As someone who uses engineering a fair bit in pvp, I can say the plasma probe changes are welcome. I wouldn't consider myself an even remotely good player in pvp but our ability to defend was incredibly strong for how easy it was, even against multiple enemies. As for the "swimming in energy", I would have to disagree with this. I'm largely a pve player and I would have to agree with the majority here that unless we sacrifice a decent amount of dps we don't always have an excess in energy. Also, who at Bioware uses snipe in their rotation? Same for takedown, its very rare you get the chance to use it sub 30%. Hit me up, I'll gladly teach them how to play it. Currently second highest parsing engi for what that matters: http://parsely.io/parser/view/290873/0 As a side note, would love to try these changes on pts but not like there's any time for that at the moment. TL;DR: PvP changes are expected and welcome, "swimming in energy" is incorrect, devs need to work on their rotations, dps changes aren't too bad overall for engineering.

I would just like to point out that there were plans to make the UC's legacy wide in 5.3. If we're expecting to get 25 per boss as people are suggesting, I could run Nefra, Writhing Horror etc. on each of my 10-15+ characters capable of doing it on imp side alone. Now while this would be boring, it would be significantly more effective than pvp. Possibly making it far quicker to gear than what may be intentional. Just a thought.

To be fair, what Auro said is true. The current master mode operations weren't scaled for 246-248 gear, they were scaled for when 242 was the highest gear in the game. As for pve being "the best way to gear" currently, that is frankly BS. If I want 248 gear, the only way I ever expect to do it is by farming components through pvp. My luck is simply not good enough, as I'm sure is the case for many others. Whilst I believe the components would be a nice idea, it does admittedly take away from the pvp aspect. The number of components rewarded would be the tricky part. Too many and it takes away from the pvp community, too few and we would almost be better off with 246 drops. I would suggest that regardless of the option picked, simply remove the 244 blue drops. Its worse than 242 gear (at least for dps). Double drops of purple gear only might not be such a bad thing. Alternatively, make 246 unassembled components? Make it so that these aren't upgradable, however they are (obviously) token standard, with set bonus etc. It removes the rng aspect that can be incredibly frustrating when classes not present in the group get gear drops. This takes nothing from pvp, but provides more incentive for high end pve. That way also BiS is still coming from Gods from the Machine, but we're not getting absolutely shafted for doing MM over Veteran like we currently are. As a side note, if MM isn't rewarding its harder to bring people into the hardest tier of raiding. Surely this is the opposite of what firstly the devs want to achieve, and secondly what the community of players wants. Not saying the content should be any easier, just that I would want more people to give it a go.

The fact that lightning and marksmanship (as basically everyone has said) aren't mentioned for getting a buff is pretty bad. Whatever your metrics tell you through parsing for lightning, I'd gladly discuss how these are misleading in private. Both have been severely under-performing and until 248 gear was introduced were terrible for master mode operations. Powertech tanks could also do with a buff, as mentioned mercs currently make better tanks. Just something to help their survivability and ability to maintain aggro at the very least (the second I've found to be less of a problem). Virulence I would personally say isn't in a bad spot, however changes to how takedown is used would be nice. Please don't break this discipline.

I believe the point for bringing gear back to ops (aside from it being a terrible idea of removing it in the first place) was to allow for people to target specific gear drops. Master mode is currently the only place this isn't possible, unless you're clearing the last bosses (although some items are still unobtainable through this).

Interesting that you're getting gear for classes that weren't even part of the ops group, sure you can transfer stuff through legacy but it's far from ideal.

Upon clearing some bosses in master mode operations today we found that the gear they were dropping was not matching the loot table, leading us to believe that the gear is random due to 246 not being available as token drops. In the case of Nefra master mode (was a test for the loot), a 246 critical implant dropped. This was instantly useless to the tanks. We also heard that they can drop 244 gear (which is technically worse that 242). Is this intentional? If so, why? Currently this makes veteran mode operations far better for gearing unless you can clear the last bosses in master mode (which currently my raid group is unable to do as we are progressing). It feels like the players doing top tier operations are being punished because of this, it is almost as bad as the previous "chance at a gear drop". Obviously you don't want people gearing too quickly however those doing top tier content should be rewarded for this. A good fix would be either dropping 242 tokens and the 246 random gear, or just simply giving us a set loot table for 248 gear guaranteed on each boss. As a side note, glad loot is back to normal for the other difficulty modes and enjoying Tyth.

Best of luck with looking for a fix, can't wait any longer its 10:30pm here... Sucks for us EU players :/ ah well see you all in 4.1