I have actually been seeing fewer Marauders/Sents and been seeing a lot more Pyro PT's. My Guess would be that people realize that the cool downs are not god mode so they switch to a class that can dish out more damage and have ranged options.

It has happened to me several times, but mostly in Huttball.

It really is not that hard to get a alt past chapter 2.....

Its sad... Lots of people have great idea's that would improve many aspects of the game. The sad thing is that the Dev's don't listen and don't care. Sadly this isn't Dragon Age where players could build mods to fix all the stupid crap the Dev's would not address.

I actually agree with the base of the OP's argument. But not only are some classes easier to play, but they also have the damage and utility to shift the tide of a battle while other classes that are far more difficult to play well get the short end of the stick. PT's are amazingly simple to play, and put out really high damage because of this. Other classes require you build X stacks of this and that before you are able to slam someone, and that is where the issue comes into play. Realistically Bioware needs to replace some of the abilities classes have and make them passive buffs with a X% chance to apply their effect. Metrics or no one class should not have to use 12+ key bindings to be effective where as another class only has to use 6-7. Not only is that really REALLY bad design it slights the advantage to the simpler class. If Bioware has any hope of balancing out the performance of each class they really need to either make all classes require the same basic number of key bindings. The best thing Bioware can learn is the principle of - KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid. Every class should have 6-8 key binds for their primary skills with 2-3 utility abilities. Yes this would be "Dumbing down the game" for SOME classes but it would also level the playing field.

My real issue with the massive difference in gear is that it removes a large amount of the skill factor from victory in PVP. Really changing it from PVP into Player VS Gear. I really don't care who the player is. If you take a player in full recruit gear and put them against a player in BM/WH gear they will get destroyed. Honestly this is EXACTLY the same issue seen in Rift, and the solution they had to put in place was to put high ranked players in their own bracket to save the PVP population from quitting on them. Rank 7-8 players (basically the same as WH geared players in ToR) had to be moved because a new player in lower rank gear would get vaporized by them regardless of skill. The same thing is happening in ToR. The more you use a stat as the real determining factor in PVP the more worthless the competition becomes. Is Expertise needed... No. Its a sloppy way to divide PVP and PVE gear, and shows a lack of real experience in the Dev staff. Simply because WoW did it does not mean its the best solution. Can the Expertise system work? Yes, But the discrepancy between gear and skill created by it has to be decreased. The Increased damage vs the Decreased damage really needs to be leveled out. You should not have a player dealing 25% more damage and reducing damage received by 18%, and additionally the way Expertise works is simply broken among other things in PVP. The amount of stuns and other CC is simply out of control. With no DR and a broken (I would go as far as saying an epic fail) resolve system combined with some of the best burst classes being able to root, stun, knock back a target almost endlessly is simply poor design and again shows either a lack of understanding by the Dev team or more likely and far worse they simply do not care. I can see the problem they have though and that is how do you balance Heals VS damage... Well that is already a mechanic with the bolster system, but when you add massive amounts of Expertise that creates healing classes that can run around with 2-3 players on them with little to no fear of death. The real solution is to make Resolve damage bonus and reduction the same or close to the same and use the bolster buff to balance out healing. This would take a bit of time to balance, but the end result would be a much better pvp system where players could incorporate more skill into competition.

Its not as good at PT Pyro, but it does do better damage than Arsenal build, and adds some much needed mobility, but still not as good as a PT by any means.

Welcome to Star Wars the CC Republic. Where rather than resolving issues they add another stupid looking pet.

Stupidest thread EVER..... I mean EVER.

That's awesome. Not only do you get to ignore idiots you get to add to the odds of your team losing all in one stroke! What a master plan! Out of curiosity has the other team voted you MVP for their side yet? Ignoring idiots is one thing. Contributing to your team losing is another, and you are managing to do both at the same time. Do you honestly expect a high maturity level in a MMO? chalk idiots up to being idiots, but don't screw over players that are being respectful because you have to ignore half the server. BTW can i get your toons name so I can vote kick you from warzones? I don't need someone on my team that can't assist with objectives.

Well after yet another beautiful "We know what we are doing patch" Now war zones can start 6 V 9 players. That's some quality work Bioware. My hats off in salute to you and yours. Could someone take a look at this? or is it like your other bugs going to be brushed off and ignored?

How about they work on better looking armor. Class balance and content instead of wasting so much time on stupid crap? That's my vote... If pets and Legacy money sink is all they are focusing on then this game is screwed. PS. Legacy sucks. Get over it you failed. Work on content and class balance.

How about we get some real options for appearance? Like Armor dye - I know its a simple thing, but honestly guys most of your armor looks shabby.. the color choices suck and it would give people a bit of individuality. Now while I'm sure every Jedi out there wants to be dressed in brown robes. I am sure a few would like some options. Its not like you took that much time to make the stuff.. you have 8 basic skins with a few color changes on them... Hide Hood / Cloak - Believe it or not some players don't like to run around looking like the Unabomber. People take time to make their toon look a certain way, but almost everything has a cloak or a hood on it... Why? So much of the armor has hoods and cloaks it looks like a bad Old Navy convention for retired superhero's. A few more hair styles and the ability to change them would be nice... I am really glad you made 12 different styles with buns, but really? Sadly this isn't Dragon Age where players could and did make better hair styles, body frames, World graphics, armor than you, so you guys will have to bring it up a notch and show us what you can do.

You do realize the reason why they nerfed shadow tanks is because of people like you running tank spec in DPS gear right?

I could agree with much of what you said if companies that had less funding and a smaller staff had not added all these features and done a better job than Bioware.

There is a real issue with lack of feedback and responses from Bioware on the PTS forums. They ask for feedback from the players on different aspects of the patch, but the way the feedback was handled was to remove dozens and dozens of threads. People were pointing out glitches, bugs and balance issues only to watch threads vanishing over and over again. My conclusion of all of this is that Bioware seems to have no real desire to balance, fix or resolve issues with classes, itemization or anything that does not revolve around their money sink er I mean Legacy system. Yes the Bioware Forum Gestapo was out in force killing anything that said anything negative about the direction bioware was going. I am not talking about rude or abusive posts. I am talking about people pointing out honest real issues that were shut down. Honestly Bioware seems so fixated on fluff they are forgetting that a balanced game keeps more players than what they have right now. over 400K lost subscriptions in the first 2 quarters after release should be a bit of a clue to Bioware that their "Vision" is really leading them down the wrong path. They are turning a game that had the ability to be a real force in the MMO community into a niche game that has a very small audience. I think its awesome that in 1.4 they are planning on releasing another world and more content, but they need to not only add that content, but really look at the class system they have made and start balancing it better. One of the primary focuses needs to be on class itemization. One of the biggest reasons people freak about Guardian/Jug, Powertech/Vanguard and Sin/Shadow is that they all have one thing in common. Access to Tank and DPS tree's and access to Tank and DPS gear. This gives those classes a massive advantage being able to mix and match gear and tree's to give them the ability take advantage of specs that are over powered. Another issue is ignoring DPS classes that under-perform while boosting others that are already performing well. This is illustrated very well in the case of Merc/Commando and Sniper/Gunslinger. Merc/Commando are clearly under performing as a DPS class and in fact the change to their heat management with this patch is a small over all Nerf. While Sniper/Gunslinger were given another boost in their over all staying power and damage. Why would you boost a DPS class with some of the best defenses in the game again while a DPS class that has some of the weakest defenses and staying power was nerfed again? The only answer I can come up with is either Dev's are playing the classes that are being boosted or all of the "Metrics" and "Logs" that Bioware says they look at are in fact vapor. Snipers/Gunslingers might say its because the class is a turret class that plants and then deals its damage. Well so are Commando/Merc's. Snipers have the ability to pop cover giving them damage reduction and immunity to a large amount of CC. Where as the Merc/Commando do not get anything like that. They don't even get an Interrupt... In the end Bioware its all good. You can keep ignoring actual issues and working on Legacy. More players will tell you what they think of your priorities by ending their accounts. Perhaps when you have lost enough players someone in your parent company will realize its not because the game did not have the ability to draw in players or create a world where people would be happy to play and continue paying. The players were leaving because of flat out shoddy management and lack of balance and stability in the game system. At the end of the day The biggest reason so many players are leaving has more to do with the way Bioware is managing the game.

LOL!!! Are you blind? At launch almost every server that was up had a status of full. Before 1.2 hit they were all low... Trying to say that people are happy is a poor take on things at best. The Vast majority have shown they are not happy with the direction Bioware is going by ending their subscriptions. There is only enough total active population to fill 8-10 servers out of the 217 SERVERS they have running. This was not a Hey lets get server transfers in because we are nice guys, it was a desperation play to keep from losing even more subs because people were sick of logging into a server that had less than 70 players during peak hours. So lets do the math shall we? Bioware's current "Vision" for the game has cost them $780,000 a month in lost subscriptions. This is reflected in the nasty drop in EA stock value. Now Fanboi's can argue till they are blue in the face how awesome Bioware is, but that same group of people would argue that everything is fine while the earth was flying head long into the sun if Bioware said its working as intended. So before you sit and bash on people that are fed up with the BS Bioware is spewing out as "Content" stop and thing about the 400 THOUSAND+ players that have left because they were not happy. Its awesome you found something that you like, but the honest truth is for every 1 player that loves what they have done 10 or more have left the game because they did not like what has been done, and these in many many cases were people that had been waiting for this game for years.

Don't worry. I'm sure he will get out of the way. What will be far more amusing is when all the people that leave slam the door so you don't get out...

People were sending feedback about the lag in PVP, but like everything else the people asked to test the content were ignored, and even better than that anyone posting problems with the patch that the board mods seemed not to like was removed. An excellent post that outlined several massive issues was deleted faster than I could believe. It included: Issues with the graphics changes causing drops in frame rates. Lag (server ping) issues in WZ's and other areas. Players in war zones appear to be jumping around almost like they are using some kind of warp or speed hack, but its just bad sync between server/client and really bad lag. Class changes that did more harm than good. Several bugs and glitches in char animation. Toons will get stuck in a single pose looking like a statue running moving around. Several other issues that they were able to replicate and document. What happened? This thread as been deleted by the mod... Don't kid your self. Bioware doesn't care about balance, content or anything else. All they care about is keeping enough subs to hit their profit goals then they can care less about anyone playing the game, and move on to their next money grab project. Where once again they will do a half baked job.

Like anything in this game there is a huge boom right at the start with prices being out of control, but in a week or so the prices will come down for several reasons. 1. People will realize that its not that hard to make the kits. 2. tons of people thinking they are going to get uber rich will flood the market and the prices will drop faster than a Fanboi hits their knees at anything Bioware does. All I have seen from Bioware in the last few patches are a few minor fixes followed by breaking more things (lag in war zones is worse than it was before 1.3) Boosting classes that were already strong, and passing off money sinks as "content" Over all It showcases really bad management and poor decision making skills at Bioware.

Voidstar: In the first room. The Attacking team will sometimes spawn in the second room (The bridge med center) after the defenders defuse a bomb. bringing the game to an end. The attackers can still arm the bomb on the first door, and the defenders can still defuse it, but the attackers cannot progress. This leaves the clock to run out and all the team that was defending has to do is pop one door and its over.

This change actually confuses me. Snipers already have some of the best defensive abilities in the game. Why do they need more? All this will do is seriously unbalance the class.

Or they could stop investing so much time into their Money Sink er I mean Legacy system and invest it into things players actually want.

The Issue is not the skill trees. The real issue is Placement of bonuses in those trees. Bioware would really benefit from changing a few basic things with in each of the trees. The problem I see though is that they have found their developers blinders. They are so proud of what they have made that they cannot see that classes are and will continue to be unbalanced because they do not set out a min-max for each class. Take PowerTech's and Marauders. The amount of damage they produce combined with the utility they have makes them very strong vs several other classes. This is what leads to QQ nerf posts and disgruntled players. A class should never have the availability to mix Healing and DPS trees. A class should never have the availability to mix DPS and Tanking trees. As long as this is allowed you will have Dev's that boost a few classes to compensate for the strengths of the OP class causing further imbalance. In ToR I really don't see them really balancing out classes with out making a third advance class option for each of the 4 basic classes, and I doubt they will do that any time soon. Back in the pen and paper days they had a really simple system to maintain balance, and sadly that is over looked by the new generation of game designers. The basics of it was: Tanks classes had access to Tanking and support abilities. Healers had access to healing and support abilities. Melee DPS had access to DPS and Support Ranged DPS had access to DPS and support Every game that allows a class to have access to Tank+DPS or Heal+DPS has always and will always have balance issues. This is a simple fact. Players will mix and match gear and skills to find builds that are simply over the top while other classes who do not have that option will always be either under powered / balanced or the Dev's will over compensate by adding to much to the classes that do not have that availability. The actual failure in TOR class balance is that they are trying to give every class the ability to dish out the damage while some classes have access to better armor mitigation or more utility. This is the I want my Cake and to Eat it too syndrome. Trying to make it so every class can do fill as many rolls as possible, but that is a direct contradiction to having a CLASS based game as opposed to a SKILL based game.

Here is the thing... Imps out number pubs on average of nearly 3 to 1. Now Also think about this.. With a higher population comes a higher number of bads. I have seen people coming into warzones with less than 100 expertise and they Honestly didn't think that was a problem.... In any faction based games the more popular the faction the more bads you will get tied down with. This makes it easier for the smaller faction to gear up.. As they win more matches and have fewer morons to deal with on their team. Imps Really do have more than their fair share of scrubs. But as the larger faction this is to be expected. I really hope that when rated comes out they will let us queue 8 man for non rated as well. That removes the guess work and lets your team win or lose based on their own ability rather than the luck of the Pug draw.