Omg stealth QQ again. Seems a regular pattern in here right. Ok actually mandos are one of the harder classes for a stealther to 1v1, especially if they arent brain dead. Sins are totally screwed by e-net, which can't be cleansed by shroud, doesnt allow phase walk or combat stealth and basically forces you to use your breaker if you dont wanna die within seconds. Especially Deception is quite prone to be kited and decent mandos can do it well enough to insure again most damage deception can pull of (except recklessness pop lightning everything 10m max) Don't break spike or low slash but definitely break electrocute. Also if you see them popping recklessness, hit a defensive CD immediatly. Denying there initially burst is crucial against deception. They actually dont have much else to after after this . I am just starting play madness sometimes, so no judgement on this spec, but it is not really a stunning ganking spec anyway. Hold the line on creeping terror at least a priori makes sense, but yeah didnt go much after off nodes in this spec so much yet, and that one merc i met there once was just too terrible to give any evidence for judgment. against concealment operatives you can already turn the tide a the very beginning. Since Hidden Strike now only roots you, Hold the Line ftw. Operative now have only one hard stun, which in all fairness you can break, since there is not much they can put after that. Again e-net screws them over pretty badly, since they tend to be a lot even more than sins, they depend on evading stuff and hit without being hit. Just from personal experience if find decent madness sorcs and decent mandos among the hardest classes to play against as a stealther. If you get ganked by two stealthers, well it happens and there is nothing you can really do about it. But two vengeance juggs or carnage marauders, or basically everything would most likely have had the same effect.

while this is totally true, and there has been an ideas by the the community that cope with the dwindling server population esp. regarding pvp, one could still argue that having all role filled might bring people back to it. I mean healing arenas without a tank is not really a funny endevour, and so is tanking without a healer, and playing a team reliant dps class is no fun either (if both tank and healer are missing). Also a lot of the healing is OP QQ would vanish if there was only 2 healers per team in reg wzs. But yeah even with the appropriate population, queue times would be longer and just from the tiny bit of PvE i still do, queuing as tank or healer for FPs (not the tactical ones) takes ages these days. I dont even try DPS anymore.

you do recognize that this thread is a year old and 1 or 2 things changed in the mean time. Overload Shot got its damage buffed, but still is too expensive in the damage per energy balance. Orbital was massively nerfed (it used to be a must use in PvE, now it can help dps but not as massively as it did previously). damage wise and that sniper 2-set bonus buffing it doesnt exist anymore either. So even what guys like carlenx, who used to be one of the top dogs when it comes to operative in pve said in here is no longer valid. Also the numbers are outdated, 2.5k on a DPS operative is nothing, the top people are above 4k. Carlenx latest stance on things can be found here for both lethality and concealment in PvE http://dulfy.net/2014/01/04/swtor-lethality-and-concealment-operative-dps-class-guide/

#Operatives I mean that class really show BW problems balancing in both directions. and btw. Mara/Sents is completely playable, enjoyable and good. Just summorizing the perceived consensus of the thread: UR/GbTF needs to be reworked one way or the other, since it is now relatively useless in most situations. one further thing. knowing BW stance from say the concealment knockdown on hidden strike, they will never revoke the changes they made to the mechanics. Old UR is gone and will never come back. So no point in asking for it.

shadows need to pick a talent from the tanking tree to get root breaker on for speed. My infil and balance spec dont include that talent for example, and i dont think there are many non-tanking specs that take it despite a few hybrids (that you rarely see). If you slightly screw up your opener (shroud too late) as infil, it is easy for the sniper to create the distance again and keep you within distance. Have not played balance against a good snipers so much yet, but yeah this one might be tougher. Concealment yes, but conealment is absolutely mean to be your hard counter, they can cleanse your roots and almost counter every move you do, as ransuu said they basically are what snipers are to sentinels. A decent snipers wins host of their encounters against sentinels, without taking more damage than say twin saber throw. Juggs you mostly have worry that you dont get force pushed (but yeah entrench), if you manage to stay in cover it is just as easy as against marauders. Vanguards again if you play it smart the only thing you have to worry about is when they use hold the line. So in the end i boils down to concealment operative, and smart deception sins (well maybe madness as well), Other than that snipers pretty much dominate melee in 1v1 situations and are pain for them in group fights, without much coordination. 8v8 with coordination they used to be a must have on the ranged spot (with the current changes this might go to dps sorcs though). Well solo ranked... in solo ranked classes dominate that can do much without team support like assassins and vengenace juggs, still some of the highest rated players are GS/Snipers so it is definitely possible, though not very easy. Everybody and his mum knows snipers can pull out a lot of damage and are serious threat if left alone, it is also well know that they go down quickly without support, if focused. So focus snipers is perfectly logical, but doesnt say anything about the class being weak. In team ranked with proper composition, they are perfectly good and viable.

first of all plo... tre is best server ever home of two the best 8v8 ranked teams ever, so if i know you in game i would be glorious and i properly do, since also theld community is quite good on this so called pve server (x-fers proved we could own a pvp server as well).... unofficial forums ftw and thanks for actually calling me competent. i main a combat sent, and hardly ever respecced, so people i know it has great utilitly, can kill thing quickly and is just a really fun class to play. It never was smash though and it never will be and never should ( i woulndt play that char anymore, if it was) and heck it is a bloody great spec, love it so much that i got me back to the game but yeah with current balance there are issuses- And if i come accrosss as a mandess sorc doesnt require any skill... sorry my first char was a madness sorc, my second was a healing sage, and both are not or ever have been ez mode in this game. point to be taken though was taliking about the current game meta... quite generally, i dont know how the muricas do (they have always beeen more sorc friendly), and i dont really want to get sorcs nerfed... 9i judz zhink bw gave us a achange of meta that that has an impactt even up to team ranked by bfffing dot spes.. so i played balance the first time one my shadow for the firs time ever a few weeks agos and i felt like it was like od mara smash.... too easy. tpp effctive for the effort and too stuffz

well cretinus hates everything that isnt madness sorc, because he cant play anything else. what makes carnage hard in my mind, despite the lottery you face in combat, is that the spec is at the baseline easy to shut down, so it is finding strategy play around this and force other people to make mistakes. Lake wastinging their knockback or hard stun and once you know they dont have anything left to throw against you can finally gore ravage and so on. Just comparing it to vengeance (which at the baseline is quite similar) you need a hell more awareness. Also of all warrior spec, you have the tightest ressource management. It is no rocket science though, it just demands a bit more than most specs in some dimensions. @Plo. Back in 8v8 sorc had a viable heal spec (actually sorc + operative was kind of BiS), and after 2.0 you could safely bring a lightning sorc in ranked. And madness well yeah back then burst was king in 8v8, since otherwise against 2 healers and tank you would never get somebody killed. It is just the general trend of this game getting so dot spec laden and derpy. Dot Spec, despite the self cleanses snipers, operatives and assassin have, dont really need to play around CDs, they dont really need to target pick and stuff like that.

Maras are not tough to play as they used, outside that one spec that used to a be ridiculously OP and ridiculously easy 2 play, they were always harder to play than say vengeance or madness sorc. Both anni and carnage are and always were highly prone to be cced and a cc mara without CDs up is as squishy as a DPS operative. Those 2 years of PVP dominance was this freaking rage tree and the UR nerf should have been restricted to that, since it was plainly stupid, that the most braindead spec in game, had 45s CD on god mode and unlike the other two spec only 25% health penality. The UR that took place in 2.5, still seemed valid to me at that time, but looking at how class balance evolved after this, or could have evolved (without to uproar against snipers god evasion), it has to redesigned. The argument that it synergized to well with healing, was ok at the time when smashers could annihilate the whole opposition without ever dying (smash mara in a premade with 2 healers ftw), but as some already said the reality now is that the CD is mostly worthless, since as soon as you pop it you get cced and just die anyway. No we have H2F ED which synergizes even better with healer w/o even having a healer, Sorc got enduring bastion making them a very unattractive target for 15s, even squishy squishy madness assassin get an 30% armor reduction. While at the same time the damage in game massive increased for almost every spec. @Cretinus. Carnage might have the highest burst in game, if everything aligns. The conditional is the big thing, this doesnt happen so very often, a deception sin, gets his not so much weaker burst of more easily, Even the inconsitent concealment burst is easier to get off (yeah stun locking operatives i know). With recent buff to pyro PTs they might even come close to carnage burst while still being easier applied. And then maybe everywhere except highlevel team ranked (which is completely dead on most servers) derpy derpy dot specs outperform burst specs atm. Easy mode madness atm is a 1000 times more effective than most carnage can be. Even TTK is on a madness sin is very close to deception.

every time somebody break on sever tendon or the hidden strike root you have to drink

Do we really need another Marauders are **** now thread... I dont know. It is fun playing a class that isnt consider to be FOTM for once (and yeah i couldnt care less about the smash nerf, as Bleez said it is still easy and does good damage), carnage is unchainged and when you play a against a decent carange mara they are still a pain in the ***. And if you are a decent carnage mara, it is still much fun to play. Not the easiest spec in game but fun. can't say much about annihilation, i have never really touched it, but they seem to do a lot of damage now.

they are viable and good both in concealment and lethality for all pve content (you have to change the spec for some fights, since the have different strength and weaknesses). There is how ever a long standing prejudice that operative have bad dps, despite it definitely not being true (and not being true for quite a while), so the prejudice probably is the biggest issue. Another thing is that the class makes such a damn good healer..... So if people see and operative the first thought is that it is a healer and usually like tanks, healers tend to be in higher demand than dps (because everybody and his mom want to dps). So yeah GF queue are really long for all dps, no matter whether sniper, marauder or operative. You will always have an easier go with tanking or healer (concerning times). In general most people wont kick a dps operative from a pug group anymore, since the word is slowly spreading that they arent that bad. So I think the best chance you have is finding a group of people, that dont insist on you healing on the operative and group up with them for the flashpoints and ops. I had the insane luck having had some people of this kind, and ended up dpsing quite a bit in OPs on my scoundrel (no NiM progression though). Nontheless is it worth also offering to heal sometimes when needed:P

he was on ts, but they hardly spoke about the game.. actually you can see that in the full twich stream. Ofc you are right, if he was playing completely serious he should have called in chat. But knowing snave a bit, it was probably more about pissing the the guy spamming ops chat even more off

Hidden strike and back stab are not as prominent and inevitable as in concealment, but if you get a chance it is always worthwhile to open with hidden strike (damage isnt too shabby and it gives TA) and use backstab as a filler when possible (damage is good as well). Some lethality builds have kolto injection granting TA and even without it you might still need it as a heal situationally. I dont know if you have bound it, but overload shot is quite a useless ability so you can definitely scrap that (even in concealment). Carbine burst is quite useless as well (inm) so you can drop that as well (again this pretty much holds for concealment as well). Diagnostic Scan you definitely dont need. But nothing of what is said is specific to lethality. outside your core priorities the spec uses most operative abilities and hardly anything that is useful in concealment becomes utterly useless in lethality.

huttball is a juggs game, the class is just (mostly regardless of spec) designed to own in huttball. So on top of the medal for protection, damage, kills and ED heals, they are also pretty much pwning when it comes to objective play. Just keep in mind that when the situation is proper a jugg can make 90m in 4 global CDs. Other then the other AC that have tanking trees they can instantly stance dance and that for free, they can spam slows like mad. An excellent jugg tank can win huttball almost on his own.

it is still playable with the knock down, it just plays very different now. Still preferred the old times, but yeah, you can still do your thing. Carnage wasnt actually nerfed (well yeah smash needing a target and the undying crappification, but those were never really essential?).

both spec are endgame pve viable and as already said they suit different fights. The simpler the mechanics the more concealment shines. What do I mean by that: Concealment is great in single target encounters (no adds), with little movement (you have to be in 4m range for most of your hard hitters). In principle by its bursty nature it would be good on adds as well, but the positional requirements on backstab + the stealth requirment on hidden strike make this quite hard, unless somebody is offtanking the adds. Lethality has less burst, better aoe and in a way better mobility. You normally dont need hidden strike or backstab in lethality (no they are no useless, you just dont have to rely on them as much as concealment), and despite shiv most of the attack you use regularly have at least 10m range. In quite a few encounters i think lethality is the better option, despite concealment regularly beating it on dps on the dummy, exactly because of those things. I dare say endgame pve (i.e. operations) for most part arent that concealment friendly. Although there are tank and spank encounter where concealment clearly has the edge. If you wanna do endgame pve as a dps operative, i would recommend to get familiar with both spec and switch specs for the fights as needed. without cull and weakening blast lethality doesnt have much to offer, so I think in general for leveling concealment is superior for most part at least to the mid 40s. And even in then for most mobs the ramp up of lethality is quite long, it is easier to burn them in concealment. PvP wise, as somebody said already, survivability is meh, but here the contents completely goes to concealment unless some crazy tank tunnel comps in team ranked (although i do think there better spec then lethality operatives for that).

it is funny how times change. 1 year ago almost everyone would say don't go full madness for 8v8 ranked, Lightning is far superior, because of utility and burst. Now 8v8 is gone and Arena are there, suddenly madness is deemed vastly superior (well it got buffed quite a bit). So to the OP my opinion, although i havent logged my sage or sorc in ages would be TK/Lightning is absolutely viable for regs and in the right set can work in team ranked as well. well solo ranked is solo ranked so most of a time a lottery. the tk/lightning heavy hybrid although probably is the best option atm. It has the mobility of madness, decent burst and probably the best aoe damage in game atm,+ resource management is quite easy.

Well, it seems to be pattern in PuG PvE to blame the healer if someone dies, even if a DPS or more likely the tank made the crucial mistake. Dont take what people in a random group say that serious. Even better try to do your group PvP stuff with friends if possible, since really pugging pve in some ways is worse than pugging pvp. While healing on an operative essentially is really easy and normally quite forgiving there is some things you might wanna pay attention to in group pve content especially if you are solo healing. Operative are not exactly optimal tank healers, because we cannot provide additional mitigation as sorcs and mercs can and our burst healing needs some ramp up. That can lead to the problem that you are not able to heal through spike damage... a dead tank or dps. Effectively what helps the most to prevent this, is knowing the fight. For a healer this means knowing who will take damage and starting to set up the hots before it happens. Most of the time this will it will be tank (if he roughly knows what he is doing), so usually you should have 2 kolto probes on him and use RN off CD. If he takes serious damage used the casted hot and kolto injection than a few surgical probes to top him up again (for flashpoints and the like that usually work well enough). Try to have the hots on all party members, but always keep an eye on the tank (also watch out for debuffs you have to cleanse, those will be most likely be on the tanks as well). If you keep the tank alive and the 2 dps stable you basically have done your job. If the tank loses aggro, it likely he screwed up or DPS failed to use their aggro drop at the right time (if open on a fight with some big heals, you might consider using yours as well after the initial rotation, just to be save). While you can keep a dps alive that has aggro for a bit (works pretty well with marauders actually), it is not meant to be like that for an extended periode, and if said dps dies, it is clearly the tanks fault for not tauning the boss of him. If you grab aggro, then you probably should immediately stealth out to reset the aggro table, you wont survive long and if the healer is dead in most cases it is a wipe. One more thing if you don't know the mechanics of a fight, tell your group and do it early. You might not want to be a nuissance or anything, but being silent and not knowing what will happen and what is to do, doesn't help the group and will give them more pains then necessary. There is nothing shameful about doing something for the first time and telling people that you need help. This works the other way round as well, if you know an encounter and are group with people you don't know or dont know well, always ask if everybody knows the fight and his role in it. Many wipes and frustration can be avoided by that. one more thing, i am not a big fan of KDY and tactical FPs in general, since they don't really make people learn their class and their role. you can do KDY with 4 dps and it is just a derp fest but that is not the way to learn to manage aggro, or how to act if a tank is present, or to get a proper impression of how healing is like. So again if there is any chance try to do the regular flashpoints (i know even for healer the pop times are ridiculous these days). It helps if you have some friends with whom you can do this. It will help you a lot. operations. Healing on an operative in FPs and Operations are two different stories. Surprisingly healing operations (despite hard mechanics), a lot of times is easier. You are grouped up with another healer and a lot of times your job will be just hotting up the party and thats it for most the part. Sometimes (when the other healer is sorc) you will be a tank healer so your healing will be a mix of hots, surgical probe and kolto injection on the two tanks for most part, but yeah checked with the group about what you should do. Cleanse are very important in some fights, but that depends on the specific dynamics (Kephess or Dread Council, come to mind). About the LoSing, all healers prefer the fight to be as stationary as possible, but sometimes the mechanics require more movement. So assuming your team mates were not terribad, maybe you should work on positioning. Clever positioning (so that you have LoS on everyone despite all the moving around) can make stuff a lot easier for you. Another thing, is vision. One thing that sometimes can be hard as a healer in pve (and pvp as well) seeing what is going on and keeping an eye on the health bars as well. This needs just some practice but it can help the play a bit around with UI. Speaking of the UI, even when only group with 3 you want the ops frame view. You should set the debuff size big enough so that you can easily spot them and make the buff size roughly large to see whether the player is still hotted up or not. Although it is not as important anymore with the changes to surgical probe, it helps to have percentages and numbers show on the health bars. I hope this helps a bit

there was a point where i found me spending wz comms on pets and mounts....... Srsly, play Wildstar and you think the gearing system in this game is perfect. First tier is definitely manageable within a week of pvping casually. Gear has some impact but it is so moderate such that you dont need brutalizer. You dont actually have to reach a rating cap to buy better (it is massively fun to destroyed by players that just started earlier, farmed rating massively and now are having their little fun with you, yeah that is what happened in WS). and heck, i pretty sure there is still is some combination of leveling blues or greens that BiS due to bolster. In fact the only thing that really need grinding in this game are augments, as somebody else said. They quite expensive and out side the pvp event the monetary rewards are that great for pvp forcing you to do the most horrible content this game has... daily and weekly areas. But mostly gear is an absolute non issue. I back to this game for like 3 weeks and non of the 6 chars i actively play has anything less than full obroan, 2 close to full brutalizer, and currently i usually only play 2-3 hours per evening. I say, if it is too much for you to do pvp dailies and weeklies for one week, (that is like 6 matches per evening, if you are unlucky, or bad) and all this is so horribly painful, i really wonder why you pvp at all. Since after you have your gear what do you do? Yes the same, you do your dailies and weeklies. And that brings back to the beginning.... soon i will be buying mounts and pets again....give me something useful to buy please (no and plz no new gear tier just now)

as long as you don't use high end raiding gear and screw up expertise royally gear is almost a non factor in this game now. And even just doing regular wz dailies and weeklies you have full obroan in a week. What actually takes more is augmenting the stuff, this always costs quite a lot and if it is your first toon, it will take a while to get the credits for that.... but augmenting is absolutely necessary, it actually has a larger impact than the gear itself, since it is flat stat increase not affected by bolster. Also get yourself stims, but those are relatively cheap.

now just imagine the other team also had a combat sentinel spamming transcendence..... and a scoundrel instead of the sage healer... oh joy.

since DPS assassins are about the worst class for PvE and have been for quite a while. you could always bring a dps operative to a raid, and for most of the time you could... it more raid leader are still under the illusion that they never really could dps, which absolute isnt true. For yolo ranked they are kind of the to go spec, since well they are less team dependent then most other classes, so in this random environemnt you can do more even if you are teamed up with *******. Their PvP superiority over operatives largely stems from the fact that they have better survivability tools, and thank to phase walk even can endure heavy focus fire for a bit (deception even has 30 less CD on the CC breaker).... well and both more pressure than lethality in in madness, and better controlable burst in deception than concealment. I think pretty much everyone that played this game for the while came to similar conclusions.

mmmmh first of all x-server is no gonna happen...at least not any time soon....source no gate or the legendary musco faq. Also Wildstar PvP pretty much is dead as well, x-server didnt help there apparently. It might have other reason (if you ask me, there are some definite reason un related to x-server while people didnt find it enjoyable enough). Point is x-server alone is not the answer to everything, it wont give certain success. But either server merges, or x-server are definitely necessary to get any kind of ranked going. And yeah 8v8 ranked back would be sweet too.... still both is not gonna happen, but stubborn me strangly keeps dreaming

While this is absolute true, scoundrel have only the hots that are still ticking on target, when they CCed. For a good hard switch combo, this means nothing. And while the cast not hot everything tactics work in WZ, even scoundrel have to cast in ranked arena, so the insta heals are only doing so much. Compared to the other two healers you have to think ahead a bit, so be more of a proactive than a reactive healer, since terms of pure burst healing both mando and even sage are better. Yep scoundrel are probably still best in slot, but mandos absolutely can work.

the operatives biggest advantage is that he doesnt have to cast much and has great mobility. otherwise in terms of pure output they are probably pretty close together.