Now that concealment is getting thoroughly neutered with patch 2.7, how about having a look at lethality so that we have at least one viable pvp spec? Currently the biggest problem with lethality is that it is a DOT based melee backloaded bust class with no defensive ability, little reliance on stealth, no protection against slows, roots, or AOEs, and is required to go into and stay in melee in order to do any reliable damage. Though the actual damage is perfectly fine, its so difficult to get it off and survive that the class turns into a ranged multi dotter who still pops in seconds if focused. To make matters worse we are constantly in combat due to our DOTs so stealth (the signature operative ability) is really not useful. On top of all this we've been getting clipped with nerfs in EVERY patch since 2.0. First we lose cover (huge nerf because you could use it to hold ground and heal vs a melee), then we lose most of our orbital damage, now were losing the utility of exfiltrate (two rolls don't matter, fishing for quickening procs and hauling *** do). Though I doubt any of this will ever get back to the combat dev team, i'll post my thoughts on how to fix the spec as a mental exercise. 1) DOT crits have a 33% chance to generate a TA 2) Explosive probe detonated on a target suffering from lingering toxins re-applies the original poison effects 3) Increase the range on weakening blast, overload shot, sever tendon and cull to 30m. 4) Quickening procs kolto injection instead of kolto infusion (since we can't fish, give us a better heal for when we get it). 5) Weakening blast generated a fatality proc instead of shiv, with 100% chance. 6) Crits on cull's primary hit (white damage) root the target in place for 2s.

PVP: Operative lethality needs to be the ranged spec its built to be. Give us a ranged TA generator and full range on Cull and WB. Instant viability. PVP: Quickening talent in lethality needs to affect kolto injection instead of kolto infusion since we can no longer fish for procs. General: Give operatives cover back, that nerf gutted lethality. PVP: Gunnery (arsenal) needs some form of interrupt protection CD General: Gunnery(arsenal) needs better ammo management

If its me you're flying with, damn right you can trust me to do it . I used to hate gunships, then I learned to blackbolt.

Didn't mean anything against your build, just saying I haven't seen that before. As for the EMP scout, its very situational. Until you get EMP to tier 5 its useful only against bombers and losing the booster recharge is a huge mobility nerf. I prefer to have to give pilots like you a merry chase (at least you're not shooting at my team while I do so) than give up my spare fuel tank but thats just me.

Not true, here are a few other options: 1) Barrel roll 2) Do an actual barrel roll. (Boost + roll left + trace a circle counterclockwise with the mouse). Its rediculously difficult to hit a person doing this as their marker moves in all 3 axis at the same time and with irregular pace. (Sin,Cos,Radial changes in motion). 3) LOS 4) Cycle shields double front/back and power shields The single best counter against gunships? field awareness.

Whats the second missile break that gunships have access to? I don't think i've ever seen someone with more than one. Edit: Ah ok distortion field, that makes for a rather flimsy gunship though. Better hope you can barrel roll fast because my blasters alone are gonna rip you a new one in the opener.

Ok, I hate to bash the OP further but this really is a glaring case of L2P. I fly blackbolt, and only blackbolt. My blackbolt is built specifically for one purpose and one purpose only, killing gunships. Here is a link to the build i'm running: http://dulfy.net/2013/11/16/swtor-galactic-starfighter/?link=dGEAAAANBAMAAxcC9AL0AtAD9AHQAeAB4AHgAuA= The 100% foolproof procedure for killing an ISOLATED gunship 1) Approach from behind and above using your boosters/barrel roll, stay out of 15km range. You damping will prevent you from even showing on their scopes if you do this right. Under 15km range damping stops working, so stay away from other ships. 2) Approach to within 3km, power weapons, open fire and start locking a sab probe. If the GS rolls before your lock finishes, skip to step 4. If not continue to 3. 3) Hold the lock until you are <1Km from the target, release. At this range the hit is instant and unless you overshoot the mark you just won. 4) Count to 2, then barrel roll after the GS. You should arrive back within 3km of the mark. Lock a sab probe and return to step 3). There is not a SINGLE gunship pilot i've seen that can get away from me, not a one. The only time they escape is if someone else comes and saves them and that is as it should be. So quit QQing and L2Blackbolt.

Here is how you kill gunships. Take the baseline scout, upgrade the lasers, use the engine refill, barrel roll, sab probes, damping. You are invisible outside of 15km range to gunships since they all stack damping too. You close the 15km in 2s with a barrel roll and a bit of boost. You lock a sab probe and wait, most gunships blow their engine ability. If they wait too, close to <1000m and release. The hit can't be avoided from that close. If you can't finish a gunship with its steering and engines disabled you're a bad. Problem solved.

My experience has been a bit different. I play gunnery (and with a rifle at that though thats not the point), and I find our damage output to be just fine, honestly I have no issue at all dropping any class except for a good assassin. If you are getting ripped up by operatives you should practice your kiting, healing, and DCD's as gunnery functions as a very good hard counter to ops if you know how to kite. I love our melee root as well, its useful not only against knights, but also operatives, assassins, healers (though thats risky), and kiting sorcs. The combination of hyrolic overrides + root allows you to put anyone anywhere you need them to be. The OP mentioned this and I am agreeing, that the two biggest issues are dps output under pressure and ammo management (for gunnery specifically). 1) Dps output under pressure, we have none. I don't notice this much in warzones because we have great survivability and mobility (not while dpsing but we can hustle when needed). However, in arenas I have learned that my job is to tank. I ask the tank for a shield, I ask we set up high, and I wait. I know damn well i'm going to get focused like there is no tomorrow, however the combination of our field control and DCD's is enough that even without a healer I can hold off 2-3 dps for a minute or longer (and if our team has half a brain they will have killed something by then). Its unfortunate but that is our current role in arenas, learn to kite, stack DCD's, tactically punt, and self heal. 2) Ammo management, rotation is too tight. Gunnery does ok so long as you're maintaining your central rotation, however if you ever need to switch to AOE pressure, toss some offheals, pick up the pace, or heaven forbid throw a thermal nade without a spare clip you are hosed. We have no method of improving our ammo management, we simply shoot until were dry, then reload and hope we're not dry again before we get another clip. I think that, like the OP said, we could use some more useful procs to help with situational burst and ammo management. Also, maybe tech override should be a short buff instead of a token, so instant casts for say 15s in gunnery, 10s in the other trees? It could be countered by LOS, stealth, and CC. Additionally, I think that the reserve power cell should provide us with a second, non regenerating ammo bar that lasts 15s. When you slap in your spare cell, your main cell continues to regenerate while you crank through your reserve (which does not regen at all, and any ammo not used up in 15s is lost). This would change the spare cell into a burst CD on a long cooldown instead of a thermal nade enabler.

Afteburners in the red, lock alarms blaring, laying into the machine guns amid the shattered hulls of pub gunships > Adrenaline junkies and blackbolt pilots unite!

I don't know, I actually rather liked Makeb on my agent. I took the batman ending and erased my identity, the intro for me was a bit different with Marr making it clear that he has spent a lot of time and effort looking for me and my crew, that we should be executed, but that he desperately needs our help, that the empire is falling apart. That was enough motivation for me. The story was also rather believable. As an agent its my job to look out for the little guys, the members of the strike team sent on a suicidal mission in a last ditch attempt to turn the tide of the war. As things get bad and people start dropping like flies it does build up some drama and I definitely did feel some rage building up towards the Archon after what happened to Sytharat and Katha. I think the imperial story was done very well actually, would have been nice to have some companions commentary or consequences to the various choices but it was still a blast to play through the first time (I only have one imp so no need to rerun it a bunch). The pub story however was just painful to play. It was horribly boring. You and your team never felt threatened, in the pub story you were the unstoppable wrecking ball kill bajjilions of mercs, casually strolling into secret fortified enemy facilities and killing everything that moves, then walking into taborros palace for a disappointingly short and boring fight followed by an equal boring kill him or let him die choice. Booooooooring. There was never any real threat, no memorable characters, no worthwhile choices (they all boiled down to "here's a scumbag, do you want to kill him or spare him? either way you'll hear nothing of it so have some light/dark points as you like"). The scene at the end of the imp story line where Katha staggers into the throne room and bluffs the Archon into thinking you're going to destory the planet was brilliant, the fact that you couldn't save her form the wounds she recieved was horrible. The fact that you could at least save Lord Sytharat was uplifting, and if you cared at all about the fate of the empire and your team you had some real drive to do this right. On the pub side you just stroll through blasting things. There are no moments of inspiration, real danger, not a single major setback.

Sab probe does have a travel time, however you don't know when its gonna get released. What I like to do is boost into my target as i'm locking, I release at <1000m and the hit is instant. Since i'm flying a max turn radius scout I do a 180 in about 1.5s and then i'm ripping into your backside with maxed out laser cannons. The only reliable method of avoiding a good sab probe pilot (if you know he's in the game) is to treat every mid duration missile lock like its a close range sab probe pass. If you wait for me to launch the probe, you're already dead.

If you're flying a scout, you shouldn't be getting hit with any missiles at all as they are all very deadly to you. Use engine components, afterburners, LOS, whatever. When that missile lock alarm starts blaring, your priority instantly becomes making sure it doesn't connect.

PVP on this server is kinda hit and miss. Ques pop regularly, and the talent pool is relatively shallow so if you're more casual like myself you won't get rolled as often by superior pugs. That said, the relatively few good players really only play in premade groups in voice chat. They can sometimes be fought against if the RNG gods are on your side and you have a decent pug, bit its very very rare to beat one of the pvp guild premades as a pug. Ranked is virtually nonexistant. I played a lot of solo back in beta (only got to 1300 rating but whatever) and wanted to get into it again back on live but it never took off. Haven't even managed to get an official rating yet that's how rare the solo ranked ques are. Its gotten a lot better since a certain guild with a drug design related name they probably don't even know the meaning of made like the bunch of crybabies and cheats they were and shoved off. Still, expect to get stomped by premades and superques on a regular basis. Without any good ranked, the "best" guys on our pve server like to take it out on the pugs rather often.

If you have problems killing ANYTHING as a commando, you're not doing it right. There isn't a single class that the commando loses to "by default". You're playing gunnery I assume? Learn to kite. And before you ask, yes gunnery can kite and it does so very very well. While i'm at it, put 2 points into the medic tree for faster cast self heals, put 2 points into gunnery tree for improved kolto bomb. Your survivability just doubled. Now l2p and don't complain about commandos, they are arguably the most balanced class in the game right now in that they are very strong when they have the advantage, but also vulnerable in a number of ways. So learn to play to your strengths and avoid your vulnerabilities. Or roll a smasher who has no vulnerabilities, or roll and operative who has not strengths.

Here is the issue with roots. Any trooper can use hold the line to get out of them and then kite you to death. Any sniper can roll out of them and then kite you to death. Any sorc can force sprint out of them and then kite you to death. And warriors won't really care since they want you in melee range.

huh, my bad then. I've always noticed though that its their shield that is the real problem for me. If I can get through that I can chew through their hull pretty easily, but I usually can't get enough uptime on them to get through the shield, especially with all the ways they have of regening/fortifying it.

As a fellow blackbolt pilot I can tell you why that may seem like a good build but is not. You're assuming that you're going to get through the bombers shields. I assure you that you are not. A bomber isn't built around taking damage to his hull, his hull is actually just as brittle as that of a gunship. Its his shields that can exceed 4k per arc. If you could stay in gun range of a bomber long enough to drop those, you shouldn't need the thermite torps to take him out. Moreover, picking up the engine power converter is a bad idea because your shields will still be far weaker than those of a strike fighter and you will have no way to defend yourself in a dog fight. Also, the taking the EMP system is a major nerf to any match that doesn't have bombers. It has exactly 0 utility outside of frying drones, its range isn't large enough to cover the average drone field, and it doesn't affect satellite turrets (and lets face it, bombers are really only a pain if they are camping a satellite). So what you end up with is a spec that is very specialized and still relatively ineffective. I suppose if you fly something else as your main you could have a specialized blackbolt just for Domnation mode vs bombers but as a general purpose fighter that is not a good build. I would suggest building an ion gun gunship for those matches though as it is far more effective at dealing with drone fields and bombers.

check my sig

Gunnery without demo round is sort of like corvette stuck in 2nd gear.

Additionally, and this is against snipers specifically, the fact that we no longer knock them out of cover means they don't lose any of their stacking buffs from us opening on them and we don't create an opening for friendly smashers to join in.

If you're in the open world, this may seem like a dumb question but are you wearing PVE gear? Because if you are and the enemy is wearing PVP gear than you're taking up to 60% more damage from him. On my commando I have absolutely no problems fighting against operatives even if they open on my and the net is on cooldown. 1) Don't break the knockdown, break the hard stun that follows. When you get knocked down count to 3 (I count fast) then hit the breaker. 2) As you're standing up, knockback 3) Turn around, activate hold the line, run sideways. 4) Activate tech override, grav round, sticky nade, grav round, Demo, HiB. 5) Stop, Full auto. 6) If he's still alive and has managed to reach you, stock strike (root), run sideways to 11m. Self heal. 7) Repeat until he cries/dies. **note: hotkey your stealth scan to something convenient and get good at activating it in under a second. Only way an operative can kill me is if they get a second opener in. A well timed stealth scan prevents it.

While it all sounds very nice, we have to be honest with ourselves here, its not gonna happen. The only way open world pvp would ever work on this game would be if they gave us something similar to GSF, you select a soldier "class" that has a separate set of skills/equipment earned by playing that class. Basically imagine that Battlefront 2 and GSF had a love child. The engine is simply not good enough for them to be able to have real instance open world content, the player characters have too much rendering data for their equipment/stats/moves/animations for large scale pvp to be stable. I've been to a few open world events and almost without exceptions the framerate plummets, abilities misfire, and though fun, they are also very static. This brings me to my next point against open world pvp on this game, the classes aren't balanced with large battles in mind. With AOE damage and healing being what they are, open world pvp either becomes a war of attrition with few/no kills, or a burst fest with one side wiping in under a minute depending on who has more AOE damage and heals. In warzones this is somewhat mitigated by limited team size, and the objectives. In the open world, if you had an operations group with 6-7 operative healers, nobody would ever die. If you did ever manage to kill on of those healers (which would be a huge chore in an of itself) they would likely return to the fight before you could kill another. The reason open world worked in the other game I used to play (LOTRO) is because the classes were meant to fight together in much larger groups. There were more roles, much less AOE, much less AOE healing, and much more class interdependence. Also, i'm gonna take an unpopular stand here and defend bolster. With each iteration there are fewer and fewer bolster exploits left, right now the 46 blues are the only ones I know of and they don't make that much of a difference. Right now, the two biggest determinate factors in who comes out on top in a pvp fight are augments and skill. I think this is exactly as it should be. I don't see any reason why a skilled person in crap gear should be prevented by their gear from taking out an unskilled person in good gear, or why the person in good gear should be entitled to a major advantage against the person in bad gear. You could argue that recruit gear does the same thing, but it does also require people to ditch their hard earned and customized PVE sets for no reason other than the fact that they didn't invest as long in PVP. Currently, a skilled person in PVE gear and a skilled person in PVP gear have about the same chance of killing each other, its an even fight (give and take). By going back to the recruit system, an unskilled PVPer who has been around long enough to earn good gear would dominate any new pvper just because they haven't had the chance to earn gear yet. I don't see why this handicap is needed. Furthermore, the current system encourages participation by anyone in PVP. You don't have to go get a special set that makes you barely competitive and get stomped on for about a week before you can actually do anything. You just que up, bolster puts you at a competitive (if slightly disadvantaged) level and you skill vs the opponents skill (or premade but thats another story) determine the outcome. In the long run this is good for the game, more participation = faster ques and lower chances of getting farmed by the same premade pugstompers all day. Better for everyone.

While running away from melee you use the kolto bomb, sticky grenade, HIB with or without buffs, demo round, hell even explosive round if you can spare the ammo. It works about as well. Also you don't need to run further than 11m in order to start casting again. So stock strike, sticky, kolto (all while moving to the side), start casting a grav round. They will unroot right as you cast ends. Its a rather elegant dance if you can get it going.

You know, I almost think they ought to increase the range on backstab and HS to 10m (throw animations if at range). If the targets can turn while rooted then yes, this is a huge nerf that the class really didn't need. Even with the current build, I don't have much issue fighting a concealment OP on my gunnery commando, I have the tools to survive and if my net is off cooldown they are gonna die. On my lethality op I can't win the fight but I can drag it out for a VERY long time and if things really go south I can always vanish, scitter away, heal up, and come back to cull them into oblivion when they open on someone else. Increasing range would me it that much harder to kite concealment, which is kind of needed since concealment can't afford to be kited with their lack of DCD (offense as defense and all that).