Do you think lethality could be viable if they gave cull and weakening blast 30m range? I have an operative healer that I would like to occasionally play as DPS. I think they did some really interesting things with the lethality rotation and mechanics, but making it a melee spec seems to really kill it (10m range has essentially all the disadvantages of melee). It doesn't do the damage of the viable melee dps specs (Marauder and pyro powertech) and additionally operatives lack the utility of those classes. Lower DPS hurts, but the real killer is the not getting help surviving in the close ranges that melee has to fight and getting back into range of moving targets or after knockbacks. It seems like this could be a really fun spec if we were allowed to sit back with the ranged DPS and do our thing. It would also give the operative the unique ability to go healing, ranged DPS, or melee DPS, which would be pretty cool.

You wouldn't be able to go full ranged unless you have a TA generator that is ranged. I do agree that it is fun to jump into cover and use ranged abilities, but I don't think there is any plan to add ranged viability to the class.

The problem with full range is that we would be stepping on snipers toes and, in many ways, make snipers obsolete in pvp. They would either have to remove cover from operatives, which would be awful and turn us into a slightly slipperier version of the assault commando, or they would have to remove our healing, which would turn us into a lower utility version of the sniper. The reason why I say this is that dps at full range would have to be comparable between operatives and snipers, but operatives would have a much easier time setting up (stealth), escaping (restealth), evading (evasion removes debuffs), and surviving (healing). The sniper would still have better field control and defensive cool downs but the deck would be in the favor of ops in this case.

 

Another idea: Full skirmish range.

-Make shiv a thrown ability from 10m. (via lethality 31+ skill in the expansion)

-Make WB give a TA (not really needed but would be nice).

-Change the positions of Inflitrator and Razors Edge (one is the concealment tier 2 runspeed/stealth boost, the other is the lethality tier 1 shiv boost).

-Change infiltrator to a 2 point talent that only increases run speed, change razors edge to a 3 point talent that increases shiv damage and stealth level.

 

Why: This keeps us out of melee range and makes us a kiting class. That would be a unique role that we could fill on the battlefield without taking over the snipers position as cover based turret dps.

The problem with full range is that we would be stepping on snipers toes and, in many ways, make snipers obsolete in pvp.

 

I don't think it's even possible that Operative could make Snipers obsolete, because this spec rely much on the damage you can do between Culls, and you can't do very well with this spec unless you have correct ranged abilities avaliable. Operatives doesn't have enough tools to keep damaging at range. You haven't Series of Shots, or Ambush, your Snipe can't hit as hard as Sniper's because you don't have a Sniper Rifle, your overload shot hasn't the range either...

Considering that you'd have no Tactical Advantage issue, setting Cull to be able to hit at 30m will just make the spec able to finish people from further than usual for an Operative, and that's it. You'd never be able to be considered as a viable RDPS.

I haven't used it much as I prefer to heal, but it can be pretty fun;

If you spec into heal tree up until you get probes + ability to grant TA from probe ticks, then go up towards cull in lethality tree, you can proc random TA's if you keep alot of probes on allys. It can be tricky to do and most likely not all that viable, but it's still enjoyable to do.

Another idea: Full skirmish range.

This is what they should do. Lethality sucks at melee range and you can't give them full ranged without becoming too much like a sniper.

You need a ranged TA generator within lethality tree. As for the range itself, it think it should stay 10m because 30M is infriging on sniper territory.