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.

I think the devs should definitely award mats only for wins. I don't really care much about mats in team ranked because I play with friends who want to win. Solo, however, definitely needs to be changed. As Hottie said earlier, they should force people into 1 tank, 1 healer, 2 dps comps. I agree 10000000000%. *Cough* 2 skank tank cheese strat *cough*

Im fine with mats being in ranked but ranked is where you go to prove yourself. I keep getting put with people who, frankly, have no clue how to even play the game at all and spam all their DCDs in 3 seconds. They don't know how to properly CC, DPS, or anything. People who farm Solos for mats are not "trying to win" they simply don't care. It's really sad when you queue for solos and want to win and your other 2-3 teammates don't even try. I did 2.1mil overall damage with 4.5k dps while the other 2 DPS did 600-800k damage overall at 1.5-2.2k dps. I don't like when people say they're trying to win when they put out numbers like that. Ranked, both team and solo, is a DPS race. However, all the DPS have to be good. The frustrating part is those people that put out low DPS and numbers just don't care. I do. I wanted to start doing solos again recently and I've played 6 solos today and lost 5 of them because I get the same, for lack of a better word: trash, teammates. I looked up my rank and its already in bronze territory thanks to mat farming. Queuing for ranked is no longer to prove you're good at your class/the game because most of the time its a 1v4 situation. Im the only person outputting enough damage to do something but without other DPS helping me, I can't kill anything. I just want mat farmers to realize this. Mat farmers piss off a lot of good players doing this stuff. Now, as a side note, I almost won a game with 2 mat farmers after I told them to start doing more dps. We lost the first round, then won the second, then lost the third. Wanna know why we won the second? Because instead of putting out 2k dps, they both put out 3.5k dps on top of my 4.5k dps. Last round I did 5.3k dps and they did a tiny amount of 2.1k dps. If people actually TRIED to do something, you can win. But it's obvious that mat farmers don't want to try. If someone tells you to stop queuing, they're mad because you're just not doing anything. You cannot win solos or team ranked doing sub 3-4k dps. So if you were doing below 3k dps, then I don't blame him for telling you to stop queuing.

Or that.

That would be 1000000x better than what we have now. It would also help if you were rewarded, say, 4 mats for losing majority of your games and you get, say, 6-8 mats for winning majority of your games. That would also help incentivize people to actually win.

This is causing ranked to no longer feel like ranked, but more like reg arena matches where 1 team is actually playing to win and the other is throwing. Queuing for solo isn't even fun anymore because basically every match is a 1v4 or 2v4 because the other 2-3 people on my team just throw for mats. I DO PVP TO HAVE FUN AND THIS ISN'T FUN. I just want to play ranked games without having to essentially play 1v4 and lose all my games.

As a MM/SS Sniper/GS main who mostly plays PvP, this is what I would recommend: For accuracy, get at least 106%. This makes a huge difference because without this high of accuracy you’ll miss ambushes and penetrating rounds quite a bit. Try to get up to 10% alacrity to make your rotation much smoother and quicker (Sniper volley will provide an extra 10% boost when popped). Next, I would get at least 40% crit. I have 2 relics with crit, 2 implants with crit, and an earpiece with crit. To get about 40% crit, you’ll need to get about 7-8 228 purple augments in addition to this. I have 2 +220 accuracy 246 enhancements. The rest of my enhancements is alacrity. The other 6-7 augments should be overkill augments. These will be 228 purples because 236 yellow augments don’t exist for overkill. You can substitute the overkill augs with mastery if you prefer. They will provide small bonuses to all stats if you do that instead. I currently am wearing 246 enhancements and mods with 236 and 242 armorings. My ambush can hit up to 33-38k depending on if my buffs are stacked and if the enemy has light armor, medium, etc. MM/SS is good for pvp because you can do 40-50k health with an autocrit ambush + followthrough. They have very high burst and have high uptime for hard hitting abilities. Penetrating rounds (your channeled attack) can do around 20k hp over the channel. You can do 2 back to back when using Sniper Volley. Also, MM is my preferred “dueling” spec because theres nothing that a target can cleanse or something like that. Only issue is when Knights pop saber ward or scoundrel/gs pops dodge. Virulence/Dirty Fighting can be decent but their only hard hitting ability is wounding shots which is easily LoSed or dodged or absorbed. Engineering really has the same problem. Their explosive probe is their only real burst and then you’re delegated to spamming snipe and plasma probe. However, everyone has their own preference.

Everytime that I play this game, I cannot go 10 minutes without the game hitting 50,000 ms ping. No, its not my internet because around 20,000 - 30,000 ms is when the game kicks you if its your INTERNET. One time, I hit over 100,000 ms and it kept going. There's a problem with the game servers because many of my friends experience the same issue. It's so bad that the game becomes literally unplayable. I want to play pvp? Nope, because i'll be attacking someone and then the server just lags out and when it finally catches up, about 40,000 ms later, I'm dead. I want to play a flashpoint? Nope, i'll be in the middle of a boss fight and when the server catches up, I'm dead. Same for operations. Does bioware even care at this point? I'm seriously questioning it, more than I have before. The game is dying so rapidly. Pub fleet on Harb used to have 2 or more instances at any time. Now, its only 1 until like 3pm EST or later at night. Once the server becomes more populated, the constant server lag becomes even worse. On top of that, the stupid RNG system is complete trash. Thank god I have old PVP gear because if I didn't, I wouldn't even be able to play PvP at all due to how the bolster system works. I like to play this game every once in a while to have fun in PvP but I can't even do that anymore because 50,000 ms server lag issues. Hell, sometimes it doesn't even catch up and I have to close the game and restart.

I think snipers need something like Force Camo, not actual stealth. I think having the ability to cloak out and get away would help. Hell, maybe make the defensive roll that Slingers and Snipers have grant stealth when rolling and for a few seconds afterward. This would allow snipers and slingers to have a chance to move into an unpredictable spot. Additionally, all the people saying Snipers are OP... Snipers are the least mobile class of SWTOR. You have to go into cover, which, although it grants you additional benefits which are NECESSARY, it means you cannot move and makes you an easy target for a good ranged class. It makes sense for snipers to be the best DPSers (which is now debatable since mandos and mercs are maybe too good ) because they are STATIONARY turret type characters. The reason snipers receive all the benefits that they do while in cover is because without them, there's no reason to even play a sniper and go into cover. Also, they don't even gain the 20% ranged defense unless they are behind a physical object. The projector cover that they have does nothing other than provide a visual for enemies to show that the sniper is receiving cover benefits. It's also pretty simple for a good jugg to kill a sniper. You can pop reflect and dash. Maras can pop obfuscate and a sniper is useless for those 6 seconds. A bad sniper is easy prey for a good player. A good sniper can make quick work of bad melee players. DR is pretty useless when you're being pounded by 6 people and can't do anything about it. Good teams will focus you because you have pretty **** defenses and that makes you easy to kill. Anyway, perhaps an example: Get Outta There or Emergency Defenses Cooldown: 60 seconds Duration: 6~8 seconds You activate your emergency cloaking device, cleanse all negative effects, and roll forward 10m. Your Ambush (Aimed Shot), Cull (Wounding Shots), or Explosive Probe (Explosive Charge) receives a 10~20% damage bonus if used while in stealth. Using any offensive abilities removes you from stealth. And maybe a utility for it too?: Augmented Devices or Improved Defenses Get Outta There or Emergency Defenses grants a stack of Preparation every second, up to a maximum of 6 (or 8) stacks and, when the ability ends, you are healed for 2% of your maximum health. The utility would only grant 12% or 16% of HP back and would make the ability even better. Plus, the ability could augment ambush and all the other central abilities. Its no different than Sentinels gaining stacks while in force camo that increases the damage of their next melee attack. Also, this ability would allow snipers to quickly get out of a sticky situation, which is pretty difficult since rolling STILL has the rubber banding bug. The roll would work like the operative roll. The damage bonus would help snipers do a little bit extra burst (since they lost the 30% crit damage bonus ) And to clarify, the damage bonus would only apply if the player used the ability while still in stealth and when the ability is used (as in Ambush finishes casting etc.) the player is removed from stealth and the damage bonus is applied.

Slinger is my favorite class but I don't even understand why they're in the game. Mercs out damage slingers plus mercs have 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000x better dcds now and more mobility. Can't even challenge a merc now because I just get completely obliterated. I'm not even terrible at slinger, in fact, I think I'm a very good slinger player and many times I've been complimented but what's the point if mercs just obliterate me? They just pop reflect shield and for 6 seconds I put a dot on them and wow, it does 2k damage over 18 seconds? While they sit there doing 35k crits on me and all I can do is roll and when that's done, pop my ****** *** shielding abilities? What a joke.

So far I think some of the utilities are very useful. For instance, I take Phasing Phantasm (gives you 60% inc. damage absorb on force speed) because it helps me get away and hide from players. I'm by far glad that sin/shadow finally has some sort of heal that doesn't require me unstealthing and hitting my channeled ability to regen. I can just pop force cloak, wait for 5 stacks to build up and get a 22k heal which comes in handy a lot. Combine it with the utility that gives 45sec off Cloak and you can have cloak up all the time. What do you think about the new utilities?