This is actually the most single disheartening change that personally affects me. I made a sniper from the beginning and ever since and I fell in love with OS from the moment I first casted it. I noticed the 2 piece PvP set bonus was to add an extra tick to OS so I farm 2 pieces of champion to make OS even more fun. Orbital Strike is, in my opinion, the coolest ability in this game and probably one of my top 3 favorite abilities in ANY MMO I have ever played. But now we have this patch. You guys are taking the signature move of the agent class and turning it into a limp noodle. I don't even know what else to say... If you didn't like where snipers were in terms of dps then nerf other abilities and not the classes signature move. You guys are destroying the coolest ability in your game because people were using it in a way that wasn't in your "vision" and I find that a really crappy thing to do.

Happens to everyone, just to be so quick to get angry or you may miss an easy solution next time.

Did you click the mission items tab when you searched your inventory?

I just got my jugg to 50 during the double xp weekend (I already have a 50 mara). I was seriously thinking about going lightside jaesa on my jugg but I decided that I didn't like the voice acting, so I went darkside again... sad times. Oh well, looks like I will be powerleveling a mara to the end of chapter 1 now.

Would be nice if they made it an auto crit ambush instead of snipe.

Whoops... I misread the OP. I thought he was talking about the regular crewskill missions, not the consumable ones.

I am not talking with any authority here but, maybe they are just trying to reform crewskills and the gtn. By making materials more rare, the price will increase for those goods (a good thing for crafters). I personally think that it's good to increase the rarity of this stuff, it will add greater value to the items you craft. It is also possible that they are trying to get people to actually go out into makeb to farm the materials rather than sitting on the fleet sending out companions.

Main is a sniper Alt is an operative and I would spec for healing One orbital strike is amazing to have for soloing heroics, adding a second one would be godly.

Marks will be my spec. I have done a little bit of lethality, a little bit of hybrid, I leveled up an engineering gunslinger (whatever their tree is called) to level 50, I also have at least one level 50 of every advanced class in the game. Despite all of this, I still love my marks sniper. I love the playstyle and I am not even sure how to describe why I love it so much. Marks doesn't have to pull top numbers to keep my interest. It can be the weakest of the three trees or the strongest of the three trees and I will always continue playing marks, it is just too much fun to give up. I have also played a little bit on the PTS and I really enjoy the new playstyle as well. In fact it was quite irritating trying to go back to the normal rotation on live after becoming used to the followthroughs after almost every attack... I am looking forward to next week.

Sorry but, there is nothing special about being a day 1 sniper. There is nothing special about being a least played class either. Your last line makes it sound like it was a difficult choice to play a sniper and that I had to play through horrible times in order to make it to where we are today. We may become a FOTM class in 2.0, but there have also been other claims on classes being "op" on the pts. But even if we do become the FOTM it doesn't matter. It just means that we will probably get nerfed a bit to bring us in line with other classes. If you truly enjoy your class, then you will stick with it despite nerfs. I love my sniper... I have played every AC to 50 and it is still my favorite. However, there is nothing special about me (or you) just because I enjoy the sniper over other classes and just because you have been a sniper from day 1. This post seems too much like an attempt at trying to gain sympathy for playing a class that you supposedly enjoy. Implying that you superior because you are a day 1 sniper is pretty ridiculous, sorry.

I think an operative would be best. Most likely you will need at least some form of healing in order to do heroics solo and an operative can provide that. As a sniper I solo all of the 50 heroics (except for section x because it isn't possible) but I have to use Dr. Lokin.

Very nice! I 2 manned this with an assassin tank friend of mine, I am a sniper. Needless to say it added a different level of difficulty trying to keep your healers alive when they like to stand in bad things and won't stack on savrak. Savrak took the most attempts to do because we had to pull in our companions and maneuver them into place for the smash, then hope they had the healing power to keep us alive in the spit phase. It was pretty fun to do, but I never want to do it again.

As a sniper I can solo every H2 and H4 heroic at level 50 as well (using my healing companion). I was also able to solo up to the shield in the section X H4 solo, however no one can progress further than that due to the mechanics. Orbital strike basically makes it so I can blow up very large groups of mobs very quickly as long as you position yourself to bunch up all the mobs into one spot. As others have said, the assassin is great as well because you can simply stealth past everything and a tanking spec allows you to survive for however long you need to get the job done.

You could romance him for a one time thing. But you had to choose the lightside options for the most part.

So many weird replies in this thread. I have tanked, dpsed and healed my way up and through level 50 HM flashpoints. Here is a question for many of you, have you ever actually LOOKED at the difficulty of these pulls in flashpoints? They are a joke... around the difficulty of a Heroic 2 most of the time. I will pull groups as a dps (sniper) because they are weak enough to be soloed. There is zero reason to sit and form a strategy for trash in this game and things like crowd control are overkill. As a tank, I simply do not let the dps pull before me. My group does not spend the flashpoint waiting on me, they spend the flashpoint trying to keep up with me. I will pull and start to pull the next group before the first is completely killed... How can I do this?, because flashpoints are a joke in terms of difficulty. You guys all overhype how difficult flashpoints are in this game. No CC or strategy required (generally)... aoe everything and finish the FP and get out.

I played around in a few hardmode flashpoints last night and I was having a blast with the trying to learn the new rotation. Series of shots fires so damn fast now and there were followthroughs flying everywhere.

Don't you touch my orbital strike Bioware! Please don't do this to me

I understand what you are saying but if you do your rotation correctly you pretty much always keep followthrough on cooldown (like you noted on), so more opportunities to cast followthrough still seems mostly unnecessary. You said that we get a lot more followthroughs which isn't true. We get the same amount of followthroughs, just a lot more ways to cast it. Edit --I was complete wrong about this, sorry. I didn't notice that some of our abilities reset the cooldown of followthrough.

-Followthrough now costs 5 energy (down from 10) and deals slightly less damage as a result. Followthrough can now be triggered from a complete Series of Shots. Just looking for some early thoughts about this change. Energy management has never really been an issue for me as marksman so lowering the energy requirement to 5 seems pretty unnecessary considering the penalty. Followthrough has been the foundation of marksman, with the goal being to keep it on cooldown permanently. I am worried at how much of an impact nerfing the damage on one of our core abilities will do and it should be something that we should look at while playing on the PTS.

I did it as a marks sniper. I was sitting on the ramp or balcony area in the middle when a guardian/sent was attacking me. I guess he jumped at the same time that I casted cover pulse so it sent him flying upwards rather than horizontal. He was catapulted over the wall toward snow, it was pretty amusing. I've been playing for a long time and this has only happened once to me.

Check out the supreme inquisitor's robe, I've seen that at 2million+ before. The chest piece is the most visible piece of gear, so cool chest pieces will almost always be much more expensive than others.

The price is simply what people are willing to pay and some people really really like the vendetta gear so they are willing to shell out a lot of credits for it. Perfectly normal.

You should keep biochem if you plan to raid. Not having to worry about stims / adrenals is amazing. If you are bored with biochem, then go cybertech / scavenging / underworld trading.

You don't need a tank as a healer either. You have heals to keep yourself and your companion alive so I personally believe your best choice for a companion is a dps... That's what I used on my healing sage all the way up until 50.

I switched to the second companion as soon as I got him, used him until Belsavis, then switched to the healing comp. I now use my healing comp exclusively and I solo every heroic daily (I would be able to solo the Section X one if it weren't for the gimmicks that require more than one person). In short, I ditched Kaliyo the first chance I got and never used a tank companion ever again, this is as a sniper.