Assassin was right at the middle of DPS classes in PvP. Sorc, PT and Juggernaut were behind, Ops around equal, Mara, Merc and Sniper leaps and bounds ahead.

PvE isn't the only part of the game. Culling the burst is a kick in the teeth of a spec that was already garbage in tank/healer games and mediocre at best in other matches. Just having a good CC toolkit doesn't help if there is no muscle behind it. TTK in this game is way too long as it is and this balancing approach does nothing to help it. Also, Carnage is supposed to be in the same tier as Deception when it comes to damage. They are already performing above Deception, so clearly their own damage categories don't make a lot of sense. But as you pointed out, you don't necessarily agree with this idiotic system either.

I meant they have no raid buff, same goes for Juggernauts actually. However, I do agree with what you say about Deception's viability. Even if they did Carnage levels of DPS after the nerf (which they won't do), Marauder is just substantially better.

PT? Otherwise I think you had a lot of good points. Well posted.

The impact of this on PvP is pretty bad too, especially for tank/healer games where Deception already had issues. Culling the burst like this is crap for PvP altogether. For PvE, there is even less of a reason to bring a Deception Sin than there already was. Maul seems to be the only rotational not nerfed. Haven't seen anyone run the numbers, but it sure looks like it's substantially more than 500 DPS.

Be careful, I almost cut myself with all these sharp edges.

25 required for ranked, which is an absurdly easy mark to hit. After that the only benefits are titles and meeting requirements for some cosmetic gear. So yeah, even Valor is a small benefit.

Just no. This would highlight the class balance issues even more and would exclude an entire role, healing, from participating.

Too many variables. If you first lose 475 in a row, then make an epic comeback, you'd almost certainly go above 1200 and vice versa. Enemy ratings, your team's ratings and the order of wins and losses all matter. You would, however, have only a tiny chance of being precisely 1200 rated after those 1000 games.

Implying things are usually equal in ranked?

Or just plain getting loads of matches with wintraders or whatever. The checking process must be pretty daunting.

This is just my experience (and therefore purely subjective), but quite often people who have played regs for ages and perform well can learn ranked relatively soon. Ranked is certainly different, but just having a good knowledge of your class, the pros and cons of others and ability to not panic under pressure goes a long way. Naturally it still takes practice, probably a great deal of it, but when it comes down to it, I'd rather have a regstar on my team than someone who is amazingly good at PvE, but has done just about enough games to acquire the PvP companion. The first part of your post is on point. Try not to worry about the rating, it'll just distract you. Focus on the positive and keep playing if you enjoy it.

People already quit solo ranked all the time. Why would it be different in this format?

No Force Mobility? Riiiiight.

As I said earlier, it is my experience that very, very few DPS Sins use that utility in regs. Mostly because there are substantially better utility set ups. It's just ridiculous to assume people have that. If you want to argue that fringe specs can do it, then you are correct, but let's not make believe it's common.

I remember that the idea has been bounced around before, could very well been on your stream. All the problems you raise are valid and I think there is no server where you could get 100% success rate with something like this. If the queues were ruined (the native people of the server are of course allowed to queue, just using the term from the event's point of view), it would naturally suck for the people who moved their toons. The idea is excellent, for sure, but there are some big, big challenges to overcome or, more likely, endure if it goes through.

It gives them more time to focus on whoever your team wants to kill first. At least to me it is a bit annoying that the Juggernaut's role is mostly to kite and survive, but if you do that well you certainly help your team. Good to hear the experience has been positive lately.

I doubt many people with any knowledge about the game want to remove all those CDs. However, the bubble heals absolutely could use some adjusting.

So you just casually take away a tank/healer combo from the enemy team as a solo Sniper? Yeah, that is balanced as anything.

From what I've seen (and what I've asked from other Sins), most Deception players don't take the extra Shroud duration utility for regs. As such you can just interrupt them when they use a mod.

You do know he very, very rarely plays SWTOR anymore, right?

Agreed. The proper response to fixing the survivability of the classes you mentioned (I feel Sins and Operatives are around where they should be) isn't buffing them to the levels of the top tier classes. Much smarter to nerf the top tier and provide some moderate adjustments to the bottom ones. TTK is already, on average, very high.

Well... cannons is a bit strong.

What do you mean I provided no reasoning? My previous message literally started with the reasoning. Soloing anything? Most mobs die in a few globals anyway, so it's hardly a big issue. Moreover, my point was that nerfing tank damage is perfectly possible without having a devastating impact on PvE. If your DPS checks absolutely need all that tank damage (which is not that impressive in PvE), maybe your DPS need to improve their performance. That's what NiM raiding is about, improving and pushing harder. Most groups are absolutely supposed to struggle with that content. I think that's why it used to be called Nightmare to begin with it. And yes, using DPS gear as a tank results in more damage. I think that is quite obvious.

Bioware could just increase the threat multiplier that comes with the tank stance. It's just an arbitrary number, so tank damage nerfs could absolutely be compensated for. Weak argument is weak.