I don't care that much as long as it has a very different feel in terms of the climate and architecture than the planets we have already.

Actually, there is something Bioware could do. Besides LFG tools, they could increase the communication tools available in-game and here on the forums for guild leaders, as well as just other players. It isn't that easy to find threads of guilds recruiting within the Server Forums. The other thing is in game, we get the smallest boxes for messages of the day. It would be nice to have a page that is viewable by everyone where the leader could write up some basic information aobut the guild's policies, and whether it is reruiting or not. So instead of having to spam LFG as a recruiting tool,, players could maybe access some kind of "guild database" like the GTN is a database of items, where players could get a list of guilds on the server with basic facts (like how many players, a mission statement for focus (levelling, pve ops, pvp, everything), maybe even a short statement of activity times, and needed classes/crafts or something.

Too many players think PVP in warzones is about kills as if it were a duel, instead of of seeing the larger game. Healing is defensive--and any healer putting that much time and effort into keeping themselves alive, isn't putting much into killing off your side or taking an objective. If they are on defense, maybe they can stop your caps til reinforcements arrive--but will be much weaker at taking nodes. The problem is, DPS want to just treat healers as squishy, low dps speedbumps that can be taken out of a fight fast, rather than having to think strategically about how to fight them. I think many players aren't actually good at using interrupts, because even if they do interrupt, they don't always use it on the right ability at the right time. They will in PVE encounters for example, use an interrupt on a low damage attack then it is not up for the high damage attack. And that translates too for healing.

What I found fun: New Pets Quests that players of multiple levels were in the same area doing --so you could interact for once with guildies lower down the level curve the incentive to take down world bosses (though they should not be tauntable by a player who is not in the group that tagged the boss--especially if said player then repeatedly drags the boss to an evade/reset point) the newscasts and general sense of "something is happening" The continued story and flavor from Taris, Kaon and Lost Island What I did not: Having to spend money on vaccine at lower levels when money is tight Getting flagged involuntarily for PVP on a PVE server by someone of the opposing faction exploding with the virus while you were standing around using the vendor for the event Having the vaccine not last through death (and getting infected repeatedly in PVP warzones) Having only one vendor for both factions on a PVE server--might be ok if there were a vendor with exclusively expertise stat items that the factions share, but don't force PvP on those who don't want it the short time frame, daily quest progression that penalized players who can only play weekends lack of notice of the event start and end date--in game email is better for many players or launcher messages One thing they could have done is make quests you could do for experience to get vaccinated if you were low level, or you could pay the 2k by the time that is a trivial amount of credits to earn. Players want to have control in the game, so anytime you take that away, it is less fun. Give people options, challenges and incentive to work together (especially across levels) with these events. For example, you could have an event of some kind of swoop relay race where the bikes are supplied by the game, so even a level 30 could particpate.

Griefing should be intentional. A lot of players are pretty casual, and may not even realize there is a vaccine on offer or have even known there was an event--if you are the sort to log in once a week for a few hours for example. There probably are players who are deliberately keeping it alive--but if you tell everyone you know to vaccine it up, it should die down soon enough. I still have stacks left over from the event of the vaccine, and I haven't had anyone refuse to use it when I traded it to them. Maybe if you find someone who does refuse--then you can get upset at a griefer.

When you have group mates dueling, and you start to try to heal them.

I agree with this. Sometimes the problem with these " heroes," is that they aren't great at playing in groups. They expect everyone to adjust to their tactics but never communicate what those are. They also don't give enough credit to the enemy. They just assume that you lose because you are bad, and if you were good, you would win. Well, sometimes the enemy is just as smart, plus they also have a better mix of classes and gear. Things that make groups work better in PVE apply to the PVP zones--you don't want too much or too little healing and tanking, you want to coordinate attacks and CC based on the abilities of those in the group, and you want a leader to communicate a basic plan of attack, with the ability to adjust on the fly through communication should something unexpected happen. If you ever PVE pug, you know it's likely to be a bit of a chaotic mess, and the same is true for PVP. Sometimes good enough players can adjust to each other, but some classes and players compliment each other better. I hope they bring in the ranked warzones sooner--it will weed out a lot of these "heroes".

Cleaning a kitchen as an MMO....assign point values to the tasks, gear up with better sponges and cleaners, and grind your way to a clean kitchen....surely better than epic loot. And healthier.

This is my biggest problem with the game. It is, for the average gamer, much harder to line your schedule up with 7 others of the right classes than with 3. Yet most players are either not geared up enough to do the hard modes, or they are over-geared for them because of OPS, and now they have no incentive to run them. We need some daily, PVE repeatable group content that feels challenging, varied and dynamic, and provides steady but slow loot progression. That is why many people who normally do not PVP are doing it in this game--there is nothing else, and they otherwise like the game's setting and mechanics. But it feels too isolating because we frequently have level 50's with no where to group up and play together that provides that ongoing sense of progression. It's either run an instance where nothing drops that anyone needs (except for fluff, maybe) or realize you don't have enough people (or enough geared people) to run the next tier of content. There is a big gap in the middle.

If Bioware wants people to do the flashpoints more, they will have to fix a lot of things in the game, to make it more like the PVP system. You queue up, know your time commitment, and have a fairly simple goal to accomplish as a team that doesn't necessarily require a fixed mix of classes. When its over, you are put back where you were and can go on your way. And most of all--everyone is working towards a goal of progression and gear that made it worth everyone's time even if you failed, but even more worth it if you win. They already have "heroics" in the game, but the travel time/communication issues kind of make it hard for people to get together. Once people are grouping in PVE more regularly for the "heroics", it becomes easier to get to know other players for trying the more traditional, longer style flashpoints they already have in the game. But it feels to me that unless you were lucky enough to roll on a populated server or were levelling with a rush of other players, you're off by yourself and no one trusts each other to even try half the content that is out there. People re-rolling aren't always as motivated to repeat every flashpoint as well, so Bioware may have overestimated the degree to which different storylines and classes encourage replay of group content in PVE.

When you calculated this, were you taking into account talents for and the relative value of alacrity, crit and power for the two classes? In another thread, you mentioned that commandos have more HPS per person (you were comparing both to Sages, who are highest, but commandos were roughly half as good, scoundrels 1/3). Now maybe, the difference is not as big on a single target, if the fight is long enough, and the incomming rate of damage is slow enough for all the heals to land, be useful and not be overwritten. The trouble is, burst is king in this game right now--and with skillful play, front-loaded healing classes don't have problems with the few endurance fights that people encounter. But skillful play can only increase a class's burst so much--and cannot increase and scale the way 10% (yes, I know it is being nerfed to 5) migitation can. You mentioned also, that Scoundrels have to keep up hots to help proc UH--it's almost like we have to overheal by design, which somewhat can undercut our actual useful healing. Then there's this--perception is important, as very few players sit there and think about the differences between the classes, and the encounters, and even fewer adjust how they play for how the other classes play. So all they have to go on when judging your performance as a healer is their perception of how close to dying they were or how much output you had on a meter. And meters, and maybe you will agree with me, are misleading because they don't measure "useful" healing. Even if corrected for "effective healing" as heals less overheals, it's still missing whether a particular heal was needed to ensure enough life to take the next rounds of damage or was serving some other purpose like generating procs to do more heals, or part of a "dumb healing" AOE, or whatever. The game runs on numbers, but numbers can mislead out of context, and players will be somewhat biased in how they interpet things. They tend to attribute far more to "player skill" than they do gear, encounter design, class skill.

Yes! I think expecting healers to heal, and only heal, should be left in old-school PVE MMO dungeons, and definitely not part of PVP. I do like healing, but I see my role more as "defense" than just mindlessly filling up life bars for the heck of it--or for some big number on the healing meters. Even in PVE, actually, I'd rather heal fewer people and keep them alive, or completing objectives (or help myself), than just spam or snipe heal wherever I can , just to get my output numbers to look larger. But what a lot of healers won't tell you is, they don't care about team play either--they just want to drop some big numbers (perhaps the same as they would playing a DPS toon).

I kind of feel it forces me to plan ahead, actually, because I have to make strategic use of the cooldowns, and even DS when I can on some fights in order to keep my energy in the safe zone for as long as I can. So I used to just think "is the heal needed" but now I kind of think " how cheap is the heal and how necessary is it?" The cheaper it is (b/c my energy is high) the less "necessary" it needs to be. I put necessary in quotes there, because I feel part of the Scoundrel/Ops healing style involves keeping UH/TA proc'd, and healing more frequently, rather than having long pauses while damage accumulates and your resources regenerate.

It is hard to truly track a healer's real effectiveness. As you say, what we want is preventable deaths avoided, but not all preventable deaths are equal in terms of strategy. Maybe I let 3 people die so I can heal the ball carrier--or maybe I do this so I can get an attack off on someone tapping a door. Or maybe the person I 'Let" die was standing in area damage, and I had to triage because I only have so many resources available to me at any time. As a Scoundrel, I actually heal people below 25% a lot, since I have an ability that is instant and free if the target is below 30%. Are you suggesting that it is always pointless to heal targets this low, or always a sign you are helping "avoid" death in such cases? It is neither. Some of the time I can keep someone up long enough for them to kill the thing attacking them, cross the goal line, or escape, or even, receive a larger heal from another player winding up a big heal--whatever it is, other times, that low health target just takes exactly one GCD longer to die and does nothing in that time. I do appreciate tanks, and agree it is often not said enough--but I also appreciate good DPS and that is not said enough. DPS who know how to pick the most effective target to kill, to use their defensive abilities. DPS who do not expect me to always be perfect, becasue they realize, they too make mistakes. Scoreboards can undercut good team play, but then again, some people are more into competitive play than cooperative, so they want to see that they 'beat" someone on something and would be unhappy without a nice big scoreboard to point out how much better they are than everyone else.

I don't see this as being difficult or impractical at all. People ask "how long" something is all the time-and right now players have to guess based on personal experience. The developers, I'm sure, have the kind of information this poster is asking to know, because if the developers did not have this information, then how did they know how to tune the encounters? You think they just randomly threw a level number on it, and rolled the dice as to how many enemies to put in the encounter? Yes, some groups will take longer*, some shorter, but there is a target time, and they could add some padding to that, then add this information in the mission logs. Some of you may have hours and hours to play the game, but I know plenty of people who do not, at least not every time they play (for example, they have three hours between classes or a 40 minute lunch break at work, or half an hour until bedtime). One thing that makes instanced pvp a fun grouping event is that games are timed, though they can end faster, there is a limit at the uppper end. Why should this not be the case for group PVE? Finally, to the peple saying that casual can mean short on time as well as attitude to the game--as long as everyone you play with is having fun playing with your level of skill, then you are not a "bad" player. Of course, there are plenty of "hardcore" people who would NOT have fun being grouped with someone unless that player has the perfect gear, plays with the same strategy as they do (which may not be the only one, but they'll assume anyone who doesn't do things their way is stupid and they'll say so). I think such players are "bad"even if they are not casual. Bad, because they are not fun to have in the group. Of course, I'd also prefer to group with someone who does sort of know what to do without triggering a wipefest, but sometimes that's how players learn and get better.

This is so true. Even people who usually are appreciative of me helping as a healer are complaining they "don't need" healers in PVP and can't wait for the changes. Well, go ahead and spend more time waiting behind a force field, because if fights are faster, that is what it will mean.

YES! I like the enrage timers as a concept--force "dps" to worry about the "s" part of their role, but the fact that most enrages involve a sudden increase in damage results in too many players who point the finger at the healer. More than once I"ve joined a group who complained "our last healer was terrible", only to have what I presume was the same result--the group was wiping after hitting the timer. But another problem with the timers, is that they put too much emphasis on the damage output and undercut the value of utility skills, and of course, different classes excel at different things, usually at the expense of damage. For example, with your shrinking room (trash compactor of course!), maybe there could be droids that are causing the room to shrink, but of course, you cannot get out of the room until you do enough damage to a door. Now you have the choice, you can kill the droids, but that slows down how fast you are breaking open the door, and of course, a replacement droid will come if the sensors detect the droid is not in the room. In another game there was a similar fight to this, but there was no time limit at all, so you had as long as you wanted to burn down a boss that summoned adds that healed it, but it woudl only summon more adds if the existing ones were dead (so there was a point to cc the adds if you had a class that could, but in that game there was a clear trade off that those classes would do less damage to the boss). So if you had a utility class you cc'd, if you didn't, you killed. But either strategy worked, and so groups didn't have to exclude entire classes from the encounter just because they didn't have this skill, or weren't able to put out this much single target damage in 2 minutes.

I see what you mean, but again, there's a bit of grass is greener to what you're saying. Stealth doesn't really help heal, and a battle rez is nice, but situational--better to not NEED that in the first place...especially if its your lower healing output that causes it to be needed. What I think is happening is that they are not sure how to quantify the utility skills they created for Sage/Sorc, and are perhaps over-valuing the "defensive utility" of the heavier armor classes, as well as abilities like stealth, or the ability to deal damage at range, versus in melee. It's not just the developers either--players frequently create strategies that minimize the useufulnesss of these things, even when they might actually be useful. Take a look at the tank forums--there's a few posts where they compalin about "stupid" healers who want to be in melee range...even though on many fights, there's actually no more damage there, then not. Now granted, in OPS situations quite often melee range IS bad, but the point is, people get used to making up strategy that fits ONE set of healing tools, and then the classes without that are out of luck, so any differences in healing out put matter all the more.

It makes me wonder--was this ability different in Beta, and then nerfed to its current state?

I disagree with this a little. In other games, healers "manage resources", by alternating periods of activity and rest, as opposed to nothing but a game of maxing HPS and actions per GCD's. Usually healing is about triage, who to heal, how much, and most important, when, because you only need enough health to survive the encounter. But when people focus too much on healing meters (conveniently displayed at the end of warzone matches), people tend to start thinking of performance the wrong way. Imagine, for example, a group with 4 players with 3500 health. You have a choice to heal all 4 players for 1000 health each or one player for 3000. If you only care about maximizing HPS, you choose the area heal. Thing is, if 3000 health gone means the single player will die on the next hit, and of course assuming the others wouldn't die, you may have chosen to do the wrong thing, thinking like DPS*, not like a healer. Of course, sometimes it is better to save the group than one person who's sure to die anyway. Healing isn't as binary a choice as some make it out--yes, players either live or they die, but sometimes how that affects the strategic objective of the group depends on which player and when. If things are in general tuned to require nothing but non-stop healing whack-a-mole, to never give you such choices to rest and triage, then I think they are tuned incorrectly. I haven't done NMM's, so I can believe you if you say the tuning is at that level, but I have done nighmarish HMs (featuring the sort of people who inspire threads like "50 things your healer won't tell you"). There's generally some room to rest, wouldn't swear its 2 to 3 GCD's, but I know resting plays a role. *off topic, but I do realize DPS is not so simplistic either--sometimes it is better to take out a single target, than mazixmize your total damage per atatck. Say, killing a healer, rather than throwing down a big area attack that puts up fat numbers, but doesn't end up killing any of the enemies. TLDR: Healing should never be just about maxizming HPS per GCD's. If it is designed to be that way, the design is wrong. Rest should form part of the strategy, because that allows players time to think about which targets to heal, and for how much.

The funny thing here is, tanks are needed just as much as healers. So if you aren't getting groups, it may not be all that easier to find one on a healer anyway. It can be tough to get 3 other people willing to do something you want, at the exact times of the day you want to do it. Sometimes it helps to join a guild, but Pug or guild, ultimately, the "abuse" on healers often comes from the fact that other players simply don't know enough about the game, their characters and the encounters to realize what a healer (or the other classes)can /cannot do. After all, its easy to think "if only the healer could have kept up!" rather than, oh, we used the wrong strategy on this fight. I think it definitely helps to be able to break fights down. As you've played a tank, you hopefully got used to recognizing the different patterns of attacks that the various enemies will use. Leading a group through often falls on tanks, but really, any player who knows what's going on can really help a group avoid a lot of trouble, and work better together so that there isn't too much pressure on any one person.

You should really adjust your strategy to the groups you are in. As other people said, a healer generally isn't in range, and isn't getting hit with anything. But sometimes groups can't help but break cc, or don't see all the enemies that are active, and things like that, so a very squishy healer might benefit. If your healer isn't all that squishy, especially compared to a DPS in the group, you may want to rethink it, b/c healer classes often have defensives to activate that apply to enemies that the healer isn't attacking--sometimes DPS classes don't have much they can do defensively.

Making healing more challenging for Sage/Sorc by making their resources matter does actually make sense to me, but I don't think it fixes the relative value problem. I wish games were designed so that one healing class did not outperform the others in every situation--but actually that's what people are used to seeing, with one class being "primary or main" and the others meant to be assist/support. The other 2 have obvious shortfalls when it comes to healing area damage compared to Sage/Sorc, which is fine because that's for balance and creating roles, but no obvious niche or strength that matters for the way content is designed, which is not fine. It's not as if a Sage/Sorc cannot produce a big enough heal to keep a tank up, even if a CM/Merc is stronger at that. It's not as if you can't usually find a vantage point to heal from range, even on moving fights, even if an OPs/Scoundrel has more instant casts. So where is the synergy, even with the changes, why bring anything but Sage/Sorcs?

Some really good tips--but most important, groups should realize that not every group is really built to take on every challenge with the exact same strategy. This is especially true if someone wants to try "hardmodes".

The notes are dissapointing, because they are still trying to fix the wrong problems. The game encourages groups to take both melee and ranged dps. Yes, it is viable to take only one type--but players know that will make some encounters more difficult. Well for healing, they almost did the opposite. It's "viable" to take something besides a Sage/Sorc, but it'll be more difficult, so groups are encouraged to take only one type of healer, even when they can bring more than one. Which of course, doesn't apply to 4 person flashpoints, since you have to beat enrage timers.