I can tell you're new to the game and haven't experienced true PvP. The simple solution is to make it so activity x (PvP) takes 4 hours to get a T1 piece of gear, and activity y (PvE) also takes 4 hours. It's not that hard, and it has been done in numerous games. It is called gear progression balance.

Oh I do have UT for my armormech character. My 4th alt is going to be Synthweaving/Slicing/Investigation. My main is Artifice/TH/Arch so I will be able to get mats from my main for the Synthweaving character. And the armormech character with UT will also supply my 4th alt.

So I am trying to plan ahead a bit for 1.2 and the critting on the orange gear for the augment slot. I am wondering what is the best way to get schematics for things like Armormech and Synthweaving. The game tells me that Investigation gives schematics. Is it pretty reliable? I've got some schematics that I want to get before 1.2 because of their looks.

I don't understand why Bioware has chosen to divide the community between raiders and PvPers. It doesn't make a damn bit of sense to have a PvP only stat when if you actually balanced your gear progression there wouldn't be a need for it. None of the best PvP games had a PvP only stat and the only reason WoW has it is because WoW didn't launch with PvP and as soon as it was added raiders were owning everyone. DaOC didn't have a PvP only stat. WAR didn't have a PvP only stat. UO didn't have a PvP only stat. SWG didn't have a PvP only stat. Shadowbane didn't have a PvP only stat. Your gearing system is a failure Bioware. All you are doing by making PvP gear even less attractive in the PvE environment is dividing the community based on what type of activities people like. If I am playing the game how I like (70% PvP - 30% PvE) who are you to tell me all of a sudden that part of what I like to do (raid with friends) is no longer viable for me because you invalidated 70% of my time spent doing PvP.

Don't blame the hero engine for the inadequacies of SWTOR. The hero engine can handle 100v100 people battles. However the issue is that the Hero engine VERSION that Bioware based the game off of was built 4 years ago when DX9 was still the standard. This is why that DX9 install fixed a lot of people's framerate issues. See Bioware just didn't update their codebase with the makers of Hero Engine, which is why the game is still calling for DX9 files and not fully DX10. The game also has to make a call to the server every time you open a bag or your character sheet, which is why the game lags every time you do that. The most important factor however is that this game is not 64-bit compiled (no serious gamer is running a 32-bit system anymore - so it is completely Bioware's fault for not compiling it for modern OS's). The fact that it is not 64-bit compiled means that even though your rig has 12 gigs of RAM the game can only address 3.5 gigs of that. This means that instances take longer to load and less player data can be stored in system RAM before being offloaded for fast rendering to the GPU's much faster VRAM. This is one of the reasons the view distance is so short in this game. Your computer simply can't store the data in local memory to allow a ton of people on screen at 500m away.

This is why Operatives, Smugglers, Bounty Hunters and Troopers should have started off as a neutral faction and then have the option early on to choose Empire or Republic. Likewise the other classes should be able to go rogue and join the neutral faction. Any game with competitive PvP in an open world should ALWAYS have three factions. This is one of the mail reason Ilum fails so hard.

Sages are far better than Commando healers because they get an instant cast shield, can also AOE knockback, and their spec tree is such that they can hybridize and heal and damage other players. I often see 200k healing and 2-300k damage from Sages/Sorcs.

What many of the naysayers fail to realize is that Sorc/Sage can hybridize in both the DPS and healing tree. I've seen many a healing and DPS Sorc/Sage hit 250k damage and 200k healing in a single match.

The bigger problem is what EA does to games that don't perform. WaR was put into Maintenance mode and their devs folded into another studio (no new content). My great fear is the same will happen with this game.

Yeah that's what I was referencing. Funny thing is I was playing BF3 pretty religiously prior to getting my SWTOR beta invite.

If there's anyone left to fight. This game has had an even more significant pop drop off than WaR had.

I don't think it is wise to wait for the inevitable ideal rated team. Anyone that has played 50 matches for an extended period of time should know what I am talking about.

2 Assassins/Shadows, 2 Sorc/Sage healers. That is all. No one on that team will die. The ability to bubble yourself and others and absorb 60% of even the biggest hit in the game (Force Sweep/Smash), the ability to force speed away if in trouble, an AOE knockback, ranged CC, and the ability to heal someone for 2-3k. Add in an Assassin tank? You aren't killing either one of those healers while the Assassins/Shadows kill you. No other mix of classes will be able to beat a team made up of Inquisitors/Sages. The Sorcs/Sages are the Bright Wizards of SWTOR and just as overpowered in team matches. No wonder since you have the same team working on PvP design as you had in WaR. In Huttball you will continue to see relay teams made up of Inq/Cons. In Voidstar and in trouble? Just force speed away. Instant bubble yourself and any setup imaginable gets mitigated. The biggest thing you can do to save your PvP game Bioware is remove the ability of the ball carrier in huttball to Intercede, Force Speed, get pulled by a friendly, force charge/leap or anything that will make it so that you can leap 20% of the map's length. If you've got the ball you're walking it or I dunno, actually passing it. **At the very least you need to make it so that using those abilities removes all built up resolve while carrying the ball. You also need to look at making it not worth the effort to hybridize (which is why in DPS and healing Sorcs/Sages are still overpowered). You've got some major PvP balancing to do Bioware and I will be surprised if there are any serious PvPers playing any other class mix if you don't do something about it soon. In the last 3 weeks most of the PvP matches I join are made up of 3-4 Sorc/Sages and the rest a mix of classes. That right there should tell you there is a problem.

UO is in Maintenance mode, which is what EA has done to WaR and will do to ANY game of theirs that doesn't meet their internal expectations.

I'm starting to see PVP matches made up mostly of Sorcs/Sages. Last 3 or so, and the 5 before that had 3-4 Sorcs on my team and 4-5 on the Republic team. They are the FOTM and should/will be nerfed. No other class can heal for 200-300k and still do 250-300k damage or more.

The whole PvP team should be sacked IMO. It should have been obvious to a first year game design student that this was a terrible system... and these guys are the MMO designers... It all goes back to Bioware's incompetent beta testing process. They couldn't give us level 50 characters because it somehow broke their game when they were generated (it broke the entire game's chat system, so no one could talk to each other - only emotes. Was as funny as it was sad). Which meant there was no one to test this stuff.

Guys. This is exactly what will happen when they release rated WZs. A whole 8 man full of Sorcs. 4 of them healers, 4 of them DPS. No one on their team will die... ever...

The leveling experience in this game is phenomenal. Certainly leagues ahead of WoW and other games in terms of enjoyability. The problem is the level 50 content. Dailies drive me insane because they feel too much like work. I think it would have been much better if Bioware had removed 50-60% of the +4 group content that was sub level 50 and instead added week long quests. See the players could only do 1 part of the quest chain per day, and there would be 5 of these and only one could be active at a time. Each would give unique rewards and daily coms. Each would also be like a FP in that there was a story. Some would be soloable, some would be group quests. Daily quests as they exist now are just a grind. You know what goes through my mind every time I get home from work to play SWTOR? "What do I have to do today?" That is problematic for me and I think a lot of other players. Instead of "What do I have to do today?" it should be "What CAN I do today?" They need to add sandbox elements too. And they need to do it fast. XFire is already reporting a 50%+ drop in players of SWTOR according to its player tracking.

Not to be sarcastic, but by that logic you should also nerf Sorc/Sage healers because a team full of Sorc/Sage healers can't be killed.

Not really. Their PUGs are far worse than our PUGs on my server. Man for man Imperials seem to know their classes better. However Republic forms more premades and is therefore better at teamwork. They also have a lot more healers.

This is why Expertise is a dumb stat to begin with. The only reason WoW introduced Resilience was because all the raiders had awesome gear when they added Battlegrounds and were roflstomping the "pvpers." SWTOR launched with PvP, and as such there was no need to balance PvP and PvE damage (except for healing - it needed to toned down in PvP). I am still in favor of making it so that PvP and PvE gear of the same tier has the exact same stats because I don't believe it is good design to require people to have different gear sets for different activities (for example having a PvE tank set and a PvP tank set).

Yes. 10 chars.

Ever since last weeks patch I've been noticing some lag when I first join a WZ. For example: I will run to the middle in Huttball and do my rotation on someone, but I don't see any damage numbers until like 3 seconds after the fact. It's like the server is trying to catch up to the fact that there are 16 people in the WZ. It clears up after the first minute, but that first minute is chaos as everyone is spamming the same ability expecting to see some numbers (I know when to use my next ability based when I see my damage).

When I queue up on my 66 Valor Jugg with 6 BM pieces I see very few fellow Battlemasters. This applies to Empire and Republic players. There are far fewer BMs running around in WZs than there were a month ago. This is probably because the early achievers have left.

Vengeance is far more viable than Rage at this point. Especially after the surge nerf. You survive far more than Rage specced Juggs. I hit people for 2-3k with Impale and Shatter, plus another 1-2k in bleeds. Both of those abilities make Force scream an autocrit and I hit people for 3k with that, and then when they are low on health (20%) vicious slash can hit for 3.9k or more. You are immune to CCs after force charge, you never have a problem with rage generation, and when slowed you get a bonus that stacks up to 5 times that adds a 5% bonus to your next melee attack that costs rage so an Impale can hit for 4k.