Hardswap and pressure are tactics, not comps. In WOW you work around the healer by either trying to control the healer (RMP) or overwhelming the healer (TURBO); in SWTOR you have to work around both the healer and the guard: Hardswap: Eliminate guard through CC, classic hardswap would often swap into the healer and did not need to control the healer, modern hardswap is more of a mix of pressure and classic hardswap and you usually need to control both. Pressure: Apply enough damage to present a situation where the tank needs to guard two targets or is not able to apply guard because his health is too low; pressure teams can soft cc healers but generally cleave into the healer and control the healer through hard stuns and interrupts. The two Meta comps atm would be: Jugg Tank/mara/sniper/healer for hard swap PT Tank/Pyro PT/cleave spec such as leth, pyro, engi, veng, etc/healer for pressure. You can alter the above comps in various ways but the synergy that mara/sniper has is hard to beat for hardswap and Pyro PT simply outperforms every other cleave spec in team ranked at the moment due to the extremely low cool down on super kolto and the strength of double carb. You can run other comps that are a mix of both, such as ling/AP pt (this is somewhat similar to jungle in that ling sorc/tank acts as a control class/gatekeeper (similar to a hunter's role in jungle), and the AP pt serves as the mongo dps (similar to a feral druid's role in jungle)

We'll have to agree to disagree here, if all 3 players agree that a person is acting in a manor that condones a kick then that's their prerogative; it may be a system that is open to abuse but in general most kicks that I have witnessed were valid. Frankly BW's track record is extremely poor when it comes to policing the behavior of players and they have shown time and time again they care more about participation numbers than any other metric/player concern.

OPs "Friend" was not kicked for being bad, he was kicked for being an ******e to his team after essentially sandbagging the match.

Any trinity composition, rage jugg chunks snipers, it's dcds are very strong vs marksmen (the meta sniper spec) and it's mobility gives it great up-time (root break/speed buff on enrage every ~30 seconds, mad dash every 30 seconds, obliterate, intercede root break). Juggs will generally lose a 1vs1 against an equally skilled sniper (assuming no terrain advantage), but in a team fight they are very strong vs snipers.

Lol. /5char

Raansu you main a sent/mara, possibly the most overpowered class throughout 5.x and one of the strongest counters to sniper; sniper was OP post engi buff and pre sniper dcd nerfs (and engi nerfs) but honestly the majority of snipers are now free kills. Snipers are very OP vs sins (post stun dr nerf) and pts (outside of trinity comps), but operatives, maras, and juggs are strong vs sniper.

Yes, you will be weaker because your crit/acc/alacrity and armor rating is not bolstered.

So introducing a new tier of gear and adjusting how you acquire said gear will have no impact on your ability to participate in the game? I'm asking because you attacked (my interpretation of your comment) Lhance's decision to un-sub from the game in response to the upcoming gearing changes and commented that you would still be around enjoying the new patch... which makes sense since everything you do in game you can do without current BIS and frankly outside of the new gearing system 5.10 looks like it has the potential to be the best patch we've had so far (this is my personal opinion). I think the fundamental issue we have here is that for many players who primarily pvp we see BIS gear as a tool to enable us to enjoy PVP on a equal footing with others, PVE players see gear as a method of character progression and a reward for completing challenging content, and non-progression pvers/pvpers see gear as something desirable but not necessary (I'm casting a broad net here and am sure that not every non-progression pver/pvper feels the same way).

I simplicity mentioned BW's track record concerning bolster, I don't understand how that makes it sound like I consider bolster to be a new concept. I would be okay with removing PVP gear progress (despite the fact that I think a small progression system is a overall positive) as long as we can control our stat distribution.

In in response to this the developers raised the cap and introduced legacy warzone comms; I think it's safe to say that they embraced the concept.

Bolster raises your "iLvl" to 242 (currently) but it does not affect your armor rating or Tertiary stats (crit/alacrity/acc); bolster also does affect augments. Currently if you enter pvp with sub 242 gear and no augments you will have around ~119k (BIS is ~132k), will take more damage than other fully geared players due to having a lower armor rating, and will have much lower crit/alacrity/acc. The fact that bolster does not affect tertiary stats is a big issue considering how much these stats affect your damage and healing output and the massive amount of stat budget we have at iLvl 248. Bolster is a great idea but is very poorly implemented, if you are dependent on bolster and are facing a BIS character you are at a severe disadvantage... if you are playing vs an ~equally skilled opponent they would have to make multiple large mistakes in order for you to win.

Andryah, what exactly do you do in game? I've read many of your posts and from what I can gleam you don't do progression PVE and you sparsely pvp (only if your friends ask/force you to, if I recall correctly). I know you enjoy playing the GTN and I think you enjoy decorating, maybe running through the story, or do casual group content? I'm genuinely curious because you seem to have a lot of opinions on the changes to gearing and yet nothing you mention doing in game has any reliance on having decent gear, much less BIS gear.

This approach could work but I think BW's track record with bolster makes this a less than favorable option; I would prefer a system that is less error/bug/exploit prone.

And pvp participation in legion and BFA has heavily declined (not that gearing is the only issue, but it is an issue).

Why is this is a bad thing, what is fundamentally wrong with having a full set of pvp gear at max level that you earned while leveling; for many pvpers BIS is a starting point, not an endpoint. The studio might not have liked it, or it might have simply been a victim of the over-arching design changes implemented in 5.0. (it certainly did not feel like had fully thought out Galactic Command when it was introduced in 5.0...). You're making a lot of assumptions and are implying that players were somehow abusing the system, when in fact during late 3.x and 4.x the studio implemented multiple changes that were designed to promote players having BIS gear in pvp...

You could remove expertise and simply call it pvp gear, as long as gear obtained from pve would not be usable in pvp and gear obtained from pvp would not be usable in pve; if the gear sets are inter-changeable then we get back to core issue of gating acquisition. A small gear progression with a very minimal power difference is not a bad thing: -It gives players small goals to work towards -Incentives low level pvp (if low level pvp awards the currency) -Rewards having an understanding of itemization (thus promoting game knowledge) -Promotes player agency by allowing you to control your stat distribution. The "gear advantage" between fully min-maxed 208's and 204s was so small that it was easy to over-come with skill, and the 'grind' was so short that it's almost an insult to call it a grind.

Expertise was introduced at max level because players would not use the free recruit gear that Bioware gave to everyone and would instead sell it for credits. I think we can both agree that bolster is a poor system, we just disagree on how it should be handled. I would like to see expertise re-introduced and have BW add the following: -On the character sheet have an extra tab for "pvp" -Have a second item bay that is limited to pvp items (gear, medpacks, stims, and grenades could be stored here). -Whenever you engage in pvp you automatically equip the gear set that you have on the "pvp" tab. -Every slot would have a basic item that is 4 ilevels below the entry level pvp gear so that even if you load into a pvp instance without any "pvp" gear you would have this set equipped.

Why do you dislike expertise? Getting expertise gear, esp. post 4.0, was an extremely small grind. Expertise gear ensured that you had full control of your stats and had none of the issues or bugs associated with bolster (if you've been here for a while you understand what I am talking about). Expertise was an elegant and straightforward solution to separating pvp and pve gearing, the only "downside" was that you had to carry around 2 sets of gear.

Please stop propagating this concept that bolster is an acceptable substitute for gear. Even when we had 250 bolster and the highest item rating was 242 there was still a noticeable difference between geared and under-geared players. If you are going to push for bolster to be the "gearing" solution for pvp then you need to also push for bolster to be modified to work on armor rating and tertiary stats, and you also need to be okay with bolster being buggy when they introduce new tiers of gear (just adding 2410 augments re-introduced issues with wind crystal relics).

This is the only way to keep both gearing systems fair. Until Bioware re-introduces PVP specific gear back into the game you are not going to be able to please both progression raiders and pvpers. Loading into a warzone or solo ranked match and finding yourself on a team full of 119-122k hp players is pathetic, the concept of increasing this gear disparity is just insane. Finally bolster, in it's current implementation, is simply not a feasible solution since it does not bolster tertiary stats, armor rating (unless this has been adjusted), or augments.

Will bolster be adjusted to affect Tertiary stats and armor rating as well?

I've also unsubbed and once again I'm trying different games, and once again I'm discovering that almost every MMO has issues (many of them of just as bad as SWTOR in their own way) and I find myself wanting to log back into SWTOR. If BW would stop making random stupid decisions like this and concentrate on trying to push out quality content (and maybe fix the occasional bug) they could still be one of the "contenders" in the MMO space. I feel like (or maybe I hope) that these types of decisions are being pushed down from some bean counter because I can't fathom how a developer/designer that is remotely in touch with their player base would continue to make such absurd changes to the basic structure of their game. As someone who works in software support/development I fully understand that a lot of decisions that leave your customers shaking their heads in confusion are often driven by either budget constraints or a lack of understanding your customer base at the management level. Hopefully Keith and company are observing the feedback and will make adjustments to the gearing system; if I recall correctly Keith has previously stated that they are seriously considering returning to an expertise based gearing system for PVP in 6.0, that at least gives me hope that Keith has basic understanding of why our current gearing system is problematic for PVPers.

I don't run MM ops so this is all second information, and from my understanding this is completing both Scum and Villainy and Dread Palace. SnV has 7 bosses (100 * 6 + 250 *1) = 850 Dread Palace has 5 bosses ( 100 * 4 + 250 * 1) = 650 Total: 1500 Then you add in the UCs form breaking down gear drops from Tier 4 crates (at least 1 per boss, and each weekly) Perhaps he meant to say in two hours, I can ask him the next time I talk with him, regardless the amount the UCs they are able to farm is far greater than what a pvper can farm in a similar time frame. I acknowledged that you have to complete the operations to gain the rewards, but this whole line concerning sitting in a corner doing nothing to get rewards from pvp is asinine, a typical match lasts ~15 minutes and a loss only rewards 8 UCs... if you simply sat in a corner and did nothing and lost every match you would average ~32 UCs per hour, not including the rewards from completing the daily/weekly (of course you might win occasionally doing this and that amount would increase). Gearing in PVP and PVE is functionally different and Bioware should have never coupled the two together; since gear is now shared between PVP and PVE Bioware needs to offer paths for both types of players to obtain the gear in a similar time frame. Edit: I spoke with Hoppin and that figure was for two hours, and his average per an hour is 1k (and that is assuming solid drops from tier 4 crates).

Four team ranked matches in 20 minutes.... where, which server, and who are you feeding?

The people who claim that the UC route is advantageous to pvpers simply do not understand how efficient the UC grind is for MM(NIM) raiders. According to my friend (Hoppin on Star Forge) who runs MM operations he can generally grind ~2000 UCs per an hour... pvpers can grind ~100-150 UCs per hour (factoring in queue pop times for solo/group ranked and the extra rewards for completing dailies/weeklies). To give an "apples to apples" comparison I have to acknowledge the following: PVP does not have lockouts and PVE does (this can be over-come with alts) PVP always gives UCs, PVE only awards UCs for success There are not many established groups that are capable of farming MM/NIM operations The new gearing system is extremely lopsided in how it rewards progression PVE players over every other sub-group in the game. On another note: Honestly the worst part of releasing new gear with 5.10 is that otherwise the patch looks extremely promising, so much so that I would say it has the chance of being the best patch we receive in 5.x (and this is coming from someone who primary pvps); I've actually un-subbed to show my disdain for this decision but will continue to monitor the forums to see how BW responds to player concerns P.S. I personally have zero issues with grinding gear in pve and I think it's awesome that they are rewarding players for putting in the effort required to engage in progression raiding, but I have a strong disdain for gear advantages in PVP; if BW had not coupled PVE and PVP gearing in 5.0 I would have zero issues with this new gearing system.