Damage is only dependant on your spec, the warzone it is and the kind of match it is. Of course a smashmonkey would get insane damage numbers in a 30 minute stalemate at novare with at least 2 healers per team. Then again, 1 single smashmonkey is a non-factor hehe... Group them up and have them jump and smash the same target and then they become effective

(Republic Faction) Hello jolly fellows! Me and at least 2 other friends are thinking of finding ourselves a new guild, we have joined this one as part of a rebuilding effort that didn't quite turn out as we had hoped in the amount of time we spent on it already. We all have several lv 55 characters ready to go for HM ops along with the experience to get through those on a weekly basis, the purpose of this thread is for us to test the "free agent" waters and see what's available to us. We hope to find a PvE progression guild with a degree of commitment to progress that equals our own, not a super-hardcore guild, but one that progresses efficiently while maintaining a nice social atmosphere in their voice chat channels. We would like to join an established guild with players to spare for us to form a tight 8 man raiding team. We also are very capable PvPers, but are putting that on hold until 2.4 hits in October, so might do it casually until then. If you feel your guild would welcome such a group and accomodate our ambitions and desires out of this game, reply to this thread so we can discuss this further. Cheers

A sad thing indeed to see one of the most storied guilds in the server disband. Truth is most PvP guilds are not big fans of arenas but we'll make do with what we get I suppose. Now that I was just beggining to have fun in regular warzones with Whasp coming back to the game and running premades... Meh back to facerolling impzies 24/7. Good luck in your future endeavours.

They're removing it probably only so no one can screw with the new matchmaking system they're implementing. Though field respec in actual warzones was a big problem, people would take all sorts of situational advantage from it "Oh we got 2 nodes? Okay respeccing tank and heals, good luck capping now brah!". People might complain that removing it is taking some skill out of the equation but I'll agree to disagree, there's no skill level involved in respecc'ing rather than being able to be at least merely decent in different specs of your AC. Plus, different classes benefitted more from it than others so in that regard it might be a balance issue as well. How can you forget the endless spyral of stalemates that Voidstar matches have become as of late, awesome for number farmers and not so fun for people who just wanna go into a warzone, faceroll the opposing team and move on to the next one. All in all, field respec's removal will be a great thing for PvP - learn to excel in your specs playas!

To be honest if you plan on taking down a healer, smash is not the spec you want to be running in the first place. For guardian/juggernaut vigilance/vengeance would be best for that simply because it has better single target burst. Same goes for sentinel/marauder combat/carnage plus this spec also has tons of roots, good when trying to keep the healer from getting away from you. Before 2.0 no one picked on operative/scoundrel healers calling them out as OP for ONE simple reason, the energy cost of Kolto Probe/Slow-Release Medpac it was 15 at all times back in the day and with 2.0 there was a talent introduced that reduced that energy cost to 9 making it spammable, allowing such healer to keep a Kolto Probe/Slow-Release Medpac on every member of his group without putting any strain on his energy pool. And that's all that has changed, giving the healing class with arguably the best defensive cooldowns and best solo survivability the ability to HoT an entire 8 man group at absolutely no effort. So nerf that talent so each level of it reduces the energy cost by 1 rather than 2 and the ability will cost 12 energy rather than 9, making the healer unable to keep it on everyone without compromising his energy pool. And that's the opinion of someone who rolled a scoundrel healer before it was mainstream

Resilience is currently only negating negative Force and Tech effects for the duration, if melee and/or ranged would be added it would be a go-to defensive CD in both PvP and PvE and then have all the other classes crying about shadow being OP In PvE it would improve a shadow tank's desirability by a lot "Terminate? Okay, resilience. Thx bai come again." just comes out of the top of my head. Still keeps the skill level in the equation for the tank would be able to negate most spikey moments during a boss fight even when they're not channeled like Thrasher's swipe, which is good for about 14k in HM if not shielded, though he'd have to know the fight like the back of his hand. The impact on DPS specs would just be a way to avoid high damage abilities especially on PvP, while also making the shadow immune to CC for the duration as resilience would counter all types of effects.

The reason this lovely class has been shunned by BW is simply because we were too OP in PvP, a shadow running tank spec in DPS gear was a dreadful thing to come by in a WZ so they've nerfed our self heals progressively in each patch and ended up nerfing our armor rating by 30% on combat technique as well (it used to be 145% rather than 115%). Sure we were given a new DR cooldown on Battle Readiness but the long cooldown does not justify the boosts at all, a 15% self heal with 25% DR on a 2 minute cooldown is not gonna help much when you're trying to keep up with a boss' dmg in anything from a HM to a NiM. And don't even get me started on Terminate... What people forget about armor rating is that it is the only defense you have against crits (and yes crits happen in PvE as well) which bypass your shield no matter the rating you've boosted it to. All of these progressive nerfs have made the shadow tank an undesirable thing to have in OPS, as a shadow tank myself for a main character with which I raid I feel the class does need some buffing to at least be viable in endgame PvE. Of course if it does happen it will only last until the PvP forums get flooded with QQ'ing about the shadow hybrid PvP spec being back as the most fearsome thing to come across. Hopefully Bioware takes notice of our struggle, because I'm tired of being better geared than VG or Guardian tanks and have them be more sucessful in tanking simply because they have it easier.

FoTM is in full display in arenas, I have not tried the PTS on this current round yet but I have patched it and shall give it a go tomorrow. I do expect full stealth (DPS Scoundrel/Operative & DPS Shadow/Assassin) teams to destroy other teams, maybe also full smashmonkey teams. But it shall be fun no doubt, at least for a while.

Both classes' initial burst stack up pretty well to each other, but scoundrel is totally useless while out of stealth if you are planning on going into the scrapper spec, the only good thing is that you can stunlock kill people with Flechette Round > Shoot First > Sucker Punch > Dirty Kick > Sabotage Charge > Flechette Round > Blaster Whip > Sucker Punch > Backblast.

This new change is overkill imo, now I regret pointing out how senseless the field respec CHEESE! was and is at the moment in the PvP scene. But this screws up lovely people who would spec heals before the match begins to give their team a chance to win, I'm a firm supporter of no respecc'ing allowed once a match begins but still being able to respec during the waiting period of nearly 2 minutes before it does. Field respec only became a nuisance when used in between VS rounds or after capturing nodes to 'turtle' them, but this my friends is way overkill by Bioware.

My opinion on this was formulated on the assumption that they're removing ranked warzones due to the lack of resources to keep them in the game at this point. Regardless ranked warzones were fun once upon a time, once a few teams distinguished themselves in my server it turned into constant stalemates that most times ended with a DC, a lag-switch or even in rare cases well timed chain-CC. The objective based play has a cerebral flavor to it which can be very entertaining but for it to be sucessful as a whole all the class balance/utility would have to be thrown out of whack and end up having an impact on PvE as well. While most WZ fans might claim deathmatch is merely about button smashing and FoTM, there are several factors that will come into play beyond that, in the end the team with the best players will triumph while previously in WZ being a winner wouldn't necessarily mean anything as far as player ability (it mostly came down to team composition or the occasional setback/exploit). "Oh noes opposing team has 3 smashmonkeys ripping us to shreds, uuuuugggghhh!" or "Why did we not bring a sniper along for this huttball match?". And PvP should be about player ability and a proper challenge in some cases if not, why play it? I will always be more inclined towards PvP myself but I do PvE with guildies as well on occasion and BW has done a great job as far as PvE goes, even though this Dread Masters' plot to conquer the galaxy is getting old, in providing a proper challenge. In fact I was just doing TFB HM for sheer lolz and the Operator IX fight remains tough as nails. Also the ranked scene must not be appealing for new groups of players that would like to try their hand at those, but got no options on practicing with a full 8 man premade group before jumping into a ranked warzone and get hammered by a much more experienced team. I do hope ranked warzones grace us with another reincarnation, perhaps with a proper matchmaking system they will flourish and more people will be encouraged to play them, but right now it's too self repeating. "Guild X smashes Guild Y. Guild X goes on to a stalemate match with Guild W. Guild Y steamrolls Guild Z. Guild Z never queues again for ranked. Guild Y has a stalemate with Guild W. Guild W gives up on ranked for the day, because stalemates are boring. Guild X and Y are stuck always playing against one another for the remainder of the day."

This OP knows what he's talking about, ranked warzones were doomed from the start. The ridiculous amount of exploits/hacks that came up in recent times only made it worse, the implementation of arenas will revitalize the PvP community at least for a little while. At least we won't have to put up with 30 minute Novare matches because neither team can kill any opponent because of the presence of 2 tanks and 2 healers on each side as often was and is the case on ranked warzones. Of course there will be class balance issues, in my opinion especially the ability of a full stealth DPS team on voice communication to open up on a single target and burst it down before anyone realises what's going on, but I do think those will be adressed in time. As in any patch, there will be FoTM to be dealt with, it wouldn't be an MMO without it. Personally I'm looking forward to cleaning the cobwebs off my scoundrel's shotgun and team up with 3 other scoundrels to pick off some poor unawary guys one by one in arenas hehe. Prioritizing deathmatch is something that should've been done from the start as far as PvP goes, afterall everyone wants to hop into a PvP environment and shoot every red named character they see. While I did enjoy the objective play style, I often found myself while queue'ing solo or even in premade groups with guildies/friends for regular warzones to be grouped with people who were either clueless about the objectives or simply didn't care and would rather go out there and kill stuff. Also the less people that make up a team, the more individual player ability comes into focus which is a great thing, afterall in PvP you aim to be the best you possibly can be within your class, spec and role. Thumbs up for a deep and insightful thread. On a last note, to the top tier PvP guilds across the servers that played solely for ranked warzones: carry your commitment over to arenas. Even if you won't be as dominant on arenas as you were on ranked because team coordination will not be so vital or because they're disabling the field respec CHEESE! or if them auto-clickers in a few cases will not be as useful to grab them balls in SNIPER/SLINGERball it doesn't mean you won't enjoy it. So please, stop moaning about all your efforts on getting people coordinated to be sucessful on ranked warzones going down the drain when 2.4 hits because those same efforts will translate over to arenas if your players are worth their salt. I bid you all a good day and thumbs up to the OP once more.

Now before everyone starts hating on yet another nerf ops/scoundrels thread let me start by saying: The ability itself is not OP, when you get Emergent Emergencies/Surgical Precision then it becomes OP, if your target is below 30% max health then you regain the stack of Upper Hand/Tactical Advantage you spent casting, meaning only the global cooldown will prevent you from spamming it to keep someone up indefinetely. While the talent itself would not necessarily need to be nerfed, if a 10-15 energy cost was added to the ability. This would prevent spamming it for ages and not take away it's viability in PvE. In PvP it wouldn't change much, just the longer you press the healer the more in your favor the fight goes, as they'd be running out of energy to keep themselves up with it. Whoever believes making such a change will affect the healer's performance in PvE needs to play one before making that point, because you hardly use emergency medpac/surgical probe unless making up for spike damage or enrage damage.

Hello chaps! I've been playing MMOs for quite a while now since the early 2000s and with each year that passes, people become ruder and ruder. Is it because they suddenly grow a manhood they have lacked their entire life to stand up to others and since they're talking to somebody who's likely halfway across the world they feel safe or just because their cyber sucess got to their heads to the point that a harmless MMO playing teenager became a self-absorbed idiot (for lack of a better word)? A curious question indeed. In every MMO, everyday there's people spamming the general with their pathetic e-peen measurement contests and flames. I wonder when everyone will act politely towards another.

Class balance is not too bad as it is right now, maybe operative/scoundrel spammable instant cast heal that costs absolutely nothing when target at or below 30% hp should be reworked... But beyond that even smashmonkeys can be dealt with, heck combat/carnage is way more fearsome to face 1 on 1, smash is only viable when en masse as it puts pressure on healers but I do agree it is too easy to play. Some specs do need buffing rather than nerfing all others, such as scrapper scoundrel/concealment operative, tactics vanguard/advanced prototype powertech, balance shadow/madness assassin (by dumbing down this one they totally ruined it).