Eh, I was feeling pretty bored already. My favorite character is being nerfed to hell - I might spend some time on one of my alts, but yeah, this is probably gonna push me closer to unsub. More than the nerf is the snotty attitude by the devs. I.e. GZ saying, "Hey! Stop talking about our patch notes! We made other secret changes! Test them before you talk crap! Oh, btw, no you can't character copy over to the test server. Nyah, nyah, boo, boo, stick your head in doo doo!" Okay, okay, so it's not a direct quote...

That's all well and good, but this is still a HUGE nerf. Maybe you guys don't pvp a lot, but I do, and the only way I drop healers is when I get a lot of RS procs. TD>FB>RS>RP>RS>FB>RS>FB>RS - This happens far more often than not. Maybe I'm lucky? It let's me drop heal specced sages, etc. Take out those back to back RS, and I don't think I"ll have the sustained burst I need to a) manage heat appropriately, b) dps through heals. Now, if the devs don't want people to be able to kill healers, that's one thing, but don't take away my ability to do that and then tell me it isn't a nerf. PS, George, if you are reading: I'd love to actually test this, but no way I'm spending time to level up and gear out a 50 on your PTS. Let us char copy over if you are serious about having a real test environment.

I was shield tech and used Mako on that fight. If you grapple one away from the other then stand in between them, you can get them to a range where 1 will shoot at you, and not be in range to heal the other. Then you just have to interrupt the one you are killing. Cheers.

I think they added all the instances to handle the huge influx of players from the new 'free weekend pass' promotion! Yeah! That's it...

Forgive me this brief nostalgic moment - my guildies and I were talking about this yesterday. Do you guys remember DAOC? If you played it, do you remember not only the awesome RVR experience, but the incredibly complex and interesting style system? Positional attacks? (front, side, back) Reactionaries? (you parry or block or dodge and a style opens up) Chains? (you hit with one attack and can hit the next one and then boom a great finisher) Why is combat in today's MMO so simplified? Click target and spam available attack in my rotation. In DAOC you had to be mentally involved in the fight. You saw an enemy and you were immediately trying to get to his back or side for your best styles. You dodge an attack, woot, time for your dodge chain! You land a stun, quick get to his back. Ahh, the good old days. I sure hope that the kid who wrote the combat and RVR code for DAOC is working on something new. I think Matt Firor hired him over at Zenimax, but I'm not sure.

I just wanted to post and say that, out of principle, I refused to read your post, because you put that (READ) in the title.

I think Gabe is hoping that if he ignores the avid PVP players, we'll go away. If we go away, we'll stop posting about how awful it is, and he'll stop getting in trouble with his boss. I can imagine the screams and tears flowing around his office every time they do a patch and Ilum or warzones remain bugged/lame.

So there's no pvp skill or gear progression in GW2? I suppose it could still be fun, but one of the things I liked about DAOC was earning realm points to improve my character ever so slightly with each realm rank. By the time you hit RR10 (and that took a long time in the old days) you were noticeably more powerful. I can see how some of you don't like that idea, but it was fun for me.

Yeah, they do. I've gotten 2 pieces out of the last 40 or so bags since the update. They just nerfed the drop rate and increased the comms.

Interesting replies. My biggest concern with regard to SWTOR pvp is that even if Bioware has realized how popular Republic vs. Empire pvp is (DUH!!), they may not be able to do a lot with it because of their game engine. It seems this engine just doesn't handle lots of people on the screen well. Meanwhile, take a look at some of the other modern MMOs and you can see that their engines are far more optimized for large crowds. A curious decision by Bioware considering their huge budget...

Hah - funny how the servers have different customs. Our bases are ghost towns. You could sit their all day and never see an enemy. People just take the darn taxis and run to center for armament circling and hand holding...

We're talking pvp here - can you explain with a few more words how gw2 pvp will fail? I am considering leaving swtor to go there because of what I've seen of the pvp system they'll be offering. If you have some info that would change my mind, please share it. I want to stay, as I like the idea of Star Wars - it's just so badly implemented at the moment...

I was trying to not talk directly about specific title names, to show some respect to Bioware, seeing as we are on their forums, but I suppose it is pertinent to the conversation - I saw some rather long videos of the GW2 WvWvW system this weekend - they can be found on youtube if you are interested.

Let me preface this by insisting that I'm not a troll and that I do want SWTOR to succeed. Unfortunately I've spent the last few weeks feeling more and more frustrated by Bioware's idea of open world pvp, Ilum. On my server, it isn't uncommon to see Republic and Imperial circling side by side around central, collecting armaments together. When I jump on one of these enemies I'm often chastised by my realm mates that they are just going to start 'zerging' and we'll lose our chance to gather armaments. When that isn't going on, it's just a matter of ever increasing group sizes battling until the dominant faction has so many people at central that the other faction can't muster enough to challenge them. It's really not a very fleshed out or interesting world pvp system. I do enjoy the warzones to an extent, but they get old after many dozens of repeats. Now to my topic: I've recently seen the beta footage of an upcoming competitor's WvWvW PVP system. This video made me think of the good old days in DAOC and I was very pleased to see how crisp the graphics were with MANY people on the screen. The objectives look interesting and fun, and make circling for armaments on Ilum seem like a really bad joke. Can Bioware do enough to improve their open world pvp before competition takes away the players who are interested in PVP?

Yeah, the key to the G13 is the little thumb joystick. All movement keys are handled there, leaving my fingers free to do their thing on all those comfortably placed, programmable keys.

By all means, people, please keep using only half your abilities. It only makes me look better. Also, if you have a job, I recommend buying a Logitech G13 - it made managing 20+ skills trivial.

Are you doing anything about the /stuck exploit on Ilum?

Go ahead and afk. Won't stop me and my friends from going around racking up kills/medals. If I don't have to worry about a win, then I couldn't care less what you do in there.

So basically, get to 200-250 surge and stop worrying about it... At least this nerf hits everyone.

Course it is - unless they were all hurt already which has happend many times, I jump into a pack that's got several people low health, flamesweep, flamesweep, flamesweep - 3 dead enemies. It's quick and sometimes it's your only AOE option. If you read what I wrote, I acknowledged that one of the primary benefits is that it makes a spectacle of you, letting your team go to work while enemies are like, "let me kill that #@$ twirling around spraying fire!" PS - I'm not dumb. I realize this isn't efficient heat usage. Sometimes this game is more about having some fun than doing the most efficient thing. At least for me.

I agree on the situational use of flamethrower, missle blast, AND flame sweep. If DFA is down and some guys are crowding on a door/node it is fun as can be to jump in , carbonize, flamesweep, flamesweep, flamesweep, vent gas, flamesweep, flamesweep - lol the dps numbers fly. If my buddies are also dropping AOE in there, we can drop a pack of enemies in a few seconds. It's great cause you make such a spectacle of yourself twirling around spewing fire, that the enemies often get tunnel vision trying to kill you, ignoring your healer and friends who are also dumping AOE. Maybe it's not the most efficient use of my heat/dps, but it sure is fun. Can pull big aoe numbers with just 1 dart + flamethrower on a similar pack, also - but not nearly as hysterical.

I have a naga and a logitech G13 - I never use the buttons on my naga. Wish I didn't buy it, but it's a decent mouse anyway, so no biggie. The G13 owns all. PS - Flamethrower is a very good skill to learn to use situationally. I use it several times in most matches to great effect.

I've killed a lot of hoppers with unload. You guys act like it takes forever, and you have to be at range. If RP is down, railshot is down, my heat is fairly high, and the guy is spazzing around in circles, I love to pop unload, and it does the job moving his health bar down quite a bit, setting him up for another RP which is usually up by then. I have a build kinda similar to Ironfist, btw, though a few differences. I use 'useless' flamethrower a lot too, and it works just lovely. Maybe I'm more creative than some people? Channeled abilities have their place - flamethrower is nice on those gunslingers hunkering in their cover, on 3 or 4 guys pounding on your healer, on stunned targets, etc.

Since the three sets can be used interchangeably and still get the bonus, I would assume it happens with any of the combat tech sets. Hope Bioware fixes this soon.

Thank you for your answers!