Good read, thanks for the info.

Yeah I have much envy for the consular/inq baseline aoe instant cast knockback that will unstealth an operative/scoundrel even if they have evade up on a 20s cooldown as well. No hate, just jealous

Set bonuses are something I'd like to see tweaked. No nerfs, just buffs for the much less useful ones.

Maybe they recognize your legacy name and just don't like you.

We already have 2 brackets, with a little tweaking the lower bracket could easily be changed into the non-gear-based bracket, (see sig). Bam. Best of both worlds. People can PvP just for giggles, or they can PvP for gear and ranking.

Actually when it launched it did not have any battlegrounds.

This is my experience as well, I was just curious if there was one that someone had tested that did not get removed, since I have not personally tested every dot in the game.

Like what non-force/tech dots are you thinking of? I only ask because most of my controlled testing has been with a shadow and a scoundrel, neither of which have any form of dot or bleed that cannot be cleansed by the others evasion. Also, shadow/assassin's evasion immunities are different from scoundrel/operatives.

I've been playing MMOs for many years, and one thing that always amuses me is how people give 101 reasons why xfire statistics are invalid. I have yet to play a game where I didn't see more people in game over time when xfire numbers were going up, and less people online when they were going down. I have an active subscription, I bought the CE, I have a good guild, old friends that play, and plan on playing for a long time to come. That's my disclaimer since this sort of opinion is normally treated as some sort of game hating propaganda. I just can't help but roll my eyes when people dispute allegedly flawed/incomplete data with even more flawed/incomplete guessing.

Cracks me up when a stealth class vanishes and does a taunting emote afterwards, only to break their stealth and get killed. It's a shame they won't make that mistake again.

Although I personally think sorcs could probably use a little tuning, (not a severe nerf by any means), I can definitely agree with these kind of numbers by tab dotting. When my scoundrel is in sawbones I can do 300k/150k by tabbing and vital shot... also more inclined to do this to prevent people from capping objectives anyway. If there are any valid arguments against sorcs, these kind of numbers are not it, IMO.

Depending on the timing, if you get a back-to-back shield, absorbing 6k can ruin your day. The debuff should start after the bubble drops, and the debuff duration should be shortened a bit to compensate.

wow.. I started reading thinking "I'm going to add a comment about enraging at some point"... nope.. covered. Well done OP, well done.

Resource fatigue/draining, and it having a significant impact on a healer's survivability, is a missed mechanic here that would add some depth/complexity to fights. It should be as important as range is to melee. Otherwise you end up with stun/burst being the only thing that matters, (I know it will always matter, but it doesn't have to be the only thing that matters). Saw the same thing in WoW at some point, (no idea how it is now), and the same thing in Rift. I generally don't have a problem with the amount of healing/survivability a class has so much as whether or not it's an endless supply.

IMO, given two equally geared players, it comes down to having the right class/spec and making sure you interrupt/lockout the right spell. If you don't have the right skills and/or you just interrupt every time you see a cast bar without knowing what they are casting then you're more likely to end up with an unkillable healer.

I hear some people talking about how the 10-49 bracket is just as hard on low levels as the 50 bracket is on new 50s. I still have yet to feel like I got stomped by math with any 14-20 alt I start pvping with. I understand the appeal of playing with more experienced players, but for me that is outweighed by the current lack of WZ ranking, longer queue times, and a need to put up with an 'inevitable loss while gearing up' period of time, (regardless of how short it may be). I already had an alt hit 50 with 1000/1000 tokens + bag. Went straight to the dailys and got those mods, filling the remainder with 49 epic mods from the GTN. Yeah, I started back in the 50 bracket with a workable handicap, but why bother? What is the point of working with that handicap, again, to power up, again, to do the same WZ that I was already doing? (playing the same maps with a closer to level playing field) It's easier and more fun to me to make another alt and just PvP without getting exploded and pondering what sort of gear discrepancy there was between me and my target. That just doesn't happen to me in the 10-49 bracket, and I'd be surprised if it didn't happen to most people in the 50 bracket. Until 50 PvP offers something new and worth working towards, it's time better spent elswhere, IMO.

It would be different if 50 gave you new or ranked WZ you wanted to participate in, or an Ilum that rocked. As it is, it just gives you the same WZ you were already doing and resets your handicap. So, in the future I'm sure it will make sense. Right now it just feels like a varying amount of arbitrary hazing to suffer through in order to get back to having fun doing what you were already doing, (with a smaller pool of players to do it with in some cases).

/signed

Sniper/slinger is a blast to play, and extremely effective in the right situations, but probably the most predictable to counter if you are paying attention to them. I think perhaps they should leave the cover and defense screen abilities, but simply remove the cover requirement for all skills. It's not like it would decrease the TTK when they are ignored, so people aren't going to get blown up any faster... it would just remove the ability of some skills/terrain to effectively lock-out their hardest hitting attacks. Cover would still be desirable for the anti-charge, mitigation, etc.

I'm not speculating, I have 50 scoundrel and have tested mirror abilities dueling my 50 shadow friend. It removes all DoTs that I have tested, force and tech, including bleeds/internal damage. You can also vanish/evasion in the same GCD; that part is working as intended I'm sure, but I'm not sure that the bleeds should be cleansed. Basically no form of dot is going to prevent a stealther from stealthing in combat... that's sort of a foreign concept to me.

Only stupid thing IMO is that http://db.darthhater.com/abilities/1054/avoidance_training/ removes everything including bleeds/internal damage. Who knows if it's a bug... you would think when it says "removes all hostile removable effects" that would imply that there are some irremovable effects. This also gives a 1min cooldown (evasion, not vanish), the ability to really screw up the DPS of builds that depend on dots with a cooldown.

/signed

This. And on my own tangent... it's annoying to see developers cater to this never-happy group of locusts that consume and leave. I like this game for what makes it different 1-49, not what makes it the same as others at 50. You start out focusing on full voice-over quests, moral choices, a class quest novel, companions, space missions, useful crafting, and a PvP bracket designed to normalize players. What you get at 50 focuses on the opposite. Your companion is gone for end-game PvE/PvP. Space missions lose half their incentive (exp) and don't really get an end-game version. Crafting usefulness depends on your profession because it's better to grind tokens in PvP or PvE for more super-saiyan infinite-power-progression bullsh** that inevitably ruins what PvP balance there is to begin with. I understand that we have to wait for more class quest/voice-over/decision based questing... but that is just part of the reason that the game feels like two different MMOs before and after 50. Which style is future development/expansions going to focus on? If we end up neglecting the things that make SWTOR different in the end... if it really just becomes about grinding gear... then is there really any reason to pick this gear grind over the other?

Hard to say without combat log/DPS meters.

Undecided. 1-49 is one of the best MMO experiences I've had. 50 feels to me like an unrefined WoW gear grind. I think I would rather have had no end-game content than bad end-game content. Fortunately it's easy to just roll an alt... just my $.02