I'm not level 50 yet, (46 now, pvping only since I know 50 is not going to be as fun), but I tried Engineering for a little bit and didn't find it "Sniper-like". Lethality seems even less "Sniper-like" and that left me with MM.

MM is what the Sniper SHOULD be, but Lethality is apparently better (doesn't surprise me). It's a bit lame how so many classes can get lucky deflections off on your big attacks.

Another thing that annoys me about the Sniper is that it's most effective against other Snipers due to cover mechanics. MM Snipers have an ability that is extremely effective against other MM Snipers (The one that takes you out of cover). Who thought this was a good idea? How about we change that ability to a ~20 second cooldown ability that "distracts" the target and causes them to be unable to dodge or deflect your shots? That's way better, if you ask me.

Entrench is really hit or miss with PvE. In some situations its amazing, and others it just doesn't do anywhere close to what it should (probably partly for balance reasons, partly for bad coding). It doesn't work on Bonetrasher, but it does work on both Jarg and Sorno and Fabricator. I have not tried it on Annihilator Droid, and I don't believe it works on Gharj.

As far as what the changes will be, I read it as more of a PvE re-balance as opposed to a PvP heavy re-balance. My guess would be an added armor penetration talent buff or damage type change to bring MM in line with Leth when multiple armor debuffs are not present, or for an upcoming stacking nerf. At most we might see something similar to the full auto cooldown reset proc commandos have. It'll likely affect PvP as well, but my guess is we won't see anything so drastic as allowing speed shot to be cast while moving or heavy defensive talent buffs.

Problem with mm is that it can be deflected or evaded so easily. With so many counters, it needs to have more dps.

Saber ward - warrior, deflection - assassin, hardcover - agent, evasion - agent, obsfucate - mara is just a list of a few abilities that completely wreck mm.

As compared to a Sorc and it is just one really and that is force shroud - assassin.

I've done both short (10 to 15 sec) and long parses on combat dummy that favor the Sorc dispite the dummy being unable to deflect or dodge.

Marksmen needs more damage that is all there is to it...

I think it was more in concern with their passive shields not buffs to prevent damage.

More DPS would certainly piss people off, so the easiest answer would seem to be a different type of damage.

This, apart from the other problems that MM has, is the core of the matter IMO, mobility.

Lack of mobility in PVP is death.

 

This is why interupt immunity in cover is not OP in PVP (can't move).

It's why entrench is not OP in PVP (can't move).

It's why having a tiny bit of extra range is not OP in PVP (can't move while chanelling/casting most of it).

 

Then in the design phase they went on and forgot that they already balanced those advantages with the cost to mobilty, and then it seems like they still tweaked most of our core skills (which MM is built upon) around being immune to interupt and having longer range.

We're paying for that already guys...

 

Here's the point where I start talking about how Snipers have more disadvantages for every advantage than other classes do, and I get told I'm talking nonsense...

To be fair, I think they started viewing Roll for Cover as zero cooldown movement off the GCD, as in:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=444103

...but it only sort of works this way. It's inconsistent. It's clunky. It doesn't work as well for snipers as it does for Ops.

Roll for Cover should really be ground targeted and directed. It should be possible to roll from cover to cover. Only THEN could it be seen as a real advantage.

This would also make the cover system a bit less dependent on terrain, which would only be an improvement. One thing that's always been true across every MMO ever designed is that terrain breaks constantly with new patches and updates (just like it's true that any class with a Vanish mechanic has complaints that it doesn't work properly). I don't think that it's a coincidence that the cover system broke so early in this game's life cycle, and I expect to see more of the same. At the very least, they could reduce the points of collision we have vs terrain when we drop into cover (too many points of collision is why a players can stand on places where a sniper can't go into cover). That would make cover bugs occur less often, at least.

I respect your opinion and I agree with many of your points about MM being able to burst down classes under heal. I am not saying it's unmanageable, but it feels in certain situations not powerful enough. On my server there are two dominating pvp guilds on both sides. Reps sometimes can have a team of 4-5 troopers. I don't know about you, but I feel like i need work a lot more for my kills with MM when i am facing so many heavy armors. And I am talking about healer troopers, gunnery commandos, vanguards tanks and assault vanguards. If we get two lethality snipers in the WZ, we can make a huuuge difference for the game outcome.

 

With MM, i only feeling that sometimes i can burst down a target under heals, and they have a little less time to react. Engineering is somewhere in between in terms of DPSing the heavy armors. The kicker here is the Engineering survivability. From my experience: engi EP+SoS > Snipe + FT + Ambush damage wise.

 

The ballistic dampeners 30% damage is high unstable as it can either absorb a grav round or just some random weak dot.

 

Being able to root somebody for the full duration is not a life saver. What are you going to do during those 5 seconds of root against the marauder? Run away? If you drop your cover -> he will just leap to you. Your extra shot is not going to kill him.

 

Oh and what i really don't like about MM is how weak Series of Shots actually is. Against any heavy armor class it is pure useless crap. Rapid fire does not bring anything special for pvp. The only saving grace of Series of shots in MM tree is an alacrity build that can lower SoS to 1,6s cast time (405 alacrity relic, target acquired, sniper volley proc and 4% alacrity skill). With these you can cast all 3 SoS in 4.8 secs total.

 

Outside of that SoS is just a filler attack used to proc the 1.5 sec ambush.

If I was regularly facing a full team of heavy armor users ... I would respec to Lethality too. If there's no Light / Medium armor to hit then Marksman is kind of pointless. Fortunately most teams have at least 1-2 of them, I just mark them up and kill them repeatedly as they respawn.

It would be a metagame related decision: I could see a scenario where if there were full heavy armor teams fielded, then teams would switch to pressure type builds instead of burst. I've done it before with another Sniper, it then becomes a pure DPS / Heal race while our Marauder pressures their healer(s)... my main complaint is that there's no way to tell (besides having a good memory) whether the DOTs belong to you or your friend, especially if they are dispelling.

I'm pretty sure Ballistc Dampers doesn't get wasted on DOTs, only direct attacks (the kind that interrupt caps) but I need to test this.

You said being able to root somebody for the full duration is not a life saver? Again, I'm talking about organized PVP, which is what the game should be balanced to. You're not playing a 1v1 against that Marauder. You are coordinating on voice chat to destroy your kill targets.

Typically, we're going after their healer or some DPS class that just blew his cooldowns. A Marauder decides to come towards me. Leg shot and keep DPSing my main target. He comes towards me again, I Cover Pulse, and keep DPSing my main target. If I need to move, that's fine - he cannot leap to me while immobilized. After the Cover Pulse is over I can Legshot again and keep DPSing our kill target. All this while I've been doing good DPS to our kill target(s) while the Marauder is doing exactly 0.

You just need to have the confidence to move and re-enter cover before the immobilize on your Leg Shot / Cover Pulse breaks., even better if you can utilize natural cover roll to put distance between yourself and the Marauder and put you closer to your kill target. And if he wants to waste his CC breaker on an immobilize... just so he can leap to you while you're relocating... you can just Flashbang him immediately and ignore him for 8 seconds.

Yes, Lethality can do this as well, but only if the Marauder was not previously dotted - Corrosive Grenade has splash, and many times I see them just putting Corrosive Dart on everything for the energy regen.

These are the three primary things I think they will tweak regarding the MM skill tree:

1. Rapid Fire
   
2. Sniper Volley
   
3. Precision Ambush

Rapid Fire

The problem with Rapid Fire is that it's really only useful in one specific situation: when we can stand still and DPS. This makes it pretty weak overall, and as an end-tree skill, it really can't afford to be that weak -- otherwise it gets skipped in favor of skills lower in another tree.

Before patch 1.2, Plasma Probe at the top of the Engineering tree had a similar problem. It was good for sustained DPS, but against anything that was moving or had a brain (i.e. most PvP opponents), it was very easy to avoid. They did a great job with its revamp in patch 1.2, and now it's useful for burst damage, in PvE and PvP, etc -- there's pretty much not a convincing reason to skip that skill as an Engineering sniper.

Rapid Fire could benefit greatly from a revamp that makes it into a more universally useful skill, rather than a minor efficiency boost that becomes less and less useful in more challenging environments.

Since back-to-back-to-back Series of Shots is by far snipers' biggest opportunity to benefit from alacrity, Rapid Fire should encourage that usage by offering some obvious synergy with Target Acquired. Let it reduce TA's cooldown by 30 seconds so that both RF and TA have the same cooldown. Now they will naturally be used together. It can be taken another step by making RF a passive boost to TA that allows the first 2 SoS during TA not to trigger a cooldown. Now it's just 1 button press to get the benefit that everyone uses it for anyway.

Another of RF's problems, especially in PvP, is that line-of-sight interruption can completely negate its benefit. If each hit of SoS while RF is active applies a short snare, then that mitigates that problem significantly.

Rapid Fire: Reduces the cooldown of Target Acquired by 30 seconds. Each hit with Series of Shots while Target Acquired is active will apply a snare to the target. Additionally, when you activate Target Acquired, you gain 2 stacks of Rapid Fire, lasting for 10 seconds. If Series of Shots is used while you have at least 1 stack of Rapid Fire, that Series of Shots will consume a stack and not trigger a cooldown.

Sniper Volley

Sniper Volley was greatly revamped in patch 1.2 to be a great skill; however, it suffers from severe diminishing returns as more points are invested into it because its uptime does not increase linearly with proc chance (due to the internal cooldown).

A simple fix is to give it a fixed proc chance (and therefore fixed expected uptime) and instead allow points invested to linearly increase the benefit of the proc.

One other issue with SV is that it makes energy bracket management even less forgiving because it multiplies current energy regeneration rate, magnifying the effect of dropping out of the top 40%. Giving SV an additive energy benefit rather than a multiplicative benefit makes energy management more forgiving (not easier -- only more forgiving).

Sniper Volley: Your ranged attacks have a 15% chance to increase your alacrity by [ 3% / 6% / 10% ] and your energy regeneration by [ 1 / 2 / 3 ] per second for 10 seconds. This effect cannot occur more than once every 30 seconds.

Precision Ambush

Simply put, it sucks to have Ambush dodged. The frequency with which opponents dodge and shield MM sniper attacks is certainly among the biggest frustration with the MM spec. The following small change would alleviate some of that frustration.

Precision Ambush: Ambush ignores [ 10% / 20%] of your target's armor and [ 5% / 10% ] of your target's defense.

Those are my predictions, assuming they are not going to tweak damage balance using the skill tree.

...

 

Rapid Fire

 

...

 

Sniper Volley

 

...

 

Precision Ambush

Precision Ambush is definitely something I see getting changed. I've been expecting it for a while. For a class that relies so heavily on basic damage it's a fairly weak talent when compared to other similar ones. Aside from what you already stated, I also wouldn't be overly surprised to see the talent buffed to include one or two of our other cast time attacks.

I wouldn't be too surprised to see a few more Sniper Volley tweaks here and there either, but I doubt we will see a more forgiving energy regen. BW seems to like how the drop-off regen mechanic works and wants to stick with it.

As far as Rapid Fire goes, I'm not sure how I'd feel about changes to that. I don't think it needs to be made more viable in PvP. PvP has always been about speccing different, and it's not all that uncommon to drop top tier talents to get more utility out of a hybrid spec. As far as adding more utility to it, or making the talent tie it directly into target acquired...maybe. More utility would be great, and it would go in line with BWs mission statement that they want to add more "usability" to specs and talents, but at the same time you have to be careful not to make it *too* powerful of a talent. So far BW has seemed to lean away from having strong DPS boosting cooldowns and made it more about priorities and ability cooldowns, and I think I like that. It makes DPS from one attempt to the next fairly consistent and reliable. Between what Rapid Fire does now and Target Acquired Snipers already have a pretty strong burst phase cooldowns available, I'd hate to see fights get turned into the mess that WoW had with revolving around balancing raid comps with Heroism/Bloodlust, Power Infusions, etc.

I doubt we will see a more forgiving energy regen. BW seems to like how the drop-off regen mechanic works and wants to stick with it.

I think it's hard to support the argument that the developers prefer magnifying the unforgiving nature of tiered energy regeneration beyond the default level.

For example, Lethal Purpose for Lethality snipers and Imperial Methodology for Engineering snipers both offer a constant energy benefit independent of current energy level. Stim Boost for operatives works that way, too. Looking at all procs and abilities for imperial agents of all flavors, as well as for bounty hunters (who have a similarly tiered resource system), shows that none of them grant energy dependent on current energy level (or heat for BHs) -- they are all flat amounts.

So really, the only two skills or abilities that are dependent on current resource bracket, for any class, are in the Marksmanship sniper tree: Sniper's Nest and Sniper Volley. Whether that's by design is something none of us know, but it's not really a pattern they've repeated across the rest of the sniper class or the game in general.

These are the three primary things I think they will tweak regarding the MM skill tree:

1. Rapid Fire
   
2. Sniper Volley
   
3. Precision Ambush

 

Those are my predictions, assuming they are not going to tweak damage balance using the skill tree.

+1 to that, because I still think that MM should be basic solid spec for snipers since its the most sniper-like spec...

I'll be honest, for PvP I would probably be happy with just getting stealth while in cover. Come on, a stationary sniper who has time to set up is highly visible while some dude can run around invisible?

You are speaking from the point of sniper view while you ignore the balance. Sniper should be visible at all times

You are speaking from the point of sniper view while you ignore the balance. Sniper should be visible at all times

We'd prob be one of the most overpowered classes if we could stealth somewhere...like a novare bunker >.>

+1 to that, because I still think that MM should be basic solid spec for snipers since its the most sniper-like spec...

it is the only sniper'esque spec... Lethality = ranged "rogue", engineering is... well... an Engineer, so.. not very sniper'esque

I'll be honest, for PvP I would probably be happy with just getting stealth while in cover. Come on, a stationary sniper who has time to set up is highly visible while some dude can run around invisible?

not stealth, as it is in game, but stealth as it was in KoToR 2... where you get the watery effect if you look at the place where the sniper is hiding and it should only be active until you start shooting... If anyone has played Nightelf Hunter in WoW, they know what I mean. Nightelf racial = stationary stealth

20-30% armor penetration to Rapid Fire for the duration and I'll be happy.

Pretty close!

Target Acquired now increases Accuracy by 30% and Armor Penetration by 15% instead of increasing Alacrity.