Sorry for the stupid question, but all I read about on the forums is this big nerf to the operatives and scoundrels, but reading the patch notes I don't see anything about it.

Just wondering!

This is the patch notes for the test server where the nerf is implemented.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=212341

-Acid blade now only provides 30% armor penetration for the duration instead of the current 50%

-Jarring strike only knocks the target on it's face for 1.5 seconds now instead of 3 seconds

-Hidden strike has had it's damage reduced by approximately 20%

This seems like a pretty big nerf. For perspective, I play a Merc and I am usually heal or pyro spec. I have been killed by scoundrels and ops VERY quickly, but they are almost always taken out by a team mate immediately after. Likewise if I see one of them come out of stealth on a team mate, I can nuke them down pretty quickly.

I never EVER see scoundrel/ops topping damage or kill charts in WZ. This nerf really perplexes me. Any class can stack buffs and get the kind of damage that people have been showing in vids. I figured the first class to get looked at would be sorc/sage...

This seems like a pretty big nerf. For perspective, I play a Merc and I am usually heal or pyro spec. I have been killed by scoundrels and ops VERY quickly, but they are almost always taken out by a team mate immediately after. Likewise if I see one of them come out of stealth on a team mate, I can nuke them down pretty quickly.

 

I never EVER see scoundrel/ops topping damage or kill charts in WZ. This nerf really perplexes me. Any class can stack buffs and get the kind of damage that people have been showing in vids. I figured the first class to get looked at would be sorc/sage...

this is a very astute observation and what I have been saying about the OP/Scou myself. In 1v1 they are VERY lethal and will almost always win with little effort. However in group combat they are weak sauce. For one they have to navigate through a sea of AOE and hope no one sees through the weak stealth and just spits at them to burst them from stealth. Regardless of how they exit stealth it will be a while till they are back in, either they use a talented 2.5 min CD and risk just being broke right back out or run WAY away to and wait for a really long time.

If a OP is not in stealth is pretty gimp and a free kill for someone. I would rather have seen a rebalance so that they are not so dependent on stealth to kill anything in PVP. Increase our out of stealth combat capabilities and survivability. All they did was nerf with out a buff somewhere else. The acid blade change will have affects in PVE as well as PVP. 20% armor pen will take a lot of gear to compensate and still do the same damage.

Would be nice if they would at least do something about that issue where I can be 10 meters behind my group in stealth and a boss breaks me from stealth and agros miles out side his agro range.

However I have little confidence in BW knowing what they are doing, look at Illum.

Its a severe nerf, but its on the test realm.

It should be getting toned down after they see how badly it hurts Scoundrel/Operative usability.

Hands down they are pretty op. I've never been killed 1V1 by anybody while stunned and 10 levels higher than them. Their stun lasts about 4 secs and you have 13k hps. Do the math.

And yes. when I see a scoundrel or OP doing that to a teammate I go out of my way to make them pay for their transgression.

this is a very astute observation and what I have been saying about the OP/Scou myself. In 1v1 they are VERY lethal and will almost always win with little effort. However in group combat they are weak sauce. For one they have to navigate through a sea of AOE and hope no one sees through the weak stealth and just spits at them to burst them from stealth. Regardless of how they exit stealth it will be a while till they are back in, either they use a talented 2.5 min CD and risk just being broke right back out or run WAY away to and wait for a really long time.

 

If a OP is not in stealth is pretty gimp and a free kill for someone. I would rather have seen a rebalance so that they are not so dependent on stealth to kill anything in PVP. Increase our out of stealth combat capabilities and survivability. All they did was nerf with out a buff somewhere else. The acid blade change will have affects in PVE as well as PVP. 20% armor pen will take a lot of gear to compensate and still do the same damage.

 

Would be nice if they would at least do something about that issue where I can be 10 meters behind my group in stealth and a boss breaks me from stealth and agros miles out side his agro range.

 

However I have little confidence in BW knowing what they are doing, look at Illum.

No class should be able to 1v1 someone and have a guaranteed win. Going up against an operative who attacks me solo in a warzone with comparable expertise (he had ~50 more than me) he was able to knockdown and kill me before I could stand up. This was a guildy who just happened to be solo queuing at the same time I was and ended up on opposite teams. We chatted about it after and I told him that he was probably going to be nerfed because of that.

That said, this only happens when they crit and their damage after the opener series doesn't seem as much of a threat to me as a healer. Compared to an assassin, I can't get them off of me, they have a lot of ways to keep me close, and they have much lower burst (I'm not ever in threat of dieing in 2-3 seconds) but they have moderately high sustained. Unless I receive team-mate assistance, a comparably geared assassin can solo me easily, it just takes 15-25 seconds depending upon my healing crits. I'm also in heavy armor so I know it's worse for other classes. As far as the sustained damage reduction, all we have to go on is our gut feelings right now as we don't have an accurate method of measure anyone's damage output reliably.

We also have no idea whether or not they're balancing to put the damage numbers of dps specs in the same ballpark or not. They could easily be using a weighted system based upon mobility, stealth, control, damage absorption, and damage output. My point is simply that nerfs do not always warrant a buff, or else what was the point of the nerf? My guess is that they'll eventually buff sustained as that's where I think they should shift the damage to, but we have no idea what their ideology is behind class balance, or even what's going on half the time in combat when I die unless it's a 1v1. Even then sometimes I have no idea what combination of skills I'm being hit with.

That is a substantial nerf.

It is hard to believe that the least-played classes are such a problem to the community at large that this kind of hit is really necessary. What is more likely is that they are leveraging the small number of those who play the class as a means to make a larger group happy.

I for one have never seen a situation where merry bands of ops were tearing across the countryside leaving nothing but bodies in their wake.

Here is what I generally see:

1. Open on some guy trying to place a charge on a door.

2. Fairy pebbles fall like rain from every direction.

3. perhaps kill the would-be charge placer, perhaps not.

4. three sages prove too much.

5. die (if vanish down)

In the end this will only make sages whine louder because with the nerf to arpen, tanks are far less likely to be targeted by ops.

That is a substantial nerf.

 

It is hard to believe that the least-played classes are such a problem to the community at large that this kind of hit is really necessary. What is more likely is that they are leveraging the small number of those who play the class as a means to make a larger group happy.

 

I for one have never seen a situation where merry bands of ops were tearing across the countryside leaving nothing but bodies in their wake.

 

Here is what I generally see:

 

1. Open on some guy trying to place a charge on a door.

2. Fairy pebbles fall like rain from every direction.

3. perhaps kill the would-be charge placer, perhaps not.

4. three sages prove too much.

5. die (if vanish down)

 

 

 

In the end this will only make sages whine louder because with the nerf to arpen, tanks are far less likely to be targeted by ops.

I fail to see how a hypothetical situation in which an ops takes on 1 person and is targeted by 3 others and still possibly kills their target before 3 people can kill them lends any weight to the argument that ops don't need to be nerfed.

This seems like a pretty big nerf. For perspective, I play a Merc and I am usually heal or pyro spec. I have been killed by scoundrels and ops VERY quickly, but they are almost always taken out by a team mate immediately after. Likewise if I see one of them come out of stealth on a team mate, I can nuke them down pretty quickly.

 

I never EVER see scoundrel/ops topping damage or kill charts in WZ. This nerf really perplexes me. Any class can stack buffs and get the kind of damage that people have been showing in vids. I figured the first class to get looked at would be sorc/sage...

http://img585.imageshack.us/img585/9746/overpower.jpg Uploaded with ImageShack.us"]http://img585.imageshack.us/img585/9746/overpower.jpg [/url]

they never toping the damage charts no.nerf coming and they need it

Because you clearly dont have any understanding of the class.

Ops/scoundrels are burst dps, alot of damage in a short amount of time, but after the openers are used we cant pull much else out of our arses, and we are pretty weakly damaged.

With a critical opener, 2 bleeds and a couple of more shots, its reasonable to think I might kill the player before the other 3 kill me, but rest assured, the other 3 will kill me, even if i restealth, one bleed effect on me and i'll pop right back up.

in truth, people look at this and see -20% damage on opener, and think thats the worst, but it isnt, I could cope with that, its the stun time of the opener halved. 1.5secs is just about time to get a back blast off, and then the target is back up, and immune to any stuns, because although they halved the stun duration, the stun still fills up the targets stun bar, and they cant be stunned for a while.

^^all in all, they have changed our class from a good pvp burst class, to a weak, low sustained dps, only good for one thing, sneaking behind people and planting bombs on doors hoping noone see's

I for one am switching spec to healing

You have to expose yourself from stealth which cannot be regained in combat more than once every 2 minutes. You have to use escape to free movement speed to overcome the snare (45 sec cd). You die thereafter, which eliminates any chance that you would complete any objective that benefits your team (other than allowing a few seconds for a more resilient class to get into position.

The mobility of OPs when out of stealth is very limited.

Perhaps you just don't like the idea of bursty classes, regardless of what other challenges they face.

That said, this only happens when they crit and their damage after the opener series doesn't seem as much of a threat to me as a healer. Compared to an assassin, I can't get them off of me, they have a lot of ways to keep me close, and they have much lower burst (I'm not ever in threat of dieing in 2-3 seconds) but they have moderately high sustained. Unless I receive team-mate assistance, a comparably geared assassin can solo me easily, it just takes 15-25 seconds depending upon my healing crits. I'm also in heavy armor so I know it's worse for other classes. As far as the sustained damage reduction, all we have to go on is our gut feelings right now as we don't have an accurate method of measure anyone's damage output reliably.

Agree, would like to see a shift from the reliance on the from stealth opener to kill anyone. Too many things to get you out of stealth and not enough to get us back in and we are walking targets out of stealth.

Also a good point, all we go off of is conjecture and gumption, we have no hard math to prove any points with out combat logs. My gut, or seat of pants dyno, tells me 20% Armor Pen is going to be where the pain comes from for PVE content. On most bosses your lucky if you can even get to the boss in stealth with out AOE or his detect thing breaking you from stealth.

Another thing is for the Empire PVP is Huttball. Which plays very different than the other WZs. Mainly because of the multilevel platforms, tight quarters and traps. The OP has nothing to contend with those things, we can't knockback, we can't jump up to targets on other platforms, we don't have a sprint to run the ball and we only have the single CC breaker. An OPS will perform MUCH better in other WZs than they will in Huttball where fights can be more spread out and they have much better chances of attacking single targets and escaping. In Huttball its just hard to do that because everyone is on top of one another, traps are all around and you can be blown off a platform before you get a chance to sneeze. Huttball and OPs go together like oil and vinegar. So when people envision the nerfs they think of how they will play in Huttball, which 80% of all PVP WZs for Empire is. They then see how tough that place is on them coupled with this.

Aldreaan and Void Star are a different world, not so much Voidstar, still lots of combat in a small area, but Alderaan is where an OP will shine.

they never toping the damage charts no.nerf coming and they need it

If I can find a scoreboard with two Commandos at the top do they get nerfed too?

I'm an operative and I always top both damage and kill counts.... but then again, i'm not concealment.

Once the pvp server got large enough where the expertise played a role, my values dropped so that I would only be at best 4th or 5th. Now that the brackets are in play, I'm back up to the #1 position in both.

Due to the horrid problem of getting cunning gear off the market, it can be difficult to keep operative gear up to date pre-50.

Defensive operatives will loose at least 5% dps due to difference in gear, which in turn is most likely not going to play out well in pvp due to how abilities work. Hopefully, i'll be able to produce a set of defense gear prior to lvl 50 for basic testing without expertise at play.

(oh, and yes... i'll pop a hidden strike in world pvp, so people think hey! I can kill the dude now. he's squishy.)

If I can find a scoreboard with two Commandos at the top do they get nerfed too?

i never have heard to nobody telling that comandos have bad sustained dps,i am a comando and i can get first on scoreboard pretty easy,but how can be posible that as every op is telling here that hey havent dps out of the combo opener vanish opener(with 2 minute cd)they can put that numbers?

i can tell you,it is because op have the same sustained dps than every class but 50 % mroe damage on their burst

and btw you posted that u never have seen to op top the hcarts so i linked you one warfrotn with two op topping it and by a big margen

Topping the kill and damage lists means nothing. The easiest way to top those lists as an op is the stay at distance and toss frag grenades into crowds every 5 seconds. You will get credit for every kill that happens during the game and also get credit for 3-6k of damage every toss.

you will also accomplish absolutely nothing.

***well, that isn't true, you will keep the other team from setting charges or taking nodes, which is huge...but that is not the play style that offends people.

There is no stat on the board that acts as a reliable indicator of how many people you engaged and killed, only how many you applied damage to before their ultimate death.

Every game it seems I will get a medal awarded for killing 10 people while I sit alone in stealth guarding a node.

Those kill stats are worthless.

So history is repeating itself, it's like Rogues in WoW - to the ground!

As an Operative it was clear a nerf was coming. It had to, given the QQ'ers ignoring the fact we (as dps spec) are a one trick pony. I can't force choke in fire, force knockback in fire, force pull into fire or force leap to goal. Coordinated teams who use force powers win.

Meanwhile I dps and maybe we win, maybe we don't. Of course I'm referring to Huttball since thats the vast majority of matches given the pop imbalance.

Oh well. Good luck to the next overpowered class, and hope it isn't yours.

Because you clearly dont have any understanding of the class.

 

Ops/scoundrels are burst dps, alot of damage in a short amount of time, but after the openers are used we cant pull much else out of our arses, and we are pretty weakly damaged.

 

With a critical opener, 2 bleeds and a couple of more shots, its reasonable to think I might kill the player before the other 3 kill me, but rest assured, the other 3 will kill me, even if i restealth, one bleed effect on me and i'll pop right back up.

 

in truth, people look at this and see -20% damage on opener, and think thats the worst, but it isnt, I could cope with that, its the stun time of the opener halved. 1.5secs is just about time to get a back blast off, and then the target is back up, and immune to any stuns, because although they halved the stun duration, the stun still fills up the targets stun bar, and they cant be stunned for a while.

 

^^all in all, they have changed our class from a good pvp burst class, to a weak, low sustained dps, only good for one thing, sneaking behind people and planting bombs on doors hoping noone see's

 

 

I for one am switching spec to healing

I do not consider, "I went up against 4 people and couldn't kill one of them!" something worth wasting my time on. The only way I feel that situation is warranted is if there's a large disparity in levels and/or gear. Otherwise, the 1 person that ran into 4 people (even with a stealth opener) and expected to get a kill has such a polar opposite view on balance that there's no reason to have a discussion. Feel free to read my post a few up from the one you responded to if you actually want to have a debate. I'm not an ops hater. I provided a thorough comparison of my experiences when going up against ops and assassins.

Hidden strike needed to be reduced and giving in sustain damage form thats it . All other

issues is a bad wz gear vs ops with good gear and likely bad use of escape and interrupts by

Average to below average players . If your laying on your face and all your doing is have

your finger up your *** thats likely why you died .

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they never toping the damage charts no.nerf coming and they need it

I have seen them top damage charts but it is RARE - they will turn them into the laughing stock in PvP - Why are they nerfing our damage? WHY? Nerfing our overall damage is not the correct fix - its our crits that kill - yet they are just making it so we deal even LESS damage...that is why this game will fail...just wait until they "fix" your class