When it comes to healers it works like this: First question is: are there consistently pops with tanks or not? If there are tanks: Operative and Merc are strongest, Sorc is weakest (but still viable). If there are no tanks you need facecheck if you as a healer are generally focus target, or CC target. If you're focus target: Merc is strongest, Sorc is good, Operative is weakest. If you're CC target: Sorc is strongest by far (because 2 CC breakers), Merc and Operative only have 1 CC breaker. I would still say that Merc is overall stronger than Operative there, because Merc has tools like Hydraulic Overdrive and knockback. While Operative has the highest HPS potential, most of the time in Healer/DPS games only 1 target will be damaged at a time, negating that factor. In general Operative is considered to be harder to play than Sorc and Merc, or it will at least take a lot more practise in regs before you can take it into Ranked. So as a beginner or returning player Merc is probably the way to go right now, but Sorc is not far off.

DM is generally considered to be the most active, as it pops every day throughout the season. SF seems very active too, although apparently last season there was a time of a few weeks/months where it wouldn't pop on some days. SS seems to rely on fleet advertisement or a streamer to keep going. Cheating: It's always the same known people, and they are always a minority, sometimes they get banned fairly quickly, sometimes they are around for weeks or months. But there definitely have been bans last season that improved the queue experience a lot. With patch 6.1.4 next week we will see a return of mats to 4s, so that mode probably becomes more active and therefore the Ranked scene will change a little, in both solo and 4s, but we have yet to see how exactly. There will also be a change to Guard on DPS specs. Meta: for Tanks it's Jugg, for Heals and DPS everything is playable. PT deletes people, but still dies cause no vanish or phasewalk. Sniper and Mara are not FOTM anymore, and both struggle against PT damage, but both still have a strong toolkit to shine. Sorc, Oper and Sin are strong, Merc is alright, Jugg probably a bit weak but not useless.

Some people also get globalled just because they forgot to put in 1 Armoring

While I agree that the theorycrafting discord is a great source for reliable information and can highly recommend to join it, it's open for anyone in the end so you shouldn't take everything for granted that anybody says. That applies even more to these forums though. Specifically on topic of Armor Pen, of which effectiveness is dependent on your target's armor (raid boss, dummy, enemy player, ..), there is no easy answer. I remember an excel sheet that tried to get as close as possible to one, where you could modify the target's armor value to see the simulation results for any DPS spec. So PvPers could try to put in Light/Medium/Heavy Armor values and see what they get. However, these results were still based on PvE dummy rotations with 100% uptime (I think). People generally believe in what works for them, and rarely do the actual math. That's fine, I do that too. But atleast don't pretend that you have the one final confirmed answer.

I share that opinion and have said similar things over the years. Game doesn't get younger though. You can have a perfect environment but people will still quit playing and move on to different games after a while. Yet the changes are good and Devs are certainly listening at this point.

Why do people always come to this conclusion? If the mode is **** in your eyes, don't play it. If I think The Ravagers is a **** operation, I don't run it. But I don't ask for it being deleted, why would I If I think SWTOR is a **** game, I don't play it. Plenty other games around that you can get addicted of. Do I ask for SWTOR being deleted? ofc not There is more to this I feel like. You guys are just making yourself clowns with these posts.

With these posts the respective posters essentially exposed themselves as not having healed in Ranked in minimum 2 years, probably longer and/or haven't been in touch with people healing in Ranked. I don't why you would even post on a topic when you know that you have no clue and/or aren't up to date. @topic: Climbing as healer has become very hard, because as the higher rated healer you generally get the lower rated Tank/DPS (because matchmaking equalizes the ELO of teams). The deciding factor in healer games is less your HPS than the DCD usage of the focussed DPS player, how good your whole team can peel and CC the enemy healer. Higher rated DPS players are usually better at providing these mentioned factors, so your winrate as higher rated healer (that gets lower rated DPS) is more likely to go down than up. I think it's reasonable to say that climbing from 1400+ as a healer is almost impossible unless you queue snipe healers that are so much worse than yourself that you can reliably carry bad DPS against him, or there are similar high rated healers queueing, so that in the long run you both equally profit/get fu**ed by the DPS lottery. additional note: Yes ofc, the most deciding factor in healer games is double offguard vs. single/no guard. But even then, let's assume PT players are above average rated compared to the field, would mean the lower rated healer is more likely to get more PTs, lowering the winrate of the higher rated healer even more.

Not updating again. Last Update was on August 12, 2020.

I prefer a 1300 elo noob in top 96 over a multi-season cheater any time

In various "Top 10 MMORPG" videos and articles SWTOR actually still ranks decently high, even re-overtaking some of the later released asian MMOs. Despite all the problems and mismanagement throughout the years you can see the solid core that a true triple AAA title can rely on, and that the MMO market is still WoW > everything else. SWTOR doesn't need to hide behind GW2, ESO or FFIXV at all, there is just a lot of unused potential, especially in terms of marketing. For example I have never seen a sponsored SWTOR stream or YouTube video. The other mentioned games do that with every expansion or raid release it feels like.

looks like it's my pleasure to post the first controversial list here: (only 4dps matches!) - arsenal merc - fury mara - IO merc - concealment op - lightning sorc - deception sin - AP PT - lethality op - MM sniper - veng jugg - rage jugg - virulence sniper - anni mara - carnage mara - pyro PT - engi sniper - madness sorc - hatred sin

this whole thread is pointless, cause the first 3 posters probably only played 5 battlegrounds on one spec with bad utilities, bad gear and generally no clue. I hope I'm wrong, but it reads like that.

PvP at 75 in general is a lot more about defensives and mobility than you are probably expecting right now. Feel free to try out all 3 specs in regs and especially ask other people for good utilities and the correct gear stats. Once you got some practise on all the specs you will feel the difference between having a 6s stun immunity or not, and having Zealous Leap or not. That's why, like mentioned earlier, Fury is the best spec for Ranked and the go-to-spec for PvP in general. Nothing wrong with the other ones though, if you enjoy them, you will enjoy them in regs too.

lmao, how random is this comment

+1. Variety: Every 4 dps game plays out differently, even if it's the same or similar players multiple times, the map and class setups, and even a team's strategy (kill order, positioning) changes a round completely. Excitement: fast paced, people die generally after their breaker is out. the chasing/healing part can be quite annoying, especially since not only mara can do it, but any class can get some distance and threaten the outfight-healing. But apart from that, 4 dps games often lead to 2v2s or 1v1s, which is generally exciting for the players participating, with the rewarding experience of the better players winning. But it's also exciting for the dead players to watch, since they are often the newer players (focussed first) that can learn new approaches to these 2v2s/1v1s from the usually more veteran players.

Yes, Defense Chance is always 0 while stunned, no matter if the original value was 50% (Saber Ward, Deflection) or 200% (Evasion).

It was always 70% since PTS one year ago. The only change is all attack types --> force/tech.

Since they "nerfed" the first 10-30 matches before last season anyway this is a good change overall imo.

Dude are you mental? 1-2 is a sample size of 3 ranked games. First of all, people that draw conclusions out of such small sample sizes generally have no clue what they‘re talking about. Second, when doing 3 matches within an hour on the same server it’s very likely that all 3 matches were the same game type (I‘m assuming 4 dps here) and the same or atleast similar classes/players. Yes, sometimes as a Jugg or PT in 4 dps games you are without any discussion the focus target that will get raped by 3 or all 4 enemy dps and you will also die, relying on your team to finish the job. This can feel like you aren‘t a factor, but you absolutely are. There is always something you could’ve done better, especially when it comes to less obvious things like positioning, where you let them open on and when (spawn camping). And well, in all other game types jugg can absolutely carry. Doesn’t make it a top tier class for solo ranked overall, but the class is definitely not dead.

Yep. Many people, especially "veterans", tend to be nostalgic about how much more meaningful rating in early seasons was. But in reality there was no cross faction for solo ranked, and there was also a lot more servers (= a lot more dead servers to wintrade on). People were getting top3s in TR for 20 wins or less all the time, especially Republic ones. Some even argue that reaching silver or gold (= enough for furious weapons and armor set) were easier to achieve than in recent seasons.

You mean more time to wintrade? No thanks.

only 1 question: why skip season 3?

If so, I apologize. I meant solo ranked arenas.

This is wrong. Operative was always strong and solid playable, but never the best class. It's easy to get that impression just because they don't get focussed 1st usually. In 4.0 I believe the "king" was Sorc dps, then in 5.0 it was Merc/Sniper/Mara, later Lightning Sorc joined the party, and in 6.0 start it was Sin, with Oper and Mara close behind, and now in 6.1 it's Merc and Mara again. Play Ranked before you spread fake news. Thanks.

I was playing some Blade&Soul around 2 years ago, specifically 1v1 Ranked arenas. Gear is irrelevant in those, it‘s perfectly bolstered, even low level can participate. The ELO system is similar to SWTOR‘s, but because it‘s 1v1 you don‘t have the issue of stacked teams vs. non-stacked, and the matchmaker can give you an appropriate opponent more easily. Also you can‘t drop below your starting rating (1300 iirc). However, the population in the game seemed similar to SWTOR‘s (that was 2018, now B&S is probably in a worse state than SWTOR). When I watched 1v1 Ranked streams people seemed to know each other and high rated players would often face the same opponent over and over again, because these 2 were the only ones queueing with let‘s say 1900+. And to the cheating part: I remember a streamer going through leaderboards (which can be viewed ingame there) and talk about who is wintrading and who is not. If that person didn’t talk rubbish, it was a serious issue in that game too. Also, there seemed to be more bots on the ladder (mostly on the Summoner class iirc) which apparently can beat real players, while bots in SWTOR queueing Ranked are spotted easily and usually a meme.