some background : i have two 50's. one deception spec'd assassin, and one engineering spec'd sniper. also have level 32 merc, but i havent been able to fully explore her abilities, so for this arguement i will leave that one out. i hate pvp, so i never do it at all, literally not one match/warzone/whatever you call it. i enjoy these games for the function of working with other people as a team.

i have a heck of a time getting my main toon, which is my assassin, into groups outside of my guild. blame low server population, or blame whatever you want. if i don't have any guildies on, i can basically forget about getting into a group because most people just want ranged dps because ranged dps is easier to play, it's easier to heal (due to heavy aoe's many pve bosses have), and in many cases, they can straight up out dps most melee classes. in truth, playing melee is much more difficult than playing the easy no-brainer rinse and repeat style of all ranged classes.

so i get my main alt, a sniper, to 50, before i even get her geared with the lousy daily reward armor/mod/enhancements, she already has more cunning than my 100% fully columni geared assassin has willpower. when i use ambush (15 second CD), she crit's at 4.6k with most of my a/m/e slots still being occupied with blues, whereas my main toon in full columni can only crit that high IF and ONLY IF i build 5 stacks of surging charge, and pray that it crits after spending almost a good 30-45 seconds building those 5 stacks. (crit chance w/ legacy agent buff being 40%, surge at 78%)

add to that the defensive cd's an engineering spec'd sniper has (shield probe, adrenaline probe, the bubble shield thingy, countermeasures, entrench, and the ability to instantly cooldown shield/adrenaline probe by exploding your interrogation probe) which are almost all on a less than one minute CD, versus the 1 minute CD for 3 seconds worth of invulnerability (force shroud) an assassin has and 12 measly seconds worth of +50% to your defense on a two minute CD, and the agent is even more survivable, taking less damage, while dealing WAY more damage, and in general staying far far away from any danger the boss might present to melee classes.

my point is this: i've played both sides, i see both arguements. and i can say NERF MY CLASS. it is absolutely outrageous that my main character is as (if not less) survivable with less dps than my wimpy little agent who has one single piece of tionese gear, who never has to even get close to danger. one big reason i call for a nerf is the absurd spike i've seen recently in BH and agents (and groups only willing to bring in rdps to their group) as people start to realize that bioware apparently hates melee classes (try doing lost island with a jugg tank, marauader and assassin dps, i guarantee 90% of you can't do it). and what i ask is not to necessarily nerf ranged dps, but they should be MUCH MUCH MUCH squishier. it's a balance issue, super high dps should mean super high smashability, otherwise why doesn't eveyone who want to dps roll an agent or merc?

not to mention the glaring obvious fault in the logic of a force-using lightsaber-wielding sith SHOULD be able to kick the you-know-what out of any blaster wielding goober they come across. but that is mostly an RP POV, which i dont particularly care for, but felt it should be pointed out.

it just really sucks having spent so much time on my assassin, reading on every forum and website out there that melee is almost useless, and ignoring those people thinking that straight up skill could always overcome my class's inherent difficulties (which it can), only to find out that just hitting the same 6 or 7 buttons on rotation while literally never moving, i can out dps my assassin with gear 3 tiers below what that toon has, and never even really have to worry about damage.

basically what i call for is to make ranged squishier in general, take away some of their defensive cd's, something. i'm sick of rolling with nothing but bounty hunters.... this IS a star wars game, lightsabers and stuff. why oh why bioware, are you punishing melee classes so hard and buffing ranged so much? it makes no sense. i know nerfing one class is easier than buffing all others, (and apaarently you can't even handle fixing one bug within 6 months, i.e. foundry: hk still glitches inbetween phases OFTEN) and i'd hate to add to your already tremendous workload of adding horrifying UGLY endgame gear that everyone hates, but please will someone just think about this.

mercs, agents (which i am) and trolls, fire away. idc what you think. ranged dps is easy, brain dead, and overpowered at the moment. end of story.

There is a reason firearms replaced swords and pikes as primary arms. Ranged has a lot of inherent advantages that poor encounter design just compound.

Very few games balance ranged and melee. Currently EQ2 is horrible biased against melee with around 60+% of current raid encounters disadvantaging scouts and to a slightly lesser extent, other melee more so than to ranged casters. I am sorry to say I raged a bit today in raid after finding yet another encounter that fit that mold.

That being said, I don't find this game nearly as bad as EQ2, but there are already multiple fights that (not my words, these come from ranged guild mates) "sucks for melee".

I agree something should be done, it has been my experience in pvp the disparity is even worse. I haven't pvp'ed for a while though so I am unsure how my Marauder will stack up with the buffs they have received.

Of course any change has to be considered very carefully and each class considered seperatly. I am not sure your squishier in general idea will do that.

One thing I fancy is more freedom in target facing for melee. A good swordsmen does have a limited ability to hit almost directly behind and this is without the advantage of the Force. Currently, for arguments sake lets say you can only attack in a frontal 180 degrees. One of the biggest disadvantages melee has is that at close range is terribly easy to get outside of that arc. Against a ranged attack 20 metres away it is impossible to do that without other factors. Opening up melee's attack arc to 270 degrees (which isn't as silly as it sounds as I tried to show above) would counteract the disparity to an extent.

Unfortunately I doubt this thread will survive without some seriously biased input from both sides but other than that, I look forward to any discussion.

edit: For the record I have a Marauder, Merc, Sniper, Assassin, Vanguard, Smuggler and a Sage to hopefully put some perspective on what I am saying.

some background : i have two 50's. one deception spec'd assassin, and one engineering spec'd sniper. also have level 32 merc, but i havent been able to fully explore her abilities, so for this arguement i will leave that one out. i hate pvp, so i never do it at all, literally not one match/warzone/whatever you call it. i enjoy these games for the function of working with other people as a team.

 

i have a heck of a time getting my main toon, which is my assassin, into groups outside of my guild. blame low server population, or blame whatever you want. if i don't have any guildies on, i can basically forget about getting into a group because most people just want ranged dps because ranged dps is easier to play, it's easier to heal (due to heavy aoe's many pve bosses have), and in many cases, they can straight up out dps most melee classes. in truth, playing melee is much more difficult than playing the easy no-brainer rinse and repeat style of all ranged classes.

 

so i get my main alt, a sniper, to 50, before i even get her geared with the lousy daily reward armor/mod/enhancements, she already has more cunning than my 100% fully columni geared assassin has willpower. when i use ambush (15 second CD), she crit's at 4.6k with most of my a/m/e slots still being occupied with blues, whereas my main toon in full columni can only crit that high IF and ONLY IF i build 5 stacks of surging charge, and pray that it crits after spending almost a good 30-45 seconds building those 5 stacks. (crit chance w/ legacy agent buff being 40%, surge at 78%)

 

add to that the defensive cd's an engineering spec'd sniper has (shield probe, adrenaline probe, the bubble shield thingy, countermeasures, entrench, and the ability to instantly cooldown shield/adrenaline probe by exploding your interrogation probe) which are almost all on a less than one minute CD, versus the 1 minute CD for 3 seconds worth of invulnerability (force shroud) an assassin has and 12 measly seconds worth of +50% to your defense on a two minute CD, and the agent is even more survivable, taking less damage, while dealing WAY more damage, and in general staying far far away from any danger the boss might present to melee classes.

 

my point is this: i've played both sides, i see both arguements. and i can say NERF MY CLASS. it is absolutely outrageous that my main character is as (if not less) survivable with less dps than my wimpy little agent who has one single piece of tionese gear, who never has to even get close to danger. one big reason i call for a nerf is the absurd spike i've seen recently in BH and agents (and groups only willing to bring in rdps to their group) as people start to realize that bioware apparently hates melee classes (try doing lost island with a jugg tank, marauader and assassin dps, i guarantee 90% of you can't do it). and what i ask is not to necessarily nerf ranged dps, but they should be MUCH MUCH MUCH squishier. it's a balance issue, super high dps should mean super high smashability, otherwise why doesn't eveyone who want to dps roll an agent or merc?

 

not to mention the glaring obvious fault in the logic of a force-using lightsaber-wielding sith SHOULD be able to kick the you-know-what out of any blaster wielding goober they come across. but that is mostly an RP POV, which i dont particularly care for, but felt it should be pointed out.

 

it just really sucks having spent so much time on my assassin, reading on every forum and website out there that melee is almost useless, and ignoring those people thinking that straight up skill could always overcome my class's inherent difficulties (which it can), only to find out that just hitting the same 6 or 7 buttons on rotation while literally never moving, i can out dps my assassin with gear 3 tiers below what that toon has, and never even really have to worry about damage.

 

basically what i call for is to make ranged squishier in general, take away some of their defensive cd's, something. i'm sick of rolling with nothing but bounty hunters.... this IS a star wars game, lightsabers and stuff. why oh why bioware, are you punishing melee classes so hard and buffing ranged so much? it makes no sense. i know nerfing one class is easier than buffing all others, (and apaarently you can't even handle fixing one bug within 6 months, i.e. foundry: hk still glitches inbetween phases OFTEN) and i'd hate to add to your already tremendous workload of adding horrifying UGLY endgame gear that everyone hates, but please will someone just think about this.

 

mercs, agents (which i am) and trolls, fire away. idc what you think. ranged dps is easy, brain dead, and overpowered at the moment. end of story.

ignorance is a bliss....

regards

Hilarious

If some ranged classes became "squisher" they would die at the sight of glowsticks

ranged classes too tough? Seriously? Snipers give up the entirety of their mobility to get their protection. Sorcerers are plenty squishy, but have lots of escapes. Mercenaries are nearly as squishy as Sorcerers but have no ability to escape whatsoever.

6 seconds worth of +50% to ranged defense everytime you leave cover and 3 charges of ballistic dampers to get 3 free automatic attack absorbs every 20 seconds. if you're not moving with your sniper, you're doing it wrong

6 seconds worth of +50% to ranged defense everytime you leave cover and 3 charges of ballistic dampers to get 3 free automatic attack absorbs every 20 seconds. if you're not moving with your sniper, you're doing it wrong

It's 6 seconds of 20%, not 50%, defense... ie 6 seconds of not giving up the same exact bonus cover normally gives.'

The moment they leave cover they've just entered melee range for everything with a lightsaber.

And just because they can move and keep a few of their defenses doesn't mean they're mobile. Their most powerful attacks typically require entering cover to use.

some background : i have two 50's. one deception spec'd assassin, and one engineering spec'd sniper. also have level 32 merc, but i havent been able to fully explore her abilities, so for this arguement i will leave that one out. i hate pvp, so i never do it at all, literally not one match/warzone/whatever you call it. i enjoy these games for the function of working with other people as a team.

 

i have a heck of a time getting my main toon, which is my assassin, into groups outside of my guild. blame low server population, or blame whatever you want. if i don't have any guildies on, i can basically forget about getting into a group because most people just want ranged dps because ranged dps is easier to play, it's easier to heal (due to heavy aoe's many pve bosses have), and in many cases, they can straight up out dps most melee classes. in truth, playing melee is much more difficult than playing the easy no-brainer rinse and repeat style of all ranged classes.

 

so i get my main alt, a sniper, to 50, before i even get her geared with the lousy daily reward armor/mod/enhancements, she already has more cunning than my 100% fully columni geared assassin has willpower. when i use ambush (15 second CD), she crit's at 4.6k with most of my a/m/e slots still being occupied with blues, whereas my main toon in full columni can only crit that high IF and ONLY IF i build 5 stacks of surging charge, and pray that it crits after spending almost a good 30-45 seconds building those 5 stacks. (crit chance w/ legacy agent buff being 40%, surge at 78%)

 

add to that the defensive cd's an engineering spec'd sniper has (shield probe, adrenaline probe, the bubble shield thingy, countermeasures, entrench, and the ability to instantly cooldown shield/adrenaline probe by exploding your interrogation probe) which are almost all on a less than one minute CD, versus the 1 minute CD for 3 seconds worth of invulnerability (force shroud) an assassin has and 12 measly seconds worth of +50% to your defense on a two minute CD, and the agent is even more survivable, taking less damage, while dealing WAY more damage, and in general staying far far away from any danger the boss might present to melee classes.

 

my point is this: i've played both sides, i see both arguements. and i can say NERF MY CLASS. it is absolutely outrageous that my main character is as (if not less) survivable with less dps than my wimpy little agent who has one single piece of tionese gear, who never has to even get close to danger. one big reason i call for a nerf is the absurd spike i've seen recently in BH and agents (and groups only willing to bring in rdps to their group) as people start to realize that bioware apparently hates melee classes (try doing lost island with a jugg tank, marauader and assassin dps, i guarantee 90% of you can't do it). and what i ask is not to necessarily nerf ranged dps, but they should be MUCH MUCH MUCH squishier. it's a balance issue, super high dps should mean super high smashability, otherwise why doesn't eveyone who want to dps roll an agent or merc?

 

not to mention the glaring obvious fault in the logic of a force-using lightsaber-wielding sith SHOULD be able to kick the you-know-what out of any blaster wielding goober they come across. but that is mostly an RP POV, which i dont particularly care for, but felt it should be pointed out.

 

it just really sucks having spent so much time on my assassin, reading on every forum and website out there that melee is almost useless, and ignoring those people thinking that straight up skill could always overcome my class's inherent difficulties (which it can), only to find out that just hitting the same 6 or 7 buttons on rotation while literally never moving, i can out dps my assassin with gear 3 tiers below what that toon has, and never even really have to worry about damage.

 

basically what i call for is to make ranged squishier in general, take away some of their defensive cd's, something. i'm sick of rolling with nothing but bounty hunters.... this IS a star wars game, lightsabers and stuff. why oh why bioware, are you punishing melee classes so hard and buffing ranged so much? it makes no sense. i know nerfing one class is easier than buffing all others, (and apaarently you can't even handle fixing one bug within 6 months, i.e. foundry: hk still glitches inbetween phases OFTEN) and i'd hate to add to your already tremendous workload of adding horrifying UGLY endgame gear that everyone hates, but please will someone just think about this.

 

mercs, agents (which i am) and trolls, fire away. idc what you think. ranged dps is easy, brain dead, and overpowered at the moment. end of story.

to be honest i dont know were your getting the idea of making them squishier. i also have two level 50's. one is a guardian dps and i have a commando healer (have full columi for dps and tank for guardian and full rakata heals and almost full rakata for dps for commando) the things i noticed while playing both melee and commando is for melee we have much more movability than a ranged yea they're 25 meters away from boss but i can pretty much run around while dpsing but commandos and gunslingers cant. yea they can use attacks but not there strong ones because they need to activate or be in cover. though if you notice in operations now bosses like toth and zorn and karagga hit also ranged with there attack luckily for melee we can run away if a counselor or force leap to boss during the karagas fight. for toth and zorn theres red aoes on the ground and really ranged dps cant stay still to do enough damage while melee dps could run around boss and still do good damage.

also in lost island yea i beat it with two melee as dps and a healer. i noticed the boss went down much faster than when i did it with ranged. we had the tank kite him around the outer edges and dps never stopped on the boss even though we were constantly on the move. why? because all our attacks are instant instead of 1 for me which is master strike but other than that i was dealing good amount of damage on the move. i realized i saved much more time doing it this way then with all ranged because dps would never leave the boss except for one who dealt with adds but dps was consistent since we have that advantage of mobility and doing damage at the same time.

otherwise why doesn't eveyone who want to dps roll an agent or merc?

interesting question.

considering the amount of people playing agents is far less compared to assassins.

interesting question.

considering the amount of people playing agents is far less compared to assassins.

and thats because its much easier to avoid damage as an assassin and still deal good damage then a sniper because snipers need to be in cover for there strong hits but a lot of boss mechanics now require constant or near constant movement

and thats because its much easier to avoid damage as an assassin and still deal good damage then a sniper because snipers need to be in cover for there strong hits but a lot of boss mechanics now require constant or near constant movement

I have cleared Denova, KP and EV and no fight I know of requires near constant movement. Regular movement yes, but not even close to 'near constant'. Zorn and Toth for example do require periods of constant moving but overall it is still nowhere near constant. I should also point out that as melee have to move at the same time, they don't get to dps either as staying in melee range would get them skewered from below.

Nearly every ability those bosses have though has some kind of range limit, a great deal of which are short range, ie far enough to hit melee but not ranged. Toth's dot for example in EM, and his leap to hit Zorn. The swipe from the rancor in KP, Karagga's flame fart, the twin Bounty Hunter's (can't remmeber the name) flamethrower move.

Don't get me wrong, I don't really agree with the OP but Sniper's are not so hard up as you seem to think. (I play both a Sniper and Marauder btw).

I have cleared Denova, KP and EV and no fight I know of requires near constant movement. Regular movement yes, but not even close to 'near constant'. Zorn and Toth for example do require periods of constant moving but overall it is still nowhere near constant. I should also point out that as melee have to move at the same time, they don't get to dps either as staying in melee range would get them skewered from below.

 

Nearly every ability those bosses have though has some kind of range limit, a great deal of which are short range, ie far enough to hit melee but not ranged. Toth's dot for example in EM, and his leap to hit Zorn. The swipe from the rancor in KP, Karagga's flame fart, the twin Bounty Hunter's (can't remmeber the name) flamethrower move.

 

Don't get me wrong, I don't really agree with the OP but Sniper's are not so hard up as you seem to think. (I play both a Sniper and Marauder btw).

i see were your coming from but also playing from a commando and guardian dps i can tell you i had an easier time with a lot of the boss mechanic as guardian. some bosses you described can be voided for example karagga just stand on the sides, rancor whoever is targeted stays still dps runs underneath him while still dpsing. also for the bounty hunter you dont have melee on that guy but on sorno and jarg is the flame sweep. that way they avoid the damage even range gets pulled into the fire sweep though so they do get damage also there targets during a lot of these fights that range will get hit. a sniper/gunslinger have to use cover fr there strong moves so not being able to stay in cover during these times you lose a good amount of dps while as my guardian i kept on wailing on the bosses still. also commando/merc have a lot of activation for there primary attacks. so to be honest i find it extremely easy as a melee and if i do get damage its not that bad because so far everyone gets hit except maybe on the toth and zorn fight other than that every other boss fight both melee and range get hurt. so as a melee i can still pull damage more than a range can at a lot of these bosses.and we rarley have to stay in one place to dps maybe just close range but thats about it

OP is just asking to be verbally brutalized. I mean an Assassin asking for Sniper nerf? May I suggest you quit playing this game pls? What a complete disgrace.. Since you are so eager to nerf "your" class, how about we take the invisiblity completely from the assasin? You are an embarrassment to every assassin on this forum.

A Deception Assassin. Tank Assassins are too strong (they do too much DPS for a tank) but the other two trees are both very squishy and don't really do all that more damage. Scoundrels are in a similar position - as squishy as ranged DPS but needing to be much, much closer. Sentinels have crazy survivability and so let's not go there... Guardians, in a DPS stance, are no less squishy than a Pyrotech.

Overall while I don't think they need to make ranged DPS squishier I do think that certain DPS classes/trees do need some increased survivability (while others need toning down.) The idea to relax some of the positional requirements I'm less sure of, but it is true that with latency and everyone running around like crazy in a tight scrum it can be a bit hit and miss. The recent comment about Sages now having too high a skill cap is laughable when you look at how easy they are to play compared to DPS Shadows, for example.

For what it's worth, as a Sage healer, I'd rather take a couple of Sentinels into Lost Island than ranged DPS.

Certain encounters do favour a mixed party composition (Fabricator, Toth and Zorn, etc), but I always like to have at least a couple of melee DPS. In my experience they're often doing more damage than ranged at equivalent gear levels, and moving hurts their DPS output less.

I have cleared Denova, KP and EV and no fight I know of requires near constant movement. Regular movement yes, but not even close to 'near constant'. Zorn and Toth for example do require periods of constant moving but overall it is still nowhere near constant. I should also point out that as melee have to move at the same time, they don't get to dps either as staying in melee range would get them skewered from below.

If you're talking about the ground spike aoe phase, melee should be able to strafe around Toth and keep DPSing for the most part.

i see were your coming from but also playing from a commando and guardian dps i can tell you i had an easier time with a lot of the boss mechanic as guardian. some bosses you described can be voided for example karagga just stand on the sides, rancor whoever is targeted stays still dps runs underneath him while still dpsing. also for the bounty hunter you dont have melee on that guy but on sorno and jarg is the flame sweep. that way they avoid the damage even range gets pulled into the fire sweep though so they do get damage also there targets during a lot of these fights that range will get hit. a sniper/gunslinger have to use cover fr there strong moves so not being able to stay in cover during these times you lose a good amount of dps while as my guardian i kept on wailing on the bosses still. also commando/merc have a lot of activation for there primary attacks. so to be honest i find it extremely easy as a melee and if i do get damage its not that bad because so far everyone gets hit except maybe on the toth and zorn fight other than that every other boss fight both melee and range get hurt. so as a melee i can still pull damage more than a range can at a lot of these bosses.and we rarley have to stay in one place to dps maybe just close range but thats about it

I am aware of all of the counters you mention and do use them actually. The point was all of those are factors that effect melee dps that do not effect (or effect to a lesser extent) ranged.

Please note I actually think the immobility of a sniper does to an extent balance it against melee. Mercs for example however get the best of both worlds.