So let's get this straight, what you are saying is that melee classes, who operate best at the 4m range, should step back to 10m, blow the bubble and then step in. Yes, that advice is really going to work well for pure dps melee stealthers then. Something like this. "Ooh look, a bubbled opponent, best pop out of stealth at 10m, lob a Thermal Grenade and let off several Flurry of Bolts" But wait a minute, what's this ? "Oh heck, as a result of having done that I can't now use my primary atack, Shoot First because I'm no longer in stealth...." Whereas if I do what I'm supposed to do as a stealther and go straight in with my primary attack from stealth, at 4m, it's auto stun for me. In fact, playing as a class who has to press a key to stun other opponents, (and the fact that involves timing and 'skill'), I do find the idea of a free stun, which requires no action on the part of the bubbled player to activate just a tad unfair Heck, in fact, as a stealther I could do with something like that myself. Perhaps we Scoundrels and Operatives could have an auto stun of our own that comes into operation whenever anyone blows us out of stealth. After all, if we get taken out of stealth at a time not of our own choosing, we are often then in trouble. Come on Bioware, give us that whenever anyone pops our stealth bubble...

Hmm yes, it would be hard to spot the difference between these lag events, real and deliberate. One obviously natural one is when you stun or CC an opponet on the move and they snap back to the location point where the CC/stun was applied. More suspicious as you say are those where opponents instantly reposition out of the danger zone at, and usually only at moments of imminent incoming death for them. I have caught one or two of those moments on video. Problem being, of course, that it might just be lucky coincidence for them that a lag spike 'repositions' them in their favour. To be sure its nothing but a natural occurence, you need to spot them doing it again (at those crucial moments and no other). Doing that is difficult. But yes, some of these conveniently timed insta leaps out of danger do look suspicious

And thanks to all who managed to make it to the spontaneous Ilum PVP event yesterday, resulting in so much fun, despite the usual issues with open world PVP framerate drop and lag http://www.redeclipse.eu/redeclipse.eu/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=722&sid=55e2a818d89b6d1dbba3e43852bd1c29

Heck no, level 50 pug PVP seems to be dominated by the Imp players at the moment. Certainly my experience when pugging is that the Imps have been winning the majority of encounters recently. Especially in the evenings...

Yes, included Imdisk installer was used and yes, tried different drive letter but the error message still popped up saying letter R is already taken. Ie, it keeps mentioning R even though I try other drive letters. log as follows

Odd, I can't get SWTOR unleashed to run. I have had no problems setting the Ramdisk and copying in files via the modified batch file method but now I have decided to try using Unleashed instead, it keeps throwing errors at me when I click save, apply and close. Error boxes are, as follows. "The Device is not Ready" "Setting RamDrive=[R] is taken already. Please selecy another drive letter. "Please choose valid settings so they can be saved" Imdisk (that came with Unleashed) is installed. There is no drive R already on my system, the message about Drive letter R is the same no matter what letter I choose. I'm obviously missing out something simple here (but there are a lot of back posts to try to read through to find out if this has been mentioned before and my assumption is that once Imdisk is installed , I then don't have to mannually set up the Ramdisk, Unleashed does that, correct ? Windows 7 x64 16GB RAM.

Hmmm, I will try to upload the graphs I capped as Jpgs. Can't recall exactly whiich logs they were now, it's a while back ! For the purpose of the long dummy test runs though, it didn't matter where Gut was, since it's repeated many time through the run at roughly the same intervals, the only seconds lost of bleed damage were the first few seconds of each run. I didn't believe it either at first but well, the maths do seem to favour Plasma Cell. Whereas HEC adds 8%, Plasma Cell when it procs on Ion Pulse (66% chance with those two points in Ionized Ignition) adds something like an straight extra 1.3k Burn DoT damage. That extra 1.3k on roughly 66% of your IP's (if the 'dice' rolls work out ) is a lot more than the 8% to elemental damage you would get on each IP using the High Energy Cell. (put simply, using HEC, 8% of a 1k IP is an extra 80 damage, versus using Plasma Cell where there is a 66% chance to add another 1300 damage) And you also get a chance to proc that Burn damage on all your rifle shots too.

I assume when you say your ticks are consistent at 2.5k that's critical hit ticks ? If so then that would mirror the criticals on my ticks too pretty closely which tick for on average about 2.1 - 2.2k My crits are probably lower though because of the surge difference and more importantly no, I don't use High Energy Cell so I'm losing that extra 5% (8% in total with Blaster Augs) on Elemental Damage. However, I more than make up for that loss by using Plasma Cell (with two points in Ionized Ignition from the Assault tree) because the extra amount of damage overall that puts out from the Burning (tech) DoT procs etc by using that cell is far greater than the 8% damage you would get when using HEC. Running two sessions on the WZ dummy demonstrated to me just how much extra damage you can put out using the 'wrong' cell for Tactics. Same rotations (roughly FP>IP>IP>HS Fill>PC>SS>Gut>HIB>HS Fill) and after around 7 minutes worth of that the damage when using Plasma Cell was around 70k to 80k greater than when using High Energy Cell. Fills in both cases because even with HEC's regen buff, a long dummy run does lead to energy dropping if you don't fit some in. .

True but still, when you read what the potential damage output is supposed to be from the tool tip, take into consideration that 3 stacks of PG are supposed to add an extra 60% of that and it's all elemental damage,(so ignores all armor etc) it sure doesn't feel good when having successfully channeled the whole 3 seconds on a target, all you seem to be doing on average no matter what zone or opponent, is a maximum of 3k over that channel (that's a meagre 1k per second at most when there are no crits) For what it's worth, roughly over the same period, using mortar volley seems to do much more damage. Range considerations aside, it leaves you feeling its better to forgo the pulse cannon and use mortar volley all the time instead... What can I say, combat logs sometimes don't make very good reading

Yep, it is strange isn't it. They keep mothballing gear in PVP whilst conversely adding extra tiers of gear in PVE.

Of course people will still complain. Prior to 1.6 it's complaints about how other players in full War Hero gear are thrashing those who are still only in recruit or a mixture of recruit and Battlemaster etc. Now post 1.6 it will be complaints about how those in full Elite Ware Hero are thrashing those in recruit or a mixture of recruit and War Hero etc I mean, after all, apart from the stat differences that carry over, this is basically an exercise in rebranding. What was Battlemaster is now War Hero and what was War Hero becomes Elite War Hero as regards the tier postions and pricing. Given that they haven't elected to go with having 4 tiers, I'm not even sure what the point of this change is really.

Pretty much my feelings too. Tactics is fun, you are at least not one of the other 99% of Vanguard builds to be found in warzones. As Tactics then you are a rarity, for what that's worth:) But yes, Pulse Cannon with Pulse Generator, even at 3 stacks like you say can really be underwhelming. Even with better gear it remains so (I'm Elite War Hero in both main and offhand and pretty much War Hero in all other slots) especially against fairly equally geared opponents. Against these kinds of opponents, if they can be kept in the cone for the duration, I'm hitting at an average of 2.2k per tick (if the tick crits), and around 1.2k per tick if it doesn't So they don't melt away, there is no burst and the 70% slow is nowhere near as effective as you would hope it could be. It certainly doesn't take much for opponents to move out of that 10m cone to negate that effect, even when slowed. Comparing it as a slow to other high value slows from other classes that stick to you wherever you move, it's a bit weak to be honest. An Assault specced Vanguard will almost always outperform you when it comes to damage and with far less effort. Examples, in the same warzone with me running Tactics and a fellow guild member running Assault, my highest single damage on a target was about 3.8k, his was near to 5k. And damage overall was an extra 60% in favour of the Assault specced player. This partly reflects what you also mention, the problems with keeping that Pulse Cannon on target with either yourself getting stunned, mezzed or knocked back during its cast, or opponents just relatively easily walking out of the effect cone before it's been fully channeled. One thing I would recommend though is that if you do run Tactics, then run it with Plasma Cell and not High Energy Cell. Put at least two points into Ionized Ignition in the Assault tree when doing this and you will do far more damage than if you run with the High Energy Cell (the one supposedly best suited for the Tactics tree.)

Could be, there was a Jedi player and Kira Carsen briefly seen running around in the entrance/exit passage inside my XS Freighter the other day as well

Fairy nuff. Main point will still stand though, having the ability to at will stun other players whilst you yourself are stunned isn't good. No defense for that ability really. Or perhaps all classes should be given a freely clickable, even when stunned ability to stun others, even when their CC breaker is on cooldown. For the balance and all that jazz.

Remember the good old days when as a stealther (Scoundrel in my case) you could ninja cap a turret in civil War. You know how it went, sneak up, Tranq Dart the lone defender and begin capping. The defender breaks the dart CC and you reply with Flash Grenade. Now, with their CC breaker on cooldown, and with them therefore out for the full 8 second count, it's a job well done for you, turret taken. Except, of course, when 1.4 bubbles are involved. So following the scenario above what happens. Well hey, no problem for the lone, bubbled sorceror because even though they are supposedly stunned full the full count on your Flash Grenade, having blown their only CC on the dart stun, there is always the magic "off button". Just toggle off the bubble and flash, wham, one stunned Scoundrel, me, thus ruining the otherwise perfect ninja cap. Seriously Bioware, this ability to toggle off bubbles for stun effects, even whilst the player is stunned needs to go.

In the Tactics build. I see various posts mentioning how this one melts enemies. ( Around 10k with Crits over the 3 ticks was one suggested damage output) Sadly as of yet I'm not seeing it happen. I'm nearly full War Hero, with just one relic and wrists to complete (Full Combat Tech gear and Elite WH main/offhand) and on average, when 3 stacks of PG are up, my massive impact seems to amount to the following. On average for each tick it hits for about 1.2k, if ticks crit then its around 2k per tick. Hmm, that doesn't feel hot enough to me ! Would that be about what would be expected ? In essence it's not really melting enemies as effectively as I would have imagined Stats currently for comparison when fully buffed and with Reflex Stim. Aim 1892, Exp 1318, Power 757 Crit 35.3%, Crit Boost 76.95%,

So, I finally get to replace my WH shotgun with the Elite WH version and.. Virtually no increase in stats ?! Going from barrel 61 to barrel 63 made no difference to the primary damage and a mere 6 extra to the Tech bonus damage, (and that includes the pittance of an increase from the level 63 mod and enhancements as well) Is there something buggy going on here or have 3475 ranked comms just been spent to gain virtually nothing ? What a waste.

Yes and this needs repeating. It also pays to learn just where 10m or greater is in relation to the node or door. During down time, have a fellow team mate stand right on the node and measure 10m from him or her. Then memorise that and always stand away further than that.. This doesn't help against duel stealthers attempting a cap but if your team puts you in that lonesome position, its good advice to always follow.

Hoth, without a doubt. Playing as I do on a 64" plasma screen that planet just hurts my eyeballs with it's constant near full screen blasting of white, white, and various other shades of..white. With a hint of blueish white thrown in.. Ouch. Then the Tomb area on Belsavis I think.

Yep, I will second this. Recently the Imps have pretty much been in the driving seat on Red Eclipse at both levels and especially at weekends (Friday to Sunday ) and evenings. At weekends over the last month when solo queuing I would say the win ratio for Imps is around 4 to 1. (Exception seems to be Huttball)

Well, all I can say is that this afternoon the Imp premades are constantly smashing the Reps into a pulp in the solo queues. Pretty much wins all the way for them. So yes, from Friday through to Monday it seems the imps pretty much dominate (weekenders) whereas during the week I would say its much more even. Based on my experience of the last month anyway:)

The Empire seem to win plenty of matches on Red Eclipse, both at low level and lvl 50 there is no sense that the Reps are dominating the field at all in the zones I regularly end up in. In fact over the last few weekends it has been Imp wins taking the majority. Obviously this is just a time of day thing then for you, you are queuing at times outside of the Imp victories.

Just to clarfiy further, it's not true that 'most' damage in PVP bypasses armor, in the sense that armor is all but useless. It depends on who you are facing and the kind of damage they dish out. Armor mitigates against Kinetic and Energy damage but does not protect against Internal and Elemental damage. So, if you are going toe to toe with a Pyro for example, with a large part of the damage they deal being elemental, your armor is ineffectual. However, against an Operative, whose main damage type is Kinetic, your armor is effective. Likewise, a sizable amount of the damage dished out by Force users is either energy or kinetic in nature and again, armor is effective in these cases. What complicates matters is not that most damage bypasses armor, it doesn't, its the number of skills and buffs that increase armor penetration.(Compared to the comparatively few that increase armor resistance to a similar degree)

Just to be clear, Backblast on its own (without FR) does not overwrite the prior Flechette Round (or that's what I can see when testing out on the dummy, use SF with FR, then immediately follow with BB and the FR still ticks.) So I'm happy to use BB (without FR) straight after SF because of this, it just means I lose 1.5 seconds before I can then reapply FR over had I not used it immediately. No big deal. More to the point, I like to apply BB straight after SF then because at that point it's pretty much a guaranteed hefty hit. Leave it till later in the rotation and you might not be able to get the positioning needed to use it at the point in that rotation where it would be best. After your initial couple of hits you might be out kited, knocked back, stunned or out of range a few seconds later and then its a moot point, you can't apply FR via BB again at the 'best' moment.

When a Sin pops Force Shroud is about the only time I ever use the otherwise not very useful "Quick Shot" on my Scoundrel. For all the good it does in that situation