It does. And also if you don’t win any games then it takes three times as long. Most 8v8 matches are pretty much the same length as a gsf match.

Yeah lack of aoe dr doesn’t make stuff impossible, but it does make it impossible to reason bringing a dps class without aoe dr over a dps class with aoe dr. You quite simply wouldn’t bring an op dps or merc dps (both classes with no aoe dr and poor dcds in pve) over a pt dps or a mara dps (both classes with aoe dr and incredibly strong dcds in pve, not to mention raid utility). Gear will make things easier and classes without aoe dr more viable, yes, but if a group is progging an operation, there will still be no reason for them to make things more difficult by bringing a class with no aoe dr.

Does this mean this was the last phase of PTS before 7.1, or will there be another one?

Because gsf is the superior game mode obviously. The real endgame.

1. Most players already have their gear augmented, but yeah some don’t I guess. The pvp player base really isn’t that massive that it will skyrocket though. 2. 326 pvp gear will still be the same as 330 operation gear, assuming both are augmented. 3. What? Side note: at least the way it was before, bolster gave you blue augments on gear pieces that weren’t augmented. I would hope that the do something similar when they turn augments back on.

Soon enough prices for many items such as master’s datacrons and hyper crates will exceed the 4.2b credit limit which will serve as an effective GTN cap if the current one gets raised. There are already lots of other items (mainly rare/old cartel market cosmetic items) over this limit as well which even with an increased GTN cap would not be able to be listed. I agree a raised GTN cap would right now be nice, but we’ll just be facing the same issue eventually. The only real solution is an effective method to reduce inflation and massively reduce the current amount of credits in the game.

Assassins are really strong right now in pvp, specifically deception. But that was mainly due to being scaled down to level 50. The scaling in the game isn’t perfect and the more you get scaled down the more damage you’re able to do relative to the amount you’re supposed to be able to do if that makes sense. There are a lot of classes that can kill you in a few gcds in Ilum pvp, but assassins do have the element of surprise and can also keep you cc’d while killing you.

Obviously no one would die is an exaggeration, I really meant ttk would be way too long, but madness sorcs may actually not die. My whole point is basically if one stun whitebarred you, you would be able to use defensive cooldowns much more conservatively, and then ttk would be way too long. It’s less so that you would have to sit through 4 sec stun instead of 8 sec stun, more so that you would not have to sit through an opening stun at all because it would whitebar you and you could break straightaway. And since you don’t have to sit through an opening stun, you don’t have to preemptively use/waste any defensive cooldowns AND you can kite/los behind stuff much easier so that you don’t take all the burst at once / don’t take the burst at all, which again means you can stretch your defensive cooldowns out longer and live way longer. You’re right in that sorc’s 3 breakers ARE it’s defensives. Getting whitebarred in one stun may not necessarily change how sorcs use their breakers, but it would make said 3 breakers much more powerful. Basically, sorcs defensive strategy revolves around avoiding damage, kiting, obviously. This means that the easiest way to kill them is by stunning them. In fact you’re probably not going to be able to kill them at all if you can’t stun them and they have more than two brain cells, I don’t care how good you are. So if they could only be stunned once every 15s, they would not have to sit through a single stun for the first 45s, and then they would only have to live for 15s before being able to pw again and basically break another stun for another 15s of immunity, and by this time polarity will be coming off cd so they can kite with 100% movement speed and whitebar immunity for another 15s, and then they would only have to live for another 30s before they could phasewalk again, you get the idea (I hope). I don’t see the correlation. I think the only class this is even true for is pt. Most classes will do less damage with less stuns in solo ranked because without being able to control the target they will run away and you won’t be able to hit them. I’m assuming what you mean is if you’re taking less stuns you’ll do more damage, but if you’re taking hardstuns that probably means you’re the target so doing damage is not nearly as important as kiting/surviving, unless you’re a pt in which case yeah you gotta do damage and not having to sit as many stuns will mean you can do more, as I already said. Maybe that wasn’t the best example, but, as you said “pt’s burst is not sustainable” burst is not sustainable. 5 second ttk doesn’t mean you’ll be able to kill someone from 100 to 0 in one hardstun late in the game because you most likely WON’T have your burst available. This means that, yes, multiple stuns are needed to kill someone. Yes you often kill people out of stuns or in one stun WHEN THEY’RE already low, but to get people low stuns are usually necessary. It does heavily depend on the class though, it’s more true that you need stuns to kill a class that depends on kiting or escaping (like sin/op/mara/sorc - wow the meta classes), and less true for classes that often just face tank (like pt). So making one hardstun whitebar you would just make the stealth meta even worse than it already is. I’m not saying it’s hard, but I am saying it takes more coordination than simply not doing it at all. You obviously still have to coordinate to hit the person you’re trying to kill at the same time during the first hardstun. In team ranked, with guards and heals, you pretty much are only able to kill people during hardstuns unless you just have pressure difference. It’s less so that you won’t be able to kill people without chainstunning them, but more so that you won’t be able to stun as often which will draw more games out to acid (which is boring). I think we’re kinda just looking at it in different ways to be honest. I agree that hardstunning people for 8 secs is not the only way to kill people, which is why in regs I think this is a good idea. But in ranked, hardstunning for at least 4s straight up is necessary to kill skilled players. Getting whitebarred from one hardstun will not only mean you are not able to stun as often, but it also means that whenever you have breaker up you won’t even have to sit one hardstun. It will make it more difficult to kill people in ranked, yes. Is this a good thing, no, ttk does not need to be longer in ranked. And it will make it easier to live when you’re the one being focused, which is most definitely not a good thing when the meta is composed of classes that are hard to kill without stuns.

I agree, but if they get it without kolto burst getting reworked they would just be too unbalanced like I said. If they do rework kolto burst however, they should absolutely get revitalizers in exchange.

I agree they need to balance the game but no matter what they do there will always be a meta and there will always be more meta classes than not in the top reward tier.

The problem is breaker has a 2m30 cooldown. This is regs we’re talking about, do you think the best course of action after using breaker on a white bar in a 6v6 in mid would be to los and run behind everything after white bar is over so you can’t get chainstunned and killed? Because that sounds incredibly boring. The fact of the matter is, you don’t have to “punish a bad breaker” in regs. If you stun someone they will most likely not have breaker because breaker has such a long cooldown. So what op is arguing and what I am arguing for regs is that if you need more than that one stun when they probably won’t have breaker anyway to kill them, you’re just bad. Again I’m only arguing this for regs. For ranked I agree with pretty much every point you make.

Dying to 1 stun isn't the problem, that's just a l2p issue. The issue is getting chain stunned constantly, which is what getting whitebarred in one hardstun would fix.

I literally didn't say anything about lethality not taking flash bang. Flash bang is on an entirely different tier than hardstun. To take hardstun you only have to give up an evasion buff (2s longer evasion on leth, 15 second cooldown reduction and 50% movement speed increase on conc). To take flashbang, you have to give up holotraverse (gap closer), and a lot of operatives choose to still take holotraverse. No, no one would die in one hardstun unless they're the type of global bait that already dies in one hardstun or without a stun. I don't think you have ever played rank based on the things you have said. You regstars have the misconception about ranked in that it's just a numbers game and whoever can number fluff the best wins. This is entirely false. In ranked, players actually know how to use their dcds, they know how to kite, they know how to peal, etc. You will not kill anyone if every class can run around whitebarred after one hardstun or 3 roots. You use AP PT as an example to your argument, so I will too. AP PT has two stun breakers, regular one and stun breaker on kolto. Currently, you can stun one twice and whitebar them and they will be able to break both of them. Imagine, if one stun whitebarred them, they could break that, be unstunnable for 15s, be stunned and whitebarred again, break new stun, and then be unstunnable for another 15s. That would be 30s of being unstunnable. With their "5 sec ttk," this means they could kill the whole enemy team 1.5 times over without having to sit a single stun. Sorc is another class that would be broken with one hardstun whitebar. Sorc has 3 breakers, and their staying alive strategy focuses heavily around kiting. If every stun whitebarred them, with their 3 breakers, they would be unstunnable for at least 45s. But it gets worse, because phase walk is on a 60s cooldown, so they will likely be able to use it for their fourth stun. That means 1m15 of not being stunnable. That is ridiculous, when the only way to kill a decent sorc is in a hardstun. You are partly right in that, yes, players can be killed in one hardstun. They most often are. But you're heavily overlooking the fact that in an arena, each player will have at least one breaker, and all of their dcds available at the start. If one stun whitebarred you, the ttk would just be way too high. Additionally, your claim that only being able to hardstun an enemy once will take improved player coordination, this is false. In solo and especially team ranked, chain stunning people takes way more coordination. If you have not played either game mode I do not want to hear your opinion on this, if you have then feel free to challenge me on that and say why you think one hardstun takes more coordination. Also, saying we're in a burst meta is kinda dumb. The meta in solo ranked will always be "burst," however, two of the 4 meta classes right now aren't even by definition burst, those two being lethality and madness.

Lol, true. Yeah and this is a problem. If one could get top 3 on sniper (an exponentially more difficult class this patch) by playing on lethality operative, every single sniper top3 will actually be an operative top3. I think honestly the easiest thing for Bioware to do is to just scrap class top 3s and give out top 48 per solo/team ranked. This will still have the problem that meta classes will make up much more of the plat ranks, but it's better than players cheesing the system to get a sniper top3 title on their operative imo (and this doesn't just go for sniper, same thing applies to every other class that isn't op/mara). Another good/easy option is to just make plat tied to an elo, say like 1600 or 1650. Again, there will be more meta classes that get it, but what can you do.

In ranked, I would completely agree. Dying early in a hard stun is either because you were mispositioned and or wasted your breaker (I have to specify early, because dying in a hardstun later in the game is natural if you're the focused target, you won't always live forever). But in regs, it's a completely different story. Sure, maybe everyone doesn't take hardstun. That doesn't change the fact that there will likely be two or three hardstuns ready to be used on you if the enemy team so desires. Granted, most regs players aren't experienced to coordinate their hardstuns well, but my point still stands that hard stuns are commonplace in regs. Not even to mention roots and slows. Your point about mispositioning is mostly moot. Yes, running into 1v5s is dumb. But it doesn't even matter if you get hardstunned there, you will die anyway. My argument is that even in a fair 5v5 or 6v6 or something in regs if a player marks you, you will get stunned, and stunned, and then stunned again. Breaker is on a 2m30 cooldown I believe. You can, and will, be chained hardstunned much more often than that. Wasting breaker is a thing in ranked, yes, but in regs, the cooldown is so long that even if you use it smartly you will still not have it every time you need it. I think you underestimate how many classes still have hardstuns. Let's count. Operative - 1, usually. Always 1 if Leth unless player is dumb. Sniper - 0 Juggernaut - 1 Maurauder - 0 Assassin - 2 or 3 Sorcerer - 1 Merc - 0 Powertech - 1, 2, or 3 As you can see, 5 out of 8 classes still have a hardstun. I wouldn't call that In addition, two of the three classes that don't have hardstun (sniper and merc) aren't all that common anyway. There has to be an asterisk next to merc not having hardstun too, because they still have net which is usually worse. The only common class that doesn't have a hardstun is mara. The most common mara spec, however, does have a 95% slow on a relatively short cd lol. Again, I wouldn't call that no cc.

He's talking from a regs perspective I assume. Tracking "how much cd they have on stun" is unreasonable. It also doesn't matter how many stuns other classes have, when there are 8 players, that usually means 8 stuns, and guess what? you only have one breaker (unless you're a sorc). And that one breaker will usually be on cd. I think this whole thing is just a matter of perspective. I agree the stuns in regs can be overbearing and annoying sometimes, especially with stun breaker having such a long cooldown. However, in solo or team ranked, I feel they are perfectly balanced the way they are. If you were white barred after one stun in solo or team ranked, simply nothing would die. CC is how you play ranked, and reducing the resolve needed to white bar to one hard stun would be ridiculous. There are two possible solutions here. Either make the resolve bar changes that the op suggests exclusively for regs, or make breaker reset at death.

To expand on these claims, I made a spreadsheet and added up all of the DPS parses for each 8m NiM boss fight in 7.0 from https://parsely.io. That is, as in, the number of parses from each class for each 8m NiM boss fight, from each server, in 7.0. I then totaled the results and calculated the percentage each class represents. I only counted DPS spec parses (I didn't include Tank or Heal parses), and I couldn't count Nefra or Dash'roode because there were too many parses so there was no way to figure out the exact amount of parses from most classes for those fights because the website only shows the top 50. Also note that these are in imperial terms, but they include mirrored classes. Here are the results: Totals: Assassin - 855 - 8.58% Juggernaut - 1709 - 17.15% Marauder - 2582 - 25.92% Mercenary - 124 - 1.24% Operative - 196 - 1.97% Powertech - 2382 - 23.91% Sniper - 1066 - 10.70% Sorcerer - 1049 - 10.53% Total - 9963 - 100% As you can see, both Operative and Mercenary make up less than 2% of all parses. I don't think I need to say how ridiculous this is. Meanwhile, Marauder and Powertech each make up around 25% of all parses. But don't worry, it gets worse when we look at just the apex bosses (final boss fights). Totals, Apex Bosses: Assassin - 105 - 8.20% Juggernaut - 145 - 11.33% Marauder - 353 - 27.58% Mercenary - 13 - 1.02% Operative - 11 - 0.86% Powertech - 418 - 32.66% Sniper - 134 - 10.47% Sorcerer - 101 - 7.89% Total - 1280 - 100% Mercenary and Operative combined make up less than 2% of all parses from apex bosses. Meanwhile, Powertech and Marauder combined makeup 60%. Here is the spreadsheet. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13poUvjI74nRfwQ0S7GtarNPmP0nQU73esYgspBwFzfg/edit?usp=sharing

Edit/update: please see my first reply in this thread for data on just how underrepresented Operative and Mercenary DPS are in NiM content. Intro Hi, I'm creating this thread in an attempt to bring awareness to the current disparity between Operative's defensives in PvE compared to other classes. I know there are currently no Operative balance changes on PTS, but I hope there will be in the future because both Operative DPS specs are in dire need of a defensive rework. Like the threads for Mercenary DPS in this forum, I will state the issues the class is currently facing and how I think those issues can be fixed. I will also attempt to be as concise as possible. First of all, before I talk about the defensives, I want to mention where the Operative DPS specs stand purely DPS-wise in comparison to other specs. Both Operative DPS specs are in a good spot DPS-wise, with both specs parsing above 30k in 330 item rating gear. Lethality has slightly less single target sustain than concealment but has much better AoE and is in a balanced spot compared to other classes. Concealment has more single target sustain in exchange for having close to no AoE damage and having to remain in 4m range for the majority of its attacks. I believe that no changes need to be made to the output of either Operative DPS spec. Defensives, or the lack thereof Operative has two defensive cooldowns, neither of them being very effective in most PvE encounters. Additionally, Operative has no way to mitigate AoE damage, while most other classes do. Shield Probe summons a probe droid that projects a shield around you for up to X seconds, absorbing Y damage. This defensive is, quite frankly, pitiful. The damage shield probe absorbs is not even close to enough to sufficiently mitigate any spikes of damage taken in PvE. Evasion increases your chance to dodge melee and ranged attacks by 200% for X seconds. This would be a very effective defensive cooldown if there was more melee/ranged attacks in PvE, but unfortunately, there is not. The vast majority of damage taken in PvE is force/tech and AoE. Additionally, Lethality has Revitalizers - restores 5% of total health every 3 seconds and reduces damage received by 20% for the duration. This is actually an effective defensive cooldown against sustained damage, however, it has the problem that it is attached to an offensive cooldown. AoE Damage Reduction As I stated previously, the vast majority of damage taken in PvE is force/tech and AoE, and Operative DPS is the only melee DPS with no AoE damage reduction. This means that there is virtually no reason to bring Operative DPS in difficult PvE content instead of other melee classes which have effective defensives and AoE damage reduction. Suggested Changes First, it is important to mention that overdoing the changes will make Operative Heals unbalanced in PvE and Operative DPS unbalanced in PvP. Operative Heals are currently by far the strongest healer, so adding any defensives would only make them more overpowered than they currently are. Similarly, Operative DPS, specifically Lethality, is overperforming in PvP where its defensives are more effective. For these reasons, I believe that giving AoE damage reduction only to Operative DPS specs is the most effective way to solve this issue. In PvP, there is far less AoE damage, so adding AoE damage reduction there will not be detrimental. Additionally, no other heal specs have access to AoE damage reduction, so Medicine Operative should not either because that would be unbalanced without giving the other heal specs AoE damage reduction as well. Like the other DPS classes, this AoE damage reduction should be 60% for roughly 10-15 seconds and added to an already existing defensive cooldown, typically the threat drop. Evasion increases your chance to dodge melee and ranged attacks by 200% for X seconds. Additionally, all area effect damage is reduced by 60% for 10 seconds (Lethality and Concealment only). Additionally, Revitalizers should be separated from stim boost and be made a separate defensive cooldown available to both Lethality and Concealment (but not Medicine). Revitalizers - restores 5% of total health every 3 seconds and reduces damage received by 20% for 15 seconds. 2-minute cooldown.

They can't completely save someone getting focused by all four people in a 4v4 (although in a balanced match where both teams have a healer this will usually only be three because the healer will be too busy healing their team, and possibly only two if the person that your team is focusing has to kite and isn't able to damage your team) - the person being focused has to use dcds, get pealed for, and possibly kite. This is how it should work, if a single healer could keep a player up through 4 players focusing on them, then no one would die and games would just stretch out until acid. Healers are more than able to put out enough healing in pve. Most boss fights the healers actually end up off dps'ing because there isn't all that much to heal, even in nim. There are not very many burst heal checks in pve, the most heal intensive stuff used to be aoe heal checks but with the current state of operative heals even those are laughably easy.

Kill farming is kinda in between “objective andy” and “damage monkies.” If they had an at all competent team, their team could have capitalized on how quickly they were killing the enemy team by planting bonus, but they didn’t.. Obviously the players doing the farming could have but it’s not their fault that their team didn’t. Damage farming on the other hand could entail 1) trying to keep enemy players up and prolong their deaths for more damage (which they didn’t do), and 2) go to where there were more enemies to farm more damage (which they also didn’t do). I do see your point but I think kill farming can definitely be between objective playing and damage farming.

He did 7k on engi, I wouldn't categorize that as damage farming.

Strange, I just made a new character and I can confirm loot discipline isn't there. Must be a bug because you could set your loot discipline at level 1 in 6.0. Biochem is what you want for pve for the reusable adrenals and medpacs, but you can't use those in pvp so it doesn't really matter although the reusable stims are nice. You'll want to use versatile stims.

You should be able to set your loot discipline below level 80. Right-click on your character frame and there should be a loot discipline option near the middle. Since champion's precision and fearless victor are both crit implants and you will be using a shield (normally a dps offhand gives alac), you'll need 4 alac pieces to hit 1.4 gcd. This can include earpiece or main gear (headpiece, chestpiece, etc.). Since you're a juggernaut I would recommend those 4 alac pieces being head and chest from the pummeler set (jugg dps) and either legs and feet from force-lord (sorc dps) or gloves and legs from force healer (sorc healer). Or if you don't have those specs but you do have another class then lmk and I'll tell you what you need from those classes. After this you'll be left with 2660 crit at 326, so even with full crit augs you still won't hit 4500 (you'll have ~4100) so you'll want all crit augs. Alternatively, you can replace an alac main piece with a crit main piece in exchange for 5 purple alac augments - you can do this up to 3 times. Sry if this is confusing, feel free to ask more questions bc I probably didn't explain this well.

You don't have to swap specs for gear boxes, just have to make sure your loot discipline is set. Ideal augs are crit until 4.5k and then rest into mastery. Assuming you have 1.4 gcd (2054), if not then swap some for alac until 2054 or get some more alac main pieces. All augments have endurance.

There's still reason to play objectives, you progress the weekly 4x faster. I also haven't really seen an increase in damage farmers since the change.