This made me lol Its absolutely difficult to understand some of their decisionmaking. We'll have to see if they were right after all, or if some of us actually were not that crazy with some of our fears and opinions.

This reflexts how i feel as well. Atm, against a well played sentinal, vanguard, guardian or shadow an equally geared/skilled commando is in trouble, big trouble, but we still have a chance to win if we play perfectly and the other makes mistakes. With these classchanges any well played sentinal/marauder will kill me. Its fine haveing classes have their nemesis, but even with that they should still have a sliver of a chance against this classes. And the job of the developer is to make sure the gaps dont grow too large, what we call balance. I think the current changes make the balance worst then it was, and i think that isnt a good development. I think its pretty obvious that sentinals/guardians are being set up to dominate rated warzones (intended or not), and will be stacked by competative teams.

That's not my point. Its examples. My point is their decisionmaking, and which kind of numbers they use to base these decisions on. If you take all the data, from all the players it may seem that a class needs a buf, while it is actually fine (like the warriors from my example) Warriors are actually one of the harder classes to play to their full potential ingame atm, and thus a bigger portion of the players that play them will perform bad on them (and they do, i've seen atrocious marauders and sentinals in battlemadstergear doing 150k'ish damage in warzones, where my guildies on their sentinals did 500k'ish in the same warzones, time and time again). BW doesnt seem to look at this. That is my biggest concern. They seem to make unfounded decisions time and again. Like the one when they chanced to global cooldown ui into a disaster when there was nothing wrong with it. Or the staggered entry to the game which was a complete disaster, or the guildplacement system that would balance population that went completely wrong. All those glitches and bugs along the way, that shows how green BW is at making mmo's. Until now, where we have come to the point where the 1.2 patch is the make or break of this game. So much hangs on this, and i feel they are again making some very weird decisions, not based on anything me nor my guild full of veteran mmo players can comprehend. My doubts have nothing to do with my class receiving a nerf mate, its the reasons they present for the nerf not matching with the changes they put trough, that has me feeling they dont have a clue. And that makes me sad. Because i may well be the biggest Starwars/BW fan out there.

Hey fellow gamers, I want to start with a quote from the Bioware podcast, because it has me worried on how they do things. After that quote i want to go into the reasons why im slowly loosing faith in how BW approaches classchanges and buggs. You may not agree with me, but im interested how others think about this, because the feeling im getting atm is not good. So, the quote: I've seen someone say something about perspective being everything in pr for a company. Well the perspective i get from the above of bioware as a company is not a very proffesional one. What math are you using? The avarage numbers people crunch out ( the stuff you get from your metric system )or does the metric system actually look at the max potential classes have by looking at the players with the highest outputs. Why buffs to the strongest 1v1 class baffle me: Why am i worried you guys are using the avarage numbers? an example: In PVP (and to an extent in pve as well) the skilled Dps Knights and Warriors (both sentinals/marauders and guardian/juggernauts) dont need any buffs, they might even need a small nerf atm (the sentinals in my guild that push out 600-700k in long warzones agree with me on this). What are we seeing in 1.2 atm? they get substantial buffs. So you are buffing your strongest 1v1 class in pvp into OPness even more. Is this based on the best players/the 100% potential of the class, or are you basing these buffs off the avarage player. If the last is true (which i assume, because there is no other way to understand this particular change) you are doing it the wrong way round. A class should always be buffed or nerfed towards its Potential. The players that reach that potential is what you should look at. Because those players will be wrecking people to death in seconds in 1.2, while the poor quality knights and warriors will need more buffs even after 1.2. A bad player will remain bad, no matter how much you buff something. Changes to commando troopers, same story: In the same line of thought the changes to combat medic healing and gunnery grav round can be mentioned. i read somewhere on the forum that your main reason for nerfing grav round was because you wanted to give commando's incentives to stop using it so much. But while saying that you leave the inner workings of the commando the same, and with that the reasons why troopers will still use grav round in 1.2. Just with less damage, but they still have to build up their buffs with grav round. So you fail your goal there, not only making gunnery less viable by nerfing a good portion of its damage, but also taking away a good portion of its survivability by cutting the grav round debuff shield from 10 to 5% and making the cooldown on concussion charge longer. making one of your weaker 1v1 classes in pvp even weaker. Again i dont understand which "math" or metrics you are using to justify these changes. Are you only looking at dps numbers? or are you actually knowing the inner workings of your own game? Because changes like the above leave skilled pvp players scratching their head. The changes to the combat medic has several of my healers worried as hell, especially combined with the nerf to reusable medpacs. I understand balancing of healing is important, but from what i've understood of the numbers my people told me the nerf to actual availeble ammo for combat medics per minute is going to be huge. Maybe even close to 30% less. This is worrying, because you're making content in PvE much harder in the meantime. Changing lots of classes at the same time. Changing to many core things at the same time: I guess my point is that you are changing too many things at the same time. And you are doing it, from my point of view, based on the wrong kind of numbers. Thats the perspective me, and lots of players i talk to, get from some of the Classchanges you are pushing in. Some of the example changes to classes i use above illustrate that it seems you dont know what your doing. And sure you can tell me and other players that its all based on good math and carefull decision making, but what im telling you bioware is that it doesnt come across as such. Me and my guildies (we've cleared 10/10 NM mode in both 8 and 16 man, and we have dozens of battlemasters/war hero's) have discussed the changes to all classes to a large extent, and we just cant figure out some of these changes that will make balance worst, not better. Like i said, any skilled sentinal/marauder will admit he doesnt need a buff, maybe might need a small nerf to be balanced out against most classes. And it is these kind of chances that leave me, and many others with me confused and full of questions. Some more explanation from your side BW, might clear it up a bit. Im still trying to keep faith/trust, but i must admit that even in me its waning. Jeng

These kinds of comments from devs make me shake my head. They really dont know how their own game works. When i run defence in my premades in huttball i keep mid and the ramps around it clear of enemies. I almost never drop out of combat. I used my already nerfed to the ground medpacks to stay up healthwise and the occational self heal, now i dont even know why i still have Biochem. Implications are pretty bad for me, but more so for people without self heals in pvp. especially if they dont have a healer. ******** excuse that you cant make good encounters with a 4.5-5k heal availeble to people every 90 seconds.

not thought trough, foolish chance with huge implications for healer light warzones. I have seen plenty of warzones where i didnt get out of combat for 5-10 minutes at a time. Using my medpac and a selfheals to keep myself up. Scratching my head again bioware, Slowly but surely loosing faith here.

i've going to check into it myself as well, though my guildies are usually well informed, i didnt see the guildsummit stuff yet. Though no 8 man premades when 1.2 goes live is worrysome to me

Guildys are now telling me there will be no 8 man premades in rated warzones for the preseason at least? Can anyone tell me im having a bad dream? I have to go into rated warzones with less well geared pugs on avarage for republic then my Empire rival premades when its counting for rated? When is this preseason going to end? 2 months? 3 months after 1.2? My guild has been waiting for 8 man premades for 2 months and more, and now im being told its not comming in april. You got to be kidding me. Not a happy camper here

This would be great indeed. It would make me go pure 8 man teams most of the time, but leaves the current system for people not wanting, or being able to make an 8 man team. Then when you play normal you wont meet 8 man teams half the time.

D3 destroying swtor? Different games mate, different audience with some overlap. I for one am not planning to play D3 at all. But the full premades aye. Full time pvp guilds wont accept anything less. For random pugs to have influence on your rating would be a nono to many of us..

I totally agree with the above. This is also why i think many pvp guilds would be dissapointed and irritated if its not possible to 8 man queu for rated. Especially when they start loosing games due to random bad pug players joining their group. BW will have thought of this as well, and therefore 8 man premades will be there. With this i dont really mind meeting soloqueu groups in rated warzones now and then. This will sort itself out eventually, with the 8 man teams climbing to the top of the ladder and eventually only meeting other 8 man premades. Because in the end, nine out of ten times the 8 man premade will beat the random solo que team.

I dont really agree with you. Some classes are strong yes, but i find swtor classes pretty balanced compared to other mmo's. Im sure there will be multitudes of setups.

agreed on the skill>gear All im saying is that gear incentifies more playtime. Everyone wants a new set of gear at a certain point. if only from a cosmetic standpoint. Walking around in the best stuff is also a way to stand out in the crowd. Most people love that. When gear scales too much with huge leps in stats and such and makes the gear>skill it becomes a problem for pvp. Thats why im all for geartiers in pvp, just make the gearscaling differences between tier's very small. It wont have too much of an impact then on premade pvp either.

Gear is there as an incentive. It always has. Mmo's are about progressing your character, and part of that is gear. What bioware needs to look out for though is that they dont make the gaps between tier's of gear too large. If they make the improvements to this new gear like the difference between champion and battlemaster gear (Which is very small) i see no problems.

you think so? im not sure. Your thinking about ranking brackets? They've not worked much with brackets so far.