A broken class gets a nerf to the things that are working that make up for hte things that are broken. /sigh Right now, it's the time for the Powertechs and the Vanguards. My god they are so OP now thanks to the new patch. Can't even touch 'em. Honestly, this is exactly what Mythic used to do with DAoC - overnerf one and overpower the other all at the same time. They never got the hang of the ripple effect of making a change to one mechanic and how that one change actually effects MORE than just itself. The symbiotic nature of these games is not forgiving toward huge sweeping changes. Maybe someone will ge them to fix the shadows and assassins shields. It'd sure be nice if they actually worked.

Fanboi, this sums up the night perfectly - another post from someone ASSUMING THINGS and who also lacks the ability to comprehend what I'm saying... if you go back I've never once said I want things for free that I didn't work for. I worked for everything and just as I was about to get there, a change in the system negated that work. If they hadn't changed the system at those particular points in time and that maybe had done it two weeks later, I would have made the Battlemaster level then and NOT been sent back to 1st grade because of the changes. As a result that set me back months. Literally to the point of essentially being a fresh 50 even though I had been 50 for three months when they made that change. What you seem to lack the grasp of is that I was literally equal to the highest of the high at that point in terms of time put in and grinding done - for the dwindling population server I was on anyway. 1.2 erased that work jsut when it mattered the most. "DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORDS THAT ARE COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH?" -Detective Carter.

Ignoring the trolls who are here to insult me without actually knowing what they are talking about... /sigh - peopel liek them will be the downfall of this game really - but I digress. I'm not talking about fresh 50's. I've continually talked about the previous levels of gear. First time thru was centurion, champion then battlemaster. Anyone caught in the MIDDLE of that grind got SCREWED out of having Battlemaster gear when they should have. I highlighted the part of your post where you make sense. See, you get it. The problem is by being in that early phase of playing from Beta and being level 50 a month after launch (my work was slow from 2 weeks prior to Xmas til 3 weeks into January) and being casual in my PVP play (and I know I'm a decent player /hides from trolls who will now jump in to insult me) that I got boned in the champion bags RNG loot rolls for the middle ground gear, then when they introduced recruit gear in 1.2 - lo - my hard earned and very effective PVP gear was suddenly vendor fodder. I couldn't get the Warzone comms I spent on them back to apply towards the BM gear. Basically, even though I wasn't, I had to regress to being a fresh 50 - worse, I didn't even have any Warzone comms saved up from leveling prior to reaching 50 as I was 50 since January. So all this gear that I spent thousands of Warzone comms on - THE VERY SAME COMMS THAT I NEEDED TO BUY MY BATTLEMASTER GEAR with - was expensive paper weights. Those of you berating me and saying "you have to earn it" - the point is - I DID #$^%ing earn it. So all that time PVPing was basically thrown away - discarded by Bioware, given proof now to the fact that they don't actually think about things before they do them. The very least they should have done was have an NPC vendor that would buy back the various Champion gear items for at least half the Warzone comms that we bought them for. But that lack of foresight is yet another one of the things that blows my mind. As it stands - the game is too much like WOW and imho they really need to get out of the safety box of copying that game and do something truly amazingly innovative to make this game awesome. I have plenty of ideas for that, but the last time I sent anyone a GDD it got stolen. Regardless of how much I like Star Wars - the community of PVPers who chose to belittle their fellows is unfortunately depressing. The sadder part is that they don't realize that they will lsoe their precious PVP if they don't support making it better for everyone. Trying to build only themselves up and others down, is the sign of a lost cause.

Nope. That's impossible now. The I-need-it-now generation of gamers is here thanks to WOW. But what I think they need to do is tone down the curve of the PVP gear effects. The difference between starting PVP and those iwth pimped out stats is TOO much. Never said to turn PVE gear into PVP gear either. I would go with saying that a PVP gearset could be identical to PVE gear sets though. All the expertise stat does is serve to separate players into the us and them and then there's the people like me stuck in the middle. I like both. But as the saying goes "Jack of all trades, master of none." My PVE buddying and what not slows my PVP experience and vice versa. Combine that with limited time to play and you get a slower ride than the rest. Thing is expertise isn't needed. But they added it. Ask yourselves why? Why add a singel separate stat for a subsection fo the game that a mjority of the playerbase doesn't even care about (truth: PVPers are a minority but they themselves never realize this)??? From a marketing standpoint it's another grind to immerse people in, to insure that you keep giving them your money each month. It also gives the illusion of more content. Which is a flase positive really. I'm not blaming anyone but Bioware. I played the game. They changed it whiel I was playing it and took away the progress I had made. I want the Warzone comms back that I spent on Champion gear. 320k credits 2 months after i'm forced to revert (which directly caused me to lull in my desire to PVP honestly) away from the second best PVP gear in the game to the worst PVP gear in the game.... is hardly substantial resistution. So who do you think I'm blaming?

Not crying. Don't confuse honest criticism with what you internet kids like to call QQ. I'm NOT a hardcore PVPer. I'm a DARK AGE OF CAMELOT alum. Someone who knows the best RVR/PVP game that has ever been in existence and someone who played one of the most nerfed archetypes in that game - a Shadowblade - for many years. A game that successfully used the same armor for PVP and PVE prior to the woefully horribly idea of a separate stat for PVP. Not sure what you are reading into there. Huge patch note list and not everything is easy to remember when you first log in and start expploring all the changes. As for playing ranked WZs - it is supposed to be for everyone to fight fairly in, not for elitist epeeners to have one more outlet to flex in. Being ranked it's supposed to match people to like levels. Not put the highest expertise gear versus the lowest expertise gear everytime. No you didn't. You are still showing that you haven't read it when you don't even acknowledge my WARZONE COMMS spent on pre1.2 CHAMPION gear that NOW would easily have been spent on BM gear. You can flex your muscles at me all you want, thinking you're breaking me - which seems to be what you are trying to do as a fanboi of SWTOR, but the fact is simply this: SWTOR broke the gear progression each time they revamped PVP - which they have done at least twice since launch - not even counting the way they had it in Beta.... they don't anticiapte problems and just cause more when they release these broadsweeping changes in each successive patch. When Bioware starts to think outside the box, think like players do, and learns to anitciapte issues and concerns that the players will have when they make these larger changes - they will start to have a much better game. Of course, that woulda been better if they hadn't copied WOW to begin with.

320000 credits is not the Warzone comms I spent on gear that COULD have been Battlemaster gear. It was a slap in the face to anyone still working in that system to have to stop - go backwards - and start over again from scratch (prior to them even GIVING us the 320000 credits in this patch 2 months later) in recruit gear. Maybe you didn't play before 1.2 but prior to 1.2 Warzone comms bought CHAMPION level gear. Centurion was the level under that - and recruit is better than both. So all those WARZONE COMMS I spent on CHAMPION gear were $%^&ing wasted on gear that essentially Bioware told me to throw away when they released recruit gear. My time and effort in the system they had set up was just tossed aside with little regard or respect for it.

A) yea, I know. But again - this is about more than that. This is about the expertise stat and how to start keeping the incredibly high from constantly griefing the incredibly low. Also as it stands RANKED warzones are supposed ot be available to all to compete in - not jsut the elite... the concept is supposed to keep you from fighting them. It's not just supposed to be for the e-peen &**%^heads. B) Time mostly. And soon the lack of a subscription will take care of the rest. Bioware needs to really start to think outside the box and anticipate the problems rather than reacting to them.

Wow. You know NOTHING about me and you obviously also misunderstood everything I said - like a majority of hte other who read what I wrote. I personally loathe the fact that they dumbed down this WOW clone that Bioware gave us. Star Wars used to be about innovation but clearly it's now about catering to the lowest common demoninator. Was one of the first 50s in my guild back in January. I PVPed a lot and got jack in my champ bags. I PVPed more than most and people who had less (rightfully earned) valor than I did had better gear than me. Each successive change Bioware made was a chain reaction that actually SLOWED my gear progression, particularly because they made me WASTE so many of my Warzone comms on Champion gear. Had I done the exact same grind now that I had done then I would already be in War Hero gear. Yet I'm still stuck in mostly recruit gear with some BM. The least Bioware could've done was have a "buy back" NPC to resupply us with the Warzone comms we spent on the useless Champion gear. Again, you didn't read a word. I've been here since beta. Again showing how you are just jumping to conclusions. You are obviously not capable of a rational discussion. And the fact that you jumped to so many cocnclusions and obviously didn't read a word of the thread at this point makes your opinion, well, quite frankly, moot.

This is a multilevel question and answer if you ask me. The problems stems from basic design issues. And I could go so far as to completely re-invent the system. But I'll keep it simple as to ways that I would suggest they make the current system work. But with a small preface. I thoroughly believe that Bioware should have had a "buy back" program for all the previously purchased armor and gear and that were purchased with Warzone Commendations prior to 1.2 and the advent of recruit gear. There were many people who were performing fine in that system and were on their way to attaining the next levels of gear who got literally set back by the change. I was one of them, I have to say prior to the recruit gear change that I was consistently in the 60-80% win range and nearly all the fights were still feeling "fair". Ok so to answer the questions: 1) Matching players for warzones will always take longer when you apply more "filters" to it. So the question of speedy immediate play vs fair even matched gear comes up. This should actually be an option when queuing. Do you want to play now asap, or wait for a match that suits your "PVP level?" And expertise is basically, a PVP level. So the algorythm would have to take into account the gear in the INVENTORY (not equipped) of the player (alternatively, it would read the expertise at the time of queuing and the time of entering the match - making sure it is the same expertise at the time of queuing and if not then they would NOT be allowed in until their expertise equalled that of the level they had when they queued; upon entering the match gear would be "locked" in place and unable to be removed or altered) and then match them with similarly ranged players somewhere in a percentile neighborhood of the available players for matches. That said, anyone brought into the match will have their effective expertise adjusted to fit within the confines of that matches particular range. For arguments sake, let's just say that the starting expertise level is 1000 and the most expertise anyone could have is 2000. (I know it's not - just need some easy numbers for the explanation.) Let's pick an expertise range - let's say 200 is the maximum difference we want to see in a match (not chosen by players - this would be a setting the devs would pick). So Joe Jedi queues up. He has 1250exp. And Sarah Sorc joins up. She has 1350exp. And Bob Bounty Hunter queues but he has 1800exp. If he joins that match his maximum effective expertise stat would scale down to 1450 - 200 more than the lowest player in the match. Here's the thing - the hardcore "leet' PVPer probably would hate this. Most people prefer to have an advantage - we're all told "winning" is fun. And it is fun - although I need to note that winning by a landslide is NOT fun to me. But fun is also a close match. Almost winning or losing by only a little is sure as hell better than getting rolled by the min/maxxer who does nothing but play all the time. Thing is - it's better for that leet player to yield to the percentile range as it's healthier for the game and the fact that his opponent will probably queue up to fight him again as opposed to quitting out of the next match the instant he sees the same guy he fought in the last match coming right at him. (Sorry for the run-on sentence there...) Basically, Bioware needs to keep a fresh 50 from fighting that guy that will steamroll them or they will LOSE that fresh 50 from playing the game eventually. Another 15$ a month gone.

Actually, I'm merely lamenting on the point of my luck in this game... I got screwed on gear when I had time. And when I got the comms to spend on gear, it became wasted comms when they changed to recruit gear. Meanwhile the people who did have the luck, got to advance much faster in the gear tree than I did. So I got shunted all the way back to square one when they introduced recruit gear. Champ gear. Recruit gear. Seriously. You move on. No one is actually hearing what I'm saying. PVP is not FUN at 50 - even when i occasionally get into that match where my team stomps the other team; that's NOT fun. That's sad. Fun is a good even match. If they continue to let hugely mismatched matches occur more nad more people will NOT want to queue up for PVP. The current state is not healthy. I'm trying to look at the state of PVP as a whole here. Not jsut from my little tiny slice of it. I'm not the only one who feels this way about PVP, just I'm the only one willing to be vocal about it and put up with the beratement and ridicule of the PVP community to try and see some justice done. P.S. pre1.2 bags when they were 3 comms each? or when they were 15 comms each? You weren't specific enough imho.... cause i'm talking about the 3 comms each bags....

I'm LUCKY if I get to queue for PVP once a week with my schedule at the present. Back in the winter when I did have time to play and was getting Champion bags all the time I got nothing then too - and in theory I shoulda had a full BM set shortly after, but I was one of the people that DIDN'T get a full set of armor out of his first 20 bags. 60 bags and all I got was an earpiece, a bracer and a pair of boots. You're lucky you can play that much.

Let's go through the list since you seem to be constantly insinuating that I am a bad player. Expertise will not help you do the following things: In huttball, when the ball carrier is a leaper, expertise will not prevent him from force leaping to you as you stand on the ledge. Duh. The number one thing I try to get across to the new guys in the 10-49 bracket. You'd be amazed how many people think the Mara's and Sent's are hacking too when they do their thing. At any time, your cc/mezzzes/interrupts are not mitigated by expertise. Also duh. That's resolve that does weird stuff. And sometimes I'm nto sure resolve is even working the way it's supposed to work. Expertise does not help you jump the vents, or auto-pass for you. Again with the captain obvious. Passing is the first rule of huttball. As long as you CAN pass, I tend to get stun locked a lot. Expertise does not prevent you from being pushed into the fire, the pit or off the catwalk. Sure and it also doesn't help you to do those things. Which I take great pleasure in doing to people in PVP matches. Expertise does not enable you to detect stealth better. Likewise it does not make you more steatlhy. Funny how all this stuff is just obvious. I feel like you think I don't already know all this. Expertise will not pop your cooldowns or relics. Nor will it tell you its time to get the buffs on the bg. It will not automagically cause you to use the ledges or catwalks. Wow. Rocket scientist at work here. I'm not even sure I need to go through it all. Expertise will not enable you to jump into a crowd of oppoents and stand in their aoe. Who the hell does this? Expertise will not change your keyboard turning into mouse turning. I've met ONE person in the game who uses the keyboard to turn. He was a PVEer and an older guy. He also mouse lcikced everything including targetting and his quickbar buttons. /shudder Expertise will not magically make you target the ball carrier or the healer with him. It will also not automatically cause you to seperate the tank using guard from his pal in some way. And we finished with a "duh". No - expertise will simply make you outlast everyone, you take less damage and deal more. You get healed for more and you heal others for more. In it's current state, it's overpowered. The curve is too much for truly fun competitive play.

100% agree. A close game is ALWAYS better - I hate being on a team that crushes the other team unbelievably. It happens, and I wish it wouldn't. (yes, it even happens to me... I'm a decent PVPer, just not hardcore... like all the other ones in here...)

Captain Obvious. Of course, those are my issues. I'm not gonna talk about your issues. I don't know what your issues are, but one of them seems obvious to me at the moment.... Gear has the most to do with it. Perhaps you don't actually understand the mechanics of PVP in the games that use a specific stat for it. I played a gimped Shadowblade for years in DAOC before they realzied how nerfed they were and finally buffed them back up to competition level. And I was still a force to be reckoned with in that game - enemy factions would call for reinforcements if I was around. Also note: no PVP stats required to PVP in that game. PVP stats are evil. Well, bully for you. I play on PVE servers and I was hoping for a PVP planet when the game launched. Instead we got Ilum and Warzones. I like to keep my PVE and PVP separate and not get ganked while doing one or the other. I'm certainly not the best PVPer on the planet, but I know I'm better than my recent turnouts were showing. PVP gear does more than you realize obvisouly. PVP expertise gear is everything. Skill comes next. An average PVP player is going to - how is it you internet kiddies put it? - "wtfpwn" anyone just coming into the PVP world in recruit gear even if they are a better PVPer. I've seen it. I know it. I have a friend who does it. He's horrible at PVP but he does it all the time and has amazing gear. When I play his toon I destroy everything. However a skilled player in War Hero Augmented is going to just annihilate all. The forecast on this is easy: unless Bioware makes it so people enjoy it, win or lose, the people who don't enjoy it - will eventually not do it. Then the people who do "flex' all the time with being about winning and being "uber' will only have a limited group of other people to play against. It's like a club that you have to pass and suffer the worst hazing ever to be involved in.

Problem is the haters don't want you to have the good gear, they want to faceroll/stompyou because they know if you actually got the gear to be competitive they wouldn't be able to flex their e-peens as much. The mentality I run into is "QQ more. You suck. Learn to play." Thing is, that's hardly ever true. Gear is the biggest issue in PVP. Skill is important as well to be sure. But the guy who has all the best toys and no skill is still gonna roll someone with skill and recruit or "old system" gear.

I'm not saying that I don't have time when I cant stay in a queue for five hours... like right now, i'm NOT in the game, I'm at work. I can't play now. And to Tamby, I realized very quickly that I had no place in those ranked Queues, but my guild wanted to try them so I did. Won't be doing that again either. As for getting BM gear. It takes forever. I don't know how anyone get's that many WZ comms so quickly unless ALL you do is work toward that and you definitely have more time to play than I do. In regular WZ's they still need to do soemthing about it. I play PVP to have FUN. Fun is why I play these games. If I'm not having fun, (which doesn't necessarily mean winning, but at least enjoying a VERY close match...) then odds are good that I'm going to stop playing. I'm not asking for an instant I-win button. And anyone who knows me, knows I'm not one to exagerate or "troll" as you internet e-peeny types like to say. My frustration largely comes from the fact that my gear should already be War Hero, but thanks to the crappy RNG champion bags giving me nothing, combined with ever de-populating servers, and no kind of trade in for the Champion gear I did have when they changed the system. Let's jsut say I feel Bioware doesn't understand much about PVP game design. Look at how Ilum was handled. That says a lot.

I have a life. I can't play 18 hours a day. I work a lot. And when I do have time to play the population is usually at it's lowest in the day cycle - so queue pop still takes longer. And it's not an excuse - it's reality. What's your excuse?

You misunderstand me as well, but you also pointed out something that I am trying to say as well. The problem with the current state of PVP is that fresh 50s are being thrown into the equivalent of "nightmare" mode right away. Thing is in PVE they have a choice. In PVP they don't and the more time passes, the more discrepancies you will see with the current state of the system. And the more obvious it will become to those objective observers that the system is quite flawed. As for those that say I should have been in full BM after 1.2 in two weeks, here's what I have to tell you. I once was in the PVP queue for 5 hours and not a single pop during that time. I don't get to play 18 hours a day like you do.

Great sure yeah, let's base all the class changes on PVP and completely forget about PVE where healers struggle to keep teams alive....

Elitist. This is the problem exactly. My Shadow should actually be in full Battlemaster by now. WOULD be in full BM actually except for the fact of how the changes to PVP came out and what state my toon was in WHEN they made those changes. Each change happened at the WORST possible time. To review - I never got RNG gear in champ bags. I spent all my Warzone comms on Champ gear only to not get to Battlemaster due to my server population dying and having quite literally no one to fight when i was able to play as well as the fact that Champion became worthless in 1.2 when they introduced Recruit gear with MORE expertise on it. This is what I'm seeing now on fleets "X with 1500 expertise looking for Ranked WZ group." That should tell you the entire story right there.

I don't think you guys get it. /sigh

Ok a little history. I PVPed A LOT when the game first started. I reached Valor 50 quite fast. Once I was finally able to open champion bags, I practically NEVER got gear. I started to keep track of what I got and how many bags I opened. Out of 60+ bags, I got 2 earpieces, a pair of bracers and a pair of boots. Then they changed the system slightly (more tokens in bags and less chance of RNG) and I got a full set of Champion gear. Which of course, is WORTHLESS, in the new system when they introduced it. It put you back to square one if you have anything less than Battlemaster - which of course, you had to be valor 60 for. Discouraging to say the least. If they had had some kind of trade-in system for champion gear to help curb the shock it would have helped at least a little. But no. Champion gear is higher in stats but lower in expertise. So again, recruit gear is the only thing you can wear. SOOOOOO many wasted Warzone commendations now. So now here we are. And a fresh 50 has been getting thrown to the wolves everytime. As an above poster said, in comparing it to PVE it's like doing Storymode, Hardmode, and then Nightmare. But unfortunately, even in regular Warzones PVP you don't actually get to CHOOSE your mode that you're fighting. If you're in recruit - you still fight that guy in full Augmented War Hero who does nothing but PVP all day. Expertise = bad. If they had just made the gear tiers the same for PVE and PVP and not done the segragation between the two camps then everyone would have a fair shot at being competitive. This is essentially elitism at this point. I already have to keep 4 different sets of armor around for all of this garbage... 4X14 = 56 pieces of gear needed... (on my shadow specifically that's TANK and DPS PVP gear and TANK and DPS PVE gear.) Personally, I feel like I'm done. I think Bioware *****ed the pooch when they decided to copy WOW.

I don't know what it is. Is it that I constantly seem to fight incredibly geared folks? Is it expertise? All I know is pre-50 I pretty much do amazing and then all of a sudden at 50 it just turns all the way around. It's honestly enough to want to quit over. I also tried a ranked warzone today with a full 8 man pre-made. We fought the same same-faction group over and over again... all valor 100s with fully augmented warhero custom gear. Most of my team barely got 1 medal each - the luckiest of us got 6 or 7 medals. My team had recuit with some battlemaster mostly. So far, I'm not impressed with the ranked system... it should be judging teams versus teams based on gear as well as "ranks" that it obviously needs time to develop. But here's the big question: what if a high ranked team queues and the only other team queueing is a LOW ranked team and no other teams are queueing. Do they fight each other? Or is there a timer to try and keep them apart so that they have a better chance to fight someone that will actually be a fair fight? Thing is - I come to these games for end-game PVP. But I'm used to good PVP like from the days of Dark Age of Camelot, where there wasn't separate gear for PVP (worst idea ever :: expertise :: imho) and the rewards system was MUCH slower to progress through thus less supremely overpowered folks to fight. But with the speed at which PVPers gain the overpowered factor in SWTOR in PVP it's staggering. I remember 4 days after launch a PVPer was the first 50 on my original server. It basically goes to say that gear is everything and the king of the hill that get's there first seems to always win the most. Imho, PVP gear should be the equivalent of PVE gear - no separate armor - no expertise. Level the damn playing field. 10-49 PVP is fun. 50 - is NOT.

Whenever someone posts this - I honestly just wonder if they aren't aware of the Marauder and Sentinel abilities which perfectly simulate most of those hacks that they mention. While I do know hacks exist (I've seen them - a lvl 45 Bounty Hunter on a speeder on Belsavis in the area where the Rakata Energy Cubes spawn.... moving at what I could only call Light Speed...) I suspect the only people using them are the ones willing to risk permanent banning.

If they only have one location, why doesn't it just automatically go there? For example, the orbital station to go down to a planet. For some reason that door has a "ship" feature - added for the people who are in a rush to go everywhere. But before that - the only place it went was the planet surface. Sure I can see having a verifier in there if you're going to leave the instance for another; re: Corellia to BLack Hole and vice versa (which btw requires a whole new thread to ask why in the hell it was made a separate instance to begin with and not just a new area tacked onto Correlia's tram system....); but when it's just a one way trip one way or the other to get to a spot that has no other choices...? Why?