/signed

What for? Lethality is great how it is, we even got a 10m TA builder (two if you take utility). It works perfectly at semi-range, and even has five 30m skills (rifle shot, both dots, frag granade and snipe). Learn to use what you have, instead of trying to kill the spec. Its like PT/VG dps crying for jet charge - they don't need it and lethality doesn't need to be any more ranged than it already is. Learn the spec and use its perks to your advantage, it already is mid-ranged and it is a big strength of lethality.

Operatives are fun In my opinion we are one of the better balanced classes nowadays (as we are strong, but very far from overpowered) both concealment and lethality work great and have their strengths and weaknesess. We are great node guardians and node stealers, great duelists (though we stand no chances against good sins. noone does currently), in lethality you can even be a durable first line of defence fighter becouse of all those self heals and rolls. Problem is our defences lie mostly in evading things - rolling to avoid a big hit or just out of range of danger is your most used and strongest DCD. Evasion is ok, but it only stops white dmg (i can think of only a few important skills you need to save it for - ravage, penetrating blast, blazing bolts maybe few more) while most dmg is yellow. Besides we got kolto probes+shield, they are ok, but nothing amazing - great for that sustained healing and keeping you IN the fight, but wont save you from any burst. TL;DR If you enjoy Operative gameplay, then it is a good choice and the class is in a good spot.

Thats quite a terrible idea tbh. The whole idea of "best pvpers" is a useless e-peen stroking, and the rules of your list are just bad. What you want here is a list of best 1v1 duelists, and at the current meta you will have only assasins here, maybe 1 jugg. Despite the fact that we have few outstanding players of almost each class. Also our pvp community is too small for such list to make sense. How about instead of making lists, get your asses together and make a team ranked que from time to time? Its hard enough to get a yolo pop on The Progenitor, and i only do team ranked if we make 2 teams in our guild and que together becouse there is noone else running it like ever.

I'm not sure i like your rotation. Is this your opener? Starting with 2x Snipe seems kind of pointless - when im playing my sniper i usually can start with the position of my choosing, and so i can also open with a Lazed Ambush - the 15k crit has a nice panic factor attached to itself. Then i follow with Penetrating Blasts (depending on my opponents health i may or might not add a followthrough after ambush - if he is below 50% i usually will, if above then usually not as PB is just more burst and dps, and you rarely can oneshot an opponent before he runs out of your range or uses some good DCD. Unless he is a baddie). Rest of the rotation is quite obvious, same as you wrote. If i'm caught in the open, or get ganked by stealth my first move is always PB->volley->PB, and then the rest of the rotation or whatever the situation demands of me.

At the moment im using Temple as dps, thats mostly becouse of her ability to get my older cunning gear. Id really prefer Vector for the efficiency, or SCORPIO for the cool factor, but the first one is willpower user, and the second a droid. Though once i get some cash and aquire droid parts - there can be only HK

There will be no use of Series of Shots for you as a Marksman Sniper once you get Penetrating Blasts. Its simply an upgrade to SoS and is superior in every way. However if you will be playing as Engineer or Virulence, than you won't be able to use Penetrating Blasts, and will need to continue using Series of Shots.

If you want a ranged dps with good kiting capabilities, then you want a Sorcerer. Merc can kite only with hydraulics override on, and sniper is usually based on hiding in cover. Sorcs - especially madness - have a plethora of roots, stuns, force speed (+immunity to slows/roots while force speeding utility), almost all their skills are instant. This is THE kiting class of swtor.

new year has come, most of us had alot of time to practice their sniping skills, so tell me please: What to do with a hatred sin or concealment op on your head in wz? I've tested all 3 trees rather extensively, first i was like "marksman for life, im never changing it", then i tried virulence and after few games i totally hated it and went back, though maybe im just bad with it. Then, although every1 said its bad i tried engineering, and after a few games i really, really liked it, and its probably best spec overall. At least for me. The only thing im really missing is the PB->Volley->PB combo (and that double knockback), i've even started to like Lazed EP better than Lazed Ambush (its lower dmg, yes - but the burst is still there if you follow with SoS, its tech not ranged, so all those deflecting DCD's can go fk themselves, and most of all its MOBILE). I can still blow sorc's/sages down to panic mode quite easily (which should be every Snipers duty nowadays), and usually kill the bad ones on the first try. I can deal with Knight/warrior classes rather easily - of course veng/vigi is a pain in the ***, but then again while he is almost immortal, he can be controlled/kited. I can deal with powertechs - well timed roll works wonders against their burst and in my experience most of them are just baddies - maybe a server reason though (im on Progenitor - RP server). There is also not that much of them here. Mercs are quite extinct, except a few healer ones. But heres the deal - if im against a good sin/shadow im dead in seconds. The deflection+force shroud combo and the ability to open from stealth are just too much. There is basically nothing i can do to win this. If im lucky i can extend the duration of my survival with a lucky roll, or when the sin isnt a good one - but without strong support from teammates im just dead meat. All tips are welcome... Similiar situation with Concealment/scrappers - they have lower dmg, so i can usually survive longer - a win is quite out of the question if the scrappers knows anything about the class - dodge roll purging my dots, my explosive probe etc makes it impossible. At the moment i usually stick to picking my targets and trying to be really cautious about my positioning, but if one of the burst-stealth classes open on me im in a really bad position. Especially since pvp population on Progenitor looks like Empire: 30% sins/20%sorcs/20%operatives/30% rest of the classes. Reps have far far more sages, but then again pvp is usually 5 matches empire vs empire for every rep vs empire match. TL;DR How is new year treating you snipers, and how do you deal with the sin/shadow plague nowadays?

I admit - IF my goal would be to kill an assasin in a duel, then if he is any good it might be a lost cause. There's a BUT though. Lethality Op has so many ways of running away that i can kite even really good assasins for quite long time. Providing there is something to kite around - but there usually is in every warzone. 2x roll (insta heal after roll every 10s), 2xhots all the time, root breaker from utility skill, shield, stun breaker, evasion, spammable slow on corrosive granade, additional slow on sever tendon, vanish. Still i will admit it - if i am caught without means to escape (all cd's on cooldown or sth), which does happen from time to time, then i can go down real fast. But remember im severely undergeared. If he is good then i won't kill him. Not unless im at 2018expertise (slowly getting there... slowly) anyway. But i wont go down without a fight, or at least a long, long chase. Still i said before - lethality op isnt about killing, its about being an annoying ******e to every opponent around, playing objectives and not dying. Tbh i've found that i can kill many assasins (just not the good ones), but no matter how much i try - concealment ops with evasion purging my dots on roll are just out of my reach - all i can do is prevent their cap and dont let them kill me. One thing to add: I'm playing on The Progenitor, its an RP server. Not pvp one Try it.

5 star post thank you, this is indeed an enormous help.

I'll give you another perspective of playing lethality - at least in regs. My Operative has about 1400 expertise i think - thats inside the warzone. The only items with expertise i have so far are relics - im just slowly starting to gear myself for pvp. You imagine how squishy is a dps operative with 1400expertise? Good dps CAN kill me in 3-4 gcd. So in the last 6-7 warzones in 2 i had 0 deaths, 2nd dmg done and 15 medals, i didnt score many kills, but i did get few important ones, i succesfully guarded and alderaan turret alone vs 3 players for quite a long period of time. Rest of my games werent AS good, but really good nevertheless. Alot depends on maps as well. Alderaan was perfect for me, huttball was great, but Voidstar was terribly hard. Point is if you decide not to concentrate on killing, but rather on objectives AND being as much of an annoying ******e as possible - you will have quite nice results as lethality/ruffian. Staying toe to toe with the melee train will get you killed really fast though. Key in my experience is to choose targets wisely, roll in for some burst, and get out as fast as possible The annoyance part is especially funny - about every 2nd warzone i get a melee player that decides to tunnel me throughout all wz. I've succesfully kited 90% of them, with slows/selfhealing/rolling and /emote them everytime they stop and follow some1 else. And you can kite effectively + dot/cull at the same time It doesnt work with every1 mind you - a geared assasin, or really good concealment can take me down finally, but not without issues. And as i said im totally undergeared and completely squishy.

So for 3.0 i returned to my operative and swapped from healing to lethality, before 3.0 i dabbled in dot builds occasionaly but not really in ops, rather pvp/flashpoints so i never really had a problem in dot tracking on a boss. Yesterday though i went on a 16m tfb with a pug, besides me there was only 1 lethality sniper in the group, and the amount of debuffs getting applied on everyboss was quite too much for me to handle. I had to concentrate real hard to; a)find the nade/dart icon b)check how much of it is left c)distinguish my icons, from the ones put by that sniper Quite terrible experience, really. So how are you fellow Scouperatives handling the dot-tracking? Any tips for the GUI settings (screenshots are welcomed) Maybe some sort of "timers" for dots, in other game there surely would be a dot-tracking mod, not here though. Thanks for help in advance.

You dont belong here you silly voice of reason, you! These are mmo forums. Uhm, im sorry - are you trying to say that you dont like Hot-based healing? Why in hell would you choose to be an operative healer then? Besides, if you got your aoe hot+2 hot stacked on 3-4 chars, thats really alot of healing going on - and while i agree this is not a burst heal - its still a very strong healing mechanism (its different, but its just as strong as other healers mechanisms), and you can still 2stack hots on all 8players. And please, stop the name calling. I really couldnt care less what you think about me or any other player, but name calling is bad. Period. Yeah this crossed my mind too while reading JustBlaxin's posts. Healing raids is a team-effort. You got your co-healer(s) and its not like you have to do all job by yourself. In fact, you are more effective if you adjust your teamplay to make better usage of all healers - and here you are qqing about not being able to spam that probes into infinity, while your other healers do what, sleep? And let me repeat myself - you can still spam about 4-6 probes if you have stacked some TA (which you do, if you are a healing OP).

I still think you are overreacting - SP does not dissapear from your skillbar. You still have it, and you can still use it in the same way as before - you just cant do it until the seas dry out anymore - which is a good thing in my eyes. I'm gonna shamelessly repeat myself - the 2.6 + 2.7 changes are the best healing balance changes i've seen in swtor.

Just finished Knights story yesterday evening - i gotta say i didnt like it too much. Quite predictable, rather boring - but i guess it was to be expected from one of the most cannonic archetypes in star wars. I've got only two stories left to see and that are Sith Warrior and Smuggler ones. So far my ranking would be: 1. Imperial Agent - brilliant, just brilliant. Plot twists, your choices actually matter and shape your future, voice acting, great, not obvious companions, interesting NPC's. That story had it all + more. Definitely best one, played it twice and it was always top quality fun. 2. Sith Inquisitor - from zero to hero with a dark (sometimes VERY dark) theme + some quality fun DS moments. I tried to play it more balanced, more pragmatic and i felt like it was a good choice. Companions were quite nice and i gotta say i LOVE Lord Zash, definitely one of my favourite characters in swtor. 3. Bounty Hunter. The story might not be overall great - predictable (maybe except the start of ACT 2), so-so written etc. Thing is, BH story had that great "feeling" of being a bounty hunter and HAD THOSE FEW MOMENTS. Companions were also very good, and many players have a love/hate reltionship with at least a few of them (mind you that is a symptom of a well written character). 4. Jedi Knight. 5. Trooper - boring, predictable, almost no interesting characters/companions (maybe with a few exceptions, see spoiler) - but it was similiar to the BH story in having the "feeling" of really being the Havoc Squad member, and a top soldier in the Republic. Biggest problem in this story though is no real "bad guy", just mission, after mission, after mission. 6. Consular story. I hated it, it was so boring it made me want to skip it and do almost only FP and PVP during leveling. Played it on DS - as i dont like being LS in the republic, to make it maybe a bit more surprising, but no. It was often a choice of being all LS Jedi-way bull#*@%, or rather silly DS crap. Didnt get attached to a single character throughout the whole story. Well ok, maybe Tharan+Holiday were nice from time to time, but thats it. Sorry for the wall of text, tbh i didnt expect it to be so huge:P

Sure we are. Apply on our site : http://www.templewatch.enjin.com Looking forward to seeing you ingame

Scoundrel DPS builds are extremely fun, though you need a higher lvl for that. Scrapper is fun when you get Shoot First, Dirty Fighting gets great when you get Woundning Shots + the reset proc talent for that (Unfair Advantage talent). Both specs require awarness and are very fast paced - Scrapper requires better positioning + using stealth as an offensive tool, and DF requires alot of dot-tracking and upper hand tracking to combine it into a devastating 4x wounding shots combo

I think the Operative/Scoundrel community is overreacting on this one. You dont have your emergency heal taken away. Since 2.7 you simply wont be able to spam that surgical probe into infinity - in my opinion its more of a PVP nerf that won't be that much noticable in PVE (it may be noticable in hardcore NIM content, but it will make OPs more similiar to other healers, not better as it was up till now, which is IMHO a good thing) Why? You will still be able to keep your target alive for a minimum of 4 GCDs - since its not a problem to have 3 TA stacked with all your probes running, the first surgical probe will re-grant TA + during that 4GCDs you have a big chance to proc another TA due to probes + after 1-2 seconds the proc to re-grant TA will be there again. In PVE situation its ALOT of time for your co-healer to hit one or 2 heals thus effectively saving the target. You won't be able to solo-heal the whole raid - but that is a good move that is taking OP healers into the same spot where sorcs and mercs are. PVP is a different thing - this change will surely reduce your effectiveness, but guess what? You will still be the best healer for pvp content, no questions asked - it just shows how overpowered you were in it up till now. Bringing more balance to PVP healing IS good. Personally i really like that changes - i mained an operative healer for quite some time (i play all 3 healers), and it was far easier to have the same or better effect with LESS effort, which is one of the main reasons why i abandoned that char. merc/commando are being brought closer to the level of other healers in terms of HPS, and for sure had their aoe healing improved, but they are still far, far away from being overpowered in PVE and they are probably still the worst healers for PVP (arguable). Also this class has the hardest energy management, while Ops energy management is almost non existant. In fact the 2.6 + 2.7 changes make all 3 healers as close to being balanced as they have never been before. +1 for the incoming changes.

Im new to commando healing - fresh 55, and i love it, but seriously: -some more love for Tech Override (either lower cooldown or maybe baseline 2 skills), it could also use some more synergy with Reserve Powercell IMHO - some sort of interrupt immunity - in any way really, it could be a proc to make next (1 or 2) abilities not interruptable, or interrupt immunity on diversion for few seconds, or immunity during SCC for healers, just give us something! Can't wait to see those changes for 2.7 but from experience i kinda expect to be dissapointed...

i certainly wouldnt agree on that one. Threat generation - best = sin, 2nd =powertech, 3rd = jugg (id even say powertechs got better aoe threat gen) passive mitigation = 1st powertech, 2nd jugg, 3rd sin. Why would you even say that guardians are a better ads tank than powertechs? PT's got much better aoe overall, hell they have a flamethrower as an important part of the rotation and a reset proc for flamethrower, they can also pop oil slick to keep mobs slowed, not to mention DFA at the start = aggro bomb. Saber reflect aggro is cool, but thats it. Also, i dont agree on sins not being a good main tanks, check out for example suckafish videos on youtube if you say sins make bad main tanks.

Those two healers are completely different from each other. Basic heal differences are : -mercenary is single-target oriented (even though you get to spam an aoe heal on a very short cooldown), with most of the healing coming from 2 hard casted heals. Update 2.6 added a multi target kolto shell (insta cast heal which heals on dmg taken) which actually makes merc heals a bit more similiar to operative healing due to the spamming of it. -operative heals are highly mobile and hot (heal on time) based, u basically spam hots all day long, even your aoe heal is a hot. You have of course 2 hard casted heals, but most of the time you will be spending refreshing your hots. You also have one of the best "oh sheet" heals in game - insta cast, free and spammable heal when the target is below 30% health. Other differences; -merc is a heavy armor class - meaning you will stand there and soak up alot more dmg (hilariously though operative has better survavibility due to stealth, spammable insta heals below 30%, and the roll ability you get at lvl 51). -Merc is purely a ranged class, and has far better off-dps abilities (including great aoe ones) than operative. -You also get two really awesome abilities in Hydraulic overrides (short cooldown, few second of immunity to slows, roots, pushes etc), and at lvl 51 - electronet which hinders your opponent and prevents him from using any escape and survival abilites. -merc heals are considered to be one of the hardest choices in game both in pve and pvp. PVE becouse your heat management is very unforgiving, and your aoe heal capabilites arent as great. In PVP becouse you are too easily shut down due to interruption. - operative is a highly mobile stealth class, which certainly helps with solo gameplay, and gives alot of advantage in pvp. while healing you dont have any serious off-dps abilities, since operatives are mainly a melee class in dps. Since 2.6 orbital strike skill is nerfed to hell, so your aoe is very weak as well. -having everything insta casted (or almost everything) + having exteremely easy energy management this class is probably the easiest healer to heal with in PVE (in not high-end content its usually enough to keep your hots going on allies) -in PVP operative heals are the "go to" choice - high mobility, high survavibility, alot of instant abilities - this makes operatives a beast of a healer in pvp. While guarded by a tank, they are almost unkillable. Personal opinion: I mained operative healer for quite some time, and while it was a fantastic experience at start (i was really surprised at what i can do with little effort), i got bored of it. Spamming the probe button for eternity gets boring after a while . Atm i am leveling my commando healer (merc mirror class) and i just love it. Granted i really have to work harder for the same effects, yet i find it fun and challenging. Also IMHO you just cant get bored with that healer - i always have something to do - managing single target heals while throwing kolto bombs around, watching for the support cell mechanism, refreshing kolto shells, off-dpsing. -One last thing - personally i find operative lethality spec dps far more fun, than any of the merc dps spec's, also operative concealment dps spec (nicely buffed dps in 2.6) is one of the best solo pve spec's for me. PS. if you havent played the imperial agent storyline yet - DO IT. Best storyline in swtor.

Powertech all the way - flashy moves, burning everything up, great suravibility, great threat generation, great utility. IMHO the only thing that powertech is lackin is an "I win" button like juggs and sins have. I've played all healers and all tanks, and from both healer and tank perspective i would prefer to have powertech as a tank. (and i do mean Powertech, not Vanguard - they just look silly with that blaster rifle, and really, really bad animations...).

You might want to check out the skills you are using in your gunnery spec "Charged Barrel Grav Round grants Charged Barrel, increasing the damage dealt by the next High Impact Bolt by 6% and reducing the activation time of the next Advanced Medical Probe by 20%. Stacks up to 5 times." By having this you can decide wheter you prefer to increase your HiB dmg or have an short/insta AMP heal with GravRound spam. One of the core mechanics of gunnery, and a mandatory talent for this spec.

It all depends on the player. Sages are extremely squishy, so a bad player will get immolated in a manner of seconds, BUT a good sage utilizes his ways of escaping and kiting the opponent and thus can have great survavibility. I encourage you to watch some video's on Psi's youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/Revenantes/videos - one of the best sage/sorc out there. He also has a merc video i think. Merc on the other hand are sturdier, but "slower". They also have fewer tricks to help them kite (though they have the ultimate kiting tool - Hydraulic Overrides), and cannot deal as much dmg as a sage while kiting. Problem of both classes are interrupts.