Get rid of those excess comms and crystals TODAY as they're gone tomorrow. I've reposted the conversions below, but remember - the cap is 2 million credits TOTAL per character, not just for warzone comms. So trade in those commendations and/or crystals now. Buy PvP Medpacs, decorations, companion gifts, whatever.

Only expertise crystals are being converted to mastery. The stat is just disappearing on everything else. Much like they did with War Hero / Elite War Hero gear a while back.

It's ok - alts are being phased out in 5.0 anyway.

Errrrrr.... You can frequently log in to Jung Ma, type /who and see fewer than 60 players online on the ENTIRE FACTION. Not just fleet, but in the whole game world. Right now as I write this in the middle of prime time, there are 62 level 65 imperials online on JM across the entire galaxy. 16 people on fleet (any level). If that isn't a dead server, I'm not sure what would possibly qualify.

I play both a gunnery commando and arsenal merc on a regular basis. There are no appreciable differences in their damage output, defensive abilities, or any other metric. The only variable is who you are fighting with, and against. If playing your imp and fighting against pubs who are wearing PVE gear, you're going to hit them a LOT harder than your pub fighting imps who are wearing PvP gear will.

Mods are not devs. I doubt that there is any meaningful discussion between the two teams about the content of moderated comments/threads. Heck, they may not even be in the same office.

Someone else made this joke in another thread, but I think it probably has at least a grain of truth in it - The top classes will be whatever is played by people willing to raid as well as PvP. The gear grind is going to be real.

Yeah, thats why the original nerf was so painful - we were ultra powerful in the early days when *nobody* was using interrupts. We took the nerf, and *then* people started interrupting us lol. Double whammy nerf. To rub salt into the wound, it took us ages (about a year iirc) before we even got an interrupt ability ourselves lol. Heh, even after the surge bonus nerf to other classes, we were generally behind their DPS. The best PTs, Snipers, Juggs, Maras and of course Sins and Sorcs were consistently putting out 10-20% more damage than the best Mercs in PvP - you could read 'top damage' threads on every single server forum for the same story. But then things changed. What happened? Most of the best players left the game. And as I've said before, mercs flourish in a sea of mediocrity. We look powerful now, because putting it bluntly, we're back to the early days of 'no interrupts' and awful awful PvPers. If I'm targeting a sorc healer along with 3 or 4 other people I know *exactly* which heals will be interrupted. Because I'm the only one interrupting them.

Yeah, and both mercs and operatives got nerfed to within an inch of their lives shortly after lol. Took *years* to undo.

I have a sneaking suspicion that operatives are being set up as the natural counter to mercs. A good operative is already painful for a merc to deal with with so much burst negated by rolls, and the reflect change on evasion in 5.0 seems purpose built for heatseekers (as they move slowly, so can be anticipated).

I actually gave several possible explanations, only one of which was you not understanding classes. Pick your poison. Yeah, not so much. Not once in the history of this game has an ability 'hack' EVER been demonstrated. Not once. Not here, not on reddit, not on youtube, not on any of the fansites, or 'leaked info' sites, not on any forum you care to mention. It's all client positioning. Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

It doesn't. It doesn't. It doesn't. They don't. The *only* type of 'hacks' that have been demonstrated are the aforementioned position/noclip types (I'm going to call that a hack, because it's what most people think of when they see it). Everything else has been either an exploit with a bugged item/geometry, a misunderstood ability, or shown to be false. Everything. As I've said previously on this subject. If 'ability' hacks were possible, you'd see lots of youtube videos of them. Sorcs demonstrating their awesome 100k heatseekers, Mercs using barrier, Juggs with stealth. etc etc. But you don't. Not *one*. The 'target drop/invulnerability' you see is just misunderstood stuff (taunt, vanish, shroud, camo etc), latency, or in very rare cases a teleport 'hack' to LOS/out of range. And I've been accused myself of using GCD hacks to the point where it's utterly meaningless now.

I always play to win - but as I said before, that often (usually) involves killing the other team more than they kill us. There are exceptions though. In huttball I will happily train 3 or more of the enemy team into our pit all day long as they kill me over and over if it allows our team to score unhindered. I'll cheerfully run out of spawn and back into the pit again to keep them there. This happens more than it should, and it always gives me a giggle. Farm numbers and TDM by all means. But don't throw the match for it. And if you're going to TDM at least be good at it. None of this 800dps nonsense. Some WZ types (non huttball) do feel like Pyrrhic victories if you 'win' but get utterly farmed though. I'm not a huge fan of stealth carries.

That's PT only.

I've made no secret of my distaste for the new gearing system - but I've had patches I really didn't like before, and still stayed. My entire decision is going to be based on whether I can effectively gear up for PvP and remain competitive by exclusively doing warzones. Both for my main toons and alts. I'd be interested in knowing how many preferred players we're going to lose. Obviously we can't hear their voices on this forum.

Heck, I'm an utter Debbie Downer on this whole new system, but even I don't think they'd be silly enough to make only dailies and weeklies award CXP heh. That would be... epic.

That depends on who is carrying. Also good luck getting your entire team to focus them heheh. At the very most you'll have 4 competent DPS (if you are very VERY lucky). Even they are going to struggle to down a hardcore tank with heals, without some MAJOR cc and separation before the tank gets to where he wants to go. And as Trixxie said, those competent DPS are probably going to max out the scoreboard as well. I'm not saying that DPS farming while ignoring objectives doesn't happen - it clearly does. But there is a LOT of wolf crying from those who think 2k dps (which is a bare *minimum* for a competent DPS* in an average match) is number farming. (* who is not guarding a node, or ninjaing etc, obviously)

Isolating PvP from gear certainly wouldn't be unprecedented in MMOs, and would probably encourage more people to queue. At this point it absolutely couldn't hurt.

This forum has been largely ignored since not long after launch. People have tried constructively posting, begging, pleading, cajoling and crying. There is only one constant - tumbleweeds. We really only post in this forum for the entertainment value and to talk amongst ourselves. Quite frankly I'm surprised a little cargo cult religion hasn't sprung up here.

By all means play for objective. I encourage that. But recognise that killing people (or healing them) IS frequently an objective. Clearing attackers from a node makes capturing it much MUCH easier. Likewise for defense. Take huttball for example. Killing people attacking a ball carrier in huttball makes that ball carrier MUCH more likely to score. Killing a healer who was healing their ball carrier makes a turnover much more likely. Neither of those two activities awards even a single objective point. Edit: It's been my experience that those who complain loudest about 'dps farmers' are those screaming 'GET ORBS' when mid is overrun in AH, or who repeatedly click on the nodes in Civil War, VS and Novare while 'damage farmers' laugh and kill them.

Absolutely not... Tell me more about hard facts... Lol. Those 'hard facts' disappeared pretty quick eh? The 'fact' is that PvPers don't quit after they get their gear - we largely consider that the *start*. Lack of fresh content drives people away. REMOVAL of old content drives people away. Bugs and balance problems drive people away. 'There are no plans' posts from devs or community managers drive people away. Half-arsed ranked seasons drive people away. There are many many reasons why people drift away from PvP in this game. But 'because they made PvP gear too easy to get' is the most ridiculous theory I've heard so far, and completely at odds with what PvPers are actually saying.

I'm speaking of the countless PvPers I've spent time with over the years here. None of them were in it for the gear. They ALL viewed gear as a necessary evil. Along with levels, the crap you got out of the way before the actual game started. In PvP guilds on every NA server with a PvP scene apart from Bastion. If you hung out with the ranked scene on Harby you'd know exactly what I'm talking about. The legacy comms addition was hailed as a HUGE step forward. What on earth does this have to do with the price of fish? How does implementing a gear grind for PvP in ANY way make it more likely that we're going to get more warzones? Explain that one to me, because honestly you've completely lost me there. My standards may be 'a bit low', but they certainly haven't been met. PvP gear grinds in NO way keep PvP fresh. They're not fun, and people breathe a sigh of relief when they're over. They're just an impediment to skilled competition. You know what I do when I get all my gear at max tier and minmaxed? I PvP some more - but without an artificial handicap. Playing against people with an uneven handicap is just annoying and silly.

I'm not sure your example of experience is a good one. It is MUCH faster to level through heroics and flashpoints than it is to level via PvP. An order of magnitude faster. Admittedly better than it was a couple of years ago, but still not equal by any stretch. I levelled all my DvL toons this way, despite preferring PvP - I don't know anyone who ran WZs the whole way up in anything approaching the same time. If I thought they'd do a reasonable job at ensuring parity (which I'm really not convinced about at all), then we'd still have the problem of a gear imbalance for alts and new players months down the line. As mentioned numerous times, it takes but a couple of days to get on a reasonably level playing field (gear wise) now for PvP. I've heard no real arguments about why making it take weeks or months is okay, and isn't going to negatively impact the PvP population in the long term. I hear new players complain about getting globalled in warzones NOW. At least you can tell them - stick it out, wear 190s, and in 2 days the problem will be over (or even better, get comms as you're leveling). What is going to make them try more warzones when the answer is 'grind your *** off for X weeks' just so you're not at a gear disadvantage, and your own team isn't screaming at you to **** off and go back to PVE until you have gear? And of course there's preferred players. I wonder how many will disappear in 5.0.

... That music. Lol.

That's what you want. Awesome. We just want to PVP on equal terms. No more. EDIT: Actually, a new warzone every 6 months or so would be nice. But you can keep the mounts and shinies.