My point is that a class already has a short duration in combat stealth move...in general I like classes to be different, and am against any sort of class homogenization.

True, but I'd say that it is quite instrumental to the assassin and operative classes to have an active combat given that so many of their skills and abilities depend on it.

Dark Embrace- While this works great in PvP and very short PvE battles it is completely worthless in long scale boss fights and PvP matches where you don't leave combat.

Spike- Essentially having an in-combat stealth would actually make the skill useful. It's a handy interrupt among other things but again, on a long term scale it's useless.

Hidden Strike(Operative)- Again another example of a skill which despite being very powerful and useful in PvP it is useless in long boss fights. That's the reason they can't balance operatives damage, because so much depends on this skill. Acid Blade included.

Now I agree with you in that all classes should have a different feel to them, however there are going to be skills which heavily overlap. In the event that assassins and operatives got a skill such as this, I think I'd like to see the marauder/sentinels cloak reworked. Possibly increase its duration by 2 seconds(to 6 seconds) and have it increase your movement speed by 50%.

-You say that having different abilities scale differently is terrible. Why is it terrible, don't just provide an example of two abilities scaling differently. Provide a reason as to why it is bad that different abilities scale differently. After reading all of your posts in this thread, I completely understand that you think it is terrible, and you have provided a few different examples of different scaling as well...how about a reason?

Alright I'll use ravage as it might be the most blatant example that I've found.

At level 15(ish) on my sentinel the masters strike(ravage) deals about 4.5 times the damage of strike which builds 2 focus. It also deals around 2.5 times the damage of slash. As of level 15 master strike is a very useful skill(and it should be considering its 30 second cooldown). However due to its scaling once the marauder reaches level 40 master strike only does around 3.5-4 times the damage of strike and 2.2-2.5 times the damage of slash. It is now almost worthwhile to cast half the skill(I believe that like 65% of the damage is done in the first second and a half) and then cast the other two skills. Thereby your rotation has changed due to scaling which is terrible. If at the beginning master strike does 1000 times the damage of strike then it should stay at 1000 times the damage of strike throughout the entire game regardless of what gear you have on. The same should apply to all skills force, melee tech all of them. The current system is perfectly fine assuming everyone is the same level with the same gear, which they clearly are not, this system is basically foolproof unless the player is TRYING to gear themselves in a way that screws them over.

-Some abilities are AoE, some are single target...is that terrible as well? Should all abilities behave exactly the same way? If it is not terrible that some abilities are AoE, why is that different than scaling differently?

This is completely different from how abilties scale, no comment.

-To put it another way, why should all abilities scale the same? What benefit does that give the game, saying "it makes it easier to balance" is not an answer, nor is "it makes the ratio's the same". Why is it important for the ratio's to stay the same, and how does having skills scale the same make it easier to balance?

It makes it easier to balance because regardless of what gear you put in the game the skills will always maintain their ratios, no single skill will get more benefit than another, thereby offsetting the balance.

My goal with the system I propose is to have a game where, no skill benefits more from gear, on a percent of your total damage that all skills put out will remain the same regardless of what gear you are wearing, Thereby keeping the value of talents in trees equivalent and keeping the game balanced over long periods of time,