The matchmaking actually does account for premades (theoretically anyway). If you are in a premade, everyone's "rating" is equal to the highest person in the group's rating, so it is a slight penalty for being in a premade. So chances are pretty good that if there is 1 premade in queue, the top 4 solo queuers will most likely all be on the other team (it might actually be the top 8 depending on what everyone's rating is). And if the skill between the 15th and 16th is a huge difference, than the teams could end up being 1-7 and 16 vs 8 to 15. I doubt it'd get that extreme, but 16 would have to be really really bad to make the team lose that match anyway.

So you went into SS ranked, got focused cause you were undergeared and died, went into SS ranked got ignored cause Mara's are (or at least were prior to nerf) really OP as far as survivability goes (and you weren't undergeared, so no one assumed it you were a noob who didn't know what he was doing), and survived. That doesn't actually prove anything except maybe, bolster should make sure everyone has the same HP so noob's don't get targeted. It doesn't mean that the gear is what got you killed, it means you being focused is what got you killed. Correlation <> causation

Yeah that math still doesn't make any sense to me, and fair enough someone else did it, and if you link it I'm happy to read it. And finally figured out what you meant by unmitigated, you mean 10% extra damage before any dr, dcd's, shielding or defense (for tanks), or armor. So the effect is actually significantly lower across the board than 10% (presumably. Maybe I still don't understand what you mean when you say unmitigated). But I would probably change your sig a little and just say "expertise made everyone do 10% more damage so things died faster" instead of throwing the 60% and 30% in there and not being able to explain what they mean, because right now it's just confusing and you don't seem like you can explain it. Or just put a link to the post of the person explaining it. Up to you, I just scratch my head every time I see your sig, and I doubt I'm the only one.

No. I can promise you, that you didn't go from losing say a 1v1 in 230s to winning 2v1's against the same players in 248 gear. Gear difference is small, max 10%. It just (due to endurance levels, which should be changed) puts a target over your head that says "new and unskilled player here" and so you get focused, even if that is not true. And if you went from losing 2v1 to winning a 2v1, I'd be willing to bet that you weren't "destroyed" it was actually pretty close (and also, the 2 you were playing were just not great as well).

I'm not sure how those numbers exactly add up, I think people not dying so much is because healers and dcd's got super overpowered (how exactly did expertise magically make some damage "unmitigatable"? Didn't it just increase dmg period?). Anyway, they could easily change trauma and bolster to get the same effect if they wanted to. And at best, all that 10% does is balance dps vs heals anyway, it doesn't balance dps classes and specs or heal classes and specs amongst themselves.

The easiest kills are bad players. You have about 8k extra health (unless you are a tank) and do about 5-10% more damage. It's not gear that is why you kill lower geared people easier, it's because lower gear is a quick and easy way to determine skill and how new someone is and whether they know to use their DCD's correctly. And because every automatically targets the person in lower gear, so they get globaled automatically. It's not gear per se, it's that people equate gear with experience/skill, and go for the one with less (and usually, bad gear does equal lower skill/experience, and so it works out).

And they have to carefully investigate each accusation. They can't just assume because a couple people reported someone they are cheating, they people could all be guildies or friends who are reporting someone for beating them. And OP's original post where he talks about getting "one-shot" through reflect is a perfect example of why, there is no hack to do that, if you got globaled through reflect it just means you were attacked by abilities that reflect doesn't work on. But that's not a hack, and BW has to investigate that claim as well as the location hacks, which pushes the time it takes to get to the location hack back. To be clear, I'm not defending on how quickly BW responds to hacking allegations, clearly they happen. But just as clearly, they get a lot of reports that are just not true, that they still have to go through, and that slows an already too-slow process down even more. They should add an additional dropdown with "location hack" and "anything else" and then basically ignore the anything else reports...

4.0 was the only expansion that expertise was a cheap and fast way for pvpers to get gear. It was also the only expansion that you could get full PVE highest tier gear in a week as well. It's not expertise you want back, it's cheap and easy gearing (which I generally agree with). But you don't need expertise to get cheap and easy gear. And how have they ever used expertise on gear to balance PVP separate of PVE? People keep saying this and I really don't understand that, it seems like it would be possible to do so (give more expertise to classes underperforming in PVP, less to those overperforming etc.) but I have not seen them do this, it was basically just a random stat to artificially create a distinction between PVP and PVE gear, which led to a lot of bads queing for PVP in PVE gear and getting globaled. I would love it if they actually used expertise as a way to balance classes, but have they ever done that in the past?

16. At least as planned/stated.

It doesnt have to be manually set up, it could be something as easy as the backend maintenance was cleaning up tables, and someone accidentally put an extra character in the daily_bonus_table somewhere while they were doing a spot check. Or they could have been changing variable names to make things more consistent across the board, and someone forgot to update every instance. Who knows, but coding, especially for something like this, is intricate and interconnected, so anytime there is literally any change whatsoever, the chance of something seemingly unrelated breaking is there. And presumably they are doing something different every time they do backend maintenance, so having done it a lot and not breaking it before doesnt mean that they didnt this time or wont in the future.

They did backend maintenance just a few days ago, probably then. Most of these events seem to be based on the backend, so it wouldn't be too hard.

You are probably not the only one who ends up queuing less, but likewise there are plenty of folks who will also queue less if they go for quality over quantity. BW has to find the sweet spot, and they've made it clear many times they value quantity over quality (the fact that premades are not a separate queue is enough proof for this). Obviously BW is the only one with the numbers, but I'm sure a lot of people do value quantity of quality, after all, at least a bad match progresses the daily and the weekly whereas no match doesn't. And if you've only got 30 minutes, waiting 25 for a match to pop isnt going to get your daily done.

I could be misinterpreting what Eric said, but I think it's more of a "after 5 minutes without enough people for a optimal pop, there can now be a max of 3 heals per team instead of 2, after 10 minutes there can now be a max of 4 heals instead of 3, etc." and not a check based on % of each role in queue. Honestly, they do need to have something like this. In live it probably wont happen much, and if it does they should increase the time, but at a certain point you should just get a pop, and if you arent willing to play in a match with more than 2 heals, quit and log off, because at that point there just arent enough people anyway.

Yeah... that had nothing to do with gear, and everything to do the fact that she was focused by 3 dps (and charitably, one was probably a merc with electronet, so she couldn't god bubble). But gear is not the issue at all.

You can also get UC's from doing NiM Operations. About 100 per boss give or take I believe.

Nevermind, not worth it.

Not at all, I think it's a good thing that he is complaining about something in the art product known as SWTOR that he doesn't like and is demanding the devs pay attention and fix it. He's the one who says people shouldn't do that, I'm just curious how he reconciles those positions.

I think it was basically anytime in June if your sub had lapsed you got the 30 days. I bought 60 days a day before I got the email, and I still got the 30 days too. Dont worry about it, you are fine.

Alright, I don't play Mara, so take a lot of what I'm saying with a grain of salt (and I can't remember the names, but I'll add the description), but some general tips: Mara dcd's are "preventative" as opposed to "healing", so you want to make sure you use them before you take damage if you can. First, as soon as you start taking any damage you'll want to use Rebuke (the one that does a little DR, damages attackers, and lasts 10 seconds and refreshes whenever you take damage up to 30 seconds). This one should be on CD pretty much as long as you are taking damage. Obfuscate (accuracy reduction against opponent): Use this on CD on whichever opponent is strongest/has the best burst (honestly, you should use this regardless whether you are being targeted or not, it helps your team quite a bit). Also, every time you use it you get 75% dmg reduction, so you can also save this for when you are being targeted. Guarded by the Force (99% dmg reduction): Your "Oh crap" button. Use this when you are about to get hit with a huge burst (you have to know your opponents rotations for this) or when you have nothing else. It'll keep you alive for a few more seconds if all else fails. Predation/Blade Blitz/Force Camo: These are what you use to stealth out (force camo) run away (Predation) and then get really far away (Blade Blitz) to let yourself drop out of combat, heal up, and then run back into combat. If you time it perfectly, Blade Blitz is also good for avoiding auto crit burst, and predation is helpful for your group as a whole, so you can usually use it at the start of the match, and then it should be back again. WZ adrenal: 30% dmg reduction. Just use this pretty early while you are being targeted. Maybe paired up with Rebuke, or right after it ends. WZ Medpac: Once you get below 50% health. Try to use it before stealthing out, cause if you do exit combat successfully, you'll be able to use it again. Now to be clear, you should generally not expect to win a 4v2, unless the opponents are really bad. In regs, you should call for help, and in ranked, you should just sign and wait to see how much rating you lose. 1v1 though you should do alright with the above tips, and certainly last a while.

To be fair, back in 3.0 you could almost 2 man EC. Also, I seriously doubt that's gonna make him feel better :D:D:D

So you are going to stop complaining about PVP and ask the devs to make changes then? You don't expect them to stop hacks from occurring? Statements like this I always find really weird, of course people are entitled to complain and ask for changes to things they don't like. That does not give any excuse for harassment, but people are certainly within their rights to ask, or even "demand" (which is still asking, just with stronger phrasing) changes to things they don't like. If the artists decline to make those changes, they can either continue to be vocal and ask for changes, or vote with their wallets (which I think is a decent part of why Solo didn't do as well as it should have done). And of course it's ok to feel let down when a certain IP does something that makes you upset, and feel as though they failed you. This literally happens in every arena of life. Do you think Patriots fans were upset when the Eagles won the Super Bowl? I could literally hear the tears from England when they got knocked out of the World Cup. I can think of lots and lots of other examples of things that people care about enough to be upset and demand changes on even though it is not under "their control". And that is totally fine! Let people enjoy what they want, criticize what they don't, and try to change what they would like to change about things they don't, as long as they don't stoop to harassment/bullying.

Location hacks are a thing. So capping nodes prior to match starting, does happen unfortunately. However, aside from location hacks I have yet to see evidence of any other hacks, so for example, OP getting "one shot" through reflect probably just got hit with something that isn't reflectable (i.e. AOEs for all reflect, melee attacks for jugs, etc.). But as a previous poster mentioned, they are putting some things in place that will hopefully fix the hacks the location hacks.

Best if with someone who is good at jumping: Jug/Guardian (so you can leap to them). Vanguard (Transpose), Shadows (shadow stride) and operatives (Holo traverse) all have abilities that do this too, but from what I have seen these are all a lot buggier and may send you off to the moon occasionally. By yourself: Sorc/Sage (phasewalk back after difficult jumps if you miss it) By yourself, but you are good at jumping and wanna just do things fast: Operative (roll, and it is helpful on some of the jumps where you can just roll off instead of jumping). Anyway, if you have trouble making jumps then you almost certainly want to do a sorc/sage if you can. I think when I was first doing them I actually leveled up a sorc just for phase walk.

To be fair, they did pretty much state exactly this. You shouldn't be surprised.

Play during the scheduled pvp times, there are 2 this Saturday. At other times, the idea is mostly to check out the new stronghold by yourself.