Newp. As long as the game is inherently fun on it's own it does not require carrots on sticks in order to act as an opiate. All "progression" based reward systems in PvP do is cover up uninteresting/boring gameplay that cannot stand on it's own while getting the sperglords addicted to shiny new numbers and having imbalanced advantages over other people (while they epeen stroke over it in an elitist miasma of narcissistic delusions about "skill"). SWTOR almost has it right, with the moddable gear. Giving people different looks for their characters to assemble. Now if they'd just get rid of the tier based gear stat padding and find other prestige and cosmetic rewards to offer instead we'd have a winner (not counting some class issues of course).

This: and this: With the addendum of "I'm an OPERATIVE HEALER! I HAVE NO UTILITY, NO SURIVIVAL ABILITIES, WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU THROW ME THE BALL? MY LIFE IS HARD ENOUGH! AND NO I WON'T REROLL MERC OR SORC, I DON'T CARE HOW MUCH BETTER CLASSES THEY ARE!" /rant

Epeen slighted. Rage post fired. This is some funny stuff.

lol, yeah they should give you guys an option to turn it off. Different strokes and all. Personally I love the maniacal laugh. My guy is a genocidal sadist and it absolutely fits how I RP him to have him laughing like a nutjob as we're slaughtering people.

I love Kaliyo. By far she is the best companion, really the only companion, that I like for my agent. I had full DS 5 by level 37 and squirm with glee every time I get to do something absolutely vile to some poor wretch. She completes my little evil empire. The rest of the companions I wish I could feed to banthas after carving them to bits. Bunch of lily livered sods get upset just by watching a little torture or gleeful murder. I didn't roll an IA to be all LS and goody goody, I rolled an IA to be the most evil, sadistic mass murdering assassin in the galaxy. With charm, wit, and the best accent in the game. Kaliyo is awesome. *By comparison my Jedi guard is full on goody goody boring archetypical disney hero man. "DUNDUNNADUN! I'LL SAVE YOU! No no, no reward. Being a sod is reward enough." Vomit. lol, sorry, just way too much fun to be an evil bastard. Pretty much killed off my desire to play any other toon. Especially since the only successful raiding guilds on the server I'm on have stated they won't bring any operatives as they're a waste of space. Snipers cool, or reroll merc/sorc. *

As much as I love my med/lethality hybrid spec (because it plays the most closely to how I wanted to play MY op, opposed to like a rogue) I doubt you'll find much success with it 1v1. As you've already noticed the healing just isn't enough to beat out the DPS in a straight up fight and the damage is lackluster on single targets as well. Med/lethality is pretty much a straight up pure support role. You heal the team, you provide aoe and occasional burst on low hp targets before moving on to heal again. Against bads and undergeareds (it's a word now) you can work wonders 1v1 but against good players in decent gear it's an upward climb in futility. Against a tankasin? Fuggetaboutit.

It might have changed at some point and I missed it, but I'm pretty sure 30% is where you want to get crit unbuffed and then start stacking other areas.

^ This. In every single damned MMO that has a stealthy class who kills squishies when they're alone these threads pop up. It's like MMO law or something.

While one spec of the Operative plays similar to the rogue from WoW (concealment) it has been nerfed as of late. Not to say you can't do well with it, but you will work for every little bit of health you remove. You have no utility, the stunlock kills are long gone which force you to use everything you have to your advantage to kill that one guy. In 1v1's they're still very strong, however in group settings you're very prone to getting nuked, being unable to finish your target off (if the other team has even the most basic of coordination) and will have your stealth nullified much of the time. That said, if you enjoy the playstyle you will probably still enjoy it as long as you go into it knowing you're going to be fighting an uphill battle. Currently OP's are in a position of "why?" within the meta game. Sure you can heal, or be a rogue, but "why" bring you over another class that does the job just as well (or better) with half the effort. From a pure performance standpoint you'd probably get much better mileage out of your assassin (or a sorc if healing OP). From a playstyle standpoint, well that's subjective, so you'll just have to roll one and see what you think and like better between the two. Just my 2 creds, YMMV. (This is coming from someone who loves his healing OP and just cannot give it up to play something more efficient. On my server I've been locked out of the option of raiding because of it too unless I reroll a sorc where I'll be "worth the slot" to a raid group.)

^ Exactly. It is depressing at times for sure too. I rolled a sorc just to see how green the grass truly was and the output and EASE of play is staggering compared to my OP. In the end though I love my OP far too much and shelved the sorc again because frankly I don't enjoy being another glowbat/magic user running around smashing face into keyboard. That and my OP's storyline made me fall in love with him as a character. First MMO game where I actually felt like I was RP'ing my guy.

This is the most absurd thing I've ever heard. What boss fight lasts only 1.7 seconds? Your healing over extended times is infinately more valuable than some miniscule amount of time barring the most extreme pvp scenarios (and even then the more total burst you can pump out often trumps a throwing out a little heal fast. PvP is all about big numbers per use). Not to mention that potentially we are healing for x in your 1.7 seconds by using SP anyways. Having SOME alacrity is cool, but only after hitting the ideal crit and surge softcaps, and even then I'd place alacrity behind power anyways as far as stacking.

Gap closer Remove TA OR Energy cost of kolto infusion. Or something to make it worth using at all. Give DS energy gain of 2 (as currently talented) baseline and put it on par with healing shots from mercs to make it worth using Gap closer Make eviscerate/headshot usable in PvP Gap closer

I hate to say it man, I really do, but it just sounds like you need to take a step back and L2P an agent better. I have screenshots of most of my scoreboards from wz's since level 11 when I started queueing and I've never had less than 100k damage. Stop being so passive, get aggressive. Hit and run, target those low health guys, pop your aoe's on every group of 2+ you see. Stealth is for the most part worthless except for 1v1's in open world pvp so learn to stick and move. Use your ranged abilities, use cover, run in for burst and then get the hell back out to range. Also dropping to crouch/cover for a snipe+explosive drone combo is something I do religiously for quick burst. Only takes a moment and then you're up and running again. Surprises the hell out of ball carriers in huttball that think they've gotten away from me. Level 11 - http://i1206.photobucket.com/albums/bb442/CShue2/SWTOR/Screenshot_2012-02-08_22_51_18_504889.jpg

Me neither. Though I'm leaning towards the former tbh.

Tried to think of something that sounded vaguely alien since I play a rakakaktaktkakan (you know which race, can't remember the actual spelling of the name) so he's "D'Khar the Merciless". Whenever there is an option to torture, kill, insult or psychologically traumatize someone it gets jumped on quicker than than the server can process the input.

I love kaliyo. She matches my Agent perfectly. I am solid dark side, evil to the core, murdering as many people on both sides as possible, revelling in any time I get to torture people and plotting to assassinate every person that crosses me in even the slightest of ways. Always talking ****, lying just for giggles, using and abusing as many of the females in the game as I get the option to. Kaliyo is like the perfect evil bastard compliment to the vile evil that is my Agent. I would of course betray and kill her as well after having my fun with her if the option was added into the game though. Love and feelings are for the weak.

Slingers have the ability to kill people, scoundrels don't.

So you're called out on being full of crap, told WHY you're full of crap and bring a lame excuse as to why you can't deny that you're full of crap. IE: You're just full of crap.

People don't seem to understand that just because the word "stealth" exists doesn't make it useful. Op/Sc stealth is barely above complete worthlessness in PvP. They have NOTHING to add utility (knockbacks, pulls, gap closers into said knockbacks) along with their damage having been blasted into laughable territory. The damage nerf is fine, getting instagibbed from massive frontloaded damage sucks for everyone, but now the rest of the classes weaknesses are so glaring because there is NOTHING else that they bring to the table. A simple gap closer would help alleviate the issue, even though in reality the reason sorc/sage + trooper/BH dominance exists is because of their positioning abilities combined with their damage and survivability. Charge, pull, knockbacks, sprints, etc. These are what are needed in group objective based PvP. Not a class that can hide (maybe) and do subpar damage, subpar healing and fill someone's resolve bar with a stun that actually hurts their own team.

On our server it's a large repub dominance. More players, and almost every match is against premades consisting of sages/troopers and maybe a sprinkling of a knight here or there. Imp's are losing the galactic war, and badly.

Truth.

People with this attitude are generally the ones dragging the team down and do them a favor by leaving.

BS, or you run naked.

HAHA HAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAH **** HAHAHAHAHAHAAHHA Damn girl, that line of crap is so dense it brought tears to my eyes. bravo.

On our server it's 2:1 repub favor over us on Imp side. They constantly farm the WZ's with premades while we're lucky to get even 4 people to group up and stand against them. Huttball is the worst with repub premades chaincapping it via sorc sprint/pull throw spam tactics.