Here is an idea, not mine heard it in another thread but its a good one, why not have the drones stick to the bomber as static turrets but segnificantly reduce their number and line of fire? For example, a drone carrier would have 2 slots, one left, one right. The drone on the left wing only affects targets in a 60 degree cone centered around the X axis (looking down at the bomber) and the drone on the right wing only affects targets in a 60 degree cone on the -X axis. This way the bomber would still have a blind spot from behind and the front that drones do not cover. Furthermore, if he chose to equip a utility drone such as a hyperspace beacon, interdiction sphere, or a repair probe, then his coverage gets even worse. I honestly think mines are fine as is, but making the bomber actually have to carry his drones and reducing their number would add some element of skill to them as opposed to fire and forget.

Ouch, the dubstep.... my ears are bleeding. Also enjoy the 2.7 changes

The issue with bombers is this: They have no effective counter. The LOS and tracking are annoying, but they aren't game breaking. What is game breaking is that bomber can dig into a satellite like a tick and attempting to remove him becomes nearly impossible if you're a fighter, scout, hell even a gunship can be effectively LOSed. More over bombers become exponentially better the more of them you have. If you have 3 skilled blackbolt pilots on your team, you have a hell of an interceptor squadron that can make life miserable for your slow ships and need to be actively kept track of. If you have 3 average bomber pilots on your team you are GUARANTEED to lock to a node. A very coordinated premade MIGHT be able to get through all the mines and drones, but against a pug, more than 1 bomber on a node = that node is yours for the rest of the game. More importantly, a single bomber can effectively negate multiple ships of other classes. There is no combination of strikers and scouts that can effectively take a node protected by a bomber. Between the bombers drones, mines, extreme durability, and the nodes own defense drones, a single bomber can and does prevent capping by an entire squadron. The only reliable way to remove them is to have a gunship clean up first the sats turrets, then the bombers drones, then have a scout go into close range and clean out mines, then have another scout/striker go to a point beneath/above the sat and start ripping at the bomber. This requires a lot of coordination and no fewer than 3 ships to remove just 1 bomber. If you have more than 1 it becomes near impossible.

Not my job? Really? I was under the impression that the Quell was designed specifically for 2 things, flying escort for heavier ships, and taking out fortified positions.

Ok it really depends, I can understand why they took away the knockdown specifically, its humiliating to be on the receiving end of it. Hence the QQ. Its more about the animation than the stun. Also, whether this counts as a buff or nerf depends on whether the target can turn while rooted (I don't think so?). If they can't turn, then getting insta punted will only happen with snipers and commandos. The vanguard stun is only 1.5s so you start on even terms, they turn around to do damage right as you unstun. Also, lets be honest here, our damage isn't going anywhere, and at the moment we can SHRED other dps. Our straight up damage output is comparable with carnage maras (7-9k hs, 3-5k acid blade, 7k laceration crits? god damn, wish I had that in lethality). It also depends on how much they increase the absorb rating on the shield probe. Currently with the tallents in lethality and 2 pieces of medic gear it will absorb about 3-4k, getting that boosted to 5-5.5 along with a reduced cd (5-10s in lethality) could make it very relevant. Also, assassins do need a nerf. They'll get it (eventually) for now we just have to avoid them. You think its bad for you concealment types? Have you tried fighting an assassin as lethality? The smashtard nerf is GLORIOUS! If you want to feel better about losing the knockdown go to the mara forum and enjoy the rainstorm of tears. All those brainless morons who couldn't do more than smash without bothering to target are gonna be as useless as they deserve to be.

Thats true, but bombers can drop drones faster than you can reload your protorps. Not to mention the lock on time, travel time, and highly limited ammo. Not exactly an ideal method of cleaing up a satellite with 3 AI turrets + 3 drones. I'm almost tempted to get the EMP pulse on my blackbolt and give that a shot instead, at least on the blackbolt I know I can get in and out before the railgun warms up.

Shields double front, power weapons, heavies blazing, scouts die. Simple enough. The pike (Quell) is a jousting fighter without peer, and honestly I suggest speed boost engines/upgrades because they increase the distance of your barrel roll and let you run down Gunships like the dogs they are. The point of the Quell it to take it in the face, shrug, and then make you opponent take it in the face twice as hard. About the EMP missiles, i've been trying to get those to work for me as well but they just don't seem that good. Against a bomber hiding under the skirt of his satellite with 3 sat turrets + his own drones there really is no counter in terms of a single ship or build. You need a gunship buddy to help you clean up the mess so you can go shove a protorp up that bombers tailpipe.

Ok well i'm still rather new at flying a Quell, I usually fly a blackbolt but with the arrival of bombers, this ship has stopped being useful in Domination mode, though its still very nice for Deathmatch. So the question to you more experienced pilot is this: how do you approach a satellite that a bomber (specifically a drone carrier) has fortified as a solo ship? In a team setting you would of course have you gunship clean up the mess while you cover them, but I fly pug and my guild doesn't have VOIP so thats really not an option for me. It seemed like before this, a single pilot could counteract any other single pilot, but now it seems like you need some serious coordination to peel a bomber of his sattelite with any chance of survival. And may the force save you if that bomber is in a premade, then removing him becomes completely impossible. Any advice on how to do this as either a quell or blackbolt would be very helpful.

So I did a bit of playing around with the EMP missile tonight and I can say that it really feels like it doesn't have much of a function. It doesn't pack enough of a punch to knock out drones, its AOE isn't large enough to cover the average drone field (usually scattered across/around a sat) and the lock on range is too short. It would be more useful if it could be used from outside the range of a railgun drone, but as it is, you have to spend so long lined up with the drone that you will eat at least one railgun shot to the windshield while trying to lock a missile that will do about 60% of the dones health in damage and disable it for 15s. I could have done better in that time with a concussion missile and my cannons. For a missile that has very little use against players, I would expect a bit more utility against hardware and drones. Here are a few suggestions for how I think it should be fixed (and it does need to be fixed because currently a pair of bombers can essentially lock down a sat against a pug with no reliable counter for an entire game). 1) Increase range to 10km and increase the AOE to 5km 2) Make the missiles dumb fire. 10 sets of 2 rockets per burst, one in each pod. You can fire 2 but then the move goes on cooldown for 30s. 3) Give them the lock time of clusters 4) Make them drain shields like an ion gun hit Currently the EMP missile is simply not viable, which is a real shame because bombers and minelayers are extremely powerful in domination mode and are in severe need of a reliable counter apart from a maxed out ion cannon gunships.

10s hold the line > 6s hold the line 4s hard root on a 10s cooldown > no root at all 70% FA slow ~= 30% plasma ammo slow 2 tech overrides > 1 tech override 2 cast abilities (grav/FA) = 2 cast abilities (CB/FA) 3 instants (HIB,Demo,Sticky) < 4 instants (Hammer shot, Sticky, Plastique, explosive round) Gunnery may have a more stationary primary rotation, but assault also has to stop to cast, and they are worse at keeping distance overall. The only thing assault is better at is running around hammer shot kiting, and thats only reliable against someone without a speed boost or leap (read operatives).

If were talking about PVP, no question, hand down gunnery. Gunnery has some awesome DCD's, superior durability, superior and more reliable burst, and better kiting ability. For PVE its a matter of preferance with gunnery being easier to play and more useful to groups that lack armor penetration.

Here is the thing with smashers, you are gonna eat that 8k smash almost regardless of what you do. You have to do what you can to minimize the hit and then evade them for the damage boost afterwards. Like I said, if you know you're gonna get smashed, turn on your shield and pop an adrenal. That 8k smash will turn into a 2k smash.

Actually, you can beat a smash jug, its not that hard and I do it quite regularly. If were assuming a true 1v1 scenario where both of you are at full health, no procs, all cd's, and starting at 30m range, then here is how. 1) He leaps you and does force crush. 2) You hit him with electronet, hold the line, tech override and start booking it sideways away from him. Get out of 10m range. 3) Critical moment, you have to catch whether he pops saber reflect or not. If he does, save your override, do nothing. 4) If he doesn't, grav * 2, demo round, bolt, and now you have a half dead jug at 20m range with no jump and still in the net. If you can't kill that you're bad. 5) Assuming he did pop reflect, you are now at 20m range, have tech override ready, and reflect has ended. You still have a few seconds of net. Cast 1 grav round, followed by a demo round, followed by FA whether it procced or not. 6) At this point he's gonna close on you. Pop shield+adrenal, eat the smash to the face (it will only hit for about 2-3k in this case). 7) Cast as much as possible, if you haven't managed to bring him down by the time your shield and adrenal drop, use cryo nade. If cryo nade gets broken, start channeling a heal, when he interrupts, concussive round. 8s to spam med probe, reload, and try again. Also, on most maps there are a number of places you can set up where no melee can touch you. Set up on the ramps in huttball and punt smashers away or into the fire. Set up near the revine on voidstar and punt melee to their deaths. Set up near a cliff/hill on novare and punt melee 40+m away. Only map without an epic punt spot is hipergate but thats not a map you should ever be 1v1ing on.

Honestly, for screwing up bombers in particular I would suggest flying a StarGuard with protorps, ion guns, quads, and a directional shield. To take out the bomber you put power to shields, shields double front as you approach, and double back as you retreat. On the approach you use ion guns to strip his shields and sap his engines. You don't need to land very many hits to do this. After stripping his shields you fly out of the hot zone and take your sweet time locking on a PT. A good crit from that is fatal, if not rinse and repeat.

My thoughts on the subject. (note both are probably the same class) http://www.mmorpg.com/image.cfm?id=4954&image=PvP1.jpg&width=320&height=450

^ Grab a quell/pike, fire an ion torpedo. Win. Back to what I was talking about. The voice commands could have a 30s cooldown between uses to reduce trolling? As for how you can tell premades? I usually can't right off the bat, but it becomes rather painfully obvious that someone is on voice chat based off of how they play and how quickly they respond. Focus fire, rapid response, and dedicated wingmen are not something you see among pugs. And again, since some people don't read well, I'll repeat myself. Yes this is a multi player game and I have no issues with people playing multi player. I am simply pointing out that GSF relies heavily on coordination and that voice communication, or at least macroed commands, is needed in order for players without voice chat to be able to have any sort of chance vs players with voice chat.

I put in option #3 is a joke mostly. Of course I neither want nor expect bioware to remove the ability to fly with friends. The reason I don't premade is in my signature actually. I prefer to get my *** handed to me and get a bit better at evasion in the process than fly with 3 other great pilots against a bunch of pugs still trying to figure out which button is the thrusters. And i'm not asking for them to remove the ability to use voice chat (not even possible really). All i'm saying is that voice chat is a must in this sort of gameplay in order to have any semblance of coordination as a team. Make as well make it free for all if you're not gonna have voice chat. Since this game refuses to set up dedicated voice servers, then they should at least add voice commands to GSF to give pugs some level of communication. For me this isn't about flying with friends or flying alone, its about evening the playing field at least a bit because right now, against a premade, I just go explore the map and hunt stragglers because I know that the match is lost from the moment I joined it.

You're either really good or you fly only with a premade. I'm leaning towards a bit of both, but mostly the latter.

Its not a matter of have to, its a matter of want to. I don't enjoy fights that are one sided. I know a lot of people do (hence the rush of "elite" premades farming the F2P guys on their first day flying). This isn't about whether you like competition or stroking your epeen with 3 of your best buds. Its about a very distinct advantage that third party voice communication software gives to people who use it. In fact, you could almost qualify it as an exploit because it is a piece of third party software that allows a select group of players to outcompete anyone who doesn't use it, and it is exclusive because not everyone wants to be in a guild, and not every guild can afford a VO server. This needs fixing, and obviously i'm not advocating for banning premades, i'm asking for voice commands bound to hotkeys 5-8 so that communication isn't reliant on being in a guild with a voice server.

The mode has only been out for 1 day and already there are roving premades in maxed out ships and on voice comm. While annoying and difficult to beat in ground side PVP, they are unstoppable in Deathmatch mode in GSF for one very simple reason. They can call out targets. Being able to go into your voice chat and say "hey guys, everyone lock missles on target X" allows you to make damn sure that target X either dies or runs. You cannot win a 4v1 in GSF, and if you're not a scout you probably can't run either. Communication is critical and its something that pugs in GSF have none of. You can't type and fly, you will either crash or be shot down. This MUST be fixed is the game mode isn't to become "join a guild or be farmed by guilds". (Before anyone asks, I AM in a guild, I don't premade out of principle. I'de rather have a fun and challenging match than farm comms for a ship that i've already mastered...). The way I see it there are 3 possible solutions: 1) Allow a pug only que. Have a little checkbox in the que menu that says "Do not que vs. groups". This is bad because it increases que times, but good because it allows new people and pugs a fair fight. 2) Add voice macros to GSF. Numbers 1-4 are abilities, 5-8 should blast the following commands over the radio "Focus this target (and a big red X flashes on the minimap)", "Push into them", "Fall back", and "Need support (big blue X flashes on you on the minimap). 3) Ban premade groups. Harsh, simple, utterly effective, and obviously very unpopular. I really hope they do #2 and they do it soon. If they don't then I doubt i'll be doing much flying until they do either 1 or 3.

Ok, whoever has been saying that you can't 1v1 as a gunnery commando needs to review their skills. Gunnery has all the tools it needs to be a 1v1 machine. 1) Take high ground if possible. This allows you to punt enemies away and not even have to bother 1v1ing. 2) If you do 1v1, here is how you screw up a melee. Let them get to you while you cast, once they are in your face, pop Hold the Line, activate tech overrides, stock strike (spec into the 4s root), run sideways, throw a sticky grenade and follow it up with grav round x2. When the sprint/leap to you again, punt, and full auto even if its not procced. By the time they get to you, stock strike should be back off cooldown. Stock strike, run sideways, kolto bomb self, high impact bolt, demo round. 3) If you have to 1v1 a range, here is how you screw them up. Get behind something and make them come to you, yes, you're going to be fighting melee range. When they get close, start casting gravs, if you get interrupted, stock strike, go around corner, heal. Against snipers just play peeka boo from behind an object, pop out, sticky nade, or explosive round, or just hammer shot, then back behind cover. They shouldn't get a single shot in on you. If you get rooted, it can be cleansed. 4) The OS moment. You're at 50%, enemy is at 100%. This is still a winnable situation. If the enemy isn't bleeding, hit them with a cryo nade and start channeling a heal, any heal, even if you're not specced into heals. Most dumb melee break their cc to interrupt you. This is when you hit tech override and hit them with a concussive round. You then have 8s to either bugger out back to friendly lines or heal up. If this doesn't work for some reason, do the following. Activate adrenal + shield at the same time, this adds up to 75% damage resistance. Channel. If grav is interrupted, fire CB, if CB gets interrupted, fire FA. As you shield grinds down pop adrenaline rush. When that trips and as it comes to an end, fire tech override, med probex2 + a warzone medpack. You're suddenly back at about 80% health from the brink of death. If all else fails, electronet, hold the line, and bugger out. You should not 1v1 unless you have to, your job is to find and shut down the enemy healers and rdps. But if you have to fight, you shouldn't lose unless your enemy is better geared or just a better player. Don't listen to any of the nonsense about how commandos can't 1v1.

Well it wouldn't really help much because nobody dies in PVP from steady damage, people die from focused burst. Thats why all the DCD's are so short and so powerful. Having a latent background heal would be sort of useless. If i'm not in immediate danger and hurt i'll pop a kolto injection rather than wait for some RNG heals like that. Its when i'm taking damage hard and fast that I need help, and that's where instant heals, DCD's, or better mobility are needed.

Well the details could certainly be worked out, but I guess the general idea here is that DPS operatives defense could be in terms of rapid regen at the cost of energy/TA's. I think that if anything ever gets done about this (and i'm sure it will eventually the question is when and how much more they will buff mara's in the meanwhile), it will come in the form of changes to existing skills. We already have skill bloat as is and kolto infusion is still, as you said, a useless skill so may as well overhaul it for the dps specs to allow them to regen in combat. Maybe they could have it work sort of like the mercs kolto shell where the stacks tick for a set percentage of the damage you take every time you take damage? I think that would be a rather unique ability, and if it was limited to the DPS trees and only be castable on self then it wouldn't change anything for the healers.

The reason that healing operatives are so durable is not because their heals are particularly powerful, but because they are mobile and they have a lot of instant casts. The DPS specs are mobile as well but suffer from severe issues with survivability. Here is an idea for how to fix that: 1) Concealment: Shadow Operative Elite now also makes it so that Kolto Infusion is instant, has no cooldown, and does not break stealth. The idea here is that if you have the TA's and energy to spare, you can rapidly heal yourself up and can even do so in stealth. The catch is that you are eating up your TA's and energy. 2) Lethality: Quickening now applies to kolto injection instead of kotlo infusion. Additionally kolto infusion is now free and doesn't cost a TA. Lethality doesn't have to be in the heat as often or for as long so it instead gets more of a background heal with an RNG procced burst off of exfiltrate. Having kolto infusion for free also gives the spec some much needed utility as an off healer since they are currently a net negative in terms of utility (their dots break mezzes). In both cases the idea is to make operatives feel more slippery by giving them a means of rapid regen during short breaks in combat (lethality obviously isn't gonna cast its free heal while getting whaled on and concealment can't waste TA's/energy while burning a mark).

^ I think we had this argument in a different thread but I guess i'll repeat myself. You're running on two assumptions that rarely occur in PVP. 1) No healers: Like you said, if there are no healers around, our dots actually add up, however if there are no healers around most of the targets we dot will be killed by burst classes before a full dot even has time to cycle through. 2) You're not getting targeted yourself. If a smasher wants you dead, you WILL die. There is no and's, if's or but's about it. You. Will. Die. You simply don't have the tools to stay alive, you may be able to run away occasionally, but any decent melee will give you about 3 seconds to choose between respawning or running away. Fighting back is really not possible. Our dps is about on par with other melee dps, our defenses however are nonexistant. Furthermore: -If you looks at the tooltips for poisons vs hots, hots are more powerful. In my case, my toxic dart does about 3600 over 20s, if I spec into kolto probes they do about 2500 in 10s. Meaning a single kolto probe is almost as powerful as both of my dots. If you break it down, having both dots on target is less effective than just spamming rifle shot at it in terms of single target dps.