It's a PvP discussion. Not a PvE one. There are ways to keep kinetic viable in PvE situations. However, kinetic in PvP needs a nerf. And that's coming from a kinetic shadow. I basicly beat everything 1v1 and there is no challenge anymore. There is no point in denying it. To have fun in PvP we should aim for perfect balance. Where is the fun in facerolling everything?

Thanks for your reply. I don't know anything about vanguards. But my guildie thats play a vanguard asked to me to add this to my post. I'll ask him to reply here and elaborate:)

It's too bad his thread got deleted. Thats why I tried to keep this one as constructive as possible. Bashing bioware obviously wont help.

You do realise that shadow tanks dont use backstab, and that infiltration shadow only use backstab when they get a proc, right? However I do think that scoundrels need a shorter CD on backblast.

I'd like to ask everyone to replies constructive and related to the OP. We are not here to bash bioware, we are here to try to improve the game.

This is a very interesting thing to state. The problem is that we don't really know when Bioware is listening and when they are not. Communication is one-way only: We post on the forums and bioware might read it or might not. It would be far more useful to have an actual conversation with developers, Hence my idea to select a few Top PvP players to get the priviledge to go in an actual dialogue with developers.

Well said. However I wouldn't mind if shadows stay the same, so I can keep rolling people!

As mentioned in my post I have a sentinel. So yes, I did know that. Other classes can indeed counter the leaps with pulls/roots. The problem is that guardians have TWO leaps, and there is no class with two pulls. You need multiple people to stop a guardian. I didn't suggest to remove any of the leaps. I just suggested to not let them use both in a short amount of time. I do however appreciate your input. If there are more guardians that have an opinion on this matter, feel free to reply!

I totally agree on this part. I play with a premade while all being on a voice chat server. We coordinate interupt and stuns and we were able to kill healer faily easily. In 1.2 we dont even have to interupt anymore.

I have removed the suggestion to remove the swelling winds talent and instead suggested to lower the damage of sweep/smash on both Sentinel and Guardian.

Keep in mind that I also suggest to revert the expertise changes back to pre 1.2. This would result in healers being much stronger. Before 1.2 Commando's/Mercs were pretty much indestructable. Then again, im not an expert on the commando healer class. If more people could point out that im indeed very wrong here, I will make changes in the post! Also other suggestions for the commando are apreciated!

Like stated in my post. I'm not an expert on the classes I do not play. That's why id like to promote open discussion. People that play pvp at a high level are able to analyze the game the best!

Dear Bioware. Let me start of by saying I love this game. I’m playing since launch and have been enjoying PvP a lot. I’m in a dedicated PvP guild and I’m currently Valor rank 82 on my Jedi Shadow. I also have a Sentinel and a Commando healer. I loved PvP in this game because it was fast-paced, challenging and most importantly: fairly balanced. Then came Patch 1.2…. Postive Changes - The UI customization is a really nice addition to the game. - The new medals allow for objective-focused players to be rewarded. - New entry lvl PvP gear available for credits. Negative Changes - The Rewards you get for being on the losing team are incredibly low. - Getting the new War Hero gear is an extremely long and boring grind. - The Current state of pvp is suffering due to the much lower Time-to-Kill(TTK). - Class Balance is heading in the wrong direction. I’m enjoying PvP a lot less since patch 1.2. For some reason (Probably the change in expertise) the Time to Kill has reduced drasticly. I really enjoy long drawn-out fights that allow me to use tactical decisions and good management of cooldowns to come out as victor. Unfortunately these fight are non-existent in 1.2. Because of the high damage it’s pretty much a zergfest. The one that strikes first wins. A big problem is that TTK got reduced, but stuns didn’t. The amount of damage a player takes in a stun is ridiculous, and people are getting literally stunned to death. Because of the reduced TTK and the nerfs to healing. Healers close to useless. They can be killed without interrupting any of their heals. Being a tank is also less useful, if you guard a healer you will die very fast without doing any real damage yourself. In the current state of PvP, DPS is king. In 1.2, significant changes were made to 7 of the 8 advanced classes. So many changes at once make it hard to keep things in perspective. It’s probably better to overhaul about 2 classes and see how they fair against the others. Of the changes that were made only a few of them made sense and classes that should have been changed, remained untouched. I no longer think PvP balance in SWTOR stands out above others MMOs. How to Improve patches in the future 1. Community Feedback. 2. Explanation about balance changes. 3. Better testing on PTS The people that actually understand the current metagame the best are us, the people that actively play PvP and know what they are doing. Top PvP players can analyze the game the best because of their knowledge of their own class and the experience from playing the game often. They have knowledge about the game you can’t learn by looking at statistics and pretty graphs. It is essential that you learn to filter feedback from these players and don’t take advise from people who don’t really understand the game but are QQing a lot. A good thread with suggestions about PvP Balance was written by Redmarx not too long ago. Some of my suggestions are based on his post. Eventhough he was critical about Bioware, some of the suggestions he made were quite interesting . Perhaps it would be an idea select a top PvP player from each class to serve as an ambassador for their class. Developerd could then go in an actual dialogue with these people. Listen to what they have to say and also give their thoughts about the state of PvP. A dialogue could result in so much more than one-way communication. There is currently no info to be found about why you made some of the balance changes. I (and many others) would really appreciate it if there could be an explanation about why certain classes needed to be changed. PvP players would like to know the views of the developers on class balance. You already have Developer Blogs on the main website. It would be perfect for this. There were loads of complaints about the lack of actual PvP testing on the PTS. The most logical solution to this is to allow lvl50 Character Copy for everyone. Changes I would make to the game I’ll give it a try to suggest changes I would make to improve the current state of PvP. These changes are my opinion and do not necessarly reflect those of the PvP community. You might agree or disagree but discussion should improve understanding of the game’s balance. ALL OF THESE CHANGES ARE JUST SUGGESTIONS. Implementing all of them at the same time probably wouldn’t be the best thing for PvP balance. However, each individual change should make sense and is worth being looked at. General: - Allow buffs/debuffs to be resized and moved independently from unit frames. - Give players the ability to transfer ops leader in warzones - Let unbalanced warzones shut down like pre-1.2. - Merge servers: Do I even need to explain this one? Pvp rewards: - Rewards for losing become 75% of the rewards for winning in non-rated, 50% of the reward for winning in rated. - If you get vote-kicked or leave a warzone early, you earn no rewards. - Reduce cost of PVP consumables back to what it was pre-1.2. - Return to the credits rewards pre-1.2. -Buff the recruit gear so that gap to BM gear isn’t as big. - Reduce the cost of WH gear so casual players are able to get it. Skill should differentiate good players from the bad players, not gear. - Add mods and enhancements to the PVP vendors covering stat combinations such as crit/surge, crit/power, etc - each costing 1/2 of the value of a BM or WH set piece. Add a rating requirement to the WH mods so higher rated players get to customize their stats and have a small advantage over lower rated players without having more stats. (Rating requirement is optional) - Make ranked WH gear have a complete new model instead of just a different color so higher ranked people or more recognizable. Overall class balance: The thing I’d like to accomplish by these changes is making PvP more fun and challenging. Intelligent and tactical play should be awarded. There should be a bigger difference between skilled players and bad players and this difference shouldn’t come from gear. I'd also like to see effort to make every spec viable for PvP. This allows players to chose what playstyle they like and does not force them to just pick the best spec and go with that. - Revert back to the expertise values pre-1.2. - Reduce the cooldown on the CC breaker. - When taunting a player you should take extra damage from the player that was taunted. This would make using taunts less attractive to dps specced players and would allow for more intelligent use of this skill instead of spamming it every time its off CD. It would also give players being taunted another thing to look out for. The animation of taunt should probably be changed so its more obvious who taunted you. Sentinel: In patch 1.2. Sentinels got a major buff to the combat and the focus tree. I do like that sentinel actually have a choice regarding what spec to play, because all three of them are viable now. Unfortunately not all classes have this privilege. Due to the damage buff and healing debuff in the patch, sentinels are currently the best class in the game. Reverting expertise to their original values should fix this partly, other changes should be: - Make Master Strike interruptible again. - Increased CD of guarded by the force. - Make Force Camo break on AoE damage. - Reduce the damage of force sweep. Guardian: Guardians are slightly overpowered as a ballcarrier in huttball and force sweep does a little bit too much damage. - Reduce the damage of force sweep. - Upon use of charge, the friendly leap is not usable for 6 sec. - Upon use of the friendly leap, charge is not usable for 6 sec. Sage The combination of Force Speed and the friendly pull is one of most strongest abilities combos in the game. (especially in Huttball). Sage healers currently lack survivability and die way too quickly. Reverting back to the original expertise values should partly fix this. - Upon use of Force Speed the friendly pull is not usable for 6 sec. - Add a talent that gives Healing trance a chance to also heal the caster for 50% of the amount healed. Shadow: Right now there is no reason not to go Kinetic as a shadow. As kinetic you have high survivability (Resilience, High defense and self-healing), high mobility, very good damage, good debuffs, and Guard. The only downside of being kinetic is always being force starved. Infiltration lacks mobility and survivability. Balance lacks Burst damage and survivability. Kinetic: - Reduce the selfhealing of telekinetic throw. - Move Mind over Matter(Root breaker on force speed and +2 sec duration on resilience) to the infiltration tree. - Move Elusiveness (Reduced CD on force speed and resilience) to the balance tree (tier1). - Particle Acceleration procs also reduce the force cost of project by 50%. Infiltration: - Move Mind over Matter(Root breaker on force speed and +2 sec duration on resilience) to the infiltration tree. Balance: - Move Elusiveness (Reduced CD on force speed and resilience) to the balance tree (tier1). - Add a new talent that gives Force Potency a 60% critical strike chance bonus to all damage over time abilities for 6 sec. - Increase self-healing of focused insights. Gunslinger: Gunslingers are pretty much fine now. The only change I’d like to see is something that forces them to leave their cover to be optimal. Perhaps a talent that would increase damage by 10% for 4 sec whenever they leave cover with an internal CD of 15 sec. This increases the skillcap for gunslingers and also give other classes another way to counter them. Scoundrel: Scoundrels are currently one of the worst damage classes. Their burst damage took a big hit this patch and their sustained damage has never been worthwhile. When a scoundrel uses his main skill he has a downtime of 10 sec without any usable skills. A viable change would be to reduce the CD of backblast. A solution to their low survivability would be to give them a force camo equivalent: A 4 sec vanish that wouldn’t allow them to use their opener again, but would allow them to reposition their selves and increase survivability. Commando: The ammo nerf on the commando was needed. - Reduce the duration of reactive shield - Increase the healing done and number of allies healed of kolto bomb. Vanguard: Tactics tree is currently broken. Fix it and make it viable for PvP.   Discussion These are just my views on the current state of PvP. However, my knowledge of PvP isn’t perfect. I know a lot about the the classes I play but not so much about the others. That’s why I’d like to know what other people have to say. Please state your opinion about some of these changes. Do you agree on them? Do you disagree? Why do you agree/disagree? Do you have other suggestions? Please use good arguments and explain yourself, if multiple people have similar opinion I will alter some of my points or add new points to my post. Let this be a community effort to improve the state of PvP Balance! p.s. I apologize for my english, its not my native language. Written by Leah <Sandwich> Dxun Battle Circle EU

"Players can now remove Armoring modifications from items with set bonuses and transfer those set bonuses to Custom (orange) items. These modifications can only be transferred to an item that is equipped in the same slot." From the patch notes. Having read this, I just transfered all my mods to Orange items and spend my last credits on doing this, only to see that the set bonus didnt get transfered as promised. I probably dont have to explain how disapointed I am.

Yes it does. "Players can now remove Armoring modifications from items with set bonuses and transfer those set bonuses to Custom (orange) items. These modifications can only be transferred to an item that is equipped in the same slot."