There goes the other half of the people sticking around. Lets see, few days left in the account.

You sure? Sorc icons are the same as Assassin Icons. Just take a look at who's got any protection points and that usually rules out 50% of the assassins. You can never be too sure though.

Here's the simple truth. BW designed our 31 point talents that were lackluster at best. Some clever players discovered the hybrid build(s) and those have proven to outperform the dev's lackluster design. Not liking to be one up'ed, they nerfed said hybrid build in an attempt to save face. What they have actually done is gutted the class but left us with nothing better than the original said lackluster 31 point talents.

Here's a larger sample size: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=331028 This is all based around the EV Council fight where you go toe to toe against one of the larger health pool folks. If you manage to run EV normal or HM on your PTR toon, perhaps you can report what you find. On Live my average is around 1430 dps so it's close to what you have found. Also Daellia/Tor over at Sithwarrior probably has better methods and log parses, and I forgot what he discovered for live vs PTR. My sub has run out so I'm not able to test this myself.

I would put it as AoE vs Single target. While on the PTR our single target damage (i.e. boss) seems to be uneffected much, they literally butchered our AoE damage. Now apply that towards PvE and PvP and you'll have some folks that are understandably upset. Try pulling off a "casted" 3 second CL in PvP if someone's on you. I assure you will be interrupted.

BW's shown a steady pattern of double nerfing an aspect of a class. They double nerfed Operative burst back in a previous patch. They are gutting the sorc healing in 1.2 with a double nerf (some say triple nerf) to a bug fix, force regen, and burst healing. And what peeves me off the most is the double nerf to sorc hybrid specs, namely madness. What they should have done was just the 2nd part of that. If they had change Wrath's 20% to ONLY benefit Crushing Darkness, we would be set. But removing Chain Lightning from the equation without buffing LS or the 31 point talents really sucks. It's been said over and over, LS damage is less than simply spamming more FL. LS damage sucks. Our 31 point talent specs are subpar to the hybrid specs as is currently. With this full nerf, what are you going to use your Wrath procs on? Crushing Darkness has a 15 second CD with an 8 second DoT. How many of you have had wrath proc MORE than twice in 15 seconds? Really, what else are you going to use Wrath on if it's not CL? If the player base can see this, why hasn't BW noticed this? In terms of PvE dps, it's not even like we were pulling ahead in damage. I'll refer you to my thread trying to capture dps on the EV Council fight. Do you see us clearly ahead of the other classes? http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=331028

Not going to debate this topic here. I suggest you join us over on the PTR post: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=370792

Says the NMM "Unyielding" guy. You know some people still struggle with the regular and hard mode content. Do you think it's fair to have to have full rakata to get into the storymode (normal) new operations? Sure they drop rakata too, but doesn't that defeat the purpose being there? LFM New Ops to get Rakata gear, folks without full Rakata need not apply. See the problem there?

Naw I'm going by the folks who actually got their characters copied over on the PTR. Plus I watched a live stream of their guild doing PTR content. FULL Rakata geared sorc could NOT heal the new HM FP. They brought in an op and killed all the bosses. FULL Rakata geared folks having issues with the Normal/Storymode new Ops first boss. Just go over and check out the PTR threads about it, doesn't look good. I can understand nerfs but what's being seen on the PTR is a nightmare. Plus I'm miffed they butchered the Wrath + CL combo, effectively killing our aoe. As you can see from the 2nd post, it's not like sorc dps was much higher than merc dps. Why the nerf?

By the time you level up to 50 and gear up on PTR, 1.2 will be released. GG. Just take a look at the folks who have had their characters copied over. They destroyed Alderon I mean Operatives before, and we didn't heed their warning. Now they are back to finish the job on healers.

Sorry folks I have unsubbed and will probably not update this thread. 1.2 Sorc nerfs are extremely brutal to my favorite class. I (along with others I know) were on the fence hoping 1.2 would revitalize the content, but with the extreme nerfs we have made our decision.

Is there any field that they excel in? Sorc's have nice AoE heals, bubbles, and decent staying power. Mercs are supposidly tank healing champs. What's the Operative Healing Niche then? There's got to be something they do better than the other healing classes? Right?

Just to clarify operatives healing operations, was sorta funny title. So out of all my ops experience with 3 level 50 toons in both normal and hard modes, I believe I've only grouped with ONE operative healer. He actually did ok I think, teamed with a sorc healer. How is Operative healing end game for Normal and Hard Mode Ops? Strictly speaking PvE not PvP, how do they fare? I've only seen Merc and Sorc healers so far in all the ops runs so I wasn't sure if I missed the memo that ops healing sucks or something. I have a 25 operative and was wondering if I should bother leveling that toon. Or should I just wait for dual specs on my sorc or even reroll a new sorc just for healing. Thanks.

Just a quick poll, how much Strength does your Veng Jugg have? I have a 50 Guardian and 50 Jugg (that just hit 50) and wanted to get an idea how much strength you folks are running with fully buffed. On my Guardian fully buffed with Rakata stims I'm sitting at 1650 strength. On my fresh Jugg I'm sitting a much less, only 1280 strength or so. It just seemed easier to stack other stats on other classes. For example my SI Sorc has 1800 wisdom fully buffed. It seems harder to stack Str gear for some reason and I was wonder if I was a bit low. Thanks.

^ This is correct. I leveled from 1-40 as Veng with no issues. Used Quinn mainly but also tried out Jaena a bit when I first got her. Have absolutely no issues with any non Heroic quests on any of the planets. Did fairly well in PvP but I was mainly PvE questing to be honest. 40-50 I used Rage. It comes into it's own as a spec at around level 43 when you get 3 points in Immortal for free scream. You will be pwning people in the pre-50 bracket for those 10 levels so enjoy it. The exp was sort of slow even though I won nearly all my pvp matches, so I went back to PvE questing on the planets to hit 50. At 50 I was torn between Rage and Veng. I used Rage initially due to my craptasic gear but once you get a decent 126+ set I'd switch back to Vengence. Vengence scales better imo and is easier to play for PvE. For PvP rage does a more damage to clusters of people but in the post 50 bracket people learn NOT to cluster up. The main reason I stopped using Rage was because it felt too cetered around Smash. If you miss it, they cc you at the right time, push you away, stun you, etc, etc then you just lost all your damage. And post 50 folks inately know when you're about to smash somehow and find a way to counter it. My Guardian is Veng spec as well and doing decent damage in Ops runs. I'm sitting around 1650 str fully buffed with rakata stims, just a reference.