I've noticed complaints levelled at duos (usually Tank/Healer) in PvP for being able to live in a 2v5 fight without any actual evidence of what that group of 5 was doing in a fight. I hear people complaining about class imbalance yet not addressing the issues with their own battle tactics. Here are a few reasons why that duo was successful: 1) They were working as a team with voice chat Premades will almost always beat a group of people who queued solo. There are a number of advantages that can't be ignored which do allow them to take on groups much larger then them: They have constant communication of the battlefield situation from the rest of their team. They can coordinate a 4 man attack on an important objective with ease. They are able to pick out a single target and focus an entire party's damage on that one person. They are able to co-ordinate crowd control abilities to ensure that someone who is CC'd, stays CC'd Tanks are able to rotate guard to those who are in need of it and are able to taunt the most immediate DPS threat to the party. Most importantly, they are able to regroup if things go wrong. Now do you see why a tank/healer duo can win a 2v5 fight? Firstly, that Healer will have guard up on him. That is a 30% damage reduction against that target from the start. Secondly, the duo can see who is causing the most damage and between them, CC that threat to take him out of the fight. Now the fight is 2v4. They would be able to CC someone else, now it's 2v3. Oh and the tank can taunt a threat to the healer so it's essentially down to 2v2. Third, that group of randoms won't be protecting their own healer. The group of randoms is currently crippled between the combined CC of the tank and healer as well as the damage reduction from taunt and guard. That healer will have no way of calling for help. Healer goes down, making it an easier fight for the duo. Finally, the duo will be able to coordinate stuns/interrupts on each target in turn that they pick out. Even if the duo can't kill the bigger group quickly, they can certainly hold to a stalemate until the rest of the Warfront group turns up. 2) Smart use of cooldowns This was already touched on above. A group working together with voice chat will be able to use their CDs at the most important times. A great example is my Sage. I can Force Lift someone out of the fight for a massive 8 seconds. However it also had a CD. What happens if another threat to me turns up? I can warn my premade that Force Lift is on CD of course! Now if someone else, say an Assassin or Operative pops on me, they are a call on Vent away (something simple like "Sin!" or "Op!" will let the party know what's up) from being CC'd and as Sins and OPs are a massive threat to teams due to their damage output, likely taunted by the tank and killed by me and my premade. Also there is another point to make. PvP Medipacks and Regular Medipacks do not share a CD. Someone about to die from pop both while their premade's healer charges a heal. That is two medipacks worth of healing plus the healer's big heal, which at 50 has a pretty high chance to crit. Combine this with +Crit/+Surge Adrenals and Trinkets and the numbers can go up even more when the healer's heal hits. Apply this to the 2v5 situation. The reason why their health goes up in huge spikes is the smart use of CDs on not only abilities but also healing items and CC abilities. 3) They can pick out high value targets and eliminate them efficiently As noted in point #1. A premade can pick out high value targets for focus fire. Now, random groups and bad players will always say "Kill the healers first" which is wrong. Why is this wrong? Simple, while a healer is definitely a valuable target, they aren't always the one that is the most important target. What is the most important target? Well it depends on the situation. It might be that Scoundrel/Operative that just stealthed up and set it's sights on your healer. It might be the Sage/Sorc that it locking down your group with CC. What about the Trooper/BH that is nuking the group with AoE? It might be the tank that's taunting and interrupting your best DPSer. What about the person trying to plant a bomb or capture a turret? What about the person the Huttball carrier is going to pass to? It may even be the healer that's keeping the party up. Whoever is the best target at the time to eliminate, a premade with voice chat can identify them, communicate it to the group and focus all their damage on that one target. 4) Premades like PvP It's a simple point but one people ignore. When you run a premade you know your group has specs that are useful for PvP. You know that they will have their PvP gear, you know that they have both PvP and Regular Medipacks, Adrenals, Stims. You will also know that they area team you can rely on and you all mesh together well. Now go into a Warfront solo. Now how to you know the above things about the team you're placed in? That Lv50 Sith Sorceror may look awesome but is he specced for PvP or PvE? What about his gear? He might still be wearing questing gear for all we know. Does he have his own healing items for if the healer can't heal them? He may burden the team by taking up the healer's resources if he's in quest greens and isn't carrying medipacks. Looking at the 2v5 again. That duo is likely in full PvP gear and has the consumables they need to be self sufficient enough for the times when heals have to stop for a few moments. Also consider this: 30% Expertise Rating 30% Incoming damage reduction from guard 30% Incoming damage reduction from guard No that's not 90% DR since percentages don't stack that way, it's multiplicative so it's actually closer to 51%. Regardless, someone is hitting the healer in that duo for half his/her normal damage while most of the rest of that group is probably CC'd or isn't geared to threaten the healer much. As much as I hate it when people say it but perhaps it is a learn to play issue with a number of people. I've seen so many people charging in as though that are Rambo, dying and then loudly complaining in the Ops chat. Then you also get the backseat generals who spam the Ops chat with rather useless orders that get ignored while also contributing little to the group himself, then complains when it all inevitably hits the fan. Basically the way is simply: play smarter, stop trying to be a hero and stop forcing the rest of the Warfront to carry you because you're too concerned about your e-peen to work as a team. This isn't Halo or MW3 set to Free for All, this is a team game.

I did this with a Guardian friend on my Scoundrel, it was hilarious and proves that a coordinated team will always beat a team of randoms. Also did the same thing with said friend on my Sage that was probably more hilarious because at one point I had 3 people on me when they didn't even think of punting me out of guard range. Basically it was a case of them being too stupid to punt me out of guard range, combined with them not protecting their Sorc and coordinated CC over vent so that we were only having to fight 2 people from that group at a time at any one time. One thing you need to remember is that they might have been double medipacking. PvP medipacks and regular Medipacks share separate CDs so combining one with a heal gives insane spike healing. Scoundrels/Operaatives are probably the best PvP healers in the game due to their class mechanics also giving some crazy spike healing on "OHSHI-" moments. The healer might also have been using +Crit Adrenals/Trinkets to boost the power of Crit Heals. SC/OPs also have quite a few instant cast heals (and so they can't be interrupted). Also never underestimate the power of vent/ts. A group that can coordinate it's CC and damage has a massive advantage over a bunch of randoms running off to fight their own targets and no way of telling the group who they CC'd

There are a couple of things here they tell me that you never played WAR: 1) The "Universal CC breaker" in WAR had a 5 minute CD and was rarely worth speccing for due to Odjira and point #3 2) Only Tanks and MDPS had access to a snare/root breaker. The Ranged classes, AKA the classes that NEED to break movement impairing CC to be able to kite, did not have one 3) Being CC'd would make you immune to it for 20 Seconds Now if you said that Kiting in this game is worse than WAR (which was killed by Bioware when they took over thus making all classes but the MDPS, Tanks and WP/DoK worthless), I wouldn't be calling BS. Kiting in this game will just get you killed nine times out of ten. You need to stop exposing yourself to focus fire. Simple as. My survivability as a Sage skyrockets if I stop drawing attention to myself and let the other side focus on the jumpy guys with Lightsabres or that huge guy sitting next to me with guard on me and an Assault Cannon. But the thing is is that if they then decide to go for me, they STILL have to deal with the attention they just drew to themselves from the rest of my premade. IA/SM especially are incredibly high up on any premade's "Kill it now!" list because of the insane burst damage they can put out when DPS specced and that a heal specced IA/SM can put out some very nice group healing. PvP in this game is unforgiving and always favours the side that can throw more bodies at a given objective, AKA zerg tactics. Thankfully zerg tactics are easily countered with an organised group. Get a guild, get into a premade and get on Vent. You will be surprised as to how effective that is.

Warhammer Online. Mostly due to melee classes and anti-kite mechanics being so absurdly broken in that game, anything not a tank or guarded Warrior Priest, Disciple of Khaine or Marauder gets facerolled in 2 GCDs.

Been getting settled into PvP in the game and found some friends to group with and Lv50 Sages to give me pointers. There's a few things I would love to see added to the game to make the lives of healers better. 1) Addition of a Detaunt Ability Sages/Sorcs are squishy. An Unguarded Sage/Sorc is going to go down fast. I have noticed that it is difficult to keep up with the damage of some classes such as the Agent/Scoundrel or Warrior/Knight. Being able to fire off a detaunt would be a lifesaver for if things get hairy and I would gladly trade in some of my CC for a detaunt. 2) Improved Raid Frames While the raid frames aren't bad, there is room for improvement. They often don't update in real time which means that I'm having to constantly divert my attention to check people's overhead HP bars, then finding their names in the raid frame. They also do not tell you if there is a cleansable debuff on an allied target and I have often left a nasty debuff on party members because I didn't know they were on there. 3) Addition of Sub-targettting Most MMOs will show the target of your target when you have them selected. This is always helpful as it makes throwing out CC/Debuffs/Damage while healing less sterssful. Currently if I want to CC someone charging down someone I'm healing I have to target the person I'm CCing, fire the CC and then spend a while finding the old target in the raid frames v

Before I start, this is not a rant thread or a whine thread. While I do enjoy the game, I find solo content mind-numbingly boring and TOR is no different. Once you strip away the fancy cutscene conversations (Which FFXI did first nearly a decade ago), the questing is really no different when any other MMO; and let's face it, questing is just a masked form of grinding. I play an MMO to play with other people; if I wanted to play alone I would just load up KOTOR or Mass Effect. Basically this means the content I like the most in MMOs is the group content: Dungeons, Raiding, PvP Warfronts and the like. One thing that has disappointed me so far in the game is the lack of group content as you level. Most of it can be done solo and to be honest, it's easier that way as it saves getting into arguments with kids who whine at you for picking the Light Side option in the conversations. Basically this leaves PvP for my group content of choice while levelling. I play healers on MMOs and I really enjoy it and I was happy to see that the Jedi got a healing class that behaved quite similar to the Archmage in Warhammer Online, something that also made me happy. As I also enjoy Roleplaying, I made my Jedi Sage on The Progenitor EU and have been having fun meeting fellow RPers but roleplaying does not progress your character mechanically. However I'm just not enjoying it at all for the following reason: 1) Tanks - Basically. People don't protect their healers. At all. The second the Imps see I'm heal spec I get marked and focus fired for the rest of the Warfront. I do have tank friends but not many of them like PvP which means I'm forced to go solo half of the time. Trying to get someone to guard and protect you in PvP seems to be a losing battle. It's even worse because people then blame you for losses because you couldn't heal them. Which brings me to... 2) Kiting - Just like in Warhammer Online after Bioware took over: Kiting in this game is impossible and will just get you killed. This is also related to point 1 due to the lack of Tanks in PvP. Basically if a melee jumps me I'm helpless. Sure I can CC them and run but CC breakers have a very short CD and his ranged friends can still gun me down as I kite anyway. But this leads to another problem: I can't patch myself up on the move. Sages don't get a reliable method of that. Force Armour + Rejuvenate can only get you so far. Also I can't actively pressure someone chasing me as I have no easily spammable ability usable while on the move. All of the other RDPS classes except for the Sorc can spam a ranged attack on the move and the melee classes also have gap closers (or they can use the Take Cover exploit if they're an Agent or Smuggler) on a fairly short CD. Basically someone being kited by me has no reason at all to give up the chase, especially if they're an RDPS class. 3) Crowd Control - Basically the situation with CC is insane. It's simple to keep someone completely out of the fight for a considerable amount of time with co-ordination (something that Happens to healers nearly constantly). But at the same time, the amount of CC flying around makes it so the only time you see an empty resolve bar is when someone just respawned. The CC in this game is a paradox: it's both incredibly powerful but also incredibly useless at the same time. 4) Lack of mobility - Directly related to point 2. Sages have a distinctive lack of mobility, made worse but how ineffective kiting actually is. Simply put: I can't heal while the group is on the move and the nature of TOR PvP means that there are very few moments where I am actually standing still. Even when battles are going on I'm constantly shifting and repositioning myself in response to the battle so that DPS classes can't easily catch me out. This obviously leaves me and my team at a major disadvantage as all someone needs to do to disrupt my healing is force me to move. As I am a class that wears cloth armour, it is always in my best interest to pre-kite and keep myself at a distance from the battle. Many good players in TOR realise that you don't need to kill a Sage/Heal spec Sorc to stop their heals: you only need to harass them, force them to move or die or keep luring the frontlines into moving forwards to force the Sage to move. 5) The Game seemed balanced for 1vs1 and not Group vs Group I bolded that for a reason. Basically most MMOs don't bother to balance classes for 1v1 fights. They are very rare outside of duels and in a team game, balancing for 1v1 tends to undermine the whole "working together" thing. There are four points I want to bring up here: First: I can easily beat any other class 1vs1. The problem is that this encourages people to run off alone to duel people instead of fighting for the objectives. Second: the majority of fights aren't determined by skill or planning. They are determined by who has the ability to coordinate more bodies to throw at an objective. I've seen very little reason to ever split up the group in a Warfront. I've seen them turned around by a simple matter of one side splitting up, letting the other team to just zerg the objective and win. The third point I bring up is that healing is also balanced for 1v1. My healing barely undoes the damage of a single player, maybe two on a well geared and specced tank. The simplest way of countering a healer is to simply have someone else attack a healed target, or just start Bombing so that there's no way the healer can keep up with all the damage. This makes healing useless as soon as these two groups emerge: 1) Assist trains that nuke one person at a time 2) Trooper/BH Bomb groups Guess which groups all the premades are running? It's Warhammer Online all over again. Finally: Because the game is balanced around 1v1 for PvP, whoever has the better gear tends to win. Again. I'm not complaining about the game. I'm just explaining why I'm concerned about my class and the game's PvP.