The absolute insanity continues. Why you are so hell-bent on ruining your game?

Change is one thing, massive dumbing down to the point where the classes are unrecognizable is another. People come to the forums to speak out against it because they don't want the game they enjoy to be ruined.

As long as you're ready for the mass unsubbing that will ensue if you follow through on this ability pruning/dumbing down.

I strongly, strongly disagree with your belief that the number of keybinds/abilities for marauder- or for any of the other classes- needs to be reduced. Having to choose between losing certain integral abilities and losing other integral abilities is just completely unacceptable. It seems to me that no one asked for this- for you to just neuter and dumb down the classes this egregiously. All you need to do this expansion is to add these new ability-specific passives for zealous leap, lance, cauterize, etc. Those are actually cool. Could even add in a brand new ability too. But if anything resembling these "you get to choose which half of your class's existing abilities you get to keep" changes go through when 7.0 actually hits, me and everyone I've been talking to about this will just be unsubbing. It just won't be the same game that we love. Don't do this.

Here is my graph comparing the overage dmg output of weapon amps (red) vs arpen amps (black) for fury, with X obviously being the target's armor value. The intersection of the lines, around 7500 armor, is where it shows arpen amps surpassing weapon amps for armor values higher than that. This is just below the medium armor class value. If I knew I was always only going to hit light armor classes- or even just light and medium- I guess I'd use weapon amps for fury too. Something that may result in arriving at an intersection value a bit higher than the one shown here would be using solely a pve dummy parse as the damage profile you use to assign the percentages of white, kinetic yellow (doesn't go through armor), and internal yellow (goes through armor) dmg that fury does. Raging burst, crush, scream, smash, and choke collectively comprise a higher % of fury's damage done in pvp than they collectively do in pve, and weapon dmg amps don't boost their dmg. Main reasons for this shift in white/yellow dmg between dummy parses and pvp are the 10m range on those abilities (except smash), and the prevalence of anti-white dmg cooldowns. Smaller factors include not using choke or smash on a dummy parse at all (fury smash is meh, but still used sometimes), crush cc immunity, etc. Another small relevant factor that's not included in the graph is the little-known fact that when DR from spec passives and DCDs are added to the calculation, arpen becomes relatively more valuable. This may not be intuitive, but it's how the math works out. To illustrate the principle using an extreme example: if someone had 20% DR from armor, and popped a +75% DR dcd, they would be at 95% DR. If you had enough arpen to reduce their DR from armor down to 15%, their total DR would then be 90%, causing you to do 2x as much damage to them (10% vs 5% dmg going through). When you're hitting something like a deception sin, which basically has constant uptime on both 15% and 9% DR passives, the effect of the principle is definitely noticeable. K i'll stop now. And again, the actual performance differences at play here are small, so this is basically just academic.

On what class/spec....

That's what the X is for.....

Definitely have, but yeah I guess I didn't explicitly mention that in my post. Though why else would I bring up the armor formula if I wasn't putting player armor values into it lol

If you want the formula, it's 100x/(x+26975) for % DR from armor. Full arpen amps (23.5% arpen) means X gets a 0.765 multiplier, negating a decent chunk of their DR from armor. For most specs, the flat damage boost from weapon/force/tech/dot amps will overtake the benefit of that DR chunk, but for specs with mixed white/yellow damage profiles, with little to no internal/elemental damage, the benefit from any of those listed amps will be not be high enough to overtake the DR chunk benefit. Arsenal rage and fury are the best examples, with a couple other specs doing just fine with arpen. Definitely no using arpen on sorcs, ops, snipers, or even PTs (though arpen isn't that much worse than tech dmg for AP).

Remember that "I did well with X build" is irrelevant to the academic conversation of what the best build is, when the difference between the "right build" and "wrong build" is at the most a couple % difference dps, and more likely <1% difference. Skill is an overwhelmingly bigger factor, obviously. I happen to go over 4k crit on some classes because the negligible loss in average dps is irrelevant, and I'd rather my damage profile be slightly spikier. Mastery/power/crit are honestly far more balanced vs each other than almost anyone realizes. Having the proper amps matters a bit more than having the right crit rating, but it's still not a big deal, especially for the specs that receive almost the same benefit from a few different amps, like veng. And yeah anyone who says arpen is never best for pvp is definitely wrong.

Actually there is a full understanding of how arpen works in pvp. The math has all been figured out. Arpen is the best amp for several specs. After the nerf to death knell, arpen may be slightly more pve dps than weapon dmg for deception, but I still use weapon dmg because maximizing burst is priority.

It's not op because it makes the user too survivable, it's just a terribly designed set that makes the game less fun by forcing people not to use any important abilities for a significant fraction of the match. Not to mention it being RNG. It's also a major reason why jug tank is miles ahead of the other 2 tanks. It has no counter other than dodging the roar, which shouldn't happen often if the warrior is decent. You may worry that it would suck for everyone who bought the set- myself included- but it really would be a good thing for all if it was just deleted from the game and replaced with some other non-rng set that doesn't turn matches into playing-around-FB snoozefests

Ah yes, 3 second channels. Carry on then 🤣

Ties go the team with the least deaths. This is how many voidstars were decided back in ranked 8s

It's not supposed to be something you can stand in the middle of so that stealthers can't sap you. It's for using reactively right after they pop vanish, or even right before they pop it. L2P issue

Nope, you just don't know how to use it. And you should be refreshing dots far more often than their duration- there's no risk they fall off. IO just requires more attention than most specs: this is a L2P issue

Don't worry about having too high crit, unless you're a pve super min/maxer. I have done a lot of math for this game, and can tell you that the crit DR curve is not that steep. Even at 4500 crit rating, you get very nearly the same dps gain per 1 crit rating as you do per 1 power/mastery rating

Phat already gave you the gist of it. Sweeping blasters ticks 4 times over the 3 second channel, and you'll almost always cancel it immediately after the second tick (or first, if your heat situation is dire) and go into your next ability. Think of it as a power shot replacement, except you have to aim it. Takes practice.

It's fast bc it only takes 2 seconds to send for it while otherwise doing nothing, and ... credit cost? Isn't it only a couple K per? I've never noticed it.

Weird- I don't know what to do with all my tech frags, I play/have optimally geared all the dps specs in the game, never pve, and don't even play that much anymore. Disintegrating treasure hunting mission returns for frags must make that much of a difference then. Try that.

Nah the dps boost from energized is puny. Once you get used to it, you'll take continuous fire over it even for single target. But you do you man- if BW balances IO with the assumption that people are still using energized and let continuous slip under the radar, I won't complain

Learn to use continuous fire. It's frustrating at first, and requires more skill, but it's the way to go.

Lemme guess: still using energized charges?

I mean this is wrong, but I much prefer IO so if bioware agrees with you, I won't complain lol. I can imagine why people might be of this opinion though, since the number of people playing IO anywhere close to correctly can probably be counted on one hand.

Not sure what you mean by this. You can buy CF from vendor, it's pretty much just a straight dps/hps boost, and it's not OP at all- in pvp at least. There's no comparison between CF and force bound.