after Cull #2 - Medical Engineering may have procced and given you a TA) - Cull #4 - Shiv #2 - Cull #5 Admittedly, unless you want to do a Rushdown + Adrenaline Probe, you will have to interweave Rifle Shots at some points, but every Lethality Operative needs to do that. Saying that the build is only a mediocre healer, ergo it's a waste of time to try healing with this build, is besides the point. Your healing (which is still quite powerful and often saves lives) builds your offenses as well (which is the nasty and neat part of this build). Every time you inject your nuke heal into someone (which I've seen go as high as ~5k) you get a free Cull. Spreading your hots (which are cheap, instant and heal quite well) will give you masses of Culls. This makes throwing heals around with this build quite efficient. In a full duration warzone, my damage ranges from ~275k to ~450k. My healing ranges from 100k (if we stomped them and there wasn't much healing going on) to 250k. While cleansing may put a dent in your damage output, over the course of a battle, it will not have that much of an impact, especially in larger-scale battles. I'd like to dispute your 1v1 argument as well. First and foremost, this build ISN'T a 1v1 build - you become more and more unstoppable when you are surrounded by friends (mainly because Medical Engineering only really kicks in when you have your Probes active on at least 2 or 3 persons). However, you can still hold your own against many possible opponents. To tackle the ones you mentioned: Sorcs and Snipers are the two easiest classes for me to take down, and I don't really know why you though so otherwise. Mercs are harded as they can clease, but they are easy to control and typically don't have enough dps to take you down fast enough, so you can just whittle them down with your basic attacks and still win, or at least run away (if you don't want to die, you won't). Furthermore, frankly, most of them don't cleanse. So those are just fried by you. Assassins are harder, if they're any good. They hurt you hard enough to easily break through your hots and Shroud removes your dots (which is annoying, if you just used Corr Grenade and have to wait for it to go off the cooldown). But they don't have real heals, and the dps difference is very minor if they're pure dps, or yours is better if they're Tankassins. A worthy foe, but not unbeatable at all. There are only three enemies you really have to be wary of: 3. Pyro Powertechs. If they're geared, they hurt you very fast. They'll force you into the defensive, which is a terrible thing. Very hard to beat. 2. Marauders. Only if they're geared and skilled. But they can melt you. Even if you cleanse their dots, they may still kill you too fast. 1. Concealment Operatives. Not at all an op class, but they just counter us fully. They cleanse our dots, which makes their dps output VASTLY superiour. But all in all, I disagree fully (well, almost) with your points. I've used this spec for two or three months now, and I can still own with it. Not saying that it is superiour to other builds, but competitive in PvP? Certainly.

I disagree. While I don't like rap, I found it quite fitting. Especially the second song.

I think that's the same with most men, actually. I find this type of relationship interesting because it is all hypothetical, it's a game. I'm not pursuing a life-long connection here. Of course I wouldn't date a robot in real life (especially not one that looks like, well, a robot). But in a game, this sort of thing is fun, dynamic and interesting, and if I didn't like Kaliyo so much I would certainly try it out. (and there you have another example: in reality I would never ever get involved with a girl like her, but in this game she's been my favourite romance companion so far)

I don't think a romance option is that unlikely should the current storylines be expanded at some point. In fact, at the end of the story,

I think it's hard to do, as you'd need to drag all the voice actors/actresses back to the studio. Most of them would do so, but you'd really need them all, which isn't something you can rely on.

Well, I think we're not going to come to an agreement here. ^^ I could argue that your dots don't have any killing power on their own (which is my opinion), and then you would argue that your dots all add up together and soften targets up for teammates to finish off. I think we both know this will be the conclusion of it all, as this topic has been raised before, in more mmo's than this one. Still, I'd like to raise you one point, if you let me. You mentioned that you agreed your playstyle is similar to a Madness Sorc, but you prefer yours because of the slight increase in survivability. This may be true, but i'd argue that a Madness Sorc has a substantial advantage when it comes to both ranged dps (not ONLY dots, but nukes as well) and ranged cc. Considering you're a dps role, that's something to think about. Could i ask what your exact build is? That way I may understand your ways better. EDIT: Yeah, I switched to the Empire counterpart names. Imperial player here. EDIT II: I've decided to muck around a bit and came up with this, you may be interested by it. I'd call it the "Healing Gunslinger". You'd basically be in cover all the time and not die. There are some nice combos - get UH's going with your nuke heal and activate Healing Hand till the UH's run out (the duration is increased by Healing Hand). I'd consider it a pure "lol-build" though, not fit for serious PvP, but possibly hilarious for giggles - I may actually try this out and Fraps it. So I still don't agree with you, but you did give me a fun idea, and I thank you. EDIT III: Oh yeah, here is the build. http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#701MccMzZhIo00zZGrbkMzh.1

Imo, skipping Wounding Shots on a DF Scoundrel is about the biggest no-no in the game. The tree is built around that skill. On my lethality operative, my Cull has even higher tooltip damage than Hidden Strike (with a gap of about 450 damage). That's without keeping its half-internal nature in mind (which is a superiour damage school). If you pick up Weakening Blast/Hemor Blast, things only get sweeter (I haven't, as I'm a Leth/Med Hybrid). The Dirty Fighting Scoundrel's dot power is not high enough to justify a pure ranged dotter role. Its dot-power is lower than Watchman Sentinels, Balance Consulars and DF/Sabo Gunslinger Hybrids. Furthermore, without Wounding Shots, those classes will out-dps you even if no-one gets to use dots. Now, you may tell me that you do fine in wz's, which could actually be true, if you are a good player. But you'll be three times as effficient if you'd just pick up Wounding Shots like every other Dirty Fighting Scoundrel. If you want ranged dotters, roll a Balance Sage or a DF / DF-Sabo Gunslinger. EDIT: Oh yes, on topic: I never felt that Wounding Shots is TOO expensive. The cost is only 19, and UH generation is more of a mechanic than a resource pool imo. However, I'm one of the supporters of the "Don't Nerf, Buff!" philosophy (bring the other classes to the lvl of the OP classes, not the other way around), so we should receive a buff, imo.

I actually found him to be the most boring and one-sided companion - apart from softies like Ashara, Temple and Mako - I've met.

Your Sith Illusions skill is essentially Lethality's Cull (both Op and Sniper). Two dot-classes should not have identical playstyles. I also disagree with Madness dots being too weak. There are about four dot-playstyles in the game. None of them are pure dot classes, as none of them have dot damage that comes even close to 50% of their output. I estimate this to be the ranking: 5. Pyro Mercs/Pyros: Their dot damage is the lowest, but they (admittedly, mostly pyros) get a lot of burst tools. Dots are just a small bonus. 4. Lethality Sniper/Operative: Their dot tooltip damage is very weak, but they have 12% crit bonus, and a 30% damage increase. Dots are mainly just Cull-enablers. 3. Madness Sorc/Assassin: Dots are more powerful, but not spectacular. Sorcs are meant to be the mobile, sustained ranged dps with lots of control. Sins in return get stealth, more burst tools and a Thrash that stings. Not sure about the order of 1 and 2, but I think when only considering dot damage it's like this: 2. Anni Marauder: Dots, while having modest tooltip damage, are heavily enhanced by other skills and talents. Still only supplementary damage though. But painful supplementary damage. 1. Lethality/Engineering Hybrid Sniper: While they do lose Weakening Blast, they gain Interrogation Probe, which is the most powerful dot available, I think. I think Madness Sorcs may need some slight lovin' though (no, I don't play one). But one should focus on further increasing the mobile/sustained/control factor. Not purely dot damage. (but that's just my opinion)

I find this rather surprising. Please, OP, don't think that I'm flaming you, as you mentioned you have played many classes without problems (which I believe). I have too, and I have found the Assassin to be the easiest low-lvl PvP class, apart from Sniper. Maybe the squishiness is a problem - for the assassin has great tools at low lvl to dps (thrash is nice and spamable, Discharge is great too) and a nice amount of control. What you don't have yet are good defensive cooldowns. So it may not have been you, but a lack of team support (which can make a lot of difference on a squishy melee character). It may also be because I've been Madness spec from the start. I got a spamable dot with good damage and a 9% boost to melee crit chance that is up most of the time (your crit chance gets boosted greatly in sub-50 PvP as a lvl 10), all in the first 5 lvls. Also, before lvl 25, I got Death Field, +50% crit damage on Thrash, and instant cast, cooldown resetting Crushing Darkness procs. Not saying that Deception isn't good at low lvl (have never played it), but you may want to give the Madnassin a try.

Without a doubt teams of dps operatives. They just stunlock you, you know. EDIT: It depends. For example, in Huttball I'd very much like a healer sorc for the pull. Possibly even two healer sorcs. In other warzones, the pull isn't as needed. You may as well go with two healer operatives. I think I'd go with 2 healers (2 ops/sorcs - depending), three hybrid (~dps) tanks (meaning Shadows, really) and three Maras/Pyroes. Unfortunately, that would mean I couldn't join my own dreamteam.

This guy:

I've been running the build now for two months or so, and found it more fun than concealment. You will feel a lot less "rogue-ish" though, so if that's what you want concealment (or to some extent full lethality) is your only option. What I find so fun about the build is the unique approach to combat; your damage gets more powerful through healing. This build is only worthwhile if you plan on spreading KP's around the place and sometimes even focus heal some allies. My average scores on a full duration warzone are ranges from 250k - low 400k damage and 100 - low 200k healing. I posted a video of me playing the spec a while ago. Should you be interested, here's the link:

Imo Lethality is almost where it needs to be right now. However, a ranged TA move would fit in with the spec. Imo the best thing is to give Lethality a high spec talent that makes Shiv ranged. It has been suggested before. The best option is probably to adapt License to Kill to: Reduces the Energy cost of Cull by 3/6. Additionally increases the range of Shiv by 3/6 meters. Talents like this are already in the game: Displacement in the Marauder's Carnage tree. Shiv as a throwing attack makes sense as well. The Smuggler's Blaster Whip doesn't really, but the guy is using guns, so there must be a way to work around that name (make the talent restyle the attack to "Smart Shot" or something).

I do agree that - if there is any op class in the game at the moment - it is the Marauder. Nevertheless, three commandos should always be able to defeat one marauder (frankly, to the flamers, even if they're bad - just spamming attacks should still rack up too much damage). Worst-case scenario - the marauder manages to take down one of you and vanishes/escapes.

Uhm, not sure what to say. Those first two, I used them multiple times through the video. I didn't use them in the first two minutes because I was either dotting up possible victims, single-target bursting someone down or healing up my team. By the way, if you wanted to see a Frag grenade, there was one at 2:08 (and another one at 2:31, as a matter of fact). As for Shield Probe, WHY would I have used that in those two minutes? EDIT: By the way, I'm not saying your points aren't valid, they're good advice towards new people playing the spec. I'm just saying, that if you had watched the WHOLE video a little more attentively, you'd agree that these are not points I failed at.

I read this just to see whether he continued to write "Snipper" all through the post. But to answer your question, if I understand your correctly you're experiencing troubles getting into cover? Then I can agree. On my Sniper alt, Cover seems buggy. Most of the time it works fine, but sometimes I use it and it does nothing. Never had that before. (not talking about cc'ed out of it either)

Yo, thanks guys. I wouldn't know about leveling as I did get to 49 as purely Concealment. But I imagine hat would be the case (the spec is totally Cull dependent, no matter whether pure Lethality or hybrid). And of course, this build isn't even possible before lvl 48, as it requires both Cull and Medical Engineering. This is my build: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#401rccMdhZZhrbkrMhd.1 There are some points that could be rearranged to suit your own desires. I know most people drop Sedatives in favour of Endorphin Rush or Surgical Steadiness. I for one would never do that as that thing completely obliterates in a 1v1 situation if you can pull it off, but it is situational. (I tried to use it in the vid at 12:29, but didn't realize the guy was in combat).

Mr. Myxomatosis in a Huttball match, with what I'd say is the coolest spec in the game! Don't mock my spec! I mean it! I'll get so mad! Grr. Here is the link: (make sure to watch in HD)

Though I do not play the class (by that I mean, my Sniper's only lvl 25), but I was under the impression that the Lehtality/Engy Hybrid was the most mobile build - less reliant on Cull, an additional (and powerful dot), a perma-snare, and free Overload Shots every 20 seconds. Just rhowing that in for ya to discuss.

I had the same idea a couple of days ago. (not trying to steal your moment, OP, just saying that if more than one has the exact same idea, there is some naturality to it) ^^ Shiv's damage isn't very high as it is, so it's not like we'd get a super deadly ranged attack. It's high enough in the tree to keep concealment spec from using it. There are already talents that use the same "form" (at least one I know of: Displacement in the Marauder's Carnage tree). Furthermore, "Shiv" could easily both a throwing knife and a stabbing knife attack. (the Smuggler's equivalent "Blaster Whip" is harder, but there are ways around this)

Explosive Probe is quick and bursty (don't know how long I stand still to cast it, but pretty sure it's less than a second) so why not use it? Mainly from a PvP point of view though.

I concur: use Field Tech. +1s Evasion would be better with a dueling-mindset, but +1 tic on Orbital is better in a group pvp situation. The +5 Energy would be nice, but extra range on your interrupt isn't bad either (it can surprise sorcs/sniper that rooted you).

I wouldn't drop Sedatives, because it's so potentially killer. Pre-1.2 I used Endorphin Rush over Medical Consult, but I found the increased timeframe for TA's very useful, moreso than the instant energy once every 1.5 minutes.