Everyone seems to be misuing the terms "diminishing returns". Look, all stats have diminishing returns from even the first 1 point in it. Try it out in your character pane : equip one piece of centurion, look at your expertise, then equip another one. What the OP is asking is: why might people not wear full BM gear, or have to mod it? There are a few reasons. 1. The enhancements on BM gear suck. You can get by with 3 pieces of +accuracy rating gear in PVP to achieve 105% tech accuracy to overcome the base 5% defense all classes have. 1 piece is forced upon you by the BM earpiece, so you only need 2 more from your armor. The funny thing is all 5 BM set pieces have accuracy in the enhancement slot. I would swap 3 of them out for enhancements from the Champion set that do NOT have accuracy. Yes they are level 56 enhancements: but at least they have more useful stats. 2. From a mathematical point of view, it would make sense to swap out Expertise for more base stats (Cunning + Endurance) by swapping a BM piece to a Rakata piece only if the loss in % in expertise was more than offset by the gain in % damage and % hp from the extra Cunning and Endurance. The exact breakpoint differs from character to character. But the differences are so minor as to be almost negligable. You have 14 slots on your character - 1 will be taken with your Matrix Cube, so you have 13 slots to play with. You can go for 11 slots PVP which give you about 10.5% expertise, then wear 2 Rakata pieces. Going for all 13 slots PVP will give you maybe about 11.5% expertise but you'll lose about 40 Cunning and 40 Endurance. The difference in gearing is something miniscule, on the order of 0.5% more or less damage done, honestly don't even think about it. Just wear the best pieces you can get, BM or Rakata. Your skill and spec matter a lot more than whether you're wearing full BM or a mix of Rakata. ---

Both Marks and Lethality do an absolute crap-tonne of damage, whether or not you went full Marks / Full Lethality, or hybrid Marks/Eng or hybrid Lethality/Eng. I think anyone who has BM gear and played Sniper extensively can tell you both specs are good, it just depends on what playstyle you prefer. For me the biggest difference would be fighting good Scoundrels and Shadows: can't use Cull against them because they instant cleanse C-Grenade, and SoS alone isn't good enough damage to win the 1v1.... while on the other hand Marks can struggle against heavy armor. Yes you can viably use SoS + Explosive Probe for good single target damage if you're afraid of breaking CC, but after that you've got nothing if the target isn't dead yet, while Marks still has Snipe+Followthrough+Ambush.

After hearing people claim they can do 500k as a sniper with a pure single target spec I tried it out... marksman... I'm definitely doing less damage than lethality but 500k as pure single target spec is possible. I think I'm a convert away from Lethality now ... you apparently don't have to pad meters with AOE to acheive high damage numbers as a Sniper.

The fact that Snipers have less escape mechanisms is deliberate - this is to offset how much harder it is for melee to get onto a Sniper in the first place. Being in cover prevents any kind of gap closers, so Marauders / Juggernauts / Powertechs can't leap directly into melee. Sorcerors for example, don't get this protection: but they have Force Speed, which as you mention, allows them to get away. Snipers have a proactive defense - preventing themselves from being engaged in melee. Sorcerors have a reactive defense - they escape from melee once they are engaged. If you want Snipers to have BOTH forms of defense, they would be overpowered, and I think Sorcs will soon start to ask for immunity to gap closers too. --- Also, a lot of playing as a Sniper relies on your team not messing up your immobilizes. I'll give you a hypothetical example of what I do when a very geared Sentinel tries to kill me (double dark blue lightsabers ftw). He's running towards me from 40m range. Eventually you'll be able to tell the intentions of each player from a distance, but a fair call that if someone is running DIRECTLY towards you, he's coming for you. At 35m I legshot him. This leaves him stuck there for 5 seconds. I ignore him and continue killing his team. He starts running towards me again! He can't charge though, so he just has to walk. He gets into melee range after about 4 seconds. I trigger cover pulse. He gets knocked back out to range, and immobilized for another 5 seconds. I continue killing his team. He tries to come back into melee range again, by now legshot is ready I immobilize him for another 5 seconds. I continue killing his team. See how ridiculous this is? I haven't even used Debilitate yet. I can do this all day. Cover pulse and legshot have very short cooldowns (20 seconds and 10 seconds talented) and our 4 second stun (Debilitate) has the shortest cooldown in the game at 30 seconds once talented. We don't need an escape mechanism because most melee have a hard time getting to us. I must emphasize this point though: don't break your own immobilizes. Cover Pulse and Legshot give you a combined of something like 12 seconds breathing room against melee, once you consider the extra distance he has to cover due to the knockback. If your friend is breaking your immobilizes, well, then it's a 2v1 situation and if you lose you should be ashamed, just DPS him down =) ---

the % bolstering is stronger at lower levels to compensate for lack of talent points. basically yes you have less talents, but your damage and armor are increased. at level 12, my Sorc / Sage had a whopping 45% damage reduction due to armor. that's more than heavy armor users get at 50. by the time my Sorc / Sage levelled up to level 42, this damage reduction due to armor had dropped to about 15%.

I'm playing a hybrid dps sorc which is purely proc based but I never look at the GUI - the game helpfully lets me know when the proc is up by playing a graphic on my character. And if I miss the graphic, my character continues to glow blue as long as Wrath is up. And hypothetically, if there were 300 skills in the game, each of them having a unique purpose? In the first place no one would be able to design such a system. But if there was, I would love to try and play it: I suspect the skill gap between the bad players who can't even handle 30 skills and the good players who master all 300 would be gigantic. Look forward to seeing how I stomp you in that game =)

If you want to play a game with less skills there are plenty of them out there. For example, Battlefield 3, you can have very exciting PVP battles in that game I hear, you only have two weapons. Or you could play DOTA, you only have 2-3 attacks. Part of what makes an MMORPG what it is is the sheer diversity of skills that exist. Plenty of people enjoy it: I certainly do. It helps seperate the bad players from the good players who can actually handle and utilize 20-30 skills to its maximum potential. Why your idea wouldn't work - if you consolidated charge and intercede into one skill, you would lose the ability to use them consecutively. for example, when running the ball in huttball, you could intercede forward to an ally, and then charge again towards an enemy, covering a huge distance. it's a dumbing down of the game - you make it easier and simpler for people, but it becomes less tactically rich game. - combining smash with aoe slow, I don't even know where to begin... so you want to make this an ability that does high damage, has a stun, and also leaves a lingering slow? In which case I would like sorcs stun to also apply full DOT stacks, snipers going into cover also apply ballistic shield and entrench... why not make stealth openers also apply a snare. There is a reason all skills have limitations and niche uses - because it allows players to make a choice, and choosing the right skill to use requires skill. - combining the two lightsabre throws again reduces the tactical options available. Right now if the enemy is at 35% hp, you can do your normal throw to drop him to 20%, then use your execute throw to finish him off. If you combined both the skills you wouldn't be able to do that. ---- In summary, you're asking for a dumbed down game with limited tactical options because your brain and fingers aren't fast enough to handle it. I may suggest you go to a simpler and easier game instead of playing SWTOR.

if anything i would expect sniper nerfs, and i play a sniper BM main... but that's just me being pessimistic.

That being said, I do play a Marksman / Eng hybrid now because it's that much easier to get the 5k crit medals although you do less overall AOE damage. With optimal gear you can be scoring 5k crits on even heavy armor (troopers, guardians) and have no problems hitting 300k damage. You can go up to 6k crits or 7k crits if you have the WZ +15% buff up.

http://i42.tinypic.com/23rwit.jpg I have many examples of games above 600k but I'm stuffed I'm going to upload them all. I'm running full lethality 2/8/31 because I prefer to have my single target burst damage from Cull to take down healers. A fully critted Cull with all buffs and including WZ +15% up can do 8k to 9k damage. (you can achieve these numbers without BM gear, easily)

Good to know, excellent response, thanks. Yes, Orbital Strike features very prominently in Voidstar games and I must say turns games around on its own.

Thanks for the reply... yes the 500k and 600k numbers were quoted from Voidstar, which is the only true DPS test anyway, as you can easily achieve very little damage done in Civil War and Huttball if you play to the objectives. A half channel time fully critted Force Lightning with an instant crit Chain Lightning at the end of it does sound extremely potent, I must say... looking forward to trying it out, and all the various specs that you mentioned. Sounds like a great class to play though, with interesting proc mechanics. (there are no "Proc" mechanics on the Lethality sniper, the only thing you need to watch out for is healers cleansing your dots which you don't have control over anyway)

Since my server died (along with my BM sniper) I have decided to reroll on another server, this time as a Sorceror. As a Sniper, my peak damage is around 600k damage in Lethality spec, but 500k is a more typical warzone. I'm only 24 on the Sorc, but looking at his skills I'm suddenly unsure whether this class can output the sheer damage that a Sniper can, hence I'm turning to you guys for advice. My questions: Will I see these sorts of damage numbers on a Sorc, with optimal play and gear? Only on certain specs? There seem to be 4 specs that are played (Lightning, Madness, Hybrid with more Madness and Hybrid with more Lightning) - which one in theory has the most damage potential, and will they be able to hit 500k damage? I've noticed Madness looks a bit like Lethality: any comments from anyone who has played both? They seem similar except Madness is missing some serious burst damage that Cull+Takedown gives to Snipers. (with relics+adrenals Cull can do 8k - most of it internal and not mitigatable - then you use your execution ability on the target) What's the equivalent burst for Sorcerors to kill someone that absolutely needs to die this instant? Wrathed Crushing Darkness? I have a concern that Sorc damage can simply be healed through - how do Sorcs deal with healers? Also how do Sorcs deal with melee? Initially it feels like Sorcerors have less options when being trained by a determined Sentinel... 1. No Force Leap Immunity (Snipers cover...) 2. Stun is 50s cooldown versus Sniper having a 30s cooldown... 3. No natural immobilize versus Sniper having CoverPulse (20s cooldown) and Legshot (12s cooldown) both being 5s immobilizes... not sure if Sorcs typically spec into Bindings In games when BM Sents get told to stick on me (in premades) I just kite and ignore them as Sniper... chaining back to back 5s immobilizes and 4s stuns and being generally immune to Force Leap. But I can see this being a problem if a Sentinel jumps on you as Sorc and refuses to let go... do you just eat the damage? Force Leap has a shorter cooldown than Overload...

Going to add a bit more sniper advice in addition to what is said above. (just to establish some credentials, it's rare for me to do less than 400k, and i sometimes break 600k - like this http://i42.tinypic.com/23rwit.jpg) I assume you're going to be playing Lethality at high levels, since it's the most powerful sniper spec right now, say 2/8/31 - we'll have to see how it plays out later after DOTs no longer interrupt caps. Number 1 - Utility Snipers are balanced around having huge range. With the PVP set, Takedown has 40m, and Distract has 35m. This means you never tunnel vision one target unless it needs to die. When you are fighting, you aren't playing 1v1 - you are looking at the game from a team perspective. You have to think of yourself as a utility class. Don't think about damage first. You can interrupt a Grav Round, Force Lightning, or Heal every 12 seconds. It has no cost to you and has a 35m range. Do it. Flashbang is possibly the best CC ever, it is instant cast, ranged, and aoe. You can catch 4 people together as they appear out of the door, giving your team time to cap or score - no other class can do this. Legshot is available every 12 seconds, and it's as good as a 5 second stun on melee classes - or even healers. It's all about target choice: it's just as easy to use any of these skills for zero effect, or use them in game winning plays. Example of game winning plays: Your team has just cleared one side in Voidstar, and has started to cap... the defender barrier opens and 4 enemy player stream out, ready to interrupt the cap. But you've already targeted them from before the barrier opened, the moment the barrier opens you hit them all with a flashbang... You are focusing down the enemy ball carrier in Huttball, you notice an enemy healer on the side casting a long heal. You use Distraction on the healer, interrupting the heal, while not slowing your DPS at all - you can fire Distract DURING the GCD of your normal damage rotation. (try it: when you use instant Weakening Blast / Grenade / Dart / Takedown, all skills go on the 1.5 second cooldown except for Distract) Number 2 : Energy Management. Getting high damage numbers is simple: keep your energy in the max regen range at all times, do not ever cap out on energy, and make sure to use your highest damage-per-energy abilities. Also, ANY time you have a spare GCD available, make sure you rifle shot. This alone will net you around 500k damage, but it's easier said than done. It's a PVE related skill, really, everyone works it out in the end, but I'll provide some pointers. So at the start, you survey the enemy team as they stream in. Sort out in your mind who your interrupt targets will be (Commandos, Sages). Sort out who your Legtrap targets will be (Melee). Sort out who your CC targets will be (Snipers, they can't be interrupted in any other way, Operatives, too many instants). While you are sorting this out in your mind, corrosive dart everyone you can safely - the ones you know won't be needing a CC or legshot. If you see a cluster of 3 people, or even 2, use your judgement, drop your corrosive grenade. By this time, you should have 6 dots up, more or less, yielding an extra 1 energy per second regeneration. And by now you should have gotten a feel for the fight - basically deciding, of all the enemies in play right now, which one is the best target? NOW can you begin your burst damage, which is costly in terms of energy but you will get back a fair bit from your DOTs. You drop to below 50 energy only if you have an Adrenaline Probe up or you absolutely need that enemy killed. Remember as Lethality that Series of Shots, Ambush+Explosive Probe still do very heavy damage. The key to managing energy is to understand that your dots are an upfront investment of 15-20 energy, which you slowly get back about half later. You use the first 6 seconds of the fight "storing" up energy in those dots, then when you get it back later in the next 10 seconds you will use it for burst damage. You need the first 6 seconds to pick the right target anyway, it's not always wise to blindly burst the first target you see. If you see 4-5 enemies clustered together, throw a fragmentation grenade. And of course, orbital bombardment. You get 4 pulses of it over 12 seconds in your PVP set, and it's always a net damage increase for me over anything else I could possibly use energy for. You just have to be creative. You can aim it so you hit people just on the very edge of it (misleading AOE indictor, lol) ... force entrenched snipers to move ... pretty much "guarantee" the bomb explodes on voidstar (12 seconds, no one can defuse or even cap nodes on alderran)... you can actually force enemies to stand in it (cast it on the side turret in Alderaan, and kite enemies round and around it using your dots and pretend to cap, they will have to stand in your orbital strike zone to interrupt). With relic+adrenal+pvp 15% boost I've critted 4600+ per player with a single orbital strike pulse. ---

There is a reason those franchises are successful. I predict SWTOR will fade away into nothing if they continue to alienate the PVP community.

Exactly as the title says. This game basically rewards luck, not skill. I am definitely in the top 1% of skilled players on my server (9 games out of 10 I will top kills and damage, and no one can consistently match my numbers, most players even those in full battlemaster will achieve about half my numbers). Yet being in the top 1% skilled I am probably in the bottom 1% of luck as far as battlemaster token drops go. Who in Bioware could possibly have thought this god-awful sham of a system you have right now is a good idea? The level of incompetence is astounding. There is no successful PVP system that relies on random luck for items. Look at the AAA titles that are the leaders of their genre: Battlefield 3. World of Warcraft. DOTA2. These games cater to the PVP players by ensuring skill and item progression is at a steady and controllable rate. SWTOR is obviously not a AAA title if it cannot get this one detail right.

http://i42.tinypic.com/23rwit.jpg 610k damage done. Post surge nerf, not yet rank 60, mostly champion gear, solo queued, faced a republic premade. I enjoy a pretty good winrate in PVP solo queueing, on the weekend over about 30 games I won about 80% of them. Voidstar numbers are typically 500k for me regardless of win or loss. It is disappointing that I score 500k while the next highest dps can someones only make 200k on voidstar... but that's how the game works. Playing a sniper isn't about the damage though. Many people will tell you that. It's about hanging around near the defenders gate when it opens up so you can Flashbang 3-4 enemies at once as they come out (what other class has a ranged AOE 8 second CC that is instant cast???) It's about how many melee you can legshot out of combat and delay their damage by 5 seconds. It's about keeping distract on cooldown always (over the course of some games I probably interrupt about 10 grav rounds and 5 telekinesis and 5 heals). You have to watch the entire battlefield, interrupt off-targets, you don't tunnel vision, you use every single skill you have. I'm pretty happy when people reroll away from snipers, because getting rid of bad snipers is always a good thing.

Issue: Of the whole spectrum of players who solo queue in play this game, there are weak players who maintain a poor 25% win rate in WZ, while there are strong players who maintain a 75% win rate in WZ. This is either due to experience, innate skill, gear, or ability to play in premades. I am aware there are plans for rated WZ: this will not help players who solo queue, who will make up the majority of the population. Why this is a problem: New players find the PVP experience to be unfair, and are likely to get discouraged and leave the game. This prevents new players from entering the pool and revitalizing the community. This is a difficult problem to overcome - there have been some novel solutions used by various games in various genres. Solution: I suggest using a simple ELO type system similar to ones used by Starcraft, League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth, etc. Aim: Create a system which results in fair matches for all players, allowing inexperienced players to match against other inexperienced players while they are learning the game. How you know you've achieved it: Everyone eventually reaches a 50% win rate, give or take 5%-10%, regardless of they're a bad player in the bottom 10% or top player in the top 10%. Players are picked from the queue pool and matched based on their Warzone Rating, which is the system's estimate of how skilled they are. The system strives to create matches where the sum of each team's Warzone Rating is roughly similar. Players gain rating upon winning a match, and lose rating upon losing a match. Players who are bad will have a below average win rate, and lose rating continually - they face lower and lower skilled opponents, up to a point where they are able to achieve a 50% win rate, at which point their rating stabilizes.

There have been many players I know who are incredibly angry at Bioware and their entire dev team for how Battlemaster bags are handled. These are players who are very talented: win the majority of their warzones - but are held back from upgrading their gear because of luck. Opening 10 bags with zero tokens? 20 bags? How far must it go before the Bioware acknowledges this is unacceptable? How could anyone in Bioware even think that rewarding players for having good luck is a good idea, as opposed to rewarding players for spending more time at the game or being skilled? Solution: Make every Battlemaster bag drop 1 token, but multiply the cost of all BM items by 4. Problem solved.

I don't think you understand the point of Voidstar. It's not meant to be a fair fight. The attackers are supposed to win. The shield is part of their advantage. The only question is, how fast they can do it, and how long the defenders can delay the inevitable. That's why you get to switch sides. Voidstar is a game with attacker's advantage. The opposite to this would be Alderaan. In Alderaan, the defenders have the advantage, because they spawn closer to the objective. Alderaan is a game with defender's advantage. Huttball is equal. Thumbs up to Bioware for the variety in our PVP =)

By the way, the +5m on distraction is the main reason you want the 4 set. I initially thought the 4 set was useless. That was before I got geared up and learned to play the class though. Just for reference, an average game in voidstar would be 500k, good game 600k, and pretty regularly score the 5k medal, and I definitely influence the course of the games I play (solo queueing 20 games on the weekend my win rate was over 80%, every day my daily gets smashed out in 3 straight wins). Not that anyone has to believe me, but just saying... Yes, if you only tunnel vision your current target until he is dead, the 4 set bonus is useless. The set bonus is designed for higher level skilled sniper play. where you are trying to control the battlefield. I like it. This means making sure your distract and takedown are used as often as possible - and very often, not on the current target you are killing. Target selection and priority for interrupts is a rather more advanced art, but I can tell you it's often not going to be the target you are shooting. Positioning is vital, and the +5m range on distract and takedown means you have 5m less to move in the fight.

thanks for the laugh, OP, great thread =P

I get it about half the games I'm in as Lethality. Just to show the mechanics of it with some quick math, base damage of Ambush is about 3000, buffed to 3700 with relic+adrenal. Assume you have 74% surge, which is a good number to be at. You need a 5000 crit, so to achieve that your base hit after armor reduction must be 2875. If your Ambush hit is 3700 before armor reduction, and you need it to hit for 2875 damage after reduction.. means you can't hit anyone with more than 22% damage reduction. Full medium armor (rating 136) gives about 24% damage reduction so it would appear you can't reliably achieve 5k crits on medium armor wearers... but you can fix that with Shatter Shot. Dropping from about 3450 to 2750 armor rating will drop their damage reduction from 24% to about 20%. This is assuming you have equal Expertise to your opponents. So yes it's definitely possible to get 5k crits on light / medium armor wearers, but you have to be pretty alert to things that can mess you up. 1. Sorceror / Sage bubble - watch for the animation, watch for the debuff. Make sure you have quick fingers. Good players will notice the Ambush graphic appear on their character and reflexively hit their bubble. You need equally good reflexes to cancel your Ambush and immediately go to Series of Shots -> Ambush, which should be enough to break the bubble and still score the 5k crit. Alternatively, if enemy could LOS you, (Series of Shots + Ambush takes 4+ seconds total with Tarqet Acquired) you could gamble and do Ambush+Explosive Probe - Explosive Probe will trigger first, hopefully taking out the shield, then your Ambush lands and hopefully crits. 2. Snipers / Gunslingers - Ballistic Dampers are your enemy. Only Lethality/Dirty Fighting are good targets. Also in general there's Evasion - 3 seconds of 100% dodge, which again, smart players will trigger the moment they see your Ambush graphic play. Just cancel your Ambush, wait it out, and fire again. 3. Marauders have so many sources of damage reduction it's almost not worth targeting them, but I have scored some 5k crits on them. 4. Flashbang can help you score the crit on targets that have reflexive moves that counter your Ambush (bubble, ballistic dampers, evasion, etc) You only get 4 chances to score the 5k crit per match, with a crit chance of 40%, your chances are pretty good. Use Entrench and Ballistic Shield so you don't get CCed while your relics and adrenals are up.

For a run-and-gun playstyle you are looking at getting a Lethality sniper. Your standard attacks would be Corrosive Grenade, Corrosive Dart, Weakening Blast, Cull, Takedown. Of these 5 skills, 4 can be done on the move while chasing a target / kiting a melee, and only 1 needs you to be stationary (Cull is a 3 second channel) No other class really offers a run and gun playstyle: Mercs require you to stand still to fire Tracer Missile (their bread and butter skill) while Sorcs also need to stand still for most of their rotation.

Well what's more relevant is the lightsaber combat forms, rather than the "class" since advances classes isn't a concept that was used in the original story. Yoda would have mainly used the Ataru form (Combat tree, Sentinal) which is an acrobatic fighting form emphasizing speed and agility. Mace Windu would have mainly used the Juyo form (Watchman tree, Sentinel) which is an aggressive form emphasizing vicious attacks. Anakin Skywalker mainly used the Shien form (Vigilance tree, Guardian) which is an aggressive form which emphasizes power attacks, physical strength, and devastating counter attacks. Obi-Wan Kenobi mainly used the Soresu form (Defense tree, Guardian) which is a defensive form relying on economy of motion and defensive technique in order to outlast opponents. So we have two Guardians and two Sentinels.. what about the Consulars?? Consular Sages (Jedi Diplomats, really) learned the Niman form for self defense: it was meant to be a balanced style and required less time to master, but less effective for combat. They all died in the clone wars at geonosis and the later purge, so there are none by the time of A New Hope =P Consular Shadows aren't canon I believe...