Your guild will have a major problem, even with full wh with attitudes like that. A team full of good augmented battlemaster geared players will destroy a bad team of augmented warhero players 10 times out of 10. PvP in this game is almost entirely decided by overall skill level, strats and how you arrange classes.

Probably the biggest problem in ranked warzones are the excessive amount of disconnect bugs. Out of 16 matches I played tonight we lost 3 times to a dc, and we won one with 7. That is 1 out of 4 wz matches... It should never have gone live like this. It's ridiculous that we can't get back into the game directly, (amusingly it still groups the dc'd player back in the group once everyone exits the wz).

Our team (6 dps, 2 healers) had no problem dismantling the 4 healer + tank squads. The one annoying wz is Voidstar, where it's a guarenteed stalemate unless someone makes a mistake. Novare coast and Alderaan is more balanced, b/c in general the healer+ tank zerg does tend to slowly lose battles of attrition, and you can force a situation where you have a dps + dps or dps +healer against a healer + tank in a 2 on 2 (which forces the team to pull a 3rd away). Huttball comes down to skill. You will see those teams in rated, but I think the best teams will still be the more traditional melee assist train 2 or 3 healer squads.

It's in general a really bad idea to pass if you are a main tank. It's better for your team to pull you/keep you up. The reason it's better is bc it's more controlled and less randomized. Some1 you pass the ball will not have guard and might be losing the healers. He also might not have a resolve bar or CDs up and can readily be pulled into a fire or back in the pit. It's just a bad play more often than nought and will lose the game against a good team.

Talk about stunlocking ball carriers and things like is a good indication that there is a lost in translation effect bc it's actually the worst possible idea you can do. It works in pugs kinda, but assuredly has no place in rated. One of the main truisms in high level Huttball is that it's basically impossible to kill a good ball carrier on a good team once they are set (maybe 3 or 4 second window) Guard, taunt, bubble, 2 or 3 healers, pull and various immunities and movement effects makes it basically a crapshoot. It's literally impossible except for one thing... The vanguard pull into the fire + stun trick. That's the only thing that will kill a good tank, and white barring them with an inneffective opener is a great way to ruin it.

Right so I agree with this, which is why most rated teams won't actually run with the setup I wrote. However, that doesn't mean there is balance. Eg you can't use the specter of the other warzones to argue away the imbalance of the Huttball map. If anything, it makes the discrepancy even more glaring.

This is the same bs argument that has been told since december, and that has muted any sort of balancing by Bioware. Quite honestly it is complete nonsense. The problem is there are certain classes who have the same role you do (for instance holding middle) that just do it better. Ok? There is no reason to have a dps commando when you can have a sniper or better a sentinel instead. It has nothing to do with just running with the ball, but more the fact that in order to win you need certain elements and there is a definite min/max involved. For instance a rated wz team is goign to absolutely require one combat spec sentinel, a Jugg tank, at least 2 sages, and at least 2 pyro vanguards. These are pretty much absolutely necessary. That leaves 2 spots for a (third healer, utility or a mainstay at mid). Ideally, you want a tankasin b/c they are amazing for getting the ball from mid out of stealth, and b/c they provide utility, guard and can run the ball nearly as well as a jugg. Guess who is left out of all of this? Almost every other class..

Scoundrels are inferior in Huttball as a general rule. So are Commando dps/heals and Vanguard tanks. The fact of the matter is huttball is probably the most unbalanced part of this entire game. Certain classes are just flat out better than others. I mean there is nothing that a dps scoundrel does better in Huttball than a shadow and there is nothing that a commando healer does better than a sage healer. I mean even certain specs of the same class. For instance a watchman sentinel is very mediocre in Huttball, but focus or combat sents are amazing. Its just the way it is..

In a pure 8 vs 8 fight, I think a team of 8 Maruaders would do incredibly well, perhaps only countered by aoe groups (like 8 focus guardians). And yes they will beat a balanced team of 2 tanks, 2 healers, 4 dps. Simply bc an 8 man assist train will kill any target (guarded or not) in at most 2 global cooldowns each making the healers worthless additions as they cannot heal burst of that magnitude. Fortunately warzones are not 8-8 fights. They are typically compromised of several 2-2, 4-4 or 5-5 fights. As you scale down the numbers, the focus factor is diminished and healing, cc and protection become comparably more important. In 2-2s you definitely prefer a healer + a tankasin than say 2 marauders (although its kinda close). So for instance in civil war, you would likely want some variety for optimal results.

Completely disagree with the OP, TTK and burst in general is and has been (even pre 1.2) a major problem in this game. Its particularly obvious to the elite PVPers with coordinated burst in teams. (1 person using adrenals.. fine. 3 people at once, not fine and more or less instant death) It had to be changed, and im glad it is.

Actually I think the bonuses are multiplicative, not additive in general. And I think its .228 per point increase to bonus damage (which scales linearly with healing) from power, and .219 from cunning if the spreadsheet on sithwarriors are to be believed. If you wrap both buffs into the cunning stat, you get .230 per point of cunning which as you found out is basically identical (when I did the test I found +1 pt difference in favor of cunning, contrary to your test so not sure whats going on there (did you have consular buff?)). However what this ignores is crit. With all the Augment slots you gain about .7% crit with cunning, which is not negligable. The reason this is important is b/c it allows you to get closer to your crit soft cap without actually using crit gear. Also, the power mods are better than the cunning mods, b/c they don't trade of 1 to 1. Eg there is actually more cunning+power on the mod with more power. Consequently when min max building your characters gear you end up with quite a lot of power, and not as much cunning which means in practise that its probable that you are low on crit. Thus for augments it is advisable to go with cunning!

It doesn't really matter, but cunning is a tiny tiny bit better than power. Basically bc of the 9% passive talent + a consular class buff (5%) actually pushes it ahead. Point for point power still adds more, but your pool of cunning is now larger. An easy way to check is to simply swap a power vs cunning augment and observe what it does to a static fixed heal lke kolto cloud. But the difference is basically .001 and an equally negligible bonus to crit.

I agree. Not only are sorcerors behind primary dps classes like Sents and Gunslingers in terms of single target sustained damage as well as burst, but they have less survivability against good players. Yes, they have lots of utility in huttball. Other than that one warzone, they need help on multiple fronts. IMO they should at the very least be the highest single target sustained dps in the game. Other than that, they should have at least as many defensive abilities as the medium armor wearing Marauders. The usefulness of AOEs in wzs are grossly overvalued by BW, and quite honestly they never should have been nerfed.

Historically Imperials had a large amount of top shelf guilds that outleveled and out valored Pub (which was greatly outnumbered). However this had the effect that it made all the republic players that stayed quite good. THe consequence was Republic tended to win (at 50) about 70% of all warzones, as Imp had to deal with a large amount of baddies that diluted their talent. That has changed with all the rerolls. Very few have any idea what they're doing, and its diluted the core Republic base that used to win a lot. I'd say the advantage is still with the Pub side, but its much closer to 50-50.

Some of you newbies are in for a shock when rated hits. I can tell you this much, when a full war hero 8 man premade gets on a target, things die from full in about 4 seconds unless they vanish or blow an invuln cd. No guard/cc or healer in the game makes a difference against 4 full wh dps who know what they're doing. It reminds me of the bs before WoW season1 went live. 95% of the community was theory crafting the completely wrong conclusions. It prevented much needed balance patches from being put into place, as only the better pvpers could see the real imbalance. The devs need to ignore everything written on this forum, or what their internal stats say and get like 3 or 4 of the best pvp teams and have them Go at each other.