The last thread did not go well, it did not create too good an atmosphere. Many of the other Huttball guides here seem very long and I just want to make one here that looks less scary in terms of size, and this is all about winning Huttball, nothing else. This guide will have much better grammar and will be more friendly.
WARNING: Make sure you read this guide very carefully, you could miss some information that you may find interesting or important to yourself.
Roles in an MMO and roles in a Huttball
There are three roles in an MMO: Damage, Tanking, Healing. There are three roles in Huttball: Getting the ball, Keeping the ball, Passing the ball.
We will go through each role of a character and this may help you to determine what job you would be best at doing in Huttball.
Damage
With this role, you will be best at protecting the ball. The reason for this is you can CC and dispose of attackers quickly, a healer can protect the ball just as well, maybe even better, but if you're a damage character and you especially can't take many hits before being defeated, this is the best job for you, you can stop damage as much as possible from attackers with CC and simply the fact that you hit hard and stop the damage completely for the time being as they will die fast.
This is the most important thing for anyone to do when someone has the ball, protect the ball handler no matter what, even if you are a Sniper-like class, you should still try and stay with the ball handler, because you can take up a defensive position, however, that won't stop people from attacking the ball handler, so it's important for everyone to jump in.
Tank
These people will be the ones focussing on getting the ball and running with it, they are pretty much intended for this specific use in Huttball, you have a lot of health, you have high defense, you should be able to handle quite a bit of punishment, which is what you are guaranteed to be taking when you have the ball. You should communicate with your Ops group with short messages such as "Help I have ball" if you are fast at the keyboard. If you are not so fast at typing, you should not do this.
Whenever you get a Baron Deathmark saying "such and such has the ball" or anything along those lines, open your map fast to see who has the ball and get to the point, avoiding other opposing players if possible. Remember, even though that member is a tank, they still die at a similar speed to anyone else without help behind him. Follow this person with the ball no matter what, even if it gets you in trouble, or if the ball handler is taking bad directions, communication will come in handy. Sith or Jedi stealth types with the Tanking build will be best for this out of all tanks, they can take damage, they have force speed so that they can run away quickly or get to the ball quickly and a good amount of CC, and many ways to escape from combat if times get tough.
Whoever plans on getting the ball often should always save their break CC skills for when they get stunlocked and many players are near. Whenever possible, especially on the bridges over the small areas that go beneath the ground, where players have to run from there, back up onto the bridges, a knock-back should be used. Snares, stuns, anything to stop you from taking damage from other players will be very important to increase your chance in getting to the other side.
Healer
This will be a very important role for protecting the ball, and they can be the ball handler considering their heals can increase survivability, especially any heals over time, they are the best kind of heals for this, as they heal you as you run along. Any active defensive skills such as barriers can be used and then heals to keep the ball handler alive as they run to the goal, are going to help you to recover HP as your health will not be getting chopped down for a period of time.. Any healers, if they know how to keep up correctly, can heal the ball handler as that person runs along to the goal.
Passing the ball
Very important to keep a match stable for your team is to pass the ball or throw the ball. Whenever you see someone with higher health than you who is not surrounded by players, should have the ball passed to them if they are near to you in terms of how far they are in the run to the goal. If things get very bad and there are no players around, throw the ball into an open space, away from attackers, that way, they will not be getting the ball for killing you and it will be ported back to the center of The Pit.
This will prevent too much panic and your Ops group won't constantly be running all over the place.
The tide turns
If the tides of battle turn against your Ops group, or if you know the other team is going to score a point, quickly get to the middle to grab the ball and rush to their side, as they will still be getting back, especially if the person who grabs the ball is an Inquisitor or a Consular and use their Speed skill, they will have a very high success rate and could probably make it on their own.
It is also inevitable that there will be some, or many people in your Ops group, especially new players, who scatter around killing people to get as many medals as possible or to just kill people or because they don't know where the ball is, there are many reasons as to why players will just scatter around The Pit, if you see someone doing this, tell them to go for the ball or follow you if you are going after the ball so that they will help to increase the team's chance of winning.
Communication essential
Communication is part of teamwork you would find in real life, before the match begins, someone should have a plan for who gets the ball at the start and how the game should be played by all players, how they should go for the ball and not the kill. There isn't much time to explain it all before the match begins, but if you got typing skills, it would be better to do this than to say nothing. During the match, short messages such as "take down (this person)", "go get the ball (this person)", "help (the ball handler or this person)", or many reminders such as "(this person) follow me" or "(this person) go for the ball please" or "PASS BALL FAST!" will help the game to go the way you, the person who has read this guide, the person with the knowledge, to get the game to go you want it to go.
You should make sure that when the game begins, someone is to CC the first opponent closest to the ball, this makes it easier for the person who is trying to get the ball and reduces the other side's chance of getting the ball.
Combat tricks
This relates mostly to obstacles, they are not just there to hamper your progress, they can be used to increase your progress if you are a smart player. Many characters who can use stealth should use their in-stealth CC when a player is over a fire obstacle, this means that they will be disposed of incredibly quickly because they will be burned down in 3 to 5 quick bursts of damage. This is especially good for keeping lonely players out of the way, who are out of combat. For using this obstacle in combat, use a knock back and then a quick stun or immobilize skill to kill or severely reduce HP, very good against ball handlers or people protecting the ball handler.
The green liquid below the bridges in the center can be used too, when fighting here, make sure you are not the one closest to it, otherwise you can be knocked back into these little pools and you will die quickly. You can use a knock back against someone close to this who doesn't know the rule of fighting near this area, they will die quickly, the more often you can do it, the better, and if you can keep them there with a snare, even better.
When you are most of the way through the course, or the opposing ball-handler is most of the way through, there are bridges that overhang an even smaller 'Pit' which you can use a knock back from either the left side or right side of these bridges, this will severely stump the progress of the other team as they'll have to run back up out of the smaller 'Pit', and then back into the center only to have to repeat what they did all over again, a good chance for killing. Just avoid getting knocked off of these areas yourself with snares against attackers.
These tricks take some time and skill to master, but if you manage to do it a lot, not only will you look like a boss, you will make a huge opening for attacks against the ball-handler for your team.
Those four medals
4 medals is all that is required for the nice experience and credits/commendations boost, this can be very easy to do. Crit for 2.5k, get a killing blow, get 10 kills, do 75k damage; alternatively, Crit heal for 2.5k, get a killing blow, get 10 kills, and heal alot (can't remember the amount of healing needed) if you can do this and win, you will get rich and you will not find it too hard to level, especially if you like to do warzones over and over and over and over and over and over and over again and over again and so forth.
It is not uncommon for people MVP voting to choose someone who communicates well, gets the ball alot, kills and heals alot and so forth, although they'll mainly choose the person who got the most medals, you still made the team win, without you, they may have found it much harder.
If you read this carefully, you may have just become a step better at Huttball! Now get out there and show them what you just learned!
Any additional tips and tricks from your knowledge can be added as a reply, but these are the basics of a (mostly) successful Huttball match.
Yeah... this guide is longer than expected..
Yes, it is a very long guide, but if you want to level/getcredits/getpvpgear/etc as good as you possibly can, this will get you there instantly if you read it right. I am sick to death of people in my Huttball games getting owned hard by Republic especially because they don't know how it works. Most people will be doing warzones not just for fighting other players but also for experience/commendations or credits. Now, you won't get a ton of credits and you won't level fast by blindly killing everyone and saying "hey I got 7/8/9 medals". Having one to four medals will increase the amount of experience and credits and commendations you get slightly. Winning the game by as many points as possible is actually what makes you get the credits/commendations/exp you want. If you win for example 2/1 in a Huttball with 4 medals you will get as much rewards as you can possibly get in that one match. Having 7/8/9 medals might make you look good and it may get you MVP votes but MVP votes again is nothing compared to actually winning. First up who's getting the ball, if there is a tank in your ops group, someone(s) should stun/root/lock the closest opponent and then someone (a tank preferably) will get the ball. Then, pretty much everyone there should be protecting the guy with the ball. If everyone protects the guy with the ball it's much harder for the opposition to get to the guy with the ball especially if he is getting heals or people are using CC/stuns/locks/roots/snares whatever. Protecting the ball handler surprisingly is one of the most important things you want to do, it's no good just having people constantly getting the ball just to get killed along the way. So Snipers/whatever the republic class is called, get off of the bridge that hangs over the acid pit where there are sandbag looking things that you like to hide behind and start killing those who are attacking the ball handler instead. Stealthers, stop looking around in stealth for people running astray so you can 1on1 them. The best people for this I'd say are Darkness Sith Assassins/whatever Republic spec for this is called they're meant for tanking, they have Force Speed so they can run to the ball fast, they have vanish so that they can get out of combat if they are going to die so that the ball doesn't get passed to the other person. It will also be important to stun and snare people who are going to stun and snare you or especially melee characters. If you are fighting near the acid pit make sure you are the one further away from it. If you can get to the right angle, especially Inquisitors/Consulars/Bounty Hunters/Troopers can use an AOE pushback that will knock them right into the acid and they die fast, same thing can work for the pits in voidstar or the fires in Huttball occasionally. A quick and easy way of getting rid of people. Inquisitors especially should save Force Speed and all classes should save their /breakstunlock skill for when they have the ball and use it only when you're standing over a fire area or if there are a huge amount of opposition coming your way. Throwing the ball is also very important and I see that many more Republic players do it than Empire probably because most of the Republic players are generally better at the game than Empire players which sort of makes sense, obviously on Empire you're going to have more unskilled players or immature players because it's simply the fact that it's different you don't have to be a good guy in this game like in all the other games and you can be a real bad man who stars in murder scenes if you want to. Throwing the ball is a very good thing if you see a player who is ahead of you in the map or if you're about to die, better yet, players without the ball could get a little more ahead of the man with the ball so that he can throw it to you. Getting medals will be easy, you can do 75k damage in this pretty easily, crit for 2.5k, get a killing blow and get 10 or more player kills for 4 easy medals. It's a matter of getting the ball and being protected, using snares and stuns/roots/locks to make your way to the finish line or simply supporting those who want to get the ball by stunning/snaring/rooting/locking their opponents or healing them, staying with them, both very easy things to do. Get the ball, throw the ball, protect the ball, done. This should be stickied. A place where players can always go to learn about how to play Huttball as good as possible.