Patch notes 3.1.1A Mercenary - Merc Armor will now come with an Automatic KY dispenser making it easier to take the shaft.

I love when people say Merc's are fine or its a L2P issue. Fact is Merc's are not fine and its a class issue. Merc's have the most ineffective Defensive cool-downs of any class. They are looked for and targeted because of this. Everyone knows the first target in any 4v4 will always be the a Merc if they are there. The reason for this is even if they blow every single DCD they will still get destroyed in 5 seconds or less. Now here is a nice example of what happens to a merc in an arena. Mind you I was playing the Op. I was rolling in Conqueror gear with no augs (just started playing my Op again) teamed up with an assassin. It looks like a magic trick where Poof!! The Merc is gone! I personally wish this wasn't the case, but it is more the norm than an exception. I have nothing up my sleeves! And Abra Kadabra! the merc is Gone!

I guess I will throw my 2 creds in here... Now that I pre ordered 3.0 and have had the privilege of paying in advance to be in the first week of open beta, and that's exactly what this has been. Beta testing. Might I suggest in the future that you actually bring in larger groups of random players to test your content. When huge bugs like the Revan fight making it through to "release" early or otherwise either the Dev's, testers or both epically failed. I mean really... It's the climax to the whole expansion and its broken 16 ways to Sunday. The good, the bad and the ugly... While I understand why they removed skill tree's to help deal with balance issues the result was less than impressive... The planets added in the expansion are very well done. Honestly some of the best work I have seen come out of the SWTOR Bioware group in a very long time. The solo flashpoints are also awesome, and that idea should be expanded. With perhaps a bit of a reduction on the combat support droids damage.. Its kinda sad when some of my cast abilities take longer to go off than it takes this droid to kill off the mob I was trying to attack... There are features in the new system I do like. The way you get key abilities earlier is a good idea. Combining some skills that were fairly redundant was also a good idea. Acid blade is a good example of this as is back stab/hidden strike, but please do not try and pretend that the "Utility abilities" in any way give people "More options" they are a eh that's nifty side note to the skill vine. While I understand there were lots of issues with the skill tree system, and that you (Bioware) had a really hard time trying to balance full tree builds and hybrids. Giving players a list of really over all useless "Utility skills" and buffing abilities that no one would use was not an improvement. The utility "Imperial weaponry" is a great example of a useless utility skill. Carbine burst deals 25% more damage... Why? Why would I waste a tactical advantage I could use on a skill that hits harder? If I need some AOE damage ill throw a grenade. Here is a prime example.. backstab/hidden strike now requires that you take a HEROIC utility for it to stun a target like it use to do, and the Assassin skill spike still has its "stun" with out having to spec into it at all. This is simply one example of the many imbalances that are currently in the new system. Many of the new animations for skills are also very well done. Others you can just kind of see that the animator was far more interested in their social media that day. Can we say mag shot? "We didn't want to just recycle a bounty hunter animation (so instead we recycled a gunslinger animation that looks really really stupid) for mag shot". So the over all damage etc is better on it so I will have to use Who's your daddy er I mean mag shot, but the animation on that and several of the other abilities just make me wonder who hired Jar Jar Binks and put them in charge of the new combat animations. The bad... I have no idea who is really in charge of "class balancing" but I really think they should probably not be in charge of it any more. Or really in charge of anything more complicated than asking people "do you want to super-size that combo sir?" Class balance in this expansion is by far the worst I have seen since I started playing in early release. This thing they kept saying about damage reduction and better balance stream after stream is just lulz. Healers are now even more broken. Some DPS classes are just hell on wheels and others are not even worth targeting till you kill everyone else there. Heavy armor classes with solid defensive cool downs should not deal more damage that "glass cannon" classes, but here in 3.0 PT's/Vanguards and Jug/Guardians are just that. They deal out as much damage as merc/commando or sent/mara with far far more survivability than either of those classes. The really sad thing is most of these issues are nothing new. They have been going on since launch. They have still not been resolved.

In a nut shell they really over tuned all the classes. I have been hit by 12K tick ravages. I have hit people for 8-9K back to back chain lighting/thundering blast/chain lightning. Add in a few double proc's and in 3 gcd's im bursting for 35K.. Where is the balance in that? But that's not the end of it. Add in reckless and polarity shift and I can burst players for nearly 45K in 3-4 gcd's, and that is simply a joke if the dev's think that's balance. In the last stream the dev's talked about TTK (time to kill) So what is the TTK in pvp? 6 seconds? In a Warzone I see people vaporized by 10-12K+ hits coming from every direction. Force storm is ticking for 3.5K. Force lightning... 1200-2500... lol really? In the streams they said they would be toning down damage and healing as a whole. What they have managed to do is the exact opposite. My guess is that either their "math" was really, really wrong or all the dev's learned their math via common core. All that has been accomplished with what passed for class balancing (yes I use the term in a very very sarcastic reference) before 3.0 was thrown in the blender and right out the window. Classes are way more unbalanced now than they were before. This isn't simply a PVP issue either. We setup a basic raid in our guild using parsec just to test out and figure about where damage was. The results were all over the place. If damage and healing was "trivializing content" before well its just a sad joke now. Do I really think the Dev's will really care or respond? Nope. They are always very silent on this and almost any other issue regarding pvp. So the only thing I (or anyone else for that matter) can really do is voice my displeasure via my wallet.

What ranked? People spamming pvp chat begging people to queue ranked solo? Or to form up a team and promising they will let them win at least one round for the coms? Ranked PVP died the second they removed 8v8 and went to arena's. What we have now is just a sad shell of what we could have had and in many ways to what we once had. When they first put in Ranked 8v8 you didn't even have time to run to the bathroom between pops. Now in Ranked I could queue up and then: Run to the store and pick up a 12 pack, Then drive a few miles over to Beto's, Then stop at another store and check out a few new titles, THEN drive back home and finish off a few beers and my beto's and a ranked might pop. An exaggeration? perhaps, but on some nights it's not far from the truth. What people want is PVP balance. Not massive buff/nerf cycles like they have been doing, but frequent small adjustments that add up to big change and real balance between melee, ranged and healing classes. Nothing is quite as fun as benching a class you love because its just crap in PVP. Not because you suck, but because some rocket scientist at EAware got pissed you smoked his sniper. What people want is cross server PVP and PVE queues like they promised from launch. What players want is to see the Devs communicating and working to improve something instead of just ignoring players or just saying "No". All that looks like is them being lazy. Now maybe that isn't the case at all, but perception is a huge thing in community relations, and the over all community perception of EAware Community relations is crap. I am fairly sure I could make bank if I could set up a dunk a dev day. Step right up and dunk a dev for $5. For $10 you get 2 min to tell them exactly what you think of their work on SWTOR. Hell the line would be epic.

I think the OP was dead on. The other points some other have made along the way are also solid. Bioware needs to expand the FTP to include warzones and OPS. Why? It would attract more players that would get involved in the game and be far more likely to either subscribe or buy their junk on the Cartel market, and most of it is junk. Look Bioware you can only re-skin the same crap so many times.. I honestly think they kind of want the game to tank. Then they can dump it and move on like they have before to hype up another title and get people to jump on. The community doesn't want the game to fail, but a lot of us are getting really tired of the same lip service answers or silence from the Bioware. I guess the real question I have is why support a game where the developers seem to have lost any drive or desire to maintain the game? You guys really need to implement not only Cross server PVP, but PVE as well. Fix the failed resolve system. You could make it so using your break free ability triggers your resolve, but it seems more like you would rather put time into something that doesn't work then say "O.k. guys that didn't work so we are working on a better system". Reduce the time on hard CC. 2-3 seconds on a hard CC is plenty of time in a strategic fight. Reduce the time on soft CC. 4 seconds is plenty of time and promotes actual play instead of using chain CC and calling it skill. For instance OPS can sleep you start a cap. If you don't stun break they get the cap. If you do they flash bang you and guess what? They get the cap! That is not skill that is just a bad mechanic. Do I blame them for doing it? Not one bit. Now If using your break free also filled your resolve bar many of those issues would be fixed. Add diminishing returns to CC. If 5 players all CC you it should have less effect every time. This is part of the problem with StunWars: The CC'd Republic. Balance healing. Yes pulling over a million in heals is simply broken, and in no way improves the game. I have personally pulled over 1.3 million in several matches and well over 750K on a consistent basis . So by myself I completely remove 3-4 players from that match. We might as well have been in a 4V8 at that point. Now ill have even more defense and be harder to kill while losing nothing from my ability to heal. Well thought out Bioware. Realize that over balancing is as bad as not balancing at all. Why have changes on PTS when you don't listen to the players when they tell you things are broken? Make small adjustments to damage or abilities instead of huge buff's/nerfs. Wouldn't it make more sense to make small adjustments than sweeping changes? Stop favoring class A over class B. Balance promotes a more stable player base. FOTM promotes dissatisfied players that are more likely to leave.

I like your idea's they are very interesting.. The patch notes I would love to see is "Removed Alacrity from the game till we can figure out a way to actually make it worth having"

Who said anything about doing something in a day? Most of the things that would actually improve the game (cross server PVE and PVP queues for instance) have been requested almost since launch. I am fairly confident that it isn't an issue of them not being capable of doing it. It seems to me It would actually involve time and effort where as taking a piece of fugly armor and reskinning it for sale for Cartel Coins is fast and easy and requires next to no effort or time. I am glad they are putting out a PVE expansion of sorts, and I look forward to the next 8-9 months it takes them to get around to fixing any bugs that have probably been reported since it came up on the test server, but hey that's harsh of me to expect them to fix something or invest some time back into a community that keeps them employed.

They really should implement cross server PVP queues. It would improve everyone's PVP experience by leaps and bounds. Why would they improve it though? I mean the last thing they want is positive feedback. Horrible things might happen.. They could see the game grow... Get more players. Make more money. Gods forbid they might end up being successful.

except everyone on your team can see you. You sir are far from the brightest star in the night sky. I would boot you in a second and report you. Ya it a FTP game so I am sure you would be right back, but all those comms would go poof with your toon.

Anything that improves their image increases their population. PVP players tend to be far more vocal about issues and improvements in a game than PVE players. PVP players are fond of posting Video of PVP, and making commentaries on sites. All of those things bring a positive (or negative) image and when there is a lot of positive feedback it brings in players. Being able to show they have balanced out the game enough to try and get it as a competitive game in MLG would also bring in more players. People argue that PVE is where the money is, but it is a fact that there are hunreds of PVP orented players to every one PVE player. Look at all of the FPS games out there. GW2 has more active PVP players than SWTOR has players. SWTOR has an awesome story line and fairly good PVE as it stands. What remains are balance issues in both PVE and PVP. What they seem to miss is that PVP can be used as a sand box to help resolve PVE issues with classes. It doesn't take long for PVP players to figure out which class has the most advantages and jump all over it (FOTM players will always be out there) and a smart dev team would use this to figure out what classes needed balanced more than others.

We have been asking for cross server PVP since week 4 when the population of the game dropped by over a million subscribers and server populations went down the tubes. SWTOR has 2 records set in the first month. Number of subscribers at launch and number of un-subs in the first month. I don't know if its simply very hard for them to do with how the servers were setup or if they are just that inept. They put out a PVP balance patch once every blue moon and add a new tier of PVP armor and call that content. They fail to address key balance issues mostly between healing and non healing classes. They play obvious favorites with classes they have admitted they play. They fail to address balance issues with classes that have access to both tank and DPS trees. They know it gives them almost the same damage, but have far more defensive skills that pure DPS classes, and they still have done nothing to resolve the issue. There is an easy way to resolve this simply by putting in a damage penalty and crit cap on players that go up tank trees, but why put in work when your job might be on the line if the game fails right boys? I would hate to be one of you when you apply to a company and put SWTOR on your resume. God knows I wouldn't hire you. What is really sad is that SWTOR could do much better. They could have a much larger player base and a better name if they addressed those issues.

I honestly don't think tanks or guard are the issue. The issue is healing and how much of a discrepancy there is between the amount that can be healed and the amount of damage produced. In an average game I can pull 850K+ in heals. 650K if i am being focused by someone the whole match. So i pretty much remove 2-3 players from the match. Healing and damage really need to be balanced out. CC needs a real look as well. StunWars the CC'd Republic is played out. Think Its time we replace it with SkillWars. But in either case I am really bored of seeing people cry Nerf this or nerf that with nothing to back it up by poorly informed opinion as the basis for that stream of QQ. If more people really focused on calling for BALANCE and called the devs on their lack of any attempt at this things might actually improve. I am not talking about just on these forums. I am talking about using every Gaming forum you can find to talk about the lack of any attention to balance by what seems to be a group of people that either don't play the game they are working on, or the ones that do, as has been pointed out almost all play snipers/gunslingers. One other side note. OCD play does not equate to skill. Class A should not have to use 12+ abilities to put out the same numbers (In healing or damage) as class B that only needs to use 5-6. Just a thought.

Love my Merc.. Leveling it up in PVP was painful to say the least. I find the comparison you make with Sorc's very interesting, but you also forgot a few things. Sorcs can stack damage faster and with far more effect than a Merc. They also have far better resource management. All of this equates to a massive DPS difference between the two classes. One other thing to keep in mind is that there is also a huge difference between the cool downs on Sorc abilities VS merc. 9 seconds vs 15. So in the time it takes to hit someone once with TD A Sorc can hit twice with creeping terror. My really big question is this... If the cast time on Tracer and power shot are 1.5 seconds and GCD is 1.5 seconds why the channel? Simply removing the channel from the skills would improve the existence of mercs hand over fist. While Sorc lightning is a channeled skill it also does far more damage and has an integrated 50% slow. Can be be traited to have no cool down and even restore force points.. This would be a very fair trade. Sorcs having lots of slow's and Mercs being very mobile.

The issue has nothing to do with stuns. The issue is Resolve. Resolve is worthless. It is a fail design. Resolve is at the core of every issue with CC, and will continue to be the issue.

This entire problem boils down to one simple issue. CC.. In StunWars the CCRepublic the issue of CC vs resolve is at the core of almost every single issue brought up in PVP. Resolve is effectively worthless the majority of the time. This is because by the time it actually fills you are most likely in the process of re-spawning. All it takes to kill almost any class is 2 solid hard CC's in a row and that's it game over. If you use your break any good player will simply see that as the all clear to use their longest duration stun because you have no ability to break at that point. This is not a L2Play issue it is a failure in design. The issue becomes even more compounded by CC becoming the vehicle of most PVP encounters instead of a supplement to them. There are many ways to resolve this issue, but I am not sure BW will bother to look at them as they seem to be suffering from a serious case of Ostrichitus and have their heads fairly well imbedded in the sand. The best way to fix the issue is make resolve a player chosen event. If someone elects to use their stun break at a vital moment it should fill their resolve bar making them immune to CC for the duration. With the current cool down on stun breaks It would still be a strategic decision on when and where to use their stun break. Stun duration is another issue. 8 seconds is simply way to long. Soft CC (can be broken by damage) should have a maximum duration of 6 seconds. Hard CC should settle in around 3 seconds. There are many reasons for this, but mostly it help reduce CC spam as a means to win fights. I would like to close with: Multi server PVP queues. What is the point of being a PVP player and a subscriber or buying PVP passes with coins if you see players sitting in ranked queue for hours some nights spamming General chat for people to queue up? You Want your Group PVE and PVP queues to be popping fast so that people get more invested and interested in the game. You don't want people sitting for hours griping about the queues. What kind of message does that send to new players or returning players? Welcome back to SWTOR.. All that BM and WH gear you busted your butt to get is now worthless and you will be sitting in queue for over an hour at times between matches!! Have a nice day =D... There are other big issues, but ill save those for another post.

I really don't care about a few points, but what I do care about is working for the PVP gear for nothing. Everyone has the same Expertise because of the bolster in PVP. So there really is no point at all to get PVP gear. Expertise also does not seem to matter at all in open world PVP. I hit players for the same damage in or out of war zones when I should be hitting someone with no expertise for way more damage based on the stat description. So someone that raids all the time can come in with several hundred more points in their stats and just blow people up because well they have the same 2018 expertise thanks to the bolster buff. How about simply removing expertise from the game and making PVP armor close to equivalent to the raid gear? Or.... remove the bolster buff completely and make one set of the PVP gear lvl 53 (closest match in stats to PVE gear) and if you dont have expertise when you jump into a war zone ... sucks to be you.

OMG the nerd rage is epic! Its better than PVP I might not like that the servers are down, but I would rather have things working then sitting around crying about it lulz. A bit more notice in the future would be nice though 15 min is kind of cutting it short.

Open world PVP is the best. They just need to setup something so when you attack another player your companion goes bye bye for the duration of the fight.

Alright. I have: 50 Merc 50 Marauder 50 Sorc 50 Ops Merc: Merc damage is borderline pathetic after the nerf. Its not to say they did not need toned down a bit, but as with everything Bioware failed here and went WAY to far. Increasing heat or a small reduction in damage would have sufficed, but they increased heat, reduced damage and made other changes to the core mechanics of the class that quite literally removed Merc from being competitive DPS period. Marauder: Marauder damage is solid, but if they had Taunt they would be a better PVP tank than Juggs. They are an amazingly mobile and destructive class and even in the hands of a nub they can do some serious damage. 2 of the 3 builds can drop almost any class faster than they can say OMG L2P!!! and a well geared Marauder with a skilled player is almost unstoppable. Sorc: After the changes to their healing and their one solid hybread spec they really have been kind of relegated to stand off steady damage instead of a "Glass Cannon". As a healer they are sub par when compered side by side with other healers lacking mobility or survivability. They are an easy target for DPS classes especially Ops and Sins. Madness spec is solid, but lacks any real burst. Ops: While not as hard hitting as they use to be they are still very capable. Once you get the hang of how they flow its actually a really fun class that can do some really good damage. Has excellent CC and survivability when compared to many other classes. Ops Healers are hands down the best sustained healers in the game. They have mobility, survivability and the ability to turn around and dish out a bit of damage when called for. So now that we have covered that. Merc DPS needs some TLC. As a whole the class is weak and there is no reason to EVER bring a DPS Merc when you can bring a PT instead. Sorc need a bit of love as well in the form of some better defensive cooldowns for healers and a bit of burst or a bit more damage. Not a lot in either case, but they do need some love. Marauders need their Defensive cool downs toned down a hair. Their damage is fine, but when added to their defensive cool downs it makes them a bit to strong. PT's need their damage brought down a bit. Its mind boggling to me that they would nerf Merc DPS specs for doing 500K in a warzone and then turn around and boost PT's to where they do exactly what Merc's were doing before the nerf... The inability of bioware's dev team to actually see its failings is truly amazing. Snipers need the same thing as Marauders. Their damage is fine, but their ability to CC is out of control. The combination of their damage and CC makes them way to strong. So please next time you try and post a L2P thread perhaps YOU should play all of the classes and know what YOU are speaking about before you get on the forum and make a fool out of yourself.

Actually the biggest issue with this game are people like you with your OMG QQ OMG L2P!!! You do not help in any way. The resolve system is a failure. It has been since day 1 and has been a constant topic. A DR (That's Diminishing returns for you idiots that can only respond with QQ L2P) is a much better system and would prevent people from being CC'd from first act till death. As for your learn to LOS the stuns... Ya good luck with that since they are almost all instant cast... Hard to LOS something with no cast time... Its nice to see all pro players like you trying to sound like you are boss when you clearly have no clue and are just a mindless fanboi of a dieing game.

Bioware should simply make all PVP gear have the exact same expertise. Problem solved. A guy in recruit gear and a guy win full War Hero gear would have the exact same expertise. The only difference would be a small over all stat bonus. This would change things from Player VS Gear to Player VS player again. All Bioware does by making people grind to get higher expertise is drive more people from the game every day. Its poor management and bad design. Keep the Expertise to keep PVP gear in PVP and PVE gear in PVE, but make all expertise the same. The other thing this would resolve would be shutting up all those people that think better gear = more skilled.

God I really love this game... The class balance is amazing.... Expertise resolves all problems and the fanboi's are arguably the stupidest people I have run into in any game. The OP has a real point, but as usual the fanboi vultures that equate having gear with being skilled have to swoop in and flame the thread. The real issue with TOR isn't all of the MANY MANY issues that the game has. Its the OMG L2P crowd and QQers.

The only thing they really need is a bit better sustained damage, but as it is they are a heavy hitting burst class. Their healing is fine. Its their damage that really needs to be brought in line. Arsenal does very sub par damage. This has to do with the knee jerk nerf the spec received, and the Merc Pyro spec also under performs the PT version. Its really amusing that they nerfed the Arsenal spec because people were pulling 500K+ damage, but then they boost PT's so they are doing 500K+ damage... Really? What could be done to bring it in line? Have more Dev's start playing the class so they buff it up after getting face rolled a few hundred times. I know they will probably be scratching their heads wondering why everything isn't working as intended, but when you see 90% of Merc's get shelved and a massive number of PT's leveling up there is an issue. Players should not have to shelf toon's and re-roll just to be able to play on a competitive level. Perhaps Bioware thinks if they keep making FOTM classes that people will stick with the game and keep making new toons. I couldn't tell you. More it seems that Bioware is lost and has no idea how to find their way back to the path. There are lots of ways several under performing classes can be brought into line, but the first challenge is to get the people responsible for doing this to actually respond to the community and admit they do need to be worked on. This is the real challenge because I am sure that with the drop in population and the resulting loss in revenue they simply are biding their time trying to milk what they can before the game goes down to 1 PVP and 2 PVE servers. As a whole if you are actually hoping that Bioware will listen to you and make positive changes to the game don't hold your breath. It seems their mentality has shifted from a "lets do this right" mind frame to a "how long can I stay off unemployment" mind frame. They do not really test changes before they go live. They ignore play testers that tell them things are not working right and will even shut down threads where people bring up very well made points on class changes. Bioware is making it very clear they do not care about their player base, and as a result the player base is looking at other options for their gaming fix.

Function over fashion .... Almost all of the armor in ToR looks like crap.