Also one addition bout the operative healer. It is a fun option but personally I find it way below the other healers, ie sorc and mercenary. Comparatively operative healer for me feels very squishy and is all about micromanagement if you want to do really good. I.e. don't let the hots fall off.. It is a quite tedious playing style compared to sorc and merc healer for me. Still, some people love it and can do really good with it.

Interrupt and cc I use frequently but shatter shot - the sniper skill you are talking about extremely rarely. It is not good enough for more than that. Laughable damage, 15 energy, decreases only healing received (20%) and lasts only 10 seconds. They could buff it to make it more worthwhile, Increase the duration of the debuff and/or add 20% of outgoing heals to it.

It is not that you can hide it. -> inspect achievements when in doubt,

Scoundrel/Operative is more versatile as you can also take a healer role. Sniper is pure dps. Do note that inspite of operative having a gun almost no animations use your rifle most are with a knife. For scoundrel that is with your hands. Also snipers use the big sniper rifle while gunslingers dualwield (IIRS don't have a GS). For coolness factor I would rank operative and sniper way above their republic counterparts. Also if you haven't played the story the agent story is usually considered superior to the smuggler story,. Then again don't remember whether you get even any of the class missions when you use a 65 token.

I think some players have an irrational fear of grouping up because they are inexperienced or whatever. If you stick to the following you will be (more than) fine. 1. make sure you have something in every slot equipped 2. announce you are new player don't hide it. 3. in terms of veteran fp's the large majority of them is not a problem some are tricky though umbara, and the one annoying manaan boss I can think off. 4. If it is umbara and there is more than one lowlevel in the group the odds of completing the fp are close to zero, so don't bve surprised that a lot of players will leave immeadiately if they see more than one lowlevel and it's umbara. 5. hammer station is very easy but also notable for being the number 1 FP choice for people who just want to grind cxp. 6. If unsure of what to do see what the experienced players do. Don't charge off as the first one if you don't know the fp. 7. pay attention to CC. If someone CC'd a mob don't attack it. 8. Don't expect the average highlevel player to be interested in the bonusses - most of them are of absolutely no vlue to them anymore. If you want to do all the bonusses look for a group of people with the same goal. Odds of getting them in a random pug are close to zero. (Except for a new fp, which would be umbara but even there the bonus boss is rarely done especially with a lowlevel - see also point 4. Everyone had to learn at one point, So did the more experienced players. And the stories of getting kicked because of not spacing.. I find them hard to believe tbh. Yes, people get kicked in FP's. I have seen it happen when they were AFK, or a very real drag on the team - ie Leroy Jenkins' types , or for very obnoxious behaviour. Eg a healer who felt entitled to all loot and then stopped healing if he didn't get it (Not an issue anymore with current loot system though...) , I have to sayit felt really great to kick that one right before mission complete

I will politely ask to use space. If people don't and say nothing I will suffer through it without further comment. Now looking at your self-described behaviour it seems obvious to me who is obnoxious here and should stick to soloing or people of the exact same mindset.

First off if you are new to the content, announce it. Most peopk5 will be more understanding and may even explain things. I will ask people to space and I do find it annoying if a FP takes 3x more time than needed. So yes the previous poster has a point, the fp's are mostly an end to a means to me. I have done most of them so often that my primary goal is to rush through for the daily/weekly, conquest or whatever. If someone is new and would like to experience the movies please say so rather than stay silent. That being said I do find some of the previous posts pretty one-sided . Usually it is one silent guy not spacing. Depending on the fp this costs time for three other people - also bear in mind that for a lot of them you can do them on solo mode to fully experience the story, extra objectives aso. (And that very often you will be carried by the experienced players whose time you are taking) I think part of it is that many people have done them so often that indeed they don't do them because they enjoy them, but as a means to an end. Reinforced by the cxp grind at 70, conquest and the relative lack of reward for a level70 in doing anything but clearing asap. I would distinguish ops from fp's btw as you can not solo an op for the story. I do think guild group activities often a different pace - more social environment than a random pug. On a note: I will usually decline a group invite if there is more than one low level in it. If you are unexperienced you can do the reverse. If you see the other 3 are level70 you can decline... the odds are quite high that they do not want to do anything but pass through asap.

Agreed. All the other explanations like elo, matchmaking aso are BS. Do they add to frustrations? Yes, that I can understand and they may make people leave ranked but the toxic behaviour of part of the community is the single most important reason why ranked is dead as it prevents the people leaving from being replaced with fresh blood. If the toxic people had half a brain they would realize that they probably won as many matches because of a new player / bad player in the other team than they lost because of one in theirs. So having new people in ranked even if they 'cause' you to lose matches... they will also 'cause' you to win others. On the whole it balances out (although if you were really good you probably wouldn't even get grouped w them much as I understand elo...) I think I tried ranked a few times a few seasons ago. Was probably a misclick even... ended up with my back then noticeably poor sniper in arena's and I was fairly new to the game as well. The experience was bad enough to never consider looking at ranked again. I play this game for fun not to have to deal with the poor kids who got beat up in school again and must vent their frustrations in a video game. If some of them are (on paper at least) adults... well only makes it worse for them.

You are right on that Bioware probably will not change this anymore. You are however wrong imo on the effects it would have. I would expect a drastic decrease of premade teams. Face it the average premade is mostly about gaining an advantage, if it weren't they would be playing team ranked.

I will use diversion consistently against another sniper, but is it really worth it against non snipers? When do you use it against non snipers compared to using an offensive attack or another defensive move? I.e under what cirsumstamces would you recommend using it? (other than another sniper)

Yes, every class has something usefull they can do, but as you say yourself about half of the classes are relegated to a pure support role in it - which no matter how important it is to the end result - is not nearly as much fun as being the one to take the ball across the end line, which imo strongly encourages behaviour to just say **** objectives and let's have fun on my own regardless of the team result. Very few roll a class to be the pure defender or midfielder in pvp while you basically see all the primadonna strikers take the glory. I play/have played most classes and hutball is by far the one I enjoy much more with certain classes than with others.

They can't be interrupted when entrench is up, which is a significant amount of time but hardly full time. Once focussed everyone dies except mercs, sorc healers.. I would for sure add assassins, operatives and mauraders to that as all of them have a true escape, though in mauraders case a short lived one. Juggs last longer than snipers under focus as well imo. No disagreement that powertechs/vanguards took a (too big) hit compared to how they used to be, but your post is very biased and extremely selective as shown above.

I dunno. Hutball is a map which really extremely favors some classes over others and this by it's nature leads very much to the behaviour you describe. I think this is the root issue rather than the people really. When I play hutball with some classes I am much more likely to play it objective oriented then with others where basically my primary focus will be on getting at least 8 medals.

With the new system I had to pick one of my many chars for pvp rather than what I used to do, ie play many different ones and I did pick my sniper. The main reason for doing so was that a) it was my second char and there is a bit more attachment to it than to most others - I still have my first char a sith assassin but she is still stuck at lvele 56 or so b) I thought that their biggest issue (no self heal at all) was mitigated a lot by the changes. So... I do think snipers are significantly improved, not so much in the offensive department but in the survivability without a pocket healer the difference is quite big, Previously in 8 vs 8 once you got down a bit in health it was already like game over. People tend to focus players with lower health and as a sniper with no selfheals at all it would be just a (usually short) matter of time before you died. Even if you made it out of a direct engagement I can't count the number of times when you would die due to a measly dot while frantically trying to recuperate but unable to do so because you were not out of combat yet. In arena's snipers are a lot more fun as well. I used to hate them with my sniper at least, mostly as by default you or the merc would be target #1, your biggest contribution to the team would usually be try to stay alive long enough for your team to kill someone else - not exactly fun. Now it seems much more balanced in that regards, Sorcs, mauraders, dps juggs, snipers I have seen all of the aboved be target #1. I do not feel that snipers are fotm though,,, for two reasons. 1: snipers by their nature can not be fotm as the more snipers there are the less effective they become. They are in a way their own worst enemy. In a match with many snipers you will find yourself forced out of cover all the time which drastically reduces the effectiveness of the spec. 2. I don't see snipers overwhelming the stats in regs at least. I think of myself as a capable but nowhere near excellent player who is objective minded. Snipers will usually do quite good in the damage department but considering that they still haven't much utility to offer to a team other than damage that seems quite reasonable. A good merc or jugg will usually outdamage an equally good sniper though ... at least that is what it seems like to me. It is very, very rare that I see a sniper take top position in damage for instance. (and the few times it happened is because you were spamming suppressive fire most of the time) I don't play ranked nor do I care for it, so in ranked experience may be different.

I have resubbed for a month or so now. About the new system. Compared to the old one it is much slower to get the top end pvp gear, and yes it is not friendly to alts at all. I have stuck to one char since I resubbed while I used to play many different ones. The changes will be an improvement - how much of it remains to be seen, depends on the amount of components you will get for the dailies / weeklies mostly as you don't want to rely on the crates. The command crates in itself.. my biggest gripe with it is not so much the rng issue on set gear, much more that anything that is not a set gear piece that you don't already have is complete junk. There is absolutely nothing in the crates other than set gear pieces you don't already have of any use. The reputation items.. maxed out on these a long time ago. Maybe if they would add some from the CM crates they would be more usefull. Rank 5 companion gifts, can run a simple grade 5 mission for those. The non set armor -> junk. Now there is one things I do like in the new system. I play both pve and pvp but was never into operations, So this system is the first one that actually allows me to get top end gear for pve purposes as well, which I like very much. Hell, maybe I will even give operations a go after maxing out my gear in pvp around 2019 . Previously I never did them as a. I don't want to join a guild and b. as usually the only set gear I had was pvp gear it seemed this was an issue for even getting into operations to most pug groups.

Think there are many reasons... * the new star wars movie effect is over and with the speed of levelling nowadays + the l60 tokens I imagine a lot of the new players have left the game again * the monthly stories. The first char I played chapters 1-9 on I loved the story (the combat not so much)... but it has very limited replayability and doing it with multiple chars quickly becomes a bore.. So I guess like a lot of players I let my sub run out sometimes for a month or two so there is something new when I log in again For PVP specific * the much easier pvp equipment grinding, now mind you I think this is a very good thing as a whole. But once you have the 208 set a big part of the motivation to play the same warzones again and again and again is gone. * the very much missed opportunity of the pvp community in itself to attract a lot of pve'ers who tried it out due to the companion quest. For sure Bioware could have done something here to make it not so big a step. And yes, I get inwardly at least annoyed as well when you queue and notice half of your team is running around with about 1000 expertise at level 65. I guess the large majority of pvp players is like that, they may be a bit annoyed but they will remain quiet and suck it up. A small minority however are purely vitriolic people, that seem to have been waiting on a clueless newbie to start insulting them in any way imaginable. I think this much more than anything else turns new people off. I also always wonder what these people are like in real life. Very frustrated and unhappy I guess, (mind you you find these people in pve as well.. they are not exclusive to pvp) * premades. Yes they do suck the fun out of it and I think they are much worse than class imbalance in itself. The class imbalance is (really) bad, but at the least that feels like 50/50 odds. Having undergeared or new players in your team is bad as well, but again feels like 50/50 odds. Having a premade on your side are a lot worse than 50/50 odds though. as of the 12 spots remaining only 4 solo queuers will be 'lucky' enough to be on the side of the premade. (not that I particularly enjoy that scenario either) (And no it is not Bioware's fault other than that they should either completely disallow them in solo queue or change matchmaking so that a premade only gets to play if there is also a premade at the other side. Or even better if there are two premades on each side. I do not particularly enjoy it if I am 'lucky' enough to have one on my side and none on the other side either. Then again I am pretty sure that if they were to implement such a change most premades would immeadiately fall apart... if they just enjoy the group play so much and it is not because of the advantage it gives versus solo players group ranked should be booming)

ROFL.. can already picture the newsbroadcast... Darth Marr slain by a single korslug while on a leisurely stroll on Korriban That being said I do have some serious concerns about the change though. 1. The xp scaling sounds nice but in reality is worthless. People will be at 65 incredibly fast and from then on the xp they get is zero so... no value at all there imo. 2. With 1 what needs to be scaled then is the loot and the rewards... this may make it worthwhile for players. If this does not happen I think of it as a really bad change. The main reason I sometimes play lower level content again with a higher level char is not the story. It is either to farm reputation or because I want to solo fi a heroic 4 that I did not do before. Sounds to me that both will become a much bigger timesink than they currently are and soloing heroic 4s may become a no go. As stated in 1 the xp scaling seems meaningless to me so what is really needed is loot and reward scaling...

So you run premades in lowbies? Guess you must feel good about yourself. Lowbies are usually full of brand new players who have no clue yet at all about how the warzone works let alone something like bolster. I think premades in midbies or l60 are already a huge advantage but in lowbies they just suck completely. What you do not realize - or just don't care about in order to inflate your ego - is that what you and people like you are doing is dramatically reducing the number of players who could get into liking pvp. Honestly when I play in lowbies usually 70% of my team is lower than 21 so even if they knew they could not have full expertise. I'd say the average expertise in a pug in lowbies hovers around the low 1000. Then the players will often be brand new so they won't even know the map - let alone other classes or how to cooperate. On TRE there is one guild that seems to run premades all the time in lowbies lately... even for me and I do know what I am doing and have the intention of levelling up this toon as I know pvp can be a lot of fun the effect is that I will just do the minimum to complete the dailies and then not pvp in lowbies anymore. I can sortof imagine how discouraging it is for a new player. The funny thing is that I find that the individual players of this guild are not even that good players. In the rare occasions that they don't gang up 4 to 1 on someone and I get to one on one one of theirs they die rather easily...

http://www.swtor.com/user/ce/2e76ki

Same it means I may not be able to bubble when I want to and I lose the blinds and selfheals. I also don't bubble other sorcerors unless I see that they are losing health fast and unbubbled. Mind you this is from a PVP perspective. I usually look at the group before the match and make a geometric shape in my head of who is not a sorceror so I only bubble those. Works pretty well provided not too many people dc or ragequit

This one I actually like and it does fit in well with the existing toolset. I.e. snipers already have the stealth detection but overall it is very so - so and in arena's it is completely useless.

Another possible route is PVP. You can get a set of 156 (or was it 158) armor fairly fast in PVP, with the advantage of bolster so you will be less gimped in PVP than in PVE if your current gear is crap. If not 55 already I would recommend you to do the rest of your levelling in PVP so you can start saving comms for the gear.

No, don't flatter yourself - assuming you are playing a sniper that is - it really is because they are quick kills. And once you can get a 4-3 advantage the match is won 95% of the time. So in almost every match I play the first target is not 'the most dangerous foe' but it is whoever can be killed the fastest. And that means it is usually the sniper. (and btw almost every class can deal incredible amounts of damage when left alone.) Snipers are fun in the warzones - one of the top classes sub 55, still OK at 55 (but definitely not one of the top classes there anymore either imo, I think the main reason they do OK in there is that in most matches people don't focus and as a sniper you tend to stay a bit at the fray of the battle so you don't get targeted so much due to the tunnel vision effect). In Arena's I find them pretty useless and 75% of the time very frustrating as you are usually the first to die in every single round. I don't know how to fix it though. Ie I don't see snipers getting heals or stealth (although if you think about it there is a lot of logic in giving stealth to snipers... they usually are hidden not?), so that basically means it limits the defensive options to a better shield - better crowd control. Personally I think I would just settle for making snipers standout as a DPS class again. Ie rather than boosting defense, boost offense. There are many DPS classes that are on par with or better than snipers at 55 and they have (much) better defenses as well. I.e. I really don't see why a class that has stealth and or heal abilities should also be able to do similar or better damage than a class that has neither of the two. (and yes then we might really get targeted because of the high amounts of damage)