Misunderstood the mechanics behind this, I can see why Sensitivity wins out in most cases!

I'm very confused by this. How does the Stormwatch tactical (which applies to a single target marked by your Lightning Flash) wreck entire groups?

Thank you for the update! I do think that is an appreciable buff especially when paired with the 10% extra Crushing Darkness damage, which should blunt a lot of this nerf at least as it pertains to PvP and dungeon content. I just remain worried that the loss of uptime on Polarity Shift itself will be very painful for endgame PvE. If the intent is to rein in our raid performance, this change does that pretty well, but I feel it might leave us just a touch too far behind compared to other classes. EDIT: And thank you so so so so much for not making us Force Speed to get the extended duration. That would've been awful.

Couple of points I'm confused on. Reverberating Force currently increases critical DAMAGE by 5%, is that being raised to 15% or is it being swapped out for 15% more critical hit chance? Also, is Convulsing Currents' current effect being retained, or does this new one replace its effect for Shock? As to the changes themselves, I don't think these buffs are enough to compensate the massive loss in Polarity Shift uptime nor how clunky the gameplay is. I don't necessarily dislike the thinking behind these changes - I think Lightning should be less reliant on its set bonus to be a functional spec. But making it so you have to perfectly time your Force Speed and Polarity Shift as well as gutting the uptime of the cooldown that makes or breaks our viability is a questionable approach. Just get rid of needing to use Polarity Shift during Force Speed. That's silly. I'm sorry, there is no way around it, it is a silly, nonsensical change. All it does is punishes players with poor latency and creates extremely awkward timing problems where you will need to sit on Force Speed to avoid a scenario where using it would leave you with 1-2 seconds left on the CD of PS. It feels bad, and it is extraordinarily clunky. Yes, maybe the current buff is too forgiving in its duration, but at least make it 6-8s to give a small leeway. Additionally, I think meeting in the middle would be good here. Let Gathering Storm continue to buff the duration of PS by 10 seconds, but have the CD reduction go down to 5s as proposed. That, coupled with the compensatory buffs would consolidate damage into larger, but less frequent spikes.

This nerf basically removes Deception. But yeah, you can play Hatred if you have a pocket healer at least.

These nerfs make absolutely no sense whatsoever. Deception isn't overperforming and is mediocre in PvP. But sure, why not. If everyone's class is ****, nobody has to worry about there being an imbalance.

Just chiming in here also as someone who's bounced between preferred and subbed status. Endgame for me was (and still is) purely PvP. I don't really do PvE outside of leveling and maybe the odd dungeon if I'm dragged into it by a guildie. I like to just hop on, do some warzones and occasionally RP (EH server) so for me, the old WZ passes were absolutely perfect. I don't know if the concept worked equally well for operations, but I will say I feel the blanket removal of all passes was a huge mistake on the dev's part. The simple truth of the matter is that SWTOR is not worth me maintaining a sub for on a passive basis. I don't actually care to enjoy everything the game has to offer. I don't care about new operations or dungeons or strongholds. The three big things I come back for are: PvP, Roleplay, and Story, in that order. There have been several times I've updated the game, played to my weekly WZ cap and just sort of went 'meh' at the thought of resubbing to play further. In the old system though, I could've purchased a $5 supplement of CC to buy passes, or played the GTN to afford them with in-game currency to keep doing just what I wanted to do. I've noticed there are several posts decrying 'freeloaders' on the pages preceding this. Personally, I feel the merits to the old system were obvious. People who had to obtain passes automatically stimulate server economies - those cartel coins have to come from somewhere and ultimately, it might not be worth it for a person to drop $15 bucks just to PvP or do Operations, but $5 is negotiable. Furthermore, when people are already complaining about queues shouldn't we be encouraging more bodies in warzones, flashpoints and operations? I'm not saying passes need to come back in exactly the same fashion as they were before by any means. I just think the developers ought to give them another look, because I know at least among my circle of friends and certain guildies, the inability to consciously pay directly for the content we want to access is a huge deterrent, whereas before that wasn't the case. Maybe the 'optimal' amount of revenue wasn't being wringed from our wallets, but at least we populated the server and the queues and still contributed to the game's livelihood.

Bump bolster up to 242. Let PvP be competitive and more alt-friendly than it currently is, still retains a measure of gear progression for people who only PvP and it represents another method of acquiring gear for endgame PvE.

It's easily one of the most useful abilities in a marauder's arsenal. The fact that its usefulness scales depending on what class you're fighting is irrelevant. By your line of logic, operative's auto-dodge bubble is worthless, as is saber deflection and other parry/dodge based abilities. They're clearly not though - it just depends on what you're fighting. Sure that sorc you're beating on might not give a **** if you obfuscate him, but it's going to make that deception assassin really sad that you're parrying all of his mauls, or forcing a vengenace jugg to waste his entire ravage and an ability or two. The effect is also quite difficult to notice in the heat of battle, especially if you have a lot of other effects on you - I will say pacify is a lot harder to spot than obfuscate when it comes to this. It all boils down to knowing what class you're fighting and when it's appropriate to use it. There are only a handful of defensive cooldowns in the game that are 'universally good' and usually manifest in the form of flat damage reductions. I'd personally take an ability that gave me a near 100% chance to outright negate someone's main attacks than an ability that reduced that same damage by 20% or so.

http://imgur.com/zBU9Grb Not having any problems here, games like the screenie above are commonplace for me now, especially if there's a good healer on our side. Even a bad game usually has me landing in the 400-450k range, the spec has become a lot more demanding, but it's also a lot more rewarding.

Not to burst anyone's bubble, but the reason why Anni is considered inferior to the other two specs is not because only a select few have have the blessed ability to play it reasonably well, but simply due to its design. Trying to rationalize that people don't consider it competitive for ranked pvp by simply saying they're all bad or that the spec requires more skill doesn't lend anything useful to the argument - I can just as well argue that Carnage requires far more input and tactical foresight, but that doesn't really matter. It's opinion. It depends. Your average Carnage marauder will charge in and blow everything they have in the first two or three seconds - this makes it extremely easy to mitigate their opening burst, and is a tactical error on the part of the Carnie. A more wise approach is to save gore and ravage for an opportunity when it's less likely to be interrupted, and it's also something to consider that the fact that CC is being blown on you at all is an advantage. I'd rather be stunned four times as a Carnage marauder than my healer get stunned four times. CCs in general can be characterized as being a counter, even anni isn't immune to that. If anything, anni could be worse off, as they lack the ability to catch a slippery healer once they withdraw from melee. Even if it rarely happens it doesn't mean that it shouldn't be considered as a factor. I might have been willing to agree with this assessment, but as of 2.0 cleanses are much better than they are now, and will be a no-brainer for healers to cast on their targets. This in turn will seriously hinder the performance of an anni marauder, who can only reset one of their dots on a 6-12 second cooldown, with the other on a 12s hard cooldown, so it's not a continuous dot train. Ultimately it doesn't matter if it's viable in unranked warzones, which it performs so-so in. The thread's about ranked, where taking an anni marauder is a hindrance. To clarify something, this doesn't imply anything about the player's ability to use the spec to its full potential - it's just that it's not built for burst, which is king of ranked pvp. By having a sustained DoT DPS, you have to consider the opportunity cost of bringing along that kind of damage-dealer. What if there was Pyrotech in that mara's place? A rage jug? A carnage mara? What if the other team has a similar makeup, but they brought along a more bursty DPS instead? Ultimately, the opportunity cost of bringing an Annhi marauder is too high for their benefits. Sustained DPS? Fights are generally over in about 30 seconds or so. Heals? They're paltry, even more so after the nerf. Burst? Practically non-existent. Sure if you get a string of lucky crits you'll pressure the target - but a string of lucky crits for a Carnage or Rage marauder is a dead target. I played nothing but Annhi during the initial stages of the game, back when Carnage was utterly broke and useless. I swore by the spec, and admit that it's a fun and well-designed spec, but it wasn't created with pvp in mind I feel. A good player can make it work like any good player can make a spec work - but it'll forever be outclassed by the other two specs more suited to a ranked environment, foregoing any major changes to the spec itself. My two creds.

1. Rakore 2. Silent Council 3. Carnage Marauder 4. Civil War 5. Solo Kills (11) 6. http://i.imgur.com/saryEFM.jpg

1. Rakore 2. Silent Council 3. Carnage Marauder 4. Voidshtar 5. Killing Blows - 29 6. http://imgur.com/3D2UxKb Posting on the behalf of Raveris since he isn't subscribed, and thus can't contribute. 1. Raveris 2. Silent Council 3. Rage Juggernaut 4. Voidshtar 5. Killing Blows - 31 6. http://imgur.com/MfZOrZK

Finally got into the fifty bracket on my powertech. Was pretty fun critting an augmented WH focus guardian for 2600 on my railshot, then being promptly sweep-crit for 7.2k, bapbap, executed for 5k. I feel very competitive! Thanks Bioware! Back to the grinding wheel.

Sounds like that was pretty nice of the enemy team not to attack you at all then. I've noticed this strange rise in damage. It's like, when nobody on the enemy team attacks me and I never die, I can do so much more DPS! It's weird, brah.