And they say that this server is bad http://i.imgur.com/Y8KTjIm.jpg Seems to be a bit of a turn out

Whilst I have respect for KBN and the his theorycrafting models, tanks aren't underpowered for pvp, it is just they are less survivable then they are in PvE. And from what I have seen of the game (and I have seen alot) this is by design. In a PvP environment every class performs worse as a whole, all classes have to deal with cc, dps have to deal with defensives, meaning that dps output is less. Healers and ranged classes have to deal with ability pushback and interrupts. Healers also have to deal with trauma. Tanks have to deal with the mechanics that are described in the post that you linked. Compared to PvE tanks are performing worse. Compared to the other roles you can play, tanks are fine because every other role balanced around being worse in PvP. If tanks were so bad, then why would people take them into PvP? The reason, they aren't that bad. Numerical analysis is one thing, but actual PvP experience is another thing.

They don't need a buff to their defensive abilities. Powertechs have less defensives but more passive mitigation. They could use a small help on the control front but that is it. The most balanced thing about the classes right now is the tank balance, with only very slight variations in performance. This is impressive considering the wildly varying skills that they have. Any buffs to a tanks survivability will severely affect the balance as it is and place the class easily in front of the rest. In addition if explosive fuel and oil slick were all damage reduction cooldowns, then you could have a very long uptime on at least one DR move.

Smash sentinels are the hardest class to kite in he entire game. If you are kiting a shasher, then they either have no abilities up, or they are just bad. And 90% of the time, they will have something available.

For Madness Assassins I think they should add a stacking buff where every time your dots deal damage you gain one stack. Each stack decreases the cost of your next maul by 10%. The reason why there is not damage increase of maul like duplicity is since you have 3 dots, 2 of which will ideally have a 100% uptime if applied correctly, you will be able to gain stacks incredibly fast (with all 3 dots you should be able to get 10 stacks in 5 seconds). This would add another medium hitting ability to the spec making it much more pvp friendly as well as adding a much needed damage buff. For a burst damage buff to smash you have to remember that there are 2 sides to fun. It might be fun for you to burst someone down in a couple of seconds but it is not fun for the other player. All the other burst specs in the game are either really squishy, easy to shut down or easy to kite. Smash, especially the marauder variant is none of these things. Personally I don't think the removal of bleeds would really serve any purpose for a vengeance Jugg. Because of shatter they are not the things stopping you from CC'ing the target (shatter is), and they are just a cool little bit of extra damage, I don't think that they really need to be removed. I don't have a Jugg/guardian at 55 so I am no expert on the class, but from what i have seen the bleeds are fine. I do understand what you mean by the PFT stacks from Railshot, however I think the reasons that you listed is what makes the spec fun in the first place. Having to make decisions about what moves to activates is what separates the good players from the great players. I do play my powertech in AP spec and I think all it really needs is a damage boost on some abilities to boost sustained damage. Otherwise it has a well flowing rotation and good amount of survivability. On PT tanking, I must admit, I don't play the spec too much, however I know alot of the theory behind the tank specs so i will speak from that aspect. PT's are passively the most survivable of the 3 tank specs and their trade off for that is in defensive cooldowns. It is not like they don's have any cooldowns. There is Energy Shield, Kolto Overload, Shoulder Cannon (Heal) and Oil Slick, all of which are very strong. Yes they do have less tools for reacting to burst damage, but they are much easier to heal. As for tthe Heat Screens, I think they are are perfectly fine the way that they are. Maybe if there was another way that you could build stacks it would be nice however there is not too much you could with them. Tanking balance as it is in terms of damage taken is almost perfect right now, so any changes could severely disrupt this. They could use a little more group control, however there is already a slow attached to their basic attack and rocket punch, meaning that even though they don't have many tools to root someone in place, they can however keep someone at a distance, or keep an enemy close, with ease.

My Thoughts: Commando/Merc: Power Surge Interrupt immunity might not be needed with next patches changes, depends on how balanced they are then. Cooldown on Emergency Scan shouldn't be that much, but the 2 and 4 piece PvE Set Bonuses should be placed in the tree and PvE setb bonus redesigned Sorc/Sage: Force Mend off the GCD is a good idea. I do like some of the force management changes proposed as well. Assassin/Shadow: If Shock procs discharge then the discharge ability itself will never be used. I do think either shock, maul or assassinate should be baked into the spec, but not like that. Smash: The spec does not need any more single target burst damage, instead it needs a sustained damage increase, with buffs to vicious slash and force lash damage. Guardian/Jugg: Removal of bleeds on impale and scream would be a huge nerf due to the smaller amount of vicious throw procs that will be avaliable. Marauder/Sentinel: Cost Reduction for deadly throw would be nice More heals for Annihilation would be good Instead of uncleansable dots, the best idea that I have heard is to have a cleanse only remove 1 stack of deadly saber's dot. I do like the idea of crits with annihilate and berserk adding more stacks, but berserk should only add one stack and not the proposed 2. This means there would still be a ramp up, but it would be hardly as long. No gore reset when gore is on cooldown is a great idea The force scream stacks would need to be applied by viscous slash as well so you could get it when you weren't level 45 and didn't have massacre Vanguard/Powertech The increased damage to railshot in AP would be nice but it doesn't need to build a stack of PFT. The tank tree ideas would be ridiculously OP. It is already the tankiest tank spec and they don't need even more mitigation. Taking away the main mechanic that they have to use (heat screans) would dramatically lower the skill floor and ceiling of the spec. A root on a rocket punch, an ability with a low cooldown and the potential to be reset would be way too much control for the spec. A root from FT would be fine though. Sniper/Gunslinger: Another reset on explosive probe would be way too much burst for the spec. It's sustained damage without using the roll needs to be increased, but not like that. In lethality I don't see why toxic regulators shouldn't just be changed to make it so dots don't break any enemies out of cc's

Healing and TK will still be garbage for PvP, but Balance will be a beast of a spec.

I was willing to take your post seriously until you said you can't match other classes burst. If maul, discharge, maul, shock, isn't burst, then I don't know what is.

At the top of the Balance Skill tree available to both sages and shadows.

As stated in the OP the main set bonuses that need to be changed are the ones where the effect from the PvE bonus is integral to the playstyle of the class. The biggest examples I can think of are the merc and sorc healer set bonuses and to a lesser extent, the assassin dps set bonus. On these classes, not using a pve armourings is detrimental as for the healer set bonuses, they reduce the cooldown of key rotational heals, and for assassin dps, they lose one of the main force management tools, especially for madness spec (however the 4 piece pvp bonus is too good to pass up and madness is rarely played). In these cases, not having a set bonus means that the classes rotation is significantly changed, which goes against the idea of set bonuses being there to give a little extra buff to geared players.

You lost all credibility when you said this. Why? Because everyone uses it as an excuse, if you went to each of the class subforums you would see that someone will post the 'this class is bad for arenas' as a reason why they should get over buffed. Just for reference on what I commonly see: DPS Juggs, 'don't have enough survivability' Marauders, 'with the smash nerf we are useless because carnage is bad' Mercenaries, 'we are too prone to interrupts' Sorc, 'we are too prone to interrupts and we don't have enough survivability' Operatives, 'we don't have enough survivability' Snipers, 'we don't have enough survivability, and we are getting nerfed' Powertechs, 'Pyro doesn't have the survivability' Assassins, 'we don't have sustained damage' Add onto the end of those lines 'and therefore we are not viable for arenas' and you get the typical complaints that pop up all over the forums. Also until there is a larger sample size for arena queues (ie. cross server), the leaderboards will always be skewed towards the few dominant people on each server since there is not enough people to challenge them effectively. This especially applies for group ranked. Please try to think up of better reasoning before coming to the forums and using baseless comments that can't be justified.

Because the offhand does minimal damage and carnage marauders have a base melee accuracy of 97% meaning that most classes will never dodge your main hand attacks (the important ones). The only exception to this is inquisitors (base 10% dodge chance) and tanks (because of defence rating).

We are as squishy as before, there was no change.

To put it simply, there is a huge difficultly spike between 30's and 55 pvp. People are generally a lot better and have greater coordination. Firstly, gear wise you should get MK-9 strength or power augments off the gtn. They make the biggest difference in pvp. Secondly, watchman is not the best spec for pvp, for pvp you should try to play combat or focus spec (focus is getting nerfed soon though), as they are much more pvp friendly with more burst and harder to shut down damage. Also leading on from that noxxic is an awful source for information. The class guides on dulfy.net or even better on the sentinel class forum is a much better source for class info. Edit: sentinels have the easiest time gearing since they can chose from 2 different sets of gear, challengers and weaponmasters as they both have the same set bonus. For the secondary stats you pretty much on want power and surge in your gear. A little accuracy in your gear can do good, but make sure you never go over 100% melee accuracy or 110% force accuracy. Likewise a little bit of critical rating is beneficial however every point of critical rating you get you sacrifice 1 point in power since they are both in the same item slots.

If it is so lacklustre then why do most warriors play smash spec in the first place.

5char

If you think that they don't have any downsides you should really think about what they do. Kolto Overload is a HoT so a sufficient amount of burst damage can actually break through and kill the person. Force Barrier makes the sorc unable to execute any action or even move for it's duration, so if that isn't a downside then I don't know what is.

But Sorc bubble and Kolto Overload both have 3 minute cooldowns which mean that they get substantially less use then undying rage.

If you think sorcs are going to be OP then there is something wrong with you. They're still going to be easy kills thanks to the fact that they have no good defensives. Most of the buffs that they recieved were PvE oriented. Operatives can kill people in roughly the same amount of time as any other burst spec in the game. And if you are 2v1'ing against any class you are going to die, quickly.

Is that because Infamous only ever premades as well?

On the other hand I took my sages old partisan gear and put it on my freshly geared assassin and I feel my performance is about the same is my fully auged and geared conc operative. It is nice having defensive cooldowns that can actually mitigate a decent amount of damage. And I admit that flashbang is very strong (should be 6 seconds IMO) the low cooldown of low slash is certainly quiet powerful as well, especially when combined with crushing darkness.

I wonder what Bioware's position is on simultaneously queuing for ranked with other people so they can get a 'group queue' in solo ranked. Is it considered exploiting the system since solo queue arenas are meant to be solo and not a coordinated activity. Just some food for thought that's all.

Bolster is incredibly broken in lowbie pvp. I recently made a sorc that is now level 11 and when bolstered i have 51.71% damage reduction and 3212 armour, according to the stats card. This compared to my mostly obroan geared sage (only conqueror piece is the wrists everything else is 67 grade) that has 2815 armour rating and 16.74% damage reduction. Both characters have no points in any damage reduction skills.

You lost all credibility with that sentence. PT's do have it better than mercs in PvP, but that is just because of interrupts and not damage output.

Same for snipers, the only class that has a cooldown that negated cover is other snipers.