So when I take a gander at the balance tree, I see a bunch of stuff that seems like a waste for a operation like the top ability Sever Force. I have always gone up to the talents that make the dots hit harder then go on over to tele to get the faster tele throw casts. Can someone explain to me why picking up sever force would be worth giving up a faster tele throw AND possible faster force regen with Concentration? I parse pretty well and if going full balance might add some dps then I am willing to change some things up.

I take all I need from the healing tree up to healing trance then go up tele to get the stun bubbles. I have found that salvation is almost useless in pvp because: 1. People have to stay in it for quite a long time for it to be useful 2. When you do place it the other team will AOE the **** out of it so your teammates don't entirely benefit from it at all.

They are nerfing the stun bubbles to only work on your own character but have you seen all the stuff they are adding to the class in 1.7? We get a weird transport ability that will have a 60m range, get a huge increase on our dots and force inbalance, and in the seer tree you will be able to spec into having your force speed ability reset its cooldown...it's going to be glorious.

1.7 apparently is adding 2 gap closing abilities for scoundrels which should help out.

I don't save the combat logs as they seem to clutter up space since they get recorded every time you enter combat. Most scrappers seem to not be able to extend their rotation until cool head is ready to be abused again which is prob why so many cannot get close to parsing on par with a sent since they will blow too much energy and stay in the danger zone too long. I honestly do not care if you believe I parse close to the sents in my guild as my scrapper is a guilty pleasure alt; not a main. It is quite easy to stack up damage especially on encounters where multiple adds spawn like the first boss in TfB. Also I never said that what I believe in is fact; no matter how you try to theory craft your class, the player that has more situation awareness and knows the instances will always be miles ahead of someone who takes unnecessary damage and has slightly better gear. I did my research, planned accordingly, and carried out multiple tests to see what stat balances and rotations worked the best (for me). The only fact I can say is at the present time all the instances are so ridiculously easy and hardly challenging that any geared dps that remotely knows the fights will do more than enough. It's so easy that the first time I went into a NiM EC run (a alt run), we were able to down Z and T on our 2nd try...in only BH/Camp and Rakata mixed gear. The only fights that are extremely challenging on the dps in terms of enrage timers is 16 man NiM Kep while many of the others fights just requires people to not stand in s#!t. If accuracy really doesn't help tech attacks then fine but I wouldn't know why all my parses that had extra accuracy out preformed the ones w/o it by quite a bit. Also even if it doesn't help tech attacks you use your default attack quite a bit in a long, drawn out fight so IMO it's worth having just a little bit. And to answer the question why I bumped a thread that is so old I happen to be googling "People's opinions on Dirty Fighting Scoundrels" since I have been experimenting with it and this thread popped up along the way. I leaned my lesson though the forums are just full of people ready to jump on someone for the most mundane reason. Won't be making that mistake again.

Sorry if my logic is flawed but after running +30 Parses on both the fleet and in raid situations, the parses with a little bit of accuracy were always better than the ones without it. The bottom line is that the dps is just as good as our sents (even though inspiration is pretty useful). Also you don't have to be such an *** about it.

I do not stack it, I only have accuracy on my earpiece and implants. Bosses require a bit more accuracy since they negate some of your ranged attacks. Even though 98% of a scrapper's abilities are tech damage, I still throw in some default blaster attacks to keep up with energy management. I found that with no extra accuracy, I was having a lot of my default blaster attacks completely miss the bosses. Also the extra accuracy is still better to have than way too much surge. At the moment I have 78% surge and if I were to say remove all my accuracy and stack more surge, it would go up maybe another 0.6% so its just not worth it. I only get accuracy from my earpiece and implants but if I had gotten the crit and surge ones instead, I would be dipping way too much into diminishing returns. Believe me I have parsed with no accuracy and what I have now and it has shown that the little bit of accuracy allows your default attack to hit more AND allows your tech attacks to hit harder as well since the bosses don't resist them. Parses don't lie.

Yeah after running through HM TfB last night, I still parsed better when I was rolling scrapper spec so I'm pretty much going to switch back. It all comes down to energy management. In DF you can really throw anything out whenever you want since pugnacity and cool head come on a quicker cooldown but no matter how hard I tried, I could just barely parse better than scrapper.

16 man operations have more dps than 8 mans and even though I say top 4 there is only like 50-100 dps separating all of us. It just boils down to a particular boss fight and if people get lucky with procs, crits, ext.

This is completely correct; scrappers can do just as much dps as anyone else it all boils down to learning your class. I am always within the top 4 dps during ops (and it's always really close between the gunslingers, sents, and myself) because when you get knocked back or the boss moves quickly, you have vital shot, your grenade, and the aoe flyby attack to use. Plus you can spec into making sneak work as a speed boost when used out of stealth. People need to stop complaining and if they find scrapper too hard then go do a brain dead dps spec like hybrid sage or any of the commando dps specs.

I know this reply was from a while ago but it's funny that you would say that scrappers wouldn't beat a sent even though I beat some of the best sents in my guild. Heck when I bring my scrapper into ops I'm usually in the top 3 or 4 on a regular basis. Even through all the nerfs as long as you have above 40% crit, the 2 set pve bonus with the extra crit for backblast, around 105% tech acc., and around +75% surge, you will hit like a truck and out dps the others. It took me awhile to find the best balance of going into the soft caps on surge and seeing how much accuracy you really need but I can easily out dps any competent sent. Now when it comes to DF vs Scrapper, I have tried both and DF is much more ranged and energy management happy. Since we don't have a gap closer, you can use the time running back to the boss to apply your two dots and use hem. blast. DF scoundrel is essentially the hybrid sage spec but instead of spamming rock throw you have 3-4 filler abilities. The point is that someone who takes the time to learn the rotation and energy management will pull just as much dps as any other class. The only thing that sents have that scoundrels could use to level the playing field is a gap closer and a inspiration-like ability. Every melee class should have a inspiration-like ability. (Btw before you say "Oh then the other dps in your group must suck", we are on 16 man NiM EC and our top dps can parse +1900 on the training dummy. Situational awarness is always more important than beating on a non-moving target but they still post impressive numbers during raids)

So for the longest time I have been strictly a Scrapper Scoundrel and have loved it more than any other dps spec in the game. For s#!is and giggles I have been experimenting with Dirty Fighting and have come to the conclusion that it is essentially the sage hybrid spec but instead of spamming rock throw in between dots and force inbalance, you are keeping up upper hand and using Wounding shots instead of sucker punch. We also still have back blast to use off cool down which still does impressive damage even without the nice damage increase from the upper tiers of the scrapper tree. But the spec is essentially the hybrid sage spec; Force Inbalance is now Hem. Blast and our two dots are shrap bomb and vital shot. It's not as fun as scrapper but I can see why people would rather go with DF because you have more things you can do while running back to the boss like re-applying your dots and using hem. blast. After parsing with both specs I still get more dps out of scrapper but during a raid fight there is a lot of moving around (usually) and sometimes knockbacks so I can see why the slightly more ranged friendly DF spec might come out on top.

Yup no matter the "dps difference" between classes, any dps class played by a skilled player is enough as long as they are not in columi trying to clear EC NiM.

Thanks will do (republic btw).

Recently most of my guildies have been spending their time over in Panda land so TfB HM and EC NiM have come to a halt. I don't want to leave them but I hate sitting around doing nothing most of the time. I have a Sage in full bh with a couple Dread Guard pieces that can heal or dps as well as a scrapper that is in full bh that can dps. If you need a healer, ranged dps, and/or melee dps please reach out to me. I also do rated pvp if that is any extra incentive.

I want to do a guide on my take of "PVE Scrapper Scoundrels" but I have never been very good at collecting my thoughts then writing them down. Its a hard spec to explain to people because unlike on a sage where you have a basic rotation to follow, scrappers have a priority list that is constantly changing based on how many upper hands you have, if things proc, and energy status. I don't mean to sound conceded but you really have to be a "good" player to get anything out of the scrapper spec. If you are a sub par player it will show. It's a dying spec and if Bioware doesn't do something soon to fix the melee class supremacy of sents over every other melee class (guardians, scrappers, vanguards), then well **** this game.

My scrapper is more of a guilty pleasure alt but if someone from our main 16 man raid team doesn't show up for dps they sometimes have me switch off of my sage and go onto my scrapper for the burst capabilities. He did just fine in Nightmare EC on the first boss last week; I was in 5th place on the parser.

One of my alts is a scrapper scoundrel and despite all the torment I had to go through to get my guild to accept him, they now are glad that there is another dps they can use if someone doesn't show up. The dps capabilities are very good but like someone mentioned before if you are going to push enough dps to rival sents, you really have to watch your energy. If you get below 40% and cool head is 30 or so seconds from being off cooldown, your dps is going to hit a wall and if you are using parsers during the raid it will be quite embarrassing. It really is a spec that you must truly master in order to get it anywhere near an acceptable level for say TFB HM or EC NM. It also heavily relies on the fact that the other members of the raid (mostly the tanks) are not complete idiots at their job. Shoot first and Backblast can only be used from the side or back of the enemy so if the tank is not good at positioning then you are screwed out of your 2 hardest hitting attacks. Overall its not an easy dps class like hybrid sages or commandos; you have to be able to effectively use your burst capabilities (using cool head effectively so you can burst like there is no tomorrow) as well as your defensive cooldowns. Scrappers are quite unique since we are a melee class with a ranged interrupt and also very hard hitting abilities that we can use from ranged if knocked back. We are also faster than any other class with the right talents and we can also use our in combat stealth to help revive party members. Its a very useful class that even though falls short on sustained dps makes up for it on burst phases (which many would say is more important to have).

As a scrapper since all of our main abilities are instant (no cast time so alacrity is useless), and are tech (100% base accuracy), is it worth stacking up to 110% tech accuracy so our attacks breach the ops boss's 10% parry? At the moment I have around 105% accuracy with around 78% surge (40% crit w/ buff as well). People are always saying, "Awww man you are dipping into dim returns on surge" but I mean if what I have been reading regarding any extra accuracy being useless over more power and surge, why bother with extra accuracy? We don't need alacrity so increasing power would also mean increasing surge since a lot of the enhancements have power bundled with surge. Also even though we have to use our default basic attack every now and then for energy management, I haven't seen hardly any of those blaster attacks missing with 95% accuracy.

Do not forget that scrappers have ranged abilities they can use when knocked back such as sab charge and thermal grenade. They are very high damage abilities and give you something to do while running in (other than re-applying vital shot). Also I forgot where I saw it in this thread but someone mentioned the importance of burst in ops (which is very correct). Me and another scrapper always queue up for random HM and the other day we got LI. To give you a clear picture of how amazing the dps was, on the final boss he didn't even make it to the second blue container before moving onto the burning adds phase. We have crazy stupid burst capabilities when using adrenals and also when we have cool head off of cool down. You can essentially go completely all out with cool head since you can burn everything, get energy back with cool head, and then do it all over again. People really need to stop hating on scrappers since most of the people who play them are most likely a better player than the dime-a-dozen Sentinel.

I'll ask but I prob already know the answer to this; when will we get to have one of our characters copied over to the PTS? You cannot seriously think that everyone that wants to test for bugs is going to lvl a separate character on a test server?

There have been plenty of times where both of the single target scoundrel healers have died and I have been able to keep the tanks up with my single target healing. Losing most of your alacrity does not gimp you as much as you might think. My only advice is that you try it out yourself before writing it off completely.

I don't pvp as a healer (or really at all as a sage). Pvp has gotten to a point where if you are not full wh augmented then its not even worth queuing up .

Even on 8 man raids its still fine because force armor eats up quite a bit of damage giving you more than enough time to top someone off. Plus when healing trance is criting for more than 2300 its more than enough to single target heal a tank.

Yes but that doesn't stop the entire community from bashing other melee classes (scrapper scoundrels, Vanguards, guardians). On my server the only time I get to bring in my scrapper scoundrel is if there are literally no other sents available.