Madness and Vengeance are both right in the curve of slightly above average. I'd expect 1500-1600ish from either in full campaign. Deception sucks though.

Here is a full ACT parse breakdown of my Op in full rakata (unaugmented because its offspec and I'm poor) with only a ghetto prototype stim, no adrenals, sunders, or anything other than just basic class buffs on the Ops dummy. 1347 DPS at 3:06. I've gone out of my way to avoid accuracy myself. None of my off-pieces have any and the only pieces that do are the tier pieces and as you can see the only thing that misses is the rifle shots. Here is a screenshot of my stats. I'm far from optimized as you can see and I would very likely benefit from dropping crit for surge, or at the very least going with power augments over cunning once I finally get around to augmenting my crap. But yeah sounds like you're headed in the right direction.

There is. Lt. Pierce.

I play both (as you can see in my sig). 4 50s. I vastly prefer the republic to the empire. The gear is way more in line with traditional Star Wars lore and the constant black emo is just depressing. That said, my operative is WAAAY cooler than my gunslinger.

No dev in their right mind balances a game around trash. I'm sorry.

I agree with the person you quoted. I pull more as DF than SS. By a good 150-200 dps.

This would be awesome.

I think it would be cool if companions were allowed to keep their iconic look. As it stands now Lord Scourge looks like a dark lord of the Sith when you get him until about 3 levels later when he's decked out in republic side heavy armor strength gear which makes him look like a Jedi. Currently there are weapons available from the heroic on Belsavis specific to our companions and it made me think how cool it would be if we could get a whole set of companion specific gear that made them look like they were intended to look. Scourge gets to stay Sith looking. Guss gets to stay pseudo-Jedi looking. Pierce gets to stay Imperial Trooper looking. Etc etc.

So we're balancing around trash packs now? DPS only matters on boss fights. Ergo, class utility that only matters on boss fights is the only utility worth balancing a class around. ....trash packs. >.>

I went operative/gunslinger. Aesthetically it just makes way more sense. Snipers "sniping" from 35m? Scoundrels pulling a shotgun out of their pocket? No thanks. Plus it's nice being able to pull out offhand barrels and move it to your mainhand as a gunslinger.

Enough to notice.

If you think you can tank a HM/NM boss just by switching to tank stance you crazy. And the amount of times that this happens regardless of the outcome is SO SMALL that for it to be considered utility is laughable at best. And the reason this is so small is because people generally realize how bad of an idea it is to try this. Not to mention it takes troopers a few seconds to cast their tank stance and it takes shadows a full force bar. For this to happen in the heat of the moment in time for you to "save" someone is simply not reality.

Please post your gear

Part of this thread is true. Part of it is not. I do 1400-1500+ dps on melee friendly boss fights where I can plop down and really watch my rotation closely and I haven't even bothered augmenting my gear yet. We're fine when observed from a vacuum. If Bioware's model is this-- Maras 100 Snipers 95 Everyone else 90 ...then we're right on target in a vacuum. I do just as much dps as my equally geared guardian does on a dummy given the exact same parameters and my gunslinger does about 5% more. This looks all nice and fair in a vacuum. Now let's move from the theoretical to the practical... In practice knights/warriors aren't penalized for mistakes nearly as much as we are. The focus/rage system keeps on trucking regardless of the situation. We, however, are penalized greatly if we aren't careful. We require an expensive buildup. It takes 55 energy/4 GCDs to even really start out rotation. This really hurts us on target switching or when we get knocked back and we have to reset. We're also the only melee class that has an ability that has a 3 second cast that does no damage until it ends and we hope lands in the right spot-- that we're required to cast on cooldown. Thusly, we have an expensive, clunky, and unforgiving rotation. This would be alleviated a lot if acid blade were passive and the cast time removed from our orbital strike. And lastly we really bring no utility to an operation encounter. As far as other melee dps go: Maras bring bloodthirst (and superior DPS). Juggs bring sunder (and more forgiving DPS). PTs bring grossly superior AoE damage. What do we bring? Battle rez? Don't get me wrong--battle rez is awesome, but it's certainly not restricted to a DPS operative in the least. At least 2 other people in your 8 man will have battle rez. More if you bring merc/sorc dps. Infiltrate? Not useful at all aside from avoiding some trash packs in flashpoints. So again-- in a vacuum we're fine. In practice, we're a clunkier MDPS in a sea of streamlined alternatives and we bring no real utility. Final thoughts-- it's still a fun class and is my favorite of my 4 50s. I just hope we get a more streamlined and potent DPS rotation sometime soon or some awesome utility to offset our weakness. No one is going to say "Ew gross. Operative DPS. /gkick", but if you aren't on your game you might get sat for a Mara who can just button mash and be more valuable.

I too feel that the non-reusables don't warrant their cost. I use my reusable one during inspiration burn phases on my Guardian but never carry any on my Gunslinger, even though I can make them for myself. Just not worth the mats.

Holy necro thread batman. And 1.3 didn't really do anything to us. Very slight healing received nerf. Nothing major.

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#401GhrodzRdGRZhMbZ0c.2 That's my concealment spec (although be careful--torhead has the trees backwards). I'd post a better parse with my damage breakdown but I'm heal spec'd atm on my Op. Really all I do is something like: Orbital on cooldown, keep corrosive dart up, acid blade before every backstab, keep stim boost up, laceration only when dots are up, and shiv/backstab on cooldown. Adrenaline probe when necessary to top off energy and weave in rifle shots when you get close to losing your max energy regen unless probe is up. edit: Here. I got bored and respec'd. ACT full breakdown parse - 1347 dps at 186 seconds. No sunders and just a ghetto prototype stim with full class buffs. No adrenals or on-use relics. And as you can see I wasn't very lucky on the collateral strikes. "50% chance" = 10 times out of 28 apparently for those of us with the luck of the Irish.

Ops haven't had any buffs since...ever. No idea what OP is smoking.

If we're talking about PvE, which I believe we all are, this is the worst thing I've ever read. Any guardian/shadow/vanguard DPS that is taunting is likely getting himself killed and wiping the raid. If we are talking about PvP, yes they can taunt off cooldown. Stick the damage reduction aspect of taunt to the tanking stance of the class and this becomes a non-issue without screwing over PvE class balance.

Dirty Fighting gunslinger is painfully easy. My rotation is basically this: Flyby on cooldown (1minute) > Illegal mods on cooldown (more or less. Time it to go with certain things) > 3-4-5-6 (channeled) > 2 (channeled) > 3-4-5-6 (channeled) > 7-8 > rinse/repeat. It seems like a lot, but it's so fluid that it's super easy. There's no procs to watch out for and it's basically the same rotation every time and even the dots aren't hard to watch since they all line up with each other and the cast times on your filler stuff.

Our droid companions are getting slighted here a little bit in that you can't buy the tier gear that you could otherwise buy for your other companions and have them wear it. The armorings are restricted to humanoid gear slots like [boots] or [Chest] and don't fit in motors, parts, or cores. And there is no cybertech version of columi or rakata for these little guys. So can we please amend the armorings to be able to fit droid parts? Chest and Pants should be able to fit Cores. Gloves and Boots should be able to fit Motors. Helmets should be able to fit Sensors. Alternatively can we make it so droids can just wear that tier gear so we don't have to pay the additional tax to move mods? edit: Or maybe be able to exchange the item for a droid part version of it? Buy the columi supercommando chestpiece and give it to T7, who then does his droidy magic and "modifies" it into a droid part? Thanks.

As someone that has changed rates in the Navy... I'm not buyin it. And honestly it fits the lore so well in this game to be able to change sides, especially if they made a long quest chain like EQ2 did for betrayals.

Maras/Snipers aside... that's going to be a divisive issue that no one is going to agree on. The problem is balancing everyone else. Currently both operative DPS specs are absolutely atrocious in a PvE setting. Deception Assassins are also pretty awful in a PvE setting. PTs, Mercs, Sorcs, and Juggs are all pretty much right in line with each other right now at about 10% less than Maras and 5% less than Snipers. Ops are like 25% behind. Honestly the way classes are set up now there is no reason to not stack snipers and maras and bring a jugg tank for sunders.. I understand that in practice people don't like to do this because of the gearing issue, but that's not an argument for balance. Having healing abilities or taunts or whatever doesn't mean it's viable utility. A DPS operative can heal 3-4 times before energy becomes a serious problem and having a long cast time means there is absolutely no incentive to do so. It would be different if we were talking about cheap, instant cast heals. Then we would be talking about practical utility. That's just not the case currently.

This thread isn't about PvP.

Vhay Concealment Operative (3/31/7) ACT Parse: 1345 DPS over 184 seconds. Gear: Full Rakata with a couple black hole. No augments. No adrenals. Just a prototype 104 cunning stim. Kadik Vigilance Guardian (2/32/7) ACT Parse: 1391 DPS over 181 seconds. Gear: Mix of Rakata/Columi/Black Hole. Rakata weapon. About half augmented. No adrenals. Just a rakata stim. Aen Dirty Fighting Gunslinger (2/8/31) ACT Parse: 1455 DPS over 182 seconds. Gear: Full Columi gear with a rakata main hand. Fully augmented. No adrenals. Just a prototype stim.