OP specifically listed 2 PVE guides, so I assume that's what he was talking about, and pretty much all the stuff you mentioned were PvP nerfs (and also listed dps guides, not tank guides). If he was talking about PvP and tanks (the 2 things he didnt mention) I'm happy to have a discussion about that, but even there it was just bringing PTs in line with the range that other melee classes have (in fact it still has better range than all the other melee classes). Shrug. You want 15m range back instead of an actual DCD, then go for it. I dont think it'll really help, but my PT isnt my main (and PvP isnt my focus) so of you think that'll fix its problems than that would be great.

Nevermind

Truth hurts. Tell us how PTs have been significantly nerfed since 3.0 and 4.0. Not comparitively, because that part is true, but actually flat out nerfed in any significant way.

There are no dual classes in swtor, and have not been for a long time. There are classes that can do two roles, but if you try to both tank and dps at the same time, you will do worse in both. Here you go: http://dulfy.net/2016/12/22/swtor-5-0-advanced-prototype-powertech-pve-guide-by-jaymis/

I assume he is making the mistake that somehow PTs have been nerfed since then, which isnt true, it's just literally almost everything else got buffed so PTs are weaker by comparison. But bringing back 3.0 PTs will not help one iota right now.

Pop shroud and then stealth out? And mercs cant leave combat once they are in it whereas sins can.

They are combining all that together to make sure the teams are even:

What's the difference of that vs your just leaving anytime you see the person you don't want to play with? The only way they'd be able to implement this is if they make it so the person who is doing the ignoring is the one who gets skipped in queue, even if they were in queue first (after all, there are a lot of reasons to ignore a person, not just hacking. Lord knows I have a lot more people on my ignore list because I don't like their personality than because I think they are hacking, and I'm sure I'm on some people's ignore list for the same reason, but there is no way I'd be ok with missing a pop because someone else didn't like something I said). And if they did that, now all the people who I'm ignoring I need to either unignore, and then listen to them when I don't want to, or miss pops. And I'm not ok with either of those options. But wait! you ask. Can't BW just have 2 ignore lists? One where you don't listen, and one where you don't play with them? People so bad, that you would rather not get a pop then get in a WZ with them and just leave in 30 seconds? Meh, sure. If you wanna advocate for that, knock your socks off. I still won't be happy, cause it'll still cause the queus to slow down, and I think your time would be much better spent advocating for better and faster response to "hacking" then trying to convince BW to create a 2nd ignore list with different constraints, and different behaviors, and implement those different behaviors into PvP without breaking anything, but go for it. EDIT: Just to be clear, this simply does not work. PVP simply will not work if the healer that I was focusing last match (because he/she is a healer, and that is usually the optimal strat) decides he/she is annoyed I killed him/her 6 times, and so decide to ignore me, and then as punishment, I now have to wait longer for a PvP pop if they are sitting in the queue first. The only way a system like this works is if the person ignoring is the one excluded, otherwise, it is just as open to abuse as it would be in ranked.

I was doing it pretty constantly throughout the match, the start I figured was out of range, and was asking for feedback multiple times and the only response I got was from an imp side player. As I said, could have just been people ignoring me, but figured I'd mention it. Actually, it raises a good point, that there should be a way to chat with people opposite faction opposite team other than say (so it can go across the whole map) especially since everything is crossfaction now. /1 still works for same faction, so something to talk to enemy opposing faction makes sense.

That would be horrifically abused in ranked.

Chat functions don't see to be working, especially /say going to opposite team opposite faction. Of course, it could just be that people on the other team were just ignoring me instead :D:D

Here is an interesting site, that estimates in-game activity based on reddit activity. https://mmo-population.com/r/swtor/ Clearly off, and I certainly don't think that there are 150,000 swtor users daily, but it is interesting nonetheless (it ranks SWTOR as number 11, behind a bunch of things including GW2, which is ranked 3).

Eh, that's only if you are that fussed about having 107% acc. Instead of 105%. If not, just swap between mastery and accuracy stims (and even that's only for ranked, for regs I usually dont bother).

Ok, so I think we can assume that the timer is based on the first person in queue, and that the time is somewhere between 5 minutes and 16 minutes. Soooo 10 minutes seems like a decent bet? And that is the longest any single person would wait, everyone else would wait for a shorter time.

Haha hooray! Another forum pvp victory! I guess? Still, solo arena regs I think are still a better prep for yolo's then playing with 7 friends in my opinion, just in the likelihood of toxicity if nothing else How long had you been waiting for a pop both times? That would probably give us a good indicator of the countdown. And was it the very first match you played? Because I'm also thinking that the timer would either have to be from the first person to get in queue, or from whenever there are 8 people. I would assume it is from the first person, because if it is 8 people, one person could leave queue, one jump back in, and so on and so forth and there would never be a pop. But even if you hopped on and got a pop pretty quickly, if there was someone waiting 25 minutes for a pop, that would explain it. Also, how long did you wait for the one at the end as well? That is probably a better litmus (as it'll at least give us a range, however long you waited+the length of you last match is probably the max time the game would wait).

I think that is exactly the plan. If you want to do Arena's, play ranked. I'm sure there is some kind of time limit, because if you think about it, there will almost always be less than 16 people in queue (after all, if there are 16 people in queue, than a WZ can pop). I assume they have it set up like this: If <16 people in queue, start countdown from (I dunno, 10 minutes?). If it reaches 0, do an Arena. If >=16 people, try to do matchmaking If no more than 2 heals and 2 tanks per team can be created, make WZ. If not, start countdown (I dunno, 5 minutes?) If it reaches 0, allow up to 5 total tanks/heals per team (but no more than 3 of either). Then start another countdown, and continue expanding until its literally only heals/tanks, and that point a match has to start, as long as there are still 16 people in queue. Anyway, the latter point I obviously don't know, but it seems pretty clear from Eric's statement that if a WZ can be created, it will always take priority over creating an arena. I hope I'm wrong, because that will just make ranked even more brutal for new folks if they can't even practice arena's in regs, but unless he clarifies, I think that is a safe assumption. A good test would be did any arena's pop during the scheduled PVP times? If not, then Eric's statement is probably true.

Trauma is a PVP only thing, so buffing that wouldn't impact PVE in the slightest. That hasn't been the case since at least 3.0 (even in 3.0 I think most of the bonuses were the same). They have not been really different gear sets since at least 4.0, the only difference in 4.0 was expertise, which as I have stated many times, and no one has informed me differently, was literally just a garbage stat to make there be 2 gear grinds. And yes, in 4.0, both the gear grinds were relatively easy to do (you could be fully geared for both PVP and PVE in under a week with a little hustle), but I have yet to hear a good explanation as to why the gear should be separate aside from "they can then make the PVP gear grind faster" (and yes, I have heard people talking about expertise being used to balance PVP without touching PVE, but as far as I'm aware they have not used expertise like that in the past, and if they had I'd really appreciate an explanation so I'll stop saying that . I'd like them to do that, but that is more easily accomplished by making it a stat outside of gearing then inside). I'd rather they make the gear grind faster for both.

No agreement at all huh...

... so you agree with the arm-chair general then? Also, yeah, no way is sorc getting a 10% dmg buff, that would put them above almost every spec's sustained dmg. Maybe a 10% boost to burst window somehow, but not just a flat 10% dmg buff, that would make lightning absurdly OP in everything including pvp.

There is already a buff in PVP called Trauma that does that too. They wouldn't need to bring expertise back to change how healing works in PVP, just nudge the amount that trauma debuff lowers healing by. And yes, if "balance" is meant strictly by dps vs healing, that is one thing, but typically balance is referencing every class and spec vs each other, and that expertise has never done (and like I said, the trauma debuff takes care of the healing stuff anyway).

http://www.swtor.com/patchnotes/05032018/game-update-5.9-nathema-conspiracy

No worries. Now providing some kind of extra damage buff with expertise may be a way to make PVP a little more balanced and nerf healing, and isn't a terrible idea necessarily to have people die faster, it's just not something that's been done in the past. Honestly that's been my concern with a lot of the comments here. I just keep hearing all these magical things about how expertise gear solved every problem, but as far as what I have seen, literally all it did was create a distinction between PVP and PVE gear. Yes, in 4.0 it was easy to gear up full PVP gear, but 4.0 it was easy to gear for both PVP and PVE. I also keep hearing about how expertise can be used to balance classes, but I truly don't recall expertise ever being used in that fashion. I would love it if it did, and would fully support that, but absent that, I don't see any purpose in splitting up PVP and PVE gear (actually I don't anyway, make expertise a stat that is outside of PVP, and then give buffs/nerfs to it based on spec). Speed up gearing for both PVP and PVE (yes, it's relatively easy once you have a couple things at 248, but before that it is a huge PITA), but you don't need to split gearing for that.

I'm sorry, I just don't believe this. You are basically saying that 248 gear vs 242 gear (since that is what 230 bolsters to) provides you with 3x as high DR. Either you are far off in your time estimate, you weren't being tunneled in the 248 gear, or the quality of the dps attacking you was vastly different (which seems the most likely, but also means that your example isn't really useful), or I suppose your teammates were just better and actually peeled for you and healed you (which again, means that your point is not proven at all). Regardless, 248 gear is not 3x as good as 242 gear.

So I understand the math now, but expertise didn't give 30% dr. It gave 37.5% dr. (1+.6)*(1-.375)=1. There was no magical damage buff for expertise, it was just a way to separate PVP and PVE gear. The amount increased by extra damage was completely mitigated by the additional DR you get from wearing full expertise gear. If both players aren't wearing full expertise, it was a different story, but if both were, there was no damage buff (Schook used the numbers you provided in the math you linked, but the numbers you provided in the first place were incorrect, which he then corrected later on in the thread by finding someone in actual full 2018 and seeing what the expertise bonuses were and using that to calculate).

Having followed the PTS forum (though not installed it, I don't have enough play time to make it worth it nowadays) it seems like the matches themselves tend to be fair, there are just some complaints about still too many healers getting onto teams. But the matches themselves seem to be relatively evenly matched.