This is exactly what I was looking for! I was already starting to compile a list of the best crafting skills based on class/companions, really glad someone already did all the work for me. Very, very nice.

I love this guide! I direct all of my guildies to it. Pretty much explains all of the basic strategies to succeed at huttball in way more detail than I could ever explain it. Wish there was a guide like this written for Voidstar and Alderaan as well, but I guess those are more traditional type games, anyway, so they might not need such a detailed explanation. Another little thing that I like to do, though, if you have a coordinated team (pre-made over mics, or just a team that knows how to play with each other), is combining the Trooper's pull with the Jedi's Force leap. Jedi falls into the pit, Trooper positions himself on the enemies goal line, both the Trooper and Jedi target the same guy in the pit, Trooper pulls an enemy from the pit, Jedi leaps at the enemy once the enemy lands and runs the ball in. It's a fun technique if you're coordinated and the enemy team is smart enough to not position their guys near their goal line overlooking the pit. Haha, then again, it might just be quicker to pass the ball, but it's entertaining when you pull if off.

One thing I've learned from these forums so far... Never trust a man with a Hutt avatar.

My first reflex is always Dirty Kick, then dropping as many HoTs as I can on nearby party members before the stun wears off and I get slaughtered.

I find this hilarious, but I honestly think that some people just make a response thread to someone else's post just to piss them off or try to show their own opinion. Case in point, someone made a thread here that said, Petition: Less Huttball!!! I like Huttball, so I made a counter thread, Petition: More Huttball!!! Which, I guess, really just proves your point.

Ahhhh! That explains it. I wasn't paying much attention to my Valor and just PvPing, was wondering why it hadn't increased for awhile. Oh well, guess I'll run space missions in the interim, been trying to get that up as well.

Dittos. Isn't this the point of it all? You bring your crew, I bring my crew, we beat each other's faces in, then we slap each other on the back and grab a drink at the pub. People just get butt hurt too easily nowadays.

Hear hear!

I very much like this example. Mostly sums up what you're getting. If you don't want to spend the credits, you could always PvP to get that particular speeder...though you still need the training, so it won't save you that much in the end.

Hmmm...I could see this as being fairly beneficial in PvE, since you usually have a pretty good idea of what your group is going to do/where they're going to go, as well as the enemies. I'm still not sure how viable it is in PvP. I mean, I could see it working well dropping it on any of the capture/bombing points, since that's where most people fight around, but I tend to think that picking the right person to heal and choosing the right heal for the job, keeping my energy up, and simply surviving would be more beneficial than heal bombing an area, as great as that would look on the scoreboard (the one thing that I don't care about, since the scoreboard doesn't win matches). It just seems like you'd be giving up a lot of viable tools from the Scrapper tree in order to get that heal.

Haha, this pretty much explains everything. Or, at the very least, the majority of the problems that I have when I'm healing. Good post.

It might not be the most desireable option, but the prospering healers that I've talked to seem to throw a DoT or an AoE ability out before they start healing whoever the enemy is attacking, so that they also get credit for the kill. You're not going to get any damage done medals, but at least you'll hit the kill medals, as well as the healing medals. Even then, most of the healers I see are grateful when they get 5 medals in a match.

At first glance, I read the title of this thread as 'Worst PVP Idea.' I was all, "What the hell? This sounds Fantastic!" I love this idea. The only thing that seems off, though, is that the prices are a little steep. I personally think that the individual players should be able to set how much they think the bounty is worth, then the bounty hunter can sort through the bounties to see which is worth taking based on the reward and the difficulty. However, I like that 75% of the reward goes to the Bounty Hunter and the rest vanishes into the Aether. More credit sinks are good. I think a way to 'punish' higher level plays for ganking lower level characters is to start off at giving them 75% of the reward, but dropping the amount given if the bounty being fetched is below a certain level. So, say, up to 5 levels lower is still the full amount (75%), but after that it drops 5% every 2 or 3 levels, maybe to an eventual floor of 25%. Or you could just have a flat rate based on the level of the character the bounty is being put on, so that all level 20's cost the same, all level 50's cost the same, and such. Still with reward reduction, though, so that that level 50 Bounty Hunter going after a level 20 mark is only going to get a measly sum for their time. Alternately, you could also increase the reward for going after higher level characters, up to 100% of the reward. A mechanic could be put in to automatically split the reward among multiple Bounty Hunter that are in a party, which would make it beneficial for lower level characters to team up against a bigger foe with a large bounty on his head. The other thing that I think would be nice (though it might become too big a tool for griefing) is to allow bounties to be issued on members of your own faction (*edit- on a second readthrough of your post, it seems like your intention is mostly just for same faction bounties, anyway*). Would definitely help keep people more in line about how the act/react to people if they know that pissing off the wrong person could wind up with a dozen bounty hunters stalking them. Not sure if the person who set the bounty should be able to get PvP gear just for setting a bounty. However, I do think that getting social points, or maybe just points towards aesthetic gear would be pretty cool. I mean, if you've got enough pull and credits lying around to throw up bounties on players, you might as well look the part.

I've been seeing a lot of threads about people who are despising Huttball, but a lot of the frustration seems to stem from one of two things. 1) They suck at Huttball. or 2) They're an Imperial and get Huttball 9 out of every 10 matches. Can't do much about the first one, but I think the pain from the second one would be vastly alleviated with... MORE HUTTBALL! Or rather, just more levels. I like the gameplay involved in Huttball (despite the fact we end up losing almost every time), but seeing the same exact Huttball level is getting old. Everyone is starting to get used to the traps and the pits and the poison (at least, any half decent person, some people still insist on running the ball through poison and fire). My humble request is that, in the future, keep Huttball, but please add more new, fun, and varied levels. Maybe some with traps that don't have consistent timing, or with moving platforms and such. I see a ton of potential in Huttball. And no, this isn't a 'DO IT NAO!!!' thread, simply a way to express that Huttball is enjoyable and I'm looking forward to more and more interesting levels for it in the future.

Honestly, sounds like a legitimate strategy to me. Smuggle lasts 15 seconds, is on a 3 minute cooldown, and you can't be in combat or stealthed while using it. This means you'd have to stay out of combat and wait until your ally starts capturing a point, then cloak him. If the enemy is paying any attention at all (which they should) they'd immediately throw an AoE into the area to break the stealth and interrupt the capture. You also leave yourself wide open before you throw out Smuggle, since you can't be in stealth. Sounds interesting to do it with the Huttball, but the short duration, in combination with the speed debuff, makes it so they won't get close enough to the goal to really do anything. That and, since they would have to have the ball first before you smuggled them, people should be able to keep track of them pretty easy if they're paying attention at all. Basically, I see this as a good strategy that promotes team-play on both sides, since you'd have to be at least semi-coordinated to use it and to counter it.

Not quite as easy as that. For some god-awful reason, the order for the function keys is exactly opposite of where the player's name is positioned in the raid frames. For example, you'd figure to heal the top person in your raid frame, you'd hit F2. Wrong, you have to hit F8. Try flipping around the order of someone in the middle of a hectic fight in order to heal them and you're either going to get lucky, guess wrong, or end up systematically going through every function key until you get the person you want. So clicking their name is just easier half the time, unless the damn frames aren't updating. Also, this doesn't help the fact that you still have to watch the battle, then scan the raid frames to find the person's name and position in the raid frame so you can hit the corresponding function key, unless you just flail through function keys until you get the right one. Either way, it's horribly inefficient. And...yeah, clicking on a person in battle for healing is a little ridiculous. For some reason, though, if I have three of my team circling one person of the opposing team, my cursor will always ALWAYS pick up the enemy instead. Good for DPS I guess, bad for support.

Very nice! Only thing I would recommend is adding some info about the effects of expertise in your PvP Gear guide. I know tons of people are confused as to exactly how that works. Everything else looks tops.

Seconded. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to get knocked into that stupid pit.

I concur. I'm always a defender of some sort in Huttball. When I'm on offense, I follow behind the ball carrier, keep him all healed up, and set myself up to receive a strategic pass if I need to. When I'm on defense, I sit in stealth by one of the incinerators and flashbang/dirty kick/tendon blast anyone with the ball the second they start to cross it. I don't need to do a ton of damage, the environment kills things for me. I think they need to change the way commendations are given in Huttball, though. I have a ton of fun playing the way I do, but I really only get, like, 2 medals playing intelligently, whereas random lonewolf who stays in the center taking out folks (which is useful, too, if he played nice with the rest of the team) gets 7 or 8.

Yeah, I admit, Huttball is kind of a different beast. In normal PvP, if there're multiple healers, you kind of CC the ones you can and focus them one at a time, since they can still only do so much damage to you while you're forcing them to heal up. Honestly, though, in Huttball, if you're playing as a team towards the objective, then multiple healers shouldn't be a problem. Grappling hooks, force knockbacks, stuns, holds, chokes, there're tons of things to stop a person from scoring with the ball. Granted, it might not kill the ball carrier, but the funny thing about Huttball is that you just have to stop him from reaching the goal most of the time. And, honestly, I'd love to see even 3 healers try to keep the ball carrier alive when I ambush him with all of my stuns when he's standing on an incinerator. Flashbang -> Dirty Kick -> Tendon Blast (specced for 2 second immobilize with slow) while he's crossing almost always results in a toasted Sith. Teaches people to pass the ball REAL damn quick. Or it should...some people are pretty dense.

In 1 vs. 1, the chance of either party winning should be equal. If the healer is spending all of his time healing, then he's definintely not killing you. Try throwing out a stun or an interrupt or something. Honestly. I think a healer should be able to keep themself healed indefinitely while being attacked by a single opponent, since the trade-off is that he can't do anything else besides keep his own life up. The second he moves to attack, though, the balance shifts. Anytime the healer is outnumbered, though, then he should die unless he's particularly tricky. Same with 2 vs. 2 and 3 vs. 3, each team should have an equal chance of killing each other, regardless of the presence of healers. I think the debuff allows this, since healers have to pick their targets and manage their energy more carefully, while their teammates have to actually guard the healer or peel DPS off them. In other words, this was a great move for coordinated team-based PvP (which this should be), but a horrible move for PuGs. And this is coming from a dedicated Scoundrel Healer.

I support this idea!

Yeah, I've noticed the dark/light side impact to be very minimal, especially considering the time it takes a companion to do missions. I just use them farming medical supplies now and take dark and light missions evenly.

You are totally my new favorite person. I was thinking this exact same thing when I read that comment.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AlwaysChaoticEvil Pretty much explains the Sith species.