When I look at The Bastion right now I see 499 toons with 10 wins or more. I chose greater than 10 wins equals active toon as an arbitrary criteria. Even the lowest rated player on the bastion has more than this being bad is not a barrier to winning for an active player. OK, of the 499 players with 10 or more wins, how many human players are there? Many of my guildmates have several alts that meet this criteria. I'm guessing that people on the first page (top 50 players) have 5+ toons with 10 or more wins.

OP is talking about regs with is a derpfest unless you queue with a 4-man premade and a few good randoms in the other 4 on your side. In yolo most folks keep track of when a sage/sorc has barriered and consider them a high priority target after that (e.g. hardstun immediately after barrier). If the sorc rides out the full barrier then it is 4v3 for that period. With the minor nerfs on PTS I think sage/sorcs are very reasonable. We'll see how the hatred nerfs work out.

feel free to tell us what nerf to hatred you would prefer

Sometimes there are no healers (I'm thinking solo ranked).

I would gladly fork over CC to get 12x XP. I was happy to do SoR at normal speed once on each faction. After that I'm done with that **** and simply want to get my other different classes to endgame ASAP.

IMO, cross faction solo-queue would fix a ton. Consider the following scenario: currently the good pub players get destroyed and if they are smart stop queuing. If a player wants to queue for solo ranked but population dynamics incentivize them to stop queuing that is bad for the game. With cross faction, if they play 20 matches the effect of the bads will be spread more or less evenly. There will always be 1 bad on each side. If the bads are rated 1200 and 950 then the strongest 3-man permutation of the goods is likely to still win with the 950 bad and thereby earn a better rating (as we would expect).

Dommi, you are way too cheerful. I think I just found a picture of you on teh interwebz.

Do you get mad when it is someone else's birthday, they get presents and you don't? Today is not your birthday.

This one is my personal favorite.

CAVEAT: I'm a pretty bad player and the game should (IMO) be balanced around what good players (90th percentile and above?) can do. If a majority of players on the first page of the leaderboard think skank tank (or skank heals) vs no skank tank is OP then they are probably right. IMO, disallowing it removes richness from the game so I think that is a bad idea. It does seem reasonable to consider match making restrictions that ensure if one side has one or more skank tank classes then the other side does too. If you do this you might as well enforce a requirement that if one side has skank healer class that the other side should get one too. This is a fine solution in theory but has the potential problem that queue pops now take longer. As I've said repeatedly in other posts, solo queue is fundamentally flawed. I think our efforts would be better spent trying to get more people to queue 4-man. In 4-man you have freedom to bring what ever you want and we don't need any restrictions on skank tank/healers.

you are beating a dead horse. BW doesn't have the budget to do much with PvP. What you see is likely what you get for 2015 with some very minor class balancing as we progress through the year.

exactly. tank tunnel is the natural counter to the fake tank guarding. fake tanks don't have nearly the mitigation that full tanks have. As for DPS, a fake tank should do quite a bit more damage than a real tank but that is because they have DPS abilities, not full tank mitigation. The hit for tank stance is -10% DPS + what ever is lost from the DPS stance (e.g. vigilance 6% bonus). Also, compared to vigilance, they don't get the stun/knockback immunity from leap. For guardians (and sentinels) just knockback root until the cows come home.

Nice work! I know the feeling. I have some combat log parsing code (haven't touched it in a few months) and a lots of it is terrible garbage that needs to be rewritten but with life and a day job I just do not have the energy. I applaud anyone who has the energy to do hobby programming.

If you beat a team that is handicapped with a merc shouldn't you earn less? Just like you should earn less if one opponent disconnects before the match begins. Right?

you can find the same thing described (e.g. on wikipedia) as the Lake Wobegon effect. (this links to the D-K effect as the main article). If you happen to know the show Prairie Home Companion LWE is a more amusing name than DKE. I'm pretty sure only olds know Prairie Home Companion.

I'm with you so far Wait, what? Forget that we are talking about juggernauts ... your statement is: If class <X> has a higher representation in the bottom 3rd of the leaderboard than class <Y> this implies class <X> is easier (!?) to play than class <Y> I would think the opposite. If a class is overrepresented in the bottom 3rd I think that means one of the class is **** it is harder to play the class well or, at least decently (above 33rd percentile) DPS juggs are hard targets (ED, heavy armor, friendly leap for escape) while maras are squishy. So yes, DPS jugg requires less positional awareness than marauder or sniper. Tank jugg, like all tanks (and healers), requires more positional awareness than DPS. Sadly the leaderboard does not break down by role. This is a plausible explanation. Sadly, I know of no way to test your assertion about the composition. It seems equally plausible that lots of bads play PT/VGs. Good thoughtful post. Thanks!

Congrats to Smoochiex on Bastion! Winner winner chicken dinner of the solo ranked trolls. One of my guildmates brags when ever he can manage to prevent smoochie from leaving the match before it is finished. I have to admit, it is quite an accomplishment.

Use this one simple trick BW doesn't want you to know about to guarantee your teammates are not random scrubs!

why do you want a hyperinflationary rating algorithm? Every game is a net gain of +12 pts x 4 pairs of players.

Elo conserves rating points so the other side is gaining 14-18 when you lose 14-18. Why? Because they are rated lower than you. It is a basic fact of Elo that when you play weaker opponents you gain fewer rating points when you win (you were expected to win) and lose more rating points when you lose (you were expected to win). Simply pray to have bad teammates against stacked opponents. In these matches you will gain more rating when you win.

Agree. Keep up the good work. Put the haters who offer not constructive criticism (e.g. "you should be calculating a different stat <x> that is more meaningful because ...") on ignore. With just a few key content free posters added to your ignore list you'll find forums a more enjoyable experience.

Can I have your stuff?

I once wrote a suggestion into the "Suggestions" forum, to create special icons for each Discipline, but I never got any support or reply except one, who seemingly didn't even fully understand me. It was this : http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=787766 Roles are less specific than discipline. That said, if you want to indicate role (or discipline) on the leaderboard then you need a separate rating for the same toon for each role (or discipline). I too have asked for this but we are unlikely to get it. Yes, is previous seasons it would have been nice to confirm that the only scoundrel/operatives with good ratings were healers and not DPS.