I usually quit or alt F4 on loading screen when I get Alderaan. It's just too boring (whether or not you're winning or losing). I logged in late at night to do the daily so I took whatever zones I would get and o lord, Alderaan is such a design cluster****. Had 4 games there, EVERY game ended without anyone losing a turret the entire match and two games ended with the middle turret never getting capped at all. It's so ridiculously easy to defend that most people just give up pretty fast after the opponent gets 2 and go afk at the one turret they own. It's strange but what keeps happening to me is I keep getting put in teams with decent players that I know from seeing them in warzones all the time in Huttball and then once I get Voidstar or Alderaan I'm suddenly in a group where I don't even recognize anyone and once the match starts it's immediately obvious that most of the team has no clue whatsoever. I don't understand how that happens but the same thing keeps repeating... This is true on my server as well. The Republic has a few massive guilds - almost always when you go against Republic their entire team is made up of the same 3 guilds - and they keep running bad premades. Alderaan and Voidstar favour even bad premades so much that the Reps actually sometimes win - but you never see them winning in Huttball, not even against totally random groups.

Oh goddamnit. You're playing a ranged burst class at low level warzones. Of course you rule. Besides, remember that you're now more experienced than when you were leveling your Assassin but most people in the zones are not. I started a Shadow and I'm doing pretty damn good at level 15... because most of the opponents have no clue whatsoever. Snipers are *********** ludicrously, ridiculously, incomparably overpowered in below level 50 warzones. If you aren't absolutely ruling the zone with a Sniper you suck. If you're only doing 1v2, you suck a lot, you should be doing 1v3 and coming out as the winner. That is because Snipers have the best ranged burst and everyone at sub 50 warzones has 11-12k hitpoints and most people do not have their full set of defenses and gap closers available so ramged burst damage rules the warzones. What happens when people reach 50 is that they get a lot more health from a few pieces of gear while your damage doesn't go up as fast with gear and suddenly everyone in the warzones has all their defensive skills. Snipers are genocidally overpowered when they get to pick on low hitpoint targets that cannot pop a cooldown to negate the burst. On top of that, Snipers have a huge amount of exploitable weaknesses (like cover not working when immobilized) and level 50 warzones typically have more people who know how to exploit them. At level 50 there are a lot more tanks and a Marksman Sniper can barely tickle tanks. The worst part is, as an un-chargeable ranged burst DPS your ideal team role would be a defender bursting on ball carriers and what do you know, your damage on geared tanks is so bad that they can basically ignore you so you're useless in what should be your main role. The second you hit 50 your Marksman Sniper goes from godmode to joke mode. The quick burst no longer auto-kills most people in the zone, outside of popping relic + adrenal which is great, and people suddenly react to that giant Ambush warning side on them with a deflection cooldown or losing. Your sustainable damage is OK when the opposing team has no one that knows how to harass a Sniper and a few clueless targets who don't know how to los and that's all. And then Lethality does great numbers but most of that damage is useless meter padding.

This is an entirely fictional gear difference. None of my chars has actually used level 50 greens, not even the first one that was one of the first level 50s on the server. A smart player will be much better geared than level 50 greens before even hitting level 50. Funnily enough, the worst players tend to have the worst gear since mysteriously people who are totally clueless in warzones tend to also be totally clueless about gearing and vice versa.

That means you play Republic. Except that the turret you turn left for is on the right side of the map and the turret you turn right for is on the left side of the map. That is if you're Imperial. For the Republic the left and right when you start are the same as left and right on the map. Left/right calling is fine on Republic side but hopeless on Imperial side since half of the population uses the left/right on the map and the other half the left/right depending on how you turn at the start and they're different.

Do not worry, Kaliyo leaving has nothing at all to do with Watcher X. She won't like it if you let him live but she won't leave you because of that. If that doesn't reassure you, you can read a minor spoiler (would be big spoiler if you didn't know about Kaliyo leaving but minor since you already know it):

Lethality is useless if you don't take Cull and dot crit energy regen and Marksman is useless if you don't take Followthrough. You'll be a complete waste of a player spot in that spec. The only damage you can do will be meter padding aoe spamming. You don't just lack the skills to do burst, you'll have no energy sustainable way to do single target damage that's noticeably higher than spamming rifle shots.

On Niman there is a whole lot of Greeks. They don't speak Greek but sure act Greek. They don't do much in warzones, get boosted by Scandinavians and then they riot if you point any of this out.

Make it a point to cap first, then, though you probably need to include a Marauder for the speed buff to do it. Fight to prevent the enemy from capping the middle for the rest of the game - this is pretty damn easy with a healer/tank team since you can run in one by one and with heals and taunt spamming by a full healer/tank group. Having a stealther harass their side turret will force them to defend it with 2 players so you swap 1 player for their 2 players. As long as you capped first, you win if middle doesn't get capped. They cannot stop putting pressure on the middle as if they divert a lot of forces to attack the side you would cap the middle. It's a gamble on getting the side turret a bit earlier and betting on being able to prevent middle capping for the entire game but I've already seen this happen many times in pugs (not intentionally of course). They will probably have to nerf turret defense and make capping easier or a lot of rated matches will never see the middle capped. In Voidstar a tank/healer team could not play for a win but you could play for a stalemate. Mara (for speed buff), 1-3 tanks and 4-6 healers. It would be a really boring way to play but most likely rather effective given how defending is much easier than capping at the moment so a team that focuses on defense can go for the "the only objective is to avoid losing" strategy.

If you want gear progression, you're not competitive. Right now the best ways to get your full set of gear are botting, afking and medal farming while ignoring the test of the team. Needless to say, botters, afkers and medal farmers love the system that gives botters, afkers and medal farmers an advantage.

Guild Wars has sold almost 7 million copies and it's one of the most successful PC games ever made. In comparison, Diablo II and Starcraft II both sold 4-5 million and they're generally considered huge hits. For a 7 years old game it still has a very nice player base - where do you see this game in 7 years? Personally, I'm a Battlemaster with the gear and I'd like them to hand it out for free for everyone. No valor grind, not even any commendation gring, just give everyone the gear the moment they hit 50. I facepalm every time I see someone terrible smashing face in PvP just because they're outgearing the opposing team. Gear based PvP is just terrible.

And that is exactly why Pyrotech Mercs suck compared to Pyrotech Powertechs. PTs get the same talent (except instead of Power Shot reseting it it's Flame Burst etc) AND more armor pen AND a damage buff for Rail Shot from other trees. The Pyro PT gets *90 %* armor penetration on Rail Shot. The spammable attack that resets Rail Shot cooldown, Flame Burst, is a tech attack that does elemental damage meaning it bypasses all defenses while Power Shot is mitigated by armor and avoidable by defense while not really doing more base damage. Tanks might as well be made of paper against a Pyro PT. Everything the PT does is instant cast so the Pyro PT has absolutely full mobility. And so on. Pyro is a monster spec on the PT, meh on the Merc.

Tbh I'd like them to hand everyone who wants it instant level 50 and full Battlemaster gear and give us actual PvP ranks instead (as in, lose matches and you lose rating). Yes, I do have a geared BM character but gear based PvP isn't particularily fun or exciting except for people who want to win with gear instead of skill. Ah well, guess I have to wait for that other new MMO for PvP that isn't about gear. There is no way to "dumb down" a mindless grind. The BM grind is already as dumbed down as you can go. You have to do absolutely nothing besides join games and move away from the autokicking spawn area to get Battlemaster. People get it by botting and afking.

There *is* Force and Tech resistance which works exactly the same way as defense against "ranged" and "melee" type attacks, as a chance to avoid. It doesn't matter much as the only way to gain Force and Tech resistance at the moment is the PvE tank 4-set which gives 2 % defense and resistance and wearing a 4 piece PvE tank set in PvP just for the 2 % chance to avoid Force and Tech attacks would be a bit retarded, but the mechanic is in the game.

Except once you no longer do the dailies...

Spec Lethality up to Cull and no further. Spec Engineering up to Experimental Engineering and Imperial Methodology and be especially sure to take Explosive Engineering and Engineer's Tool Belt. Find clumps of enemies and use this rotation: grenade, rifle shots, grenade, rifle shots, grenade, rifle shots... drop in Orbital Strike whenever you can and whenever there aren't any tight enough groups to aoe tab target spam dots and rifle shots on everything. This is surprisingly effective in Huttball when you're facing a pug that actually gathers on the ball but doesn't have enough healing. You can pretty quickly take down a good chunk of a whole group's hitpoints and a group trying to carry the ball with everyone down to half their hitpoints is much less dangerous than a group with full hitpoints. Also good to spam while your ball handler is being zerged - even if he dies the guy who the ball bounces to will not be at full health. Aoe heals can quickly ruin this though. 600k is generally only possible if both sides have a lot of healers. If the opposing team doesn't have enough healers, standing in monster DPS aoes will send them to the spawn fast and then you won't be getting a very high total as half the time you'll have no one to shoot at. The super damage Voidstars are typically zones that ended up with so many healers on the opposing team that they could just sit there in Orbital Strikes and the meters would get padded with damage that got instantly healed.

...and to add one thing, if this is a Blaster Rifle you can use it on Kaliyo (I think) but you should never use a Blaster Rifle yourself as you can use Sniper Rifles and they do more damage. As in, you can take the mods out of an orange Blaster Rifle and put them in an orange Sniper rifle and it will have higher damage. It's pretty much never worth it to use a purple Blaster Rifle either as it's easy to find a Sniper Rifle with higher damage.

Shield rating boosts the shield chance of any character using a shield in the offhand slot and thus it's absolutely useless for Snipers since we cannot use shield offhands. Ballistic Shield gives fixed 20 % protection and you can't boost it with items. Shield Probe either scales with Power, Tech Power and Cunning or doesn't scale at all (I haven't heard of anyone testing it). For some reason there are a few items with tanking stats for Cunning using characters in the game even though none of us can use shields and AFAIK no Cunning using companions can use them either. They're probably a leftover from some early beta where they had a Cunning tank character or something like that.

That's great... WHEN YOU ARE FIGHTING PEOPLE WITH 11K HEALTH. Get to 50 and watch no one give a **** about your pathetic 2.5k crits on 30 second cooldown. Pump your shots into that tank with 20k health and good mitigation and watch him laugh at your joke class as he scores the ball. Snipers rock in the sub 50 bracket where everyone has low health and can be blown to bits in seconds and then... don't rock so much at 50. No one can match a Sniper at level 18 because no one has proper defenses and health so you can just nuke everyone else down before they can do anything. Then you hit 50 and it's nothing like that. The burst made you godly in the low level bracket and then suddenly the burst is just not that good compared to the health pools and defenses that everyone has at 50. You thought Snipers were great because you could nuke down anyone before they could get to you and then you suddenly do 1/3 of their health in the time it used to take to kill someone. For most other classes a MM Sniper in level 50 PvP is just an annoying joke class that might get one big hit on you before you get close and roflstomp them.

Have you actually tried the other tanks in this game? Tanks in PvP have a bit of an edge on survival but most of the time it isn't big. Against a Lethality Sniper, a Pyro PT etc tanks have basically no edge at all in survivability as most mitigation simply does not work against them. It doesn't matter which tank class you're playing, you're still going to be made of paper against a lot of classes in this game. Are you just standing there and taking the damage? As Assault, you're almost fully effective at 10 meter range while most melee is completely gimped and your attacks have an auto-snare. Play "in your face" against the clothies, kite the melee when you can. That is beyond ridiculous. Assault/Pyro is hands down the best, easiest damage tree in the game at the moment. If you feel like the damage is "mediocre", sorry, you just suck. It's not only one of the highest damage classes but it's almost all internal/elemental and the big hitter gets 90 % armor penetration, meaning you'll absolutely tear through even tanks as if they had no mitigation. The only thing Assault is missing in damage is the chart topping aoe/multidot spam from range that especially sorcs/sages can do but the single target damage is about the highest in the game and definitely the highest in most real PvP encounters as it's uninterruptible, completely mobile, cannot be easily outranged and, really, very easy to pull - there's very few buttons in rotation and only 1 proc to watch for. (I love my Pyro PT but I have to admit that it's retardedly easy to play compared to the other classes I've tried and the damage is still off the scale.) The Assault/Pyro spec is one of the best damage specs in the game, the class has great stuns and utility, it has every option to avoid damage while doing damage through smart play (but not through mitigation) and the only competition for the absolutely best 1v1 class is Sentinel/Marauder, everything else is far behind.

It doesn't even stun with that talent, just immobilizes. I can see how Grapple is going to make Powertech DPS a bit overly favoured for Huttball and the easy solution would be to swap Grapple and Jet Charge so that pulling would be tank only but every PT could charge. You can't fill teams with tanks if you intend to win most warzones and you'd still let PT DPS have a powerful Huttball move.

How could he know he has to "ease up on his threat" when there is no indicator of threat level? The only way you'll ever know you're pulling is by... pulling! There is no warning, no meter, nothing to indicate you're getting close. He didn't know he was going to be playing with bad tanks. And yes, they are bad tanks. As long as DPS has no way of knowing how the tank is doing, ONLY the tank is responsible for threat managament as the tank is the only one who has any way of estimating his own threat level. No one else can do it. This is what I tell people as tank: as long as DPS has no way of estimating my threat level, it's ONLY my responsibity. Apart from the few seconds in the initial pickup when DPS really needs to hold back threat, threat is MY responsibility and ONLY mine. As a tank, it's always, always my fault if a DPS pulls, as long as DPS has no way of telling whether they're about to pull. It doesn't matter if it's an addon or some indicator in game but as long as only the tank can estimate threat level, only the tank is responsible for threat. You cannot blame this player for doing what he was invited to do just because your tanks are not as good as he is. The only way to estimate threat as a DPS is by playing with the same tank over and over again and getting a feel on whether you're about to pull. There is no way to estimate how good a tank that you've never played with is as there is no indicator of aggro levels, so all he can do is keep pulling until he has an intuitive picture of how good the tank is. This is how it works as long as the only aggro indicator is pulling off the tank: DPS will often pull from a bad tank and the tank just has to deal with it.

Huttball is amazing, the best warzone I've ever seen in an MMO by a very long gap. Everything else in this game is kind of meh but Huttball keeps me subbed, at least for now.

You don't have to move. Use Suppressive Fire and you can hit the guy behind the turret.

Change the keybinds to something more accessible, like q, e, r, f and so on. I don't use anything beyond number 4 for combat abilities, it's just way too awkward to go from my movement keys to most of the number keys.

They get 1 DoT ability (which costs too much heat for serious multidotting) and some of their other abilities have burning as a random proc. Not really a DoT spec. Dirty Fighting and Balance are the DoT specs. Gunslinger also has the option to go hybrid to pick up the DoTs from both Sabo and DF trees and that spec most likely has the most damage in DoTs in the game.