Please address lack of balance between DPS specs

I've seen very very few DPS scoundrels attempt to join pug raids, but haven't run with one in about 6 months, since they get kicked right away.

Well, none.. But I'm from Master D where the pop is so low we'd be lucky to even have a level 50 Scoundrel/Operative DPS still playing :/

Really? You think a raiding guild won't consider it "carrying" when they are trying to clear TFB and three of their DPS are pulling 1400-1500 while the third is less than 1200? That's exactly what I would call it.

See, this is where the combination of sims and parses is just incontrovertible. The sims take gear skill and rotation problems out of the mix so that you can see the results based on spec alone. And they show 10 percent-plus disparities between some of the specs.

The parses reflect this same disparity. We have thousands of data points. It's not an issue of skill or gear. It's an issue of some specs simply being capable of less DPS than others.

And again, this isn't a question about whether lower DPS specs can clear content or pull decent DPS. I can pull solid DPS with my Sage and clear TFB HM. The issue is that I have to be in full optimized campaign gear to do this with my Sage when I could do it in Rakata/BH with my Sentinel. That's just not acceptable. Players of one class shouldn't have to min-max their gear to clear content while another class can randomly smash buttons on the keyboard.

problem with scrapper is we reset the parser whenever we vanish.

but in terms of SimC: lightning sorc gets 1925 ish in dread BiS whereas scrapper is 1870 ish. not sure what maraders sim at, but if we take maraders at 5% over sorcs and scrappers as 5% under, then maybe that is the model they are going for. i want to say tht melee dps> ranged because this game hates melee.

and to add, i have only seen 2 other op/scoundrel dps in the past 8 months.

This is exactly the kind of things parses show.

Here is a link to the highest DPS posting on torparse for the Writhing Horror encounter. It's a sniper. When you click on damage done it tell us: his exact damage breakdown over 324 seconds. We can see based on his abilities that he is lethality/engineer hybrid spec'd and we can see by his damage breakdown that he has 40-45% crit-- which would imply to us that his gear is either BiS or just short of. You can see his rotation down at "Damage Dealt Broken Down by Time". It breaks his abilities down to when he used them by the second.

It's easy to discern what is going on based on this data. We have mountains of this data.

http://www.levelupstudios.com/lvlup-...proval-750.jpg
This image summarize my current face, L2P issue, Deception is fine since 1.4 and im up there with everyone else.

Yes, really. It's a judgment call. I hear it loud and clear that you draw the line of "carrying" at 5%. Different people draw the line about "carrying'" at different percentages. Some at 3%, some at 5%, some at 10%, some at 20%. We can make a separate poll and ask about it if you are interested. There will be a spread of opinions. Right?

I used to be one of those people that believed that Infiltration/Deception was a weak class when it came to DPS because of what people said on the forums. So I rolled either a Balance spec or Kinetic hybrid in DPS gear for the longest. Then when 1.3 came out with the buffs to Infiltration, I decided to try it out. Lets just say I will never listen to the forums again when it comes to what a class can or can't do. The DPS I put out on my Shadow is just about on par with what I do on my Combat Sent. Heck. In some cases, better.

Now. I'm not saying that there isn't a disparity between DPS classes. My Shadow, Sentinel and Pyro PT put out better DPS than my Scoundrel or my Sorcerer does and a lot easier, I might add. And those two classes do need to be brought up to par when it comes to DPS. But those parses on Tor Head, Ask Mr Robot and those other sites do not take into account the human factor.

I think this point is off-topic. The Devs are the ones who have set the goal at within 5%. They apparently think that is a reasonable range for people to feel like they are competitive and not being carried.

That goal is measurably and obviously not being met. We have mountains of data that proves it and there is zero data disputing it.

Whether you think guilds will take people anyway isn't the issue. The issue is that Bioware's own class balance targets are being missed by a mile and they haven't even talked about addressing that issue.

I think the OP's questions are fair. Why have the class imbalances not been addressed in any of the major content patches we've seen? Has the 5% target been abandoned? If not, are there any plans to address these issues? If so, when? Those are all valid questions that the community deserves some answers on.