It blows my mind that operatives got a stupid good set bonus and a tactical that makes them the best PvP class for killing anything right now. Exfiltrate has a 6s cooldown with set bonus and they get 2 Debilitate stun charges that they can also spec into have a lower cooldown. Veiled Strike does auto crit, triggers volatile substance which can also crit really hard and then get a 50-60k backstab auto crit without positioning requirements. This whole setup takes players down to 50% hp in just 3 button presses 90% of the time. You can break the first stun but you'll get stunned again and if you don't break the first stun you're dead anyway. There seems to be no way to really counter play at this point in time against this setup. PvP is full of operatives now just abusing how strong this tactical is along with the set bonus. Operative was in a fine place before; strong but not too strong and still able to hurt if you played it correctly. However, now you just have to press 3 buttons in the right order and you do nearly 100k in 2 GCDs, more than any other class that I've seen.

Tactical Gear Suggestions: - Landing shots from Penetrating Rounds on a target affected by Vital Shot grants a stack of Buff Name Here. At 5 stacks, Aimed Shot consumes all 5 stacks of said buff, causing Aimed Shot to deal AOE damage around the target for 30% damage and causing the targets to burn for medium amount of damage over 5 seconds. - Shots from Penetrating Rounds now ricochet to targets nearby the primary target, dealing 50% then 40% then 30% damage. Damage decreases per bounce. - You have increased range on all attacks (~45m) I feel like Marksman and Sharpshooter should be the go to discipline for staying way back and taking out enemies. A Sniper should FEEL like a sniper. - Ambush interrupts and knocks down targets farther than 15m away. - Flashbang is now a stasis charge and has its cooldown reduced to 45s. When hit by Aimed Shot, Penetrating Rounds, or Charged Burst, the target is slowed heavily and is knocked back 15 meters. - Aimed Shot now has a 2.5s-3s cast time, but hits for 30% more damage. - When a target is crit by Aimed Shot, their fortitude is shattered, causing them gain stacks of Smuggler's Misfortune. Smuggler's Misfortune reduces the target's armor by 1% per stack and is stacked every time the target takes damage from Penetrating Rounds or Aimed Shot. Can stack up to 15 times and lasts 30 seconds.

I see plenty of juggs and other classes that aren't maras/mercs/snipers doing just fine. And just because they play mara/merc/sniper doesn't mean they're good at the class so... Yeah.

Skank tank juggs are still hitting for 25-30k on crushing blow. Balanced? Lol.

I never even alluded to the fact that I "was having problems with juggs." It was an example.

Okay so is it at all possible that we could nerf the pooled hatred talent for jugg? I mean, 50% extra damage is a lot. This is causing both rage juggs and veng juggs to out perform maras and snipers. Mathematically, this allows both rage and veng juggs to hit for around 50k on impale and vicious slash (of course this is before we add in mitigation stats, armor rating, etc) but it still can hit for 45k. On rage, that near 50k vicious slash can then be followed up using a 20-30k raging burst. I'm really confused how this hasn't been even talked about because this is doing more damage than pure DPS classes. It can even be used on Hew to hit for 40k as well, which means you could be trying to run and then you get hit from say, 26m away from a 40k hew? Uh okay. When snipers were hitting for upwards of 40k in 4.0, that was swiftly nerfed. But if it's on a jugg, it's okay? Not to mention jugg has 4 DCDs, which if timed well, can allow them to 4v1 and win. With the amount of slows that classes have, it stacks quickly. Snipers generally have the Series of Snares talent, which applies a stacking slow when channeling penetrating bursts or series of shots. Arsenal mercs' blazing bolts or whatever it is also applies a slow that is reapplied. The reapplication/stacking mechanic grants the jugg an additional stack every time the slow is stacked/reapplied which means you basically lose a huge part of your rotation while fighting a jugg. This means that you can either stop using that ability on them and lose so much DPS, or you can continue doing it and get hit by a 45k impale/vicious slash. I'm open and willing to hear from other players what they think. I think that it should be cut in half (5% damage bonus per stack -> 25% at 5 stacks). It would still make pooled hatred worth grabbing but it wouldn't make it the monster it is.

Well.. sounds like a terrible sniper then. Cuz Snipers aren't easy to global.

LOL! First problem: trying to play Pubs in PvP. Most pubs are just idiots when it comes to PvP, sorry. Second: Mercs, Snipers, and Maras don't live forever if you kill the healer and LEARN 2 PLAY! TL;DR --> You need to L2P and "git gud" because pub side isn't underpowered when compared to imp side. Imp side just knows how to play the game, unlike 99.9999% of pubs. Wanted to add a little EDIT: I run in premades with my guild all the time because frankly, playing without a premade is the worst experience for a veteran PvP player. I want to play with players who actually know how to play and will heal me, dps targets I'm on (LIKE THE ENEMY HEALER OR HEALERS), and play the objective and win. My Guildies know how to do all of those, unlike every pug group. Every group is either full of noobs, people who are wearing gear from level 30, people who don't know how to play their class/fight other classes, people who don't play the objective, etc. Imp side is just as guilty of having the bad PvP players as pub side is. The thing is, a lot of the veteran PvP players play on Imp side instead of pub side. Pub side has basically no good PvP players who play on it, so the entire pub side PvP population is filled with baddies. However, my L2P statement still stands. If you want to L2P, there's always someone out there to help. Hell, you can contact me on Star Forge if you want and I can try to give tips on how to play (I only play on Imp Side). See my sig for my mains if you wanna talk.

Gear doesn't even matter in PvP if you know how to play your class/the game. A person in 230 gear can kill a person in 248 gear easily.

1.) We had 2 tiers of gear before and bioware removed them. They're not going back. Plus, I think everyone can agree that being able to just have 1 gear set for everything is nice. 2.) First off, there's not even enough players to segment pvp even farther. The game is barely hanging on as is and most players are at 248 item level. Bolster helps by boosting your stats to around 242 item level. Second, premades are so prevalent because alot of the good players have stopped playing the game. I would rather play in a 4 man premade with guildies in voice comms and win games than play in a pug group and lose multiple games because people don't know how to play objectives, kill healers, or just play their class. 3.) Really. You think snipers are OP? Yes they are very, very good when used by a good player who knows how to play it but they're not OP. There are so many mediocre snipers in PvP that it's honestly a joke. Sorry but this requires a "git gud" response. As you learn how to play PvP and how to play your class effectively, you'll see that each class has a weakness and how to exploit them. 4.) Another "gid gud" response. Every DPS class except Sniper and Mara have healing in some way. This is because sniper and mara are the only pure DPS classes in the game and technically have/should have the highest DPS output. Other classes make up for their lack of DPS output by having heals and other utilities. If you're fighting a scoundrel/operative, you need to get them stunned, netted, slowed, etc. If you don't CC them, they can roll and LOS you and heal. 5.) Skill trees were already revamped in 3.0 because BW wanted to cater to new players and make everyone cookie cutter builds. 6.) You do realize that the warzone ends in 30 seconds if you have less than 6 people in your warzone group? 7.) I haven't seen this bug ever in my 5 years of playing this game and bugs like this seem to always exist. 8.) Cheaters will be in every game unfortunately. Just gotta report them and hope for the best. (P.S. 99% of the time the person cheating is really bad so they use exploits and cheats to win games.)

Well considering you don’t understand ranked, let me explain. There’s this thing called CC and in ranked you are CC’d and then they hard swap. Sure the tank or healer can pop their breaker but they will be immediately CC’d again. In ranked, wasting cc breaker is a guaranteed death most of the time. Also there are plenty of teams running double skank tank. You can’t “dps through/around guard” when the dps and healer are guarded, always in guard range, and you as a dps are being taunted. I’m sorry but its obvious that you have not really took the time to understand the problem. A tank is able to do the same amount of damage as a high burst dps like a arsenal merc. All while having 20% shield chance and some absorption. Lets also not forget they also get all the tank cooldowns and perks such as invincible (for juggs) or dark ward (for sins).

Okay lets take a look at why Skank tanks are broken. I will be referencing RANKED PVP. Especially group ranked because in regs skank tanks don’t really matter. First, lets talk about how each tank spec gets a damage buff to one of their main AOE attacks. For example, PT tank gets a 100% damage bonus to Firestorm. A skank tank PT can hit 8 enemies for 25-30k damage with firestorm. Its essentially smash monkey 2.0. Granted, it has to crit on all 8 people but it does a lot of damage without crit. It can crit for 13-15k on a normal PT tank. Same with jugg and sin. Depredating volts can crit back to back for 18k. It hits 4 times so essentially a sin tank can do ~50k damage or so with 3 stacks of the damage buff. Not to mention that sin tanks have the highest mitigation possible. In group ranked, teams run 2 skank tanks, 1 healer, and a high burst dps (like mm sniper or arsenal merc). The tanks never have to switch guard. Both tanks cc everyone and then jump on a target, each do 25-30k crushing blows (so about 50-60k damage) and the sniper or merc does an additional 30k damage (now up to 90k damage). By that time you’re dead. The fact that a T A N K can do burst dps like that is insane. They just global everyone into the dirt and you cannot do anything about it. Now lets talk about how all tanks get AOE heal reduction. Two skank tanks can apply a constant 20% heal reduction on a whole team. This means that healing output from your healer is constantly reduced to low numbers. The skank tanksm burst will overwhelm your healer and you will die. On top of all of this, 2 skank tanks in a granked team have the survivability bonuses of a tank, while retaining stupid levels of dps output. Are skank tank teams possible to beat? Yes. However, it’s very difficult and the average team who hasn’t been playing granked together forever will not beat a good skank tank team. Dps output against skank tank teams can be reduced by ~80% due to skank tanks constantly taunting each dps and no guard swaps. You could be doing 5.5k dps realistically but with that guard and taunt always up, you’ll be doing 2k dps. This wouldn’t be a problem with 2 normal tanks because normal tanks do not have the capability to global someone. So please tell me why skank tanks aren’t the problem?

Marksman Sniper is one of the hardest hitting disciplines in the game, if not the hardest. However, be aware that Sniper is a turret and you will stay in one spot in order to do 98% of all of your dps. They have a lot of channels and casts but cannot be interupted. With entrench they can get 20-23 seconds of cc immunity. Operative’s hardest hitting spec is Concealment. Lethality is a DoT spec and imo does very little damage. However, Operative is a melee class.

Personally if my team wasn't peeling the first thing I would do is try to run towards my team. If they're in stealth, enemy AOEs will force them out and force them to help you by attacking the enemies. Next, make sure you pop your force armor on yourself and your AOE healing if you're playing a sage/sorc. Sorc/Sage is the most vunerable, IMO, when being opened up on because they have paper thin armor and very little survivability options in the way of abilities. Sage/sorc has a ton of kiting tools but not a lot of DCDs. If playing Operative, put 2 probes on yourself, pop nanotech right before they attack, and pop your stim boost (with the 5% heal and 20% damage reduction - revitalizers). As for merc, I would pop reactive shield and make sure you have the 30% less damage while stunned perk. Thats 55% less incoming damage when you're CCd. If you get netted, you have the option of CC breaking and then bubbling as a sorc/sage. Or you die.

I'm sorry but unranked isn't comparable to ranked. You were stunned three times because... thats how you play ranked. You don't pop CC breaker instantly unless you're whitebarred and for sure going to die. I've seen many players that will instantly pop CC breaker the instant they're stunned and are promptly globaled. Now, your team was being very unhelpful and the first thing they should've done is peeled. They should've CC'd the attackers/pushed them away. If one of them had guard, they should've swapped it to you. They should've been taunting too.