I really couldn't care less about sustained dps, the only thing that REALLY matters is overall effective damage. There are few fights in this game that actually require a spec with lower overall damage to be benched in favor of a bursty spec with really good target-swapping capabilities. In the case of Sentinel, Concentration and Combat's burst are close with combat winning the day by having burst windows more frequently. If you butt f**k Combat's burst, there will be no reason to use it over concentration.

I completely agree with the OP. There is absolutely no reason for this change other than closing the gap between new players and practiced ones. Citing server lag is a smoke screen. One could just as easily say that this is punishing players who can execute throw clipping. This will completely gut carnage and ruin the flow of the rotation that people who know it have come to love. I used the term "practiced players" for a reason, because I don't think myself or others who can do it are just gods far and above those who can't. It isn't hard to learn. If you park yourself in front of a dummy for any length of time I believe anyone can learn how to land 4 GCDs inside a berserked/zen ferocity/precision window in no time. I'd argue that the primary component to carnage/combat is rage/focus management. Ensuring that you always have enough for each ferocity window and getting 30 fury/centering stacks when you need them. Instead of disrupting the orchestra, the masterpiece, that is this spec,just increase the duration of ferocity as others have mentioned. It will be really sad if these changes go through in any manner close to their current form. People who main carnage know that it's a brilliant piece of class design.

My one and only issue with the level sync is that it is a cookie cutter set of stats for everyone, rather than working as a reverse bolster, which it should. This makes gear almost completely irrelevant save for secondary stats (which affects gear in a weird way, i.e. pvp gear having more crit or alacrity than your 224 pve piece). On top of that, I feel weird without my standard numbers. I needz my big numbers. I don't wanna feel like a level X twink.

Though I don't use wither or discharge in my pvp spec I understand what you're saying. Tank sins are probably the best 1v1 class in the game right now. This is exactly why I agree with Thumbtoe when he says they could simply increase the threat generation on our ablities. But I'm starting to think this may just be a pride issue me, when I lose aggro on elite mobs in Ops I blame myself but, like Cichard says the tank's holding aggro also falls on the dps to manage their aggro.

To start off I'd like to say I'm not good at math. I can't give you complex equations or algorithms to explain my opinion, but I do have my experience and in my experience I've found that assassin tanks do not generate enough AoE threat. After an AoE taunt what do have? Discharge and wither simply aren't enough to hold aggro. And Lacerate is a joke its damage and force cost make it futile in trying to hold aggro. Now before you say anything my gear is not completely terrible I've got full columi with a few rakata off peices. A simple way they could fix this is increase the damage and/or threat generated on all our AoE abilities. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this, especially if you think I'm completely wrong and can tell me how to tank better.