Yeah, at those numbers... if that goes through it sounds like it's just time for me to take another extended break from the game. You can't expect to nerf the most iconic ability of a class by 50% or more and expect people to just deal with it.

IDM disagrees with you. http://www.twitch.tv/deliriousdm/b/485730420 It's a fine build. It's not great. It doesn't depend on Bypass shenanigans, which I personally like. I think it's kind of bizarre to hear people complaining about it, honestly.

I run the build, and I have since the beginning of the release of GSF. It depends on being able to stay on target, and really shines when you're on target and behind them. So, literally the best defense against it is to be a better pilot. Stacking evasion isn't a good idea against it. Maybe armor would be the better bet? Rapid fire gives up the burst of Burst Cannons and using frequency caps and such limits your firepower per shot. I expect that much of the whining about the build is going to come from people that stack evasion to the exclusion of other defensive options.

Oh. I use that build. :-p [edit] And I use that build because people love to stack evasion. This build is a good counter to that. If you throw a ton of shots at someone, their evasion is not likely to save them. I also use the accuracy buff in my co-pilot slot. This is, again, to kill evasion builds. It also works well at eliminating targets in dogfights and people that satellite hump. The accuracy buff seems to work on tracking and close range penalties.

You realize how stupid it is to make a post complaining about something you're too afraid to actually talk about? There's zero content except your whining. That's why people are calling you a troll. Put up or shut up.

This is a case where it would actually be helpful to know how to pve with the class to inform your pvp. Simply stated- How many culls you put in determines your dps. The entire spec is built around optimizing use of Cull with Tactical Advantage.

Not sure where you're pulling those numbers from, but 1371 for a merc healer is bunk. My guildmate regularly goes over 2k and he's not even geared yet.

Eh. I don't have a problem with you using game mechanics to win but throwing in alpha/beta bs into it is silly. You're a runner. That's cool with me, but you don't need to write a justifying book about it. You're also using a frankly overpowered ability set in the ions. And that's fine. But it has nothing to do with any kind of social hierarchy. You're a good player, but you're not fantastic. Your biggest asset is usually your wingmen in any game I've seen you play. Merry Christmas as well.

I think playing other ships will help you be a better pilot, period. I decided to build up my flashfire so I've been playing that quite a bit. It really helps you learn to stay on target when you're in a flashfire with the short range. I played on my Strike today after doing the Flash for a long time. Man, was it ever fun to blow people up in the Strike! Those missiles mean business, and swapping between the ion and quad lasers was great. Basically, I learned how to fly and stay on target in the Flash, and it's so much easier to do that with the range the Strike gives you.

That can be annoying for someone new, sure. Pressing x will totally cut your engines so you can stop, by the way. S will cut them to 33% so you go slow. If a gunship is parked and sitting still under a satellite, that's actually pretty good for your team. They can't attack and they're sitting ducks. Some tips- strafe by them and hit them a couple times until you see them blow some cooldowns. Then fly away until their buff ends (you can see buffs above the same window that shows their ship). Come back, blow cooldowns, and own them. If you've really got a grudge, switch to rocket pods in your missile slots. You will destroy unmoving targets extremely fast, and most won't try to run. This is because a lot of pilots only really go into run mode when they hear a missile lock. No missile lock+tons of damage=dead opponent. Also, somewhat unintuitive, but you want to be as far from the gunship as possible while still in your blaster range if they have a chance to shoot at you. Gunships pretty much always use burst cannons for their blasters, and that hits harder the closer you are.

True. There really is no point in pugging against a premade in this. When I see a known premade on the other side, I just quit out before the match begins.

I kind of agree. I don't fear strike fighters in a head to head on my scout, and I should. Their tankiness should be enough to give them the edge in that situation. As it is, I'll just hit a cooldown or two and blow them up.

Bypass. You're wrong. Nice try with the condescending attitude, though.

Pft post however you like, Nixx'd. Great stream!

Besides me? Usually not. If I ignore them, then they just pick people off points left and right and we lose.

And that's not to say that it's awful. But, it's just not what I wanted. I wanted a dog fighting simulator. What I got was a "Kill the camping gunship" simulator. And that's not fun. So, yeah. Adios, and good luck to everyone still having fun with this.

Yep. Learned that the hard way the first time I tried it . What you do instead is set your point and then teleport to receive the throw, rather than teleport with the ball. Of course, since everyone can see your phase point before hand, it's not without counters.

That's true. My flashfire is my main ship, so I outfitted the NovaDive just for capturing objectives. Basically I took all the speed and engine boost modifications I could. I don't even try to fight with it usually. I just run from objective to objective trying to cap. Those matches can be VERY successful if you have someone bent on doing just that, I've noticed.

Something that helped me was when I just said to myself: "This is space. There IS no up." For some reason, that helped getting my mind oriented around flying without worrying about whether I'm upside down or not. If there's no ground (and there isn't), you've got a lot more leeway to relax. It's not like you can hit the ground, right? So just react to what's in front of you. You can see my thread about dogfighting http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=704948 for a few tips. Someone linked a wiki article and a separate dogfighting website that I found really helpful. Basically, DON'T play the spinning game. SWTOR artificially drastically reduces your chance to hit at both range and glancing shots off the side of your targeting reticule. So I really try to avoid that scenario if at all possible. What I ACTIVELY try to do is A) Help anyone else in a dogfight and B) ALWAYS try to get directly behind my targets. Now, I'm not great at GSF. I pretty much just started. But just keeping A & B in mind I went from 2 or 3 kills a game to around 8 with some solid objective points (150-240ish, depending). So, for some direct advice- If someone is playing the rolling game to you and your panning around trying to get them in your sights, here's what's really happening. A) Neither of you are going to score hits because you're too close. Blasters will miss and missiles won't have time to lock. B) You will be practically standing still for anyone that wants to come along and kill you. So don't be that guy. Be the guy that comes along and kills the guy standing still panning around. When I get someone on me that wants to do that, I act like I'm going to roll at first and then right turn hard into a boost to get extra range. I'm trying to get either above or below their path so I can swoop in behind them. Even better is to boost off into a group of my teammates so they can pick up the easy kill of the guy moving in a straight line trying to blast me.

That was a really good read. Thank you for that!

I was looking for something a little more precise or well thought out than that. Obviously, I've gotten that far on my own. I just haven't played flight simulators much so I don't have a feel for the tactics.

This game in particular is not good for this, because there is a SEVERE accuracy penalty to close range fighting. You can't circle and then fly towards each other firing. You will both miss 95% of the time with your sights dead on. So we need to find a better way.

Pretty much the title. It seems a lot of dogfights degenerate into this kind of circling game. It's annoying, and very ineffective because it seems like your blasters can't hit a moving target at close range. Generally I just pick a direction and boost out, and hope to juke them in some way. Does anyone have any tips on this?

It's more that the empire has premades on voice comms very frequently. Shock, who is on the leaderboards for kills, has a full contingent of people playing wingman for him. That's why he does so well on a gunship. It's just the same old thing in SWTOR pvp- it's premades or bust. And right now, Empire has the premades. Which means they gear faster from winning. Which means that not only are those people who are in the premades getting better at a faster rate, so is everyone that rides their coattails. So, as a solo player, your best bet is to play Empire. Bioware tried to address this with 8v8 premade pvp. We see how that went.

I've been playing Galactic Starfighter all day on POT5 and Republic has won 2 matches out of countless others. I'm not saying I'm good (I'm not) but in order to even have a chance I have to use my Empire toons it seems.