Well thank you I'll have to keep an eye out. So when the swirling shield comes up from the proc I have... at best 1.5s to react before being critted for 4.5k. Take into account latency and it's probably closer to 1.2s. Manageable I guess. I'll switch my play style to "PT in wz, save all CDs for within 10m".

Well I'm glad to see at least some people are on topic. My main argument is that there is no tell, and CDs only get you so far vs a pro player... they'll react accordingly. I completely understand all the math and mechanics behind a ranged kinetic attack. And yes, ranged kinetic is about the worst type of attack you could have. But when you allow the player / gear to have bonus crit chance, 90% armor pen, and +30% surge on this ability that is completely unpredictable, it is out of balance with the rest of the abilities in the game. Two other people here said it right. It is the only high damage ability with no tell, and the best "counter" for a lot of classes is to stay outside of 10m. People who try to steer this top towards 1v1 just makes me LOL. I could care less about 1v1 mechanics... WZ is all that matters. Of course without being in game people can say this is l2p, cry more, etc... but seriously this is not a cry thread, this was me wondering if anyone else felt the same way, and I'm glad that at least some people do. hopefully something minor can be done to either give this attack some sort of tell, or lower it's armor pen to ~50-60%, Although I wouldn't mind it hitting for 4.5k on a full WH tank if it was something I could actually see coming.

I think something needs to be adjusted here... Some people complaining are about mercs... They can be easily LOS'ed, interrupted... you see their attacks coming easily. Same thing with assassin / shadow tanks. If you see 3 stacks built up, you know the lightning / tele throw is coming, and you react to that. LOS / vanish after the 1st tick, CC them, whatever. swap attacks when they pop CDs. easy. Operatives can be kited by a lot of classes... Snipers can be LOS'ed easily and CC'ed out of cover. Smash Jugg? same thing... it is easy to predict what is coming and react accordingly. Marauders are no different. Every move they have can be identified and countered in one way or another. My experiences vs. Pyrotech / Assault VG is not the same though. Rail Shot / High Impact Bolt is more or less unpredictable. Sure the burn can be purged in a bunch of various ways... but it is way too easy for them to re-apply it. The real kicker is that rail shot is a hard hitting 30m instant that bypasses 90% armor. People who build this class right hit for 4k+ with it often... and I'm not talking about hitting fresh 50 squishies. Even a full WH guardian / jugg is going to get hit for 4k+ by this. In the end... I just think this ability needs some way to be countered. Not a hard counter,but like most classes I play against, I expect to be able to learn the class and spec, and know how to react. I feel I can react accordingly against all classes in the game except these Pyrotech / Assault VGs Does anyone else feel the same way?

really? that's funny because every late night queue I'm in pops with exactly 6 people. when I do a search for all level 50s it is quite obvious they were the only 6 whom were queue'ing. Either way. the match shouldn't start 6v8 period. it is broken.

I don't agree with that at all. I'm almost positive it will start a wz with 6 people queue'd up

I'm on a medium population server, on the republic side where we are outnumbered by imps, around 2.5:1 or 3:1. it is mid day Saturday, and I've played 5 games which were all losses. why? 4 of them started with 6 on our team and 1 game started with 5 on our team. The fact that a game can start 6v8 is just terrible. why? because now pvp gear progression is almost entirely linked to success in warzones. Sure for the casual player the 99 ranked and 99 warzone commendations from the dailies may be their primary source of commendations... but for hardcore players, a few hours of wz a day is where they acquire a majority of their commendations. If this continues... in a few weeks the imperials will be wearing full war hero and rocking 1200 expertise, a few more weeks and they'll have their stats all tailored with 61 mods and enhancements. I'm so frustrated with this game right now... being probably in the top 5 best geared pve dps in my faction (1962wp shadow), and the 2nd highest valor rank in my faction (85)... this is really killing me. I'm seriously considering quitting this game which is a real bummer considering how much promise it had and how much time I've invested in it. This really needs to be fixed... cross server queues, merges, transfers, warzone rewards scaling based upon population, cut people from opposing team when it's 6v8.... anything to fix the madness. if ranked warzones have this same 6v8 issue I'll be gone the day it comes out... I'll probably be gone may 15th if pvp isn't fixed anyway. what a shame.

Does anyone know what the criteria is for determining a tie breaker? At first I thought it was that the first defender wins... but that is not true. Then I thought it might be linked to whichever team made it through the doors quickest, but that isn't true either. So.... what determines the winner when it is something like a 2-2 or 4-4 game?

To take it a step further... what about giving the player a valor hit? Valor is so easy to gain... maybe a -50 to -100 hit at lower levels, -200 to -300 at higher levels? It's small enough that it shouldn't make anyone upset (someone might have a legitimate reason to go afk every now and then), but it could be enough to detract them from going afk. Or in this day and age (I'm an old school EQ player) is it unthinkable to take something away from a player?

Be sure to play a non force/tech class against PT tanks before making a post like this... lol Having your maul/hidden strike/ambush/execute attacks that deal 3-5k damage get owned by a defense roll is not fun. or... having your primary attack that usually does 1.5k no crit, 2.5-3k crit shielded and reduced down to 600-700dmg from absorb + mitigation is not fun either. maybe you are just getting focus fired if you die quickly? in that case a tank needs support of taunt, guard, stuns, or heals to stay up for any length of time.

Please consider adding some level 50 solo quests that are slightly more challenging, or increase difficult of all of the daily quests. For example, a heroic 2 at level 50 (think of poisonous strategy) is practically impossible for a single person, yet all of the solo quests are extremely easy. What about adding quests where a typical fight might consist of 2 strong 2 standard? or 3 strong? These quests could give slightly higher rewards than a solo quest, but not as much as a heroic 2. It would allow someone who plays off hours or just enjoys solo'ing to have a challenge every now and then.

I think it should be obvious, based on the fact that half of the threads on this forum are about this puzzle... that there needs to be some changes here. The entire sequence is non-intuitive. Games should be designed so that the players can learn from failures and improve upon themselves. They should not be left scratching their heads about what went wrong. If certain conditions are not met, the panels just don't light up for the next round. There is no indication why this happened. Is it a bug? or did the players do something wrong? Even a slight hint would be great. Without the use of google, I could imagine it would take a new group 20+ tries to figure out this encounter. Occasionally, there is definitely a bug that occurs after the group has failed. The controls do not always reset. This means that the instance must be reset. Not only do we not know why it failed, but now a bug is preventing us from trying again until we reset and clear the path. This bug really adds to the frustration of the entire group. all attempts to report this to bioware have gotten the generic response "encounter is working as designed" In the end, it could take a new group 4 or 5 hours to figure this out, while costing over 1 million credits in repair bills during that time. It is by far the most poorly designed area I've seen in this game. please bioware make this puzzle more intuitive and fix the bug that doesn't reset the consoles occasionally.

Snipe is the most energy inefficient main damage ability a MM has... and it lands in the middle of the pack on DPS. so having a skill that requires you to chain snipe is a terrible idea. SoS, followthrough, ambush, and takedown are way more energy efficient. Since conserving energy is key to sustained DPS (i.e. hardmode ops)... then yes sniper volley is a complete waste. All it does is force you to burn through energy. If you lead from an ambush into FT and then two snipes to reach 9%, then any other useful actions that will use the 9% will put you well below optimal energy. I found that every time I reached 9% I had to follow immediately with rifle shot, followthrough, rifle shot... which seems like a complete waste of the 9% to me. 9% cunning is a much better use of 3 skill points for sustained dps. sniper volley = worst MM skill there is.

against pros, ballistic shield is useless unless entrench is active otherwise they'll just pop you out of cover and cancel it. although I almost always try to activate both... I'd guess that more than 50% of the time, when I activate ballistic shield without entrench, I get knocked out of cover.

I think the OP is spot on in many ways. in my mind the proposed changes would clear up what I feel our some of the biggest issues for a MM: Scattershot: has diminishing returns vs. high armor rating. I've tested this with a jugg buddy and when he has 44% mitigation, scattershot removes 3.1% of it. when he has 28% mitigation, scattershot removes 4.3% of it. This is because of how they coded the diminishing returns on armor rating. Scattershot needs to be linear. 44% mitigation before scatter? then take 8.8% off. Currently, reducing the target's armor rating from 6400 to 5100 only takes 3.1% off. Deflection: a well geared tank will have more than 20% defense chance. a well geared sniper will have approx 110% tech accuracy resulting in a 10% chance of deflection. If by chance an ambush or takedown is deflected, it puts a massive whole in our dps. If a sniper tries to shoot for something like 115% tech accuracy... they'll be giving up too much power/crit/surge. ambush should not be able to be deflected period. maybe snipe too. No counter for opponent defensive abilities: target acquired can actually be harmful to a sniper. I do believe that energy recovers quicker with alacrity, but here is the problem. Say a jugg activates invincible and has 40% damage reduction for 10 seconds. If I execute a series of attacks that takes 12 seconds, the last two will strike after his ability has finished. But if I activate target acquired, then all of my attacks will fall within the 10 seconds and be reduced by 40%. Here is the scenario I tested: spending 107 energy in approx. 12 seconds on SoS, laze + ambush, 3x snipe, 2x followthrough. 66 energy was recovered during this time and put me at 69 energy at the end of the attack. - no cooldowns activated: ~12k damage for a net cost of 41 energy over 12 seconds - invincible activated: ~9k damage for a net cost of 41 energy over 12 seconds - invincible + target acquired: ~7k damage for a net cost of 41 energy over 10 seconds this is so broken it is ridiculous. snipers need a massive offensive buff to counteract the defensive buffs of others. Something along the lines of 30% damage, or 20% damage and cannot miss. If squishys can be 3 shotted with it, once every 2 minutes, then oh well that is what they get for being squishy... but burning down to 40 energy, hitting probe, then burning the rest all to get a heavy down to 30% is a load of crap scattershot needs to be linear... I would say it should also be 30% vs heavy but then it would be OP for focus fire. I think that only the sniper needs help vs heavy so that leads me to believe we need built in armor piercing vs heavy.

I agree completely with these two. pros know to LoS a sniper at every opportunity. a pro sniper always tries to be in the right position but it is never easy. think pillars near first doors on voidstar. healers LoS me all the time on those. shots deflected or evaded by their defensive abilities is a major problem too. having a bunch of single shot high damage abilities that can be deflected or interrupted is too great of a disadvantage. attempting to out dps a healer's heals is an exercise in frustration. target acquired + mixing in distraction / flash and burning down 80 energy won't outrun a pro merc / sorc.