I think pvp warzones are the best possible exp to time ratio there is and is definitely the best money to be had. I started at level 10, played nothing but 100% warzones, am 24 on one character and he has over 100k credits. That for about 3 days of playing a decent amount each day. At level 20 I started getting around 11k exp per warzone as well as between 1.5 and 2k credits a warzone. As long as warzones are popping, and they were for me. It's the best leveling and cash i've seen. However, I've gotten so sick of Voidstar's bullcrap as a map goes. I've also gotten sick of the Crowd Control issues in this game. Playing tons of pvp for weeks on various characters, I've seen mroe and more and more CC spec's coming out and it pretty much kills the game for me. If I hadn't pvp'd alot and just did it off and on the weight of how wretched CC is in this game and the piece of crap that is the Voidstar map would not have been driven home so forcefully to me. So if you plan to level up with pvp warzones, be warned. It's no fun being CC'd all the freaking day long with zero you can do about it...and then there's Voidstar.

700K+ on 30 some number of kills means there is an assload of healing going on. I'm about tired of PvP in this game because of all the CC. I played a game called Dark Age of Camelot which at first was really great with PvP. And then all the players worked the kinks out with CC and it was basically groups running around Stunning people and using mass AoE to kill them before stun could wear off. PvP in SWTOR is pretty much exactly like that now. Huttball is a nightmare, Pull, Push, root, snare, stun...and somehow during all of this I never seem to benefit from my resolve bar. I use my one clickie to break out once and then everything pretty much goes pear shaped. The sorcerer/sage issue is something I agree on as well. I rolled up a bounty hunter and a sage to play in pvp to see what it was like to be one of them. The Sage is not so good starting at level 10, they just don't have all the talents that make them uber. However, what does make them ridiculously over powered is the fact that Snares and roots ignore resolve. Making their knockback have a 5 second root and making their force armor explode for another incapacitate...it makes a squishy class into a not so squishy. And what is more, it makes them into a class that is NOT fun to encounter in PvP. It's like the Midgaard healer from DAOC all over again. The bounty hunter....I do have to say WOW at the damage. I chose a Powertech and until I get him high enough to check out the nice roots on grapple and the power jump type ability, I've gone Pyro even though I've read that advanced prototype is the tree to be in. Well, at level 10 using Flame Burst and auto fire I pretty much have been top of the damage chart since then. Flame burst with three talent points tirggers the combust cylinder 100% of the time. With the buff that newbie pvp players get that means for 15 heat out of 100 I hit for between 800 and 1000 combined Elemental damage every time I press it. It raises my heat fast, but combat in warzones is largely 1v1, 1v2 or everyone is killing you. The dot on the cylinder ticks immediately when it's applied for between 300 and 400 damage, so every time I hit with my flame burst for around 600 damage, I get a free boost from my cylinder. I do use other buttons to do some burst damage to help punch out a healer, but the fact that flame burst is instant and I can do it while strafing for about 1k or more damage a hit..It's butch. The fact that it's not kinetic or energy damage is also butch. But even though sorc and bh damage is seems a bit wacked to me, the real issues is PvP being a CC fest. That has always been more frustrating than fun, and I for one am at my limit on it. It's just getting worse and worse the longer I play.

Why don't you just get in front of the stealther when they de-cloak and jump up to intercept the ball? Just because they ball carrier throws it in the general direction of the stealther doesn't mean they are the only recipient available. Intercept it and ground it so it goes back to netural..with half their team trying to score if you have an ally stealthed around the ball spawn it will be a quick score for you as long as you make it a point to NOT kill the guys in your end zone to give them a free trip back.

Actually, yes, it did occur to me. And while in a generic pvp battle I don't necessarily see a problem with a healing outclassing dps, I'm not so sure it's the best thing for objective oriented pvp. Alderan for example. When you are holding two turrets and they have healers, it doesn't really matter if your side has healers or not. Split 4 and 4, you can survive even an 8 on 4 situation with time to spare for all the defenders that might die to make it back. In generic pvp an 8 on 4 situation should be a win for the 8 with or without healers if level of play is equal. But when the goal isn't just to live, but to achieve an objective...the 8 on 4 no longer has any certainty of winning at all. Whoever gets the turrets with healers are basically entrenched at that point and the "battle" becomes more about who caps the node first, because then they have a significant and massive advantage in returns, more-so if they decide to cap the east and west turrets so that respawning defenders get delivered literally right to the cap point. As a BH as soon as I come back I can pop my AE damage without moving at all and interrupt anyone trying to cap the tower. So while I don't quite know how I feel about a healer and dps'er going at it 1v1, I do know that healers on the alderan map trivialize the battle for those defending the node.

Actually, this argument thread is a great place for video's that can prove points. All of us who are posting here should likely put up or shut up, as the saying goes. I've never ran fraps before, so I'll try to wrap my brain around that and see if I can't video some of my experiences to share. I'd love to see others do the same, especially the instant kills on squishy healers. While I don't doubt healers can be squishy, I'm finding it a rarity on the republic that play on Sanctum of the Exalted server. There is likely a huge difference between level 50 pvp, lvl 10-49 pvp and premade vs pug pvp. Everyone is posting from different vantage points within these three scenarios and it's varying widely. My viewpoint is levle 10 to 49 pvp pug vs pug. I meet some premades sometimes, but not often.

I'm not trolling, are you? My level 20 is a very valid sampling in the 1 to 49 bracket. The point isn't the level, it is the damage output. Starting at level 10 I have been doing pvp with this bounty hunter exclusively to see what's going on with the class in pvp. Starting at level 10 I was able to top the damage charts. That's pretty much a testament to how much dps can be put out and very little of that is Area. My point isn't my level, it's the dps that I can throw toward a healer not being sufficient to kill a solo healer in a moderate amount of time. part of that is the interrupt usage and part of it is trying to figure out when to burst. It takes both interrupts and burst damage at the right time to kill a lot of healers. If the healer stays on top of the situation I can't do much even with interrupts until I can get them down to about half then prep them for burst with an interrupt after. If they want to however, they can keep me there spamming on them for a long time if they keep their healing going. Troopers with Grav shot for me are the worse for this as they can interweave grav shots and shred me while staying healed up. My BH at level 20 isn't really gaining a lot more damage abilities between 20 and 49 that I don't already have. I get Flame Sweep, Shoulder Slam and Carbonize. Of those only Shoulder Slam and Carbonize is something I would use when facing a healer 1v1. So yeah, I actually used my lvl 20 BH in a pvp argument.

Actually, it must depend on level. I have a level 20 bounty hunter now I've been playing and I'm competent with him. I often am top damage and kills unless I need to switch stance to guard a healer or am stuck guarding a node that sees no action. But when in full damage mode I'm always near the top of the list. Despite my damage output, it is exceptionally hard to solo a healer. I have a stun and an interrupt and I use them in the best placement I can. But because of the way resolve works, they tend to be able to mutli-stun me so that once I pop my one CC break, I'm still repeatedly taken out of the fight allowing them to heal through my dps. If I don't CC, his healing trumps my dps in a flat out fight. so yes they are kill-able solo but it is NOT easy if they are at all competent. If they have a melee with them?? forget it, you're dead well before you can kill the healer. Which actually I don't have a problem with since it's two on one. But I'm not sure about how I feel for a dps role to be trumped by a healing role. Part of me rejoices at it since I always played healers in MMO's...but I also wonder of the balance at it if high powered dps can't burn down a healer with only moderate difficulty. What this means is that if both sides have healers, whoever has the map disadvantage for an attrition battle is going to lose a LOT more. Alderan for example, whoever controls the node can fly straight back to it while the attacker will have to cover more ground. In a battle of attrition it is way harder on the attacker. Voidstar...I'm not sure. But I think it's likely the defender since you get put in the box for absurd amounts of time and will often find yourself getting out into an empty room because the doors exploded and everyone already left meaning your team is short members until you catch up to the attackers. Huttball...I'd say whoever gets the ball first. But the real problem here is more the movement abilities of certain spec's than it is about healing. Anyway, the prolonging of a fight changes things on these WZ's. Of that there is no doubt. Alderan probably being the msot noticable.

What if you leave dots alone and instead change it to a proximity based capping system? The rate of capping speeds up or slows down based on how many of each side are present in whatever "area" there is? That way the focus is on group warfare instead of who's got the dot. It means zerging from one side to another is not nearly as profitable as scouting and communication. Although in most WZ's i'm in communication is pitiful so this may be a bad idea. Just brainstorming

I agree it would be nice for the lvl 50's to be able to get warzone matches going. However, I completely disagree with "it seemed to work well before the patches". Maybe it worked well for the level 50's but it was completely unbalanced for people without expertise gear. Hell, BW is even stating now that the difference between new lvl 50's and 50's in pvp gear is too great and must be addressed. Add that difference plus 20 to 40 levels of skills and talent differences and it's easy to see why all the 50's were happy with the way it was.

So what type of DOT is it that gets dropped on the ground and does AE? I have no idea what it is, but I have seen people drop this little white doo-hickey on the ground that belches out flame every few seconds to prevent caps. They just drop it on the ground and run off or die and no one can do anything until it goes away. What is that?

I disagree. Yes they are making a lot of money, but there is no reason not to give whoever is doing this better tools to do the job. I think it is a bad idea to have more "managers" on the payroll than developers just to make sure people don't cheat. So I don't think hiring 216 managers, one for each server, is a smart decision for a company when a little bit of software could knock that down to about 5% of the number of people needed. I also do not think it is "hard" as much as I sincerely hope like hell they are being as thorough as possible before slapping people with the BAN stick.

It's a discussion hot-head. If you don't want to be constructive, stop looking at this thread.

By all means, if that floats your boat. It won't matter though as it would be the trending of the data that is more important than the fact that you got pissed and decided to grief. A system like this should only fail in the case of wide spread Griefing or wide spread Apathy. And I doubt apathy would be an issue. Take for instance me. I played in about 30 Warzones on Sunday. Lets be generous and say I met you in 15 of them. You encourage everyone to vote me a cheater and have three other guildies teaming with you. So out of all those matches I played, you are worth 4 votes against me and maybe..what..50% of your team you were able to encourage to report me as well? So around 34 votes for me being a cheater this Sunday. I'm likely to play an average of 7 warzones a night until the weekend, then count me in for another 30 on Sunday. So i've got about 100 matches under my belt for the week (rounding down). You've got to be actively campaigning against me even in matches that we aren't in together to make up for all the matches where I wasn't voted a cheater. What's more, if you get pissed off at someone else and do this to them, that makes your case worse as you increase the background noise and push the spike threshold higher. What's more, as you so readily pointed out, you won't be alone in this. Lots of people will be doing exactly what you are doing to bunches of other people, basically creating a baseline of acceptable votes. The way to cheat it would be for the cheater to limit the number of matches they play so that they can fit in with the background and not spike. That alone is a little bit of a victory, but extend the data sampling period for a Month and that becomes increasingly difficult to do. Anyway, these are just my opinions I have obviously never implemented a points based anti-cheat system for an MMO before, so I can not tell you with certainty how it would work. I just know that trending is an amazing tool for filtering out anomalies and I feel it would apply well to a pvp setting like this.

You are confusing an anti-cheat system with an automatic ban. This is merely a filtration system so that investigations into cheating are more properly targeted. Real people will still be required to do the work. The caseload will be significantly lighter however if you rely on multiple incident reports instead of just one angry kid opening up a harassment case or some such. The other thing I think you are confusing, (and partly because I didn't indicate a time frame) is the duration in which the data is gathered. My suggestion would be take an entire weeks worth of complaints from Sunday to Sunday and tally the voting. This gives you a wider range of match ups and a wider range of reporting. I may even need to be extended for a couple weeks or a month. Whatever is needed to gather enough data points to reveal the spikes. This is not like WOW in which you are using a single match to get the guy booted with afk flagging. This is more like a voting system where majority wins. If everyone is voting you cheater of the month, then it at the very least warrants an investigation.

Of course that will happen. And likely happen often. However, it is predictable and constant and when the data is trended out there will STILL be spikes. The spikes will only occur when a large number of accounts start voting. IF you span this for a week and look at the data, you might find that everyone has been accused of cheating, but that the account ICHEATYOUHAHA seems to have gotten triple the number of votes. Also, it looks like with the data that the entire guild called DESTROYYOUSUKKA has been reporting everyone in every match they play. Not only is it easy to discount their data, but it is also easy to warn them and help make the game better for everyone. However, forget all that and look at the current system in place. Currently, people report cheating through the reporting mechanism in-game. Opening a ticket, it will likely be a bug or harassment ticket...but these are indistinguishable from real, in-game issues. What you are saying is currently already happening. The difference is a system (and it doesn't have to be this one) but an anti-cheating system would help bioware Weight the complaints as opposed to trying to address every real and imaginary finger pointing going on.

It's data mining for crying out loud. To abuse it would require something along the lines of a sustained conspiracy. If every time you played a game, you reported everyone on the opposing side and your side for cheating. and you did that every time you played then it would mean two things. The first as far as the system goes, it would mean absolutely nothing unless you had a large number of other people doing it with you. The second thing it would mean is that you yourself could fit an entirely different "griefer" threshold as you are obviously abusing the system. Please note that I am using "you" in an abstract term and not implying that you would be someone who would grief. Yes, there will be people who will always try to abuse a system. But that is not limited to ones that incorporate players. In fact, I would venture it is harder abuse this type of system than it would be to hack the game and control mvp or "cheat" votes. But in that case BW has a bigger problem than an anti-cheat system failing.

Actually, you are providing the "If's". I'm simply saying that the cumulative data will reveal spikes and that those spikes can be weeded out via setting multiple thresholds. This is not anything new, it's simply using some very basic tools to make life easier for everyone. If 20k or so people on your server don't like you in pvp enough to report you for cheating, then that would be a pretty big anomaly. I would also venture that it would be exceedingly rare and more of a "fear" tactic argument than based out of anything real.

A points system like this has many possibilities that can be programmed in. The simplest is just a tally with a threshold. That alone eliminates the random griefer and rager that does things out of malice or spite. It would take a concerted effort, of constant matchups and constant reporting every time to trigger a false spike. This type of false spike would have a signature however, it would be coming from the same people over and over again. This is another from of threshold. A program can easily look for not only the number of votes a person got for cheating, but also from how many unique sources it came from. If a small number of people are reporting over and over again to grief, it can be ignored, investigated...whatever the devs want to do about it, but it's not a big deal for a program to handle.

Doubtful. All they have to do is implement it for a week and look at their totals at the end of the week. There will be some background noise and then there will be spikes. The spikes are interesting, the background noise is not. Set an initial threshold for the spike to reach, and then raise or lower it as the months go on. That isn't a lot of number crunching or work that isn't mainly computer driven by a reporting system. Once the system is built, it just kicks out the offenders accounts to whichever group needs to see it allowing them to target their investigations more accurately.

What about the little flame turret device? What the heck is that? I can't find it in any classes abilities or a crafted item on torhead. Basically what I object to is when a guy runs up to a cap point on voidstar, drop a little turret looking device that spews flame every few seconds and then runs off to defend the other door while waiting on allies to show up. That is complete crap...what the heck is that?

The problem with that is the million user player base. It's just not realistic that they can hire enough people for this duty so that when you need to report it they can get there in time to observe the behavior. You also have people who will report because the "suspect" cheating, or because they are just so pissed that they want someone to listen. A points system like this would allow them to set a threshold so that only offenders that trigger an alarm will have to be investigated.

Hey, I would like to propose you implement an anti-cheating system to help out in warzones. When you have someone who is cheating (moving at insane speeds for the entire match, attacking you from across the map, etc) It really causes frustration and a ill feeling toward the game. I understand developers will die a horrible agonizing death if they had to investigate every claim, because a lot of times, it simply isn't cheating but just a lack of understanding on what other classes are able to do versus the persons perception. So why don't you implement a Cheat column like you do the MVP column? let people earn cheating points and when they reach a thresh-hold that you feel deserves investigation you can look into it. That way it's player driven, but it also weeds out the Rage portion of the accusations. I would think something like this could help ban the folks that ruin the game and keep your devs, customer service, etc guys doing better things than tracking down false leads. Just a suggestion. If you don't do something like this, then please just do *something* it's annoying as hell and very irritating.

Bring a healer, you'll be so overpowered it's pitiful.

This is so frustrating. At least 10 of the last 15 Warzones I've done we've started with between 3 and 5 people. We get rolled and before the timer can expire and end the suffering, more people log on and we have to play a complete loss all the way through. This is crap. Put more alternates in a warzone start up, or something. This has been happening more than I've ever seen it. Makes me think you changed some code somewhere that is screwing it up. Please look into it.

I've been loving my Kinetic Shadow in the Warzones. I started at level 10 and have done nothing but level up via PVP warzones to just test out how that compares to questline leveling. After about 5 days, with a couple of those days containing some intense playing, i'm almost level 23 now with 90k in the bank (after spending around 30k on gear). The survivability is just incredible when you are low level and facing down 40's with a lot more tricks than you have. So I will be going Kinetic for my trip to 50. However, I have a very slight build difference than yours and I wanted to question you on it. To me, it looks like the synergy between double strike and project is a huge factor of the kinetic build, followed by the addition of TK throw for some good healing. Given that, I thought it was a shame not to further that synergy by not having the double throw chance on project, but also not having the 50% crit bonus for doublestrike which will be getting crit increases from project's crits. So I was looking at a 29/0/12 split. http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#601rIrokrskbZZf0cMb.1 I lose out on slow time, but I get my 50% crit on doublestrike that I wanted. However, how does focus go with this build? My guy is not high enough to benefit from much of the focus generating abilities. I wonder if 2 points in shadows respite is worth more than one of my other choices?