Good players ONLY trinket shoot first. Everyone knows that.

You see, what you are failing to realize is, that if THE ONLY WAY you can kill a similarly geared/skilled opponent is to stack a relic and adrenal to get a damage edge over him, that is not balanced? I actually just hit 50 last night on my shadow, standard 31-0-10 spec (no not even the fotm FiB spec) and, while i'm not saying I did well by any means, I held my own and assisted my team in the proper ways. Ended the match, that we lost btw, with 11 medals and 50k protection. I got on my scoundrel (not WH geared, but full BM at least) and went into a similar match and didn't even kill a single person. Now my scrapper skills are probably rusty as I haven't played him in a little over a month, but shouldn't a burst damage class be able to...you know....do burst damage? Full shoot first get absorbed by sorc's shields, then i get knocked back and since I don't have a gap closer, have to drudge back to his face and sucker punch only to be stunned. but I have full resolve now, so I escape, dirty kick and start my rotation, only now he's escaped and popped another shield. Long story short, I get him to ~20% before he finally can get another knockback, and knocks me into the 5 or so rescuers that came long after he must have called incoming. Now on my shadow, I get jumped by a marauder, he has ~18k hpish, and I'm like "**** a WH roflrauder" so i knock him back, hit force slow and start kiting and using my projects/slow time to keep him off me. he ends up getting a charge off, as I haven't properly judged my kiting radius, he starts his ravage, but as soon as he charged my force speed goes and i dont even eat 1 of the hits, I have my full 3 stacks of LOLRocks and use my force potency to keep him around 25 meters away and slowed. At this point he pops invis, and I wait a few seconds and force wave again, he reappears right where he disappeared at and pops his dmage reduction shield (the 6s one that goes to 30 seconds if you hit him) and promptly gets another slow and i run away like a little girl. That shield wears off, he gets close at about 40%hp at this point and i'm still at 3/4. I hit him with a double strike, procing my auto project crit. Now lo and behold I still have a force potency charge left! So I pop my relic/wz adrenal hit my project and hit him for about 3k which put him into undying rage mode. promptly force stunned him and waited that one out. once the stun was over, he comes up, i slow time, and spinning strike execute him. Now you're probably going to say that he was a bad marauder, and I did all the stuff I should have to counter him, but he outgeared me heavily. and he didn't even stand a chance. Now a sorc barely outgears my scoundrel and I barely dented him? I know how to play my scoundrel, and I know how to shut down a caster and while all that went down, I didn't have the damage EVEN with my WZ adrenals and relics to get past his defenses. This is nothing new btw, I remember this happening ever since we got beat to death by Georg Zoeller for stunlocking entire servers and making them unsub. Assassins/shadows are better mechanically than operatives/scoundrels.

My shadow is about to hit 50, I have 3500 ranked WZ comms, and will have 2000 regular comms when I hit 50. My question is, Would it be better to outright buy the WH Weapon when I hit 50, and get recruit gear for the rest of it, since that piece of WH gear takes the longest to get? Or like you said, to use all my Ranked WZ comms as regular comms and get 5500 comms worth of BM gear and then do the rest recruit? I'm by no means a newbie when it comes to pvp, as my main is VR 7X, and my shadow leveled from ~34-49 solely through pvp and only pvp. Question is, will my skills combined with the WH saberstaff and recruit gear be enough to make me not suck totally?

This is very true. The fact of the matter is, that you can take an assassin and an operative, gear them for burst damage, spec them for burst damage, and put the exact same player behind them doing the best rotations possible and the assassin would pull far ahead of the operative simply because the assassin class has not been beaten to death by Bioware because people were stacking adrenals and relics. The assassin AC is just mechanically more powerful than the operative.

And I did not omit evasion/dodge or dirty kick to strengthen my point. The fact of the matter is, that dodge only dodges white damage. It's only useful aspect in that it clears all damage over time effects, which are force or tech, and is generally used only before a vanish so that you don't get knocked out of stealth. Exactly like Resilience before force cloak. I also did not mention dirty kick because it's a melee range only stun for 4 seconds, while force stun is a ranged stun for 4 seconds, making it infinitely more useful. I apologize for the mistake in the flashbang grenade, i haven't played my scoundrel in so long it escaped me. and as for a person saying that going tank means you're not a dps is rather inconsiderate, seeing how for an assassin, going darkness is the only viable dps spec available if you want to live longer than half a kill. Darkness assassins do almost as much damage as even a madness assassin, and live longer. Plus they have utility through their taunts, guards, pulls and other sort of damage reduction. Fact of the matter is, the only thing operatives do that shadows cannot do better is the aoe mez, and healing. Aoe mez is useful in a lot of ways, but as the OP was not posting about healing, it did not deem itself necessary in my advice.

Hybrid Op is a healer who can take care of themselves if need be. They are not a dps class. The OP was talking about a dps class. And your hybrid OP isn't going to last very long if you don't have a tanksin either guarding, or taunting the people wailing on him.

Maybe not burst down a healer, but you can control one for quite a long time and keep him from doing much of anything for several seconds. It's all about your knockbacks and pulls being used as interrupts, and timing your auto shock crits with force potency and warzone buffs/relics. Using an auto project crit in time with those can provide a nice set of burst damage and if you can double strike and proc another auto crit, do it twice in a row relatively effectively. I don't have the gear to burst down a geared healer at 50, but when I was in the 10-49 bracket I could get about 4k burst out of project/upheaval twice in a row with force potency. That's some pretty good burst in my opinion.

Assassin Benefits: as told from a shadow's perspective. Useful defensive cooldown's in Resilience and Deflection Force speed Force wave (knockback) Force pull (Talented KC) Spinning kick 2 second knockdown (usable out of stealth with talents) Taunt, single target + aoe (30% damage reduction for players not targeting you) Guard (if tankassassin) Force stun (30m 4s stun) Spinning strike finisher Operative Benefits: As told by a scoundrel's perspective. (all abilities shared by, or not as useful as a shadow/assassin left out) Underworld Medicine:Heal (3s cast time unless talented, interruptible) Flash Grenade: 6s AoE Mezmerize effect (breaks on damage Go assassin. The only thing an operative does that's better than shadow is their healing, but as you're wanting to dps, there is no reason to go operative unless you like being gimp.

Assassin. Do not question it. Operatives only heal. That is their job.

Right? You'd think that this bad of a bug wouldn't make it out of alpha, and yet they keep on ignoring it. If I lose out on WZ comms like that, I might as well unsub as if being stunlocked by teams of operatives. In fact, it's probably the teams of operatives doing it. MUST NERF THEM IMMEDIATELY

What's the concept behind the Arika build? force in balance just used as a 30m ranged aoe? because without the cooldown on force techniques force breach, instant mind crush proc, and sever force, you don't have any periodic effects to use to make the charges on FiB do anything, makin those talent points wasted. I'm just confused a bit

a team of 8 scrapper scoundrels/conc ops to just stunlock their entire team and force them to unsub. We'll destroy this game in seconds!

Mine would have to be after a huttball match had just ended ( they spanked us 6-0) and were /s trash talking for the last few seconds. We were on the top center ramp right outside of our score zone and there were 6 of them clustered up. in that last second when you can still move, I force wave'd their entire group into the fire trap right as the game ended and rooted all of us. They were rooted into the fire when it went off, killing all 6 of them after the game ended. many lulz were had.

My favorite myth is that teams of operatives are stunlocking entire servers to the point that they unsub. Whoever got that idea is a terribad.

If you have force problems as a balance/madness sha/sin, you're doing it wrong. If you have dots going on a target that has been force in balanced, you regen force like it's not even a mechanic. granted, my balance shadow is only level 47, but I've put FiB on 3 targets, and then tab spammed force breach on each of them, and I had enough force regen to spam shadow strike without the proc 5-6 times in a row to burn a huttball carrier down before he could even pop a cooldown. And that was while he was being healed. (note: I didn't check to see if those shadow strikes proc'd the shadow strike buff, but its irrelevant.) In fact, of the 3 tree's for shadows/assassins, Balance/Madness is the LEAST force starved, as you don't rely on project nearly as much to maximize damage. You only use it to give yourself the Twin Disciplines buff every 20 seconds or so. That being said, I do agree with the statement of needing to be a bit more difficult to kill without having to go tank spec and be bored to tears for the rest of your life. If I had to make a suggestion, it would be to give a better mitigation mechanic. But the chance of Bioware actually putting stuff into their game is nil anyways, so I guess the point is moot.

Because questing is boring as ****? I queue for pvp the second I hit level 10, and usually get 3 or 4 games in before I even make it to the AC trainer. Meaning I pvp most of level 10 away as a smuggler, instead of a gunslinger. or a Consular, instead of a shadow. Pvp is fun, so **** off.

This thread necro made me lulz so hard. I especially liked eldispar refusing to accept the mass advice that alacrity had no effect on the global cooldown, and going (akin to a child with their fingers in their ears) LALALA IT MAKES YOU ATTACK FASTER LALALA QUOTE FROM BIOWARE LALALA IM RIGHT AND YOURE WRONG! Good lulz were had. Thanks much

Except obviously the developers would all roll concOps/scrapScoundrels and stunlock everyone with their insane stunlocking and burst damage. Think of it, teams of operatives just stunlocking the players, proving that Sc/Ops are overpowered and need to be nerfed again.

huh? I dungeddit

What I'm confused about is people saying that we want things to go back to the way they were before the over-zealous sc/ops nerf. Why do you say that it was "operatives" that could do the 3 shot insta deaths when hidden strike/shoot first knocked them down for 3 seconds? The only reason damage was that high was because you could stack surge past the point of being useful, pop a crit trinket/and grab the red buff in a warzone and THEN pop an expertise adrenal, with biochem shyte running and boost your numbers to the point of mythic proportions. Not to mention that this was being done by 50's with expertise against 25-30's without. The class was a strong 1v1 alpha strike class, and because of bad game design, we were singled out because of our ability to stealth. What people fail to realize, is that those buffs were available to ALL classes. So a shad/assin could do the same thing. The point the OP is trying to make, is that we cant abuse those game flaws anymore, and because of that we can't do burst damage enough to win a 1v1 fight against a similarly geared/skilled opponent. Do not try to make the argument that sc/ops are good at taking out weak/half dead/undergeared players, because that's not balance, that's just an op trying to get a kill before they get gang ***** by the myriad of leap happy glowbat swingers. God forbid an alpha strike stealth class be able to go into a melee and mix it up with the rest of the players. We will just have to stick to the shadows, pick our battles, and contribute absolutely jack schidt to the rest of the team. All you sent/arauders can flame me now. I know you're just scared of being knocked off the top of the food chain.

The change was a glitch fix for scoundrels in that the triage heal would double heal on scoundrels, and wouldn't on operative. While it does feel like a nerf, and might be, it's simply a fix of a bug that has been the only republic favored bug of the game so far. So yes, the change does make the heal for Triage when talented a lot less useful, but as it still removes tech effects, it's still quite useful as a lifesaving tool, i.e. removing the sent/mara dots that do so much of their damage.

I prefer HoTs SUCKA! for scrappybones and HoTs n' DoT's for DirtyBones. You see, cause you HOT yourself to feed your sucker punch... hence HOTS SUCKA! and you have HOTS....but you also have an extra DOT....so HOTSNDOTS I'm clever

I'm with ya, but I'm gonna have to go sawbones unless some miracle of god happen when I use the free respec to see just how bad scrapper is now. I rolled a shadow, at least they are a true alpha strike stealth class. More damage, More defensive cooldowns, more utility with knockbacks etc., all the benefits, none of the scoundrel drawbacks. That being said, if scrapper doesnt work out, I'm excited about the sawbones changes. So at least that's something.. -hushed whisper- 1.2 is coming.... -ominous look-

Problem with all of that is, is they would have to give Scoundrels utility. Which would apparently make all level 50 warzones divide by zero and implode, according to Zoeller. Roll sawbones for 25 points, 16 into scrapper for the buff to Disappearing Act and having Sucker Punch, and just run into fights with slow release med pack running on both you and your tank companions, and use the upper hand proc's from that to feed your sucker punch addiction. The scrapper tree is not worth it. You get mediocre damage and mediocre stuns for a trade off of no survivability, no utility, and no viability. On the contrary, you can spec 25/16/0 and have decent damage once you get gear, much more improved survivability with the heals, and you can keep yourself, and other people up with effortless ease and use the resources you gear from healing other people to take care of the nasties attacking you. It's a win win once you get the hang of the spec. I dont know if you pvp much, but as that's my only way of gauging damage I'll use the example. At level 50, with a mix of battlemaster, champion, columi, and Rakata gear as the 25/16 spec I've ended a warzone with 290k damage, 350k healing, 70 kills, no deaths, 9 medals, couldnt count on 1 hand the number of times I ensured an objective was achieved. between heals on teammates getting focused, and damage to finish off someone who thought they escaped from the battle, to interrupts and stuns on enemy healers, you offer a whole lot more as a player overall. Soloing should be the same.

I don't think CC is overpowered, and I think resolve is a good idea. My problem is that no two CC's are the same for resolve... knight/warrior stuns only fill up 2 bars of resolve each, yet last 4 seconds. Smuggler/Agent stuns fill up 5 bars of resolve, and last 4 seconds. The AOE afraid mezz that breaks on damage that sents/maras have only fills up 2-3 bars of resolve, while smuggler/agents flash grenade fills up all but a little tiny sliver of resolve. I think that for resolve to be effective, all incapacitating effects should generate exactly the same amount of resolve, enough to where you can only be stunned twice.