I agree with you. Defense is UP in PvP because there are so many things that bypass the defensive stats. You can't shield critical hits, you have nearly zero mitigation against internal/elemental damage (and inqs/cons have skill points to reduce your int/ele mitigation even further) and almost everyone has armor penetration because just about every ability is a "special" with a base of 100% hit chance. Thus, any accuracy rating at all puts most attacks over 100% and gives them a passive armor pen (and high end gear has lots of accuracy rating). Then you have classes with stacking armor debuffs and high damage attacks that avoid armor completely (shad/assa). All that combined makes playing a tank for the mitigation benefits in PvP nearly worthless. I'm to the point where I ditch the defense gear for dps gear in PvP. Honestly, I die about the same frequency and do more damage. It's a bit of a no-brainer.

Never did I try to say my experience was the norm, I merely responded with my experience because you claimed that there was "no" situation where you could "knuckledown" and pull out a win after being down early. You didn't state it as a "general case", you made an emphatic statement. I only needed a single instance to the contrary to disprove your previous statement. If you're now going to revise your statement to be something more general, fine, I'll agree with you. It is unlikely to come back from an early deficit, especially when playing with random pugs who forsake teamwork and basic strategy.

That's not true. I'll share my own experiences. I was in a match with some guildmates and we were down 4-2 with 1 minute remaining in huttball. I scored with just under a minute, and our team was already setup in position to fastrack pass another score as soon as it respawned. I died after my first score, ran back to the center and grabbed the ball with 10 seconds remaining in the game. We won a 4-4 tiebreak because we controlled the middle and I was able to hold the ball at the end.

People who want to punish others for leaving early are doing it out of spite and only looking for revenge. They want to inflict damage onto those whom they feel have slighted them. They're not considering how it would affect the game overall. I'll tell you one thing, though, these same people wanting deserter penalties will cry a river when it happens to them after a random disconnect or when they're trying to group with friends and they accidentally forgot to uncheck the "Requeue warzone" button. Then they'll come out with all the exceptions that need to be coded into the system and complicated hypothetical scenarios for when the penalty is applicable and when it isn't. In the end, a deserter penalty adds nothing to the game, it solves nothing (people will still leave early) and it adds a lot of extra work/code to the game. All that said, a better solution is already in place. When someone leaves, the matchmaking system continues to add people to the match to fill empty slots. As long as one side is outnumbered, the game works to even up both sides.

News flash, but all games have an optimal method to playing them. I'm simply trying to be helpful by pointing out how people can best take advantage of the current mechanics. You came here to pick an argument with me and you're attributing things to me that I never said. I'm not even going to bother refuting them all because it's clear you're not listening anyways. If you don't want to listen to my advice, fine, leave the thread and don't respond. I only offer it up to be helpful, I couldn't care less if people want to flounder in mediocrity. The game works the way it is, obvious bugs not withstanding. It was designed by intelligent people who obviously put a lot of thought into how the game would be played. It's up to the player to figure out the optimal solution to the game's mechanics. If it changes in the future, so be it, but I don't see the point in whining on the forums about the current mechanics of the game when there are alternate paths to the same goal.

herp derp

I'm not arguing for or against. Go back and read my first replies and you'll see I was pointing out specific things to other posters. I didn't even address the OP. The first was a guy who said half his guild was gonna rage quit over this. Really? Gonna rage quit over easy mode loot? Move on, run hardmodes (they're not actually hard) and stop crying. I don't know why you latched on to my posts, perhaps you were just randomly clicking on the quote button, IDK. You came looking for an argument and you have the gall to call me out for arguing? As for limiting options, I have no idea where you came up with this as I never said anything about limiting options. The fact is though, that there are limits in video games, there are always limits. Until we have the ultimate in AI and simulation technology, there will always be a finite limit as to what can be done. The fact is, Bioware has made their game and they've got a reason for doing it this way. I'd rather they focus on other areas of the game that are actually broke than changing something like this that ultimately doesn't matter. Also, anything in a normal mode op can be had from a HM flashpoint or can be purchased with commendations. You don't actually have to limit yourself to operations to get loot. There are you options, exercise them.

Huh? That makes no sense. Unassembled Columi tokens are BOP, you can't buy/sell them. I've run groups through these flashpoints and got Columi drops for a class that isn't even present in the group. My companions have more Columi items than some people's mains because of this.

This has been mentioned in several threads. It happens when the original puzzle has a 1 turn solution at the top level. If that happens, your only option is to leave the instance and reset it. My guild did this 2 nights ago and we decided to have the stealthies go ahead and check it out before the rest of the raid started clearing trash, if we had a 1-turn puzzle, we just left and reset.

Everyone has the nostalgia effect for their first raiding experiences. For me, it's EQ1. WoW is crap compared to EQ1, IMO, but that's the nostalgia feeling. Sorry to burst your bubble, but you'll never get that feeling back, no matter how many MMOs you play.

@ OP: I find it odd that you complain about destined loot, but then pine for the loot bags to be brought back. You realise that the end result is the same for both, right? Bags: 8 people loot a bag, open it, and they might get an item (similar to champ pvp bags). The item may be a duplicate of something they already have or may not be an upgrade at all. Destined loot: 8 people kill a boss, 4 people get destined loot. The item may be a duplicate of something they already have or may not be an upgrade at all. At least with destined loot, you're gauranteed X number of items. In a bag system, as has been evidenced by the PvP side of the game, your entire raid could all open their bags and get nadda.

Because it's a good idea? I thought the bag concept was a fantastic idea and I really wish they would have kept it as a bag that everyone loots and then opens. But I love how you're trying to marginalize my opinion by implying that it doesn't affect me. It affects everyone. Someday I'll have an alt that runs through normal mode ops again. Game development isn't a democracy and Bioware isn't going to make changes just on your say-so.

Well, I wasn't talking about quantity, I was talking about quality. I think that if 8-man raids drop 2x columi/rakata items then 16-mans should drop 4x columi/rakata items. But I've seen several people mention that there should be superior items that drop only in 16-man ops. IE, a tier set that is better than rakata that is exclusive to 16-man ops. At that point, in order to continue our progression, once we get full rakata we'd have to expand to do 16-man ops. If I misunderstood what people were talking about, whatever, that's how it came across.

Prerelease, they mentioned a loot bag system where everyone got a bag similar to what they are doing with PvP champion bags. This auto-assigning is really no different, the end result is the same anyways. With a loot bag, 8 people open a bag, 4 random people might get something. It might be an upgrade it might not, whatever. With auto-assigning, 8 people loot the boss and 4 people randomly get something that might be an upgrade or not. Despite the name, hardmode ops are not hard. They certainly aren't elitist. But if guilds are even semi-serious about raiding, which is what seems to be the case with people responding to this thread and talking about how they're trying to gear up their guild, then hardmodes are not far out of reach.

If there are unique drops that only drop on the 16 player ops, then you are wrong. You would be forced up to 16-man raids in order to continue your progression. You would be forced into 16-man raids in order to attract the best, new talent. In essence, 16-man would be THE end-game and 8-man raids would just be practice. Many guilds want true 8-man progression that is THE progression. We want parallel paths to progression, not a single, linear path where 8-mans are only there to lead into 16-mans.

I'm sorry, but if your "veteran" players are going to rage quit over this, you don't have good players to begin with. If these guys are so good and been 50 for longer than a week or so, they should be geared past what normal EV drops, with the possible exception of chest drops from Soa. Your fresh 50's are the people that need the gear the most and if you have members whining that these people are getting geared up (which benefits your guild in the long run) then you should tell them to shut it. Simple answer, run hardmodes. You can ML and do whatever you want for loot then. Hardmodes aren't even that much harder than normal. Your "veteran" players should be geared for HMs already anyways.

run hardmodes. problem solved.

bad analogy, or maybe it's a good one, but casinos are not regulated per individual machine, they're regulated by the combined payouts of all the machines on the floor. In essence, a casino can have a machine that never pays out (like the ones nearest the entrances) as long as they have others that make up for it. Random is random, and every raid/HMFP that I've seen has dropped the appropriate amount of loot and it's been distributed to someone in the group. But to answer your original question, yes, I've probably done TFE 10+ times without getting the chest piece. Had several times it dropped the chest for a class that wasn't present in the group. I actually got 2 off-class chest pieces simply because everyone in the group rolled greed because no one could use it. I ended up buying the Chest with commendations. Random is random and I never saw anything that would indicate otherwise, although I do wish they would code in limitations so that FPs will only drop loot usable by the present classes (ie if no smuggler in the group, all smuggler drops are taken out of the loot table).

I actually like PvP in this game. The only thing that bothers me is the population imbalances on Ilum and the 3 fps that I get there. Fix Ilum and they'd have a very good PvP game.

A 3rd faction would have too much impact on the PvE raiding side of the game. It would never work. Take my guild for example. A significant portion of our healers are Smugglers. If we suddenly lost 60% of our healers to a 3rd faction, it would cripple our ability to run operations.

Because what they have right now isn't already terrible? My idea is much better than what is there now.

Or they could just put population caps on how many can enter Ilum's Western Shelf. Like say, neither faction can outnumber the opposite faction by more than 5 players. They could patch that in a week.

It was probably a 4 person premade that queued up and then decided not to join the WZ. Maybe there just aren't many people queuing on your server. Or maybe the time of day was just not good for WZs

Because people queued up and then didn't join the warzone when it finally popped. Bioware can't force people to enter the WZ.

Dual Spec? Yes, please. My guild runs HM Ops and our tanks are constantly respeccing from tank to DPS depending on who shows up for raids and the specific needs of that night's event. Ops have little need for a 2nd tank spec and with the tight enrage timers, max DPS is a must.