Excuse me, the discussion here is not about distributing the shield across the entire team. That isn't effective anyway and is a waste of GCD's/Force. The issue here is how it makes sorcs "OP" because they can absorb 2.5k-3k damage every 20 seconds.

So, should we also remove the instant heals that Op/Sc get?

It s a heal. We're missing a traditional heal and it was replaced by this ability. It heals/absorbs 2.5k-3k damage at 50 every 20 seconds. It is a moderate heal on a long cool down that is instant cast. A "decent" sorc can only keep it up once every 20 seconds without the 3 second reduction from the set bonus.

Why are you comparing a heal (basically, it is just a heal) from a healing class to a tank? Do you want heals as well?

What class are you? Are you a healer?

Not sure what happened, but last night Illum was rocking on Vulkar. Big fights all night long. Last week it was just point flipping.

They just perceive it to be OP... but in reality they don't even understand what is going on or its limitations. It is entertaining to watch people thrashing about and exaggerating though.

At that point, just replace it with another boring heal. It just isn't as powerful as people make it out to be and this is a great case of perception = reality for scrubs.

Uh, yeah? That's because cover is designed to be used primarily by snipers who don't heal. Why should a snipers cover mechanic be compared to a feature healing ability? A DPS spec sorc doesn't have the skill tree points necessary to keep himself alive against a decent player.

Because it is their feature mechanic/ability for healing. Other classes get other gimmicks and have strengths elsewhere. It is great to use but without set bonuses, can't be recast on the same person more than once every 20 seconds. I believe the set bonus knocks 3 seconds off the debuff? If you can burn me down in less than 17 seconds, you wouldn't be able to burn me down without the shield because you'd qualify as a terrible player. Pro-tip: After I shield, I have to HoT+Force Bend+Big heal... if you interrupt my big heal and lock me out of it for 4 seconds, i have to fall back on my small heal which isn't enough to keep me up against good players.

The talent was nerfed between beta and release. It used to lower it 6 seconds but now it only lowers the cooldown on the ability.

3 seconds off of 20 seconds is not half.

@OP, I couldn't care either way. When you do enough PVP on the same server, you know who all of the good and bad players are anyway. I know who to focus and who to ignore at this point.

I just wanted to disagree here... completely. "The game" isn't PVE and if it were you'd have a lot fewer subcribers. I'd go so far as to say that the PVE in this game is terrible. Aside from the single player storylines and voice acting, it is total rubbish. Grinding through unimaginative Ops to get gear? Eternity vault, where it takes about 2 minutes to figure out and master the encounter? That's "the game"? I guess once you're bored with normal mode, you can hop into hardmode ops where the devs spent 30 seconds coding an enrage mechanic into the mobs and then pretend like its a whole new experience. PVP will keep this game on life support far longer than PVE raiders will. At least the PVP experience, even with only three warzones and a couple of world PVP areas, changes each time you do it.

I don't want to have to PVE in order to PVP, therefore I support the Expertise stat by default unless it is replaced with gear that has equal stats to PVE gear.

It isn't worth the effort to break it down any more to post screen shots. Your post is incorrect with respect to the fact that if you cap Huttball as fast as possible for a win, you will get fewer rewards than if you were to farm to the point of getting 8-10 medals then score the game winner.

Just like FPS games and all MMOs before... If you want to have a chance you need to get other people and organize.

I apologize, to clarify: Bioware needs to make it more time efficient for the winning team to score 6 and requeue. It should not be more efficient, in any way, to roll over and let the other team score 6 fast caps. Hope that clears up what I was trying to communicate.

It is actually fastest to farm right up to the point where everyone in your premade as their maximum amount of easily attainable medals. So, once I get my 75k damage and 75k healing (and all of the stuff in between) it is then fastest to score and requeue. It is not time efficienty, unfortunately, to score 6 times as fast as possible and requeue. You need to rerun your numbers. P.S. I think Bioware needs to fix this situation.

I hope that instead of quitting, they will just form their team and even up the odds. That's my hope anyway because dividing the PVP population up with brackets and divisions isn't going to be good for the game when the subs dive.

I HATE farming people. It does however, make more sense to farm people. I'm just trying to explain why it is being done and how this is an EASY fix by Bioware.

It always comes to this doesn't it? Someone making baseless insults without any actual knowledge of the people they are commenting on. If you are good at Huttball (PVP?) then you know that if you score 6 goals as fast as possible (some here go so far as to say that this is the CORRECT and ONLY way to play huttball) then you should end the round with 1 or 2 medals, very little damage, very little damage taken, and very few heals.

Why is this abuse?

More to my point. If I give you the ball because I'm a sadistic farming bastard. Am I still doing something reportable which I could receive punishment for? I'm giving you a chance to get the ball and score with it. I don't see how a CS rep could divine my intentions from a screen shot and have the proof needed to punish me. Doing so, would lead to a lot of false positives and lots of backlash. It is safer for them to let people report it, pat them on the head, and then ignore it.

They weren't doing it right anyway. You get more points if you farm in the pit by their goal line and throw the ball at them before killing them. Flagging the matches won't lead to any repercussions from Bioware anyway. They cannot enforce rules that don't exist. Unfortunately, the scoreboard is just for telling you if you're going to get the win bonus. The real incentive is from medals... which is based on killing other players. I agree that they should give some incentive to ending the match early to avoid farming. The farmers don't like doing it any more than people like to get farmed.