I play healer often (in this game and in WOW back when I played it) and I don't like this weird chip on the shoulder some healers have about dps pulling aggro and so they're gonna let them die. guess what, I'm a healer. I'll try my best to keep everyone alive. period. and if someone's doing something wrong, no matter what it is, maybe I'll try to advise them on how to play better. but if I'm a healer, I'm healing everyone, whether I like them or not. because that's the job.

I'm in central ohio. In my county we had almost 600,000 outages, if I recall correctly. I was out of action from Friday until just now. And as angry as I am that I had to sleep drenched in sweat in a dank, sauna-like house every night, and as angry as I am that about 75% of my neighborhood had power the whole time, it still could have been a lot worse. Some people won't be up until the weekend. I missed out on several days of play time. I also missed out on the perishable groceries I purchased literally 4 hours before the storm knocked us out. I watched all my beautiful lunchmeat, ice cream, milk, eggs, mayo, cheese, etc that I bought that same day go bad and need to be thrown out. All the meat I had in my freezer had to be thrown out. In some situations I'd be able to take the food to a friend or family's house to keep it, but no one had power. So, I'm upset that I missed almost 5 days of play time, but I'm more upset about my groceries. The moral? Life sucks, and no one's gonna reimburse anyone for anything. Not the electric company, not the grocery, and not bioware.

and playing as a merc healer, by the time I cast a few heals on allies I get noticed and pounced on by one or several leaping knights/warriors. and then I pretty much stand there and heal myself indefinitely until enough people are attacking me to kill me, or until my team kills them. that's the rythm of it. and it's not that fun. I'd rather be able to run rather than be a motionless punching bag.

I don't fully understand this. On both my merc (healer) and my gunslinger (dps) the action that constitutes me getting attacked are performing my functions. I get singled out for casting heals or doing damage. or other times I get singled out just because I exist and I look tasty to a warrior/knight. I can't count on pugs to protect me. they tend to be pretty scattered and uncoordinated a lot of the time.

I don't agree, and re. stuns, there should be diminishing returns like every other game since DAOC.

back in the day, after I no longer had the time to play WOW in long uninterrupted breaks and pretty much couldn't have a PVE , guild, raid sort of lifestyle, I sort of settled into a pattern where I liked to just play battlegrounds and level my characters up mostly that way. I'd log in, play 1, play 2, heck, sometimes play hours on end, just lots of battelgrounds. It was progress, and it was fun. I've been playing SWTOR in much the same way. I've leveled up primarily through WZ, and I've done this on a gunslinger and on a mercenary. neither is maxed yet, so I can't speak to the "meta game" when it comes to pvp and wz, all I can speak to are my own experiences. I'm experienced at pvp in these games. I think I'm pretty good. and TOR does have a lot of similarities with WOW, so I think I also had a headstart. There are a lot of small things which make pvp less fun than it could be, but there are some things that really stand out as well. -Too much CC, and, in particular, too much CC on melee classes. As a gunslinger and as a merc, I spend an unbelievable amount of time locked down, mezzed, stunned, blown back. There's sort of a delicate "melee vs. ranged" balance in these games, and in some cases the pendulum swings back in forth. Right now, something simply seems wrong with the whole equation. Defeating melee classes, even if you can do it, involves just standing there and beating them. There's little room for strategic play (namely, kiting) because the melee in this game have an inexhaustable supply of ways to stop you and catch up to you, and usually do it very quickly. If a melee wants to attack you, generally, he's attacking you. And then the question of who wins is usually based on the idea that he'll always be attacking you, and can you survive that. I prefer games where a skilled ranged attacker has the ability to kite. This may be, at times, frustrating for melee palyers, but it also feels like something is wrong with the natural order of things that kiting is not something that exists in the game. - The global cooldown seems too long. That, or there's some sort of pesky but or delay or something. It can't always be lag because my ping is usually under 50. It just feels like using different abilties takes forever. - It's simply not fun to fight someone 20 levels higher, or even 10 levels higher. I reject the whole system of everyone having their stats inflated and supposedly being able to compete. It removes meaning from items and levels and stats, which I dislike, but also leaves battlegrounding as a lower level character a proposition that involves a permanent, unavoidable, absolute disadvantage, most notable because the higher level player has more abilities. The system on the one hand creates unease with me as I dislike having inflated stats and artificial boosts as it distances me from my accomplishments (items, etc) but it also, as said, leaves people at disadvantages that they can't get over short of just leveling to 49. I just don't like it. I want to play people who are around my level who have characters who have access to items and skills around my level. I like that little league experience. I don't want to see high level characters with their high elvel abilities and items, regardless of stat boosts. I want a pure experience. WOW has been providing it for years. I don't know if I'll QQ more or go back to WOW or whatever, but I really want to love the PVP in this game, and there are serious obstacles in my way to that end.

all MMOs have some issues sorting out their melee vs. ranged balance. in some games, ranged can kite too easily leaving melees helpless. There were times early in WOW when it was like this. in SWTOR, however, it seems as though things are slanted too much in melee's favor. it seems as though ranged classes tend to have too few options for CC and escape, and melees have too many. ever try kiting a jedi as, say, a bounty hunter? it's not something that's possible. they can break out of your one CC and they have an abundance of leaps, ccs, snares, you name it -- there's no escaping. there's no kiting. I'm not saying it should be easy, and this is always a difficult problem to work out from a design perspective, but there should be *some* capacity to escape/kite, but now it seems as though there's almost none. If a melee wants to be attacking you, they'll be attacking you. If they want to finish you off, they'll finish you off. Good luck ever getting away.

any other thoughts? I guess the idea here is I'm so on the fence, and I'm kinda wondering if the hype about merc being bad in pvp forever is overstated by whiners.

if you use the armor pen cylinder, doesn't that mean you're missing out on your snare?

and did mostly WZ along the way, if you can believe it. anyway, I like the way my character looks, and is pretty fun to play, but as a pvp minded player I can't help but feel -- even though I'm only 30 -- that other classes have some really good tools that I just don't have. in particular, I'm envious of the powertech's deathgrip move (I dunno the name, but it's the same thing as Grip in WOW which sorta ruined battlegrounds.. but I digress) and looking at my own moves that I have and will get, nothing seems as good as that. it also simply feels like if I'm shooting guns or healing people, I'll have jedis jumping all over me endlessly, and they are virtually impossible to kite or escape from. they manage to break out of my one CC and seem to have endless snares and ccs of their own to catch up. I simply can't escape or kite any force user... nor can I go toe to toe with them, unless I'm lucky or they sucky. I have a level 13 powertech on the same server. should I just hop over and start playing the power tech? I'm very on the fence about this.

is very good. like I said, it's possible to assemble decent looks. but if you're not plaiyng dress up and generally using the best gear you can get, then you have less say over your appearance. where do I get that helm?

I don't want to look flamboyant. and keepiong a low profile, who cares, it's a game. you can walk around naked if you want, and that's not low profile. wielding two big blasters and a belt of grenades isn't exactly low profile either, anyway. I just really think they could come up with "hybrid looks", so it's sorta han solo clothes, but with teche stuff sorta intertwined. I want a progression from low to high level. now most stuff looks like clothes and mostly very similar.

yeah, I've seen some exceptions, but in general you look like you're han solo. which isn't a bad look, but as you level up, it should evolve. it should start to become more elaborate and techie looking while still retaining the original overall motif. for example look at the jedi knight; starts out wearing robes like in the movies, but later is teched out and armored out. you could start as han solo, and as you become powerful and leveled, the gear starts to become a bit more advanced looking. this is the pattern that every other class follows, but other than a few noted exceptions, smugglers are left out. other than obvious specific gear like the pvp gear, a high level smuggler often looks very VERY similar to a low level one.

I think the smuggler class stands out among all as the one that has the least variety, the least appealing, least interesting visuals to their armor. pretty much everything looks like clothing (it's supposed to be medium armor) and pretty much everything looks like han solo (or a cowboy with the pvp gear). it's not that I think these things are necesarily bad, but it's a medium armor class, let's mix in a bit more tech looking gadgetry and so on into the look, especially as you progress. two points to consider are that one, it's possible to incorporate a visual style evocative of han solo but still have some interesting variety and some "armor looking" pieces, and, second, maybe not everything HAS to look like han solo. maybe not everything always does.

that IS canon for the size of the millenium falcon. even watch the battle scenes. it's a bit larger than a fighter. it led the fighter squadron. it is NOT the size of an aircraft carrier, which is what I have in SWTOR. it's ridiculous and makes it feel like a giant building rather than a cozy personal ship.