When I was a kid, I walked to school barefoot in the snow, uphill both ways... /sarcasm I played WoW beta, vanilla, BC, Wrath and Cata. Just because an MMO that launched in 2004 didn't have a LFG, doesn't mean a AAA MMO from 2012 shouldn't. You can't even compare the two. There is nothing lazy with wanting to be efficient, spending an hour or more forming a group to run content that will take upwards of an hour itself is ulcer inducing. Stop trying to defend it, this should have been in at launch. It's called progression, without it, nothing would ever improve.

/shrug

Sorry, I wasn't clear, I just meant dark-side Imps. You're basically the same as me. I have a Sorc and a Merc, just below 20. Both are good people, get the job done, without the unnecessary cruelty. I can actually get into that, while being evil for evil's sake turns me off. But I'm willing to go out on a limb and bet that at least...perhaps 75% of Imps go dark-side, for various reasons. They think it's expected of them, or they just want the evil look, or my theory, they like to role play (even if they aren't actual RP) the whole 'I'll kill you while chuckling evilly and not give it a second thought, because I'd never get away with this in real life'. I could be completely wrong, on the number of evil Imps and their reasons for doing it. I can't wrap my head around anything else though.

Sadly true, I've been lead to believe there are at least one or two servers where the imbalance favors Republic. I believe it, but...not without seeing it for myself. I'm 50, 400 crafting/gathering, full champion+, rakata...I'm settled. I can't leave this server. And now I have to deal with it or quit. I don't have a constructive answer for how this could have been avoided, but damn it is beyond frustrating. However, with the recent change to PvP dailies, I don't even have to set foot on Ilum (the worst part of being outnumbered) so it's not as bad.

I'm generally a trusting person (stupid, I know) so I deliberately force myself to suspect EVERYTHING. And I truly believe those numbers were wrong (on purpose, a lie from BW). They couldn't come out and say 'Oh look, you're all wrong, it's 50/50 even' because we aren't that stupid. But let me drop this tidbit on you... Pre-launch, you were allowed to form a guild through the BW website. I did this with three other friends, and went Republic. The day of launch, the website showed the distribution of guilds on my specific server, Daragon Trail. At LAUNCH, on the 13th of December, there were over 240 Imp guilds pre-registered. There were fewer than 80 Republic guilds. Now, of course the size of the guild was not listed, but if you break it down and assume, for the sake of argument, that each guild was just 4 people, that's over a 3 to 1 ratio in favor of Imps. And if those numbers continued in that direction, I genuinely believe my server (can't speak for others) has at least a 4:1 Empire/Republic distribution. At any given time, Empire Fleet ALWAYS has a minimum of twice as many people as Republic Fleet, I check it almost every day (I'm keeping a log). Yesterday, Saturday, at 7pm Pacific time, Emp Fleet had 289 players. Republic had 67. Is this scientific? Of course not. Is it indicative of something? Absolutely. Only a moron would disregard these numbers as irrelevant.

Because more people are concerned with looking good and having numbers on their side than they are with playing what they truly want to. I'm a 50 Sentinel, and a basically good person in real life. I made a BH and got to level 10 or so, at which point some Hutt wanted me to hunt down and cut off some dudes head. This dude wasn't evil, he wasn't a criminal (he might have cooked some books, don't recall), he was just trying to provide for his family and make it in the universe. Then I shot him in cold blood, and sawed his head off. I was actually sickened enough by this I deleted the character and started a fresh BH. But, sadly, this actually appeals to a lot of people. I understand to many, it's just a story, no different than watching a gory movie. Except that these people are rooting for the villain, hoping his plan of mass genocide goes off without a hitch, killing the hero in the process. Part of my enjoyment of this game was diving into the Jedi Knight role, being good and basically choosing the light-side options that I would naturally pick (although this game is very black and white, there were a few times I would have picked dark-side if not for the impact on my light-side orientation). So I have a hard time understanding a persons desire to shock, torture, kill and play a character without a shred of compassion or humanity. I honestly believe people who ENJOY this are at least slightly twisted themselves. But, I also realize I'm 'projecting' my own view of the matter onto other people, which isn't wholly rational. The overwhelming server imbalance that occurs on most servers just goes to show that the Empire appeals to more people. Everybody wants to role-play their sick fantasy about being evil, hurting people and getting away with it. It's actually quite a disturbing look at society, imo. The only reason my neighbors haven't killed me in my sleep is because...they fear the consequences? And if those social restrictions were suddenly gone...it's scary to think what barbarians people would become without the law to keep them in check.

I can relate, figuring it all out on my own took me the better part of a day. Ilum too (destroy **** with a missle launcher...ok, where do I get a missle launcher? /baffled) Anyway, I had a big long-winded description on how it worked and why it worked that way. I won't say I agree with the system as a whole, but there is a reason it works the way it does. BW should do a better job of making it user friendly, but once you understand, it's second nature. When you kill anyone in a PvP setting (WZ or Ilum) you gain Valor. Valor is, currently, a way of limiting which PvP gear you can wear. As I understand it, that is going away with 1.2. At that point, Valor will only be about titles. Any time you PvP in a Warzone, you gain Warzone commendations. You can gain up to 1000 of these at any one time. You then need to spend them before you can gain more. The first rank of PvP gear, Centurion, requires Centurion commendations. The ONLY way to get these, is to convert 600 Warzone coms (earned directly from a WZ) into 200 Mercenary coms at the PvP vendor (should be standing directly next to where you acquire your daily and weekly PvP quests). You buy Merc coms with WZ coms. Then you need 200 regular WZ coms, and with 200 Merc and 200 WZ, you can purchase a bag that contains 15 Centurion coms and 7 Champion coms. To recap: You play WZ's all day long, over and over until your eyes bleed. Then you buy Merc coms at the PvP vendor (NOT the PvP armor vendor), which can then buy the Champion gear bag (which contains Centurion and Champion coms). If you are dedicated, you can easily obtain one piece of gear per day (we're talking like 30+ WZ per day). Supplement this with your daily/weekly WZ and Ilum quests, which also grant Champion gear bags. Just yesterday I finished both dailies, both weeklies, and earned enough WZ coms to buy a bag. I had 9 Champion bags to open. That comes to 135 Centurion coms, which can (maybe?) buy you two pieces of gear.

Annnnnnd, guess what? I'll wager 4 million credits you're a ranged class. They are the only ones (including healers) who can get away with clicking in pvp (although you're still at a disadvantage and will die against a keybinder). I played WoW for just over six years. It was my first MMO. I used the arrow keys to move, and the mouse to click my abilities. The only keybind I had was Mouse 5, which is the thumb button. It was set to auto-run. For the first five years, I played this way, as a Hunter, and I destroyed people in raids, and usually dropped people in PvP before they could reach me. I thought this meant I was good. I was so, so wrong... PvE content is, for the most part, clickable. It's so predictable (not to be confused with boring, mind you, I do enjoy a good OP) that any reaction time lost from clicking rather than keybinding can easily be overcome. But......if you come at me in PvP and try to click, I will kill you. Hands down. Even a ranged class. You simply are too clumsy, unwieldy, slow to respond/recover, etc. I'm closing in on my 8th year of playing MMO, and I can say this: 1-5 years - Moved with arrow keys, clicked ALL abilities. 6th year (last full year of WoW) - Learned to use WASD, and bound my six most important abilities to Q, E, R, T, D, F. Even this baby step, once mastered, utterly overhauled my ability to play the game well. 8th year - I've forced myself to relearn it all, I now move with ESDF, and I have over 30 core abilities bound between my keyboard and mouse, and Shift modifiers. I even use my scroll wheel up, scroll wheel down, shift-scroll wheel up, shift-scroll wheel down. I can now respond to any situation that arises in real-time without hesitation, as smoothly as playing a console action game with a controller. Effortless (sort of). TL;DR: Coming from somebody who evolved over time from a complete clicker to a complete keybinder, the only people who would defend clicking in PvP (PvE is fine) are people who have yet to try keybinding, or people who downright fail at it. Keybinding is superior in all aspects and the only time a clicker will beat a keybinder is when the best clicker faces the worst keybinder. An 'equal' keybinder vs. an 'equal' clicker...there is no contest. It's laughable to even contemplate.

I was just in a WZ, had a random D/C, now I can't get past the game launcher, let alone reach the server select screen. This is new. Did it died?

What kind of barbaric job doesn't let you watch frivolous videos about video games while on the clock? I bet you can't play 16 man halo lan matches at work either? You poor sob...

Yeah, my Malgus doll is great and all, but I mostly got the CE for the perks and the in-game store, which was just a total disappointment at launch. Yet nobody seemed to address this at the summit. As it stands right now, if I had known back in June 2011 what I know now, I would have just gone with a standard edition of the game. I really hope they show us CE owners some love in 1.2.

While I understand what you're saying, which is combined with burns, then Stasis on top, it melts their health. In reality, Combat Stasis can do more. Stasis does Kinetic. Pop Precision, Cauterize, Stasis. Your Stasis will now be hitting for exactly what the tooltip says. I've seen my Stasis crit for 1000, and it ticks 4 times in 3 seconds. That's a potential 4000 damage (granted all four ticks would have to crit, I've only seen 3 of 4 to date). Merc Slash is 7.5 second cd, takes 4 focus. Blade Rush consumes 2 focus, 1 with Zen, has no cd. I can Blade Rush 4-5 times between Merc Slash cd for over 3k each. Watchman > Combat, as it stands right now. But the whole concept of Combat, when fixed, will rival or beat Watchman. I can't wait for that day to arrive.

Today in Ilum, 32 Pub vs. 40+ Imps, we had few heals so we retreated frequently. I'd get separated from the group on occasion, half health, trying to break combat so I could regen. Some imp seeing an 'easy target' would spot me and chase me down. This happened four times. I beat Jug, an *** (pretty sure he was middle tree, pure dps), a Sniper and a Sorc. They had me on the run, then when I was sure it was just me and him, I'd turn and engage. Killed 'em all (other than the ***, who vanished). Powertechs don't scare me either, I'm more tanky than they are. But if I was going to admit to anything, it would indeed be any tank, but much less so since going Watchman. Really, I'm pretty confident about facing any opponent. Died twice to a Sniper in Ald the other day, who was solo defending mid. Couldn't leap, and I had to decide whether to use Camo to close the gap initially, or for after he would inevitably knock me back with the added slow or snare, whichever one the Snipers get...but I ended up killing him solo too, just adapt and overcome.

For starters, I apologize. My frustration was not directed at you, but I vented at you. There have been some very snide remarks in this post, from people who CLEARLY are biased (and failed to provide a SHRED of constructive evidence to support their claim). I have played both specs, Combat more than Watchman I admit, and I truly believe they are neck and neck. I don't know which is superior over a long duration (5+ minutes) in their current form, but I know for a fact when/if Combat is fixed and tweaked, it will be on par or ahead of Watchman. On a side note, I was very tired when I posted my original 'parse' and made obvious mistakes. On another note, the way I was attacked was a prime example of what you stated. You CAN'T have a civil, adult discussion on this topic. People want to believe the spec they've chosen is best, and will (in some cases) blindly defend it with hearsay, guesses and in some cases downright misinformation. I'm usually above it all, but my defenses were down from lack of sleep.

Heh, I love the people who read up to a certain point, quote somebody, and totally miss the rest of the convo. I gave a 20 second scenario because who the **** would read a 5 minute one? I'm not going to even try and type out something like that, *******. Secondly, minus the lack of Master Strike, I guarantee you what I listed is pretty damn close to accurate. It's really simple, I'll spell it out for you. Priority (rotation): Zen (used with a full stack of OS, of course, not while building it) MS (if you're within 2-3 seconds of losing the stacking buff) Dispatch (super cheap, super hard) Cauterize (while never overwriting your current burn) MS (to hopefully refresh the CD on Cauterize) OS Zealous (so long as you have no more than 5 focus, otherwise you might waste Burning Focus) Master Strike (but you better be sure neither Merc and Caut won't come off cd halfway through) Slash (filler when all is on cd and you have high resources) Strike Tell me oh wise and ****** gamer, am I so horribly off with this? Or did I nail it? I'll tell you what, I bet I nailed it, because figuring out a priority is simple. And thirdly? Keep track how? Do you have a damage meter? I sure don't. Why don't you let us all in on your secret, I'd love to be able to parse. Oh wait...you can't. Because there is no way to track damage /facepalm.

381 power, actually. 32% crit. 78% surge. And Combat gets 30% surge to their 3 main attacks as well, and an extra 30% damage to Ataru strike, which has a 50% chance per strike of procing, so you might even consider it a dot (mine did over 1k in pure surge gear before surge nerf). I'm new to Watchman, but I'm a damn good gamer. I was consistently top damage in WoW, in the best guild on the server (not top 100 material, but we downed everything, hardmode). And I did so by exhaustive theorycrafting and exhaustive sessions at the training dummy, honing my skills. I have no damage meters, not concrete guides, and no training dummies to learn from. Add to that my slightly less than two weeks with this spec, and I admit I'm still discovering things. I will wager 1 million credits that when damage meters are added, you will be shocked at how close Combat comes to your precious Watchman. It may not compete in survivability or utility, but that was never the topic. The topic was damage. Good day to you, time to rest...

I just equipped a crit/surge relic, and got a crit MS. Main hand 3500, off 900. Still only comes to 4400. How you possibly hit 4800 with just your main hand, and yet you're so close to my off-hand damage, I have no idea. Your main hand crit, you claim, is 1300 damage stronger than mine. But your off-hand crit is only 200. That seems really, really inconsistent.

I'm sorry I wasn't clear, I was stating main hand damage for MS, due to the fact that I have 69% off-hand accuracy and frequently miss with the off-hand portion of the attack. When I crit, and both sabers hit, I crit for 3.8-4.1k.

And yet it all still comes down to theorycrafting, and bad theorycrafting at that. Without a damage meter, you really don't know anything. You can't compare two specs easily even WITH a damage meter. With no empirical evidence to compare side by side, from two Sentinels in identical gear (optimized for each respective spec of course) all you're doing is guessing. Maybe it's an educated guess. But it's still a guess. So keep pushing your opinion on this forum, I'll keep pushing mine. And thanks for absolutely no constructive input whatsoever. My dots are 20% behind yours? Obviously, I'm only 5 pieces of Rakata and 2 Columi. Combat is mostly mitigated damage? SO IS WATCHMAN. Only your dots avoid armor, everything else you do is fully mitigated. So OS on a 12 second cd gives you some unmitigated damage. Precision Slash on a 15 second cd gives me some unmitigated damage too. So that's a stalemate. My fully mitigated attacks (BR, BS) hit harder than your Slash and nearly on par with your Merciless, and my guaranteed crit basically cancels out any benefit you get for hitting harder with Merciless. Merciless Slash, 7.5 sec cd, crit for 3300, hits for what? 2k? Blade Storm, 9 sec cd, crits for 3k. Every time. It balances out, because you won't crit with Merciless every time. Combined dots do 6600 (for me, in my gear) over 6 seconds. Master Strike with Precision up does over 7k in 3 seconds. Stalemate. I can keep going. Watchman is not the end all, be all spec you want it to be. It IS superior for raiding. It is not the only option though. *edit* And unless you're willing to post YOUR rotation, your words carry no weight, really. I at least attempted to create a scenario for people to follow. If my Watchman rotation is so horribly, terribly wrong, I'd really like to know what you do differently. Wanna know what I think? I think I was pretty damn close, and you know it, so you don't want to look bad.

I love how you keep harping on an obvious oversight on my part. I love how even if I corrected it, the Combat numbers are still superior. And the rotation I listed was not intended for PvP, it was my standard rotation for anything Strong or above. Also, you are obviously not used to Combat, to say Watchmen so far outclasses it that they aren't even in the same league. I also love how you claim dots tick harder than what I stated, even though I was very clear these were MY numbers, with MY gear, and I even listed my stats. You saying I can't read a number as it jumps up on my screen? And by all means, tell me how your Watchman rotation differs, I'm all ears. *edit* This is my best guess. Leap OS Zealous Cauterize (before Merc so hopefully Merc refreshes Cauterize cd) Merciless Master Strike Strike Cauterize if it cooled down, another strike if not? Leap Not a slash here, you wouldn't have enough focus for OS unless you were really lucky with burns giving you focus) And it goes on from there...

And then you get knocked back from the boss, and your Leap is on cd because you used it 5 seconds earlier for focus (so now the only dps you're doing is dot damage, if they're up). And the only mechanic problems with Combat right now revolve around Master Strike and Blade Rush animations, stutter and misfires. If you use MS as Watchman, you suffer the same fate as Combat. And even with BR stutter, the damage generally goes out even if you can't see the attack. Annoying, but it still works. Even then, using MY numbers, how do you honestly bring an aditional 7k or so damage to that 20 second 'parse scenario' as Watchman? Besides Master Strike, which would add 3 seconds in there somewhere, replacing something I listed. It would only add perhaps 3k damage. That still brings Watchman on par with Combat, not ahead.

Of course I'm in Juyo? Duh. 3 stack of OS with Zen crits for about 1300, 3 times. Cauterize crits for about 450, 6 times. That comes out to 6600 damage over 6 seconds. 6600 divided by 6 seconds is 1100 dps. Dunno what uber gear you're running in for your dots to be so OP. I also said I've only been Watchman 2 weeks now, and primarily PvP. Master Strike is worthless in PvP without the Combat or Focus talents to improve it. No, these numbers were not meant to represent PvP, but this has been my experience. Even taking into account the ability to use Cauterize every 6 seconds (which is impossible, sometimes you simply will not get the CD refreshed) it's virtually impossible to keep OS up 100% as well. Blade Storm costs as much as Merciless and does half the damage without Combat talents. And virtually every other ability you use as Watchman is melee. Meaning you stack OS very quickly. Please, enlighten me. You've said nothing useful whatsoever, either you or the person above you. And I love how you read my edit at the bottom, that stated these rotations might be off. Great reading comprehension.

Read my post above yours and argue your case. Combat is at the very least on par for dps in PvE situations. The numbers don't lie.

Combat > Watchman for PvE (just damage, not utility) Combat: Valorous Call Leap(4 focus) - 800 damage - 1.5 seconds Zealous(10) - 1000 - 3 seconds Precision(7) - 1200 - 4.5 seconds Zen (off GCD) Blade Rush(6) - 2100 with 900 Ataru proc - 5.5 seconds Blade Rush(5) - 3000 - 6.5 seconds Blade Rush(4) - 3000 - 7.5 seconds Precision wears off somewhere between 3rd and 4th BR Blade Rush(3) - 2300 - 8.5 seconds Blade Rush(2) - 2300 - 9.5 seconds Blade Rush(1) - 2300 - 10.5 seconds Strike(3) - 1000 - 11.5 seconds Zealous(9) - 1000 - 13 seconds Precision(6) - 1200 - 14.5 seconds Master Strike(6) - 7000 - 17.5 seconds Blade Storm(4) - 3000 - 19 seconds (then round up to 20 because nothing is perfect) In 20 seconds I just did over 32k damage. 32000/20 sec comes to 1600 DPS. You really gonna tell me some burns, a Merciless that is mitigated by armor, and a bunch of Strikes and point blank leaps for Focus are going to top that? Really? Watchman: Valorous Call Leap(4 focus, assuming PvE build) - 800 damage - 1.5 seconds OS(1) - Off GCD Zealous(7) - 1000 - 1 stack OS 3 seconds - 3 seconds Cauterize(5) - 1000 - 2 stacks OS and Cauterize - 4.5 seconds Merciless(1) - 3300 - 3 stacks OS - 6 seconds Zen - Off GCD Oh snap, both Zealous Strike and Leap are still on cd Strike(3) - 1000 - 7.5 seconds Strike(5) - 1000 - 9 seconds Strike(7) - 1000 - 10.5 seconds Slash(5) - 1800 - 12 seconds Leap(9) - 800 - 13.5 seconds Slash(7) - 1800 - 15 seconds OS(4) Zealous(10) - 1000 - 1 stack OS - 16.5 seconds Merciless(6) - 3300 - 2 stacks OS - 18 seconds Cauterize(4) - 1000 - 3 stacks OS and Cauterize 19.5 seconds Zen (if available, should be) Now, because you only just reach a full stack of OS a second time by the very end of this 20 second parse, we aren't going to count that burn damage. In 19.5 seconds (again, round up to 20) you've done 18800 damage. Throw in 3 ticks of OS critting for 1300, that goes up to 22700, and 6 ticks of Cauterize for 450 each (and that's being generous, some of these will not be under the influence of Zen) and that brings you to 25400. My numbers were generated using my gear: 1515 Strength 32% crit 340 Bonus 78% Surge Now even if you doctor those numbers a bit, and subtract a few from Combat and add a few to the Watchman 'parse' you're still only coming out equal. I've played both specs extensively, although admittedly only been Watchman now for 2 weeks with a PvP oriented build. My Merciless crits slightly harder than my Blade Storm, but my Blade Storm crits 100% of the time, which trumps Merciless. Combat Zen comes out to equal much more damage, however Combat takes slightly longer to acquire 30 stacks of centering. You just can't really argue with these numbers. Do the math, even if I messed up in a place or two, overall the time and damage is solid. Combat is just as good, if not better, at PvE dps. *edit* Of course these numbers aren't perfect, the rotation might also not be perfect, but like I said, it's all close enough to give you a picture of damage output over a 20 second window. All these numbers were tested on level 50 strong mobs on Ilum, for consistency.

I'll put this out there first. I leveled 10 to 50 as Combat. I love the tree and I love the play style. I stayed Combat welllllllllll into 50. However. Combat currently suffers from several terrible flaws that, if fixed, would probably put it on par with Watchman. In the mean time though, coming from somebody who openly admits they love Combat, Watchman IS superior in all ways. PvE...the line is blurry. You can do just fine. Less movement, more predictable scenarios, great damage output. Still suffers from the problems I will list below though, which impedes your performance (even in PvE). PvP, it just does not work as well. Master Strike is a firm part of Combat, and the talent to immobilize while you use it fails over 50% of the time, due to distance issues. Master Strike itself fails frequently, where you begin the animation, but the actual ability does not go off. You are then stuck (literally, you can't move) for 3 seconds while you do no damage. Ataru Form strikes do not proc at max melee range, making your damage suffer in PvP due to range issues from the fact we play this game on the Internet, which is flawed. Combat Zen is broken. It should reduce your melee global cooldown from 1.5 to 1 second, which in a perfect world would allow you to mow down an enemy with 6 Blade Rush attacks in 6 seconds flat. This does not work. The animation for Blade Rush is broken, and when you drop the GCD on it it begins to stutter badly and cause delays, making it closer to 7-8 seconds. This shaves a whopping 1 second off of what you would normally be capable of doing. If you don't believe me, pop Zen and time how quickly you can perform 6 Blade Rush attacks in a row with a stopwatch. Precision Slash is a flawed concept. In PvE, it's ok. You combine this with Master Strike and a guaranteed crit Blade Storm, and you do some sick damage. The buff lasts 6 seconds, and at MOST you might get off 3 attacks in this time, but in reality more like 2. Then you're back to doing less damage because ALL OF YOUR ATTACKS are physical, and are mitigated by armor. Precision Slash needs to be changed to an Overload Saber mechanic, where you hit it and it buffs your next 3-4 attacks with 100% armor pen. When they do this, it will be on par. Until then...no. I could go on, but this post is already too long. Watchman suffers from none of these afflictions, no stutter, no lost damage, nothing. For the time being, I would highly recommend you teach yourself to play Watchman. Can you do well with Combat? Sure. Would you do even better as Watchman? Yes, you would. TL;DR - Combat rocks, but it is seriously broken with bugs right now. I love Combat, I want to play it again, but I've played both specs EXTENSIVELY in PvE and PvP and Watchman is hands down better right now. So unless Watchman is a total turnoff (which it was for me while leveling) then skip Combat, go Watchman, and you will be rewarded.