Wont be resubscribing. The 1.2 update is coming too late to renew my interest. I'm all warzoned out, and the endgame additions just sounds like more of the same gameplay we've been doing for 3 months now. The only thing that interests me there is the Legacy system and the storyline continuing, but neither of those things hold enough sway to justify subscribing further. I had serious concerns about the game when the developers were only talking about story, story, story for the past few years. Story is all fine and good, but eventually stories end. When that happens the game falls flat on it's face because there's no purpose behind any of the other activities.

SWTOR isn't dying. It's going through the launch stages that every single MMO goes through. The servers flood at launch, then the MMO sheds some of those launch players, leaving the subscribers who will form the longterm subscriber base. The stage that follows is trying to bring back the subscribers who left, and trying to attract new subscribers, which maintains a steady population to keep the game profitable. SWTOR is already the fastest selling MMO in history, with over 2million copies sold as of the beginning of February. At that time there were 1.7million active subscribers. According to EA, SWTOR only needs 500k subscribers to remain profitable. So no, SWTOR isn't dying.

Marauders do get shafted in medals. I can run out as a tank class, throw a guard on a teammate being focussed down, and I'll receive 3 medals in about 6 seconds (2k, 5k, 10k defense in one life). After Killing Blow, 75k Damage, 10 & 25Kills, I'm already sitting at 7 medals. It is extremely easy to get those 4 medals as any class. For a Marauder to get the same amount of medals as the above, they've got to work at it the entire match, and even then there's no guarantee they'll reach 7. There are a bunch of objective medals coming in patch 1.2 though, so that should help boost the Valor gains from medals... unless that gets a nerf due to the increased attainable medals.

As of right now, that is all you're doing in the 50 bracket. The most fun I had in SWTOR PvP was back in the first couple weeks before there were any 50's, when everyone was on a level playing field. The closest you can get to recapturing that right now is re-rolling an alt and playing in the 10-49 bracket. Simply put, PvP at level 50 is just not fun. The Expertise stat is designed solely to create imbalances in PvP, that is it's entire function, to make players stronger than one another just based on their gear. Add in the raid gear and you've got some pretty major gear imbalances, when players are seperated by upwards of 8,000HP (not to mention the stats and base damage differences). Then you've got the 50 premades which will unbalance the matches they're in. It is exceedingly rare to experience a close game in the 50 bracket. It is almost always one team rolling the other. Either you suffer utter and complete defeat with no chance, or you steamroll the other team with them having no chance. It's just not fun. In the 10-49 bracket, the majority of matches are close, and that's one major reason why it's more entertaining. Then you've got Ilum, which isn't even worth going into, or (imo) playing on. I've taken one of my 50's to Ilum. None of my other 50's have even set foot in the PvP area because it was one of the least enjoyable open world PvP experiences I've ever had. Roaming around in a zergfest group, trying to get the inordinate amount of kills or items needed to fill the dailies/weeklies... it is a chore, and not enjoyable in the least. My advice would be to stop grinding Valor. Stop grinding dailies/weeklies. Stop grinding altogether. Re-roll an alt and play in the 10-49 bracket. It's only going to be worse once you reach that 60 Valor, because you'll enter into the RNG BM bag range. Play alts until 1.2, and hope that it will make endgame PvP enjoyable.

I didn't say it only takes one. What I said is it doesn't take 4, which was the number you stated as the player being focused. CC's have cooldowns, but apparently the part that is hard to grasp is that the cooldown on these CC's is less than the CC-break. Example: You are on Huttball ramps, carrying the ball. A player stuns you, and you wait it out while receiving heals. You continue forward and get stunned crossing the flame trap. You are now at full Resolve. You use your CC break ability to avoid dying in fire and throw the ball to a teammate sitting on goal line. Your team scores while you get swarmed by enemy players coming out of their spawn. You are defeated. Now you're back on your side, and you've got no CC-breaker for about 1.5 minutes. Meanwhile, enemy stuns recycle in half your CC-breaker cooldown (or less, if they're specced down to 50s). Not sure why that's so hard to understand.

Eating the first CC then using CC break on the second only works once every 2 minutes. Full resolve lasts what... 10 seconds? That leaves 1 minute 50 seconds where the player can be stunned twice and can't break out of it. It doesn't require 4 players to take down a player who is trapped in 2 consecutive stuns with no CC-breaker up.

The assertion that one would always have their CC-break ability up so they can prevent 2 stuns in a row is foolish. The ability is on a 2 minute timer. Unless you are an RDPS that flees the second you get targetted, you are going to be in enough fights and experience enough CC to not always have your CC-break when using it would save you. I'd ask you to explain who exactly made the suggestion that a player should be able to be survive being attacked by 4 players at once? I certainly didn't make such a suggestion, so unless you are suggesting that yourself I don't see why you would even bring it up.

You're able to leave chat channels in Preferences > Chat. Just uncheck the General option.

Rather than making all CC break on damage, what they need to do is make damage taken while stunned increase your Resolve. That prevents the stunlock deaths that are too frequent for a game that wasn't meant to have stunlock mechanics.

Your damage will decrease a bit as you level up. Level 10-13 Bounty Hunters can do a lot of damage in a WZ. I believe the lower levels get significantly more benefit from the Bolster buff, to make up for their lack of gear and abilities. By the late teens Bounty Hunters need to make sure they've got up to date gear just like every other level has to, otherwise they will do significantly less damage.

I get the same thing on my server. I play Empire, but due to faction imbalance it's almost always Empire vs Empire in Huttball. Every match it is basically Sorcerers vs Bounty Hunters, with perhaps 3 players being Imperial Agents and/or Sith Warriors. Players are increasingly shying away from Melee DPS because there just aren't any advantages to being so disadvantaged. RDPS is preferred in PvE, and Melee get wrecked on Ilum due to how that planet is right now.

Of course they'll kill their force pool if they aren't specced for healing and try to chain cast. But even not specced for it, they're capable of keeping up chain casting for longer than the any other classes are capable of chain casting their abilities. The other classes would run out of energy, or overheat. That is what I was drawing attention to. That they are not restricted like the other classes are in terms of energy reserves. Exactly. If you're allowed to chain cast you eventually run out, but all the other classes are restricted at all times by their energy reserves. Chain casting to a Sorcerer does not mean the same thing as it does to an Operative. They have a much larger energy pool to fall back on before being shut out. Pretty much every class dies in 6 seconds if they get focused. 6 seconds = 4 GCD. 5 attacks (4GCD) x 1.5k damage = 7.5k damage 7.5k damage x 3 players = 22.5k damage. This does not include the instant attacks that do not affect GCD. It also does not include the attacks which do more than 1.5k damage, or crit.

Hi. This. And this. Later.

It's a good question. But I think the main issue with Sorcerers/Sages isn't that they can switch between DPS and healing abilities on the fly. The issue is that they can spam these abilities virtually endlessly. Sith Warriors / Jedi Knights are restricted by Rage / Focus. Imperial Agents & Smugglers are restricted by Energy. Bounty Hunters / Troopers are restricted by Heat / Ammo. Sorcerers are supposed to be restricted by Force, but this really isn't the case. The size of their Force pool compared to the costs of their abilities allows them to churn out damage and heals at a rare higher rate than any of the other 3 class types. Warriors can burn through a full Rage bar with a handful of attacks, while the other classes can quickly find themselves with a full heat bar, an empty energy bar, both of which empty/refill at a snail's pace once down to one >.

You'd be better off playing one if you want to PvE as well. Groups running HM's tend to prefer a RDPS over melee DPS. As much as I prefer melee classes to range, there is no great reason to play one in SWTOR. Melee doesn't have any higher DPS than range, any more survivability, any more CC capabilities, and unlike Mercs/Sorcs they can't respec to fill in as a healer when needed (except for Operatives, which people tend to not want as DPS anyway).

There is plenty of reason to PvP before the 1.2 patch hits. Just not in the 50 bracket. With 1.2 there will be more warzones, no more RNG bags, ranked warzones, and a whole array of other improvements. Nearly all my guildies have re-rolled alts that they just WZ with. They don't do the planet missions, they simply level through warzones in the 1-49 bracket. In the 50 bracket, either you roll the opposing team, or they roll you. You will experience very few close matches where the two teams are balanced. This contrasts with the 1-49 bracket where there's no expertise or raid gear to screw up gear balance. There's no huge consumables to screw up damage balance. There's not pre-mades every single match that PUGs have no hope of stopping in Huttball. The majority of matches are close battles, with the lead going back and forth in an actual battle, rather than a crushing slaughter. Simply put, 1-49 PvP is a more balanced, more enjoyable experience.

Knockbacks shouldn't be given a cast time, but they should be given longer cooldowns. They are able to be used too frequently right now, which when combined with grapples creates that feeling of being ping-ponged all over the place.

I don't think many players are being kicked for bio. Matches are only ~15 minutes, and the player has to queue and select join. If they need a bio break there's plenty of time between matches to do so.

More often than not, why I see players leave is because they run into a premade that they will obviously not win against. These are the premades that score Huttball after Huttball score in practiced movements, with your team not even being able to get onto other side's ramps... assuming your team can even get the ball at all. These quitters are not just Battlemasters, as much as people would like to claim they are. The quitters are players who have queued up to do their dailies, and an assured loss does nothing to help them complete those dailies. To address that, there are 2 changes that could be done to combat the problem. Change dailies so they can complete by 3 wins, or 6 losses. For a player to have lost 6 times, they will have had to play upwards of 1.5 hours, not counting queue time. I think that should be considered sufficient time for a daily, since they will still have their Ilum dailies to do (which will take their total PvP requirement to 3+ hours every day). This will also help get these quitters out of warzones faster, so the players who do want to PvP wont have such lopsided matches. Undo the decrease to Warzone Commendations awarded for a loss. The rewards from Warzones were decreased a little while ago, and so you receive fewer Commendations for a loss. This pretty much removed all incentive for players to stay in a warzone when they're losing. Giving them ~26 Commendations just isn't enough incentive to keep players from leaving a frustrating match. Give them more so they have a reason to stay until the end. Either (or both) of those would go a long way to address the problem. I don't suggest this as someone who leaves warzones, but rather as someone who is tired of having zero chance of recovering in warzones due to the amount of quits. Yesterday I had 3 warzones in a row shut down because so many left and were not replaced. The 4th warzone stayed up until the end, but kept flip-flopping between the shutdown warning and shutdown canceled. This morning while trying to do my dailies, my team had over 8 players quit and be replaced by the 10 minute mark (at which point the score was 4-0 with us having never held the ball longer than 5 seconds). After 3 matches I was still sitting on 0/3 completed, in part because our team was constantly fewer than the other team. It's gotten ridiculous.

In terms of PvP, you do get a "bubble" of sorts. The Energy Shield upgrade that makes you immune to interrupts for 12 seconds is amazing.

Whenever I (Marauder) find myself getting focussed by range players, I use Force Camouflage to make them lose me as a target. I'll combine that with Predation if I need to hightail it out of there, rather than just force them to switch targets. Really though, you shouldn't be fighting by yourself in the first place. Fight around teammates, then you don't need to bring any friends with you. Unless your team is devoid of healers, you should be able to catch some heals long enough to break LoS of the range players.

Great info so far, thanks guys On a normal pull where there's multiple mobs that aren't CC'ed, should I just go to town on them, using Smash freely and DPS'ing them down? Or should I refrain from using Smash when there are Strong mobs in the mix? And should I stick primarily to the tank's target, or kill the other mobs while the tank keeps the toughest mob on him/herself? My biggest concern is pulling too much aggro, and then having the healers get aggro from healing me. I haven't really done much PvE group play since Everquest 1, and that was very different from how things are today.

Ever since hitting 50 I've just being doing warzones. While I have been having a lot of fun, I would now like to try some 50 PvE content as well. That being said, I have no idea how to play a Marauder in group PvE. I didn't do any Heroics beyond level 20 because it was a pain in the rear to get a group for them. I didn't do any Flashpoints beyond BT for the same reason. While I could just jump into a HM group once I see one and try things out for myself, I'd prefer not be the cause of wipes and wasted time for other players. Rather I would like to get some tips from experienced PvE Marauders so I have a rough idea of what to do, before I head into a Flashpoint. I'm not really looking for spec or gear pointers so much as I'm looking for general group play tips (aside from the obvious "Don't break CC's"). To AOE or not AOE, offtank yay or nay, kill trash or tank's target, etc. Any pointers would be appreciated!

Pre-made soccer teams need their own league. And goalkeepers are overpowered. They can touch the ball with their hands.

I really can't see them putting in an AFK votekick without having some sort of safeguards to prevent it from being used to kick people who aren't AFK. The devs are gamers too. They know if you give gamers a new toy, the first thing those gamers will do is try to break it. Perhaps they'll make it so you can only initiate a votekick against a player who is not in combat, and if the vote passes, a timer is put on that player that will boot them out unless they make an action. That way it can only be used to kick someone who truly is AFK. Same here.