Yeah, but I mean, they should have someone who's sole focus is on communication between the combat team and the community, which John doesn't seem to care too much about. For an actual dialogue to happen, there needs to be two sides, and we've not yet gotten anything close to that. We've just gotten posts saying we are wrong and then nothing after that. We need communication!

If you actually looked at the leaderboards in-depth, you'd also find out that a large part of that difference is because the highest number of wins in the top five is 207 in solos, and three of them don't even break 100... The top sentinels apparently didn't play the class very much last season, and as such, couldn't go as high as people getting like 500-600 wins. Whether they had a lower win/loss ratio is beyond me, but when people aren't playing enough to hit the high numbers, of course there's going to be a huge difference between classes. I personally think that no, mara isn't anywhere near as good as other classes in solo ranked unless you know the class well and get good match ups, and that's the reason nobody wants to play it, which eliminates competition, driving people to not have to play as many games to get the top spots. The whole point of this post is to say how pointless it is to go by the leaderboards when talking about viability in pvp.

Mine doesn't discuss any sort of action, though. I'm just asking a few questions that will probably just be added to the pile of stuff they haven't answered. If they use the ToS as an excuse, well, I'll just ask them what offends the ToS and take it out. I don't mind. The devs should be accountable for what they say, and everybody agrees on that, including the devs, apparently. EDIT: Here's an interesting idea... why not just have one worker in the office work as the combat team PR guy? (maybe the guy who thought up the changes to annihilation lol jk) Almost anything is better than what we have. Or, heck, even a new hire would probably more than make up for the money they're losing by losing players due to this.

I wanted to ask the devs about a lot of things, and their silence has been kind of an issue on the forums, in both the PTS and class forums, so I figured I'd go ahead and address some of the issues I've seen lately. ______________________________________________________ I was wondering what you guys mean by this, because I did a search of all posts made by John, and he has not replied even once to any player, even outside the class forums. If you look at any of the 3.2.1 feedback posts, he only has a total of 2 posts in each thread, max. It's like they put stuff out there to try and shut up the community and then continue with their jobs, rather than actually try to have any sort of dialogue. They are just saying "this is what we are looking at doing" without saying anything else or giving any justification on why they chose that decision rather than another one. It's almost like they are trying to hide their design philosophies, even though we need transparency to even understand what the heck the design team is talking about. The lack of any sort of response, as well as the original posts, seems very unprofessional, which is why the community is so upset. I mean, there has been a massive public outcry on the Sentinel/Marauder forums about us not understanding certain things, especially the "vision" that the combat team has for the class and why they feel the need to "improve" (nerf) certain aspects of the class to adhere to that vision, or why they aren't making any sort of changes to things that are considered by the community to be in a huge need of it. Even in the very few posts that have come from the combat team in the 3.2.1 threads, especially in the Sentinel/Marauder posts, you guys say things are based on community feedback, but you never say where from or how they even correlate to anything said in the thread. For the most part, the changes don't seem to be at all what the community feedback had indicated as needed. Because of this I've noticed a lot of posts lately saying many of the same things, such as: You guys say you want a dialogue, but all we get is a combat team monologue, which on the outside shows that they either don't care about the feedback, don't care about improving the game, or don't care about the community on the forums. If you're not going to respond to posts, like you say in official statements, then don't make official statements like that! If the first quote above is true, then why hasn't any of it happened? When will we actually receive answers? ______________________________________________________ In this post John even went as far as to pretty much tell the Sentenel/Marauder community that they don't know how to play the game or know how the game works, after the combat team's overall changes cause an overall dps drop according to both the community and the combat team. They acknowledged a DPS loss, but according to nearly 100% of the feedback, it was never returned, as apparently intended. It's like the combat team has no accountability for screwing things up, so they're going to pass it on to the players who are the victims. Again, responses and transparency are needed for us to understand. According to official posts, there should be accountability, but from what we've seen, there is only any for players. Even that previous URL (this post) is borderline harassing an entire community with an "L2P" statement, so why is there no accountability or even an apology? Even editing the post to not sound absolutely condescending and jerkish would be nice. Maybe you guys need to get a better PR team. ______________________________________________________ The last point I'm going to bring up is how little all of the posts from the combat team make sense. You guys make contradicting posts, such as: And Here's another one: and When you say things like this, it makes no sense, and then you give us no follow up information, so we don't understand anything... yet again. You guys will go against your design philosophies, but will use those same philosophies as an excuse why needed changes aren't happening. Maybe there's a good reason? You keep saying you want feedback, but you never give us yours. ______________________________________________________ In the end, all we need is a bit of transparency and feedback. There should be actual dialogue between the combat team and the community, rather than seemingly ignoring the community for long periods of time and coming out with changes that have nothing to do with the community feedback. If you guys give us that dialogue and transparency, then you will probably have the support of the community, but as it stands, the community thinks you are fighting with them, which means they are going to fight back. ______________________________________________________ References Threads: These are in no particular order http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=810922 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=811195 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=8122355 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=810968 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=8140825 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=807167 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=810897 John's post list: http://www.swtor.com/community/search.php?searchid=5508660

For PvP, the only real reason to hit somebody is to kill them. The crit may increase your overall damage over time, but you won't be hitting as high numbers per hit. The real secret to marksman tho is looking at the tree. Other than ambush/aimed shot, which gets your auto crit proc, all of your other main attacks get a passive 4-15% crit chance, which helps negate the lack of crit and allowing for higher power stacking, which, in turn, increases your ability to get big hits resulting in fast kills. In PvP, this translates into stacking full power and letting that passive crit give you around 23-34% crit chance on all your non-ambush attacks.

Oh, yeah... the one alacrity piece was from back when I did engi at the start of 3.0 to fit a series of shots into the time of 2 GCDs... I should probably change that, as it de-optimizes burst for marksman. I'm not gonna change the aim thing tho. As the above poster stated, it works if you're just gonna play marksman, which is what the whole thread is about. I will put something in there about it not being good for other specs though

Oddly enough, Marksman is the only spec in the game that I know of that can get a min/maxed set without having to buy extra mods or enhancements. This is solely for best burst, not sustained, as getting the kill is more important than numbers overall, especially in arenas. Set Pieces So let's get started! You'll notice that there are two sets for snipers, and both have the same set bonus, so you can interchange between the sets. So I'll just list the stats on the piece, rather than the name of the piece. The set will get you to the 95% ranged accuracy, the 70% crit bonus, and the rest to alacrity, as far as tertiary stats. Pretty nice, eh? Relics - Serendipitous Assault and Focused Retribution - for obvious reasons Ear - Power/Surge Implant1 - Power/Accuracy Implant 2 - Power/Accuracy Bracers - Power Head - Power/Alacrity Chest - Power/Surge Gloves - Power/Accuracy Belt - Power Legs - Power/Surge (you have to go into one of the operative sets, but you'll still get your set bonus) Boots - Power/Accuracy Mainhand - Power/Surge Offhand - Power/Surge Augments - Power 52 x 14 Stim - A cunning stim, of course! (though you could use aim, but I'll get to that later) Overall Stats (Ranked set) This includes a stim, so don't forget one! Endurance - 2844 Cunning - 2250 Power - 2207 Surge - 430 Accuracy - 344 Alacrity - 86 As you can see, it is a full power set, which works amazingly in pvp, since your tree gives you crit bonuses to pretty much everything. You might also notice that the accuracy goes a bit over the 95% mark, but honestly, you can't change out any of the enhancements or you'll drop under it. The Aim Debate Many people will tell you that you want to stack aim instead of cunning, because it has better ranged crit, and I honestly agree, based on both parsing and real-world pvp. It'll lower your tech damage a bit, but orbital strike and corrosive dart are fluff damage anyway, just used to stop caps or debuff your opponents in real-world situations. The reason for using aim is diminishing returns on mainstat crit. As either stat goes up, it gives less and less crit, but both give the same ranged damage bonus. Optimally, you will have them at exactly the same number, maximizing the crit%, but that's a pain in the butt, so I personally just get them close enough by switching out the mods in my set for aim mods. You could also get an aim armouring for those pants up there, which means you can just buy aim/pow/surge pants, if you like. On a side note, keep the cunning mods! You never know if Bioware will choose to change the stats for snipers to force people to stack their actual mainstat. Finishing Thoughts I feel like this is obvious, but these are just my opinions, and if anybody has some extra info that I didn't cover, please tell me so I can test it hehe... I hope you have fun hitting people in full gear for 15k+ (Ambush crits with relic procs and Target Acquired, if you didn't know tho it can hit higher). P.S. - Should I make a marksman pvp guide? I've been debating it, as I've not really seen any around. Any thoughts?

My best games as a jugg have all been with a pressure dps, especially hatred sins. I can't seem to find a good place for vengeance since their aoe damage just isn't enough to be called pressure, and their burst is very sub par, but as Rage, if you have enough pressure to get somebody to about half, you can destroy them of they don't have a guard. It's mostly about hitting one target to keep guard and heals On them, then just switch to a lower target when your auto crit on furious Strike comes back. It takes a bit of practice and experience to know when a target is low enough, but with another person putting pressure, the healer generally can't keep up after a couple burst phases. It's the same idea as a PT sin combo, one pressure and one burst to finish them.

I still use an old war hero pistol. Looks awesome

Furious saber with a purple or cyan war hero Crystal <3

Rage it's completely different than how it was before 3.0. Vengeance didn't really get any buff except in aoe damage, but rage got completely buffed all around. The single target damage on rage it's massive now, and with your two largest hits having automatic critical hits, you can do about 25k damage in 2 gcds on a fully geared heavy armor. And when the auto crits on FS aren't up, it still has a bonus to its critical chance. it doesn't have to rely on crit% at all, so it can focus on having a much higher bonus damage ttan vengeance, plus it has a ton more up time on targets. If you play it right, it's way better at killing, especially solo fights, than a vengeance jugg. Rage might fall behind slightly in 8s for overall damage because it has no real aoe power, but generally it will have a lot more killing blows and your kill numbers will normally be higher. In arenas, its just hard for most vengeance to function these days, due to most other classes having a ton of kiting utility. Unyielding doesn't really make up for the loss of ranged attacks and the extra jump that can be used while impaired. Vengeance does have a place, I'm sure, but if you take the time to learn and gear up rage, it tends to make up for the slight loss in overall dps by giving you more killing power

Those videos are completely irrelevant at this point, as they have changed both specs considerably since 3.0. Also, I'd like to know what you meant by rage doing massive damage to groups. It's completely single target these days, since smash sucks in the spec. The ridiculous single target burst makes it actually way better than vengeance in a 1v1 against anything except maybe a tank. Focus/rage is also way easier to control on a rage jugg these days, and I've not found a situation at all that has had me use assault since 3.0. The only rage issues you will have are if you aren't playing the spec properly. I Will say that vengeance has straight up better single target on a target that isn't moving and has a healer, but rage will definitely do more on a target trying to kite you, like a sorc or something, since it has a lot more utilities that prevent such things, like 10m attacks and an extra jump/root. It will also kill about any target without heals faster because of its burst and higher amounts of force damage that won't be avoided by dcds. That's why rage will almost always out perform a vengeance jugg in arenas, especially solos. The only issue is getting the gear to make rage's single target damage comparable, since you need more specific stats than vengeance. It also has a much higher learning curve, and most people don't take the time to try it out, much like how your post makes you seem. It just seemingly fails behind vengeance when you don't have the gear and don't know how to use it.

Honestly, accuracy gives so little per rating it's really not worth it. Especially for focus/rage where your highest dps attack is not white damage. Most of the time your only misses with white damage will be during dcds anyway, so accuracy won't help. Also, your thoughts on augments are a bit confusing. The extra crit from the str augments is mostly so you can put in another power enhancement, rather than crit, ending up with about the same amount of crit% but more bonus damage. This is somewhat pointless to do tho on rage, since your two highest dps attacks have auto crits, so you don't really need crit rating at all to be awesome. And you'll still have like 19% crit with no rating and full power anyway.

I would honestly say that the reason you don't see much Rage is because the damage sucks next to vengeance until you get good gear. It is pretty much based on getting your bonus damage as high as possible, which is very hard to achieve without min-maxing your gear. Vengeance does okay with all the crit and alacrity on the one dps jugg set. Its damage isn't based solely on your big attacks. Like until I had about 1100 bonus melee damage and 1600 force bonus, I could never do more overall damage than a good vengeance in regs. That's like stacking 2k power, which is hard to achieve.

You don't seem to know how the class or PvP works... You pretty much need a tank in ranked or you will lose against any decent team. Rage doesn't need any crit rating at all because of the auto crit attacks it has, both doing 10k+ on geared opponents. Both dps specs , especially rage, with 6 roots/slows with utilities, a jump you can use while movement impaired, and a couple stuns, have anti kiting abilities. One of which is immunity to movement impairing effects for 10 seconds! That is huge! Vengeance also has all cc immunity after a jump. Then as for maras and assassins getting shafted, maras aren't bad, but they didn't really get any new shiny toys like everybody else, so they are not widely played, though they are good.. And hatred assassin is probably the most broken spec in the game right now, especially with the bugged force slow heal every 6 seconds. Also, again, your post is a mess. I don't think half of the words you use mean what you think they mean. It's very hard to understand what you are even trying to say :/

The general rule of thumb is around 20-25% crit with buffs, 70-75% crit multiplier, and then put everything else in power and alacrity. If you also plan on playing rage, you could go full power and vengeance would still be okay with the 18%ish crit, but it does better with a little bit more crit. The last issue would be augments. For vengeance, I'd personally go strength, just for the tiny bit more crit, which lets you stack more power in your armour modifications, but again, if you plan on also playing rage, full power would probably be better. So just stick to those numbers up top of you don't plan on switching to rage at all, but if you do plan on it, go full power and surge, since vengeance can still run well with it, and it is amazing for rage auto crits. Edit: forgot to mention this, but accuracy is generally bad in PvP. Other stats will give you better numbers, since most of your misses will be against defensive cooldowns anyway

This post is a mess. Pretty much all the things you say are missing from the class are all the utilities we were talking about that make jugg really good in endgame PvP. Also, shadow/sin is probably the worst mitigation as far as tanking, and is mostly RNG based. And finally, other than hatred sin, about all the classes stuck at low level and get better as you level. Every game it's like that, but people have preferences. In PvP, though, bolster in Swtor is awful and can make any class shine or suck, based solely on your gear, especially at low levels. You really need to get higher level to see any class shine in PvP in this game, otherwise, you're not getting the whole spec, and bolster is skewing what you see. To be completely honest, jugg is amazing in endgame for about anything other than progression raid dps, and are probably the best PvP tanks around right now. Rage burst is insane in PvP, added with all the survivability cooldowns, and vengeance is a really solid sustained dps spec. Many people tend to think of juggs as overpowered right now. You just have to keep with it to see the reward, just like any class other than hatred sin with their level 10 one-shot aoe lol. (I think madness sorc gets the aoe too, but I don't remember it hitting quite as hard)

Unless you are doing ranked... In which case vigilance gets kited for days, and focus/rage globals things lol. Just too many roots/slows to be kited easily on a focus guardian, whereas vigilance has half as many and one less jump (which can be used while rooted!). All the retaliation procs are beautiful against many defensive cooldowns as well. The only issue is you will never be able to hit the same numbers as a same geared/skilled vigilance guardian except in arenas where you will normally destroy their damage. You will however probably get a ton more solo kills and death blows in 8s due to the much higher burst potential. Vigilance it's more sustained overall and has dot spread (which is pointless fluff in ranked, but oddly useful in 8s). It's worse at switching targets with the lack of ranged attacks, that 10m jump, and the longer cooldowns, but that's not too big of a deal in 8s, compared to hard switches in ranked (vigilance in a pressure comp is pointless with how tiny your dots are, so you are most likely switching). Vigilance is all about sustained single target damage, and it does it amazingly well, but guard switches just shut them down and make them waste time switching since they don't have abilities that support fast switches. Vigilance also has a much higher reliance on RNG, which can sometimes be annoying, but less so in regs. In other words, both honestly work, but are better for completely different things. I prefer vigilance for 8s and focus/rage for 4s.

It's somewhat poopy to use master strike in PvP these days on rage... It's pretty much asking for a c.c. or them to do a cooldown , if they know what they are doing. I'd rather send some fluff to get them down a bit and then wreck them with big hits lol... Plus it normally wastes time for setting up your next burst. I just can't justify using it often in pvp

Sabotage/emp is off gcd, which is enough of a reason to use it...<3 burst... Also, the change back to original sabotage makes more sense than sabotage resetting all of your own defensives. Plus it's easier to work the small stun

I feel like the oddball here, but I really am liking engineering/sab right now. The only thing I dislike currently is that they nerfed the nade. I love sabotage being its old damaging, off gcd self again, giving the spec some really good burst after an explosive probe/sabo charge (which is hitting for 10k+ on a crit and giving you the extra little charges). The only difference from old sabotage is that you keep your dart on them after you pop it, which is nice. You have a ton of utility as well with 4 slows, one being a damaging 70% aoe slow, and a few stuns. The roll bombs are still great. And just all the utility and aoe in general. Single target, you have the burst, but mm still has the better sustain in PvP, I think. I Actually like the flow on saboteur better these days, now that it's back to how it was pre 2.0, other than losing aimed shot

Try using the non arsenal spec (can't remember what they changed the name to... Innovative ordinance?) if you want to solo people. The way things are now, it has enough utility to beat on most anything pretty effectively without dying. It's just a ton harder to play lol... I had a great time with it when I messed around with it, and found the survivability really nice compared to arsenal (I'm normally heals). It will normally put out less overall sustained damage, though

I hate to say it, but I've not found any space at all in how I play the spec to use slash/vicious assault... Or regular assault for that matter... The spec flows so well, but takes a super long time to learn. I think that's more the problem people are having. Slash deals less damage than anything else and is a bit of a focus sink. And there is no time that everything will be on cooldown for you to make it useful. Also, I see people using ravage/master strike a ton more than I personally think is necessary... I only ever use it as a filler in rage spec, since just building up your raging bursts is a higher dps output. Though I also PvP and don't like how often it gets eaten by a cooldown either

Also, having hydraulic overrides from utilities on a jugg now makes life a ton better as far as getting pushed back... Oh, and something I forgot earlier... Rage is also great because you don't have to ever hit your little weenie free attack to build focus, So your dps doesn't have any massive drop offs. I'll post a parse when I get off work to show how level your dps stays. It's a beautiful thing. EDIT: heck, I'll just parse both vengeance and rage and see what happens. I'm very curious... Though I don't know if there is a way to simulate accuracy vs an actual player, so maybe I'll ask a couple friends to heal up a player while I whack them lol... Or I could be lazy and use a dummy, which will give skewed results

I mostly play either my jugg or my merc healer, so here are some multiple perspectives on this. First,The way heals are right now with more aoe heals and definitely higher hps (most ranked on the ebon hawk is seeing between 3000-4700 hps) any sort of pressure comp is having issues because ale pressure is just fluff damage. Healers also have more time to react to multiple team members with the higher hp. The only way killing is happening these days is putting all that damage on one target, really really fast, and overwhelming the healer. As far as rage jugg, the burst is insane compared to vengeance. It's also nice that retaliation is useful for once and will never miss, and your biggest dps Attack (raging burst) isn't weapon damage. Had a lot of issues with ravage dodging on vengeance. Oh, and you also get two massive auto crits, if the rest wasn't enough, raging burst normally hitting at least 8k on an unguarded dps/healer... Furious strike at 10-14k when it hits. Pretty much, rage is amazing in arenas, but in 8s, vengeance is way better because of its utility, rather than killing power. I'm sure you could still run vengeance in arenas if you were with a massive burst spec like AP PT, or something.