The idea: After paying Cartel Coins to unlock an item or set across our Legacy via Collections, those items should be Bind on Legacy when re-acquired through Collections. Why I want it: This would allow greater customization of Legacy armor sets and vastly increase our choices for Legacy weapons. Ultimately, a weapon slot in the outfit designer would be ideal. If the entire weapon-slot itself is problematic, a color-crystal outfit slot would be nice - especially in combination with BoL weapons from collections. For those of us with lots of characters, managing Legacy sets of gear can be a hassle when all the sets look alike, especially with the bug where set bonuses don't show up on items in legacy storage. (I thought of this idea while trying to figure out how to easily distinguish my new Mercenary/Commando DPS set from my PT DPS, PT Tank and Merc Healer sets.) For those of us who consider outfits carefully and certainly for role-players, the limited options for BoL weapons is especially frustrating. This improves both issues. Why you should want it: In making items unlocked from Collections more useful, you incentivize use of the collections system (i.e., more CC spent). Even players not concerned with cosmetics might be inclined to unlock items just for better inventory management, widening the market for CC. Players who don't want to deal with the hassle of managing extra sets of Legacy gear, or with losing their preferred cosmetics, might be more inclined to create new characters and thus spend more time (and money) in the game. Before I end, I'll add yet another plea for a legacy unlock for a shared bank account. Pretty please? Lots of great QoL stuff in the past year or so, thank you for your work!

I promise I won't rehash any arguments about Marksmanship, but I've been interested for a long time in trying to rate the "burstiness" of each spec, but I've not managed to nail down a useful and reliable way to work it out. There's too much variability in definitions, conditions, and in the parses themselves - especially given the inherently short time window. Would it be possible to use the same method used to generate the expected sustained DPS numbers and optimal gear stats to generate an "expected burst damage" rating for each spec? How to define/rate burst? A 5, 10, or 15-second window? A simulated TTK (i.e., how long to deal, say, 100k damage?) A variable time-window? (since different classes probably have differing lengths for their "burst phase") A rating (e.g.,"115% of baseline") or number ("15s @ 7000dps")? Other complications: Include pre-cast or pop-out-of-stealth abilities which might not be possible to use in a boss fight? Would the optimal stats be different for burst damage vs. sustained? (That information might be quite useful for NiM, come to think of it!) Speaking of NiM, should consistency be considered or rated? (E.g., Auto-crits) Perhaps like tanks' "spikiness"? While I presume raid buffs should be excluded, they are still worth mentioning, since classes with a raid buff are guaranteed to have that ability available to them. They can also, perhaps, time the buff better to benefit their own damage. Anyway, I don't know how difficult this would be, because I don't know what your tools look like, but it might be useful information - interesting, at least - if it's feasible.

Thanks for the replies. I understand the concept of multiplicative vs. additive in and of itself, and your calculations all make sense to me when I read through them - but I still don't quite get why my simpler way doesn't also work. But apparently it doesn't, so I'll drop it. I am, however, still seeing a >10% drop in my own DPS in parses. Your list does not show any difference in optimal gearing, so it shouldn't be a gearing issue. It may be nothing more than my own demoralization from watching my close-to-BiS toon drop to nearly the DPS levels I used to get out of comms gear. It's hard to care about maximizing a parse when you watch such low numbers roll through. Where's my weeping rakghoul emoji, BW? A dummy parse is the epitome of a no-target-swapping situation, so the number of times you have to reapply it there is not relevant to target-swapping penalties. My point is that Marksmanship DOES have a penalty, and depending on the situation is either minor or enormous, like other classes. You're missing the point. If AoE damage is too much, then nerf that - but Marksmanship already has to sacrifice single-target DPS in order to use Suppressive Fire. It doesn't make sense to double-tax Marksmanship. For that matter, BW has stated that they don't want to penalize any spec for having good AoE, but that every spec should have an appropriate amount of AoE. (I really like that every spec has different types of AoE. Not every type of AoE is equally useful in all situations, but each has situations in which it outperforms the others.) In short, I'm not arguing that Marksmanship doesn't have any burst damage, but that it doesn't have more burst damage than other specs. Both Lightning and AP have auto-crits in the rotation without having to use cooldowns AND have crit-boosting cooldowns. Recklessness is only a 60% boost, but considering the auto-crit Thundering Blast, that it has more charges and can be used up consecutively - it's a more potent burst-damage cooldown than Laze Target. Even Annihilation, the quintessential non-burst spec, has Annihilation (that crits for very nearly as much as our super-crit Ambush w/ half the CD once it's rolling), Berserk and Bloodthirst. In short, I think you're overestimating Marksmanship's burst relative to other classes. That's really my over-arching point as well. The argument that Marksmanship should be the "lowest-parsing spec" is based off a series of assumptions about the relative strengths of Marksmanship that I believe are significantly over-estimated. I think it's more fun than any other class, and its popularity suggests I'm not unusual in that, but surely no one would claim a class should be punished for being fun? It's hardly the alpha class some folks - including BW,, based off this patch - seem to think it is. Maybe when I'm not dealing with a cluster of real-life troubles I'll do another meta-comparison of relative raid performance compared to dummy parsing. Last time I did it (2.5 or so) I came up with a 3% gain for MM in raids relative to dummy performance, compared to other classes - with a 5-6% best-case gain. Then again, math clearly isn't my strongest subject so maybe someone else should do it. It occurs to me that this might not be the right thread to debate a specific Discipline, so I apologize if I'm out of line. In any case, I'll drop the whole thing. I don't expect any changes based on my complaints anyway.

Marksmanship may have less target-swapping penalties than many classes, but it certainly has noticeable penalties - and no benefits like DoT Spread. First, Corrosive Dart: not re-applying it is a 5% loss, while re-applying it spends a GCD and is costly in terms of energy management. Second: Movement. Marksmanship is easily the least-mobile class in the game. Not only is almost every ability a cast or channel, but leaving cover erases our defenses, reduces our energy regeneration, and takes time to enter/leave cover. In many cases, this penalty significantly outweighs any benefits to being ranged. With the ninja-nerf to Entrench in 4.0, this is an even larger issue than in the recent past. Regarding AoE, you're mostly right - but it's not without drawbacks. Suppressive Fire is powerful, but extremely costly in energy and single-target DPS. Contrast to Disciplines like Vengeance and Lightning which have powerful AoE abilities in their single-target rotation. Which method of AoE is preferable or more powerful varies on the situation, but it's unfair to simply claim that Marksmanship ought to lose potential single-target DPS based on access to a strong AoE that, in using it, already sacrifices significant single-target DPS. Survivability is good on Snipers in general, but it already comes with costs: a lack of mobility and utility. Our only raid utility is Ballistic Shield - which is an excellent and under-utilized ability - but we have no mobility, no battle rez, no heals, no self-heals, no cleanse, no other role, etc. Is taking less damage in fights with unavoidable AoE is worth giving up flexibility and utility in every other fight as well? I think it's an even trade and I believe the intention is to incentivize raid leaders to bring a variety of classes. But again, it's not fair to ask us to give up our single-target DPS - our primary and only role - in return for a small incentive to bring us to a handful of fights. Finally, while Marksmanship has moderate burst-damage potential, it's hardly as potent as AP or Lightning. Our offensive cooldowns are not as powerful and less frequent and our cast times are longer. In other words, we are not "more bursty" than any other burst spec. Certainly less burst than Lightning! Maybe Marksmanship shouldn't be at the top of the chart, but saying that it should be the lowest parsing spec in the game is unfair - especially by as large a margin as it currently sits. Speaking of that margin... how do you figure on only a 7.8% loss on Marksmanship? We lost 20% crit damage off 90% of our damage with an average crit rate of 50%. That's a 9% DPS loss without even considering the reduction on Penetrating Blasts (at least another 1%). That would more closely match the 11% loss I'm seeing in my own parses, and that others have reported as well. The top parse on Parsely (6097) since 4.0.3 is almost 13.5% below the top parse from earlier (6927), and (presumably) even with adrenals and good RNG hasn't managed to match your number yet. I recognize the small sample set there, but even the top-parsers own personal best (on Parsely) has dropped by 11.8%. Anyway, I think your calculation may be optimistic unless there is some adjustment I'm missing. EDIT: Oh, just in case I came across a little belligerent - I'm not "calling yall out" or whatever, Bant and KeyboardNinja. I really appreciate yall's work.

Goblin_Lackey just updated his thread on optimal stats; his calculation for optimal stats appears unchanged for Marksmanship. The new DPS rankings puts Marksmanship with a 8.6% loss in DPS, now at 5.52% below average. That's less of a loss than I'm seeing, or calculated, but it's still pretty huge. (I average close to 50% crit rate, and we lost 20% of our critical damage bonus on 90% of our damage + the nerf to PB, so anything less than 10% seems pretty optimistic to me.) To put that in perspective, a Marksmanship sniper in fully optimized 224 gear today can expect less DPS than a MM Sniper in comms gear was running yesterday. We took a substantially larger nerf than any other spec, despite not being anywhere close to the top-performing spec to begin with. Normally I would suspect a PvP-related concern to be involved, but just looking at the scores on the Ranked Leaderboard, that seems unlikely - since Snipers are the lowest-scored class there as well.

Marksmanship has gone from a middling spec to the worst spec in the game by a large margin. Even poor Rage and Fury are better now, and they've been the red-headed stepchildren of specs since at least 3.0. It's a good thing I didn't funnel all my best gear to one toon, only to have it made worthless in a single blow. /s EDIT: Melodrama aside, I'm seeing a 10-12% loss.

Seriously? That would be hilarious if it weren't so depressing. Progression raiding isn't about achievement points and e-peen contests, it's about learning to work as a team and overcoming challenges with your friends. Without a clear progression though, there is no "progression raiding". It's the difference between taking a road trip with friends to the mountains (or wherever) and taking a road trip with friends around the neighborhood. I really do appreciate the new story and all the hard work yall have done in 4.0, but if the complete lack of attention to progression raiding wasn't destructive enough, this announcement just adds insult to injury. Please reconsider - not just eliminating progression from Nightmare Mode, but also your apparent complete disregard for group content as a whole. It really is more important to us than you (seem to) think - and if your metrics show that not many people participate in progression raiding, that's because they've all given up. Some are gone for good - you've burned some bridges, frankly - but many will come back if the content is there.

Punctuation is your friend.

I appreciate your asking for feedback, and particularly explaining design goals re: difficulty, but I feel sorry for you having to read through all this Eric. Fortunately for me, I can safely ignore the other fifty-whatever pages! You can skip to the last paragraph for the summary. Level 65 Marksmanship Sniper 220-224 gear, HM/NiM Ops-experienced player Rank 50 Weasel, er... "Dead-eye" Leyta I ran Heroic Star Fortresses (solo) in all three companion roles this morning to test. Alliance rep is 16 on each - using all bonuses and crates. Healer role: I'm only getting about 1500 HPS from my weasel on average, topping out around 2000-2100. This seems a bit low for a rank 50 companion. In fact, this is noticeably worse than pre-4.0 companion healing and certainly not worthy of "companions should still feel powerful." DPS role: I'm seeing an average of about 3k-4k DPS on average, with single-target peaks of about 5-6k. DPS seems surprisingly variable, but that's to be expected in short fights. DPS role was, by far, the easiest way for me to run Heroic Star Fortress, even without any self-heals beyond the sliced-crate Medical Probe (while heals for about as much by itself as I was getting from a healer companion!) Tank role: Trouble holding threat, self-heals negligible (100-200 HPS), DtPS roughly equivalent to my Sniper (2k-3k DtPS) but without the sense not to stand in the stupid. I love the mass-grapple, but otherwise running with my weasel in tank stance is mostly frustrating. DPS is pathetic - about 1k - and she just dies too quickly to make much difference in terms of my own DtPS. It looks like there's a known bug re: armor rating and defense on tanks, though so that might account for some of my trouble. It does feel like tank-stance DPS should be improved noticeably, as this would also help with threat. The heal nerfs - needed as they were - were probably a little too drastic. I would expect a rank 50, level 65 companion to manage 2500-3000 HPS, with the numbers I'm getting now (1500-2000) at rank 1. DPS numbers feel pretty good to me. Deadeye doesn't outshine me, but she definitely contributes noticeably and feels appropriately powerful. I'll revisit tanking once it's actually been patched, but tank DPS is somewhat too low.

I had something similar in mind - take the steam-punk spider legs from contraption in Wild Wild West and put them underneath a platform for the player character to sit on. Like a wheelchair with spider legs instead of wheels. (I'm sure I've seen such a thing somewhere before, but I can't figure out where, and the Google has failed me!) Bonus points if it jumps via rockets and/or has 'fangs' that can attack on Flourish.

For the sake of my time and (mostly) sanity, I'm going to skip reading the other 57 pages of replies here. And while I hope you're reading this Eric and/or George, I'm really sorry that you have to wade through what I'm guessing is a toxic swamp of poorly-written outrage. Don't worry, I'm here to save the day! (that's a joke; others have probably said something very similar.) I'm really excited about all the old content being bumped to level 65, and it needs to be done! I'm sure it's also more work than it may seem to re-balance everything to a new level, but I appreciate it because I really enjoy the old content as well - so it's great that it will be non-trivial again. However, I'm sure you anticipated the disappointment over the "no new Ops" announcement, but maybe not the degree of disappointment? I lead a progression raid team, and this announcement may actually spell the end of my team - just as the last drought of new Ops ended my last team (and guild!) I'm not being melodramatic, that's just the way progression raiding works. The progression itself is a large part of what people enjoy about progression raiding, and playing old Ops - even if they are suddenly hard again - doesn't offer the same sense of "progression" as learning completely new fights. I appreciate the quality of raids we've had, and I understand that quality takes time, but the pace of new Operations indicates a lack of staff, which indicates either a lack of funding or a lack of interest at the management level. Since EA has pointed to SWTOR as a major profit source, I suspect the issue is interest rather than funding. To the managers then, who I suspect are looking at the number of players who actually raid at the Hard/Nightmare mode level and deciding it isn't important, consider two things: First, progression raiding is a bit like a flagship product. Companies often sell flagship products at a loss because it increases the appeal of the lower-end, profitable products. Progression raiding may represent a smaller percentage of players, but those are also the players that most support the community: theory-crafters, fan sites, and - most importantly - guild leadership. I've been in three guilds since launch, and two of the three collapsed as a direct result of progression raiders leaving the game because of a lack of progression content. One shortly after launch, during the Dark Days, and the second when DF and DP were about a year old with nothing on the horizon. We had many non-raiding, active members who also left the game when the guild leadership all but vanished. It's not that progression raiders are more important people - in the philosophical sense - but our presence or absence has a larger impact on the community than the numbers alone may indicate. Second, progression raiding is a critical-mass type of activity. If you can't get eight (good) players together for a raid, then nobody gets to raid. Raid participation isn't linear; if there are seven people on the server who want to raid, then 0% of the people who want to raid are going to get to raid. If 799 people want to raid, then 99% (792) of the people who want to raid will get to raid. In other words, since both quality and frequency of new operations determines how many players want to raid, a higher percentage of players will participate in progression raiding when new operations come along more frequently. To put it yet another way, devoting fewer resources to developing operations due to lower participation is a self-fulfilling prophecy - a downward cycle - because it ensures that even those players who do still want to raid have a harder time finding enough other players with whom to raid. So, for damage-control, please consider answering a few questions (with favorable answers!) while people are still around to hear you say it. First, when are we going to see Nightmare-mode ToS and Ravagers? (The correct answer is "this summer", next best would be "4.0 @ level 65" Second, we need to hear you say that new operations will be coming ASAP after 4.0, and that you haven't given up on progression raiding. Names and/or Episode/Patch numbers would be ideal, since it makes people more likely to believe you and gives us targets. I really enjoy this game, and I play it over other MMOs because of the story - so I'm really excited about Knights of the Fallen Empire - but I play an MMO rather than single-player games because it offers more to do than just a single-player story. Like many others, the main thing I do other than story content is raiding. Without raiding, why bother with the inherent challenges of an MMO over single-player games? EDIT: One little suggestion: there will be enough HM Flashpoints in 4.0 to comfortably generate two tiers of difficulty. Take at least a handful of the re-balanced flashpoints, separate them into a separate group-finder category, and balance them much tighter than the others. Original Lost Island-level difficulty, or like Blood Hunt HM now. This is could be an excellent stepping-stone into raiding, and give raiders something else to do to satisfy the need for a challenge. (And by separating these in groupfinder, we avoid the "fresh 65, still in greens, trying to run the hardest flashpoint in the game" problem, without balancing for the lowest-common denominator.)

Just to repeat what others have said: the real issue with Pyro right now is the change to Flame Barrage causing heat management issues. This is the only change that really needs to be rolled back. Unload was useful in certain circumstances where you either couldn't stand in melee range or when an add would die from Unload (so you didn't need to take the time to run over), but otherwise not really important for Pyro. As a mid-range class with significant ranged options and Hydraulic Overrides, we don't need a gap-closer like Force Leap. I miss it too sometimes, but it just isn't appropriate for the class. Moving damage off Immolate and Rail Shot and on to Flame Thrower is appropriate and useful for AoE, even if it is a net loss in single-target DPS. The new bonuses to Kolto Overload are better than the old version, even if it had worked. The surge bonus to Scorch makes crit a little more valuable for Pyro (bringing it closer in line with AP) and moves a little more damage onto an otherwise underwhelming ability. Pyro isn't really a burst-damage spec anyway. Again, the big issue here is the change to Flame Barrage completely breaking heat management, and thus the rotation. Pyro isn't a difficult rotation, but it does make you pay for mistakes. Now you have to pay for doing it right . Having to spam Rapid Shots in between every ability is irritating and throws off the timing of Scorch and Incendiary Missile. Alternatively, skipping a Flame Burst and using Flamethrower with only two stacks is unsatisfying and clearly not how the spec is intended to be played. I don't think petitions ever really work, but for whatever it's worth... /signed.

Definitely viable - very good, in fact. Utilities will vary from fight to fight and from person to person. Check out Shulk's guide here: http://dulfy.net/2014/12/21/swtor-3-0-marksmanship-sniper-guide-by-shulk/ (the same guide is here on the forum, but I find Dulfy's presentation easier to read.)

A little additional thought on #7: Cutscenes don't need to run at 60fps; in fact, locking them to 30fps would probably give them a more "cinematic" feel, since it would better replicate the feel of film that people expect from a movie. Having the option to cut the expected FPS in half for cutscenes could allow better quality modes.

Actually, Bloodthirst is only 10% now.