in a way team ranked between two skilled teams requires even more coordination than old 8v8 ranked did. Not making a fuzz about it, but very good player from Pot5 got out classed by a Tofn team (also very good players) on the PTS, not on measured of individual skill, but mostly because the tofn team had the better strategy and better coordination. When it comes to mirco objectives like getting your CCs and switches right, or stopping the tank from switching guard, seperating the target, managing resolve, using cleanses, cc breakers and DCDs in general, I dare say group ranked arenas might even take more skill than old 8v8 ranked, which quite a lot of times were a more coordinated zerg fest or turtle fortress, with rare moments of individual brilliance to break the tie (amongst equally skilled teams). I guess the OP meant yolo ranked, but yolo ranked is not to be taken completely seriously. In a way it is pug matches with hopefully geared team mates, that hopefully have some understanding of the game, against other pugs, for better rewards than normals and ratings for e-peens. BW could just as well introduce rated yolo wz, wouldnt make much a difference. And yeah, i would absolutely love to see 8v8 ranked back, but it is probably too late for that, sadly. Since I agree with the OP, that playing objectives ultimately is more satisfying.

yep... me want to play dotgoresmash, best spec world

With that reason you could also remove shroud/resilience from the game, it is 4s of god mode against sorcs (and not only them). Pre 2.5 madness dots were cleansible by fully specced sorc healers and them only. Some people in here are talking as if that back then madness was completely unviable, but in reality it wasnt. Do people really think a healer has nothing better to do to shut down one madness sorc, when his team is taking dathenmage from multiple sources? Even back then madness (sorc) usually produced more damage overall then unnerfed smash in an average wz, so please tell me how you were completely cleansed out of your damage. In 8v8 ranked madness hardly had a place but the reason was more that in general burst was preferred to sustained (with the exception of lethality for snipers) and lightning was in pretty solid place there. I 'd like to remind again about the massive population of sorc/sage healers in ranked arenas (yolo and group). It is least viable healing class for this anyway even before uncleansible madness, but after 2.5 there really was next to no reason to bring a sorc healer. I repeat uncleansible dots are lazy and bad design, because they remove options, choice and some level skill (on both part of the healer and the applying dps). Let's face it madness (sorcs again) is one of the easier trees to play anyway, and uncleansible dots just made it even easier because you dont have to think about cleanses anymore, you can just mindlessly apply your dots and do massive damage on the scoreboard, if you got the sorc basics down. A buff to madness or (in general) sorc enegry management in would have been better, but it is like with operatives in 2.6 we asked for survivability and got our damage buffed (well maybe 2.8 will fix that). An yeah it is not only madness that has force problems, and you really dont wanna sacrifies your own health as healer once you got low on force:P

although this thread is slightly ridiculous as it is, i have one mildly serious question: Does the game engine actually discriminate between force and tech heals? I see no indication or have heard on anything that such a difference is actually made. So far eveything suggests there are just heals, no matter what the origin they have.

they are pretty squishy since the weapon damage increase and venegeance becoming FOTM and both combined

so either that or give lethality cleansable dots? oh i find corrosive grenade already annoying as it is:P And again, operatives and mercs never could cleanse madness dots, so i dont get why you even mention them is this thread. They only effect the uncleansible dots had was making sorc healing even more useless than it already was in an arena context, without changing a single bit about the viability of madness sorcs (they where viable at the point people realized that smash that great in group ranked). And with spam dotting and most of the madness damage whores do so, drives healers that actually cleanse crazy anyway, (just try to heal on an operative against corrosive grenade spamming lethality sniper or operative), at some point you just give up and heal through it, instead of wasting 3 GCD on spam cleansing and neglecting your healing. In effect you annoy a healer more if feels he must cleanse those dots then when he just heals through them. On another note, madness has three dots and afflication is spammable and without a CD and instant. A cleanse can only remove 2 effects. As already mentioned cc also fall into that realm, so you can basically overload a healer with force effects. If you have him spam cleansing, wow mission accomplieshed he is not seriously healing anyone besides himself. That is also some pressure madness could create back in the day. On yet another note, how many healer's actually cleanse the vengeance and anni dots. How many cleanse pyro and lethality, or even concealment (pro tip, it actually makes sense to cleanse acid blade). TBH, if i play my sentinel or shadow, i have the feeling that most mandos and scoundrel dont even have their debuff bar adjusted for that, since i hardly ever get cleansed. Playing DF on the scoundrel, also i hardly ever have problem with my dots being cleanse and if they are easily reapplied, so a non issue. So I would say that only a small fraction of healers actually cleanse in unranked wzs. In ranked, preferably cleanse mezzes and stuns anyway. Cleansing HoTs? Who should cleanse them or should every class be able to? Anyway that would actually might drive operative into complete uselessness against people with half a brain... happy deathmatching then.

fun fact is that is the only class that could cleanse the madness dots (with a proper cleanse not evasion or shroud) were sorcs anyway. For the arena meta it didn't change much since most run operative heals anyway and they could never cleanse madness dots anyway. It is really not like sorc heals needed even less viability But yeah if they continue like that, they could as well remove the cleanse ability or make it work on CC only. I personally think dot protection is bad design, and dumbifies healing, so cleanseble dots exposed the healer to the choice, whether to cleanse or to heal through, depending on the situation heal through quite often was the a valid choice anyway. But if healers can't cleanse dots anymore (which most healer in non ranked dont do anyway), they will if they use cleanse at all, focuse on cleansing CC, removing choice and making healing even easier.

ok, this might have it be reason in play style. since getting 300 in normal wz should be a problem if you are gear and roughly know what you are doing. and even if i dont get perma target and literally cant do drag *****, i have never been below 50k, even when playing like retard and not picking targets. so yeah carnage is harder then most specs in this game, and it takes time to get used to. rotating your DCD is essentiak and using the buffs from fury at 30 stacks correctly. Generally you have to pay a lot of attention to what is happening, it is not like lolsmash where you jump into a group (pre 2.7) and get them into low health immediatly, you have to pick target your targets, you have to watch you buff bar, you have to use your CDs and you have to know how you can maximize your damage. but with practice you can make that work. first tip would be to get a healer and queue with him. people have opinions about pocket healing, but maras really need a healer to be full effective, even if it is just for cleanses. if you have a healer that pays attention you can do miracles if you have a little grasp of the class and it really makes the class more enjoyable. this spec is more team dependent than others, but that doesnt make it bad. Sin are less team dependent, but in there is only very few that can make them work at the very top level, whereas there plenty of carnage maras atm. again spec is harder then most, that is why i like it, i personally better on others classes but i enjoy my sentinel the most and just love the challenge, it require more understanding of the game and its mechanics and heck if your are white barred and can almost global somebody... such satisfication.

If it is all about medals go main a shadow, they get medals so easily. But what cycao said... medals dont mean viability. Carnage has a lot of utility and is in high demand for team ranked.

one could argue, that before the recent changes to other classes, that essentinelly reduced the rng for concealment, lightning sorcs, madness sorcs, vengeance jugg reducing rng seems fair for carnage as well. I personally do like the rng in carnage, but heck it is so much easier to play vengeance now, because you know what to do and when. What Xenius said earlier can happen in both pvp and pve you spam massacre and simply dont get bloody proc and your damage is pretty much mediocre at best. Managing RNG require some skill, but add to that rage management is tough and you liable to stun, you have to maximize your damage in small window and if you dont- have your procs you might be in trouble. So maybe it would be fair to reduce RNG or something.

Part of the reason Carnage is actually harder play in pve as well, is despite bad RNG and quick fingers you need, that is raged starved quite easily. So totally agree, seeing how easy rage management, is in Rage (both mara and jugg), Vengeance and Anni, some QoL changes here would definitely be warranted. I know spec or class spam auto attack that much for energy management. And I think what would be an interesting tweak, would be to be able to use cloak of pain while stunned... since a stun mara without CDs up is as squishy as an operative.

I like the Idea of making camo passive, since i guess one of the biggest problems of watchman is that it doesnt have a root breaker at all. I think they really should change UR in some way, since in most cases it is a pretty useless CD. It was OP with smash and pocket heals pre 2.5 but that is thing of the past anyway.

Actually only focus/rage was really nerfed. The other trees are just the same as they were when 2.5 hit, except for smash which you rarely use in the two other tree now requiring a target.

well they don't get insane numbers you could easily get in same without knowing what your doing, so they are jumping the what seemed the next best choice. Most smasher didn't really play objectives... to be honest it was kind of hard, since ok i see 3 sorcs perfectly lining up but there is the lone ball carrier... objectives? I want massive damage!!! leap to the sorcs and get your monster smash off. It was just so tempting to randomly play like retard and derp around and at the end be the score board hero. At least it felt like the few times i played that spec. Yep single target damage is the same and easy and effective. That's why it still is the yolo queue tree i think. Potential of carnage is higher since both burst and sustained are higher on a single target, but it is trivial to make that work, and a lot people seem to struggle with that switching over from the easy tree.

scrapper has an insane sustained... in pve, and ofc the challenge there is energy management, so you have to use auto attack as filler sometimes (which you do use in pvp as well, but normally not for that purpose), and ofc you dont play ehm as bursty there.... all this is not so applicable in pvp realm because you wanna burst, and if you play out your maximum burst on a scrapper you are likely to be completely energy drained quickly, Cool Head has a long CD So normally it is good just to stay about 60% energy, but yeah if you are going for a kill, that is not always practical. About DoT specs in 8v8 ranked. The major issue was not really that the dots are being cleanse, but that generally burst spec were superior. TK allowed for hard switches on unguarded players easier than balance does, simply because you had the chance to burst somebody down before the tank could switch guard and stuff. Lethality snipers had a place in that because, lethality has good aoe and is also quite bursty. madness sins/ lethality ops where just to squishy and heck needed to be melee. Watchman has this long ramp up and has to stay on the target the whole time. And who would play watchman back in the day when you combat and focus (especially focus)

there is some variant of a new dark maul for shadows now which is actually played in combat technique. so you are naturally in tank stance, despite being a dps in dps gear. The damage output is good and the defensive capabilities are great no stance dancing required. It is quite tanky. it is classified as dps because you have more point in the infiltration tree. So Op how would you handle that?

Most of the CC all the classes have is useless in end game PvE (that is operations), when playing combat on the sent in in PVE i dont spec into the roots on master strike and crippling throw because it is useless... in pvp though it is the bread and butter to be able to kill something. Sever tendon on the operative is one of the most usefull abilities PvP wise in all specs. In concealment you spec it into a root and if you are against a decent sorc this is you make or break ability. In healh and lethality it is just something that helps you kiting away from melee, or slowing the enemy on the way to an objective. you said you dont pvp. fine, but if you were you would see how important snares and roots are there. No all abilities you have are usefull for both kinds of content, i.e. there are only a hand full of classes that have useful abilities attached to their aggro drop in pvp (sentinels, pyros, lethality, juggs). the droid cc is completely usless in pvp. On the other hand dps juggs, sins or pts normally wont taunt in pve (there are situations), but should be permanently taunting in pvp

Hey hey, he basically has every one that i think of a voice of reason on this forum on ignore now.... i so hope i am getting ignored as well... it is an honor it seems.

yeah i somehow expected more

In fact the devs already gave maras and sents a reply. Not about getting unstoppable but about making ps/gore a stacking debuff that consumes with attacks, which is still more counterable than unstoppable,. The answer was a clear cut "NO", for exactly the reason almost everyone here is giving. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=728460 Dev Quote: "As for the difficulties presented by various forms of crowd control, that is intended. We will continue to keep our eyes on Marauder/Sentinel and how their overall performance is in PvP. If we feel that they are being outperformed by many of the other classes, we might consider having Gore/Precision Slash grant a few charges with a longer duration that get consumed when damage is dealt to help Marauders/Sentinels use Gore/Precision Slash to its full effect. " So yeah they keep monitoring, but until there is actual evidence that carnage/combat is underperforming, nothing will happen.

gore smash... such a troll spec:P

and roudy's team usually run with very good carnage marauder as well, because well they kinda BiS for hard switches. And yeah you need to control your burst in hard switches:P

you healing output (like dps as well) depends on my factors. One of them is how many other healers you have. The more you have the harder it will be to get high numbers. I had wzs were there was like nothing to heal, so ofc. Another one is being focus by competent dps (and not having peels). Even on OP operatives this will mean, that you have to focus on your on survivability, and thus reduces your healing output massively. And if it is good DPS you will also die a lot, and yep you cant heal in spawn. When the battle is less stationary. Meaning for example CW where there is action all over the place (lot of node switching and stuff like that). The less stationary it becomes the harder it will be to get good numbers. Just having a stationary main fight will allow you massive numbers more easily. When the team you are against has like zero DPS. No damage so nothing to heal. Lastly since Operatives have stealth, you sometimes can play more objectively than heal derping. Voidstar and Huttball come to mind. Or cap interruption in CW. You can even ninja in AHG. And sometimes you just have to do that instead of healing.

or CC the healer(s) kill the tank. Both can work, especially if somebody is tanking in DPS gear. Having healed team ranked without tank, i will just say, i will never ever again to so. Without the protection of a good tank you are just dead within seconds, or left without CDs after the first hardswitch and an easy kill the next time. The skill in team ranked consists negating the effect a tank can have, by either playing hard switch and not let him switch guard in time, or but tunneling the tank, so taunts and guard wont help him survive if the healer is cced. So taking away the factor of a tank, would only trivialize the deathmatch arenas are. Just tunnel the healer until he is dead, gg. to the OP. you should not only focus on the healer, but rather guard, taunt and people for who ever is getting focused. Great tanks switch guard often, and try to control the battle (in WZs that is). Some times is the better idea to guard the sentinel trying to harvest their backline than the free casting healer.

I have missed you @scylence I almost feel bad playing this class when I see thread like this. This class and spec is harder to play good then others (and that is nothing new, basically been like that since 2.0). If you can't handle that play another class... vengeance is pretty and effective now...or try to get better, but please stop crying and asking for buff that would be totally over the top. Carnage is almost a must have in team ranked... nobody halfway serios plays smash there for quite a while actually... and heck the spec is more team dependent then others and liable to cc, but either find a way around it or play another class. gore protecting would be an overkill. unstoppable on the jugg is fine (and people still complain about it), but they dont have gore and beserk. If you take a full gore ravage with berserk active, more often then you have lost about half your health in little more then 2s, if excute is up you eat nother 8k and VT... killed in 4s. I have done it, i have receive it and i have seen others do it. Many were complaining on the PTS forums about snipers getting god evasion because there was no counter for that, but giving carnage cc immunity would be far worse than that. I play the class, surely not on the top level, still much to improve i freely admit, but i don't think anybody in his sane mind can support your proposal.