There are an increase in Marauders, period. Not surprisingly, many of them are poorly handled. But the numbers of well played, or at least dangerous, Marauders is also increasing. Perhaps the proportion of poorly played Marauders has increased. That wouldn't be a result of the increase in re-rolls and thus there is a demographic bulge that must get through their gearing and learning phase.

Your wordsmithing is lacking. Class (im)balance is a RELATIVE concept. It doesn't matter if the imbalance is coming from one class being buffed or the other being nerfed - RELATIVE power is influenced all the same. And in point of fact, Mara/Sent DID get buffed in 1.2. Your repeated inability to understand that simple concept degrades every subsequent argument you make that the classes are balanced. Are you nuts? The skew towards melee dps over ranged dps is easily noticed by any player with PvP experience pre and post 1.2. The same with the swing towards Operative healers. The thing is, even you admit as much - "there will always be a good portion of players that roll the FOTM". Although just a few inches later you deny any such event - "AC population has NOT changed since launch". Your logic is so screwy, you can't even make it past a single post without contradicting yourself. And no, people unhappy with a single AC don't always translate to a mass exodus. But 200k subscribers leaving per month do. You can play ostrich with his head in the sand all you want. But Bioware can not. That is a dire attrition level.

Briggs, it isn't the kiting per se that has changed. However in 1.2, melee dps were significantly buffed. Ranged dps were significantly nerfed. And now, nearly a month after 1.2 a lot of those new FotM melee re-rolls are actually learning their craft and becoming semi-competent. As well as better geared. This process will only continue as time goes on. This is why BW's policy of balancing based on subclass meta averages is flawed. They should have balanced based on best practices for each subclass and let players learn to play their classes. Instead, now as players learn to play their classes, new nerfs will need to be made to adjust class meta averages.

I think this Taugrim fellow makes some good points. However I think he underestimates the impact that ranked warzones will have. Once ranked warzones arrive, every player that already has a full BM set will move to ranked warzones. For the simple reason that they will no longer be subjected to a 3:1 currency depreciation in commendations. Thus the level 50 PvP gear imbalance that Taugrim laments will be largely nullified. New 50's will gear up in normal warzones. BM and higher geared 50's will be in ranked warzones. It is interesting to note that this is what was originally intended when 1.2 was rolled out. But that was scuppered by the removal of ranked warzones.

They have not said that ranked wz will come before 1.3. Rather they have said that it will come "soon". The only rational interpretation of that is that Bioware does not know with certainty when ranked wz will come. And given the previous fiasco, they don't want to commit to a timetable unless they are 100% certain they can meet it. So ranked wz may come before 1.3. It may come with 1.3. Or it may come after 1.3. We don't know. Bioware doesn't know.

Being "unplayable" is a horribly low hurdle for assessing game (im)balance. By that standard, if Mara/Sent was buffed by another 15%, all the other classes would still remain "playable" and everything would be fine. Everything is not fine. Moreover your standard of "playable" becomes a shifting standard once ranked warzones arrive. For competitive PvP players, a class becomes "unplayable" if it Pareto inferior to another class. It doesn't matter if it is by only 10%. And it will be very evident that this is the case when you examine ranked warzone rankings. EVERYTHING has changed since launch. Most importantly the loss of 50% of those purchased the game who no longer subscribe to it. You can keep your head in the sand, but those FACTS aren't going away. Lack of attention to those mere details simply dooms this game. The poor state of PvP in ToR is one of the main reasons subscribers have left. There is really nothing to do in ToR post 50 other than PvP. 3 operations (which until recently were on a weekly timer) is simply not enough to keep people occupied.

And what planet did you come from? Even with 1.1.5 it was obvious that Mara/Sent for example had distinct advantages in team utility, survivability and dps over Merc/Commando. Which is why everyone was so stunned when it was indicated that Mara/Sent would be buffed in 1.2. Just look at the population distribution on starter planets. From The Fatman server, literally 5 min ago: 15 Bounty Hunters on Hutta. 62 Sith Warriors and Inquisitors on Korriban. And I'd wager at least half of those Bounty Hunters are destined for Powertech, not Mercenary.

Multiple people posted target dummy dps numbers immediately after 1.2 was released. Ranged dps were coming in around the 1050-1150 range. Top melee dps are hitting 1500 with similar equipment. Now that many toons have improved Tier 3 gear, those numbers have shifted slightly higher, but the hierarchy remains the same. Melee dps > ranged dps. Unless some ingame mechanic is introduced to discomfort melee dps there is no reason to bring ranged dps along.

Look, I like the game. But the problems that exist are real and fundamental. One thing people need to recognize about MMOs - the past standards just aren't good enough. The player base continually evolves and its expectations advance. That is why ToR does not have two years to figure things out. We already know they were losing subscribers at a rate of 200k per month before they staunched the bleeding with a free play month. Just from the release of the pent up bleeding, you'd expect 400k to drop in the next month. Those are not sustainable numbers for this business. Like many fans who hope this game succeeds, I am a bit stunned at the lack of urgency shown by the devs. You'd think that by now they would be testing character transfers to PTS. Or at least announce a new PTS - a step necessary to test x-server queues. Instead, silence. It just isn't inspiring confidence amongst the customer base.

Warzone deathmatches would be over in 60 seconds. And while that might be unique for awhile, the commendation, xp, valor and credit rewards for such a match would need to be about 1/15th that of a match on a standard map. Which then causes problems. Such as groups becoming irritated that they spent time in the queue for xp/valor/etc. rewards that were miniscule. Indeed, given the way that rewards are handed out, you need each warzone type to have (on average) a game length that is about equal to the existing ones.

Ouch.

You just don't get it. Which isn't surprising, because BW looks at and evaluates class (im)balance in basically the same way. But the existence of a high scoring Merc does not imply that Mercs are fine. This has been explained to you before. Repeatedly. So at this point I will simply turn your observation on its head - if Mercs are so great, why are they one of the least frequently chosen advanced classes for rerolls?

Remember the week or so before ToR was released and the devs published some mini-videos with devs debating about how different classes would do in a fight? Each dev would pick a side and they'd go back and forth about how the BH would beat a Jedi Knight, or how the Knight would beat the BH. Fast forward to today. One dev would say: "Jedi Knight would own the BH." The other one would say: "BH can target switch better, so he'd get off two shots at a different target before he died!". The first dev would just chortle.

I think the same hierarchy exists in PvP. One of the best healers on my server is a BH BG, and after 1.2 his numbers are down, but he's still a stud. But let's face it, in 1.2 free insta-casting unlimited heals wins and will always win. So operative healers are the best.

Of course it is playable in the right hands. But with those very same hands you could do better with another class. This is so blatantly obvious. Yet people will always point at a high Merc dps score and exclaim, "See, nothing is wrong!". I've scored 750k in damage with a Merc Pyro. But that was on a toon geared better than any other PvP toon on ANY server. Period. That is nothing compared to what my Marauder can do. With 4 pieces of BM (all armor, none weapons) and full Recruit everywhere else, I've scored 580k (damage + heals) while using no adrenals, no PvP consumables AND while entering midway through the match. Play balance isn't proved by the existence of a single player who can light up the scoreboard with a given subclass. It is about each subclass fairing equivalently when they are piloted by players of equal skill. And that is not happening right now.

EVERY PvE fight starts out with the ranged dps at a disadvantage. Because on a raw dps basis, the melee does 20-40% more dps than the ranged. If a boss fight does not introduce a dynamic that specifically penalizes melee dps, then it is by default biased. And yes I play a Marauder and a Merc.

The Marauder is a significantly better platform for endgame PvE. The primary advantage for the Merc (and for all ranged classes) is their ease of target shifting. But in the majority of endgame PvE cases, the climaxing battle is against a single boss mob. Thus the advantage of the ranged dps is negated. Even in cases where the boss mob spawns adds, these are generally best dealt with by tanks collecting the adds and then applying AoE attacks. The Marauder on the other hand already starts out with a ~30% dps advantage. And then he adds huge advances when the combat stretches out and TTK is longer - an almost inevitable characteristic of endgame boss mobs. With longer TTK, the Marauder can repeatedly apply his Fury dependent abilities, which include the best team buffs in the game.

But it is still better than an offhand weapon which HARMS you. No one has ever claimed that a shield is HARMING it's user. Are you?

So you want queue hits to occur even less often than they already do?

I disagree. But people will be unhappy if the active population ratio between the #5 server and the #30 server is 5:1. Or worse.

The only explanation for why BW is so resistant to server mergers is that a server merger is probably considered a "failure metric" by the boss of the ToR project lead's boss. Someone at some time probably told the boss' boss that ToR wouldn't have a server merge for years after launch. So now, no one wants to embarrass themselves and their boss by doing a server merge. So they'll try to get the same results but with different tactics, i.e. character transfers. Meh, that stuff happens in big companies. What i don't understand is why is it taking so long to implement character transfers....

On my server which is an above average pop server, the situation today is the same as it was yesterday. That is, no lev 50 warzones from 12AM Pacific to 12 PM Pacific. 1 or 2 warzone matches going on during the evening hours. Which means your wait for a warzone match in the evening can vary from a minute to 15 minutes. This is a definite decrease from the level of activity before D3 was released. Then, lev 50 matches would be going on from about 9AM Pacific to 1-2AM Pacific. I just want the devs to respond and indicate that they too have a sense of urgency about the implementation of x-server queues and/or server mergers. I understand they are reluctant to commit to a specific date (or even a patch version number). But the lack of any communication on this issue is demoralizing much of the active player base.

Queue was badly impacted on my server during the morning, but recovered by the evening. Maybe that was because no one could get their PvP daily done earlier. Hard to say...

This. I would gladly give up my offhand weapon in exchange for being able to equip a generator (with no aug slot) and the replacement of my multi-attack resolution abilities with a single attack resolution ability. The use of the offhand weapon simply cause ME more damage via Retaliation/Riposte than it does to my target. The fact that someone would claim that having an unaugmented generator is a disadvantage simply shows they don't understand who the game works. The fact that a dev would agree with him? Well that demonstrates the same lack of understanding about the game. It is as simple as that.

That is incorrect. The Law of Large Numbers would apply if the composition of team members was random. But it is not. Strong players like to group with other strong players. It is what they do. Thus the creation of a strong premade necessarily gravitates towards the selection of strong players first rather than strong classes. The fact that strong teams have a class composition that is skewed away from one type of group (all members being of one or two classes) puts us in the field of Bayesian statistics, and the raw reliance on large sample size here is flawed. Now you might reply that if strong teams are currently predisposed to using multiple classes, that would imply class balance is good. But it is not. The reason that strong players are currently spread across multiple classes is that few players have had time to level up a second (or third) toon to full WH gear. But this hurdle is being rapidly surmounted. Very soon, and certainly by the time ranked wz start, you will see the availability of nearly all the strongest players to deploy the optimal subclasses. And at that point the class imblanaces will become pointedly evident. You will simply need to look at the top 8 man premades and note which classes dominate.