My sage has around 1350 expertise and I still get rocked for 6-7k smashes and that's just the state of that class right now - they are going to hit and hit hard. I'm full balance and I don't find it difficult to perform well in PuG warzones (99% of how I play). The key is understanding your role and filling the role effectively - for example, without help, 2+ people focusing me means I will die and there is nothing I can really do about it. I can only hope to disrupt some objective before I die. The way to survive is movement and positioning - experience will teach you where to stand and not stand (which is pretty obvious to most, but takes practice to constantly do well). Please, please, please understand that you're a support class, especially as a hybrid healer. You excel at controlling the enemy - force lift, force slow, stun, etc. If you're interested, I can post some videos of how I play (I don't pretend to be the best, but I'm not bad).

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=481046

Good point - I do understand that is generally bad to LoS my teammates, but in the situation in the video, I'm not communicating well with either of the shadows and I can't guarantee they'll peel, but yes I agree in general Hopefully if I get a chance to play in some rated games, I'll be able to perfect strategies in which I rely on other people - currently, I'm too used to playing by myself and PuGs so I'm not counting on anyone other than myself to survive/defend/attack. Are you guys also running the hybrid spec? I've been hearing some thoughts about going full heals for rated, but I can't imagine losing the utility from the hybrid spec, but I'm guessing that comes from the lack of accepting people assisting me.

Already working on all of these actually - the last tip is good since it should give me more time to actually get the heal off

Thanks for the comments guys. I'll post a new one soon

I'm not participating in rated, so I can only speak of experience in normal WZs, but I'm not finding any problem with my 21/20 hybrid. I don't necessarily end the WZ with the top healing stats or top damage/healing ratio, but I do feel my role is effective in each WZ. I used to be full Seer until 1.2 when I switched to the hybrid and the thing you have to realize about the hybrid is that you should always be DPSing when possible. I love switching gears and starting to lay on some LOLburst DPS on low targets (spam Disturbance until Tidal Force proc then Tidal Force/Project/TeleThrow). Because of that, I'm assisting my team in killing healers and DPS, thus alleviating some of the damage output being done (so even though I heal for less, I help kill to reduce incoming damage, etc). This is especially helpful if you get into a team with multiple healers on your side and you can't kill fast enough to grab an objective. Just remember that as a sage you must always be mobile and position yourself well - do not allow yourself to get caught out in the open when two melee jump you. Also, this information assumes that are you running in PuGs where you do not usually have a guard or friendly peels assisting you.

Hey guys, I took a short video today during a random, PuG WZ and wanted to get some feedback from the community. I edited the video with some comments of my own and am looking for the same kind of feedback from you guys. Link: (Apologies for the quality - I'm not used to video taking/editing) I'll also be the first to admin that I'm not great at PvP - for example: 1) I rarely remember to use my CC breaker 2) I'm not always facing the right direction in order to cast abilities on enemy players - this wastes at least a second while I adjust and cast 3) My escape routes are sometimes impeded by my "pillars" - I need to get better at not running into them by accident which reduces the effectiveness of the kite 4) I don't usually pay close attention to what kind of spec my opponent has - I assess their potential based on class and usually go from there - there are exceptions of course 5) I have a tendency to tunnel vision and can sometimes forget to check objectives while attempting to kite/stay alive. But anyways, I'm sure you'll see some of these weaknesses in the video, but I wanted to get a sense if I had an accurate representation of the state of my PvP game and what things to work on now that rated is coming out. Thanks for any feedback

The just watched the first fight and figured that I didn't want to watch someone DPS on a test dummy so I closed the window, but maybe there are better fights inside but I'll never know!

I emailed about this and this is their response: I have received your transmission informing us that you wanted to consolidate your characters from 3 different servers to 1 server and you are willing to pay for this to happen. We understand your plight. However, this option is not part of the current character transfer service and we hope to ensure balanced server populations across the service.

Is this just me? I can't seem to find any of these on the GTN and if I put some up for sale, they don't appear in the Browse section, but they do in the Sell section? I checked two servers (Bastion and Jedi Covenant) and can't see any on either.

I saw a guy last night in HB tell everyone in the ops channel to not stand by the edge of our spawn point so the ball carrier couldn't jump to us...Normally a great idea, but he typed this while standing on the edge, got jumped to, and they scored.

This. Kiting an enemy away from your time usually means the enemy is winning - not you. You want to recognize and avoid the enemy "peeling" you away from your teammates - or out of guard range. If you're a sage/sorc healer, make liberal use of your friendly pull to orchestrate support - pull a friendly to you to help peel the enemy off of you. Always remember that your specific role (outside of objectives which everyone is held to the same standards) is to support and heal your team and if an enemy player is preventing you from doing that, you need to do something about it instead of just accepting it.

I don't pretend to understand how they store their data, but given my experience working in the field, I'm sure an engineer could write a script in a couple hours to faction swap a character - more time will be spent around the logistics and the decisions as to what happens in certain situations (maybe only apply to level 50 characters who have finished their storyline) Companions just swap - normalize their gear level and give the new companions the associated gear - any aesthetic differences are at the cost of the user who initiated the transfer.

Please don't misunderstand me; I do care about story and enjoy this game that much more because of story. I do not, however, believe this voluntary service has a detrimental affect on the story aspect of this game. By doing the transfer, you're acknowledging that you are missing out on a story and are going to be put potentially in the middle of another, but just enjoy it from there After all, you made the choice to do the service

I think they should consider it because of the filtering effect of bringing in extra money will have on the game - they lost subscribers and had to make cuts. Revenue will allow more resources to work on more stories and furthering the character narrative of the game. And what is lost? A small amount of dev time and people who choose to use this service lose out on a storyline (that they could go and reply especially since they could go the other advanced class)? Seems like they'd consider it

If I'm not mistaken, one commonly mentioned "issue" with this game is the blend of character storyline and MMO end game - storyline matters so much while leveling whereas once you reach the max level, there is no progression and the game turns into a normal MMO where you are grinding out PvE/PvP gear - now, in my opinion, in order to the game to succeed, it needs to be concerned about how both ends are affected when making changes (like you pointed out) - and I totally agree with the amount of resources and time required to make the fiction work, which is why it's a paid service that goes outside of the context of the story aspect of the game. I don't think they should attempt to fix a storyline for each faction transfer; they just allow it without touching the storyline.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Totally understand that concern - see my above post where I explain how I feel they should handle that

I understand your point and agree mostly; the story is great and I love the unique aspect it gives to this game, especially because I love the lore of SW. For this faction swap to work, I don't expect ANY fiction around it concerning the story of your character. If I have a level 50 Sith Warrior that I faction swap to a Jedi Knight, I don't expect BW to facilitate a sideways story to explain why my character is now a Jedi Knight - I just expect the character to appear in my character screen as if I leveled a Jedi Knight - me, as a paying user of this service, am to expect that I just missed the entire story for this character and if I want to experience it, I have to roll the same class and play it through. I'm totally fine with that, but apparently in a super minority. I do want to experience each story as I find them very interesting, but I also want to play with my full WH on a new server with my friends! I want both and I feel this service gives me both.

Just this one It's not paying to win - you understand that right?

Trust me, I'm a software engineer working in the game industry - I fully understand how resources are spent and understand that there are specific sets of people who work on specific problems - this particular problem does not need a client game programmer involved at all. It barely requires art resources and just some server engineers to facilitate the tech to achieve it and designers to work out logistics. Do you guys not understand what time investment means for MMO characters? Sure, I can simply reroll the character on the faction and server of my choosing - I understand that's what is expected, but I'd pay money to be able to continue playing my investment on another server or faction. At the end of the day, it's a money sink for BW who will start looking for new ways to justify the development of this game since the subscriber count isn't impressing.

So this is a valid response (the others are not). If BW wants to pick restrictions around faction balance, that's fine - if my friends and I really just want to play together on our vested characters, we can all just transfer to a new server and faction swap to whichever faction is underrepresented.

How does it honestly affect you if people swap factions? If you don't believe in it, then don't do it

It's not illogical just because you disagree - if I have friends playing Empire, but I have invested time into a Republic character (datacrons, valor, gear, companion affection), I would like the option to faction swap the character - just swap out the companions. I don't even care about the story - if I want to experience the story, I'll just play the class again. I just want to play with my friends in ops and ranked WZs with my full WH characters; not my level 30 reroll.

I agree - at least with the ability to swap factions through a paid service