Stopped reading right there. Arena practice queues are not a bad idea.

Once you get past ~1500 you only encounter mat farmers if there is no one else in queue, mat farmers provide an incentive for lower rated players to play because they will always have someone that they can "beat." I have no desire to play vs mat teams but after seeing how many people actually played 4s when mat farmers where in queue I can't see it as being a negative thing.

I would suggest taking matts out of solos, at least in group ranked if you queue up to simply farm mats it only hurts the people you group with. Matt farmers also provide opponents for newer/less experienced players to play vs; when mats were introduced to grouped ranked SF/SS had a lot of group ranked activity and this encouraged newer groups to queue up. Once the mat farmers stopped queuing and these newer groups were forced to constantly play vs the more experienced groups group ranked activity died down again on the NA servers but on DM were people still form mat farming groups on a daily basis these newer/less experienced/"mid-tier" groups still queue fairly regularly. TLDR: Mat farming in group ranked is not a bad thing, if anything mats should be removed from solo ranked.

Scoundrel/op has the best potential hps but has a hard time dealing with focus/healing burst without a tank Sage/sorc has the best overall toolkit but has energy management issues Mando/merc has solid hps and is tanky, but is the worst healer in pvp due to it's mechanics Healer balance is, overall, pretty decent; sage/sorc is the best overall healer with OPs/scoundrels excelling vs pressure teams and mandos/mercs trailing behind the other two. Since you were on POT5 back in the day I assume you are playing on Star Forge now?

Just roll back to the last 2.x patch, buff merc/sorc healers, pt/sin tanks, minor buffs to concealment ops and anni maras, a slight nerf to madness sins, push it to live and start from there. On another note the only thing ling needs is for old fast channeled lighting proc to come back, make it share the proc that allows you to instant cast chain lighting, boom, ling sorc is in a great place. P.S. Force storm spam between CD/TB/CL if you can hit a cluster is how you play the spec, you should only focus on single targeting during your polarity shift window; this is a general statement and there are definitely times when you should prioritize single target dps outside of polarity.

One of the best comps in 4.x was merc/sniper...

Smash mara was nerfed before season 3, smash was not a meta spec in season 3.

We're approaching this from very different perspectives, you're looking at it from the perspective of someone who mainly solo queues regs and I'm looking it from the perspective of someone who plays a decent amount of solo and group ranked, it's not odd that we wouldn't see eye to eye on this.

Pyro pt is not a burst spec, it's a sustained damage/aoe/dot spec... AP PT is very strong in a full trinity composition and no one has said that AP doesn't have defensive issues in solos/non-trinity comps. You're cherry picking your arguments now.

First of all mercs/mandos were in a very good spot in 4.0 (somewhat weak in solos, but good/great in regs and 4s), the class was very close to being balanced because a good merc/mando was noticable, decent mercs/mandos were decent, and bad mercs/mandos were bad. As for your comment to skanks, that is just ridiculous; some of the biggest hits in 5.0 have come from crit stacked mercs landing an auto-crit heatseeker, but aside from that having the "biggest" hit isn't really what you judge a dps class on... look at carnage maras, who routinely do not break 25k, but they're still considered "bursty" and a tier 1 dps spec. Mercs are definitely over-tuned for regs and solos, there is simply no question about that, it's only in trinity compositions (such as team ranked) that you could argue that they are not over-tuned. In my opinion mercs (like powertechs) don't need simple nerfs or buffs, they need to be overhauled.

The burst is extremely practical, both specs have rotational burst with a crazy burst window when their auto crit is up; Powertechs have the advantage of also having great sustained dps and easy target swapping. Given the stiff gearing curve a lot of players opted to gear characters other than PT due to it's lackluster state in 5.0, so It's not surprising that you don't see a lot of great Powertechs in regs; PT is also super squish to solo queue on, so that's another reason you don't run into as many Powertechs in regs. If you see Aqar or Powertech Meta in regs on Star Forge (both recently came back) I promise they'll re-kindle your "fond" memories of being terrorized by Powertechs

Arsenal dps may fall short in the pve rankings, but it's actually very strong in pvp, and your burst potential is also very high, on top of this your damage is extremely easy to setup/deliver; your only weakness is having someone sit on you and rotate cc/interrupts, but then you use your amazing kiting toolkit to pull them away and punish them for tunneling you... Your mobility is actually really strong as well, you have HO and rocket out, as well as a low cd 30 meter root, knockback, and a 70% snare on a hard hitting channeled ability that can be casted while moving; your strong dcds also allow you ignore proper positioning and play much more aggressive than a ranged dps should be able to play, any gaps in your mobility toolkit is more than made up for with your strong control and dcd kit. You can't talk about any class in piecemeal, and this is especially true for merc.

I would prefer not to bring back old rewards and instead release meaningful new rewards. We haven't had "awesome" rewards since season 3... the rewards that are released are not an excuse for the length of the seasons. The renewed focus on group content is refreshing, but this idea screams of laziness.

Compares a completely buffed railshot vs a rotational railshot... because logic.

Powertech damage (sustained and burst) is borderline OP, AP PT and Rage Jugg are arguably the two best burst dps specs in the game. Powertechs have dcds issues, and to understand them you need to talk about PT in two scenarios: 1: Non-trinity regs/solos: PT dies, through kolto, once energy shield is down 2: Trinity matches: PT can be hard swapped to once kolto and energy shield is down, if the PT is taking constant damage there is a ~30 second window for this to occur. PT in trinity matchups is actually very strong, any buffs to it's dcds will push it back to into a meta dps spot. BW has never been able to balance Powertechs, they have always been over or under tuned.

Net has always been a broken ability because it is a pseudo-cc that ignores the resolve system, no one complained about it in the past because the trade off to having access to net was that you had to deal with the weaknesses associated with running a merc/mando. Mercs are in a weird spot, they are definitely over-tuned in many situations, but at the same time at high elo solos and team ranked you can still shut them down (discounting the aids merc/sniper comps people run). I agree with you concerning powertechs, 3.0-5.0 was long enough for double/triple pt to be meta, but I doubt BW is going to make intelligent changes to PT that address it's issues in solos/non-trinity regs without making it over-tuned in team ranked.

The mara/sent nerfs have resulted in a resurgence of mercs/mandos in solos, and against both sins/shadows and operatives/scoundrels all you have to do is double hard stun into e-net (or simply chain nets if you have multiple mercs/mandos) and there is very little room for counter play. Many of the classes that countered mercs in the beginning of 5.0 (sents/maras, deception/infil, and snipers) have been nerfed (some extremely heavily, such as deception/infiltration sins), so they have less natural predators than they did at the beginning of 5.0; this is exaggerated by the generally lower level of skill that you encounter in solos since the season has gone on for so long.

Are you really trying to say that regs are competitive?

I think our difference in opinion on this matter is that I place no value on being able to stone wall a mid node 2vs6-8 and you do; I don't care about this because there is no competitive game mode that requires you to play like this and I consider it a boring way to play regs. For the record I played 8vs8 ranked and this is something that never happened when fairly matched teams played vs each other because playing the objective was part of the game mode and no decent team would fall for this tactic.

I have not tanked, in solos or team ranked, in ~2 seasons; most of my tanking experience was pre 4.0 and I had multiple gear sets (full mit, high end, full dps mods/enhancements), you swapped your gear set depending your team composition, strategy, and the team you were playing vs. The best tanks I have ever run with were capable of fulfilling the tank role while also doing damage, they enjoyed this because it brought an extra layer of play into the game and forced them to work harder. I did not attack Kendra's play style, I simply pointed out that a dps geared tank is also a tank as long as they are fulfilling their role and that tanks do not currently need mitigation gear to fulfill the role of a tank.

Bioware doesn't understand that true pvp tanks will never opt for full mitigation gear until 1: They need the mitigation 2: Mitigation stats offer a higher net benefit over dps stats Trying to address issue 2 before they address issue 1 is pointless and currently (outside of solo ranked) sin and jugg tanks simply don't need mit gear to stay alive. Side note, people will die quicker when the average player learns how to do more dps than can be accomplished by spamming your basic attack the entire warzone,

This drivel is getting a bit old, real pvp tanks have been using dps gear since launch because they understand two fundamentals: 1: Survival comes from intelligent use of dcds 2: Damage is a form of pressure/control. If you prefer to play a mitigation tank with a nerf saber that's fine and no one has a right to tell you how to play, but stop insinuating that tanks who use dps gear and push high damage are not true tanks; as long as a tank guard swaps, taunts, and peels they are a "tank," pumping out solid damage while doing all of the above simply makes them a superior tank.

Snipers are usualy the tunnel target in 4s and solos (post healing nerf) because their dcds are very strong vs small windows of damage but weak vs sustained damage. Snipers in the hand of a skilled player can be a game changer but the majority of snipers are easy kills. I would suggest taking Grim's thoughts on sniper with a gain of salt, he's admitted that he is fairly new to pvp (in previous posts he said that he switched to pvping in 5.0 due to his pve groups falling apart) and he's also biased because he mainly (only?) plays mara and thus only understands the issues melee players face when fighting snipers... I promise you that his opinion on snipers would change if he attempted to play the class on a regular basis and gained a deeper understanding of the challenges the class faces (esp. if he played sniper in solos).

Once again, I didn't condone raging. I don't think you can classify gating one companion out of the crazy amount of companions we have access to behind pvp as poor design. I won't speak to conquest since I don't take part in it, but is pursuing the bonus objective really a necessity? If pursuing the bonus conquest objective is considered necessary then I agree that's poor game design and a better design would be to offer players a choice between different objectives/tracks. There are tons of design changes I would love to see implemented in SWTOR but at the end of the day the only thing players have control over are their own actions; and in the case the OP described I saw two examples of toxicity, not one.

There are 11 pages of replies, I've skimmed through them and read a few of his posts, frankly I feel like he was backpeddling based on some of the initial responses but I admit that I may be wrong. Regardless, the op's initial post paints the picture of someone who doesn't care about pvp and definitely isn't someone who is there to enjoy pvp and learn; if that's not true then he did a poor job explaining himself in his initial post or has done a complete 180.