[Proposed changes to stuns]

All these proposals and posts say you haven't been here (SWTOR) for very long.

 

Resolve/CC wasn't much of an issue in old 1.0. It used to be the case that overlapping stuns would have their resolve values added. It also used to be the case that slows and roots also added to your resolve bar. Roots actually added a fifth or a quarter of your resolve bar. A hard stun and a root were enough to fill up a persons resolve bar.

 

Warriors leaping wouldn't always be able to land smashes (because they couldn't forever keep the resolve bar from filling by only using roots). Shadows wouldn't always be able to low-slash spike. Powertechs had to play smarter with their CC because Carbonize + Grapple was a white bar. The CC in this game doesn't need to drastically change as you seem to think it does.

 

All that needs to happen is resolve needs to go back to 1.0.

[why people move when they are fighting?]

I don't understand why people move when they are fighting, do you get a bonus or something?

 

1. You can absolutely destroy clickers by passing right through characters (you must be facing an opponent to initiate an attack, so if you are behind them all the time they cant hurt you)
   
2. Some classes - namely Assassins/Shadows and Operatives/Scoundrels have attacks that only work when attacking from the rear.
   
3. If you play at a high level all melee fights are usually "jousts" in attempt to shut out classes like Assassins and operatives, and to really force impeccable timing of attacks because you need to be facing an opponent to initiate an attack.
   
4. By constantly moving you can get into a better position to grab a medpack or expertise buff
   
5. By constantly moving you can get into a better position to defend objectives
   
6. By constantly moving you can lure baddies away from objectives while your team-mate caps.
   

[Keybinds vs clicking]

This topic has been beaten to death. It was answered in February 2012 with the following answer:

 

Why should you keybind:

• More fluidity for many classes
  
• Vastly improved performance for classes with Defensive Cooldowns off of GCD
  
• Vastly improved performance using the CC-breaker (trinket)
  
• More freedom to use the mouse to control the Camera to improve situational awareness
  
• Easier to target-swap for bursting through a healer
  

 

What happens when you dont:

• For many classes you suffer degraded performance (inability to pop defensive cooldowns fast enough)
  
• You appear to have slower reaction time when doing things like "throw the huttball"
  
• Degraded situational awareness causes you to miss things like players open for passing the huttball, player count balance at objectives, healer peeling opportunities, focus target opportunities
  
• You impede your team-mates
  

 

What many keyboard-turners and clickers do not realize is that by binding all of your skills and abilities to keys, you gain a lot of free time to use your mouse, readjust, pan your camera. Doing so every 10 seconds gives you a swath of information that makes or breaks a great player.

 

If you're a clicker you need to face facts that a Good player is the best that you can ever be. If you want to be a great player (who carries teams) you need to take the next step and do whatever you need to do to improve your situational awareness. I can guarantee you that the best clicker in this game will not be even close to the level of situational awareness possessed by a keybinder + mouse turner.

[Why did arenas and ranked fail so catastrophically?]

Now once I start rambling you will see I know exactly what I am talking about, be ready to get knowledge from me.

 

From TBC to Cata in Warcraft I played a sub rogue and a shadow priest. I got glad in TBC with both classes and through Lich my comp which consist of shadow priest, deathknight, shaman posted a 2400 rating and I finally was playing really good players about that time.

 

You wanna know what incentives I got in those 8 years?

 

Pride, skill, and a learning experience, not to mention and very fun time.

 

Glad title, the gear means nothing to me, us playing good players and preforming well was the incentives.

 

I repeat, PRIDE was the incentive.

 

That is the problem with this mmo generation, or least this game, these kids think you need more than pride.

 

I would take pride in what I do in PVP in a heart beat before anything else, hell that is what PVP is.

 

So again pointing out the fact I am not doing ranked in this game, had nothing to do with me looking through the glass here did it?

 

You can say what you want, but ranked is this game is made for competition, nothing else.

 

Problem is these kids that don't Q or make excuses don't understand that competition is about learning how to be a better team than the other team and not about the incentive you gain if you win.

 

 

All I see here is someone who is clearly out of touch with the problem. I think you don't understand causality.

 

1. To play ranked matches you need players
   
2. To get players you need to make them want to play
   
3. To get players to want to play you need to give them a reason to play ranked matches.
   

 

What you still don't understand and 4 people have already stated it on this thread is the 3rd bullet. You seem to think everyone who is playing this game or will play this game in the future should think and act like you. Newsflash they don't. If these forums have shown anything is t hat there are disparate groups of people who completely think two opposite things.

 

Summarizing your post (without all the crap):

 

"Players should use skill, pride, gear, and e-fame as motivation to play ranked arenas because that was my motivation in another game".

 

 

 

But, you've got to face facts that they don't. The problem aren't the people who currently are playing ranked. The problem is the people who aren't. They aren't playing because its no fun. Its no fun to them because of _________________________________________.

 

 

You don't seem to understand that games only survive if they are fun. The declining population in ranked only strengthens the fact that something is wrong with ranked warzones only a handful of people are having fun. What damning about the whole situation is people who actually regularly and religiously participate aren't having fun - its a chore.

[Why did arenas and ranked fail so catastrophically?]

This reads like someone who hasn't done ranked.

 

Cause atm if you are doing ranked, you gain respect, pride, gear, and learn how to beat different comps.

 

• You really don't. You play a very limited number of specs, and team compositions.
  
• You learn how to face a limited number of specs and team compositions.
  
• You rarely get taken into (team) ranked unless you're fully geared and decked out.
  
• You don't get much respect - only maybe 100 people will ever know your characters name.
  

 

Its the classic case someone who thinks they're a celebrity when nobody knows who they are. A better analogy is a star in some random obscure country may have a million followers. The audience is the world of 5+ billion people.

[Why did arenas and ranked fail so catastrophically?]

This unfortunately is true. Like I said before, there's no vanity items for Ranked. None. Nada. What little we have is a set of PvP gear, 2 pets, a few crystals and a reskinned speeder, nearly *all* of which are a lot more easily available by just converting Reg comms to Ranked comms, or just getting them from other sources excluding PvP (the PvP gear is an exception. It needs you to PvP).

 

Vanity items won't change much if they adhere to the typical SWTOR vanity-ness. New gear isn't really that cool. In fact I prefer to roll around with old Battlemaster set pieces because vanity-wise they're rarer than anything new that comes out on the Cartel market.

 

The only way Vanity items could drive up participation is if they were something cool like a lightning/fire aura that is permanently applied to your gear pieces (i.e make another module like the "dye modules"), or an add-on to your gear that creates after-images of you as you move.

 

• The vanity-items need to be permanent - not consumables (people eventually give up because the vanity-ness goes away and the grind isn't worth it.
  
• The vanity-items need to cost a lot - otherwise there will be a very temporary rush at the beginning and then dead participation at the end
  
• The vanity items need to be visibly cool - gear isn't good enough because there are old gear sets that are both cool and more exclusive..
  
• The vanity-items need tiers - so people can feel like their making progress to the super-ultra final vanity-effect (which costs a ****-ton)
  

 

People say the game needs this and that, but they don't understand "people". Bioware's game designer for SWTOR doesn't understand "people".

 

Game developers keep trying to find something "new" and "cool" that seems like fun. But they never consider how "people" think.

 

 

 

Just look at other games. "Perfect World" has crappy class balance, and pretty bad PvP (worse than SWTOR). What kept their PvP communities thriving is the fact that their is progression - and it drives deep engagement. They have gear that glows. Gear that is visually distinct. Such gear is obtained both through PvP engagement and money (with which people have invested $20,000+ worth of it).

[62% Damage Nerf? Wow.]

finally, i salute you.

OS is the biggest hitting "escape" ability a sniper got. with escape i mean, all These melee guys have to either delay their attacks or just suck it up.

for me as pure eng sniper its many times a lifesaver because of its dangerous dmg Output.

 

If they've allocated points into the Carnage/Combat tree they get a 30% AOE damage reduction passive. Combine that with Coak of pain and they're setting at 50% If they need to reduce damage because your bursting them even more, Saber ward makes your orbital strikes feel like sorcerer dots (tiny and insignificant.

 

If they're full Carnage/Combat they've got another +6% damage reduction from a stacking buff. Too many Snipers read melee wrongly. You may be able to face tank an annihilation/watchman or rage/focus marauder/juggernaught. But a carnage marauder will not only be able to face tank you, and rip you to shreds.

 

I can't help but laugh when I play my sniper at all the people who think sniper is a hard counter. Its a soft-counter to the Warrior class, and weak to 1 spec in that class. Don't bother wasting time dropping an orbital when facing a Carnage/Combat marauder - it doesn't work as an area of denial. Roll, knockback, root, flashbang, are your friends (just remember NOT to dot him before using a flashbang to setup burst.

[Why did arenas and ranked fail so catastrophically?]

Whilst Ranked might be slow on most servers due to a myriad of reasons, foremost among them being players are sooks and can't handle thatt hey are not top dog, the arena format by itself is far from a failure.

 

Blizzard admitted it was a failure. Blizzard arguably had much much more experience with Arena's than Bioware has.

 

Regardless of what the small vocal minority whingers here on the forums will tell you, everyone I play with in game doesn't mind them. They may not love them exclusively, but they don't mind them as another format.

 

Everyone I play with quit the game when 8v8 rateds went away.

 

I've probably notched up an easy 200+ arenas in regs, if not many more and I'll let you in on a secret, I've only ever had a 3v4 once and that was only in the 2nd round and it wasn't even on my team.

 

Cool story. Depends on the server.

 

The rest of the community acts like a spoiled brat. Bunch of them leave or whinge tht 8v8 ranked got taken out, a game mode they likely never played anyway and the rest whinge that they don't like TRM or LMS and leave the moment they load in, leaving thier team short and compounding the problem.

 

The PvP community here sucks, the game is fine.

 

The rest of the remaining community is trying to help - you just don't see it. The top notch players I talk with share frustrations with this game. Classes not being viable, and boredness because their is no variety in the teams and compositions they face (as a result of non-viable classes).

 

• No gear to grind
  
• No competition to face
  
• Boring when you actually face good competition.
  

[Why did arenas and ranked fail so catastrophically?]

Ranked failed catastrophically because it became boring:

• Boring because wins are easy (for good teams)
  
• Boring because loosing is all that ever happens (bad teams)
  
• Boring because there is a lack of depth to PvP strategy (stalemates)
  
• Boring because there is no variety (always pit-off against the same team and class compositions)
  
• Boring because everything is too predictable at high-level play.
  

[4 mara vs 4 mara ranked arena]

Having the Ataru/Carnage marauder with 3 smashers works well. The ataru blooding ability lets them build 30 stacks before the fight begins. This lets the 3 smashers use their 30 stacks of fury on the instant smash while the carnage marauder bloodthirsts. 3-bloodthirsted smashes opening is devastating

[What am I doing wrong? Do something nice this holdiay season and help a Mara survive]

The only conclusion I can come to is that Bolster really whacks out gear. It over-buffs some stuff and under-buffs others. And I can't help but think it even mucks up top-tier Expertise gear. I don't know how else to explain the same enemies in the same gear being able to facetank inside a warzone, but falling over in a stiff breeze out in the world.

 

Its not bolster. Its the WZ Medpacks and Adrenals. Adrenals is 15% damage reduction, and a medpack heals about 1/3rd of your health.

 

I know its a mistake to even post this but I must vent.

 

I am not a so called "Baddie" I am new to SWTOR ( been playing for barely 2 weeks) and new to this style of game play. So I know it will take some getting use to.

I KNOW THIS!

But unlike most players who tear the package open and jump right into a game I actually took the time before hand to read the specs on the build. ( Marauder )

 

Step back. In PvP start with the assumption you're "terrible". If you start from the mindset that "I'm not a baddie", you will never figure out where you need to improve. Light reading on the spec's is good, but really reading on how you deal damage is useless.

 

Why?

 

Everything goes out the door when it comes to PvP. Unlike regular mobs, players WILL try and make you waste your skills. They WILL try and dodge your attacks. They WILL ruin your damage windows/procs. Their objective is to survive, yours is to kill. PvP is all about utility. How many roots or forms of CC do you have? Do you use them effectively? On the right person? at the right time?

 

I practice my abilities by questing. I set up my key binds. I learned what abilities link to increase their potential damage. I equip the right armor. I got the timing down. I keep my rage stacked. Buffs...the whole 9. But when I walk into a WZ everything is out the window. :mad:I don't even get a chance to cast a single ability.

 

You're not yet adept at PvE much less PvP. Stacking rage = bad. Stacked rage means you didn't use abilities or skills which significantly increase your damage output. You should be nearly at 0 rage if you've been using your class to the fullest extent.

 

Wait I lied. One time I went in with a pocket healer who's sole purpose was to keep me alive and I literally almost single handedly demolished the other team. W/O healer omg. Crying shame.

 

This is why marauders are a little overtuned. They synergize too well with healers while other DPS classes get shafted.

 

I am using Annih tree which all the blog and guides say is best for survive ability. I thought this a good idea to use with the belief it would buy me time to master the Character. And to a degree I find it to be true in questing. I can solo heroic 2's even and run through flash points w/o ever dyeing. I'd appreciate some guidance and advice from other Mara's.

 

Annihilation was good for suvivability. Not the case anymore since the nerf to their heals in 1.2.

 

Carnage and Rage have better survivability than Annihilation. Carnage's ability to break roots, AOE damage reduction, and 4-6% stacking ataru form damage reduction make it better than Annihilation while it dishes out some pretty mean burst.

 

Rage Shii-Cho and passives provide it with an obscene amount of damage reduction on top of their defensive cool downs. I have a marauder and in comparison to the other classes its far too tanky for its damage output and gap closers.

 

The Undying Rage change was very necessary.

 

I

And premades vs PUGs. Really? what is that about?

 

level 50's vs 30's really? Why?

 

The lowbie brackets are all about who has more learned skills and abilities on their character.

 

All of this goes out the door once you hit 55 where everyone has all their skills and are ready to hit all 20+ of them.

 

But I only lose in WZ's. I have actually fought some of the people that were ranked high in the WZ matches where I've been rolled afterwards. In a separate 1 on 1 type deal ( companions out ) and a few of them I beat like they stole something.

I don't know if it was pity and they let me win but from my stand point when it comes to 1 vs 1 I rock.

 

On many characters I can absolutely destroy people in 1 on 1. PvP isn't about 1 on 1 unless you need to keep someone else busy (harassing the off-node or healer). You need to build situational awareness. You need to know who is around you and what they're doing at all times.

 

I've gotten to the point where I know who has spent what cooldowns during the course of an engagement. From that it is easy to identify the Sorcerer, Operative, Mercenary, Power Tech, Marauder, Juggernaught, etc who really cant stop my onslaught of 25K+ damage in 3-7 seconds.

 

Which leads me to believe that its not all skill that are getting them medals nor knowledge because for the most part they didn't seem to know how to use their character properly. There has to be something I am doing fundamentally wrong and I am yet to figure out what it is.

I'm a strong Sith but I'm not too big to look for help when I know I need it. HELP!!!!

 

1. Mechanics (Knowing how to effectively use your class)
   
2. Situational Awareness (knowing where people are, what they can do)
   
3. Strategy (Who can be focused? Psychological Warefare)
   

 

You're lacking experience in all 3. The first is easy to solve. The other two require substantial practice, experience, and complete understanding of other classes.

[PoT5 Guild looking for Leader for Ranked PVP Team]

New guild in POT5 PVP server looking for a well-geared PVP vet to create and lead a PVP team within our guild. TS3 server will be provided, as well as anything else you may need. You will be given full control of the PVP aspect of our guild and will be tasked with recruiting members for a ranked arena team. Reply to this thread with your in-game name if interested.

 

Please note: This guild is not strictly Ranked PVP, but will also have a high-tier Ops group, as well as a leveling community for alts of members of both groups.

 

Thank you,

-Smrfy

 

Ranked PvP for new teams requires a commitment that sounds like you're not ready to take.

 

 

You will have close to no RAIDing time because prime-time matters when queuing for team ranked PvP. If you're a seasoned team queuing anytime isn't a problem. If you're new to the scene you'll get ROFLstomped when the queuing teams consist of those who've been running ranked PvP/premades for over a year.

[Conquerer weapon and offhand are downgrades]

Then obviously power and surge are overpowered in comparison with the others and they deserve a nerf.

 

I take it you're new here.

 

Auto-crit skills within classes make stacking power/surge better than any other stat combination. You can nerf the stats all you want, but until the auto-crit mechanics are changed, power/surge will continue to remain the best stats you can find on mods/enhancements.

[PVP healing needs to be nerfed to pre 2.0]

u know this is much harder to achive than simply put a guard, use taunts and cross heals, right?

 

dps kills peeps

healz counter dps

focus fire counters healer

guard and taunts + cross healing counters focus fire

and there is no hard counter for guard

 

There was a hard counter for the guard.

 

It existed a long long time ago. Its name was Madness Sorcerers. Back in the very very distant pass they had this 30 meter instant 8 second mez called whirlwind. They also had this 30 meter 4 second hard stun.

 

But guess what? They got the nerfhammer applied to it and now you have a guard/heal combo that doesn't have a hard counter. Now to combat guard you need to have good teamwork (1) to keep the healer busy and everyone else piling onto the tank.

 

In the very very distant past, you would have the madness sorcerer keep the guarded healer busy for a total of 13 amazing seconds of no healing awesomeness thanks to the instant whirlwind (with 1 second stun that applied even if you used your breaker). Alternatively you could have had the sorcerer keep the tank busy for those 13 seconds too. Either way one person died.

 

Today's problems are not a result of healers being overly powerful. Today's problems are the result of nerfing a class that played a part in the rock-paper-scissors of healer, tanks and DPS. The counter to the tank+heals is CC. Bioware nerfed the CC-spec.

[Let's discuss the dichotomy between pre-55 PvP and 55 PvP]

So there are some glaring problems with the current Warzone/PvP system, and we need to talk about them. The one major problem is Expertise. I speak from experience because I have farmed all the previous War Hero armor, and am currently farming the new PvP armor.

 

As of right now, people get bolstered to a level 55 stats (including expertise which is good). But there is an incredibly large problem with this, there are people that you are matched against at level 55 who have much more expertise than you. The end result is an PvP experience that is not fun in any way.

 

It is frustrating as a player if I am placed against people who can 3 hit me (because they have the best armor and best stats). I cannot learn to play better. I cannot learn my rotations for my class and I cannot learn how to be effective in PvP when this occurs.

 

My main point is that the difference in PvP before level 55 and at level 55 is incredibly different; usually for the worse. Before level 55, if you know how to play your character then you will do well due to the even playing field bolstering gives everyone. I can have mediocre armor and a reasonable level and still do well because I know how to play the game. But this doesn't occur at level 55.

 

I have seen fresh 55 players that are full tank specs die from 3 to 4 hits because the other person has far superior armor and expertise. That shouldn't happen and when it does, it provides for an "unfun" experience (Dev's if you are reading this, this is the tl;dr of this post)

 

PvP/Warzones need a match making system that matches people according to their expertise and armor. As someone who has barely any PvP armor, I should not be placed with and against people who do.

 

You need to stop.

 

I highlighted why you're getting a hard beating in 55 PvP.

 

You are getting bolstered. If you're not decked out in 55 gear you're getting bolstered to Conqueror gear. You're just missing the augments which account for close to 5K HP. The reason you're getting beat is not because of gear. Its because you have no clue how to win or play your class.

 

The sooner you realize that you're fighting against experience the sooner you can move on and actually beat people in 55 PvP.

[Static Stat PvP Relics]

Please give them back to us. Preferably in the next patch. There have been a stupid, stupid amount of bugs and exploits linked to the proc relics we currently have. They also introduce another RNG element to PvP, which is not good either.

 

Just give us back the static stat bonus relics already. Proc based relics were removed from PvP once, but now we are stuck with them again. And it has not been for the better.

 

It wont happen. When they changed it from RNG to fixed stats a lot of problems went away.

 

Then the PvE'ers began complaining about how they have to PvP to get these relics. So they went back to RNG.

[Marauders and sentinels are rubbish without other players to hold their hands]

Before I begin, I know some people may resent the topic title. It's strongly worded. It's not my intent to provoke anyone, however. These are just my honest opinions. I've played all three healing classes and 99% of the time, marauders are not a threat to me.

 

A marauder leaping on my operative is a bad joke. Stun, roll, see you next year. Oh, you're came back again? Okay, stun, roll, see you next year. Really? Still here? Slow, roll, see you next month. (And in the rare event that a marauder can actually get me down to low HP) Oh, dear, look at the time. Force cloak, move a little out of the way, heal myself to full in seconds, and now we start all over again. It's a farce. The only class more impotent at taking down a healer 1 on 1 is probably either spec of DPS operative.

 

Please, someone shout "But look at these screenshots! Look at this marauder who did 1.3 million damage." Yeah, that's great, honey. It really is. I was once chances for an entire match by a Sentinel who did 700K damage, almost all of it was on me. He didn't kill me once. Not one time. Smash monkey marauders are all big numbers and little substance. They're all fluff.

 

Take care to note that the big number marauders are only accomplishing this in group play when they have multiple healers holding their hands. As someone who also plays an Arsenal mercenary, sentinels are among the easiest classes to completely shut down. Hit a marauder with electronet and watch him run around like a headless chicken anyway, 9 times out of 10, and take the full damage from it. In solo play, I don't see how anyone can disagree that marauders and sentinels are among the worst glass jaw classes in the whole game. Yeah, you have a few defensive cooldowns that are really, really good. Once they're all used up, you're road kill.

 

What's the point of this topic? Stop crying about overpowered marauders. 10K smash is nothing.

 

Sounds like you've been playing bad marauders or are a bad marauder.

 

Arsenal mercs are jokes. The only time they will ever win is when a marauder doesn't have a CC breaker or the marauder is soo bad that they don't know when to use their CC breaker (on electronet). Against an operative marauder any damage is meh. I LOS troll range, and dodge, CC troll melee on my scoundrel. There is no difference between any DPS classes, ranged or melee both are kitable as an Scoundrel/Operative (and at the same time I might add).

 

If I've got a tank as a scoundrel/operative, you might as well go somewhere else because I'm not dying anytime soon.

[Change to Solo Ranked Rating Calculation]

I like how people suggest rating calculations, yet their ideas demonstrate their lack of intelligence on match-making.

 

Please read up on ELO rating systems (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system), which provide one common model for match-making.

 

Enhancements to the ELO rating system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueSkill).

 

 

Matchmaking is a mathematical model. Any other factor besides wins and losses adds uncertainty to the model thus widely skewing results. You cannot measure ability by the number of medals, heals, damage, etc. These values are correlated values with a little degree of randomness once you account for correlation.

[Solo Que Matchmaking has a Serious Flaw - Data Inside]

ID are alive and well on Pot5 (Imp side) and Shadowlands (Rep side)

 

On another note, they need to do away with the conversion of regular comms into ranked comms. i.e. force the cattle into either solo Q or ranked Q to get their top tier gear. Perhaps then with force people into the ranking system will they finally to fix match making rather than just throwing 2 sets of random groups together.

 

This alone tells me you must be very new to PvP in SWTOR.

 

People like you are going to be the first to complain that level 55's with fresh greens, and who have never stepped foot into a WZ or arena are on your team versus 4 well seasoned PvP'ers in full Obroan gear. People participate in the regular queue because they can convert commendations.

[Does the cold war turn hot again? (Annihilation Spoilers)]

Playing the Sith Inquisitor you pretty much blow up an entire republic fleet.

[Oldschool player's analysis of SW:TOR PvP. My thoughts.]

Hi. I don't know why I'm posting this thread, but perhaps it's because I need to vent.

 

I'm a 31 year old dude and I've been playing games and mmo's for over half my life. That's a lot of experience. I've always been into PvP. However, I'm not enjoying SW:TOR PvP at all, for a multitude of reasons.

 

First off, I personally don't think Warzones or Battlegrounds is the same as legit PvP. There's even teams, equal classes and very small areas, and the worst part of all - there's not really any penalty for dying. Thus, the reward for killing someone is equally small as the penalty for dying is. When you kill someone, they should suffer for it. Here, they are back on you before you even noticed what happened. Fine, thats how the game is. I get it. This isn't something that's gonna change, ever. But really, SW:TOR doesn't have PvP. It has wargames.. or violent soccer matches. I don't consider that PvP at all.

 

Second of all, is that I have a rather unpopular opinion on what PvP should be like. Before you scream and show what a moron I am, bare with me and try to digest my message before you respond.

 

PvP is NOT supposed to be balanced. There are supposed to be viciously overpowered skills, abilities and mechanics. Everyone is crying about omg nerf this nerf that. NO. While I agree that it sucks to get mauled by a person who is defeating you for the simple reason that his class is better than yours, not his items or skill, that doesn't change what I'm aiming at here. Think of it like this. In an actual war, a group of infantry encounters a Tank. That is a force that is imensely superior to them, and to overcome it they need to use their collective efforts in strategy, ambush and explosives etc. If they die to the tank, it was expected. If they overcome it, the personal reward would be imense. "WOW! They killed a tank? That's insane!". Please note that I'm not talking about DPS vs Tank speced players. I'm talking about things like sieges, vehicles and other mechanics that could easily be implemented in the game if PvP was more than just a word-we-don't-say at BioWare studio.

 

Another thing that I find rather bizarre in Warzones, as an Empire player, is that there are some very evident stereotypes that reveal themselves and cause tremendous imbalance in the gameplay. Republic players have an imense ammount of healers in comparison. I never liked the idea of being able to heal in PvP in the first place, but this is pretty ridiculous. To put it perspective, the stereotypes I'm talking about seems to be something like this:

 

* Republic player: I'm gonna heal the world. Righteousness for the win! Justice for all! Holy macaronies! (Plays lightside Sage healer spec).

* Empire player. I'm Darth Vader, I'm gonna kill all the galaxy. My mom doesn't understand me. (Plays darkside Marauder dps spec).

 

Tell me I'm wrong. This is what I see in 90%+ warzones. Naturally, the healer zerg wins.

 

Yeah, I just spoke about how the game isn't supposed to be balanced, then I cry that things aren't balanced.. well here's why: Things SHOULD be imbalanced as long as there are possibilities to overcome it through superior personal skill.. well, that's just the thing. The latter is not present in SW:TOR. No matter what I do, I can't down that healer zerg. You have not given me the option to best them. It's not possible.

 

What am I supposed to do, tho? I do quite enjoy this game, but the elements of the PvP are so bad that it makes me depressed just to que for warzone. Its truly a second job to grind that valor rank.

 

I'm sorry.

 

I've got to say you don't actually know a thing about PvP - "Player versus Player". If you want true PvP, I suggest you begin playing:

 

1. Call of Duty
   
2. PlanetSide 2
   
3. Battlefield
   
4. Pong
   
5. Quake
   
6. Unreal Tournament
   
7. Counter Strike
   

 

That is true PvP. There is no PvE based crap that gets in the way. If you notice something about all of those games, its that there is balance! The PvP found in RPG's is horribly done because RPG's need to be balanced against a PvE aspect. many classes shouldn't have any of the skills they have. The reason RPG PvP is terrible is because of vertical progression and being locked into a single role.

[Solo Que Matchmaking has a Serious Flaw - Data Inside]

I'm not particularly surprised.

 

Bioware's developers have proven themselves inept over and over again. Match-making is not a trivial problem - proper matchmaking involves graph-theory and a little knowledge about scheduling to prevent starvation (one player from never getting matched).

 

I would not trust Bioware's developers to implement such a complex system correctly.

[Pull - baseline ability for Shadows/Sin.]

Let's not go too far, shall we? The OP is demanding stuff that aren't feasible, true, however, assassins don't deserve a nerf. If you could endure the opening burst, the efficiency of the assassin will start to greatly degrade.

 

Wrong.

 

There are just far too many bad Assassins out there (I have a shadow). People complain about an Assassin being shut out of his initial burst. We have the ability to burst twice. If both openers go successfully that is over 20K health from a 30K health toon. If not you're still up with 10K+, force shroud, force speed, low slash, a stun, and force slow.

 

The reason you don't see many assassins topping the arena's is because we're all used to doing things alone. Very few assassin players have a solid grasp on team work. You don't need sustained damage if your dishing out 10K and your 2 fellow DPS are also dishing that damage out to a single target.

 

When focus fire doesn't work you're likely the one to blame because you neglected to mez the healer before unloading your burst - or you failed to correctly keep a healer from healing (scoundrel/operative). A large reason why Assassins are currently failing in Arena's is primarily to do with people failing at the Assassin class.

[Whats best pvp east coast server? (Leaving POT5)]

Come to think of it, why the east coast PvP server has big faction population balance issue and the west coast one doesn't?

 

Don't jinx yourself. In all 2-faction games PvP always tends to gravitate towards one side. The balance on other servers is only temporary - if you're lucky it will continue another year or two. Why is this the case? Well what happens is one side inevitably has slightly more participating players.

 

Rated groups used to be groups of 8. Now they're groups of 4. If you have 5 players, one unlucky bloke gets left out. The faction with slightly more participating players allows this 1 bloke to join others and hopefully form another group of 4. Have enough participating players, making groups of 4 is easy.

 

What tends to happen on the faction with slightly less players is there is less inclusion into the groups of 4. A group is set in stone - has schedules and very rarely play alone. Tight-knit groups always leave someone out. So when you have one "decent" player whose being left out, they tend to go to the other side that has many more "left out" players with which to group with.

 

Po5 used to have good balance. Rateds moved 1-7 decent players from republic to the empire because they required groups of 8. The republic became polarized - a handful of top-notch players and the rest being brain-dead players at PvP.

 

In time ToFN and Bastion will become like Po5. It may be the case that on these other servers the republic is the "go to faction". It's only a matter of time. That said, if you want to keep your faction balance alive a little longer, the top-notch players on those servers are going to have to step up. There is a group of PvPers inbetween "bad" and "awesome" on your server that provide a large part of the balance between factions.

 

If you don't start including or grouping with them, you'll find that they will jump ship to the faction where they can find their own group to play with. At this point your coveted faction balance will cease to exist.

 

 

As for the OP, you have several options:

1. Switch servers (higher ping)
   
2. Make an empire character
   
3. Spend time PUGging and helping your faction's PvPers improve
   

 

The problem for republic on Po5 is there is a "horrible" set of players, and there is an "awesome" set of players. There are very few players inbetween those two groups. The imp's have most the "decent" players who aren't "awesome", but are very far away from being "bad". Because the imp's have a wide spread of skills the matches they play tend to help them improve.

 

If you feel that you constantly have to get a group of 4 of your closest buddies to PvP - then you're actively contributing to the faction imbalance on Po5.

[Camaalot Marauder Annihilation 2.4 PVP]

It is clear to me that a lot of players:

 

1. Have never played a Marauder.
   
2. Have never played all classes.
   
3. Have never played all specializations.
   

 

 

First thing needing to be clarified about the Annihilation specialization - your PvE gear math does not work on the Annihilation specialization. Soo many ignorant marauders don't understand the resource-refunding nature of critical hits for an Annihilation Marauder. Stacking purely power is a sign of a smash-n00b claiming to be an expert at using a Marauder.

 

Stacking some critical hit rating pieces drastically improves the resource management of the class. The people having issues keeping 3 stacks of Annihilate up are the very same people who stack nothing but power. Yes purges hurt the spec's damage output. Yes it has a long ramp up time.

 

 

 

The only issue with the spec is it has less volatility over its burst than Carnage has. The resource management on an Annihilation marauder makes its burst more predictable and therefore easier to heal over.