This is an excellent video on how to kill mara/sents. While it is from a specific class perspective it shows what each of their abilities does, what it looks like when they use it, and the best way to counter it.

Our server has an interesting trend of good pvpers re-rolling pubs. I personally rerolled my imp mirror class to play with a pub guild that I greatly enjoyed pvping against and in leveling have found that the pugs tend to be more skilled than the imps (on our server). They also seem to have more desire to win. While there are still matches where people do poorly I think the smaller community puts pressure on players to perform well. It also means you are more likely to get qued with the same people and learn what the expect from one another. While I see people argue about premades and mumble often, the greatest benefit of playing with the same people repeatedly is knowing their tendencies. I don't need my teammate to tell me on mumble where he will be for the pass. I see our team, I see the enemy team, and I know where he will go. Low population can lead to basic premades without quing together. Even if it just means you know that one guy is always going to leave the voidstar door empty, it is an advantage over playing with a bunch of names you rarely ever see.

While there is some good discussion in this thread I think people seem to be overlooking the 4v2 aspect and how guard works. Four players stuns and interrupts + correctly split dps would have lead to a dead tank and then a dead healer. We all have our moments were we do extraordinary things and I don't mean to downplay your performance, but against four players actively thinking about what they are doing, properly using resolve mechanics and understanding the right moment to switch burst the tank should have gone down. Also, while it sounds like you did a great job los-ing, in a 4 v 2 situation los should easily be less effective. While your overall point and suggestions may be useful I think the specific situation it is just an example of four players not working together well. Their failure to play well does not demonstrate that guard should be nerfed and you should have more defensive cooldowns. If this was an average situation against just a heals and a tank then it would be more compelling. I don't doubt that the extra mitigation did help you more than an extra dps would have, but guard is not going to give you the ability to 4 v 2 consistently.

TTK has changed greatly for pre-50 and 50. I leveled a character 10-50 through pvp and have been re-rolling the same class at the request of a high end pvp guild on the opposite faction in the same way. I have checked the levels of my opponents to confirm that they are not high enough to be taking expertise mods out of 46 weapons (as I had done previously). There are a great many factors outside of expertise and I would agree that some of it could be more players are studying their class (meaning it is not a dev caused issue). Regardless of the cause, it is clear that the TTK has changed (not the time to die, the time to kill. This is not qq about dying to quickly. My opponents die faster than they did before and I do as well). Personally, I'm not saying it is better or worse, I will adapt either way. I simply would like to know if it is an intended change or an 'oops,' as is the title of this thread. You wont find my posts in any other pvp damage related threads, because I don't care. I would simply like to know if in a hotfix or the patch the devs are going to change their mind. It effects my gear and spec choices which takes time, credits, and theory-crafting. p.s Obviously pre 50 pvp does not matter, the point is made simply to eliminate the majority of expertise in terms of TTK.

The rng attached to the former method was just annoying. Queing with the same players constantly and one person having 5 peices, another having 3, and another having 2 did not differentiate our skill. The same time put in and the same victories and losses did not equal the same reward. I'm not saying that the new method is better or worse, we can debate how hard or long it should take to get gear all day, but rng just isn't fun.

I've been watching the dev forums since 1.2 came out to see if there is a response. Lets hear it Bioware. It doesn't even have to be the response we all want to hear. Many games and changes are successful not because the devs bend to the will of the players but because they are more responsive. The silent majority may not be posting qq threads or woot this is awesome threads, but they are watching and waiting. I can't count the number of times I've read "working as intended" and not liked it, but it satisfied me because I at least understood what to expect.

My favorite matches are when I get hit by lightning from 5 different directions and then bounced around like a rag doll. I don't have any problem with the class though. That many of any class using signature abilities leads to loads of fun.

It sounds like the real issue they need to fix is the barely populated servers. Cross realm pvp is just a band aid to a problem that will show itself more in other ways as time goes on (ah availability, groups, never seeing anyone anywhere, world pvp, etc) . I enjoy that there is no cross realm. Rivalries form and you start to know who you are fighting. In civil war fighting the same couple groups all night (I work until late at night) you watch each others strategies change and evolve to meet and beat the changes. Its fun. Cross realm isn't game breaking for me, but I enjoy single realm. Imo, fix the real issue of terrible server populations. The game has been out long enough for the populations to normalize a bit.

I've never once seen grass/snow. I'm glad my server knows how to read a map.

I keep running into naked people. I thought they were trying for the quick heal medal at the beginning but find them later in the match still naked.

Imo the only reason for gear in pvp is the choice to lean toward a specific stat or take a set bonus to be unique and develop play style. Outside of that, if you really care about a true test of skill, there is no reason for anyone to have better or worse stats. I want to outplay you, not out crit you. If anything that would mean the cream of the crop would have far more bragging rights because they are obviously better when they end up ranked higher, and have better rewards (rewards, not stats). Before this nerf it really just meant you started your grind earlier. But out of the thousands that care about this there are only a handful of them. And really, the cream may be better than you, but have gotten their gear later for whatever reason (life, other games, etc). The shinies don't prove that you are the best, just that you invested time. Some people did get it in a faster amount of time because they ARE good. But having the gear doesn't prove that in any way. We can argue that getting gear should be hardcore and should prove you are the best, but the mmo demographic has proven that rewarding the top .5% (not most of you reading!) doesn't make as much money. So, imo, screw the gear chasing, make it so many people can be equal, and provide meaningful rewards for proving you are the best when equal. Grinding super fast and running a full bm team early and facerolling everyone doesn't show skill. Winning 90% of your games while on equal footing, shows incredible skill.

In that unkillable game me (heals) and my tank ran all the way to the other teams base with our flag. Walked into the middle of their entire team (10 people), killed their flag carrier, and then ran back to cap, three times in one game. Somehow the game isn't dead. I do like your thread though. The love of dramatic titles and language on these forums never cease to amuse me and immediately make it hard to take the subject seriously.

Many great points. Specially with two good pvpers .1-.2 second advantages add up quick. If one person is consistently causing even a short break in the others dps they can end up several global cooldowns ahead of the other by the end of a fight. If its a keyboard turner its far more significant. Also, if you are constantly forcing them to turn and then turn again you can see whats going on around you without adding spinning your camera to movement + abilities. Seeing a target with more priority running by with the hutball/running up to heal, etc is always useful. Even with your camera all the way out, you can't see everything.

It was pointless. Just like arbitrarily deciding servers are empty by looking off peak times in an mmo that is barely out of its first month-which echos the many this is broken I quit/game is dying threads. Games like wow may be able to claim they have 8 million subs, but in the course of the games life, many, many, more than that many people have bought and quit the game. I apologize for my lack of point but after a boring day at work of reading endless 'the sky is falling threads' I felt like releasing my frustration with a little sarcasm. The sky is not falling...yet. And hopefully it wont.

GUIZ, All of Europe is light now! Get out before you're the only one left! p.s even though I /canceled and have posted in every thread on the forums to tell people, I will still spend hours on the forums every day until my account expires!

Ever wonder why the rebellion was so small by the days of "A New Hope?" BW is just ensuring we have an accurate lore experience.

The point is since our shield stats and defense stats have very little impact on our performance as a tank it is better for us to take dps sets/talents and keep only core abilities (i.e why should I put 5 points to get 10% shield chance when I could take much more desirable talents in other trees). The result of this is as people figure this out you will be facing that tank with similar mitigation, and far more damage-regardless of whether we or you think tanks have enough or need more.

BW is at least directing people to this thread. Even a working as intended post would be nice. I understand the mechanics and don't have a strong opinion either way, but if they are planning on changing things, knowing anything would prevent grinding different sets of gear for no reason. If nothing changes I think hybrid tanks will be the normal, and then we will see a set of qq tanks hurt but don't take enough damage/guard is op!/etc threads.

Mako recently gave me +points for choosing to killing someone. I was shocked.

Sure I make like 50-100k in a day if I'm lucky. When you consider talent respecs are going to get over 50k, your repairs over 100k and high level crafting mats will eventually be very expensive, it really wont be that great. I'm level 400 and will enjoy it while it lasts. Considering the item to buy ce access is 1 million, and access to the other vendor (if you didn't buy those editions) is 1.5mil, I believe the average player wealth is going to be much, much higher than we envision.

I wake up. Sit in que for the first time ever on my server-for 5 minutes. Go to work. Use teamviewer to log into my computer at home, send companions on missions every 15 minutes for nine hours. Drive home. Find computer still on character selection screen. Win. In all seriousness though I picked my server based on the fact that I assumed people wouldn't swarm to its name. Its now full, but no outrageous ques as of yet.

To OP: You say your graphics card usage is 30%. You might want to check gpu-z and see what your clocks/shaders are at. Its possible that your graphics card is down-clocking for some reason. It is an issue with your computer, settings, and the client. That doesn't mean it doesn't have anything to do with Swtor. I have an AMD 555 and a 570 and I sit at 60fps the majority of the time on high. Sometimes it drops to in the 40s. I have AA forced through nvidia inspector, not nvidia control panel. While I understand your bottleneck rational my 555 is pushed to 4.0ghz. BF3 may be highly optimized for video cards while swtor may rely heavily on the CPU. It is possible it is not feeding your graphics card fast enough-hence bottleneck. Bf3 may be sending more info to your graphics card, but swtor may be using so much cpu that it isn't able to send enough info. That doesn't mean that is your issue, but ruling it out because you can play bf3 on ultra does not make sense. To Lazlo3 with the 'super' computer: While there are various issues with the client it sounds like you are definitely down-clocking. I agree there is no reason you should ever see 15fps with that system. However, I have had plenty of issues with swtor, but none of them have been fps related, and I run a much lesser system. You say you are in the business, but my first guess would be power management settings in your bios. Edit: I just noticed the SLI. I doubt you haven't tried this, but I would disable one, remove the bridge. We all know how wonderful nvidia is about releasing sli optimization months and months after a release. Not to mention if its a down-clocking issue that is so much overkill your dual graphics cards should be yawning without forced optimization. You may want to try running bf3 + swtor at the same time or a graphics benchmark + swtor to see if you get a lot better performance under full load. When I get home from work I'll check what kind of usage I'm sitting at/what driver version and see if I can't be more helpful. Edit 2: I don't know how this would effect your situation but swtor is recommending you set your pagefile to 3x your ram. Win 7 64 bit auto sets mine at 1gig under my amount of ram. Probably wont help you, but I've only seen them state that in a random forum post, and it did resolve some other issues I was having. Worth looking into.

This is exactly what I love about questing in this game. While the model may be the same as go here and kill X number of Y, or gather X, there is variety in combat. Aoe down this pack, Mix up your abilities to kill the strong mob. Oh no, you got an elite and a strong mob, blow your cooldowns, maximize your rotation, wooot you won! Its not mind numbing repetition.

Random server LF whatever, encourages bad behavior. Keeping things server side means people develop a reputation and those who chose to be terrible human beings will eventually be well known. It also means those or are either fun or good develop a network of people that they can actually regularly play with/trade with, etc.

Not that it makes the issue any better but a quick fix is flashpoints. Run blacktalon/hammer/whatever a few times and each time you will get the extra alignment. Gives you more freedom in quests. Not saying you should HAVE to do this to be able to make the choices you want, but its something.