So I recently came back to the game for the first time since I quit in 2013. I have been playing on empire since coming back, but I was wanting to play on republic as well, and now that I'm marginally back into knowing what abilities do again, I was figuring on augmenting the leveling with warzones. The problem appears to be that on the server I am on (Bastion), the republic side appears to be entirely dead. There are very few people online, and I've sat in WZ queues for an hour. I was wondering if there was someplace everyone went, or if there was some place that still saw any action. For clarification, I'm more interested in leveling/casual WZs, and have little to no interest in ranked anything. I've done some research and have heard that Harbinger is still a decent server for pvp, but I've also seen people say it's bad for WZs (or extremely bad for republic...that could just be standard complaining though). If there is no server where republic pvp is at least manageable, I guess I can play imp; I just told the gf we could do the pvp on republic side, lol Thanks for any input you might have.

Personally, I run laps around my ship. I'd love an open world pvp hub, but it would need to be an easier planet to load. My computer doesn't freak out on Ilum like it does with Corellia, Belsavis and Alderaan, but it still has some trouble. And while I don't have the greatest computer ever by any stretch, it isn't a total fossil either. So I imagine there must be others who have similar problems. You'd need a better planet, especially if you're considering all the extra weight from potential pvpers (this game already has trouble loading 8 people in isolated WZs sometimes). But otherwise, I'd be excited to see something like this.

You know, honestly, I'm kind of conflicted about this. While compulsive rage-quitters do annoy the hell out of me, especially when they happen to be in large numbers (I have a friend who rage quits WZs essentially the moment things don't look good for our team, and it sometimes puts me in moods where I regret playing with him), on the other hand, I am past the age and lack of peripheral real life stuff to do on the side that I am going to sit and tolerate a 15min battleground debuff like they had in WoW. I'll just cancel and go do something else (cue someone quoting this and saying 'good riddance,' because you're oh so imaginative). And that is not a threat to any wayward developer reading this, or to other players. It's just a statement. When I play, I like to be doing something, and when I'm pvping, I'm not doing anything else (the fact that planets are a bastard to load in and out of bgs sort of prevents this, so when I pvp, I hang out on my ship doing laps in between pops). I don't think it's as big a problem as some people make it out to be. Yes, you get games, or even a stretch of games, where you feel torpedoed by people quitting the WZs on you. But they're hardly a majority, at least on any of the servers I play. I just finished a stretch of WZs where like 5 out of 8 pubs on the opposite team were sages, seemingly completely by happenstance (I did not see all the same ones every game), and they destroyed everyone they looked at in seconds, because as if the damage itself wasn't enough, apparently having enough pebbles flying around the screen lags people the hell out. Am I going to complain about sages and demand BW do something about it? Well, to be honest, I'd like them to fix the lag, but really, no. The node based WZs in this game also make me kind of iffy. It's very possible (I've been on both sides more times than I can count) to have the game lost within the first couple minutes, being on a clearly inferior team, but not so inferior that they can three cap you. If you play WZs, you know this game, even if you pretend you don't. Now, theoretically, you COULD turn this around if your team plays smart enough, but if you have enough headless chickens on your team who can only run off by themselves or follow dots on their map to nodes they should not be at, it's pretty clear that short of literal divine intervention, it's not happening. What's the point of staying in that game? Add a forfeit option for games like that so it can be over. But of course, they won't do that, because if they did, it would get abused like nobody's business. Nonetheless, I don't see the point in needing to play a 15min+ game that was decided in the first 90sec. Do you somehow feel vindicated that people are standing around at nodes, jumping and emoting, or slowly trickling off to wander bored, one-by-one into the enemy's gibfest, rather than just opting out of that game and trying their luck with a different one? I mean, this can work both ways too. Sometimes the really terrible players are the ones who quit (usually after laying some deviously witty insult about how the rest of the team needs to l2p)., and then you get new players in, and hey, maybe they don't suck as much. And can we all agree to stop using words like 'despicable' and 'immoral' in regards to not-even-necessarily-harmful behavior in some facet of a videogame? And moreover, there's no need to comb your thesaurus for hoity-toity sounding words, or invoke ridiculous hyperbole like 'the people who sit and trash talk are 100 PERCENT (that being...ALL OF THE PERCENTS) more useful than people leave WZs? That's a completely stupid thing to say, and all it does is make you look like the ragey baby in the situation. Someone who simply stands around and dedicates all their time to berating their teammates is doing LESS than someone who leaves, because at least that person has a chance of being replaced with someone more useful. Mr. Trash Talk is doing nothing but bringing his team down, without offering any upsides. Though, I have a very strong feeling that your saying that was an attempt to defend yourself and your own actions, given how pedantic and exaggerated your post was in this thread. So whatevs, right? tl;dr, to wrap up, if they added a penalty to quitting games, I'm pretty sure hordes of people would quit the actual game, since there is no incurred penalty in that. What's wrong with adding incentives to stay, or any number of player sorting systems, or perhaps even fixing some of their maps so they don't so heavily favor whoever takes the lead first?

On The Bastion, it usually seems to go back and forth enough to not make you want to kill yourself and/or delete all your toons on a faction. There is definitely still the crappy games, but coming off of years of WoW, where my faction either won 80%+ of the time, or couldn't win anything ever, depending on where I was, I'm surprised how competitive it is. However, late at night, Imps can't seem to win much of anything.

I was in a Novare earlier today, and there was this Shadow there. Semi-frequently (about every 10sec), he'd do something that sounded exactly like a grav round (there wasn't much, if any, animation to it), and I'd take massive damage from it. He was at range. There was no Commando anywhere in the area. I'm curious because I've never seen it before.

The Thundering Blast bug is a clever dev metaphor about the impotence of the game designers. Great theatrics, looks very strong to observers, makes you anticipate what's about to happen as it builds in strength...then just sort of sags and fails to do anything. You read it here first. (just a joke bioware ilu don't ban me plz)

I prefer Lightning by far. But then again, I was an elemental shaman in WoW, so stubbornly that I played it in two expansions where it was more or less completely not welcome, or just buffs for the 'real' dps. Lightning is an elemental shaman, both in elemental theme, and in playstyle. I don't feel that handicapped on a Lightning Sorc. Yeah, you die when the leap train comes a-choo choo'ing in, but that's the fate of almost every class in this game. I've always, on every class I've ever played, on any MMORPG I've ever played, been a real big LoS abuser. That's obviously useful for both specs (and arguably more useful for madness), but it lends itself well to the strengths and weaknesses of lightning. Madness is a good spec. It may statistically be better, but I don't feel it. The Madness sorcs on my server get blown up a lot (it's possible they suck though). I never found it as satisfying though. There's that occasional moment of exultation after you win a protracted duel with a class/player you KNOW thought they had you easily, but there's so little institutionalized 1v1 in this game that that's a rare moment unless you're just one of those people that duels all the time. The bgs are too small to permit 1v1s for the most part. I try to find 1v1s all the time (it's hard to learn anything when you are either on top of the world, or getting zerged by 4 marauders at once), but people keep wandering into them.

The build doesn't seem any more survivable than any other builds I've tried out (although hilariously, it doesn't seem to do any less damage either). Riot Gas is a cool trick, but getting force pushed or knocked out of it, rooted, then blown up as normal doesn't fix anything. All the same classes still dominate you. You might survive a few extra bads who are basically just hitting random hotkeys, but they were never the real problem anyway. In theory, I think the build should be really neat. But even making liberal use of Riot Gas (and trust me, I have no problem abusing survival cooldowns), it doesn't seem any sturdier.

The state of Vanguard/PT kind of reminds me of what happened to Unholy Death Knights in WoW after season 5. The class got absolutely leveled, to the point where it was only viable in competitive pvp as a slow/silence bot for warriors and hunters to help them kill things more efficiently. And VGs don't even have THAT functionality.

The idea of taking attention off of the merc sounds pretty good. Decided to make a Juggernaut based on this (probably tank). Thanks for the input, guys.

So my friend wants to make and level an arsenal merc, pretty much exclusively through pvp. He knows (or claims to know) how much people say the spec isn't that great, so that's not an issue. And I'm not so hardcore that I demand mix/maxing from everybody. Anyhow, I was wondering what the best class would be to roll support with him ('support' can mean whatever). I was thinking MM Sniper, to augment the 'look at something and make it die' style, which might be better than a healer if the problem is making damage opportunities, but I'm not sure. I haven't played much since October, and I haven't played Arsenal much at all. Any thoughts on this? I can play whatever. There's no thoughts of RWZs or anything. We don't know anyone, and I'm done when the expansion comes out anyway. So that's not a concern. This is just for screwing around and hopefully good times.

I don't even talk in bgs unless it's to make tactical calls or mock someone who is being an ******e. This often gets me bashed by those people, which affects me exactly not at all. I mean, look, I take the game seriously when I'm playing it. I'm not doing propeller spins in my chair during a WZ. I try to do my part. But people who take the game THAT serious, to sit and berate everyone else for often completely made-up or totally assumed reasons to get the rage out, are hilarious.

You switched specs because you didn't like being the spec everyone else was, and are now excited that tons of people might be switching to your spec?

Is that the only change? Because while that will make it annoying fighting smarmy snipers, it will effect almost nothing else.

No, look, nobody cares how it used to be in Everquest. If it took you twenty years and the blood sacrifice of three of your children to get the best gear for your dire troll scythemaster berserker who got -85% exp/money/tokens from everything and you STILL DID THE GRIND YO. The only people who care about the insane slogs from Everquest are people who were big into Everquest, back when it was a relevant game, and not just the thing everyone brings up as an example of too-long grinds in any debate about grinds in any MMO ever. It's not somehow a rebuttal for the mechanics of a completely different game in a different time period because that's how it was in some other thing twelve years ago, back when MMOs were built under the assumption that its players literally had no lives and did not require sleep. And I don't even agree with the OP. I do think that parts of the WH gear grind are a little ridiculous (having to get multiple copies of certain pieces of gear because the stats on other WH pieces SUCK, for instance), but it doesn't bother me to the point of getting up in arms and crusading against BioWare over it. I don't need to be a part of the 'top WZ team on server' circle jerk, and I play this game for fun, and if I decide it's not fun to do something, I'm just not going to do it (because I'm not a gosh darn mule that is singularly obsessed with any old carrot BioWare decides to dangle in front of my face). This other dude can react however he wants though (within reason), and I don't think he's wrong for bringing it up if he's upset about it. Ostensibly, that's what these forums are FOR. I just think Everquest as a rebuttal is kind of lame. There's a reason we're posting this on the swtor forums and not the EQ forums

Look, I know you guys want to circle jerk and assert your pvp dominance to strangers as much as possible, but you're kind of missing the point that the OP is AGREEING with you. He is not saying huttball is a bad battleground. He is saying that his games turn into 15min 0-0 slogging killfests because he cannot score by himself (and honestly, no one can score by themselves unless you're facing literally the worst team on earth and 90% of them are ignoring you; I don't care how 'good' you think you are), and he doesn't find that fun. I don't even see what there is to argue about. You could say "I disagree!" which would be completely valid, but the posturing is kind of laughable. I personally don't mind the 0-0 huttballs all that much. There is a method for breaking the stalemate (holding the ball at the end) that built right into the mechanics, and once you've confirmed that your team has no interest in scoring or supporting you while you score, you can just do whatever you want until then. And when your team actually IS a team, it's really fun. I dislike Voidstar pugs a lot more. You are not really fighting the enemy players. You are fighting the rez clock, because of how absurdly skewed toward defense it is. Even when it's a huge blowout for my team, it never really feels like a victory to me. I just think "Thank God that's over."

I've encountered players that stand motionless by a fire trap waiting for someone to come in range, like some mindless horror movie plant. Those players are idiots. They're like the rogues from WoW that camped outside of the renew hut in WSG for the entire game waiting for low health players to come along. They don't help their team, and honestly, they don't really do much more than annoy the opposing team. Making use of the fire and acid traps does not, however, automatically equate to that. And if any such players read this topic, it would only make them happy. Calling them unskilled is not going to affect them, because they are not attempting to demonstrate skill. They are trying to make people rage by doing the closest thing to griefing allowed in formal battlegrounds.

Tactical blunders happen to everybody. Brain farts happen to everybody. Even the best. Assuming you aren't just not telling something, the loss wasn't your fault. It COULDN'T have been your fault. I've been at nodes with 4 other people defending against an attack. You know what usually happens against a decent team? I eventually die, and while I'm on my way back, they cap the node. If the team was decent, they could have held out longer, OR, adapted since hey, we still have two nodes. That's just a matter of people wanting to push their failures off on others. What you have to realize is that there are a lot of people invested in thinking they're king **** at pvp, in a game with honestly fairly subpar pvp (not to say it isn't fun, just that there's a lot wrong with it). In order to show the world how amazing they are, they have to tear you (and everyone else) down, and act as condescending as possible, at any opportunity. This happens on the forums, and during games where your team is getting smashed by a far better opposition. After all, THEY are pretty much God, so it can't be their fault, right? Learn from what mistakes you did make, and brush off the exaggerated vitriol. Ultimately, it will never matter anyway.

How Others Seem to View Mercs People in my guild seem to think really well of Mercs. Two of them are primary dps, and I am a healer (recently re-specced, and apparently stuck that way). We are a very casual guild though, and do very little in the way of min-max'ing, so that may not be 'correct.' I'm pretty much the only one in the guild who even visits the forums. In PvP, I tend to be viewed as a free kill. Been doing better as healing recently, even though I probably suck at it. Still, it's something, and people sometimes leave me alone now, and sometimes dps on my team even help, where before an enemy would just ride me until I died, lol. How I View Mercs: To be honest, I'm so new to healing on this class that I don't feel comfortable trying to be authoritative on it. I spent the last 6+ months since I made the Merc in December playing as Arsenal, and that's what I'll comment on. I will say that I don't have any particular complaints about healing, in pve or pvp. As an Arsenal Merc, I feel like an Elemental Shaman from Burning Crusade in WoW (a class I gave up). You are a stationary turret, and the damage looks really impressive from where you're standing, but outside metrics tend to value it lower than I would think. I don't know if the damage is where BW wants it, so I don't know how to comment on that. Tracer Missile does seem somewhat cumbersome though, since nearly EVERYTHING about the spec revolves around it. But this style and similarity extends to (and is probably far more annoying in) PvP, where you have pretty good burst, but no defensive CDs (Jet Boost is laughable), and easily crumple if someone gets on you. Which why wouldn't they?

I get annoyed when I'm top damage, the only person calling out anything in ops, managed to cap a node out from under the Empire (debatably a direct influence on our win), and managed to single-handedly defend that node against 2 respawns worth of 3 people before anyone deigns to come help me, and I get no MVP votes. But the dude who did 20k healing the whole game gets 3. Like, I'm no all-star pvper or anything, but I have my moments. And most of those moments seem to go sadly unrecognized. I know the MVP thing isn't really that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. But its existence and gross misuse does bother me occasionally.

I have to roll my eyes that there are some people treating this essentially lighthearted thread as some sort of serious criticism on pvp, and leaping in with the snobby, elitist defenses. /hug to the OP and anyone else going through the recruit grinder right now. I'm doing it too on one of my toons.

Torian is pretty hot. Mako, Doc or Tharan for most useful. Any healer is theoretically the same, but I seem to have less 'died because my companion is channeling their stun on something that is immune to it' moments with them than I do with Quinn, Elara or Lokin, even if I leave their stun on like an idiot. Not sure if it's just me. Personality-wise, has to be Jaesa, if only for the fact that she is so customizable, and I wish BW had used that for more companions. A few other companions have subtle changes of morals depending on how you play, but she is the only one DEDICATED to it.

The Sith Inquisitor storyline doesn't become noticeably bad until you advance much of the way through Act I, and realize that you are doing the same fetch quest over and over. This is conceptually similar to the Bounty Hunter (most of the planets have you chasing bounties), but the BH has a lot of focus on character interaction, and as someone else said, the BH themselves. Most of the SI companions never go anywhere, and the Inquisitor never feels powerful within their own storyline (everything you do is facilitated by someone else's effort or wit, rather than your own), or very well characterized. Dromund Kaas as the SI was pretty cool though.

You know, I'll admit that I'm not the greatest player at this game. Outside of my first couple of WZs, where I didn't really even know what my buttons did, I don't think I'm the bane of the earth to have on a team either (I like to interrupt enemy healers! and assist my own healers!), but I'm sure there's crap I could always do better. I was decent at WoW pvp (like 2200 back before the massive rating inflation), but either I've gotten worse, my computer/graphics card is holding me back, or I simply don't jive with the way abilities work in this game. Maybe a combination of the three. Anyway, my point I guess is that I've been on both sides of the "decent player in pvp surrounded by relative 'bads'" scenario. And I can tell you, that the people trying to get all psychological about negative reinforcement and public humiliation are either terribly mistaken or just pulling a flimsy rationale for acting like a jerk out of their butt. Anyone who is self-conscious enough -- and would be disgusted at holding their team back -- to be shamed over their bad pvp DOES NOT NEED you to point it out to them. They can recognize it themselves by the fact that they are dying a lot, seemingly not putting up much of a fight, and continually losing battlegrounds. All trying to 'embarrass' them in chat does is make them more liable to suck on purpose just to spite you, which is presumably the opposite of what EVERYONE wants. And continuing on that thought, public humiliation only works in an environment where they know a lot of people present and care about their opinions. We do not even have server forums to augment the community and pvp trash talk, so a new pvper does not care what any of the self-proclaimed 'big dogs' or regular pvpers of the server think of them. By the time they do (if they do), they probably suck a lot less and don't 'require' public chastisement anyway. So it serves no purpose, in any universe, except for someone to vent their nerdrage. Which, whatever, we've all been there, but let's not get philosophical about it and start calling it things it's not. It's not for their benefit (how is a new pvper who has bought their Recruit gear, and read forums enough to know the logistics of pvp, but has no actual 'field' knowledge to apply it to SUPPOSED to get better, exactly?). It's for your benefit, and only your benefit. As to the topic, I find that WZ chat is often so dead that I've gotten to where I barely even look at it. If I do notice someone being a massive, unconstructive ***, and it looks like it might be at me, I ignore it unless it's ongoing. Then I sometimes go out of my way to do whatever they complained about, and brag about it to them.

I prefer the new animation. Looks more like one would imagine a missile with targeting capabilities would look. That said, I didn't really mind the old animation, and I never complained on the forums about it. I just think the new one does, in fact, look cooler.