I have experienced the same thing as you for quite some time and have always had the same question as to why there is such a big disconnect between the classes people overwhelmingly complain about on here (Marauder, PT, Ops) vs. what I see in-game which is Merc, Sorc, etc. dominating the PvP matches I play in. I think these are some of the reasons: 1. You mentioned your results come from 8v8 warzones. I also play in a PVE server (Harbinger) where there is no ranked so most of the time I'm playing warzones as well, and ranged classes have a massive advantage in those that is magnified due to the low level of playskill associated with reg matches in a PVE server. Ranged casters are the worst at 1v1 but the best at 8v8 simply because the chances of being able to freecast and deal 1m+ dmg without getting attacked much go up the more people there are in the match. However in 4v4 arenas these classes get picked on and your effectiveness goes way down once there are people actually attacking & interrupting you, making the melee classes OP in arenas by comparison. 2. The way OPs kill people is psychologically more demoralizing. When someone pops out of stealth and (it feels like) your character is stunned indefinitely while they kick you/stab you to death with a small knife in a game with lightsabers, flamethrowers, assault cannons, etc...it just feels more frustrating. This is part of the reason why OPs were heavily nerfed in the earlier stages of the game...supposedly there was data that showed that getting stunlocked by a team of OPs increased the chances of players unsubscribing from the game. 3. Ego. A lot of PVPers care about their ability to 1v1/deathmatch other people even if it has nothing to do with the objective of the warzone. Ranged classes are team/support players and when I'm playing one and I find myself in a 1v1 with a melee class my priority is to run away and get to where I can freely deal massive damage from the fringes while my teammates engage the enemies. Like you, I've gotten way better DPS, objectives, medals, and K/D ratio with my ranged toons in warzones than my melee ones simply by using this strategy. OFC those assassin-type classes will outperform in 1v1 duels, which is why people complain about them more, but that doesn't mean they're better in objective-based gameplay.

Thank you for this thread. I was at full conqueror working on getting obroan when I read this and took the advice of using 69/63/61 weapons and found those to be MASSIVE upgrades compared to conqueror. So for someone who is already in full conqueror for my non-weapon pieces, should I keep using them until I can upgrade to obroan or would replacing them with PVE gear now be an upgrade to conqueror already? If so, is there a formula for what's optimal? (like adding up to 193 for the weapons) or should I just wear blues?

The inquisitor hard stun ability is actually called Electrocute

No, not anymore. Although Bio is still BiS for PVE endgame due to being able to use medpack & adrenal on cooldown it is nearly worthless for endgame PVP. Can't use the adrenals, medpacks not worth using compared to the PVP consumable one, and blue stims (slightly better stats than the reusable) are available for around 7k credits which will last you for 2 hours each so the cost is negligible. Which leaves Cybertech as the only crew skill viable for endgame PvP due to being able to use grenades off cooldown which will run you out of money if you do that without reusables.

Lots of good information in this thread. One more thing I'd like to add for the OP. Don't worry about your placement on the leaderboard at the end of each match. The leaderboard is by default sorted by medals and since you are a combat sentinel and thus incapable of getting any protection or healing medals you will by default never be at the top of the leaderboard when sorted by medals (unless your team is really really bad or all sentinels/gunslingers). When I first started PvPing as a sentinel I thought I was doing something wrong as I was on the bottom half of the scoreboard perpetually unlike with my Jugg where I was at the top consistently...but it turns out it's due to the medal system being imbalanced against sentinels & gunslingers. Recently I've just started focusing on my damage dealt and specifically comparing that against damage taken (hover over your death count to see that). If I dealt more damage than I took, it makes me feel like I contributed positively to the team. That seems to have helped my gameplay a bit...makes me think first before charging headlong into 5 enemies and encourages me to focus fire enemies that my teammates are already attacking.

The Harbinger - PVE West Coast

I've been PVPing a lot with all 8 ACs recently (8v8 solo unranked queue only on PVE server) and I can't for the life of me figure out why there are so many complaints on the forums about how Marauders & Powertechs are overpowered and Sorcs & Mercs are underpowered. When I play those ranged DPS classes I literally feel god-like in 8v8, getting far more damage, objectives, healing, and far fewer deaths despite being far less experienced with these classes and having 10 times less APM than what's required for melee classes. This doesn't just seem to be me either...in 8v8 games the scoreboard shows time and time again that these ranged classes consistently dominate their melee counterparts. 8v8 PVP seems massively imbalanced towards ranged classes and I don't think it has anything to do with the classes themselves and their ability to 1v1 but due to the way that the game is played. Here are some observations I've made: 1. Large objective-based battles favor ranged. Typically 8v8 warzones are centered around a central objective(s) and both teams swarm towards that objective in order to capture it. The people in the middle constantly get killed by each other and by the ranged casters on either side while the ranged casters are relatively safe because in order for the other team to attack them they generally have to enter/get past the killing zone and because people generally play in such a way that minimizes their own deaths this rarely happens. 2. Getting healed is rare in 8v8 unranked soloqueue Usually there are 0-2 healers on an 8-person team and the chances of getting healed as melee are pretty low since healers often get marked as targets and spend a lot of time healing themselves, running away, or healing the other 6 group members. Of course when I get healed as a sentinel I feel pretty powerful...but it doesn't happen that often. As a sent/mara you're often faced with this dilemma after surviving a fight with low health. You can run away for miles until you finally drop out of combat and try to regenerate your health (this takes almost as long as just dying, respawning, and coming back), or you can go back into the fight and try to get in some damage before you die. As a sorc/merc you can simply run away for a bit and quickly heal yourself to full (not trolling here) before DPSing again. 3. People generally attack/focus fire whatever's closest to them As a melee class you need to be pretty close to someone in order to deal damage to them. This will instantly draw their focus and hence you will get attacked, stunned, cc'd way more than if you were killing them from range. It's hard not to notice people swinging lightsabers at you but if you stand far off and cast at people usually they look for whatever's closest to them and have a harder time noticing you. Also people tend to focus down melee a lot more because it's visually easier to see people fighting at melee range and therefore seize the opportunity to focus fire. I don't know if anyone else has experienced this, but playing a melee class I am slowed, cc'd, rooted, etc. for almost the entire time while not respawning or running to/away from an objective since people tend to cc whatever's in front of them. As a ranged caster I'm rarely cc'd and most of the time get to pump out DPS unhindered. 4. Running away is very effective for ranged, but not viable for melee As a ranged caster you can stand 30m away from the objective and just spam aoe attacks/nukes at everyone clumped around the objective. If one of them leaps to you and attacks you, you can simply stun/cc/pop DCD and kite towards your base. This again puts the melee attacker between a rock and a hard place. They can either chase you, bringing them even closer to your team's spawn point and farther from the objective, (which usually means they will die) or they can try to run/leap back towards the objective, in which case you can continue to just kill them from range with minimal downtime. 5. Respawn system favors ranged This is related to the previous points. As a ranged class you can stand 30m closer to your team's respawn point and run towards it whenever you're pressured which means that reinforcements are always at your back. Because people generally attack/focus whatever's in front of them if the first thing they will see coming out of the respawn zone is a melee attacker trying to duel you, they will all focus fire them down on their way to the objective. No matter how much I've tried on my sentinel (tried all 3 trees) to be effective at 8v8 warzones, it takes an incredible amount of effort/luck to even be at the middle of the pack while as a sorc/merc I feel like I can fall asleep at the keyboard and more often than not score near the top of the scoreboard and get far more kills/medals and far less deaths. I've yet to have enough experience with my vanguard to be able to comment on it, but although it seems to be a little better due to its ranged abilities so far it seems like it suffers from the same problems. I realize that these arguments don't apply as much to organized/competitive gameplay/arenas where these classes tend to get marked for focus fire, but I'm curious if anyone else has had similar experiences or tips to share with me on how to improve my melee gameplay in these situations.

Each day after I turn in my lvl 55 PVP daily (play 4 matches) I get another PVP level 54 mission (play 2 matches). Is this working as intended? I remember about a year ago when I last played this game this had something to do with the timing of when you hit the max level vs. when you turned in your PVP mission. If you did one before the other you got an extra daily mission forever. It seemed like a bug back then, but does anyone know if it still works like this? If so what's the order, I need to know so I make sure to do this for my other chars I tried searching for something but couldn't find anything on here...

Thanks for the helpful suggestions. I think I'll try rolling a sniper someday...it's the only AC I haven't rolled yet so maybe it's worth giving it a shot. As for Maras, the one I am on (carnage) has that force scream proc in the beginning of the tree and from guides I've read/watched it seems like it only gets more RNG dependent as you go up the tree. Maybe I'll try the Anni tree...it seems like it might fit my playstyle better. Thanks!

Clarification: I would like to be able to pay attention to the fight (i.e. see what moves my opponent is doing and decide in my head what moves to counter that) rather than having to constantly pay attention to my action bar to see what has procced/come off cooldown.

Thanks for the tip...I didn't know that you could do that. I'll definitely try it out although I'm afraid that in PvP where you have at least a dozen buffs/debuffs on you at all times it'll just lead to more staring at a bunch of squares on my screen instead of watching the actual fights. We'll see though.

I recently came back to this game after a long hiatus. I used to play a Veng. Jugg that had a very simple rotation system that allowed me to pull top DPS numbers just by following a simple set of rules that kept gameplay fun yet not repetitive. There was only one proc to manage which could be audibly detected as it made my character laugh, so I never had to look at my action bar and could enjoy watching the fights and interacting with boss/PVP mechanics while not having to constantly think about which buttons to press since there were more or less only 3 possible sequences for every 4.5 seconds. When I saw how sundering strike had been changed to give it a longer cooldown and the Veng. spec became more proc-based with the additional Vicious Throw proc, I was pretty heartbroken as the particular playstyle described above was one of the reasons why I enjoyed and stuck to being DPS Jugg even though I knew it was underpowered compared to a Marauder. I tried re-rolling a Mara but was discouraged to find that every spec in that AC also revolves around procs to generate resources and refresh key cooldowns with the main resource generator only coming off cooldown every 15s. Even as a level 20 going through a early-level flashpoint, I realized that I spent the entire FP staring at my action bar/resource bar to see which abilities I could use without ever looking at the mobs besides in peripheral. I know I will probably get a lot of flame for this but when I play games like Diablo III and League of Legends, the combat feels so much more enjoyable because there are only 4-5 abilities and you don't have to constantly watch for procs to see if you can use them, so the focus is on using the right abilities for the situation rather than having 30+ different keybinds and constantly watching for RNG procs to see which one to use. I feel that this is why those games have such broader appeal as well. I remember when I first started playing this game, it was quite enjoyable playing Sorc/Merc and only having a handful of buttons that could generate good DPS without having to constantly stress out about choosing from dozens of abilities that randomly become available every 1.5 seconds. However from what I hear those styles of play have been nerfed to the ground due to people complaining about how easy it is to just "spam" abilities. The progression in the game, the story/fight mechanics in PVE, and the objectives/tactics involved in PVP keep me plenty entertained...having infinite abilities and not being able to use them on demand just adds stress and I'd much rather be able to watch my character fighting the mob/player on the other end instead of staring at my bar all the time. Is this the direction the devs are taking this game on purpose? Are there any viable classes/specs left that have a relatively "simple" gameplay style? One where I don't have to constantly stare at my action bar/resource bar to be successful?

Came back after long hiatus (since 1.5) and can't stand how they've changed the Vengeance spec so I'm going to try giving Immortal/tanking a shot before re-rolling. I remember in the past PVP tanks would always use DPS gear because the defensive stats were seen as worthless against most abilities used in PVP. Is that still the case? From reading the forums it seems like more people are using tank gear for PVP tanking. Is tank gear now viable for PVP? If so what are the pros/cons vs. wearing DPS gear? Thanks!

From the situation you described it seems like your team being severly undergeared was the biggest contributing factor to your beatdown. Top ranked teams already have full WH and 14 augments per person and going against a team like that with mostly battlemaster is like going into EC HM with full Columi. Doesn't really matter how coordinated you are or what strategies you run. Just isn't going to happen.

Just updated the numbers and changed the wording on the 2nd option a bit to clarify it. So far I've been surprised by the number of people who are willing to stick with their currently underpowered toons. You'd think by the amount of anger on the forums in general everyone's either ragequitting or rerolling. Looking at the numbers I know a lot of you actually rerolled though. Don't be shy about it...why did you reroll and are you enjoying it despite having to regrind for everything?