To answer the OPs question. Levelling via PvP ALONE is not really viable. By that I don't mean you CAN'T hit 50 just pvping, but with queue times mixed with joining near completed matches and so forth, it will take considerably longer to hit 50, possibly to the extent of weeks, which you could otherwise could of dedicated to gearing yourself up in the 50 bracket. Oh and PvP levelling is only really viable during peak times, limiting when you can play. Questing on the other hand affords a. faster experience (several times faster) b. more money (at the minimum for a pvper you need a fair bit to augment your gear, and PvP doesn't really provide anywhere near enough to afford augmenting yourself up) and c. the ability to play whenever you want. My advice would be to mix PvPing with questing. Doing class quest and the main world quests with a few extra thrown in here and there whilst your waiting for your queue to pop should generally be enough. If you've an avid PvPer then I would also recommend making sure you have the max 3.5k ranked warzone comms before you hit 50 as well as 2k wz comms.

Currently running DF on my Scoundrel (that's the same as Leth for you guys in case you didn't know) and all I can really say is, whilst it's a great spec for bosses and such, the problem with the spec is trash mobs. You don't really have any extra tools to kill trash mobs. For obvious reasons DoTs are useless against trash (they should be dead before the DoT can start to show any real damage), and Cull is only useful against a target with DoTs on em. So basically, as a dps against trash mobs, you have the dps of a healer. So the question for people organizing groups is, do you want a mediocre melee dps (you will still get out dps'd by PTs/Maras/Juggs) who contributes very little to anything outside of a boss fight, or would you rather just pull one of those other classes? Don't get me wrong, it's still possible to complete an op with a leth/conc OP, however, given the choice, Leth ops are probably one of the last options I'd take in an op, closely followed by concealment ops.

Thought I should let you know that against a DF/Leth spec, you can't restealth. You can cleanse their DoT, but if you do so their secondary DoT kicks in and will knock you out of stealth. The only class that can fully escape DF/Leth DoTs are Shadows/Assassins as their skill provides several seconds of immunity which doesn't allow the secondary effect to kick in.

And you couldn't just tie in buffs to survivability and such to high tier skills in a particular tree like Concealment to prevent buffs being applied to Snipers and Medicine operatives because?

Edit. Just realised how wrong I was lol.

Anyone notice the irony that they set out to increase our group gameplay yet only managed to increase our lonewolf gameplay? Seems to be the BW M.O., set out to do one thing and do the complete opposite instead. Good job fellas, for a moment I was worried you might become competent, thanks for proving me wrong.

If gearing is no problem, then Akaavi. Akaavi DoT spec'd did just as much damage as Risha sniper spec'd for me. Also Akaavi's ability to wear heavy armour made life much easier for me, especially against bosses. If you can't always keep up to date gear wise, then Risha. She can use your old gear so she tends to gear up a lot easier. Something else to be aware of though is that Akaavi is more AoE and DoT reliant and hence makes it harder to manage CCing, whereas Risha can focus fire single targets a lot more easily. For that reason I'd say Risha is a better pick if you're struggling a bit, or if you like soloing heroics.

Glad someone is happy. I'm glad we got something but considering BW's reasoning behind the changes and how they completely failed to achieve anything of the sort, I'm more along the lines of disappointed. Especially since I know BW is prob not going to touch the class again rather than admit they don't have a clue what they're doing and revisit the changes they made. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, BW brought these changes about in order to increase our viability in group gameplay as opposed to the lone wolf gameplay dps scoundrels currently enjoy. All these current changes do is to further increase our lone wolf gameplay whilst having very little group gameplay impact. Nothing in these changes makes us any more tempting as a pick in PvE and PvP groups. Whilst I believe we contribute towards groups, I still believe what we provide is comparatively far inferior to what other classes can provide, esp since our stealth counterparts just received a dps buff (their burst is still not as good as ours, but their sustained is far superior) as well as a significant survivability boost (they're now well and truly above us in that regard). As for the actual changes... More re-stealth? Great, apart from the fact that in major group gameplay restealth is a very conditional move that requires you to be free of DoTs and avoid AoE skills (gonna be fun now with the 15m ranged force wave, whilst that change sucks for their class, it also sucks for us who try to run around in stealth). 50% faster movement OOS is great, but what would have truly given it value as a gap closer would be giving it the same effect as sprint on a shadow, not speed wise, but in terms of breaking snares and being immune to them for the duration. As it is we still have no way to counter the multitude of snares that exist in this game. 50% movement bonus is great, cept that in most group gameplay situations you're almost constantly being under at least 1 snare effect. As a lonewolf class, we definitely excel, as for group gameplay, we still lacking. Also for those saying our damage is fine... Personally I play a Scoundrel healer who occasionally switches over to dps when I get tired of my masochism. As it is now, operative DPS specs are hardly a concern for me, the only other dps classes I shrug off more are DPS assassins and Sorcs. Comparative damage output wise the rest are seriously out of their league. People only ever bring us along to PvP for healing or support roles. In PvE, we're there just for healing, we can dps ok and ops aren't impossible with us but having a dps Scoundrel in a HM/NM op is basically asking your other dps to step it up a notch to make up for what you're losing had you picked another melee dps class (which is essentially a good 100+ dps).

Speed bonuses do no stack if I recall correctly. Against transendence + sprint, you got no hope of reaching the ball first, and on top of that, as one of the weakest classes in the game against burst damage, if you get caught with the ball in the middle, it's almost the equivalent of handing them the ball. You were right about the node travelling uses of the skill however doing so requires you to be switching in between stealth and OOS to get there making you visible to enemies and eliminating one of the main advantages of the class. Also if you happen to get caught out in the middle of your makeshift sprint routine it's essentially game over, a Scoundrel without stealth is the worst dps class in the game by a long margin. As a poster said above, this simultaneous speed boost only really applies to OOC situations, furthermore, unlike sprint, it doesn't remove snare effects making it of very limited use in combat situations. It's a pathetic excuse for a buff when you compare it to what our assassin/shadow counterparts got with 25% DR OOS and a snareless sprint. As for the reason I'm only really focusing on the PvP aspects, in case it wasn't glaringly obvious, 50% is far inferior to my 110% speeder. The only place where it would actually be useful, is areas where you can't ride your speeder, though those areas aren't usually that large to begin with so... yay for saving a few seconds? Sorry for being so pessimistic, but whilst it'S a fun change, it's also virtually a pointless one.

The irony behind these buffs is that none of them really target the issues with the class which they were trying to deal with, they just make us better soloers. Main issues before were OOS damage, lack of a decent and low CD gap closer and their poor survivability. As for restealth,... they can do it only once every 1 n half min, which is completely negated if they take any damage whether it's from a DoT (only an issue against DF specs) or AoE. When compared to force leap, force sprint or even grapple (though the resolve factor for grapple lowers it's viability as a gap closer considerably). it's pretty evident it's a significantly worse gap closer, or rather, it only shines in solo situations.

The perma invis associated with Maras/Sents is a bug I believe.

I held all 3 nodes by myself! I'm better!

I personally haven't tried it so it's just what I've been told, the idea was boht pop out and you hit Smuggle next to the planter after he's already started meaning rather than starting a new action he's continuing it. But as I haven't tested it (I'm a heals on my smuggler so I generally don't pop smuggle unless raiding a node) so it may not work that way. Anyone actually tried it before?

Not sure if it's the same story as before, but I do know that a Scoundrel using their "Smuggle" ability would be able to render someone planting a bomb invisible. Essentially 2 stealth run up to the door, 1 pops out to plant bomb whilst other hits Smuggle rendering them invisible whilst planting. This was awhile ago so it may have been fixed, just throwing it out there as a possible explanation. Also may have missed the devs saying anything about it but no one ever said it was an exploit, that I recall anyway.

If that truly is the case, then BW has completely missed the mark considering that they had previously made statements along the lines that they wanted to phase out the hybrid builds in favour of focusing on a single tree.