Right, so you play on my server. Insult fancypants and act super self righteous, all while he is by far the more known player. That alone is hilarious. Your comment about merc healers easily tanking 4 dps is just not even remotely true. Ressan and myself are widely considered to be the best Merc Healers on the server. Could we tank 4 dpser's pre-patch? If they were *******, absolutely. If we were grouped together, absolutely. Would 2 GOOD (and I stress the word GOOD) DPSer's kill us? Absolutely. In fact we have both killed each other in WZ's with just a good dps on the other while we use stuns and assistive dps at proper times. The problem was that the mass majority of dpser's either don't interrupt the right spell, don't save the resolve bar for un-interruptable bubble, don't properly dps, don't realize when there are other healers healing the current healer they are on or a combination of any of these. DPSers tend to tunnel vision and the only thing they see is "WOW HES NOT DYING THIS IS SO BROKEN" without understanding what is actually happening. Sorry, you may not like hearing this but it is the truth. Also as far as healers not having to juke / bait interrupts with certain spells or anything pre-patch that everyone seems to be implying, again not true. Against solid dps that know what they are doing, I juke all the time. 1 DPS vs 1 HEALER at equal skill SHOULD BE A DRAW. 2 DPS vs 1 HEALER at equal skill HEALER SHOULD DIE. That is balance.

People just aren't reading the main post. In his (and everyone that wants arena) suggestion, arena won't give any better gear than what you can get from warzones. The only difference will be cosmetics. Stats will be the same.

It went both ways in WoW, and I can assure you it frustrated PvPers when things were balanced for PvE just as much as the other way around. Unfortunately that is just the nature of MMO's. It will happen in this game regardless of arenas being implemented or not but luckily this game is already extremely well balanced. Unfortunately the easiest way for developers to balance everything in MMO's is to balance the classes around PvP encounters and then tune the PvE fights to fit. They can't simply adjust a few numbers in a PvP encounter like they can a PvE Mob, due to the more dynamic nature of the fight. Either way, I personally am not looking for arena to give me an advantage in any way over other players. It will most likely have to give some sort of commendations just due to massive complaints over wasted time by casuals if it doesn't, but the actual gear you receive from it should be the exact same as rated warzone gear.

So basically you are saying you play a lot? Because all the "hardcore" PvPer's I know are all about competition, not the carrot on a stick. I know a few people who pvp a ton for the carrot on the stick and that's all fine and dandy. Hardcore is a very broad word. Arena's have been proven to be extremely competitive in WoW. There were paid tournaments for WoW arena hosted both by Blizzard and other organizations. On top of that many servers are hosting 3v3/4v4 tournaments already. So for you "hardcore" means I PvP a lot, it's all I do but I don't want competition. Arena's aren't for you, but that doesn't mean they aren't good for other "hardcore" PvPers. Next time clarify what you mean by hardcore.

First off, major props for the post. This is easily the most well made pro-arena thread to date. I played WoW from vanilla to mid s9 in Cata, with my focus being nearly 100% on arena from the time it came out. I will say what killed the game for me and most of my arena partners was at the top level, team inactivity was unbearable. Given there were better times for it, such as during the tourney realms or at the end of BC / Early WOTLK on Cho'gall or ~S7 on Blackrock. But in Cata the majority of top tier of PvPers split off into different battlegroups and it made it almost impossible to queue some nights. If (and hopefully when) they implement arenas in SWTOR I hope that they don't go the battle group route and just have every server play against each other (possibly in divisions based on the continent because of latency, though I would love to play europeans in arena as they had some very top notch teams in WoW). I also haven't played since Feb last year (archaeology ban wave) so they could have changed that to queue vs everyone now like they had in RBG's. Edit: I actually think they did change it to everyone vs everyone but I feel like I remember it about to happen right before I got banned. Though I'm not 100% sure on this.

There is actually a thread about this atm in the Sentinel forums too. I will just post what I posted there. For a reference point my main is a BH Merc Healer and I have a watchman(annihilation) sentinel I play quite a bit. Just to add a bit, from trial and error dispelling before the stack is at 3 isn't worth it. So if you see them just spam dispelling on cooldown you should be able to kill the healer fairly easily. And like I stated above, get your 4 dots up or run with another dotting class and you will have no worries of dispel.

Not true. Watchman Dots are physical not force. - Mercenary / Commando can dispel them baseline. - Operative / Scoundrel can dispel them baseline. - ONLY Healing Sorc / Sages can dispel them. I play a healing merc and yes good players will dispel them. Luckily at this point in time there are only maybe 2-3 people on my server that I ever see actually making an attempt to dispel them. That may go up as people start to find their dispel key in rateds. And to answer the question, yes it does make a huge difference if you dispel right as the stack hits 3. You will catch both cauterize and the whole saber stack in 1 dispel. My suggestions are using Deadly Throw and Leg Slash (or spec for Cauterize slow). That will give you 4 total debuffs and healers can only dispel 2 at a time so theres a much better chance they won't get the 3 stack. An even better suggestion would be to run with a Lethality/Dirty Fighting - Sniper/Gunslinger (respectively). Though the class is super rare, they put up tech dots which perfectly complement Sentinel dots and make dispelling almost worthless.

Then take it out, because you would be wrong. I played WoW from Vanilla, off and on, through mid Season 9 in Cata. I ended up quitting because I got banned during the archaeology ban wave around Feb last year and just couldn't bring myself to level back up because my arena partners quit or transferred. I didn't even want to bring this into it, but you forced my hand. On top of playing that long, I played that whole time an an extremely high level in PvP. At the time of being banned for archaeology my 3v3 team was top5 (and no it wasn't even close to the first time I was in the top5, and no all my success was not in wrath when it became EZ mode). So you can drop your sarcastic entitled attitude. As for the kidney shot comment, yes not all kidney shots would 5 combo pt. But they were either 4 (in order to not waste combo pts just for the 1 second extra stun) or 5. There are small occasions where you would use a smaller combo pt kidney in order to force a trinket, but that only worked against *******. Once you got to higher play it is immediately recognized how long the kidney was and would not force a trinket. Also DR's were mentioned in my post. And as much as you may not like to believe it, timing a stun to stun with no gap in-between is used in this game. It's used by operatives if you want to compare it to cheap shot > kidney shot, or if you wanna move up a bit higher in the food chain to the big boys then it's used by 2 coordinated players to stun back to back much like deep freeze > kidney shot. Edit: Just to throw something else out there, also in WoW you can CC a person FAR longer. You have separate DR's for all types of skills, so when one DR is up the next is rotated. In SWTOR essentially resolve is 1 DR. Every type of true CC (not snares or roots) is effected by the same DR. Once you hit resolve cap you are immune to everything, instead of being immune to JUST poly or JUST disorients for 18 seconds. This again leads to a tighter window of CC.

It does work in Esseles / Black Talon. But I would love one that isn't instanced.

I won't argue that the skill cap is higher than WoW because I also believe that it is higher in WoW. Neither have an extremely high skill cap though. At the very minimum, the top level of PvP is played at a much MUCH higher level in WoW than SWTOR. But the examples you used are all very very poor ones. Stuns) There are tons so I will just list the ones that can be associated with easily in PvP. Kidney Shot (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=408) - 6 second stun / 20 Second CD Deep Freeze (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=44572) - 5 second stun / 30 Second CD Throwdown (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=85388) - 5 second stun / 45 Second CD Gnaw - DK Pet (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=47481) - 3 second stun / 1 min CD Hammer of Justice (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=853) - 6 second stun / 1 min CD. There are more such as enhancement wolves stun, etc. All of WoW's stuns with the exception of gnaw have a longer duration than SWTOR's. SWTOR's stuns have 1 min CD's with some talented to 45 seconds. 2 in WoW have 1 minute, then they are 45 seconds or less. Stuns in WoW are much more common and longer (assuming you don't DR it like a retard) than SWTOR's counterparts. What does this mean? Less duration + Longer CD = thought needs to be more-so put into when to stun (strategy) Not saying that is how it happens, people spam their stuns like *******. But low caliber players do the same thing in WoW. CC) Really the same exact argument as stuns Fear and Polymorph are both spammable CC. Again DR effects them but focus on one thing. Spammable. They are both broken by damage. Force Lift (Consulars) and Concussive Round (Troopers) last 8 seconds with a 1 minute cooldown. Like fear and poly they are broken with damage. If someone on your team ****s up and breaks the poly, you can re-poly though it will be DR'd. What happens if a retard breaks your lift or concussive round? There goes a 1 minute CC. You cannot just re-cast it. Again you have to think (and alert if in a premade just as you would in WoW) when and where to place it because you can't simply recast a DR'd one. Slows) Slows are much much stronger in WoW. The game has shifted towards more and more instant casts. While the duration may be shorter on them, instant casts make kiting much more prevalent. And for fire and forget, rogues apply poisons on attacks that slow. The AoE Slow from Guardians is in WoW. It's called Piercing Howl (it has a lower duration but is just as spammable on a group). There is another one that is called Desecration that is placed by DK's through their main rotation (fire and forget), but it is stuck where the spells are cast. As for dispels, WoW has those same limitations. Every class is not meant to dispel every debuff. I am a Merc Healer, and I cannot dispel Force. Do I like it? No because the game is filled with massive tons of force users. BUT I understand it. If anything makes me mad about dispels, it's that people just don't do it. I run with many sorc healers that are *considered* the top on my server, but I swear they don't even have dispel on their bar. The player skill level is much lower. I'm not disagreeing with you. I do think at this current state in time, WoW's skill cap is higher. But I also think this game is very well balanced at the higher levels of PvP. You just picked 3 very bad topics to compare to WoW.

I'm all for running casters in general out of resources, because I think the current system is quite retarded that casters have infinite resources (when played by someone competent enough to know how to manage them). On the flip side I don't trust any MMO company, much less BW, to make an ability work differently on different class or even really in different situations and still be balanced. It just hasn't really been done before and generally when suggestions are made to have skills operate differently in both PvE and PvP in order to help balance, they are declined by dev's due to not wanting skills to have different mechanisms (happened for a LONG time in WoW). I feel like different mechanisms in PvE and PvP would be a more simple idea to do than this, yet it is rarely done and typically avoided. All in all I would be in favor of the idea IF BW could figure out a way to make it completely balanced for both types of resource. I just don't trust them to do it lol.

Most of your ideas are quite good, watch a BH video or mess around on one just to experience the resource pool if you haven't yet. Unfortunately it's not like energy or rage in the fact that they are completely linear. The best way to explain it would be to say that BH/Agent's resource pool has DR's. The higher you go, the slower your regen becomes. Once you hit the very first DR you can't really afford to cast anymore. If all the resource pools were linear (such as in WoW) then the mechanic could work, and it could work very well. But no matter what the % of the increase was, it would effect the non-linear pools (non force users) more than the linear pools (force users).

Notice how I didn't use any values in my post? That was intentional. The mechanic itself cannot be efficiently balanced. The % is irrelevant. Now what you could do, would be a casting speed slow. But again this would only effect certain classes. It would be a unique skill set as it's not currently in this game.

Completely agree with this post. While the idea of a resource increase is one used in other games, it can't apply well to this one. I have a 50 Mercenary (Healer), 50 sentinel and 50 shadow. The resource increase would be manageable on both the sentinel and shadow, but against my Merc Healer it would be beyond broken due to the way the rate slows once you exceed 40 heat. Same thing would happen to agents/smugglers due to them having the same type of resource system. Personally on my shadow and against a shadow on my healer, I would much rather shadows have a dispellable MS identical to sentinels current one. The only problem I could see with that would be clairvoyant strike is spammed in the rotation so it would be very inefficient to actually dispel it, where the sentinel one is on a CD and worth dispelling. Prob just be best to make it a diff skill. Edit: with all that said, the rest of the ideas are all solid and feasible. I'm not sure if a passive evasion is the best course of action, but I don't exactly have a better suggestion.

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Not that I think we need one as I feel the mobility is good already. Huttball can be frustrating because we don't have one that can travel planes and we would probably have too much mobility on flat surfaces if we got one. But if we did I would really like it to be similar to this ability: http://www.torhead.com/ability/blj4l8c/shadow-strike Some Jedi Mobs in Correlia have it. Obviously the cooldown would have to be adjusted and what-not, but it's basically a "Shadow Step" for anyone that played WoW. Would be a very cool ability to have.

eh, cool intro. Only made it to about 2:30 before I turned it off. Having trouble with basic movements is just a deal breaker for me. First fight in illum he doesn't use his snare and constantly backpedals and get stuck on a rock when trying to get to a guy. JT 1 is way better from a pure gameplay perspective.

Chances are the person you are using your executing move on doesn't have 2.5k HP. It has to actually do 2.5k damage, not just show a number on your screen for 2.5k. Healing medals work the same way, over-healing doesn't count towards it. Can't really help you there, that's just how it is. Try to pick off a healer or range on the side in big fights if you want that medal and can't find a decent 1v1. Most PvPer's are too herp derp in this game to target either of those. Make sure to watch the resolve bar. It will make them immune to knockbacks as well, not just generalized CC. Also some Jugs will have a talent that makes them immune to all CC for 4 seconds after charging. If you see that someone is not getting CC'd right after they charge and they don't have a full resolve bar, just remember not to use one on them next time.

The reason you have no trouble with lvl 33 gear at lvl 40 vs a lvl 49 is because of how the bolster system works. If your stats don't exceed a certain level you get bolstered to those stats. You won't exceed them until you are level 50. Expertise is 100% needed. Apparently none of you played WoW in vanilla. In order to compete against raiders in PvP, you had to PvE, which ended up even more time consuming than PvPing to get gear (And no the High Warlord / Grand Marshal Gear wasn't good enough to compete with raiding gear, I myself was a HWL and once AQ came out you pretty much had to PvE). Without Expertise people would just PvP to get raid gear because it would be faster to get it that way. Raiders would complain that they hate PvP and that they shouldn't have to PvP to get the gear (happened many times in WoW). Expertise limits the stats so that it isn't ideal gear for raiding and also makes it so raiding gear isn't ideal for PvP. With all that said I do think that the damage bonus should be taken off of expertise so you don't get a double-whammy against an expertise geared player. That way it only reduces damage taken and not reduces taken + increases done. Healing buff should stay due to 30% PvP healing debuff. I'm sorry that you are having trouble against full Expertise geared players. I myself am not fully geared and can have the same trouble at times, but you have to remember the type of game you are playing. This game is an MMO. MMO's are purely based of progression, always have been and always will be. If you don't enjoy this, then maybe it is time to move on to another genre. TLDR; expertise is very much needed, just with a few tweaks.