I do agree that shield gen makes playing solo easier. But from a min/max, win at all costs point of view, I don't see how Shield Gen is better than dps focus.

I'm afraid I must disagree with your assessment sir. I find the backstab proc dysfunctional and not worth the talent points. You could put those 2 talents in death field and its cost reduc. Deathfield is internal damage and therefor is largely unresistable damage. And its AOE to boot with huge range. Its great for tagging door caps and does great damage. Also, I tried 4 pc rakata for the thrash crits and did not find it better than the extra recklessness proc and lower cd. Also, your bonus damage w/ Rakata gear is weak. I wear rakata bracers and belt and my BD is ~385 with stim and self buff only. 407.5 on the dot when fully buffed in a WZ.

My humble opinion is as follows: The same people that use Shield Generators are the same people that wear Survivor PvP Gear, or wear BM Stalker gear w/o taking out the accuracy mods. IMO you are gimping your team by not doing as much damage as possible. Unless your the guy that only plays this game to run the Huttball, but even then, passing > tank running in any case. I have played as all 3 Sin specs, I have played with a shield gen and I've used every combination of mods imaginable. Before I got full champion gear as a minimum, I really liked my shield gen, it does give as someone pointed out, approximately 10% additional survivability. If that's what you want, then go for it. However, after 68 valor ranks of PvP, there is no question that for me, as much damage as possible is the way to go, ESPECIALLY if you are premading and have a healer to back you up. The loss of shield chance is noticeable, but not detrimental. 5k assassinates, 6.5k shock procs, 1500 x2 thrash hits are much better for my team. Credentials: Rank 68 Valor, Multi-Glad WoW xfer. 600k max damage on voidstar as 27/0/14 spec. Server: Daragon Trail Name: Psylence Come look me up, I'd be happy to discuss the finer points of gearing as sin tank for pvp. I also have a HQ stream, but I'm not going to advertise it here. Cheers!

All fair points. There are multiple viable solutions for evening the playing field for Crafting Professions. We've illustrated a couple in this short thread. It's such a disappointment to level your profession to max, only to find that Biochem users have 100 more stats and 40 more power than you ALL THE TIME. And there's nothing you can do about it short of leveling Biochem yourself and dropping the profession you WANTED to play. This is such backwards thinking to begin with. How did Biochem in its current state get out of beta? Where was the guy at the Dev meeting to say "Hey uhh, guys? Maybe we shouldn't create a profession that is vastly superior power-wise in PvP, and vastly superior power-wise in PvE(unless you spend hundreds of thousands of credits per raid)" Seriously, how does that happen? Furthermore, now that it HAS happened. Fine, lets fix it. As someone suggested, if it didn't cost me a fortune to buy my own medpacks and adrenals and stims, I would HAPPILY do so. Which begs the question, "Why are the mats so expensive when Biochem users aren't using them anyway because all of THEIRS are reusable?" Good stuff in this thread. Hopefully we will see some improvements.

Biochem is too good. ~100 to your main stat 100% uptime. ~40 Power 100% uptime. No other profession can compete with that. Not even close. And that's BEFORE adrenals and whatnot. You can nerf it all you want. Fact of the matter is, one profession is far superior to all others. If you don't want to change the profession or nerf it into uselessness, then allow for more people to take it. At least allow for people to have a profession for fun and a profession for top end raiding/pvp. Most MMO's that I've played have similar bonuses for crafting as far as min/max goes. I've never seen anything quite like this, where one profession so outshines all others that half the player-base has it. tl;dr Moar crafting.

Look, I'm totally with you. Deserter debuff would be great. But I'll be honest, I can't stand playing 8v12 Warzones all day b/c my server is full of clowns who like to exploit everything under the sun.

Fine. L2P.

900k damage is never pointless. Ever.

Oh snap! +1

Untrue. Same as with operations, you can easily purchase gear from the GTN/AH that will get you by until you get actual pieces, which takes no time at all. Even the unluckiest of people will get a new piece every couple of days if they just do their daily/weekly. Hell, if you just buy orange gear and do your PvE Dailies on Belsavis/Ilum, you can buy rank 23 hilts/armorings that will grant you better gear than the Centurion gear. They only cost 8 DCs per hilt/armoring, you get 25 DC's per day. People are so helpless, its unreal. Take some initiative. READ SOMETHING other than this QQ forum once in awhile. Holy cow..

This is untrue. You make far more valor per minute by winning 6-0 every time.

So you also advocate the extra players exploit as well? The idiocy in these forums is unbelievable. The correct answer to the OP's question is that spawn pulling should give the other team a point, but other than that, its fine. The fact that it robs you of a point is obviously unintentional. You crossed the line, you score a point, real simple. Since BW has bigger fish to fry than goalies, my suggestion is to do what my guild does and farm them for 15 minutes at 5-0 rather than finishing the game.

This. When you hit 50, just buy purples with lots of endurance. Endurance is a better stat anyway. Expertise really isn't as good as people make it out to be, its far less good than Resilience was for WoW. 10% DR? 10% damage? Big deal. The real problem is that fresh level 50s in their GREENS have 11k health and wonder why they die in 2 hits. It has nothing to do w/ expertise, it has to do with the fact that you have 11k health. Just buy health on AH and you'll be fine. And seriously, if you aren't smart enough to have money for this, then you aren't smart enough to be good at games in first place and no amount of expertise will save you.

Snares need DR. Otherwise, resolve is fine.

No it isn't.

I think we should turn levels off too. Cuz 40+ has an unfair advantage vs level 11s. We should turn sprint off too, cuz level 14+ has an advantage over level 11s. Personally for me, I don't want to level at all past 11. I want to be able to compete at level 11 as my class. It's not fair to me that other people have more time to spend questing than I do. Also, sending money to your alt so he may buy nice gear should be outlawed as well. In fact, let's just make this game like rockem sockem robots and give everyone 2 buttons, punch and punch harder. tl;dr Stupid argument is stupid.

I must concur with this gentleman. For Wither and FL (31/0/10) to compete with Death Field and Maul from a simple ease of use/damage potential point of view, Wither would need to have its damage doubled, at least. I don't find Wither's slow to be at all useful when everyone in huttball has a jump or pull or sprint anyway. Death Field on the other hand does wonderful damage for an aoe and does it from 30m. Honestly, Death Field's range of uses and utility cannot be understated. It's our best button. I can live with losing Crushing Darkness, but we can't afford to lose DF too.

Very few people were actively stance dancing to begin with. Most everyone, myself included have decided that sitting in Dark Charge at all times is the only viable option. Not to say that Deception cannot be effective. But as an Imperial player, 9 out of every 10 games is Huttball, so any non-DC spec really just isn't an option if I want to be most effective for my team. But that is another problem entirely. There is no room in competitive Huttball games for ninja/assassin type characters to begin with. Mobility and Pull/Push abilities reign supreme. You either have them, or you lose. If I were Republic, I would be much less aggravated with this upcoming patch as I could go full Deception.

You guys don't get what OP is trying to say. If orange custom gear is always better than raid gear b/c you can have an augment slot. Then all of you who want to be original and unique are not going to be because EVERYONE will ONLY wear orange gear. Sure there are a few more options, but there is hardly a plethora of choices to be made. And why have bosses drop gear at all when EVERY SINGLE PIECE YOU WIN will just have its mods stripped and put in your already existing orange gear with an augment slot.

Raze change breaks 23/0/18 spec.

I want to clear up a few things here. The NPC's do NOT react to the Wamprat. That is a myth. Also, the NPC's "needing" something the others have is circumstantial at best, and completely untrue at worst. The Jawa simply wants to trade with you, nothing more. The Exile is hungry. The Gammorean never says anything about food, he simply has a campfire with food on it, not exactly an uncommon occurrence. He also says he has too much junk to carry, jawas in general like junk, but that is hardly a *direct* correlation to THIS jawa. After seeing the Wamprat in action, and seeing the merchants and reading the Krayt Dragon Pearl stuff. I'm convinced that the world boss is summoned in or very near Outlaw's Den using the Wamprat and the buffs. Another item of note, the merchants all have a 2 hour respawn timer. What else in SWTOR has 2 hour respawn timers? World Bosses. What we are missing is the catalyst to set this all in motion. I am not convinced that anything on tatooine and hoth are related at this point. Or that Outlaw's Den has anything to do with White Crystals. But there is SOMETHING to be found in Outlaw's Den.

We had one person WITH the fever, one without, and tried to get both of us infected AGAIN from the buffed wamprat. Didn't seem to have any effect either way.

Here is the thing. The Wamprat is scripted to walk around to all of the merchants ONLY when another player is close by. This cannot be coincidence obviously. I still think the Wamprat and the buffs are central to our quest, I just think we need something ELSE. Something from Hoth perhaps. For the record, we scoured Hoth, from top to bottom, we even found quite accidentally an unfinished area with a large Volcano and caves that lead to the end of the world. There are loads of Tauntaun's, loads of dead Tauntaun's, and lots of place that could be interpreted into being similar to the map found on Ilum. We found nothing definitive in any regard.

I can speak on this. Each of the merchants can only be kited the standard distance of any normal mob. Same as the Wamprat. We were only able to give the Wamprat all of the buffs by waiting for him to pat all the way around the canyon, it took forever...

Okay. Some friends and I successfully gave all 3 buffs to the wamprat. We then let him do an entire circuit AGAIN just to see if he would change his path whilst having all 3 buffs. He did not. We checked to see if he had a different type of Wamprat fever. He did not. We checked to see if being inoculated made a difference. It did not. We also checked to see if having the Shockfrozen Water refreshed buff did anything. It did not. After running out of ideas, we finally killed him. Nothing. Sorry for the bad news. Hope it helps somehow!