I've never had a problem killing mercs.

Yeah, you got it. I need to talk to some top tier operatives to confirm because I haven't played in five years, but the parses I'm doing support volatile substance as being our main source of burst now, with lacerates proc'ed off of collaterals as secondary. so at range, i'd volatile, c-dart while closing. or at melee range, vol, vs (shiv), and then c-dart or if you want to stun lock, just lacerate off collaterals and backstab after a debil for acid blade and a hard stun that covers most of the duration of acid blade, so you can flash if you need it without it breaking due to a DoT like c-dart. with volatile's sunder running, backstab becomes a utility, and not so much an opener anymore. Its a different playstyle then what I'm used to, and probably every operative that's taken a break. But the numbers seem to support this direction in playstyle. Its all simplification of the mechanics, which is pretty sad to see, the high skill cap was always appealing, I really enjoyed playing carnage marauder as well due to the high APM required to do well. I hit a lot of buttons when I play, its natural to me. I couldn't handle a two button arsenal merc. I would go crazy with boredom.

Yeah explosive probe was the burst that people just didn't expect. Volatile substance is definitely in that vein though. They don't see the setup until its too late. I would definitely push a c-dart right after VS now unless you don't think you can burst them down before the CC midgame starts. You can now use the talent for backstab and stab them in the face and apply acid blade, which is hilarious to me. Internal damage completely bypasses damage reduction mitigation, so it is superior to all other forms of damage for us, except in the case where a shadow, or sentinel pops tech/force immunity, in that case you want to hit them with overload shot for the kill, or just wait it out if you're not going to secure it.

We could beat around the bush here, but the reality is that women gravitate to healers and tend to eschew evil, thus end up pocket healing their significant other, usually on the republic side. It’s crazy that this trend transcends space and time. This was true in the early days, and on several different servers. Thus, you end up facing 3 or more healers probably capable of top tier raid healing, and you’re lucky to have one healer that keeps getting ganked nonstop because nobody is guarding them, or the only jug is lolsmash aoe rage spec.

Valor 100 since 2012 and no manhunter achievement. Feelsbadman. I am a huge proponent of shaming people into becoming better PvPers. I think its working good so far. Every time I come out of stealth everyone wants to give me a hug.

I haven’t played since 1.3, but I know how to math, I was in the closed beta, and I was one of the very first players to view and parse the combat log in this game due to being an officer in a top ten global progression guild (Bioware copied our raid force to the pts in order to test out EC). I was also an active leader in the operative community, probably the very first one to 50 on live, and gave away my own personal theorycrafting to the community. Finally, I made a string of PvP videos to prove that in the right hands, concealment was fine. I did this after the most brutal nerfs to the class at launch. I 1vx’ed, 1v1’ed the best shadow tank on my server before their nerf, and pretty much terrorized the whole republic faction on wound in the force. Carnage is in a really good place. I have no gear, my marauder is like level 52 and wearing EC HM raid gear still and I melted a guy 12 levels above me so fast, half their team started focusing me down for the rest of the warzone. It has always been the highest APM spec in the entire game. If you’re not doing well, you aren’t hitting enough buttons. I constantly see people that should be decent given their valor title, or legendary player status white bar me in two seconds that clearly lack understanding of the fundamentals in this game, like resolve. And I see a ton of people that can’t identify healers without marks, or outright ignore them and beat on dps, and even when marked they don’t interrupt heals or abilities. I see a ton of players think they are pvp gods, but literally get globalled while backpedaling, without either pocket healers, guard, or three other teammates in close proximity at all times.

A new challenger appears..

I also came from wow where I was a rank 1 gladiator rogue for a couple of seasons, and I played eq and uo on pvp servers before that. I was an operative in the closed beta, and one of, if not the first one to 50 on live. Before the nerfs started rolling in, I was fully min/maxed in BM gear and one shotting pretty much everybody with 15k hidden strikes. The poor souls that survived, got stunlocked, and then subsequently two shot. It was fun ganking people who had no idea what they were doing, and probably belonged on a pve carebear server, but wildly broken if you know a modicum of mathematics, and know how to theorycraft. Every single republic player on Wound in the Force was waiting for my nerf, and they frequently told me so. The nerfs came, but I already knew how to play the class, so it didn't matter. I 1v1'ed two of the very best shadow tanks on the server when that class was ridiculously overpowered and nigh unkillable for most, and won (see my pvp video for the fights). It wasn't easy, but it did prove that it was possible. That, and other duels sealed my resolve. I didn't want to play anything else. I was also the pvp and raid officer, and later GM for "Working As Intended", a world wide #2 progression guild in the vanilla/EC era, and as much as I would have liked to have been able to raid on my operative, I had to go marauder. Bioware copied our characters to test out EC before it got pushed live, and that update made the combat log public, so I immediately started running parses with an editor a friend coded, and the numbers were dismal. Without constant access to stealth, I had pretty much no burst, so it just wasn't viable for us to have a concealment operative on the progression force. I've recently reactivated my account, and I'm getting up to speed with all of the new changes. While the skill cap has been dramatically lowered across the board, I think the addition of an escape, and a shadowstep are great for operatives, I haven't played since 2012, so there is quite a bit to catch up on. If this was the class at launch, I would have been able to raid at a top tier level on my operative, so I wish it would have come sooner. TLDR - I still love playing the concealment operative despite the nerfs.

It doesn't have to be a rated match to see the strength of the build. This hybrid medicine/concealment spec is by far and away the highest survivability build of any class in the game. It excels at solo node defense, and there is a degree of synergy, as its the only way you can vanish and pop right out and heal someone as a healer with most of your tools.

Created a Mr Robot profile Here. Dropped accuracy down to 102.90% and after several parses I only average 3 more misses on white damage. My main concern is overload shot on tech immune shadows/assassins as well.

This is a fair point, I personally enjoy the challenge, I don't pvp for 'stuff' I do it because I enjoy it. And while there are certainly clips that are pure entertainment value (read 5k+ crits) I also take on a fair amount of people that are in full war hero, and win, including a pre-nerf shadow tank.

On your first point, I play an op in pvp because I love the class, I don't really care if I top the damage chart. With that being said, I frequently outdamage both marauders, and bounty hunters in warzones. I have a powertech, and its extremely boring, the rotation is stupid, the class as pyro requires absolutely no skill whatsoever. I can rail shot people for 90% ArP at 30 meters every six seconds, and flame burst crits as hard as my hidden strike, and its a spammable ability. I don't find that at all fun, or challenging. As a five season rank 1 gladiator sub rogue from wow, concealment op is the closest thing to the classic thief/rogue archetype, a class that I have played for 15 years in mmo's. I don't want to play anything else, and I have a fully min/maxed raid geared marauder that I could gear for pvp if I so desired. On your second point, I disagree, I can strip a ball carrier faster than any other class including marauders, I can outright intercept the ball if the enemy team crosses my path and I am positioned correctly (I demonstrate this at the goal line in my last video). While the average player may not see the enemy team setting up for leap frog passes or pulls in huttball. I do, and I intimately know every class and spec in the game, and how to counter them. I know which heals to burn through, and which heals must be interrupted at all costs. Lets be honest here, a lot of people think concealment operatives are completely useless after their opener, yet I'm one of the few ops/scoundrels that have continually dispelled that fallacy in pvp videos since our very first major nerf. If you are a skilled player, you will excel in any role that you play, including a concealment operative. Stealth is an extremely powerful tool, but it is far from our only one.

I was referring to the crit component of cunning, stacking skill augments will allow you to have more play with power mods, as you won't need that extra crit mod to meet your target crit.

I don't use them, I probably would if I had two 26 armorings, but I stopped raiding on my op after I was able to finally see the numbers for myself on test before 1.2 went live. Skill augments are the cunning augments, I use them, not the crit ones. I can't login to the game right now, but I think i'm around 1850 cunning buffed with the biotech stim running.

Ok, this is sort of long winded, and typed on the fly, so bear with me here.. I am going to assume for the moment, that you lack power, this is a mistake as power boosts your overall base line damage more than cunning. While it isn't a tremendous amount more, it is noticeable. The vanilla war hero gear is obviously terrible, so to resolve the issue, of too much accuracy, and too little power we look at two mods. Enhancements - War Hero Field Tech Boots Mods - War Hero Field Medics Leggings (ensure that you maintain 105% special attack accuracy) Now since the 4pc set bonus is also terrible, the original operatives have always used the T1 raid PVE enforcer set bonus, as 15% extra chance to crit on backstab is simply amazing, and leaps and bounds more useful than anything else. To make this viable for PVP, we use BM armorings in the shells (as pre 1.2 shells carry the set bonus, and not the armoring), and the afore-mentioned mods and enhancements. To balance crit out, we look at a target of roughly 36%, if we add in our set bonus, that puts us at 51% crit chance on backstab, we run all 22 skill augments to help our crit, and give us more room for power on the mods. If we are still under our target for crit, we sub in some mods from War Hero Enforcer's Boots instead of the power mods to reach our target. Now that our damage is in line, we want to look at survivability, so we use 2 war-hero-trappers-mk-1-enhancer and 1 war-hero-trappers-mk-1-enhancer Whether you opt to use a power crystal or an expertise crystal is up to you, I use the latter, and that puts me at 1320 expertise, and about 800 power. You will be at about 80% surge, but its unavoidable, in a perfect world you would look to shave 5% of that off. -- I hope that helps, happy hunting!