I'm only seeing stuff about PvP, so I'll respond with that in mind. It's less that non-Sage healers are terrible and more that Sage healers are easy to learn and fit perfectly into the present "burst or die" meta. They have great burst healing, great defensive tools, great energy management, and they're not hard to pick up and play. The other two healers have their own specialties, but the Scoundrel's focus on sustained healing doesn't fit quite as neatly into the present meta. They bring a lot to the table, but it's more subtle and situational. As a Scoundrel, you have to always be at least one step ahead of the situation. And you'll have to work harder than a Sage does to do your job. There's a lot more micromanagement involved. It's not as user friendly as the Sage. Tracking HoTs, energy regen rates, and Upper Hand stacks -does- get tiring at times. The reward is in the non-obvious utilities you bring, which just isn't enough for most players, and amazing sustained AoE healing. The Commando is a middle ground between them, but suffers from being the most vulnerable of the three. Which is weird, being a heavily armored combat medic, but whatever. If you were looking for a PvE healer, I would recommend the Commando because it's the most versatile: the DPS specs of the Sage are somewhat lacking right now, and DPS Scoundrels have never fully recovered from the brutal beating they took at the hands of the nerf squad early on in the game's life cycle. Commando DPS, while not always top of the charts, has mostly had a respectably stable presence. Gunnery, at least, doesn't yo-yo as wildly from expansion to expansion as many other DPS specs do. But the Commando lacks the Sage's awesome defensive cooldowns and the Scoundrel's extreme evasiveness. If PvP is your thing, I have a hard time recommending it there. The Commando forum regulars will be happy to tell you all about why. So, it all depends on where your focus lies, what kind of healing style you enjoy, and how much bang to expect for your buck. The standard MMO vet advice is to pick the one you like most and ignore the numbers, since patches come and go and the FotM comps with them, but with this game's content turnaround time... idk. It's unpredictable. Sage is definitely in the sweet spot right now, but that could all change in a week, or a month, or a year, or never. It's impossible to tell with this team.

Most of the complaints about Mercs have to do with their lackluster defensive cooldowns (DCDs)in PvP. They're easy to focus and burn down without support. You know how people are. They parrot things without really understanding what they're saying. If you're focusing on PvE, Mercs are more than fine. They hit respectably hard and have a secondary role option if you ever feel like exploring it. They're in a good position to ride out the ways of FoTM this and FotM that.

I brought up the etymology simply because I don't like to get bogged down in what I feel are ultimately semantics, but... it's really just a matter of iconography, at the end of the day. "Sniper" is a popular video game archetype. The AC's weapon is a "sniper rifle". It's made less to be a faithful recreation of military logistics and more as a nod to video game camp. We all know the sniper character trope, it's instantly identifiable. That said, I'll confess to liking my Gunslinger a lot more than my Sniper, because my Sniper has just... never felt quite right. Rolling around with that giant elephant gun, never engaging at any range that would actually require it. Whereas my Gunslinger's John Woo style is obviously hammy, but it feels right for the range of engagement. The pistols don't seem like they would interfere with the gymnastic floor routine he does. The spray-and-pray style fits the character.

The cover mechanic is much more optional than it used to be. In the old days, you lost most of your damage if you weren't in cover. These days, you don't -need- to be in cover as much. You still -should- be in cover whenever you can be, but you're not punished anywhere near as harshly if you're not. And for anyone who finds the cover system problematic, I recommend that you go into your keybinding preferences and swap the "Take Cover" and "Take Cover in Place" buttons. Most of the headache surrounding the cover mechanic for people, I find, comes from the auto-roll function and not cover itself. Taking cover in place is instant, off the GCD, and quickly becomes second nature. Rolling into cover, on the other hand, is highly situational.

If you really want to get down to brass tacks, the word "sniper" comes from British soldiers in India who considered snipe-hunting -- hunting actual birds called snipes -- to be a distinguished test of skill. It's been in common use since the early 19th century and is considered analogous to "marksman", "sharpshooter", or any of the other many terms we have which mean "person who's really good at shooting".

Look at how many complaint threads there are on the first page. Look at how many of them are drenched in hyperbole. And, as pointed out above, one of them directly names and calls out a member of the dev team, calling, not just for his resignation, but his termination. There are still avenues of communication open, they're just not on this forum. Given how people -- the customers -- on this forum behave, I fully support that decision. Until the general level of vitriol and aggression gets turned down a few notches, I don't think we can (or should)expect to see any substantial dev/CM communication here. The community needs to behave in a manner deserving of the communication it desires. Until players can tone down the hostility (and this level of vitriol is, sadly, typical of what's become the norm around here), they should get used to being left in the dark. A civil exchange requires civil behavior on behalf of all parties involved. If somebody regaled you with nonstop threats and harassment every time you tried to talk to them, you would do the same thing: you would stop trying to talk to them.

Given the way online gaming communities have gone, and this one in particular, I don't blame them for their reticence.

Auto-roll can definitely be a pain, yes. That's why most of us remap the buttons.

I don't know that it's an attempt to be unique that people are criticizing so much as the unfortunate quality of its execution. Though, really, I don't know how unique it is. WildStar's basic premise was "out-WoW vanilla WoW", so taking WoW's cartoonish style and kicking it up to 11 seems like a logical choice. It doesn't really seem bold or daring or avant-garde in any way. Likewise with the gameplay. It was a generic tab-targeting MMO early in development, but during development they tried to look around at the genre as it was evolving and guess at the needs of the market. So they grafted in the "action combat", which was a laudable attempt, but it was weighed down by their stubborn philosophy "let's make everything harder than it needs to be so we can turn every casual player into a hardcore raider". If you watch some of the early interviews with the executive producer, they freely admit to these things. And that's the ultimate problem with WildStar: not that it's ambitious or novel, but that it's not. It was an attempted throwback to a time that nobody really misses, plagued by a pedantic design philosophy that insisted on dragging the game a decade backward even as they tried to make it hip and fresh. They introduced things like Paths and the elaborate player housing system to draw in the casual kind of player who just wants to explore and take their time with the game, and the kind of action combat that's gaining in popularity among the new generation, but they welded these things to a punishingly tedious grind, a truly unfortunate interface design, and the exact design philosophy that WoW became successful for abandoning. I don't know what they expected.

They key to pumping out damage as a Telekinetics Sage is proc management. Open with Telekinetic Wave whenever possible, then use one of your abilities that procs its CD reset (I prefer Disturbance). Use your stun on hard targets. Armor before the fight so it can be refreshed more easily during the fight.

After your other thread (also on the front page of this forum), you seem to not want to be playing this game, Xorian. You don't seem to want to be playing this era of MMOs, really. Maybe try WildStar? It's hemorrhaging money, but I believe it's intended to be a willful throwback to a previous era. Skill trees have been phased out of this and most games for a reason. Mandatory grouping has been done away with for a reason. I may not personally agree with all those reasons, but they exist and the genre in general is heading in a direction that favors simplicity and convenience over complexity and ordeals.

I'm sure it's already been said, but this game doesn't cater well to strangers grouping outside of instances. Some people prefer to rush through all dialogue, others prefer to take their time. Some people like to do all bonus objectives, some people would rather not spend time on them. And nobody ever really feels like they need much help with anything because we all have entire crews of NPC companions. I enjoy taking my time and I like seeing what other people do in scenes I've already watched a thousand times, but even I hesitate when a stranger wants to group up. They may not want to go at a pace that's compatible with mine. They may not like to explore like I do. Or maybe they enjoy all the same things I do, but they're playing the same class I am (1 in 4 chance of that), and doing class story missions together just became very awkward. The only real "group leveling" content outside of instances comes in the form of heroic quests. Even these, I'm reluctant to do with strangers unless I'm playing one of my healers (to be fair, healers are all I really like to play), because a bad group simply won't be able to do them. And now with 12xp... there's just no reason to bother. Now, I -like- playing with other people. That's one of the main reasons I like MMOs. I like meeting people, chatting with people, playing with people, seeing how they like to go through their stories. But I don't do it very often because this game just makes it kind of a huge pain. If I, as an older MMO player who fondly remembers the days of doing practically everything in a group, am reluctant to group up with strangers, imagine how much more reluctant the current crop of "solo all the things" MMO players are.

That one's been argued over since beta and I don't know why. You're not recovering the supplies to give to wounded soldiers, you're recovering them so the warehouse staff doesn't get in trouble for their negligence. That's what the story on Ord Mantell is supposed to be about: the moral vagaries of politically motivated war. I think that's what happens, in general, when people find LS/DS choices confusing. The game is trying to tell a complicated story sometimes, presenting some unusual moral dilemmas, and the narrative isn't always up to the task, or the player isn't always fully paying attention.

Your class ship is wedded to your class story. Not only is it a logistical matter (programming of placement for characters and cutscenes, etc.)they all fit. The Jedi and Sith get iconic Republic and Empire vessels. The Agent gets the sleek, sporty number that fits most for their "James Bond in space" vibe. As a Sith, you represent the authority of the Empire, so you get a scary-looking Imperial fighter. I'd love more customization options, myself, but it's just not in the cards.

I like Iresso. His voice is sexy and he's a consummate professional. Zenith is a very damaged and distant man. My least favorite romances are for the male Jedi Knight, male Consular, and Troopers of either gender. Mostly because I don't like the idea of shacking up with your subordinate. Especially in the case of the Jedi, romancing your padawan seems... creepy. To me, anyways. I know a lot of people who like that.