I lost about 10% crit damage. I also gained a substantial amount of power, but then all classes did, so tk/lightning's damage was still effectively nerfed. Concealment/scrapper got essentially the same ninja nerf, with 10% bonus crit damage on key abilities instead of 30%. Sins, pts, juggs, and maras did not. edit: I was incorrect - pyro pts and carnage marauders got similar nerfs as well, although ap and fury were left alone. Very strange...

Yes, this is the case for pve. For pvp, its a different story. On both an operative and a shadow, it isn't difficult to put out serious damage in warzones. The recent buff to concealment certainly helped, but it isn't game breaking like people seem to think. With proper (equivalent) gear, it is really quite easy to pump out more damage on a sin/shadow, especially when focus fire is done properly to allow regular resets of force potency/recklessness. That said, sins/shadows are fine in pvp. A buff to sustained with out significantly affecting burst would be nice for those who focus on pve.

I'll bite. Playing both an inf shadow and a conc operative at 55, this is pretty much the opposite of my experience. As an operative, you get 16% bonus crit on your hidden strike and backstab; if you are lucky and have old pve set bonus you get an extra 15% on backstab, or with the newer pve set an extra 15% crit chance on shiv. FP/recklessness, on the other hand, gives 60% bonus crit to project/shock and force breach/discharge, and it resets when you leave combat. If you have enough bonus force damage this happens quite often. That said, I have (and had, before the buff) fun with both classes. The real deal breaker is survivability. While its very possible to flatten many players 1v1 with either class, operatives just don't have the durability to compete on the same level in ranked if they want to dps.

I main an operative, and I would be happy to see merc/commando get significantly shorter cds on kolto overload, power surge, and energy shield.

Not sure what you are talking about.. My main has been an operative since launch and I've never had an auto crit on hidden strike. With the old pve set bonus, before the crit nerfs in 2.0, and the earlier nerf to our got 6% crit from talents, we could get our backstab crit up quite high.. If you went beyond the dr on crit back then, you might have 73% crit on backstab, and 58% on hs - neither autocrit, and at the cost of bonus damage. That said, we have been hit with a lot of nerfs.

Just a guess, but I'm pretty sure the OP is speaking from a pvp perspective, whereas it sounds like you are talking purely about pve. On topic, I realize cover was a bit over the top for the healing tree, but from a pvp dps perspective, it was a very nice tool to help the operative function in a skirmish melee role. My infiltration shadow outperforms my operative in terms of pretty much everything pvp related, and the ability to be immune to leaps/pulls (at the cost of being immobile, no less) was one of the few things I ever missed. That said, I've played an operative since launch, and as always, I'll adopt to the changes.

I was wondering when someone would point out that min maxed wh (except ewh weapons) with below 19k hps is stronger than at very least the vanilla wh, and arguably the vanilla ewh gear with more health.

Fortunately with 2.0 the weaker version looks greyed out compared to the strong one. I can't wait for the patch to drop - lethality op is already one of my favorite specs/playstyles on live. Being able to open with a mez then proceed to dot up and lay down EP is just nasty. Anyway, nice video. Personally I run with about 95% ranged accuracy, but I'll give higher surge a try and see how it compares.

This engine does not handle large numbers of players as well as other games. It is ironic that you mention the OW PVP on POT5, because the event on March 2 crashed the server for an hour or so. To be fair however, there were a couple hundred people on Voss, far more than a larger wz would entail. While high end systems may be able to handle more players on a map, plenty of people bought this game with machines well above the recommended requirements, but still slow enough that a large wz would cause problems. Bioware is unlikely to create a new warzone that would require many people to upgrade their machines to avoid ultra low framerates. You can imagine the qq if they did this, and frankly it wouldn't be entirely unwarranted. This sort of thing (along with faction population imbalance of course) is part of the reason the original Ilum was received so poorly. Still, I would certainly like to see a larger warzone. Vanilla AV was actually very fun - it sounds like its changed quite a bit from the look of these comments. Unfortunately, with out quite a bit of optimization to the engine, I just don't see it happening.

I would suggest going for more than 600 power. IMHO you could get away with between 27% and 33% crit buffed. Also, if you are interested in doing as much damage as possible, you may want to try DF/lethality. The single target is actually very good if you have time to put up your dots before the target dies, and on top of multiple dotted targets its really very easy to top the charts. Finally, are your barrels 61 or 63? If they aren't 63s yet, shell out the creds for the pve or grind for the pvp barrels. This is the most important upgrade you can get.

I can definitely see that.. It is already a fairly strong spec in the right hands on live. Since it sounds like the 900k hp issue with bolster is probably cleared up, I'm going to hop on the pts and see how it goes.

When it comes to the lethality vs concealment debate, I didn't see anyone mention that concealment will have better mobility than lethality. With shadow operative elite, ghost, not to mention easier access to infiltrator, concealment ops may be a contender for the most mobile class in the game. If you don't mind burning your energy, you can keep up with a speeder for about 25 seconds. That said, while I haven't tested lethality on the pts much in wzs because of the glitch, I've messed around with it in duels, and you can really blow up some classes if they can't purge your dots. People aren't used to facing that many back to back culls, so by the time they realize they need to pop their defensive cds its often too late. Of course, if you know how lethality works the burst is easy to anticipate, and good assassins are still a strong counter to lethality, but over all the spec looks like it will be quite strong, at least in regular wzs.

What you are missing is that aim only affects ranged attacks. Cunning affects ranged and tech. Almost all of an operatives damage, and a chunk of a snipers damage (depending on spec) comes from tech, so you really want cunning instead of aim. You should still get both the cunning and aim datacrons, but on gear you want cunning.

Yep, most classes aren't all that difficult to play if you have decent keybinding.. While a lethality operative ( I'm assuming he was talking about an operative, seeing that lethality sniper is usually considered decent, at least in regs) is one of the weaker classes in some respects, it is quite easy to top the damage on it. A cull will regularly hit for 4k if even one of the 3 parts crits, and 6-7.5k if all three crit and the target is 30% or below. When you set up properly you can cast 3 in 4 globals. No only that, but you can spam ~275 dps corrosive darts on most of the other team which really adds up. Against an uncoordinated team it is surprisingly effective. Of course, the set up for any burst takes a while, and you interfere with your team's cc if you dot multiple targets, but when it comes to shear numbers, you can compete with even pts and rage. That said, at least until the changes from 2.0 go live, it really isn't viable in rateds. Even with the changes I'm not sure it will fit in good teams.

The problem is, as soon as someone who is geared and competent realizes you're in greens, they will target you over and over. You will not live long enough to do objectives or significant damage or healing with one person targeting you, let alone several.. Even recruit geared players will utterly destroy you, not just 1v1, but in a group scenario. You will be dispatched by well geared players faster than it takes to cap a turret. As for reaching 600k damage in pve gear, sure your damage will be ok, but you won't survive if even one person realizes you are rolling with no expertise. Earlier today I ran into a sage healer with no expertise on my conc op in voidstar, and I can assure you it wasn't pretty.. If I had ignored him, he may have put out quite a bit of healing, so that wasn't an option. Instead, he put up the lowest of any of the healers in the game, I killed him a dozen times, and I topped the damage by over 50% simply by focusing him. Again, it had nothing to do with my skill or his - he may have been an excellent healer, but with that sort of gear, you are counting on people not marking or seriously focusing you. If you want to go into pvp with your pve gear, fine, but please start grinding the wh gear. It won't take long, you won't die in 6 seconds to a bursty class, and your team will thank you for your more consistent performance.

Really? Full greens vs wh? I 3-4 shot people in bh gear. Someone in full greens can die in 2 crits. That many crits in a row isn't a rare occurence on my conc op, shadow, or pt.. and 2-4 shotting someone in that type of gear has nothing whatsoever to do with my skill, its gear, plain and simple. Skill comes into play when one actually has to react and respond to what the opponent is doing. If you do with away expertise and make it so the same gear is obtainable from either pvp or pve, chances are it will be easier to get in pvp.. This means people who don't want to pvp will feel they are forced too. I know you said you never played wow, but trust me, it was pretty awful to try to fight people who got gear from 40 man raids when you didn't have access to it. I really don't understand the desire to get rid of a pvp stat. Is it that you want to be just as competitive in full pve gear with out having to do the pvp grind? I can assure you, in my pvp gear I won't be a contender for top dps in a raid, although pvp gear may be somewhat better in pve than vice versa.

On live, there are three ways to build shockwave, which increases damage of smash up to 100% with 4 charges - force choke, enrage, and force crush. In 2.0, it will only take 3 stacks to reach 100%, but force choke no longer works. Force crush ticks quicker, so it will build the maximum number of stacks faster, and slow the target from 50-5% movement speed over 3 seconds instead of 60-10% over 5. It will also likely do less damage. Enrage's cooldown will be lower than it was, but overall there will be fewer buffed smashes over time. More importantly, force critical hits are increased 30% with the current patch, and in 2.0 they will be increased only 15%, so smash damage is down. All the rest of their damage will be increased 9% after using smash for 6 seconds. This isn't long enough to work on the next smash, but may keep the sustained single target damage close to what it was at the cost of burst. tldr; giant smashes will happen less often and won't hit as hard

Yeah I don't like it either.. I can see that it might be a slight increase to sustained damage in pve because of the lower cd on shiv, but for pvp the burst from back stab is much nicer. At least exfiltrate and the laceration changes look nice..

I was referring to the fact that it lists two different set bonuses for field tech 2 piece pve. Field tech is the sniper/slinger set normally, but one of the abilities listed is for snipers/slinger, and the other for ops/scoundrels. It looks like they meant to put enforcer's set for the back blast/back stab, but this is already what it is on live, so there must be some mistake. Thanks Hallow. I assume you mean the enforcers set bonus is 15% crit on shiv now?

When it comes the NC scenario discussed above, sins can already pull a defender who is poorly positioned then knock them off the edge. This is more effective than it would be knock them back, force sprint and pull them down before teleporting up, because the pull has a better range than the knockback. Whirlwind has a long enough range to cc them from the top as well. In either scenario the defender would have to be poorly positioned, although it is a nice way to get a healer away from the group in a pug where no one is focus firing. As for the ability in general, it certainly will be useful and add to sins mobility. I doubt it will work while carrying the huttball. It will be particularly useful in voidstar, and as a defensive/retreat ability. For solo defending a node, it will be very nice, as it will allow you to range further from the node, making it less likely that another stealther will be able to sneak up on you. On a side note, sins/shadows aren't the only classes to get better mobility. Operatives/scoundrels will be as fast as a speeder while their energy lasts, along with improved energy regeneration:

On the topic of stealth detection, we only have 3 levels of increased stealth in our talents trees at the moment. We may get more somewhere in the tree with 2.0, but I haven't been able to log in to check yet. From my experience, I have almost never been knocked out of stealh when I approach from behind, regardless of stealth level and whether the class I am approaching might have a stealth detection buff (other operatives, pts, tank sins for example.) From in front, with the the 3 levels of increased stealth detection but no sneak, I have been knocked out as far as 15 meters, though this may an issue with syncing, where I am closer to the target on my opponents screen than I am on theirs. It will be interesting to see how this will play out, but I suspect even with scamper/exfiltrate and sneak snipers should be able to pull us out of stealth if we approach from the front. On the other hand, it wouldn't surprise me if one could still approach from behind. edit: To the OP or anyone else whose tried the PTR - have you been able to open on snipers/gs?

The PTR patch notes have conflicting information for the 2 piece field tech set bonus. Operative (DPS) Field Tech's Gear 2pc (PvE): Increases Backstab critical chance by 15. Scoundrel (DPS) Field Tech's Gear 2pc (PvE): Increases Back Blast critical chance by 15. Sniper (DPS) Field Tech's Gear 2pc (PvE): Activating Target Acquired restores 10 Energy. Gunslinger (DPS) Field Tech's Gear 2pc (PvE): Activating Illegal Mods restores 10 Energy. Can anyone confirm which of these is correct? I would assume the second set is right.. It sure would be nice if they put the backstab bonus on the pvp enforcer gear as well, but I guess that may be wishful thinking.

I'l agree on most of your points, but not having expertise at 50 really isn't wise. Sure, you can still do decent damage, but a sage in pve gear is hilariously squishy. When I run into full pve geared sages on my shadow, they often die in my first rotation. Still, the screenshot does show how important positioning is for sage/sorc, but one can put out those kinds of numbers with 1200ish or full expertise with out losing so much survivability.

This is incorrect. The pvp armorings from EWH bracers/belts do not have a set bonus, so you can put them in pve shells with out losing the bonus. Before EWH came out, you needed PVE armorings, but that is no longer the case.

As for the first part, I'll agree. The second.. well I don't know what to say. Are you saying smash is fine, but you have to worry about your mirror class? You realize tracer missile was nerfed along with grav round? I'm not sure if this is a joke. I'll give you that a good concealment operative or powertech will wreck you as a gunnery commando, but then nearly any class will 1v1, especially if they have a pillar to LOS and use their interrupts correctly.