DPS'ing so hard he is dps'ing you (almost) into next year

Combat/Carnage because it feels fast-paced and rewarding, even though not nearly as fun as the late 2.x version. Anni/Watchmen feels slow and clunky and Fury/Concentration just feels like it suffers from ability bloat. Doesn't help that I am just bad at both Watchmen and Concentration either so naturally I will pick what I find the easiest and most fun

Don't think its a matter of pubs being scared to queue at 60, more that imps are the bigger faction that pvp's and typically are better at it so a lot of games tend to be imp v imp especially in solo ranked. Also depends on the time of day, as I see that imps tend to stomp pubs in regs mid-day but later at night pubs have at the very least been able to put up a solid fight.

None besides the self-heal from using Battle Readiness

New Ability: Curved Bullet-Shoots a powerful shot that hits the target for x-weapon damage that can't be parried or LOS'd. Instant. 30 seccooldown. 10 Energy.

I think current set bonuses are fine, though I think the 4-piece benefits Infiltration/Deception way more than it does Serenity/Hatred. I personally don't mind considering I like infil better anyway, but for the sake of balance it might be something to look into to make the 4-piece a little more benficial to Hatred/Serenityt as well

The 2-piece is fine imo. The 4 and 6-piece are a little weird to me. the taunt cooldown time is only really useful in pvp and a few certain fights in pve (though I guess it entirely depends on how each group's tanks handle the mechanics). I think 6-piece would be fine if it also increased the shield chance similar to the old 2-piece, though I could see how that might be a little OP. Personally I would prefer the old 4-piece over the new 6-piece. Whatever the changes happen to be, the set bonuses need to be equally useful in both pvp and pve considering the homogenization of the set-bonuses we saw in 3.0

I LOL'd

what level are you? and you talking pve or pvp? Tanking at lower levels can be hard because you don't exactly get all the stuff you need to start feeling 'tanky' until later levels. Also just an fyi a tank's dps is never going to be as high as a regular dps spec'd/geared character because they utilize 2 different sets of stats

Haven't watched the whole thing yet but it looks great so far. Was interesting to see that you prioritize Master Strike and Dispatch in a Precision window over Clashing Blast w/ the opportune buff. May have to give that a try. Also will have to try that Dispatch before Precision trick. Had no idea the travel time would give you a split second to activate Precision and the damage would be calculated as if you had Precision active before Dispatch.

Yea it gets pretty rough. Guess part of the masochist in me loves queueing despite the odds not being in my favor as far as class balance goes, but I won't deny that every so often I want to start queueing on something else because it will be so much easier for less effort lol. Or at the very least it would be nice to play more games with trinity comps so it isn't disasterous as 4 dps vs 4 dps matches are for us (as well as mercs ad slingers)

As far as I know it doesn't contribute much damage just because of the inherently high miss-chance of the offhand weapon. I have heard of many Snipers capable of consistently doing more dps than they can on their Slinger in similar gear simply because snipers don't have to worry about offhand attacks missing

It's mostly QQ because of the implications of PvE viability. Hatred 's viability in serious endgame PvE suffers for multiple reasons, and this nerf is just adding to the list. For PvP, I think most people that play the spec (including myself) agree that this nerf is fair. Its one of those unfortunate nuances with the game in that PvE affects PvP affects PvE. Brutal cycle where buffing/nerfing something to try to balance it in one aspect can end up over-nerfing/over-buffing it in the other. I still think that if they go through with the change then FiB/Death Field needs to come back to 30m though since there would literally be no good reason for it not to be anymore

Im assuming you are asking from a PvE standpoint. I personally like Scoundrel healing more for playstyle preference, but for the most part Sages tend to be more desired for serious raid progression teams because Scoundrels have issues with Burst heals unlike Sages and Mandos currently. Patch 3.3 due next month (and im sure Patch 4.0 in October) might change that a little but on live that's kind of where sages vs scoundrels stand atm. Sages=more mobility, better burst heal capability, better dps even while in healing spec (even though that's a moot point), and better utility via the force armor bubble. As far as I know, the only thing Scoundrels have better than Sages is their mitigation via AoE damage reduction, damage reduction on using Pugnacity, and Defense Screen. Overall it just depends on playstyle preference. Scoundrel healing can keep up with either of the other healers as far as raw number output goes so you aren't necessarily going to be a liability as long as you know how to play

Guess if you really want some Deception (I play Infiltration, but its just the pub version of Deception) gameplay I might be able to record something later this weekend if you don't find anything by then, but it will most likely just be SM stuff since I tank on my shadow atm for HM. #shamelessplug

Same goes for how taunts work in PvE vs PvP. Definitely there, just devs don't seem to want to or can't use the resources and coding required to make every ability for every class function differently

This . Yea it sucks but imo a DoT-spread mechanic shouldn't be part of your core single-target rotation. With that said, FiB at least should come back to 30m range

I could use a carry on pub side for once. Mah back is getting sore Also lol where did the random salt come from:rak_02:

For PvE, in many ways I think Darkness/KC is in the best spot it has ever been in. most fights in these new ops appear to be Shield-heavy fights and assuming you play it right you can have >55% shield chance with very high uptime. Also Resilience is a pretty invaluable tool that can nullify many major hits in a boss fight. While it is widely considered the hardest tank class to do well with, I also find it the most fun and rewarding when played right. for PvP, it has some sweet utility great for tanking via extra defense chance on guarded players, Knockback root, and insta-lift. Can't really say how well it does for ranked as I haven't really played it much, but for the most part it was considered bottom of the barrel. Not because Shadow/Sin tanks were "bad", just that the other 2 tank classes could do the job better in that type of environment.

I would say Decep/Infil is doing well in both PvP and PvE. Has great burst and its sustained dps has improved since like 2.5. Obviously there are better dps specs out there but it can still be competitive if played well. not to mention the playstyle is awesome. Plus it has good passive defenses via Entropic/Kinetic Field and the AoE damage reduction built into the tree. My only real complaint with the spec is that I feel like I am at the mercy of RNG a lot because it is very crit dependent lol. Only thing I think I would like to see would be a slight buff to its sustained dps. Im sure there are a number of ways to achieve this but one I can think of would be give Shadow Strike/Maul a low-damaging,short-duration DoT similar to what Veng/Vigilance Guardians and Juggs have with Blade Storm/Force Scream

As far as PvP goes, Serenity/Hatred (as well as the class in general) is still very much a tier 1 spec/class despite the nerf to range and self-heals because of the powerful DoT-spread mechanics and the 12 sec CC immunity on Deflection. In fact, I'm pretty sure most ranked teams since 3.0 had a Serenity/Hatred Shadow/Sin in their group comp. A quick glance at the leaderboards from the previous 2-3 seasons are a testament to how strong Shadows and Sins are for ranked (Doesn't really show spec, but it's a fair assumption to say most of them were Hatred/Serenity ). As far as PvE goes, the spec is somewhat still a liability solely because of the fact that they have little-to-no passive defense. Underlurker fight is a prime example of just how squishy you really are because you are taking constant unavoidable AoE damage, coupled with the fact that you take damage from the melee attack from the adds only exasperates the issue. Normal Damage taken per second (DtPS) for me is usually around 1200-1800 in HM, which is entirely too much. but the kicker is that there is literally nothing I can do about it except maybe switch to Deception for the extra AoE damage reduction or bring another class entirely. Curious to know if anyone else gets similar DtPS numbers as me for that fight. In short: Serenity/Hatred is doing great in PvP, arguably a little over-tuned. In PvE it feels like its kind of suffering because of no real Damage reduction/mitigation in fights with heavy unavoidable/AoE damage that our self-heals cannot even come close to making up for

In general: healers or lack thereof will influence the game most of the time In reality: the role you don't have that the other team does have will most likely be the most influential assuming the person of said role is actually decent. as far as what class being the most influential, sometimes the team comp influences the match more than people's individual classes. with that said, a good stealther could be a good class that saves the day because of their ability to ninja the nodes

I would say its a bad habit, and really the only ppl you shouldnt heal are the ones that are constantly LoSing you or are fighting 20 miles away from the objective. at least thats how it is on the few ocassions i heal lol. My reasoning is that a dps job is kill the enemy as fast as possible, and a majority of that time, it needs to be spent trying to kill the enemy healer first. If people are trying to peel for you, that usually means healers are free-casting and healing the person/people that the dps are trying to peel off of you which means you are getting nowhere. Killing enemy healers=other dps eventually die=gg. Obviously, good dps will try to take advantage of the enemy dps overextending/LoSing their own healer and try to peel for you in that time but you cant always rely on them for support. Not to mention some classes tend to be better at peeling then others ie dps with taunts, and similarly ranged classes cant really be peeled off of you (unless they happen to be silly and in melee range) so its on you as the healer to try to LoS them tl,;dr version; its not a great habit because you are asking dps to do a tanks job

I personally find the spec fun for the most part. Feels very fast-paced., and dps output is fine as well. But I do get the feeling every so often that the spec feels very "one trick pony"-ish. The spec is basically filler attacks (Blade Rush, Twin Saber Throw, Basic attack(?)) until Precision allows you to do other things. It would be nice to not have to rely on what we can do in the Precision window to be our only claim to fame

It would be nice to get some more good pubs pvping. its basically come to the point where if you queue on pub side (especially by yourself) and you are facing imps its an auto-loss. I would like to think that imp healers just seem to outnumber pub healers at like a 3:1 ratio so a lot of losses are just bad matchmaking match-ups, but even more healers cant help the lack of good dps on pub side either lol. Even playing on imp side I feel like the only games that are even remotely close matches are imp v imp ones