Just save up your credits so you can purchase warlord gear with WZ preseason. It's going to be an improvement over BM gear, so I wouldn't bother griding out valor ranks or any of that crap.

DAoC PVP: Where to begin? 3 factions. I cannot stress this enough. 3 factions allow for a self-correcting mechanism with respect to faction imbalance. I can't tell you how many times Midgard was dominating the frontiers and the only way we chipped away at their keeps was by coordinating attacks with the 3rd faction to make it 2v1. When 1 faction gets too strong, the other 2 join up and take them out. Rich, comprehensive character progression which was seperate from the leveling of your character. Realm ranks provided players the opportunity to further customize and progress their toons to the needs of their guild or friends or whomever the PvPd with frequently. Open world RvR. No game can really use the term RvR except DAoC. A huge component for sustainable, engaging and competitive PvP is a sense of pride in your faction. This may sound silly talking about a game, but it's absolutely true for many players. Nothing in an MMO was as invigorating as watching your guild's tabard adorn the ramparts of a major keep in the world. Players came to know the terrain intimately, and which paths were commonly traveled by enemies. Those who knew the frontiers had the most success in defense and assault. WoW PvP: Blizzard constantly made updates to class balance. Some found this to be very annoying as it led to frequent swings in class counts and FOTM perceptions. Frankly, I've come to appreciate this design philosophy more than BWs adopted methods for balancing TOR. WoW would use a perturbative approach in that they would buff or nerf something if it seemed out of whack, and they would then evaluate it and either buff or nerf again. The constant adjustments towards the ideal balance (which is never really achieved) made it feel like the game was always evolving, and issues people may have had with a class would only stew for so long before the balance swung another direction. Warzone design. Blizzard has some of the best warzone maps to date, in my opinion. As tired as we may be with the original WSG and AB, those maps were strategically exciting and designed in a way that encouraged cooperative play amongst groups. I think of the various avenues to approach or defend the flag in WSG, the disadvantage of holding the mine in AB and conversely the huge strategic advantage of being at lumber mill and having a clear view of the entire map. Classes. The classes in wow were just fun to play. I've played a rogue, paladin and druid at the cap. I've played almost every spec for those classes (never cared for combat rogues or feral druids). The group mechanics and interactions just provided a very fun approach to pvp. Strategies against specific combos were needed in many cases, and it added to the feeling of accomplishment and challenge. That brings me to arenas. A very contested subject, but arenas were ultimately a good move in my opinion. Many who didn't like them simply didn't enjoy the fact that it was a tiered ranking system where you had to play each week and perform well to move up the ladder. While there will be always issues with ranking systems in MMO due to inherent imbalances, that doesn't detract from the fun that was had in 3v3 matches (the most balanced) against the right class make ups. And this is coming from someone who never really did that well in them. Watching others play at the highest rank, I also noticed that all classes were represented fairly equally which suggests that some people were having success with the classes that others perceived as weak in arenas. While I'm not a fan of gear progression in pvp, the honor system was straightforward and simple. BW should have taken this right out of wow and applied it to TOR. TOR pvp: It's still very early to evaluate the game's pvp at a high level. I can speak to my personal experiences, though. Class balance: the classes in this game are surprisingly balanced for group pvp settings. I would have to say it's the best at-launch balance I've experienced in the 7 MMOs I've played. For everyone that complains about being too weak or about someone being OP, I've met players who prove both perceptions wrong. If someone is doing well with the class then anyone can do well with it. Huttball: as much as people rage on this, it's impossible to deny that it's a good innovation in the instanced PvP area of MMOs. Unfortunately, part of the negativity associated with this warzone is attributed to it's frequency of play (which is a direct result of having 1 same-faction WZ with fairly skewed population distrubtions).

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=344328

You're correct that there would have been complaints if they didn't release it, but do you feel that those complaints of wanting the game now instead of later are as valid as the ones that point to the fact that the game was pulled out of the oven 3+ months too soon? It's BW prerogative to make the game ready for release, and it's the community's prerogative to whine until they have their hands on it. Only one of the two failed to deliver in this respect. While I agree that there is no win-win given today's MMO landscape, that doesn't forgive the oversight demonstrated by the developer. Furthermore, the single larget contributing factor to people expecting a game like WoW after 5 years is the fact that games liek Rift and TOR aren't breaking away from the WoW formula. These games are being compared so closely to WoW because they're so similar. TOR is just a theme-park MMO with less features than WoW and a novel approach to quest text via voice acting. The latter can only serve to generate buzz, but certainly isn't a feature which provides longevity to the play experience (if anything, it gets in the way after you've played a while). Should TOR launch with as much as WoW has today? Of course not. But little quality-of-life features and things like better world designs would have gone a long way to making the game feel more rich. If you're going to make an MMO similar to Blizzard's WoW, you better have many of the same features already in place and you better have strong features that differentiate you from WoW. These games are failing to beat WoW because they're trying to replace it. You need to do your own thing. GW2 is an example of a game that is completely reinterpretting the genre in big ways. TOR just fell short in many respects, and it can't be blamed on the redundant fact that MMO players are the way they are. Shame on a developer for ignoring that.

With a patch as big as they're suggesting and a tentative release in early april, they don't have much time to test and push this. Either it's not as big as they're saying, or it's not coming in early april. I think those of us who are itching for the PTS notes to hit are mostly concerned with whether or not to resub for april. I'm assuming we're all on the same payment schedule if we started at release or early access. My account will close at the end of next week, and I was hoping to at least have a sense of the patch before that time. I know it's only PTS, but you'd be kidding yourself if believe that major patches in an MMO undergo significant adjustments after they begin testing barring some ludicrous issue or bug. There will be tuning adjustments, but the general idea can still be gleaned. Not the end of the world, and I haven't been logging in much lately anyways. I might skip a couple big patches and see what 1.3 or 1.4 is looking like in the fall if GW2 doesn't deliver.

Oh, ok. Well why are you isolating it in this way? If you want to debate the effectiveness of the mechanic, does it make sense to ignore the context of the group and things breaking on damage or not?

That's correct. For the 25 resolve decay, it starts after the CC effect. So a 2 second stun would generate 400 resolve, and start to decay at 25/sec after the stun wears off.

You misunderstand me. First, I did correct myself. The fact is that resolve doesn't decay until the effect ends. If you are at the threshold for immunity, however, it decays. My comment about avoiding CC in every scenario was in response to your point about the breaker needing a shorter cooldown. I don't think it does, but there's nothing to be debated here. It's simply a matter of opinion. I feel that the occassional breaker combined with the resolve mechanic keeps CC manageable while you think that the breaker should be available anytime you're CC'd (or at least every 30 seconds).

This is incorrect. You cannot control your character, but you can be damaged while stunned. This makes a huge difference. Mez is not nearly as severe as stun. In fact, resolve favors mez because there's a change that you generate resolve but do not endure the full CC effect.

I forgot about the delay on the decay. This would only make resolve seem more favorable to the victim of the CC. I won't bother modifying all my cases in the threads earlier, but it's worth noting that the issue of decay and chain CC is gone. It's not a flat 6 seconds, though. If you're below immunity, the decay doesn't start until the CC effect ends. If you're above the immunity threshold, it starts as soon as you cross it.

That's fine, I think that's all we can say. I didn't realize there were AoE stuns, though. I still can't think of a situation where I've been getting CC'd along with my allies and couldnt' receive their support. Maybe I just haven't been in the same situations as you.

I think a lot of things on the forum boil down to fundamental differences. When I read this response, I wonder what your point is? But then I realize that this seems like a moot statement to me only because of my assumptions. I don't beleive that a player should be able to avoid CC in every scenario. I think resolve keeps CC from being too ridiculous, and the breaker gives you a get-out-of-jail free card every 2 minutes. You might just feel like that's not the case, and that's fine. We can leave this thread for BW to review our fundamental opinions of what we want in a resolve system.

Yes, full resolve for 2 seconds. But you can't be damaged while mez'd, otherwise the CC breaks. Are you suggesting that you should be immune to any mez after a short stun? I am not saying there's a dead zone for ranged dps. I'm saying that a ranged player doesn't want a melee player in their melee zone. Do you really not understand this? Do you play a sniper and prefer to tank a maurauder while shooting at point blank and making no effort at kiting? Maybe I don't understand ranged!

2 second stun generates 400 resolve decaying at 25 resolve per second. Let's say you aren't stunned until the precise moment that the leap stun stops. that's 2 seconds which means you've decayed from 400 resolve to 350. Now you are stunned for 3 seconds which generated 600 resolve and puts you at 950. Let's say they time the stun again to coincide with the end of the previous one. 3 seconds decays 75 resolve putting you at 875 when the 4 second stun hits, generating 1200 resolve and putting you at 2075. You've been stunned for 9 seconds. If you're still alive, you're immune for over 20 seconds. I agree that this would be frustrating and unlikely that you'd survive 9 seconds of being stunned. However, I still have to wonder where the team is? It's not likely that the stuns are coordinated perfectly, although by considering this we can view an absolute worst case scenario. If your team mates are not controlling the enemy, if they're not healing/tanking you, then I guess you're right- that's a ****** situation. But is that because resolve is busted? And since you aren't breaking CC with the breaker, it must already have been used in the past 2 minutes to take advantage of resolve in anther situation. Assuming you have a team worth anything, you would come out of the 9 seconds of stun to enjoy a further 16 seconds of cc immunity. Enough time to walk almost half of the huttbal field while snared. I'm just going to leave that there. Again, I'm not saying anythign one way or the other about the effectiveness of the system, I'm simply painting the picture for others to comment on. Frankly, I don't think this scenario is that absurd in a group setting where you've just used your CC breaker minutes earlier.

Sure, using your example here, you were just stunned for 1 second (giving the 200 resolve) and now you're mezzed for 8 (giving you an additional 800 for 1k total). So a 1 second stun and an 8 sec mez have made you completely immune for 10 seconds. If you receive NO DAMAGE at all, you'll be mezzed for 8 seconds and immune for 2 after that. If you are damage at all, you break the mez and retain all the immunity remaining on the timer. Let me try to clarify further. A ranged character tries to deal damage from outside of melee range. When fighting a melee player and the ranged player is rooted, they are unable to kite. Sniper/gunslinger may be able to use the pulse move, but i thought they needed to be entrenched in cover for that. Am I wrong? Do ranged players not kite? Do they welcome melee into melee range?

I think I was pretty clear in my first post. A 2 second stun from a talented leap (a tank spec, by the way), provides 400 resolve. A 3 second stun after that would create 600 resolve, leaving you at the 1k immunity threshold for another 10 seconds.

All they can hope for is team mates that aren't terrible, I guess.

You can attack players that come close to you. Or you can just stand there while your team mates help out. Let's say you have 800 resolve, and you get an 8 second mez (breaks on damage, and you keep the resolve generated). this will put you at 2000 resolve (8 seconds generate 1.5 times the 800 because it is pushing you over the 1k threshold), which provides 20 seconds of immunity. Assuming you aren't damaged at all, you would experience 12 seconds of immunity beyond the mez. I said you can get stunned for a nother 3 seconds...not 3 times. 2 times. 2 second stun + 3 second stun = 1000 resolve. My main is a tank and my alt is an operative. Again, I agree that root is rough for melee, but I don't understand what your team is doing.

How is it more than a 1v1 issue? If melee is rooted, why are you dying? Where are your healers, your tanks, your dps? Is no one addressing the issue of you gettign strung up and whipped like a cheap pinata? It can only be a serious issue in a 1v1 setting. I think I understand the differences between melee and ranged well enough to refute your point. You think a root on a ranged character doesn't matter? They might be able to put out dps more easily than melee, but they can't defend themselves. A rooted ranged player is dead in the water. Maybe my tiny brain is missing something?

All I'm saying is that you can still act. With snares, you can't move as much. But honestly, if a melee is snared and the enemy isn't, you may as well be rooted. You can't stay in melee range to attack. What you're describing is an issue in 1v1. That's the only time a melee being rooted could be an issue. I'm a tank. I know all about being rooted. When I'm rooted by a target, I'll try to grab a target near me, my allies will go for the enemy that just rooted me, etc. Again, I'm not saying whether or nto I think it should be affected by resolve. I'm just pointing out that it isn't as debilitating as you suggest outside of 1v1. And there's no reason to consider 1v1.

People keep saying this, but it flies in the face of history in this genre. MMOs have become increasingly focused on streamlining things so they don't take as long. They offer more variety, more content, more achievement, etc. Crafting, pvp, pve, exploration, social interaction, minigames, raids, guild features. Just because RPG used to mean "time sink" doesn't mean that BW intends this game to follow that outdated model. Most RPGs since WoW are avoiding precisely what you're describing.

At a minimum, it takes 10 seconds to decay. Longer if you receive a stun that pushes you over the 1000 mark. The longer you're stunned into the immunity timer, the longer the timer has to count down. Seems to acknowledge and incorporate this fact into the mechanic already, doesn't it? I don't think people are assuming the breaker is always available. Rather, I think you are assuming that you should always be able to take advantage of a full CC immunity. Once every 2 minutes you can basically fill resolve and enjoy 10 seconds of immunity. Other than that, you'll enjoy less immunity.

You cannot move, but you can still act. Below 1k resolve (the immunity threshold), resolve decays at 25 pts per second. 1 second of stun is 200 resolve. A 1 second stun would take 8 seconds to wear off. 7 of those seconds are after the stun is already gone. A knockback generates 400 resolve which takes 16 seconds to wear off. Maybe, although Im' not sure this would have a significant impact. You can generate more than 1k resolve, and this adds to the length of the immunity you experience. Also, CCs that will generate resolve above the 1k threshold generate 150% resolve. The leap is a root, which is not on the resolve mechanic. With a talent, you can get a stun effect which generates 400 resolve. One 3 second stun will then push you to the immunity threshold.

Why do they have to? Aesthetic differences in gear is still a form of progression if there are requirements to obtain them. Not everything has to be understood in an incremental sense.

You'd be a good politician. Do you understand the significance of contextual quotes?