Not really, it's been a constant gripe since beta that ranged companions in general outperform their melee counterparts due to better AI and faster target selection. Regardless, none of it really matters post 50. BW failed to make companions part of the endgame in any substantial way.

Actually that could impact the drops given. If the game only registers what classes are present, then the more of any class you stack, the more likely you are to entirely lack a certain class. Lacking an entire class in turn removes it from the loot table and increases your odds getting loot for the other classes. After all, if it didn't, there would be absolutely no point to having made the change to make the loot system smarter in the first place.

That's the same logical fallacy that people tried to claim on Hybrids pre-1.2 with their AOE splash dmg. Dmg is dmg. Dmg is also pressure. Pressure to heal, pressure to blow your defensive cooldowns. It doesn't matter how someone is worn down, as long as they die in a way that sees you winning the objective. I'm spreading the pain and helping others with their 1 on 1 fights. So while the sent/mara is applying pressure to a single target by bursting them, I'm not only helping him beat down that target, I'm taking down the other players at the same time, making them then easier to kill. Wearing down an entire team, restricting their movment, contributing to burst, and buffing your own team at the same time makes us one of the most effective dps out there. Your usefulness is only determined by how well you take advantage of the situation around you. And lets be clear, I'm not knocking TK either. It's just another side of the coin.

If you think you still can't bubble other people or throw in a heal or two then you clearly need some more exposure. Try something next time before you bash it.

You say that based on what. Your vast experience pvping as balance?

Yea I run 1/9/31 atm. Not really no, how many targets are you people tab dotting over and over again that you're actually going OOF just from it? I mean sure in very long drawn out fights with multiple respawn waves I can run low, but that's nothing NS doesn't fix, which with all the self healing isn't really a penalty other than the GCD-loss in most cases. And again there, I'm generally going OOF from doing something like bubbling others and casting a couple heals than the dots themselves.

Well if you're pugging against a well organized premade what did you expect? Your team still needs to keep melee from hounding you to death as a healer if they want to get anything done so if they don't realize that, they were bound to lose. If you're in a well-organized team of your own this ceases to be an issue, so I still don't see how this has anything to do with healing so much as it does the skill differential between teams.

You still deal single target damage and help your team burst people down, I'm not standing there tab dotting even close to 50% of the time. Burst comes primarily through coordination when playing against better teams, not someone flying solo with cooldowns or using gimmicks. So while you're bursting our guy, and my guys are bursting yours, I'm eating the rest of your team's face and the healer can't stop to do a thing about it without letting the burst target die. Worst part for him is, after about 4-5 GCD's I join in the bursting while still having dots rolling on offtargets. It's the same concept as splash damage that everyone was touting with the hybrids pre-1.2. It's just an all around win for you and your team, you help burst, you spread the pain, and you self heal while controling the battlefield with CC and Roots. You're not going to dot everyone in the Warzone, when I say as many as possible I'm talking all those present at the location excluding potential CC targets. This could mean only 2 targets, or it could mean 5-6 with a whole team zerging a node. And no I couldn't out-regen someone's burst if it's 1 on 1, but at that point I can control them enough to restrict their burst so I still don't die. Again man, I'm topping charts in almost every game. The only games I'm not are when I really take myself out of the game to defend something for the good of the team. I can easily see how hybrids/full TK's are struggling in this melee, defensive cooldown, escape artist-fest that's going on. Balance though is thriving. A question on this... you must think weaken mind is a pretty bad dot then too right? I say this because Sever Force is very close to it in DPCT. Sure it's real strength is in it's root, but it does good damage too, especially now that it does an instant, initial tick. But I digress, and I see the thread is trying to get back on topic. My favorite thing to do in warzones: Stand on the other side of huttball fires from Knights/Warriors and purposely not cross when it's down. It's hilarious to watch their self-restraint break down as they predictably leap to you, only to have you force wave them into the soon to trigger fire, and then Sever Force them make sure they stay. Right as they're breaking, you stun them and laugh maniacally as they're incinerated.

It's more than viable against any opponent but even more so if YOUR team is good, it doesn't really matter how good the other team is. The more pressure your team applies, the more your dots rack up unnoticed. You become quite the force multiplier in that sense and it makes it impossible for even the best healers to outpace your group's dmg. I'd even go so far as to say I've come out on top of the meters on almost every premade vs. premade match I've been in (even the losses). Burst is important, but it also doesn't work against a quality team without sustained simultaneous pressure on their healers. The "other teams will negate you" argument is completely false. In fact, you're quite impossible to negate as even if they focus fire you constantly (something I'm noticing more and more as the other premades have begun to head hunt me to take me out of node fights early) as your damage persists through death. Only another Sorc/Sage can cleanse your dots, and if they're a healer they frankly don't have enough GCD's or force power to waste on removing your dots from every one of their players. That only leaves stealthers who are forced to burn their removal cooldown to get back into stealth, which much to their chagrin, you then promptly pop them out with FiB or FQ and reapply dots. Frankly people bashing balance in pvp either are bad at it or have never tried it and don't know what they're talking about.

Like others have said, this is the wrong approach. You create an uneccesary barrier, a punishment if you will, for those who are already punished by failing to sell their product. The result is easy to predict because it can be seen in any other game with a similar punishment. People vendor items whose profitability doesn't outweigh the cost of the risk in their eyes, and for those that do, they spam chat channels attempting to sell them directly causing players to try and cheat the system. In turn this annoys players into actually avoiding the channels when they aren't interested. Even now you see people spamming general chat to sell items with no cost because they may be able to attract interest and speed up the sale, so all you're doing in the end is incentivizing that behavior while creating yet another money sink for an overburdened crafter. Slicing missions will always be in fairly high demand with few exceptions, so you just end up hurting other crafters who now have a penalty to posting their low demand goods. And again there's nothing wrong with someone overpaying. A competetive market still relies on an intelligent buyer to enforce the competition. When a sucker does pay too much because he didn't bother or have the patience to assess the value of the competition, that's his loss and your gain. Like they say, Buyer Beware.

No it's always been like this but it seems to have slipped through the cracks with all the facerolling in this class. Alacrity can reduce the GCD on cast times that would occur faster than than the 1.5 second GCD. You'll see the same thing occur with disturbance too with any amount of alacrity as it's base cast time is also 1.5 seconds. However, Alacrity DOES NOT reduce the GCD on abilities whose cast times are longer than the GCD (in other words you couldn't stop casting TKthrow earlier than the GCD and immediately queue a different ability, you have to wait that 1.5 seconds out) and on instant casts (which are locked at the normal 1.5 seconds) unless they are specifically designed to be off the GCD restriction (like a knight's riposte). TL;DR - Alacrity reduces the GCD only on cast time abilities that would finish faster than the normal 1.5 second GCD.

You're doing it wrong. Then you play against idiot sages or you don't actually realize what they're doing that's winning them the fight. I have my dots running on as many targets as possible. Why? To ramp up my self healing to a point that I'm borderline unkillable for any melee who wants to stick to my hip. It also drastically weakens any group of enemy players and puts pressure on their healer. People claim you can be negated by dispells, but only other Sages/Sorcs can cleanse your dots and most can't be bothered or afford to spare the time to do so. Beyond that, only stealthers can get rid of them as a last resort. I am a bubble vendor and proud of it, but only at the right moments. I can't tell you how many times I've been voted MVP after matches because I tossed out a bubble to someone at 10% health. A bubble at a critical moment often turns the tide of any duel going on in a warzone. I honestly fail to see how this is problem either, bubble in general is one of the easiest ways to assure your team a warzone win. Every sage should be looking for opportunities to use it. Lastly, Balance is about battlefield control. What it lacks in burst potential it picks up in utility through sever's root which works through resolve immunity and has a shorter cooldown than any other root in the game. Rooting idiots in huttball fires, stopping the defense from running back to the node, and pinning melee away from your healers are just a few of the applications.

Not to my knowledge, every time I've ever used it post-1.2 it still fails to drop the aggro. The bug was that it was reducing a quarter of a percent of your threat rather than a full quarter of your threat like it should due to a misplaced decimal in the data files. I'll ask around and see if someone's checked it in the data files recently. Personally I resolve this like others by A.) having the tank guard me or B.) coordinating with our Seer to rescue me right after I finish using potency (generally your highest threat/dmg point). The latter proves to be the most effective because unlike cloud mind, Rescue actually does reduce threat by 25%.

Perhaps because it's not true? You only don't have to worry about Force Management as DPS if you have effusion. On topic: Both my guild's Seers are still going strong in pvp and pve. I feel like most of the whining is actually the result of gear differential going unrealized and causing quick deaths.

You're still coming out ahead by the fact that you have ANY bonus to healing whatsoever. Dps gains from expertise are directly mitigated by defensive gains from expertise on the target. However, healing gains from expertise have no foil at all. Thus as you and your enemy go from 250 to 500 expertise, he does the same dmg to you the whole way, while your heals get stronger and stronger.

It's entirely possible that the EC bosses have higher armor ratings or kinetic dmg reduction. That being said, the EC fights in general seem to be more movement intensive than the Karaggas or EV bosses.

I like that you're trying to get other people to try out TK spec, as it does get a bad rap undeservedly by bad players. However what you're saying about balance is simply untrue. It doesn't just run out of force if you play it correctly. I.E. don't refresh your dots before they fall off for maximum DPF, don't tab dot everything under the sun, and don't interrupt your casts to move unless you have to. Do it all correctly and very little NS'ing (if any) will be required.

No. You can't even utilize the absorb stat without a shield generator equiped. And since sages can't equip a shield generator....

Sages are fine still in dps and healing. In pve and pvp. If you're complaining that you're broken and unviable, you're doing something wrong, because others are handling the changes just fine. If you're threatening to quit over it like the OP, please do.

It is a pretty big factor unfortunately. BW has continually crafted ops fights that require excessive amounts of movement. Thus while the specs are all on par when standing still, the specs that can dps better on the move thrive. It's not that you can't make TK work and work well even in the hands of a good player, it's just that Hybrid and Balance have that much more of an edge on the move and will perform slightly better in the hands of the same good player. How BW didn't anticipate this I don't know. I can tell you that so far this is especially true in the new operation. On Toth & Zorn you spend a lot of time correcting your range to avoid fearful, and running in and out to soak rock hurling, both of which can be done easily while reupping dots or casting FiB. On Fire & Storm, my guild is also utilizing me as the ranged soaker BECAUSE I can be so mobile as a ranged dps and still deal great dmg, all while retaining the ability to self-cleanse.

Equiping your +41 End crystal will just make you a worse healer. No one expects you to have a lot of health as a Sage, they just don't want you to have 12-13k health, as that's a pretty good indicator that you don't even have epic gear yet. Sure more End is going to give you more survivability, but in terms of healing output it's worse for you. Your noble sacrifices takes a percentage of your health on use, so the more health you have the more that percentage will take with it in terms of actual HP. It's not really a problem, but it does make your NS less efficient in terms of health --> force point conversion. Power on the other hand is going to make you heal for more and when needed do higher dps, making you slightly more efficient at just about everything. It's an easy choice, stick with power.

Not my area of expertise but I'd personally suggest a healing proc trinket (Karagga's or Campaign) and the best power trigger relic you can get your hands on. If not fall back on the matrix cube, it's easy to acquire.

No they weren't. Why is everyone throwing around 500k like it's an average number? It's not even achievable outside of voidstar except in extreme cases.

500k healing is still great and better than average. If you've got melee harassing you talk to your team, it's their job to keep them off of you.

Then you weren't fighting on a node, your team wasn't getting any kills, and you weren't healing for enough to get your own role-based medals. Sounds like you got stomped by a premade, nothing more.