This is exactly the kind of post that fueled my point on childish responses in this forum, there are some good people with plentiful feedback on the forum, unfortunatley the trash far outweighs them. So I rolled a Scoundrel for EZ mode? Nope I played one in beta and I actually was one of the few Scoundrels that lobbied for the nerf because it was needed (champ/cent geared) So I can't play a Guardian? 100k + protection in most WZ's and fully champ geared (most of it obtained when the bags were RNG which took me several weeks of grinding) I reroll FOTM? Actually I made a Commando and a Sage to see for myself how they weighed up, how to counter them and be able to give a frank and honest opinion on them rather than falsities....Gunnery spec for instance has too much utility tied to one spammable skill that needs to be spread out more evenly instead of laser beam focused on grav round, Sage has the most utility and can hybrid spec for exceptional results. And again, because you are too busy trying to tell people to l2p, blindly defending your class and that PvP has exploits that should have been hotfixed hours after they were confirmed tells me only one thing. You can't see the forest for the trees. Edit: And just so you know, I still find Scoundrels to be OP but this isn't because of there burst, this is because every minute I can pick a target and stunlock them to death of which they can do nothing about, this is because resolve is a bad mechanic and broken at best. In case you are thinking to yourself I'm lying .... Pop adrenal, trinket Flechette Round > Shoot first > Pistol whip > Disappearing Act > Flechette Round > Shoot first > Sucker punch > Dirty Kick > Flechette round > Back blast > Sucker Punch. That's 3 sec of stunlock from K.O followed by a 4 sec stun from Dirty kick....7 full seconds of stun before resolve would have kicked in, that is nearly as bad as the infamous Slam stun from DaoC. Even if they break the dirty kick, they are down to 1/4 hp at the most, no chance of fighting back at that point.

I didn't farm in Ilum Zergs nor did I level through PvP exclusively, thus I did my ranks "the hard way"...grinding in level 50 WZ's against a bunch of players that were part of "Ilumgate" and were running around in part or full BM gear.

This is something that stands out to me as a long time MMO player and another part of the chain of events that have gotten me to the stage I'm at. The frozen shockwater bug should have been emergency patched because of how bad of an exploit it is (Trion would have done it, Blizzard would have done it, heck even Funcom and Mythic-pre absorbtion to EA would have done it). I could abuse it myself, but I won't because I try to play as fairly as I possibly can, I keep away from exploiting, glitching and generally doing anything to gain an unfair advantage. One of my friends who made his return to MMO's with SWTOR put this point to me in Teamspeak and I completely and utterly agreed with him. "PvE could have broken quests, heck I don't even mind being on the underdog side, what I do mind is imbalanced and exploitable PvP, I like my PvP balanced and fair!" Of course my friend now feels exactly the same way I do, we often queue together in teamspeak with other friends (group of us that started together) and when we come across a WZ filled with players using exploits such a stealth glitching to take capture points/bomb doors without coming out of stealth (without a smuggler/op around so clearly an exploit) using the frozen pureshock water exploit and rolling with mostly sorcs so they can chain stunlock the first person that comes near them to death....We tend to lose interest and either go do something else or log out entirely. The glitches and exploits in PvP are creating quite a lot of apathy right now, throw in the broken resolve mechanic and balance on top of it...you can understand why players feel the way they do.

I'm not asking for the game to be perfect, if I wanted a perfect game I would not have played AO for the best part of 5 years or DaoC right up until the LoM expansion. But the fixes do need to come a little quicker than they have been or at least communicated a little better, as imbalanced as Rift was at it's release I'll give them props on the communication and hot issues front, they were really good at this (the problem with Rift was the balance issues were so bad at launch that it took them 6 months to sort them all out and by that point, most of us had gotten fed up and left) I also wouldn't even be considering looking at TSW giving Funcoms track record of bad launches, but they do take risks and try to "break the mould" with each MMO (AO was the first to use instancing, AoC was the first to incorporate action combat into an MMORPG) sometimes it pays off (AO) sometimes it doesn't (AoC). I play SWTOR because I like the Star Wars universe, I adored the KOTOR series and I know Bioware are great story tellers and make quality products (I stuck with SWG for 2 years which should be testament enough to how much I like Star Wars, I just couldn't stomach the horrible NGE and SoE's direction) I guess I have played my fair share of MMO's over the years and SWTOR is one that I really could see myself sticking with, but again...they need to start prioritising balancing and fixes soon because I'm not the only one that is getting disenfranchised with the PvP balance. If they would just tell us what they are up to and answer more than a single question on PvP in there Q&A instead of talking about subjects everyone already knows about that'd be enough to know where they plan to take things.

Nah I played the Scoundrel in beta (still do well but just because I do well does not take away from the fact that some classes are generally not balanced) and I really should have noted what I meant by class balance, I also do well for myself on my Guardian but it's well documented that they have a massive amount of gear reliance to succeed and are pretty gimped in 10-49. By balance I meant the abudancy of CC to some classes (sorc/sage) and lack of CC to others (Sent/mara), the tree layouts that allow certain classes to become hybrid and do it all in one build (sorc/sage & merc/commando) and how bad the Resolve mechanic is (does not make you immune to CC 100% of the time when you have a full resolve bar, does not build quick enough allowing you to be effectively stunlocked to death should your CC breaker be on cooldown) There is a reason many people have gravitated to Sorc/Sage and Merc/Commando, because they have better risk vs reward potential than other classes and thus are more consistent.

Right now its 16:40 and I've just logged out after about 30mins ingame, I have a 50 Guardian and a 50 Scoundrel I feel no urge to play a 24 Commando I could level up but don't feel like it right now and a 15 Sage that I'm probably going to delete because I hate them. Is it boredom, perhaps burnout that has led me to just halt playing so suddenly? No it's class balance! Every WZ consists of the same thing, multiple sages/sorcs and mutliple bh/commandos with the occassional train of surge stacked marauders (now some of the imps have realised that running them in a zerg train cannot be defended against they are rolling them by the dozens). Is this a rant that I can't win WZ's? Nope I still win my fair share of WZ's since I play for my team, but I'm sick and tired of having to work for every single yard when there are so many players using faceroll team setups and classes because Bioware listened to some guy from a game that was well known for it's balance issues. I never cheated my way to BM like some of them either, I'm almost rank 50 with my Guardian and rank 40 with my Scoundrel, I worked for them the hard way. Now I have reached a crossroads and have 5 choices. 1. I can either continue playing and become bitter towards Bioware becoming disenfranchised and probably never playing another Bioware product as long as I live (I've already sworn of Activision products until that idiot Bobby Koddick is no longer there CEO and wrecking every single flagship title they have and I wont play SoE products because they have no clue how to balance anything) 2. Or I can take time out, play something else and wait out the fixes checking back each week/month to see how the progression goes..But with this I run the risk of becoming disinterested with the game and probably moving on elsewhere. 3. I could possibly stick with it and just PvE until PvP balance is fixed, but as a PvP junkie this will only hurt me and I cannot swear off queueing for WZ's when I know it's easy to do. 4. I could also become part of the problem, but you know something...Empire does not appeal to me at all, I don't want to run around chucking lightning bolts in every which direction and shouting l2p at anyone I may happen to stunlock to death with one of the other population of probably over a few hundred thousand sorcs there are. 5. Or I could just leave all together, write off SWTOR as a bad experience with a less than adult community (for what I seem to gather from a lot of the posts) and look forward to GW2 or TSW, and oddly enough, right now at this moment in time....this choice appeals to me most. ======================================================== I have been through all the balancing nightmares and hiccups of many games before SWTOR, I have seen the for and against arguments more times than I care to remember and I'm now getting to a point after looking over the patch notes and thoughts of belief... "Bioware doesn't know where to start balancing do they?" I have been a Bioware fan for some time, I absolutely love Mass Effect, KOTOR and DA 1 & even 2 but I really feel Bioware are so far out of there comfort zone they are struggling to stay with there heads above the water on this one and are now doing the age old stubborn solution of... "Maybe if you ignore it long enough it'll go away" Here is the thing, to any Bioware rep, dev or whatever that might stumble across this post and think "just another QQ thread in the pvp forum", the problem isn't going to go away, but your playerbase will! Not now, maybe not in a few months, but slowly and surely more players will get to the stage that I have, sick and tired of the lack of balance between classes and feeling like if they are not part of the problem they cannot compete as well that they will simply quit and not come back. You are making all the same mistakes that Funcom made with AoC You are making all the same mistakes that Mythic did with WAR You are making all the same initial mistakes that Trion did with Rift Those 3 games are not bad games now, but they are forever blemeshed because: - They didn't listen - They didn't react - They took too long to address serious balancing issues - They made the same mistakes again (WAR with the release of the Choppa AoC with the expansion) Getting industry awards is all well and good, but what good are they when you are trying to nurse an ailing database of which can only get worse because you didn't stop the rot in time... ======================================================== This is not a feel sorry for me post, nor is it a doom post, should I choose to leave SWTOR will do just fine without me and will continue on (this is not to say I'm going to, just that the choice to do so is very appealing right now). But wake up and smell the coffee fanboi's and trolls alike...SWTOR cannot continue to run like this, the PvP balance and issues have to be addressed or the game will be doomed to "niche" status which isn't good for any triple A rated title to ever be especially when Lucas already had to cope with one failure title under the Star Wars brand. And Bioware, you really really need to start communicating better than you are...an entire weekend with not so much as a peep from any of you? If you truly loved the product as you claim you do, you would be keeping a constant communication line open during the weekend. We respect that you have families, but remember this is your livelihood and you should be doing everything you possibly can to ensure it's success! Thanks for reading those that did and nope no TL DR because litteracy needs a buff! =p

You would be right and he held a designer role. However he wasn't in charge of balance, that was Adam Gershowitz (the infamous nerfer of witch elves and lover of bright wizards) My guess is that Gabe might have based some of his balance desicions around WAR class balance...big mistake. http://warhammeronline.wikia.com/wiki/Warhammer_Online_Development_Team That's the WAR development team as it stood before Mythic was absorbed by EA entirely.

^ this. If you are going Vigilance you are doing your team a disservice by not fufilling your tank role because your damage output does not match your loss of utility. Focus can get away with not fufilling the tank role because they are fufilling a burst role and bring a fair bit of utility to boot, force exhaustion is an excellent soft CC for stopping those pesky Sorcs since it is classed as force damage and cannot be cleansed by the root/snare breaker effect on using force speed. Guard is simply too good not to use, Warding call far outstrips plasma brand because it gives you a much needed second panic button. There is nothing wrong with stance dancing, etc...but again you are harming your team more than helping them by not using one of the top mitigation skills in the game. It reminds me of the arguement back in WAR with the KOTBs and the dps spec vs the tanking spec it took some people months to realise that the tanking spec was superior in every way to going 2h dps just because the utility alone could be a deciding factor, at least here we have a pretty damn viable dps spec that warrants going dps in focus...but vigiliance seriously does not warrant it at all, from a PvP point of view....especially when you realise all 3 dots (inc plasma brand) are cleansable.

Focus spec is only as good as the quality of players you are facing, not to mention the burst is soon to be nerfed since it has reliance on high amounts of surge. You might get the sweep combo off on good players, once...after that, you'll be focused, CC'ed and generally priority cannon fodder. Vigl/Def brings utility and constant dps to the fray, you might not shine as bright as a focus Guardian, but you have a much more consistent performance of being an absolute pain to kill and giving there healers one heck of a headache. You can counter burst by breaking the chain, there is no counter in the game to utility and having an ace up your sleeve for every occassion.

You should read class forums more often, there are several 5 starred multipage threads on how horrible that some of the PvP gear looks, I'm pretty sure Inqs don't hate there gear since there pvp gear looks alright, as does the SW's, Agents and Consulars JK's, BH's, Smugs for most absolutely loathe there sets and a lot of Troopers hate the Toadface helmet, that's 4 advanced classes worth of players that do not like the asthetics of there PvP set. I personally hate the JK's helmet and the Smugglers Hamburgler cape armor, the BM suit for the trooper looks pretty cool (black definately suits it) but yea, most of the 40 armor sets do look more asthetically pleasing than the 50 sets.

Vigi/Def also has the extra % increase base mitigation, I'm also not denying that Shien has good damage potential, but offset it against the loss of Soresu and Guard and not having perhaps one of our more useful mitigation cooldowns and you'll see why the Hybrid is technically better than Shien full Vigil in a PvP situation (that cooldown can often be the difference between holding a point and losing a point) Not forgetting how lacking the burns are, plasma brand is alright but the effect burns on blade storm and overhead slash are really lacking (I laughed when I tried the build and saw that they only do 50 damage per tick) Again, this is why full Vigil is primarly a PvE build, focus isn't really an issue with leap, saber throw, stasis, combat focus and defiance as well as picking up free of cost sweep and snare while being able to bladestorm for free after leaping which will crit thanks to overhead slash.

Read your own figures, 50-100 damage right there in black and white, this is what you gain for losing Guard and mitigation values, so outside a PVE environment, it really isn't worth it since in PvP you'll get plenty of focus from the abudant CC flying around.

Focus bombers won't be getting 5k after the surge nerf, thus your point is moot, now read above look at the screen and note the fact you dodged the fact I mentioned you are geared vs fresh 50's which is the only difference.

And there we have our answer ladies and gentlemen, fully geared Guardian claiming class is fine when beating on cents/fresh 50's! You keep telling yourself it's a good build, the rest of us that take the time to fully explore things will keep our own opinions on how poor Shien stance is and how useless single saber mastery is as a talent. I'll keep plugging away, earning high amounts of medals and valor because I haven't forfeited Guard for some poor damage tradeoff thus making me generally more useful to my team in a...team game, you keep dreaming of getting the 5k destroyer medal and the 300k damage medal which will constantly slip from your grasp the minute you realise the whole enemy team has more than 6% expertise. Enjoy adding 50 damage onto your elemental Dots because that is all the Shien bonus is worth. In one of the closer matches against a BM geared empire team the only reason they won is because there assassin used a stealth exploit to steal a turret (remained in stealth while capping and the blue cap beam didn't appear) http://imageshack.us/f/443/screenshot2012021203071.jpg/ The 200k+ damage was a Sentinel, note that neither Guardian broke 150k damage and the other Guardian was dps specced in shien stance with me being Vigil/Def Hybrid tank spec....wow 20k more damage and he had 2 less deaths so more up time. This is what actually happens when gear starts to even out, you start to see what makes a difference and what doesn't and Shien makes very little difference for the loss of Guard and the mitigation properties of Soresu.

Popular opinion is that most of the 50 sets look horrible.

Shop around and pull mods out of other gear, this is what I did with my duplicate Champ gloves, pulled the mods out and stuck them in my cent boots, since I have 580+ expertise I don't really need to upgrade the boots now until I get BM ones. I mainly have a vindicator set with some mods pulled out from the war leader set because I prefer the vindicator set bonuses (10% damage increase on leap which you'll be doing a lot and being able to self heal by guardian leaping > 5% damage increase from Guarding and 1 second increase on stasis which you'll never ever see since it'll get broken more often than not) Mix and match your mods, even if you have to look to your mirror classes set and there mods and see how they weigh up, if they are better than yours, buy it up, pull the mods out and stick them in your gear.

I don't leave, because if it's going to be a slow loss, I'll get more valor than being a baby and ditching out of the WZ. And I'm grabbing a second champ set since my main is a Guardian, it's nice to have a tank set and a dps set.

Something tells me you are mistaking level/gear gap for overpoweredness. Seriously do yourself a favor and try a similar build with Soresu you'll notice a huge difference to your survivability and very little difference to your damage....this is because: -Shien only increases your force and elemental damage by 6% (run the math thats pretty damn low) -Single Saber mastery only works on weapon damage... blade storm, plasma brand, force sweep, force push, force stasis and burning effects do NOT I repeat do NOT get increased in any way, shape or form from Single Saber mastery!. Judging by your posts you sound like you haven't played the class very much at level 50, if at all....trust me you will die a LOT if you try to PvP in Shien form because you are a heck of a lot more squishy than Shi Cho or Soresu stance Guardians, this is why many make mention of how terrible Shien is and that it needs a buff to bring it up to par with other stances.

Don't bother with force clap it's only a 2 second stun and we get a root from leaping anyway, I'd also move the 2 points from lunge into solidified force, drop the points out of focus all together and pick up gather strength and effluence. The build trades some survivability for utility, if you are geared enough it could work. http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#500frh0urbozZhRrMr0z.1 I still think you'll find yourself missing overhead slash and commanding awe a lot from going with that build although.

I'll write it off because I've tried it (I also have the full Vindicator Champ set), Shien stance is terrible compared to Soresu and not worth taking over warding call (which the survivability heavily outweighs the poor damage increase from going Shien) This is why the Vigil/Def Hybrid exists, because Full defence is poor and full Vigil is poor, but with cherry picking and combined they make for an excellent tank build with not too shabby dps to boot.

Compare Guardian slash to plasma brand and overhead slash. The major problem Guardian slash has is it has a very high cost and a very high cooldown for what it does, it needs to have its focus cost reduced by 1 and it's cooldown bringing in line with other skills. If those are done it'll do just fine since using anything that applies sunders while in Soresu generates high threat anyway.

That isn't difficult, I used to queue with my scoundrel with two friends on TS in 10-49 very high win ratio. Now in the 50 bracket, gear is the major deciding factor and teamplay can only win you so many against those BM geared steamrollers.

BM geared premade vs habadash geared Pugs. If you didn't win matchups like that I think people would probably tell you to uninstall.

Yes they do stack, they would only be on for a short period of time but it's rather good.

Since most of your attacks from Vigil do weapon damage, no it isn't a waste. The biggest problem with Vigil is Shien stance having given it some time I ended up going back to Vigil/Def because the damage increase is poor compared to the trade off loss of survivability. The stance and the single saber mastery improvement equate to all of 50-100 damage extra, definately not worth it, Soresu and Shi-Cho are both miles ahead of it.