It would definately not be thriving as much. Healers are usually the hardest thing to find when people try and make a 3v3 team. Just think if the wow system required you to find another teammate who has to be a tank? Queue a tank for PvE. You get an insta pop in WoW. That's how much of a demand they are in even with cross server and a massive playerbase. The 5v5 bracket is not very active, because you have to find more people. Arenas in general would be a lot less active if 4v4 was their only game mode especially if you were required to have a tank on your team. No 2v2 for people to learn how to play and get introduced to WoW Arena either. No conquest points forcing people into ranked content to get the best pvp gear. People would never have an incentive to leave battlegrounds. Arenas would probably have never even taken off if they made tanks essential to arena comps like they are in SWTOR. Pretty sure that's why they purposely left tanks out of pvp. It's too many roles to balance things around. Too many roles required to make a team. Solo ranked (this game's most active ranked mode) will never be balanced and will never be fun for the majority of the playerbase. You can't balance things around tank/healer/2 dps, 1 healer/3 dps and 4 dps, even if they wanted to. Not with guard in the game in its current form. 50% damage transfer with no cooldown, no duration is too polarizing. It's the best and easiest to use defensive in the game. 4 DPS is never going to be fun for new players. People die too fast to learn anything. It turns people off from ranked PvP. They die too fast, because the game's damage is intended to be soaked by a tank. When a tank who guard swaps isn't in the game mode like most solo ranked matches and most warzones they get replaced by more DPS. You see damage inflation. There is no way to balance this or make it fun when you have to have high amounts of damage to counter guard.

You fix it with school lockout on interrupts. Sorc abilities were pretty much copied from WoW. Innervate = Penance. Static Barrier = Power Word Shield. Rejuvenate = Riptide. Roaming Mend = Prayer of Mending. The big difference is that you can counter those abilities in WoW. They copied the abilities, but they didn't copy the counters. Channels do not see enough of a penalty for being interrupted in this interrupt system, because it will still heal and they only see global time lose if they are instantly interrupted. Even then it's only .5 seconds of lost time. Innervate is like a 7 second cooldown as well. So they can Innervate again a few seconds later making the stacks loss not that important. Kolto Infusion, Healing Scan and everything hard casted sees a penalty if you are interrupted (especially late in cast). You have casted downtime. If a merc gets locked on a 1.8 healing scan at the end of the cast, he just lost more than a global worth of time. Add a 2 or 4 second lockout to all other heals when you are interrupted and Innervate becomes more balanced. Increase casted healing output and nerf instant derp heals like roaming mend and anything else that don't have direct counters. Lower cast times on everything rotational that is over 1.5 seconds. Healing scan shouldn't be 1.8+. That's too long with not enough reward.

Knockback separating guard is rarely a thing. It's a lot easier for the tank and healer to just reconnect then separating them with knockbacks. It's a lot more common and a lot easier to just kill through guard in that scenario with stun chains on the healer or just tunnel the tank and CC the healer. Knockbacks are usually wasted resolve on a healer unless you can like knock them off a bridge. It's not a real counter mechanic.

It's not the worst pvp out there, but yeah it's clunky. The movement isn't fluid. It's more made for clickers and keyboard turning. Players with low apm. The camera is buggy. The targeting is worse. It doesn't handle consist jumping and button spam very well at all. You get things like rubberbanding, false globals, ability/animation delay, abilities just not going off. A lot of the problems are probably engine. Combat bugs rarely get fixed, but it's still a good casual game to play.

Guild Wars 2 and SWTOR are entirely different combat systems. SWTOR needs CC. It's like the only way to peel damage, stop guard swaps and healing. They've just gone overblown on instant CC. Can't counter instant crowd control. It should be. I go to CC you. There's an indicator in the mechanic. You can then react to that indicator with an immunity, interrupt, line of sight or whatever else. You don't react, you get CCed. You have one break and a resolve bar to fall back on. Design the indicators well and people can fake out immunities, wait them out and then land their CC. Reward awareness and quick decision making. Not their philosophy though. On topic: The game would have been so much better without guard. Guard causes damage inflation on non-guarded targets. Skill level drops when tanks are in play. Room for error increased. At least 1/3rd of your toolset becomes useless in tank/healer matchups, because people don't need to kite to avoid damage. Then there's skank tanking and tanks abusing dps gear. The only two things guard adds to the game is making tanks pvp viable, which isn't even a good thing, because it causes inbalances in non-tank/healer scenarios. And dps swapping off guard, which if guard was removed, damage could come down and dps would have to swap off defensives anyways. Makes it easier on backpedalers though.

You don't want abilities to do different things in pvp and pve. It's too hard on new players. Most new tanks for example don't understand that guard needs to be swapped around to whoever is taking damage, because a tank doesn't do that in PvE. Flat decrease in output or reduction for certain classes is a good idea, but like it really isn't too difficult to balance say the 3 healers for PvP. The 3 healers almost play the exact same way, it's just abilities like roaming mend are overscaled.

People are going to group up. Nothing wrong with that. It's bioware or w/e's fault for not having good ranked content and not forcing people into ranked content for gear. Group Ranked and Solo Ranked are not designed well. Not fun for most people and there's no real incentive to do them. So you have premades or overgeared experienced players flooding into warzones causing matches to be imbalanced and ruining the pvp experience for new and casual players. Just one of the reasons the pvp community has never really grown.

Dampening would only be barely better than acid. They should just fix absorbs soaking acid damage. WoW dampening works, because a match is not best of 3 rounds, so they can extend to 8-10 minutes. Say they implemented dampening here, it would have to start at like the 2-3 minute mark if you wanted a gradual increase or you would have 8 minute rounds. That's too long especially for a dead pvp game that probably only has 3 teams in queue. Dampening would favor pressure and aoe comps the most. Dot classes, double pt, etc would kill easier through just flat damage once dampening kicks in. Hard swap would be on a timer just like control comps in WoW were against a dampening cleave/lock when it was first introduced. LSDx, FLS, Turbo, RLD, etc. Most warlock teams and turtle cleaves have the advantage the longer the game goes. There's nothing more boring than playing a FLS or LSD mirror. It wasn't until recently that dampening comps didn't dominate the ladder high end. It took blizzard literally years to balance out comps for dampening and FLS is still probably the strongest comp right now. How long do you think it would take the devs in this game to adjust things?

More reliable and stronger relic procs, maybe? This is how other games do it. Right now there isn't enough of a reward for a dps to wait to burst during relic procs, because they aren't reliable a lot of the time. What if they change how relic procs work? On use gives you the most control over your relics, but you don't want a simple on use, because that just leads to people popping relics first global and bursting. You want to reward people for setting up their burst. Relics could proc charges every x amount of seconds from combat activity stacking up to y amount of times. Once you use your relic you gain whatever bonus damage/healing from how many stacks you have for z amount of seconds and all stacks get reset. The more patience, the more rewarding. This allows people to sync their rotational burst with their relic. This also makes the burst more predictable which is a good thing when using defensive cooldowns, because you can track someone's relic stacks. Relics would need a better animation so people could really see when someone is popping their on use and react accordingly. Going off of only buff icons is sloppy design. Make secondary relics static. You wouldn't want 2 relics that do the above. Personally I would like to see pvp medpacs replaced by an on use heal relic and adrenals removed entirely. Consumables required for PvP makes it rough on new players, but that's another topic.

Healers lack counters. Sorcs just stand out, because Roaming Mend is overscaled, Innervate has too short of a cooldown and for some reason they were given Phase Walk. You can't counter their shields. Game doesn't have a purge system. Resolve protects them from being mezzed until their shield fades, so even sins can't sap off their shield, wait and then open without just white barring. You can't really counter Innervate. Interrupting Innervate does very little, because there is no healing school lockout accompanied by interrupts. If interrupts actually stopped healers from using another healing ability for 2-4 seconds, Innervate would be a lot weaker. You interrupt Innervate right now (even instantly) and they can just Roaming Mend next global and you have not slowed their output down. Phase walk. Dumbest thing to ever give a healer. Sorc healers have 2 breaks to crowd control already with Force Barrier and standard break. Phase Walk usable while stunned, simply not thought out. Roaming Mend should be scaled down by half. 1 bounce should not heal as much as any hard casted heal. Phase Walk shouldn't be usable while CCed or just removed entirely and replaced with some kind of damage reduction cooldown you can put on yourself or others. Simple solution for Innervate. Longer cooldown. Better solution. Introduce school lockout for all healers and buff casted healing output to compensate. This would separate the good healers from the mediocre, because then you would have to fake cast or position yourself to avoid interrupts. It's embarrassingly easy to play a healer in PvP.

I haven't played a guardian/jug in awhile. Does leap still give false globals when you try and leap your focus target or did they fix it?

They won't do it, but carbonize should put a debuff on people for 1.5 seconds (uncleansable). After the debuff ends whoever has the debuff is then stunned for x amount of seconds. The stun should be tech cleansable. Right now its the only CC in the game that isn't cleansable unless you count pacify as crowd control. This would give players a way to counter carbonize with immunities or defensives to live the stun. Once it becomes more counterable, you lower the cooldown slightly to compensate. 1.5 seconds is enough time for people to react to the animation and debuff with an immunity, because most immunities in the game are off GCD. This change would also fix Grip -> Carbonize -> Hard Stun which right now only full resolves after the 2nd stun, because people could react better in between the grip + 1.5 second carbonize window. PTs could still chain stun (Hard Stun -> Carbonize within the hard stun), but they would have to sit on their GCD to maximize their stun chain or they would overlay. Right now you don't have to hold your GCD much, because the duration on carbonize syncs up with global cooldowns.

Would be fine if the abilities that had 2 uses actually mattered and could be exploited for being used offensively. Why things like sin deflection cc immunity is stupid isn't that its attached to a defensive, but rather deflection as defensive doesn't guarantee the sin he's going to live with it up. It's pure rng on white attacks. A sins real defensives are vanish, port and shroud. A team cannot switch to an operative after he wastes his rolls. I mean they can, but you can't coordinate that in solo ranked without voice. Wasting rolls doesn't mean anything in group ranked typically, because they have guard to fall back on. The new sin shadowstep will see some penalty if used that way, but melee has so much mobility to fall back on now, I don't know if it will matter much. The sin will still have sprint, so decisions like that whether or not to blow shadowstep for stacks is going to be easier to make, because they'll still have sprint as a gap closer. The problem with too much mobility is just that. People aren't forced to make fight changing decisions, because if you always have a gap closer or root break then there's no thinking required.

I'll break it down better at least for solo ranked. This assumes damage and healing is about the same as it is on live. 4 DPS matches: Sorc Conceal Operative Sin Marauder Jugg Sniper PT Merc Healer/3 DPS matches: (DPS) Marauder Concealment Operative Jugg Sin Sniper PT Merc Sorc Healer/3 DPS matches: (Healers) Sorc Operative Merc Tank/3 DPS: (DPS) Sorc Concealment Operative Sniper PT Sin (Hatred) Marauder Jugg Merc Sin (Deception) Tank/3 DPS: (Tanks) Jugg PT Sin Tank/Healer Solo Queue: (DPS) Sorc Sniper PT Sin (Hatred) Jugg Marauder Concealment Operative Sin (Deception) Merc Tank/Healer Solo Queue: (Tanks) PT Sin Jugg Tank/Healer Solo Queue: (Healers) Sorc Operative Merc

Could you see the player's nameplate when you couldn't tab target to him? The camera + some locations on certain maps will bug out tab targeting. It usually happens when the environment is blocking nameplates for whatever reason and they aren't showing up. If you play with the camera at max distance on civil war for example and fight near the power cords near the mid spawn with your back to the spawn wall, you lose nameplates and won't be able to tab target anything. There are a lot of spots where it is like this. It's not a hack or anything. Not saying you're saying it is. It is just a really poorly designed map, camera, engine, targeting system and game. This might not be what you're talking about though.

Because the sniper roll is definately keeping them alive in solo ranked against a 2+ man tunnel? Rocket out would help a little bit if they added it on live right now, but mercs would still have kiting issues. In 4.0 all melee are getting mobility buffs. Its going to be more than canceled out. Jug: Two leaps, intercede, new roll Marauder: Leap, new roll, Pred! Pred! Pred! Operative: 2 rolls short cd, multi-root/snare breaks, shadowstep If say tomorrow pred was removed from arenas, mercs would still have survival issues against multi-melee. Even with rocket out and then they nerf the cooldown on hydraulics. The one ability that gives mercs a chance to kite somewhat when combined with a pillar. Some maps don't even have a good pillar to kite around with hydraulics. Plus you can't pillar and be healed by your healer. Ranged dps in arena are horrible in (non tank) healer matchups. This rocket out will do next to nothing to help change that for mercs. Rocket out will give the merc 2 seconds before melee get pred-ed back to the merc. It also doesn't really help a healer, because to live on a merc healer right now you need a pillar. Period. Unless you have pred. Maybe with pred, rocket out will help, because when pred fades you can rocket out to the next pillar. If you get caught in the open on a merc healer with no pred & hydraulics against 2+ melee, you lose all your cds and then die.

These changes show how poorly the combat team understands how sniper and operative play in ranked. Operative dps is weak in tank/healer, because they have a hard time getting kills. Shadowstep doesn't really help them there. Shadowstep kick doesn't do anything in this game. They might be able to hard swap a little faster? Concealment operative is really strong in healer/3 dps and 4 dps. Shadowstep makes them stronger in both those matchups. Shadowstep will help the healing operative's mobility which should help them in healer/3dps where they struggle compared to sorcs, but sorcs are gaining port? So any buff the other 2 healers get won't really matter. Sniper is really strong in tank/healer. They will be stronger in tank/healer with this change. Why? They don't need to be stronger in tank/healer. Sniper is really weak in 4 dps. This change will give them at most 6 more seconds. A slight buff. When you look at the other class changes, however, they might have become even weaker in 4 dps matchups. It might put them ahead of PT now in 4 dps. Maybe. Which isn't even good. DPS sorc and concealment Op will still be leading the pack in 4 dps matchups by a large margin. Even if off healing gets nerfed. The cooldown reset will help them in healer/3dps. 2 evasions and a second roll to kite with a sorc healer is pretty big, but really only with a sorc healer, because the sorc healer brings knockbacks and pull. But you have to understand how healer/3 dps plays. Marauder defensives aren't being touched and honestly they gained, because that new dash can be used defensively as another kiting tool for their healer to pick them back up. So looking at things. The pecking order for dps classes in 3 dps/healer will be: Marauder > conceal Op > Jug (gains huge buffs for playing with healers) > DPS sorcs (port isn't great with healers) > Sin > Sniper > PT > Merc Jug through PT you could swap around based on comp which means those classes are close to balanced in 3 dps/healer, but who knows how PTs will fair. Not seeing any real survival buffs for PTs, which means they could fall down to Merc level. Sins get nerfed the longer marks snipers can live, because marks snipers are the best at blowing up sins in a team setting. My guess is sniper passes PT in healer/3 dps, but marauder and concealment operative will still be miles ahead of the other dps classes. Nothing i'm seeing is going to change this. Concealment actually gains in 3 dps/healer. Shadowstep back to your healer and get topped off without having to waste roll or shadowstep back to your healer to peel then roll back to the kill target when defensives are down. Now a concealment will only die in a stun chain. Same with a marauder with a healer. Sorta like it is now. Not the greatest changes for ranked when you break it down.

Have you played 100+ games of solo ranked at all rating tiers on an active server on both the merc healer and sorc healer? You don't need a chart to tell you how much worse the merc healer is and how much stronger a sorc healer is lol. You certainly can't go off of ratings and ranked participation. Most healers queue dodge other healers that can beat them. At least the ones that care about rating and play on active servers. This chart is not accounting for inactive servers where you have both factions queueing all the time. It's not too difficult for a merc or commando to inflate his ratings if he one queue syncs on the less dominated faction or two just picks and chooses when to queue. There is no cross faction or cross server so really you can't even judge this stuff on metrics based on the overall solo ranked data. Even harbringer which is the most active imperial NA, right? There's only what maybe 100 players who play solo ranked once a week? Even if it was 500 players who played a week. You wouldn't be able to judge balance off of metrics with such a small pool. You have to look at the classes. You have to watch the games or play the games and only compare the games where the healer (in this example) mattered. A big portion of ranked games the healer on each side doesn't even matter. Its a fact that merc healers heal for **** compared to sorc healers in solo ranked. Anyone who understands anything about healing solo ranked would agree with this. A merc healer's team has to kill quickly or they have to play incredibly defensive, to make up for what the merc healer is lacking in arena HPS. This even makes it harder for a team to win with a merc healer over a sorc healer at lower levels of play, because it will take lower skilled players more time to kill something and they probably don't know how to play defensive. Its a balance problem. Its a pure balance problem and the developers are too stupid to understand their game or they don't care about balancing solo ranked just like they don't care about GSF, because so few people play it.

Yeah everyone has their personal preference. The 30% stun DR I keep bringing up, because its better than egress for pure survival. If you run bubble stun and knockback root, you don't have to sprint the first roots from people. You can eat them. Except vengence and smash who both have cc immunity, but even smash mara has to force crush someone first before getting on you. You shouldn't be afraid of vengeance killing you and the ones that will, will stun or knockback your sprint anyways if you try and egress in the root. Hatred sins are the only other class you are really hurt against without having egress, because they can terror you during sprint. Thing is, they are already going to connect on you regardless unless you are kiting around LOS. If you are kiting around LOS which normally you should, they won't be able to creeping terror you. You also have to factor in rubberbanding. Most of the time. Once you learn the maps and how to play on them. A sage will only get in trouble when he's double stunned. He will then be immune to roots, because roots only slow on a white bar. This is where you typically have to start using things and can die. In stuns. Bubble stun is generally the best defense against stuns, because if you bubble stun them when you are stunned, it negates the 4 second stun most of the time. 30% stun DR or cloud mind is just a bonus safety net. The only thing you should be dying to with consistency is double marauder on corellia square or marauders in general, because they can pred their team and its really hard to kite them and both smash and gore does insane burst damage. Concealment thrown in can also kill you. Yes. You're probably going to have to heal your teammates out of barrier. But thats why you have wandering mend and interrupt immunity. Most of your barriers will come while you're white barred if you're playing things right. You just cancel early and heal spam. With 2+ stacks and white bar, you can't be stopped from topping yourself and your teammates off. Then back to kiting. The only thing that will stop you is another stun after barrier ends. 30% DR helps in that scenario. Just think about it this way. Corrupted barrier only helps you once in the match unless you're counting the minimal healing the shields brings. You should only be dying in or as a result of stuns normally. A concealment operative has his stun up every 30 seconds. So on average you live for 2 minutes. Say you break one stun and barrier another. That's 2 extra stuns you had 30% damage reduction on and that's just one guy on you. Don't get me wrong. Egress is good and its not bad to take it. Its just not mandatory. Corrupted Barrier is also good, but I just feel like there are better talents to replace it for pure survival and definately better talents out there for a more team build.

You don't need egress. Marauders and concealment operatives are the only 2 classes you really have to fear when combined with others. You can get releaped on your sprint, yes, but typically if you play bubble stun/knockback root you will have something up for every time those 2 classes connect on you. Egress is much more important in warzones, because you are forced to kite in more open areas. In arenas you kite around pillars and because of LOS it is very rare you get rerooted on your sprint. Why I said play with it, is because you have to get used to not playing with egress and not blowing sprint immediately when getting leaped. Is it better to have the 30% DR? For your survival, yes. Egress is really only better just because it gives you a root break so you can heal your teammates and not have to waste a global (and your cleanse cooldown) cleansing a root on yourself when you get knockback rooted or something out of their LOS. Egress is better for your team in other words. Knockback root is also better for your team over 30% DR on stun. It can be used for a peel whereas if you are not being focused, 30% DR while stunned gives your team nothing. And you don't need corrupted barrier. You shouldn't die coming out of barrier. It might happen once out of like 100 games maybe. It's just not useful. If you're timing your bubble stuns like you should be, the heal on your shields isn't going to do anything either. It's personal playstyle though. You just have to try everything and figure out what you like best. Not sure what server you play on, but start to build a reputation for being unkillable with defensive talents, then you can switch to a more team oriented utility build. Knowing how to kite on each map is more important than any utility as long as you have bubble stun.

Its not even top or bottom or any of that ****. Merc healing compared to sorc healing in solo ranked isn't even close. This is just one example. It has nothing to do with skill cap or how good whoever is playing them is or is not. A low skilled sorc is going to be more productive than a low skilled merc. A medium skilled sorc is going to be more productive than a medium skilled merc. This isn't balancing around top level play lol. I mean the merc class is so limited that yes mercs are horrible, but the class itself is probably easier to play (not succeed at, but play) than a sorc. That's one of the things that makes mercs bad. They are a limited class. The sorc heals more than the merc in a solo ranked setting. It's simple. The sorc has a bunch of instant casts and a short cd channel whereas the merc has a clunky design that is cast based which is designed for standing in the back of an ops and bombing 1.9 second heals. Its one thing, if you can say the really low level played mercs are on par with the really low level played sorcs, but they aren't. The sorc is better at all levels of skill. Unless they are literally both standing there afk. Then yeah the sorc dies maybe a second quicker. This is just one example. There isn't a huge skill separation in this game's pvp for each class. We aren't dealing with incredibly deep and elaborate classes that play completely different than one another. The dps merc doesn't have an out. The dps sorc does. The dps sorc off heals for more. The dps merc off heals for ****. The dps sorc brings shields which essentially gives his team another 7k health custion to start plus midfight. The dps merc brings net and stealth scan (haha force storm is almost just as good). Dps sorc cleanse is better. I mean you can go down the list as to why the dps sorc is better than the dps merc. It has nothing to do with skill.

Yeah, but I don't think you can separate abilities to do one thing in PvP and one thing in PvE. It becomes confusing to new players. You want to know why very few tanks guard swap? Because guard has a different use in PvE. If guard was a forced and learned part of leveling a tank integrated into the PvE meta the same way as its used in PvP, more tanks would guard swap. Things like damage ability stuns weaker creatures, but doesn't stun things in pvp and might slow instead or some **** is confusing. Maybe not to a veteran MMO player who might understand, but a new player who has limited experience isn't going to read all that ****. You have to make the game's entry PvP skill level be easy and similar to what they learned while leveling, so people will have fun and continue to PvP. If a player has to relearn everything just to have fun in PvP after they've already learned it one way in PvE, they are going to be less likely to even do PvP.

Get rid of the force armor/shield healing you. Either go knockback root or 30% stun DR. Bubble stun is a lot better than 30% DR. You can go both or pick up knockback root. Knockback root is useful, because you should only die to melee and bubble stun doesn't resolve enough to white bar after 1 knockback. Typically you don't shield yourself until something is directly on top of you or about to be on you, so your bubble stun doesn't break from a ranged attack. I'm not talking about the first shield, but when you are kiting and have distance don't shield yourself. Wait until they are about to connect to you. You can also play with it and drop root break if you want. Root break is a lot more valuable in warzones than arena. The DR on cloud mind is decent, but not as good as 30% stun DR, because it's stuns where you're probably going to either die or fall so far behind that you can't recover. Cloud mind requires you to time your CD pre-stun most of the time. Not hard to do if you're watching your resolve, but also not as much DR and when you are being trained you will be stunned more than once every 45 seconds.

Just remove the tank from PvP. Even if they wanted to balance ranked, which they clearly don't, they wouldn't be able to. Right now for the sake of argument. DPS sorc -> great in 4 dps -> average in 3 dps/healer -> great in tank/healer -> great in tank/3dps Marauder -> average in 4 dps -> great in 3 dps/healer -> below average (probably) in tank/healer solo ranked -> below average in tank/3 dps Sniper -> garbage in 4 dps -> below average in 3 dps/healer -> great in tank/healer -> above average in tank/3dps And this is the problem with having this many comps for solo ranked. You can't force the trinity in solo ranked. It would never pop, because there are rarely any tanks that queue. I want to make a group ranked team. What is the hardest thing to find? You get rid of the tank. Now you can do 2 things. First make arenas 3v3. Better for so many reasons. Can't make arenas 3v3 right now because tank/healer/dps mirrors would never die. Secondly, by removing the tank, you just removed 1/2 of the comps you need to balance things around. 3 dps/healer and 4 dps play very similar. 3 dps and healer/2 dps play very similar. Yes sorc healer + 2 marauder is broken as **** and other sub comps would have to be rebalanced, but by removing the tank you just got rid of 50% of the potential comps you would have to balance things around. Would make things a whole lot easier even for this incompetent dev team.

Sorc healing is miles ahead of merc healing in solo ranked. From pure healing, operative is closer, but lacks the kiting. Tank/healer solo ranked. Operative and sorc are about even. Operative might have the slight edge, but because most of the time it goes acid, sorc is better in acid obviously. Merc sucks in tank/healer and if a merc's team doesn't get a kill in the first 3 minutes, will probably eventually get cleaved down. Merc aoe healing is horrible. It only looks good in warzones, because you can kolto shell 8 targets and sit in the back bombing healing scans. It's really bad in arena. Not to say they can't still win or live till acid. A lot of it depends on comp. Merc is fine against like hard swap probably. Healer/3 dps. Sorc is best and this is why sorc is stronger, because most of the games are healer/3 dps. Operative can die quicker than a sorc just from toolset. The real problem is that operative suffers from only having one break compared to the sorc who has barrier + break. Typically when everyone is good, you won't be going healers. It will come down to stopping the single target burst healing with cc and interrupts on the healer and killing one of the dps. Sorc healers are better than ops in that scenario. If everyone is good, merc is not that much farther behind. Again in the scenario where you can't kill healers because everyone is good at peeling, you have to go dps to stop damage and typically going dps is the safier kill. Merc might even have a slight advantage if teams can get a kill in 20 seconds, because of net. Sorc is still the strongest healer though by far in 3 dps healer and as you go from high tier to middle tier to low tier, the players become worse and there is going to be more of a separation between the 3 healing classes. This is really why sorc healers are so much better than the other 2. The other two healers get stuck in lower ratings and even if they are a skilled player (maybe been playing their op or merc healer for years) it won't matter, because at the lower ratings most the games just come down to tunneling both healers and sorcs are just better than the other two. Mercs can die through all their cooldowns, purely because they don't have an out. Ops out is a lot easier to counter than barrier and their kiting isn't as strong, plus they are susceptible to interrupts when they are forced into healing single target. Interrupting a sorc healer literally does nothing. Also roaming mend is OP. A sorc healer can kite out and return to the fight and roaming mend his whole team back up to a comfortable level in one global. All sorc healing abilities are easy to react with. Instant casts and channels are easy to use. Hard to stop. Sorc healer in the hands of a good player just isn't fair when facing the other 2 healers. Their pre-fight prep allows them to use their first couple globals on utility. That means they can get first Whirlwind on the other healer and can cleanse things like first awe/bubble stun on their melee. Root. It's huge for a marauder to be cleansed on first root or bubble, because they can gore with relic procs up. Let alone the other 2 healers being spammed with focus interrupts from the sorc healers. Plus grip for after defensives is also a game changer when playing with good people. Like for PTs. If you grip a PT out after his cooldowns and he lines for a little bit until energy shield is back up, he lives. Can't do that on the other 2 healers. Sorc healer is the only one who can save mistakes. Like someone who wastes break and should die in a stun a little later, but gets gripped on that stun.