There really is nothing else to say. Its possibly one of the biggest idiotic decisions i have seen. Fixing something by removing it. It was about the only reason one would even try to learn pvp in this game and it was replaced by yet another battle pass. I only occassionally played it but it was still fun and nowhere near as toxic as people make it out to be. It was still toxic but compared to some other games its flowers and rainbows. Ranked pvp needs to come back.

I have been very active on the forums about combat/carnage being a disaster whenever i could.When i read the patch notes i was of the impression that they just brought fanged god back, but then i read more carefully. 1 extra focus/rage per hyper stack? Are those devs on some heavy drugs or are they just disabled. Which imbelcile though it was a good idea to add a tactical that only further strains the abhorrent resourse management that the spec suffrs from. No spec in the game should be forced to use basic attacks to keep up their rotation. These people are so clueless it's not even funny. It's like they are trying to do everything but the thing that actually needs doing. BIOWARE brings me in awe as to how consistently thet can make the completely wrong decision, believing it's the right one. Well maybe their budged just gets wasted on cocaine and thats why the game is in the state it is in.

Furious strike is the thing to use. WIth proper implants and utilites you can consisctently hit over 60k on raid bosses and up to 80k in pvp with it, giving it probably the best burst in the game.

I have been quite vocal for years now about how carnage/combat is designed and have multiple posts about they can change. To be honest they are so out of touch with this spec they left it without a tactical. They can maybe do something like changing the lance bleed to tick its remaining damage when lance is used again but that would be too much to ask for cause they dont give a **** about this spec. I had some semblence of hope that 7.0 will fix it and well... they didnt. Its worse than before in fact. That being said there is one thing they might have considered and thats the passive that makes blade rush/massecare do more damage based on movement speed buffs. If it stacks up to 50% with the new passive that gives you ms and crit up to 5 stacks, the damage could be quite good(currently a bugged passive). But the biggest issue are the animations. While i like blade rush/massecare, i think lance/gore needs a new animation, something more flashy and acrobatic. Clashing blast too, the motion of it makes no sense. PS: The dash on lance was a suggestion made specifically by me, though it was a part of a massive change revolving around dispatch and they didnt add that.

As far as i can tell level lock is just level sync combined with one other system. That system being veteran's edge stacks. I do know know how it works exactly. Anyways that's not a discussion post so lets not keep this going. Also the only not level locked endgame content is Objective Meridian and Duxun operation. That's actually more than 90%.

Since the introduction of level lock around 10 MONTHS ago, there has been an issue with weapon damage scaling abilities. Essentially, they do far less damage than they should. I have tested it with sentinel's combat spec as the armor penetration lets me gauge damage perfectly due to its consistency. At lvl 75 without any relics, on an operations dummy Clashing blast(energy damage) does around 48k crits, Lance(melee damage) does 46-47k and Dispatch(energy damage?) does around 48-49k. Dispatch is weird because the tooltip says energy damage however the color says weapon damage. Note those are all buffed as if i was fighting a boss(minus the relics). That means clashing blast is under all the buffs like opportune attack, precision, fanged god stacks and other skill tree buffs. Lance and dispatch are under beatdown, Force clarity and precision of course. At 75 the base tooltip damage of these abilities are: Clashing blast~16,700; Lance~19,000; Dispatch~19,500. The point is all those abilities hit for around the same damage, so while level locked they should still do more or less the same, just less damage... RIGHT? WRONG. For this test i chose Hammer Station Master Mode as its the most run flashpoint in the game. The issues start with the base tooltip values, We have: Clashing blast~10,700; Lance~9,900; Dispatch~10,500. We have a clear issue here. AT lvl 75 Clashing blast has the lowest base damage, however under level lock it has the highest. This isn't normal and its not purely tooltip bug. The damage they do is: Clashing blast-31,000; Lance-24,000; Dispatch-27,000 Dispatch has far less of a problem than lance. I am unsure how that attack is counted, because as stated previously there is a discrepancy in the tooltip. These values should all be around 30k or around 26k. There is clearly a problem here and it affects every class that uses ranged or melee damage of some kind. 90% of the content ingame contains level lock. I do not know whether or not you're aware of this issue, but its a massive problem. If you have made level lock so that you don't have to go and redo all the content every expansion, fine,. But this can only get worse as new expansions come. In my calculations the scaling is off by 15%-20%. That's quite a lot.

As i said i can see the logic behind level locking so that they don't have to bump them up each and every expansion. I honestly didn't think of that at first, just though they are lazy. However the main issue is the white damage. If that is fixed i am happy.

I can see the logic behind that. However them f*cking over white damage(melee and ranged) is very unacceptable. I already said that at the very least they should fix that and if they do i have 0 actual issues with level lock.

I don't really have an issue with the concept of level locking, but they did it improperly and melee/ranged damage specs suffer harshly. That is completely unacceptable i think. Marksman sniper is even more screwed than carnage mara cause at least mara has clashing blast. Let me put this into perspective. When i am not level locked with carnage mara clashing blast deals~50k damage with max hyper stacks. Gore and Vicious throw do slightly more. So one would think that if stats were capped, they would do damage equivalent of what it should do at a lower level. However it doesnt work. In MM flashpoints the difference is 33k clashing blast to 27k gore/vicious throw. That's a massive nerf of 6 to 11k damage per burst window. And its even worse for SM ops. I have seen a 10k damage deficit on a single skill. Granted could be relics but still. I don't wanna make this into another one of my carnage bad posts, but my aim is to get that fixed. If they removed it, i would be very happy but fixing it is enough for me.

I don't think DoT specs should be viable in ranked pvp because that's not what they are designed for. Making those specs viable will even further overload the game which is not what we want. Just look at Lethality operatives. Other than that i agree. Also carnage being literally THE worst spec in the game for any type of content is kinda yikes. Its sucks in PVE because level lock eats away at its weapon damage skills(90% of the spec). Skills that should crit upwards of 33k do no more than 27k.

I know i have been hardspamming this forum about the issues sentinel/marauder have. Today i'd like to give an idea that's probably the best thing they can do about the class. In pvp Force Camo has been an issue since the introduction of defel spliced genes tactical. Being able to camo a lot more than normal is very powerful and makes the class essentially immortal in regs if you want it to be. I have had games with no healer or tanks and still had like 1-2 deaths max. The idea is: Change the utility that gives damage on next attack after camo to this. Force camo now doesnt put you in stealth, but the effects don't break on attack. That was the class doesn't get overloaded, as it loses one of its most useful utility skills but gains a pure godsend when it comes to pvp and some pve fights. All that needs to be changed for this to work is maybe defel tactical needs to be reworked. Tbh if that tactical is reworked changing camo wont be necessary but doing this will be extremely valuable to Carnage/combat and watchman/annihilation. What are your thoughts

I got it today. Cant say i didn't deserve it once i looked into it. Kinda annoying how long it is though. I actually genuinely did not know i could be chat banned for referral advert. We live and we learn i suppose.

The main type of content i do is MM Flashpoints. I just recently did Objective miridian that's not level locked and it felt so much better. We need level lock GONE from all content above veteran flashpoints. It screws up melee damage which isnt fun. That messing up also makes carnage, that already ****, even worse. Losing 6k damage in burst window just because the content is level locked improperly is a horrible feeling. Please as soon as possible, remove level lock from MM FPs and all of the operation difficulties. I know the BIoWare team did this because they didnt have time to get everything up to level BUT i think 10 MONTHS are probably enough time to get it done. So please scale everything up or at the very, very least fix white damage while being level locked.

To start off i will only use sentinel terminology because its the one i can pull off the top of my head and to reduce the size of the post. I have been very vocal about how, quite frankly, sh*t combat spec is. I wrote about it in the sentinel/marauder class forum however, even though the spec isn't THAT difficult to fix all its gotten is a small buff. Don't get me wrong that buff is great and a huge step in the right direction but its just simply not enough. The spec has MAJOR issues. I will list them now: 1: For a burst spec the burst isn't all that great. 2: Spec gets completely shafted in pvp due to no reliable defense against CC 3: The spec deals basically only white damage which is very bad in this state of the game. 4: Massive focus starvation.Only spec IN THE GAME that has to use basic attacks in the rotation.(unless you use fanged god, though even then you can starve) In the past i have been vague with the changes i want out of respect. Now i will just out and say what exactly you need to do in order for the spec to be great again. First change: Ataru form. Ataru should deal elemental/internal damage. This will fix the issue of the spec dealing only white damage on top of giving a lot of utility. Ataru's damage needs to be nerfed by 15% though because we want combat to be a burst spec not sustain spec.Now i know a sword slash doesn't make much sense to be internal damage but you said ataru is an acrobatic form and is literally the least acrobatic saber spec in the game so i think its gonna be fine. Second change: Lance. Lance should become a lunge type of attack and requires 1 less focus, but no longer have a grounded effect.Also it should deal 10% less damage.Range - 10 meters. Applies 3 stacks of a debuff. After 6 seconds the debuffs explode, dealing kinetic damage. Each ataru strike activates 1 stack. That causes ataru form to critically strike and generate 1 focus. This change will fix 2 issues. One is the focus starvation second one is lack of yellow damage. This will also help it to be more competitive in pvp. Third change: CC defense. I though a lot about this and i came up with a way to give combat spec a cc defense while keeping counter play in. When you use zen buffed precision you will get a buff that protects you from any stuns, sleeps and slows for 3 seconds, however push backs and displacement effects are not resisted. Cooldown on this is 15 s. You can either fit this in a utility somewhere or just in the skill tree itself. This will give the cc immunity the spec so desperately needs without making it a concentration clone and still leaving enough counter play. Fourth change: Burst. This is simple. Force Clarity benefiting Clashing blast needs to be put in the skill tree itself. This will give the spec much harder burst while not over buffing other aspects of the kit. The tactical would be changed to clashing blast now refunds the force clarity buff, gain 1 focus and causes the next blade rush to critically hit. These are relatively simple changes but will absolutely make combat a great spec. The numbers might be a bit off and blade rush might need a damage nerf but the overall mechanics added are very much needed. I just hope someone from the dev team actually reads this and at least considers the proposed changes. i am not holding my breath though.

I think the only real takeaway is that Regs shouldn't be as hard to win as as they are now. Before this all came to be i could queue duo with a friend and win 80% of games we played. Now we have up to 4 ppl group queuing . I don't think a regular casual player that just queued pvp for some fun should even be close to such a difficult game. It hurts the game as a whole. Now i can deal with those games if i had a team of close to equal skill but way too often you get just pure unwinnable games that were lost from the accept button. And don't even get me started on games i need to fill. Oh my god. The moment you see the game is in progress you already know its so lost you might as well not even try. Regs are a place where ppl go to learn and play pvp for fun not to compete with groups of highly skilled players. BioWare did something that caused skilled players to queue in big groups to get their weeklies done insanely fast and the ppl who suffer are solo players and unskilled players. Whether or not you agree with the change is completely irrelevant. You can't just tell ppl in regs to git gud. THERE IS NOWHERE LEFT FOR THEM TO ACTUALLY TRAIN AND GET GOOD.