They have the best utility. Another dps class really cannot compete with the sniper shield bubble or the marauder predation and bloodthirst.

It becomes a disadvantage to bring any other ranged or melee class, keeping gear and player skill constant. I understand that they cannot do anything but dps, but if you are going to give them the best dps, don't give them the best utility.

I would like class utility to be redesigned so that every advanced class has a role in an operation. Snipers/Marauders can be the nukers and put out the most damage, but take away their group buffs and give them to other classes so bringing along a balanced group of classes becomes an advantage.

There would be no reason to play a marauder if they didn't have the utlity. A Jugg or Sorcerer can spec into healing to get a slot in a raid group. A marauder just brings damage and the utility it currently has. Working as intended my friend.

Right, more damage and more utility. It should be one or the other. Both makes it so we have the situation we are currently in, which is there is no real point in bringing a different class to dps. If mara's and snipers were doing the same DPS as the other classes currently, they would still get a raid spot because of the utility. Take that away, but leave the damage where it is, guess what? They still get a raid spot. It may be working as the Dev's intended, but that isn't the right way to do it.

They have the best utility. Another dps class really cannot compete with the sniper shield bubble or the marauder predation and bloodthirst.

 

It becomes a disadvantage to bring any other ranged or melee class, keeping gear and player skill constant. I understand that they cannot do anything but dps, but if you are going to give them the best dps, don't give them the best utility.

 

I would like class utility to be redesigned so that every advanced class has a role in an operation. Snipers/Marauders can be the nukers and put out the most damage, but take away their group buffs and give them to other classes so bringing along a balanced group of classes becomes an advantage.

A raid group will take a marauder for bloodthirst but I can't really imagine bothering to take a sniper for the shield. The CD is just too long for it to really help out with healing - if you can't heal the damage without it then your out of luck because 20 seconds every 2.5 to 3 minutes just isn't going to win you a fight.

Other abilities like taunt , resilience, leap to ally, pull ally, etc are also very good and occasionally can make a huge difference.

So in other words, no.

Im in two minds about this.

I do think the argument that some classes can respec so they should be crap at DPS is... well crap. when you are DPS speced for raiding you may not even have say a tank set and you may have no interest in tanking. the fact that you theortically could as an argument for being crap isw stupid. A bit like me tanking the final boss in HM FE on my sentinal because the tank had to go.

DPS should be about the same. Utility should be varied with classes all having something of value. It looks like this has been achieved in 2.0 (yay developers). however in an environment where DPS are about = and utility is varied then pure DPS should either have slight better utility or slightly better DPS (for bragging rights). This is about how it looks in 2.0 to me.

In the last patch it was hard to do serious raiding as a vigilance guardian but i think balance has been handeled a lot more carefully in this patch. It is no longer - sorry mate we need sentinals and slingers.

A raid group will take a marauder for bloodthirst but I can't really imagine bothering to take a sniper for the shield. The CD is just too long for it to really help out with healing - if you can't heal the damage without it then your out of luck because 20 seconds every 2.5 to 3 minutes just isn't going to win you a fight.

 

Other abilities like taunt , resilience, leap to ally, pull ally, etc are also very good and occasionally can make a huge difference.

 

So in other words, no.

Look for green for TL;DR

Shield bubble is useful when raid-wide heavy damage is happening ( ex : Droid boss at S & V after it hits 20%) extending the life of raid during soft enrages which can sometimes ( not always ) mean the difference between a wipe and a kill. Now that the shield does not disappear if sniper / gunslinger moves after it has been cast a player can place it in an optimal position for maximum coverage and then move to a safer position.

Other abilities you listed like taunt, resilience, leap to ally, pull ally etc are only situationally useful and benefit only caster and/or another single individual and therefore should not be considered as raid-wide utility.

However if you define general utility as using inherent class abilities to make an encounter more manageable

you can argue that :

• Snipers / gunslingers have group benefiting abilities at the expense of self heals & self damage reduction/ immunity skills other ranged dps possess while they still have a low cooldown damage absorption shield and wounding shots.
  

• Sentinels / marauders however still have the advantage over other melee classes by having saber ward, rebuke/cloak of pain, force camouflage, pacify/obfuscate, deadly throw, awe/intimidating roar as utility skills not even counting droid cc and self & group heals and 5% damage reduction debuff on target from watchman / annihilation spec in addition to inspiration / bloodthirst & transendence / predation as raid wise utility.
  

TL;DR

Extra dmg/healiing from bloodthirst/inspiration for your group is useful in all boss fights which involve dpsing and healing (ie all boss fights) and the aoe shield bubble of snipers/gunslingers is beneficial to majority of the ops group ( mainly dps & healers ) when it is used correctly.

Other abilities you listed like taunt, resilience, leap to ally, pull ally etc are only situationally useful and benefit only caster and/or another single individual and therefore should not be considered as raid-wide utility.

That's not a meaningful distinction. If it helps to kill a boss it is useful. Whether it is "raid wide" or just affecting a single person which in turn saves the raid is not and important difference. There are more bosses where taunt is useful than the shield - unless you're stacking 4 snipers in your group.

Look for green for TL;DR

 

• Sentinels / marauders however still have the advantage over other melee classes by having saber ward, rebuke/cloak of pain, force camouflage, pacify/obfuscate, deadly throw, awe/intimidating roar as utility skills not even counting droid cc and self & group heals and 5% damage reduction debuff on target from watchman / annihilation spec in addition to inspiration / bloodthirst & transendence / predation as raid wise utility.
  

.

Sry mate just wrong here. Even pre 2.0 Vigilance guardians were significantly less squashy than sentinals. I end game raid with both. post 2.0 the survivability of vigilance has been improved to make this a cleaer point of difference. Inspiration and trancendence are great raid wide utility.

As i said above my personal preference is that utility is varied i think thats about the balance we hav eright now.

Sry mate just wrong here. Even pre 2.0 Vigilance guardians were significantly less squashy than sentinals. I end game raid with both. post 2.0 the survivability of vigilance has been improved to make this a cleaer point of difference. Inspiration and trancendence are great raid wide utility.

 

As i said above my personal preference is that utility is varied i think thats about the balance we hav eright now.

I don't know. Passively, yes, I suppose. Cloak of Pain is great when you expect damage, Saber Ward is a tie, Camo versus Juggie threat drop heal, Camo wins. Camo is free, reduces damage by 50%, and drops more threat, and increases movement. The healing on the Jugg one is bad unless you have a dot on you plus lots of rage, Endure versus Undying, Undying wins, because you can absorb 99% of the damage. So if it's life or death, Endure -might- save you, but Undying -will- save you. It's fairly equal.

I don't know. Passively, yes, I suppose. Cloak of Pain is great when you expect damage, Saber Ward is a tie, Camo versus Juggie threat drop heal, Camo wins. Camo is free, reduces damage by 50%, and drops more threat, and increases movement. The healing on the Jugg one is bad unless you have a dot on you plus lots of rage, Endure versus Undying, Undying wins, because you can absorb 99% of the damage. So if it's life or death, Endure -might- save you, but Undying -will- save you. It's fairly equal.

your forgetting on Vigilance side: unremitting = 20% damage reduction + avoid knockback, Guard Leap = 20% damage reduction + get out of dodge (focus taget the heals or the threat hog RDPS), Spell reflect (very nice when you get agro), Ability to drop into tank stance (ups mitigation to 50% from 30%. Oh and the 30% self heal is very nice whenever the boss AOE's like second boss in S&V

This artical is stupid. other classes can respec on the fly. If you want a pure blood dps, roll one ... and get use to longer cue's

cheers

Marauder has pretty terrible AOE damage in both of its commonly used operations specs. It is also melee, which means it has to take more boss mechanic AOE damage in some fights, and risk getting cleaved in others if not careful. The utility is pretty strong for the class, and the defensive cooldowns are the best non-tank set in the game. Perfectly balanced? Maybe not, but I would say it is within the 5% margin for error.

Sniper has a spec for front-end burst, an AOE heavy spec, and a solid DoT spec. All of them are raid capable and ranged at 35 meters now, which is far enough to circumvent or mitigate raid damage AOE and a few mechanics. Entrench, the bubble, and vital regulators rounds out their utility quite nicely.

What they lack to compensate is the ability to off-heal or cleanse when the wookies hit the fan. I've seen Sorc and Merc DPS die because they refused to throw as static barrier or heal on themselves at a crucial moment. Does that mean their utility doesn't exist? Obviously there are fights with tight enrage timers that throwing an off-heal isn't feasible because the dps check is too tight (HM Styrack, NiM Kephess pre 2.0). But any other time a live DPS is going to outdamage a dead one. Worst case scenario when throwing an off-heal would be losing damage, and hopefully i can repay that as a healer with a couple corrosive darts.

There would be no reason to play a marauder if they didn't have the utlity. A Jugg or Sorcerer can spec into healing to get a slot in a raid group. A marauder just brings damage and the utility it currently has. Working as intended my friend.

Last time I checked, a raid needs more DPSers than healers.

There would be no reason to play a marauder if they didn't have the utlity. A Jugg or Sorcerer can spec into healing to get a slot in a raid group. A marauder just brings damage and the utility it currently has. Working as intended my friend.

Expect you mean BH.

And the viability varies with this offspec work.

It's vastly more practical to heal in accuracy gear than to tank in dps gear for example.

Being melee is actually good for you on all of the current encounters but one and Bloodlust stacks with other Marauders while you yourself already deal more damage than 6 of 7 other classes.

Having a defensive cooldown that effects more than yourself and a very high uptime for CC immunity and the best damage out of all classes makes sniper simply superior.

All the Juggernauts, Powertechs, Assassins, Sorcerors, Mercenaries and Operatives can count themselves lucky that there are no really hard encounters that call for stacking raid wide utility and top-notch damage, otherwise all 4 DPS slots would be filled with only two classes while the remaining six would be forced into one out of three of their possible specs (yes, every class is actually DPS first with 2/3 of their option being that role) fighting for one of two possible slots (even worse in 16m).

You are either a tank, healer or damage dealer, but never two of those at the same time.

Raid wide utility stacks with no diminishing returns whatsoever.

Organized guild operations bring players to fullfil a certain role and expect them to stick to it.

All classes that bring anything other than personal defensive and offensive cooldowns also have the highest damage output.

Take a look at how WoW dealt with 'pure DPS' and what compositions progress oriented raids use because of it. Bringing the class not the player is the credo here and if content becomes challenging in SW:ToR we would see the very same thing here.

A raid group will take a marauder for bloodthirst but I can't really imagine bothering to take a sniper for the shield. The CD is just too long for it to really help out with healing - if you can't heal the damage without it then your out of luck because 20 seconds every 2.5 to 3 minutes just isn't going to win you a fight.

I can't imagine you ever played a game with actually challenging content, where raid wide cooldowns were not just mandatory but correct timing and combination meant win or lose.

Other abilities like taunt , resilience, leap to ally, pull ally, etc are also very good and occasionally can make a huge difference.

Taunt is useless, you'll probably turn the boss facing to your group and then get your face ripped off by a proper boss.

Leaping to ally is a movement ability and no utility. Pulling others is the same and there is absolutely no fight where this would be benificial.

stealthers combat vanishing and rezzing

Very true, although I personally still think this isn't really a wanted game mechanic and Bioware just doesn't bother fixing it. In addition I might add that b-res is not a utility for any DD, since you already got two healers that both can do the same and lock each other out from repeated use.

It's vastly more practical to heal in accuracy gear than to tank in dps gear for example.

It is vastly ignorant to think an actual raid needs anyone to respec into a different role or even to be able to keep up with almost 400 rating in a wasted stat.

And no. Story mode is not a proper raid.

Mechanics balancing should be done for the 70% of players that actually bother reading tooltips, but number tweaking must be done with the 5% in mind that actually can reproduce perfectly simulated rotations in actual encounters.

.... Pulling others is the same and there is absolutely no fight where this would be benificial. ...

I take it you've never fought EC Kephess or TfB Kel'Sara

Every class is parsing 2900 or higher excluding shadows (2600 max) and vanguards (2800 max)

All classes are within 5% of each other besides the shadow/assassin. Stop whining.

i have a feeling its the same op for everyone of these post about nerfing marauders and/or now snipers there is no need to nerf a dps class for being good at dps i have a feeling u play and undergeared sorc or operative and don't know how to heal u decided to pvp once and got your butt handed to you by an overgeared sent/marauder so u decide to qq in hopes that they buff you or debuff sent/slinger

Nothing in this game is even remotely challenging...people don't heal just cause they don't know how it's the fact that healing and tanking in this game is so god damn boring! I thought tanking in WoW was faceroll but this game somehow finds ways to make it even easier. Lets not forget how pathetically easy the rotations/priorities are for dps classes in this game. Yet people are wanting macros/mouse-over type functionality in this game when it's obvious the developers have no *********** clue whatsoever how to accomplish anything or if they do it takes them 1+ years to implement then they find something else to break while putting that in.

Nothing in this game is even remotely challenging...

Yeah, I'll bet you one-shot NM DG on your first try, because everything is just sooooooooooo eeeeaaaaasssyyyy.

Yeah, I'll bet you one-shot NM DG on your first try, because everything is just sooooooooooo eeeeaaaaasssyyyy.

With the +30 seconds nerf ... done!

Every class is parsing 2900 or higher excluding shadows (2600 max) and vanguards (2800 max)

 

All classes are within 5% of each other besides the shadow/assassin. Stop whining.

bull **** try checking something that's not a target dummy it changes a LOT

best parse for my class last I looked was 3100 same guy I looked up for some real fights was doing 2300-2400 area while other classes in the same fights are doing 2700+ and that's not just a 1 fight thing its a constant

the difference in classes might be 5% on a dummy when everyone is having a lot of luck but in real fights its more like 15-18%

as is bringing anything other then sentinel and gunslingers is just going to hurt a group

ya I could go try to heal but then most people think commando heals are crap so I am out both ways I cant dps because of a 15-18% disadvantage and I cant heal because my class is just not as good as the others at it (and yes I know commando heal is ok if you are good at it but in most cases people want there healing circle or there hots)

bull **** try checking something that's not a target dummy it changes a LOT

 

best parse for my class last I looked was 3100 same guy I looked up for some real fights was doing 2300-2400 area while other classes in the same fights are doing 2700+ and that's not just a 1 fight thing its a constant

 

the difference in classes might be 5% on a dummy when everyone is having a lot of luck but in real fights its more like 15-18%

 

as is bringing anything other then sentinel and gunslingers is just going to hurt a group

 

ya I could go try to heal but then most people think commando heals are crap so I am out both ways I cant dps because of a 15-18% disadvantage and I cant heal because my class is just not as good as the others at it (and yes I know commando heal is ok if you are good at it but in most cases people want there healing circle or there hots)

Wow. QQ more. You are comparing top end players to yourself and your guidlies as if its simply your class that prevents you from doing massive dps. If you are actually being excluded or booted from raids I am willing to bet you are just a bad player and if you are not being excluded or booted then you are crying about a hypothetical situation and need to just grow up. I know of no guilds now who are simply stacking maras and snipers because they are better. Every class has its strong suit and as it stands now maras and snipers do a bit more damage.

As for the utility...Blood thirst is a 4 minute cd so you get it once per fight. Its a raid wide buff so it helps everyone. If you need more than one blood thirst chances are you should get new dps because they're not pulling their weight. Oh and for NiM content you need to be able to sustain 2400 dps which as far as the on boss parses I have seen includes all classes. This whole thread is acting as if unless you bring only marauders and snipers you won't be able to down hard content which is simply false. The only true and real balancing issue at the moment is shadow/assassin tanking because given the right RNG regardless of how good or bad the player is, they will die. Period. That is a real balancing issue. Force Camo is an amazing threat drop because without a guard (even with it sometimes) a marauder will pull off of a tank. You know who has a better threat drop mechanic though? Mercenaries. Drop threat AND absorb damage? For free. That is amazing. Disable Droid is great but can only ever be used on droids. That's pretty damn specific. And you throw predation out as if its just something we can do for free when in reality we either have to use Frenzy to push it out or intentionally lower our dps for raid utility. Undying rage is amazing assuming in that 5 seconds you will get healed to full and /or after it ends will not get a damage spike because of you do then you die. All of our utility comes at a cost and that cost is primarily our dps. Those guys who are pushing the massive numbers? They aren't using a lot of that utility because its made up for with other classes.

STUFF

I kinda agree with you except where you say that the only balance issue is shadow tanking for two reasons:

1-) Shadow/Assassin dps is pretty unbalanced and powertech is also kinda unbalanced (since you have to pretty much resort to a hybrid tree or hope you're in a fight where the target will just not move at all).

2-) Balancing is not about downing content, its about not making a class so much better or worse that would make people not have a reason to play it or to have it in your group.

That said, I agree with you that if you are any class other than a pt or shadow and complain about dps balancing issues you should go learn to play your class because every class can pull numbers that are not only good enough for any content but also pretty close to each other, obviously we'll always have a class that does more (sniper/slinger for example) or one that is easier to play and pull high dps without worrying so much about your rotation (commando/mercenary or smashmonkeys) but that just normal, its pretty much impossible to make a perfectly balanced game.