I'm with you guys though I used to be lethality. The loss of our heals really hit this spec hard, lethality was always a rapidly regenerating and slippery skirmisher. Annoying if managed correctly, lethal if not. Now its just a stinkbug, it spreads the weakest dots in the game and then has to get into melee range to actually do anything with them. Everything is now more mobile and we lost our comparative advantage in mobility. We still have no decent DCD (though the ultimate utilty to stim boost is nice) and wither fast under focus fire. Those are all balance issues though, the real problem is that this class is just NOT FUN. When I rolled an operative I had something like the infiltrator class from mass effect in mind. Nimble, stealthy, engage at any range with a wide variety of tools. And at launch it was like that, we had very good melee damage, passable ranged damage, the unique utility that is cover, airstrikes, healing, stealth, and great CC. I would have preferred if we favored ranged combat over melee but other than that it was great. Then they started changing stuff, simplifying and streamlining. We progressively became more and more of a pure melee dot class. They don't want us using AOE's, cover, cast abilities, heals, stealth (otherwise we wouldn't be stuck in combat so much), or ranged attacks in general. Our toolbox keeps getting smaller and we've never been particularly good. I'm out, time to play my commando I guess.

Hmm, if/when you guys get around to fixing this would you mind leaving distortion field as it is? I rather like actually getting missile locks every once in a while.

I'm not liking the changes honestly. As a gunnery commando I gained mobility but lost my healing and a solid chunk of my utilities (funny, 4/5 of the utility points I had went into getting utilities I already had before the changes and some I couldn't have at all). Overall it seems like all the dps took a hit to their survival, burst has been toned down but TTK is lower since sustained and dot specs seem to be more powerful. Kiting is no longer possible since everything under the sun can ignore roots and my healing is gone, DCD wise commandos still suck. As far as class balance goes, I didn't notice much of a change to ops healing output despite them supposedly getting a nerf, sorcs are getting a bit out of hand with their high damage uncleansable dots and newfound mobility. The rest of the classes feel ok though. Operative dps is still in the gutter and bears still sh*t in the woods. Overall it feels like the game got faster and much more dependent on healers. Commando and operative used to be ok working alone due to their ability to self heal, which is incidentally the reason I play both classes. Now they are much more reliant on healers. On the bright side the proc lightups are nice, and I haven't seen any major bugs yet.

Allow us to buy duplicates of our existing ships. I would love to have a setup involving 3 different blackbolt loadouts and 2 version of my quell (bomber buster and dogfighter).

Koi is actually the better engine in my opinion and here is why, when you activate it it puts you in almost the same spot you were in in terms of X and Y and about 500 m further along in the Z direction. Snap turn however makes you boost about 1000m further back than the spot you started from. If the target you sab probed didn't bugger out but just decided to sit pretty, you will be right in their sights and ~800m ahead of them after a snap turn. Koi couples better with sab pobe flybies. Barrel roll is pointless, and dangerous, on a speed built scout. And honestly, I don't like powedive because I suck at aiming it.

Here is my counter to gunships: its the ship i'm famous for flying on JC. I guess its a modification on the "Brave Sir Robin" you guys love to poke fun at but its great in a gunship heavy domination map: http://dulfy.net/2013/11/16/swtor-galactic-starfighter/?link=dGEAAAANAAICAw8C8gLyA9AA9ALQAeAB4ALgAeA= This is the maximum accuracy build with an additional sab probe. The tactic is to approach from directly above or below, boosting in from 15 km to minimize your time on their sensors. When you get into TT range, pop wingman and TT then unload. Start locking a sab probe. Gunship is probably gonna BR at this point, chase after him with afterburners, cycle some shields if you're below 50%. Get in range and start locking again, he's gonna use distortion. Laugh at his puny evasion as your 140% accuracy rips his shields off. If he's still not dead, sabo probe while charging at him, release at point blank, pop a koi turn 1 km behind him and rip him apart while he gets to sit there like a lame duck. Here is my bomber buster: Its not exactly optimum but I hate flying gunships and I think bombers shouldn't even exist so I don't fly either on principle. This is what an actual torpedo bomber should play like. The point is to use charged plating to face tank mines while harrassing the bomber with EMP's and cluster missiles, this is a very nice build for removing a bomber who has already dug into a sat. HLC's will allow you to take out 2 turrets per run on the sat, and your EMP should take care of any drones. The problem with this build is that its heavily reliant on support fighters as it has the dogfighting ability of a drunken hutt (what do you know, like a real bomber). With proper fighter support its great, without it, its a pain in the ***. http://dulfy.net/2013/11/16/swtor-galactic-starfighter/?link=dGEAAAASAAYEBRAA7ADsBPID4ALQAuAC4ALgAeA= And yes I know hydrospanner is bad, but with this build its decent for fixing up the dinks you get from face tanking mines. It's not much but it adds up over time. Again its not a dogfighting build so accuracy and turn rate aren't a concern. And I use double volley clusters instead of lingering effects because i've got 75% extra ammo and rarely do I see them run out.

Ok, well i'm a purely pug player myself and here is my advice. Most matches, its not what the OP is talking about. It may be one sided but so what, you learn more from losing than from winning. The matches where you should actually quit are the ones against malicious people playing like jerks. We have an infamous guild on Jedi Covenant whom everyone hates for a mix of cheap tactics, regstaring, allegations of hacking/cheating, and most annoyingly endless amounts of seriously nasty trash talk. When they show up, with or against me, I quit. But everything else? Worst case scenario just go into stealth /slap people the whole match.

1) Unbalanced matches. I hate being on the stomping side even more than being on the stomped side but both are a waste of my time. Most of the time just bad matchmaking. 2) Que syncing premades. 8 on voice chat stacking sting, gunships and bombers vs pug. See above but this is intentional (and used to be very common on JC). This makes me RAGE. 3) The sab probe bug. I can't take the clearly superior slow on the T5 of sab probes because a glitch causes the probes to stop working if I do. Very annoying. 4) Wall-o-gunships. Doesn't matter which side, or which game, or how the match is going. This is a dogfighting game, not a duck shoot or a game of chicken. 5) Non-utillity cooldowns and RNG based defense. I really hate moves like TT, blaster overcharge, distortion field, ect. Burst is all fine and good, but these moves feel almost like cheating to me, like an offensive CD from the ground game. I swapped out my spare fuel tank for TT recently on my blackbolt and holy crap, its so much easier to get kills with that ability. I haven't gotten any better as a pilot, i'm just stacking the odds in my favor via a button click. Booooring. Same for the double missile break on distortion field. I respect those pilots who know how to fly, who rarely need missile lock breaks because they know how to do a manual power dive. And I myself never rely on distortion field (run shields to engines instead) because I prefer to dodge (or get vaped) based on my skill as a pilot not RNG. If i'm approaching a gunship, I do a real corkscrew (Or as one guy named it the Demitrov Roll ;p) and rarely get hit even if its head on from 15km. Distortion field is a lame workaround for actual pilot skill. ^ pardon the rant but there is a reason I don't do groundside pvp anymore and it annoys me to see similar mechanics define the GSF meta.

I consider myself a decent pilot. On Jedi Covenant i'm even considered a blackbolt ace (which mainly just makes me an annoying hipster). Personally, i've been finding myself drifting further and further away from this game because it has become progressively less fun for me. If I had to blame it on one factor, I would say that it was the lack of dog fighting. Don't get me wrong, bombers and gunships both add depth to the game, but it seems that with the current meta dominated by bombers gunships and battlescouts (with battlescouts I suppose you could make some claim to dogfighting, but its really not a "fair" fight as no dogfighter really stands a chance against an equally skilled battlescout) i'm finding the gameplay simply boring in most matches. I didn't come here to whine about the meta or about any particular ship though, i'm curious what do you guys find fun in this game and what suggestions would you have for making the game more enjoyable given its current state (basically its a "what should I fly instead of my blackbolt" thread).

Eh, to be honest i'de much prefer to only get one pop per half hour if it meant it would actually be a good game where either team could win. I have my gear, I don't need the comms from games I could afk through, and my play time is limited so i'de rather play one good balanced game than any number of stompings, or of being stomped.

Another major issue, and the one that made me switch over to GSF instead of ground side where its not so blatant, is the utter lack of matchmaking. I've noticed that on Jedi Covenant most of my matches boil down into three categories. 1) I'm grouped with one of our "professional" premade groups vs a bunch of pugs. This match ends within 5-8 minutes and even if the premades aren't a bunch of trolls to their inferior pug teammates, its still a very dull match. 2) I'm grouped against said premade and either promptly quit or spend the entire match hiding in stealth and sapping people for the lolz. 3) Pug vs Pug or premade vs premade, these are really rare but are the only matches worth playing, if I had to take a guess I get these maybe 30% of the time, less on most nights when a certain guild likes to field multiple premades. If over half of your matches every day are determined from the get go, whats the point of playing? *before anyone gets on my *** about "finding friends" that's besides the point. The point i'm making is that matches are rarely balanced. The system is flawed and yes I do know that I can stack the odds in my favor to render more wins by forming my own premade but that's rather pointless as well since the only thing more boring than getting stomped is being the one whose doing the effortless stomping.

I've been playing gunnery dps with a rifle for years now in top end pvp and in normal mode ops/HM flashpoints. Its perfectly viable. You will need a slightly higher than suggested gear level for the flashpoints and ops, but that's not hard to do as the pvp gear is sufficient. For pvp what matters most is your ability to stay alive, kite, and heal yourself. The burst in gunnery doesn't change with a rifle and sustained doesn't much matter in pvp. I never have any issues and can easily pull 800k+ in a stalled voidstar match or 40 kills + in a healer light alderaan.

Dear Devs, Please consider reverting the recent changes to the sabotage probe, the current version is simply not worth using. It has the same lock time as a concussion missile but now does virtually no damage, and the ability to remove the targets engine ability is pointless because the ships that can pack sab probes can't pack another missile to capitalize on the opening. The 50% evasion drop is useful but the sorts of ships that pack that much evasion (battlescouts) are the sort of ships you will rarely if ever hit with a sab probe due to their extreme maneuverability. If you guys are so set on removing the CC effect of sab probe then please just remove it altogether and give the ships that can currently equip it a refund on their comms along with a new missile. (I would suggest interdiction missiles for the blackbolt and concussions for the battlescout). Also: when was this change officially made? I've been looking through the patch notes back to 2.8.2 and I couldn't find any mention to it. Was this an accident?

I have to say, I don't fly gunships on principle but I have fought against plenty of good ones, and even more really terrible ones. Here's my take on it. Gunships are a balanced class but one that is not fun to face. When you are defeated by a T2 scout you know you got beat by a better pilot. When a strike crits you with a protorp and atomizes your hull you know you got unlucky. When you fly face first into a fortified bomber nest you know you're an idiot. But a gunship's slug usually comes out of nowhere, while your fighting someone else, and either leaves you smoking or out of energy. You don't get a sense of being out-played, only a sense of getting ganked/cheated/back stabbed. It feels low and dirty. Moreover, if you then try to approach that gunship and as soon as you do he high-tails it back to his carrier rather than dog-fighting you (which he can't, I know) the feeling is even worse. Especially in a strike fighter that can't chase him down. Honestly, I think its pointless to argue about whether this game would be better or not without gunships, they are here and here to stay. What I think does have some merit is looking at a re-design of gunships that achieves the two things that are needed to reduce the frustration of facing them. 1) Removing the sniper aspect of their gameplay 2) Decreasing burst while increasing sustained damage. If I could fully re-design the gunship, I would start with the following: -Railguns no longer bring you to halt instantly when you scope in. You can no longer scope in the middle of an engine outmaneuver. -Railguns can now be charged and fired while moving. -Slug railgun still has 15km range but fires twice as quickly for half the damage and half the power cost. It can zoom. -Ion railgun no longer scopes, has a range of 10km, same charge up time as now, applies an interdiction effect instead of a power drain (still screws shields though). -Plasma railgun completely removed and replaced with gatling laser. -Gatling laser: 7km range, spin up time equal to the charge time of a railgun shot. High spread but insane rate of fire. Creates a cone of death for 7km and 5-10% in front of the gunship. Rapidly drains weapon power (you should only be able to spray for about 10s off full weapon power. Reduces turn rate and speed 50% while charging and firing. -Gunships now have higher boosting cost and lower engine speeds. -To compensate gunships get best in game base shield strength. -Fortress shield no longer makes you come to a standstill but instead drains your weapons/engine power by 25 each when activated. Cannot be activated with less than 25 energy in each pool. Specific ships changes: T1 Gunship: -Remove BLC's as a weapon, replace with Quads. -Remove rapids, replace with LLC. -Remove distortion field, replace with overcharge shield. T2 Gunship: -Replace sensor component with armor component -Replace directional shields with charged plating -Add Clusters, Concussions, and EMP's as missile choices T3 Gunship: -Replace slug railgun with gatling laser -Replace EMP's with Concussion missiles -Replace lasers with quads. Basically the idea is to turn gunships from snipers into, well, gunships. Heavily armed and armored but non-agile fighters who can lay deadly sustained damage and take a beating. The focus in a dogfight would be on out lasting your opponent or catching them with your superior firepower as opposed to running away to your carrier. Thoughts?

Different people end up on the list for different reasons. And besides nobody is immortal. Since you don't list your characters I don't know who exactly you are, but I'll vouch for most of those imp aces. I've personally flown with at least half and they are all nasty and any one can be a game changer. Personally i'm not really sure how I ended up there actually. I got nominated for being a huge pain in the *** to shoot down in a blackbolt, and i'll agree that i'm very good at hit and fade though i'm not sure if I belong on the same list as Zuckerkorn. I may be annoying, but he will wreck you.