and rescue is not nearly as big as you make it out to be. someone might say 'inspiration would be awesome' or 'defense screen would be cool for this fight' but i highly doubt anyone has ever said 'rescue would be really important here, so let's bring this sage dps over any other dps we could bring'

Actually in Toth and Zorn, if you put your Ranged DPS 30m away from Zorn and always position him so he's between the ranged and Toth, then the phase where you have to deal with someone getting a yellow circle can be pretty brutal without a rescue since if one of the ranged DPS does get it they're gonna be the next best thing to 60-70m away from Toth which just isn't long enough to run there without rescue.

That being said, your point about how a healing sage can do that just as well is a point well made, and is more an argument for taking a sage period over a sage DPS specifically.

all of that said, we're talking about two skills that, while useful, are not essential. and, as someone mentioned earlier, these are for pure dps classes that literally can't fill any other role. they get 1 skill to make up for the fact that they can only fill one role.

for the sake of discussion though:

what do guardians, shadows, vanguards, and scoundrels have unique to them over everyone else?

and what makes commandos unique in their undesirableness compared to these other 4 classes?

The unique thing regarding Commando that would somehow make us undesirable is our lack of interrupt which IS a pretty huge oversight on BWs part. Or would be an oversight except it seems to be pretty stupidly deliberate based on statements they've made in the past.

Like I said though, once you have two interrupts you're pretty much set (three if both of the other two are on long cooldowns).

The unique thing regarding Commando that would somehow make us undesirable is our lack of interrupt which IS a pretty huge oversight on BWs part. Or would be an oversight except it seems to be pretty stupidly deliberate based on statements they've made in the past.

 

Like I said though, once you have two interrupts you're pretty much set (three if both of the other two are on long cooldowns).

i say that's a fair point (and i would still like to know if the OP has an answer to my other question).

but to play devil's advocate about interrupts, i can't think of any fight where an interrupt beyond the tank's is absolutely needed.

jarg and sorno: i've been in groups whose strategy it was to avoid interrupting unload so that rapid scan takes longer to cast. not that i think it's a good strategy, just making the point that it's not necessary for success, and even if you consider it necessary for success, you want the ranged on jarg anyway, so that's two commandos you can place on jarg where you want ranged dps anyway.

and the droid boss on lost island? i do just fine interrupting by myself on my shadow. having another interrupt would is surely helpful, but i'll tell you that having 2 commando dps and no extra interrupt is still infinitely easier than having just one melee dps in the group.

i would venture to say that just being ranged dps is far more valuable in more cases than having an interrupt would be.

yes, things like ironfist on esseles hard mode were basically impossible without at least two interrupts before, but the recent changes to many flashpoints have made those extra interrupts unnecessary.

now his snipe attack doesn't happen nearly as often (and doesn't do nearly as much damage when it does).

i think this was bioware's response to all the concerns of commandos about our lack of interrupt. i really wished that they had just given us the interrupt though instead of dumbing a few things down (make it melee, cost ammo, on a long cd. just something to balance it out if they felt it would be too powerful), but i think they've made it so that a second interrupt is no longer required.

pvp is of course another story altogether, and i won't argue against the value of having an interrupt there.

Actually in Toth and Zorn, if you put your Ranged DPS 30m away from Zorn and always position him so he's between the ranged and Toth, then the phase where you have to deal with someone getting a yellow circle can be pretty brutal without a rescue since if one of the ranged DPS does get it they're gonna be the next best thing to 60-70m away from Toth which just isn't long enough to run there without rescue.

 

Just a question...why in the world would you have the Ranged that far away from Toth? You can set up the Drouks so that you don't have to position Zorn between the Ranged and Toth, which makes moving to Toth much simpler, and allows you to get back to DPS position on Zorn much more quickly.

As far as the topic goes...I DPS in a raid with a Sentinal, Guardian, and a Gunslinger. The only thing that I dislike is that my armor debuff is no longer useful for the raid. Other than that, I have never felt any lack of utility. More than once we've had a healer go down with a rez already used, and I've switched to CSC and kept people up long enough to down the boss (happened on HM Vorgath last week). I grant you that this situation is not ideal and should be avoided, but **** happens and it's nice to be able to serve as a healer for a little while. During Gift of the Masters I hide so that I don't get pulled in, and then throw heals on whoever gets too low. And, like many have said, the Trandoshans during Kephess just get annihilated by my AOEs. So much so that our tank had to start guarding me during that phase.

We have a place in raids.

I just want to add to this that I took my Commando dps through EC Story over the weekend and it went very well. I'm very happy with my class, my setup and my rotation, and my team was happy with my participation.

I would have no objection to adding utility, but I fear that in doing so, Bioware would nerf some other aspect of the class that I happen to like playing.

"how outclassed Gunnery is by other DPS roles" is a very dramatic title that way overstates the actual situation.

but to play devil's advocate about interrupts, i can't think of any fight where an interrupt beyond the tank's is absolutely needed.

You need a second interrupt on Hard Mode minefield. One to get the cleaves, the other to get Overcharge. If you have to you eat the cleaves, but overcharges comes so quick that we pretty much just use a single sentinel to interrupt the overcharge and leave the cleaves to the tank. Anyone else's interrupt is on too long a CD to solo interrupt (Sentinels can also cheese a second interrupt with a leap).

Just a question...why in the world would you have the Ranged that far away from Toth? You can set up the Drouks so that you don't have to position Zorn between the Ranged and Toth, which makes moving to Toth much simpler, and allows you to get back to DPS position on Zorn much more quickly.

Meh, that's just how we ended up doing it. We wanted to avoid fearful and other positions were still having us get it every now and then. We settled on that one the first night in HM EC, and we've always downed it since, and at this point if it ain't broke, don't fix it. We always have a sage as our second healer anyway in case one of the ranged DPS gets the circle. Otherwise, many times they never get it at all, and like I said we always down them now so no real need to rock the boat.

Yeah those overpowered Gunslinger AOES.....

 

I mean all I can do is stack Plasma Grenade, Sticky Grenade then Pulse Cannon a whole pack to hell.

 

On top of the short cast, massive damage Mortar Volley which I can use on a different pack immediately after. The important thing is you don't have to wait forever for the damage...

 

Wait a minute, that sounds suspiciously better than the AOE capability of a Gunslinger...

Just wanna point out a GS/Sniper can spec into way more AOE than that and even NOT speced into it will match it it easily.

Engineering(saboteur) can...

Orbital Strike

Plasma Probe

Frag Grenade

Suppressive Fire

Talents to drastically increase area effect damage

Lethality(dirty fighting) can...

Orbital Strike

Corrosive Grenade

Frag Grenade

Suppressive Fire

Marksman(sharpshooter) Can...

Orbital Strike on a reduced CD and much faster cast time... great for boss fights

Frag Grenade

Suppressive Fire

All 3 specs can have a 3 second CD frag grenade if they want, though only engineering(saboteur) takes it regularly.

Anyway commando single target DPS matches fine for raids, I have no problem bringing one. Though I wouldn't stack them. The emergency cleanse really shouldn't be under estimated.

Just wanna point out a GS/Sniper can spec into way more AOE than that and even NOT speced into it will match it it easily.

 

Engineering(saboteur) can...

Orbital Strike

Plasma Probe

Frag Grenade

Suppressive Fire

Talents to drastically increase area effect damage

 

Lethality(dirty fighting) can...

Orbital Strike

Corrosive Grenade

Frag Grenade

Suppressive Fire

 

Marksman(sharpshooter) Can...

Orbital Strike on a reduced CD and much faster cast time... great for boss fights

Frag Grenade

Suppressive Fire

 

All 3 specs can have a 3 second CD frag grenade if they want, though only engineering(saboteur) takes it regularly.

 

Anyway commando single target DPS matches fine for raids, I have no problem bringing one. Though I wouldn't stack them. The emergency cleanse really shouldn't be under estimated.

Well if you want to list everything then I didn't mention:

Hail of Bolts (no CD, hugely expensive and best used by Assault spec which gets a damage boost on burning targets by stacking with Plasma Grenade for epic stacked damage)

Explosive Round (expensive, lousy actual AOE dmg, lousy knockdown on weak mobs only, only useful as a aoe turret/bomb/hack interrupt in pvp)

The big one that Scoundrels have is incredibly slow, its so often wasted in raids because by the time it gets round to doing damage, much faster AOE damagers have already taken out the pack.

The OP's definition of "unique" is kind of skewed. Let's look at the utility that gunnery commandos have.

An armor debuff that helps the entire party

Ranged damage

Off heals, cleanses, and in-combat rezzes

A universal in-combat CC

Great AOE damage

Heavy armor

Not a single one of these abilities is unique, as each one can be done by other classes. However, there isn't a single other class that can do all of them. That is where the uniqueness of the commando lies, not in the uniqueness of their individual abilities, but in the uniqueness of the combination of their abilities.

Everyone makes a big deal out of commandos not having an interrupt, but only two out of fourteen Op bosses require it. One of them is Sorno, which a gunnery commando shouldn't be attacking anyway.

Well if you want to list everything then I didn't mention:

 

Hail of Bolts (no CD, hugely expensive and best used by Assault spec which gets a damage boost on burning targets by stacking with Plasma Grenade for epic stacked damage)

Explosive Round (expensive, lousy actual AOE dmg, lousy knockdown on weak mobs only, only useful as a aoe turret/bomb/hack interrupt in pvp)

 

The big one that Scoundrels have is incredibly slow, its so often wasted in raids because by the time it gets round to doing damage, much faster AOE damagers have already taken out the pack.

Nice, job on making the point that gunslingers have better AE.

I still don't see it personally. Saboteur is the only one I see that really comes close (and actually I'll concede that their talents in that tree are pretty awesome on the area damage). Are a lot of gunslingers going saboteur spec? My admittedly limited knowledge of the AC is that they spec mostly Sharpshooter for PVE or Dirty Fighting for PVP. I just don't hear about a lot of talk about that spec. The other specs seem to fall behind us.

Either way we're off topic because fact is we aren't getting outclassed in PVE, and OP hasn't really made a convincing argument that we are.

Either way we're off topic because fact is we aren't getting outclassed in PVE, and OP hasn't really made a convincing argument that we are.

+1. OP should learn to play the class and teach it to his guildmates. Actually, I rarely meet a commando in the game that is correctly balanced, most of them are either not remodding their stuff, or investing in secondary stats, and many of them don't even have a correct cycle. And then they complain about how the class is badly designed, but it's them who don't know how to play.

+1. OP should learn to play the class and teach it to his guildmates. Actually, I rarely meet a commando in the game that is correctly balanced, most of them are either not remodding their stuff, or investing in secondary stats, and many of them don't even have a correct cycle. And then they complain about how the class is badly designed, but it's them who don't know how to play.

This is a good point.

A while ago I wound up on mmo-mechanics on the dps commando thread and learned a crap ton about a good rotation vs a bad one. I also learned the inefficiency of lettered mod gear. And then I installed MOX and went around doing dailies and watched what happened to the numbers when I tried different rotations.

After this, I got good enough to do SM EC. As soon as I get a Columi or Rakata mainhand (RNG hates me btw) I feel I'll be ready to tackle HM EC.

Oh, and just last night on EC I used my utility to restun an elite mid-battle, and battle rez a healer that dropped early in an engagement due to an unfortunate mistake.

After this, I got good enough to do SM EC. As soon as I get a Columi or Rakata mainhand (RNG hates me btw) I feel I'll be ready to tackle HM EC.

Man I hear you. I can't tell you how many times I've cleared KP Hard or Nightmare mode, and I've cleared EC SM several times as well and I have never seen the damn thing drop.

My suggestion would be to go do PVP and grind out a War Hero weapon (this will require 1550 normal warzone commendations and then 3475 ranked warzone commendations). The extra damage you get from the 147 rated barrel is worth the loss in aim. Just did this myself and can't wait to try it out.

Man I hear you. I can't tell you how many times I've cleared KP Hard or Nightmare mode, and I've cleared EC SM several times as well and I have never seen the damn thing drop.

 

My suggestion would be to go do PVP and grind out a War Hero weapon (this will require 1550 normal warzone commendations and then 3475 ranked warzone commendations). The extra damage you get from the 147 rated barrel is worth the loss in aim. Just did this myself and can't wait to try it out.

I've been tempted but I've only ever PvPed twice and didn't enjoy it. I like the spirit of cooperation against the AI, rather than the spirit of competition against other players.

I had a bad essperience.

I've been tempted but I've only ever PvPed twice and didn't enjoy it. I like the spirit of cooperation against the AI, rather than the spirit of competition against other players.

It helps if you have decent guildmades who PVP a lot. My guild is chock full of them and you can usually get a premade going and that helps a lot. I'll also say that Assault works much better for PVP.

I agree with you btw, I much much MUCH prefer PVE. I love it. But you can only raid a few nights a week really if you're not on progression. Rest of the time you might as well. Also PVP becomes much more bearable once you get battlemaster gear. PVPing in recruit is simply awful.

edit: also, sadly the best in slot relics for PVE are the PVP War Hero relics.

Meh, there's no reason NOT to have a commando attacking sorno if you brought three ranged DPS, but like I said, usually a tank gets the heal which is the most important one, and unless all your DPS are commandos someone else gets the unload. Or if you bring a guardian tank I think I recall vids seeing them solo interrupt both the heals and the unload.

i think this touches upon another point. given that a second interrupt is absolutely necessary, the slight against commandos is really that the raid can't bring four of them.

in this situation, no, it isn't very fair as only commandos get slighted in this way, but i'd say that still being able to fill 3 of 4 dps slots without a problem otherwise is not nearly as bad as the doom and gloom the OP makes it out to be.

as for the mainhand. i have the war hero mainhand for dps and the rakata for healing.

just changing the crystal in my wh cannon to power (and keeping the other mods), it does loads more dps, even though it has less bonus damage.

the rakata mainhand is far and away better for healing though.

i think this touches upon another point. given that a second interrupt is absolutely necessary, the slight against commandos is really that the raid can't bring four of them.

 

in this situation, no, it isn't very fair as only commandos get slighted in this way, but i'd say that still being able to fill 3 of 4 dps slots without a problem otherwise is not nearly as bad as the doom and gloom the OP makes it out to be.

 

 

 

as for the mainhand. i have the war hero mainhand for dps and the rakata for healing.

just changing the crystal in my wh cannon to power (and keeping the other mods), it does loads more dps, even though it has less bonus damage.

the rakata mainhand is far and away better for healing though.

This really just brings up whether you really need to stack 4 of a class for DPS. The only classes that even should be nominated for that are Sents, Gunslingers, and Commandos (maybe sages? They don't exactly have huge burst though from what I hear of the QQ in the PVP forums). I wouldn't bring 4 commandos to HM EC because of overcharge but I would bring them to any of the other raids including SM EC. I wouldn't actually want 4 melee DPS of any class in KP (Jarg and Karagga). I guess that leaves 4 gunslingers, but mobility is a pain in the butt for fights that need it (At least when I'm on the move I can HiB, Demo Round, or Sticky Grenade as needed).

In general though more class diversity good. Less class diversity bad.

In general though more class diversity good. Less class diversity bad.

100% agree.

Meh, there's no reason NOT to have a commando attacking sorno if you brought three ranged DPS, but like I said, usually a tank gets the heal which is the most important one, and unless all your DPS are commandos someone else gets the unload. Or if you bring a guardian tank I think I recall vids seeing them solo interrupt both the heals and the unload.

Unload is the far more important of the two; leaving even one interrupted could well wipe the raid in seconds. Medical Scan heals for almost nothing and missing a handful of them, while not optimal, is hardly a show-stopper.

As a tank, I insist on being the one assigned to Unload, because my survival depends on it. Any melee DPS can get the Medical Scan, and if they miss one or two, I'm not dead.

I don't see a problem with the mechanics encouraging a mixture of melee and ranged DPS. Ranged DPS can easily switch targets (quite helpful in this fight), and are able to target Jarg without standing in his AoE. Melee DPS are able to interrupt Sorno easily. That's a sensible design to encourage diversity. And like many fights, you would certainly prefer to have 3 ranged and 1 melee DPS vs. 3 melee and 1 ranged DPS in this particular fight.

Unload is the far more important of the two; leaving even one interrupted could well wipe the raid in seconds. Medical Scan heals for almost nothing and missing a handful of them, while not optimal, is hardly a show-stopper.

 

As a tank, I insist on being the one assigned to Unload, because my survival depends on it. Any melee DPS can get the Medical Scan, and if they miss one or two, I'm not dead.

 

I don't see a problem with the mechanics encouraging a mixture of melee and ranged DPS. Ranged DPS can easily switch targets (quite helpful in this fight), and are able to target Jarg without standing in his AoE. Melee DPS are able to interrupt Sorno easily. That's a sensible design to encourage diversity. And like many fights, you would certainly prefer to have 3 ranged and 1 melee DPS vs. 3 melee and 1 ranged DPS in this particular fight.

Shows how much I'm always on Jarg. I always hear people in my raid making sure to get the heal (though the tanks definitely want to get the unload. Never seen it wipe a raid in seconds though).

And I agree, mix of classes is a good thing.