Well, even a Pyrotech can solo most Heroic 2's, if you're sensible about it. Heroic 4's might be a handful for a Shieldtech, and some of the hardest ones will likely still require a group, but I think a lot of the moderate ones should be fine, so long as you're not trying to do them when the mobs are +2 or anything.

Depends on what you want to do. If you want to just do normal quests, story line, a little PvP on the side...Pyrotech. If you want to solo heroics as well...Shieldtech or Parakeet.

That's more or less my spec, and I have hit 450,000 with it, but only once. I average around 300,000. Mind you I don't have a ton of expertise, and it always seems to be the same 5-10 Battlemasters in every warzone, so I spend a lot of time dead.

Everyone starts somewhere, guy. You didn't come out of the womb a crackerjack PvP player. Those same yutzes who are running the ball into their own end zone today could be tomorrow's battlemasters. They won't be, though. They'll decide PvP "isn't for them" because some idiot keeps /spitting on them or running them down in chat, and yet another game won't have a PvP focus because it's too "niche". Besides which, people who actually enjoy balanced PvP don't go looking for it in MMOs in the first place, but that's a whole other kettle of fish.

I agree that seeing the same faces over and over again lends an air of personality and engagement that you lose by going cross server. There's no question. However, I will take balanced, competitive matches over familiar faces 100 times out of 100, and if you care a whit about PvP, so should you. However, judging by the part of your post I bolded, I don't think you do care about PvP. I think you care about beyblades and sneakers and whatever the hell else eleven year olds care about these days.

I've been doing 50 PvP for a little over a week now. I have a nicely populated server, queue times are alright (even if it is Huttball 90% of the time), and I've been reasonably successful. I can claw in 5-7 medals and 75ish commendations with clockwork regularity, win or lose. The match quality, though, has declined rapidly in the last 4-5 days. First day or two it was nice, competitive, fun, frantic. Now, it's the same 15-20 people doing PvP every...single...day. It's gotten to the point where as soon as I see who is on what team, I know exactly how the match will end, and exactly how lopsided it will be. Wins feel just as bland and perfunctory as the losses. I can only imagine what it would be like for a new 50 who wasn't familiar with PvP, and came in with no expertise. Some of these guys can kill me in a single stunlock, and I have decent gear. Cross realm queues are pretty much a necessity at this point, and the sooner they can separate the premades from the pugs, the better.

Speaking as a "melee" class, + run speed in any substantial quality would be crazy OP.

Epic Swimwear. +5 Speed, +5 Charisma. Those damn noob countries just need to grind their OWN swimwear!

It makes no sense to me. It's like going to play some football, and then demanding after you win that you want special pads that will make winning easier next time. The whole concept is so ANTI-competitive it blows my mind.

Isn't quality competition a reward in and of itself?

We ALL miss DAoC.

Yarp. Due to Funcom, it'll likely be a train wreck at release, but we can always hope. Any game with 3 factions and world PvP will get at least cursory interest from me until the next DAoC is identified and acquired.

Well it's too late for THAT, unfortunately. But we can still hope it doesn't disappoint!

In this, my friend, we are in 100% agreement. Personally, I'm looking to GW2 and TSW to get my PvP itch scratched.

How many is "a ton"? If we assume 1-1.5 million players at the moment, what percentage of those would "the ton" of people you personally know represent?

Let's not get our wires crossed. I'm not the one saying "it's not real PvP". I do think you're dealing with an exaggerated attack there, designed to counterbalance the people who think the Arena was some kind of godsend of skill and aptitude. How's this...it's not an e-sport. Or if you find the term "e-sport" silly, it's not a sport. It was all over the place in terms of balance, exploits, loopholes, etc. Rankings, therefore, were totally goofy in that environment. I'm arguing against ranked PvP in an environment that doesn't support it. It's an argument I'm likely to lose, but there you go. I'm not arguing against letting people duel in a little room if that's what floats their boat.

No, it doesn't have to be balanced to be PvP. But it does have to be balanced for rankings to mean anything.

I'm not even sure about that any more. I swear to god, sometimes it feels like Flame Burst is 75% of my damage in any given Warzone. All that tech power and tech crit we get, and the elemental damage...FB is seriously underrated.

Well, you know. I think they shouldn't because of the reasons I listed way back near the beginning of this thread, not because I think they're god awful. Developer resources ARE a zero sum proposal, and I do think there are better, more productive areas to focus on for a game like this. I'd rather see some functional form of World PvP, more and varied War-Zones, a proper Valor system, etc, etc, before I'd go looking to stick in glorified duels. So, if we can have everything? Sure, why not. But I don't really do believe we can have everything. I think we need to pick and choose, so I'll leave the most problematic elements at the bottom of the pile.

Well, I'm not really WORRIED about it at all. I expect TOR's PvP to remain badly balanced, and messy. It doesn't mean it CAN'T BE FUN. Messy, silly PvP can still be fun, for what it is, just like Arenas could be fun, for what they were. I stated my arguments against Arenas back on page 2, and I stand by them. I guess I just have different expectations for this game than everyone else. I knew what I was getting into, and messy, silly PvP neither surprises nor depresses me because it was exactly what I expected to see. It's like I was hoping for a sandwich, and I got a sandwich, and everyone else was hoping for a 10 course meal, and they're tearing their hair out, and I'm just enjoying my sandwich. I'll say again, no one MMO is going to be all things to all people. I honestly do not understand when or how this mentality started that because we paid $50 for a box and $15 a month for content patches that suddenly we'll be able to play the game for 10,000 hours without getting bored, or exhausting content, and that every conceivable method of play in the world will be equally represented. If I want an e-sport, I'll just go play Starcraft 2. That's what I bought it for.

But this game IS LIKE WoW. TOR is many things, but innovative is not one of them. This game is almost stubbornly anachronistic. In some way's that's good...it's like a comfortable old boot. But the same systemic problems that rendered Arena a laughingstock in WoW are evident here as well. It's NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. I'm not "blindly hating" on anything. I've been playing, and PvPing, in MMOs since the genre first popped up. I don't think WoW Arenas were the death of fun or anything, but they were a bad idea, badly implemented, and the people who keep promoting them as temples of skill are so wildly off base I'm actually breathless with amazement. It is, quite literally, like they've never played competitively at anything, ever. That's not "blind". That's just calling a spade a spade.

Let's not prop it up TOO much. Remember when you could run around in a leather brassiere and a wizard's cap and be immune to fire? Or when magic missile would one-shot anyone in heavy armor? UO was always too freakishly buggy to be a good example of fair, balanced PvP. It was fun though!

I appreciate sports and I appreciate chess and other strategic games that require tactical thinking. There's actually a lot of overlap between the two. There's a reason some of the very best athletes are referred to as "students of the game".

That's not what he said at all. He said he likes skill based pvp, and that it isn't properly represented by Arenas. And it's not.

But WoW is the only place it was ever called "Arenas". Lol @ Arenas isn't the same thing as Lol @ e-sports. I understand you're trying to defend e-sports, but I don't think e-sports are under attack. I think people are mocking Arenas, and rightfully so, they were hilariously stupid. No, the fact they failed in WoW is not evidence we should never have another e-sport game. But TOR? This game cannot support them. You don't need a degree in games design to recognize that.