Pop relics and adrenals and spam rapid scan on teammates for a bit and you have just gotten 2 medals. One for 2.5K heal and 1 for 75k healing. Even if you are specced gunnery there is no reason you couldn't get the two healing medals. I know matches like that are frustrating but you have no one but yourself to blame for zeroing out.

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#3000cZMckZMIMrdhGMs.1 That is my build. Most important thing: Keep moving. I don't find pushback reduction to be needed. If I am getting hit I am not going to be casting PS or Unload, I'm going to be strafing. 3% crit isn't great for 3 points and if you find a better usage for your style, great. I tend to think crit is king in PvP though. I hear people talk about heat management issues with Pyro but can't say as though I notice them. I also don't tend to stand in place and cast PS a lot either so that could be it. Any opponent that stands still long enough to let me run through an Unload and start PSing is usually one that is going to die long before that anyway. I always R&R when I have a free moment out of combat. I use rapid shots as much as possible to fill any GCD's while keeping moving. I think DeGauss is huge. With my shield coming off CD so often from Energy Rebounder I find I use it with pretty much every fight. Usually when a melee gets to me and gets a snare on they are expecting to drop their big damage abilities. Being able to remove the snare while at the same time blunting their damage by 25% is huge. I always try to assist another dps since my dots become death itself on targets below 30%. Incendiary and CGC by themselves will eat most folks alive at low health.

There are barely 6 mercenaries on our whole server let alone in 1 WZ. At primetime a /who 50 shows out of a 100 people mercs barely register. Though interestingly there is almost always 40 Sorcerers at any given time on line. I am usually the only merc in each wz when I play. Occasionally you will see a BG specced merc running around shooting green lasers but that is a rarity. I think I have seen 2 arsenal specced mercs in wz's over the last month. I'm not sure I have ever seen another 31 point specced pyro. At least I never recall getting hit with a TD. What is this magical server of which you speak?

So do you think you would have won with that team if the daily requirement was still 3 wins? The answer is most likely no. Once you fell behind they would have all gone to the same gun and camped for medals. The only thing that it changed is you made progress towards your daily instead of not making progress toward your daily. Queue again and hope for a better luck of the draw on teammates.

For me at least it stops after I use any other ability. I usually cast Cure while running to my next target and it stops the animation.

26 hours of playing that is. You aren't figuring in the hours of waiting for a queue to pop. On Assassins of Sion, you are very lucky if in 3 hours of prime time play that you get 8 pops. I'm not saying that the grind is terrible, impossible, hard even. Just saying that no pvp gear should ever give a 20% boost from 1 level to another. 5%, great. 10%... sketchy as can be. 20%, stupid.

No one would take a lesser set minus the hp, additional other stats and 2 and 4 set bonuses just to have enough expertise to be within 5% mitigation and damage of what the BM set would give them. You made a good argument. It was just flawed. It's ok. Being wrong is not the end of the world.

Recruit Set 4 Piece Bonus : +200 Expertise You can then work on your weapons, implants, belt, and wrists while not being a whipping boy. You would then be able to break set to pick up the BM 2 piece bonus leaving you full BM accessories and the 2 piece bonus minus the 3 remaining Recruit pieces. You would remain competitive through the whole process.

Take Recruit gear. Add 200 points of Expertise. (or whatever it would take to narrow the gap between BM and Recruit to approximately 5%) Do not add more other stats. Problem solved and PvE untouched. BRB, out procreating.

Actually there is one reason. The people that got BM pre 1.2 would have cried a salty river if they can't face roll new 50's while telling themselves it is all about their skill.

There is nothing to understand. PvP gear is good for PvP because of Expertise. PvE gear, while having better stats in general gets eaten alive in PvP due to no defense. PvP gear sucks in PvE since so much of the stat budget goes to expertise. It isn't rocket science. None of that however explains why BM is so much greater then recruit. If you increased recruit stats you still wouldn't do pve in it since so much of the budget is for a pvp stat. If you decreased BM you still wouldn't PvP in PvE gear since you would still lose 16% defense and 20% damage. I understood your argument, it was just wrong.

The Expertise stat prevents PvE gear from being the gear of choice for PvP. There is zero reason why there is such a huge differential between recruit and BM.

"He (Daniel Erickson. BioWare's lead designer) says that the team discovered that SWTOR had a huge PvP community and has since "turned a huge amount of resources" to developing more content for that side of the game. BioWare's also shifted several team members over to creating more endgame content as the players chew through the stories at an increasing rate." http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/05/02/swtor-on-the-rise-and-planning-more-pvp-endgame-content/

It's only a grind when it is unbalanced. The distance between BM and recruit gear performance is inexcusable. The difference between how my toon felt as a fresh 50 in recruit gear to having all BM is night and day. I even had 2000 comms saved up so I was able to step in with a few pieces of BM gear but it was still painful. The main reason is because gear > skill. Especially when that gap is a big as BM over recruit. Now I have full BM gear I feel like I'm back on equal footing. The difference between me and a WH geared player is not enough that I feel like I don't have a chance. When I was recruit against BM I didn't feel I had much of a shot. If BM gear was a total 5% increase over recruit, that would make perfect sense. From what I have read, that is about the gap between BM and WH. Recruit to BM is closer to 20% when you look at all the additional stats you gain besides just expertise. There is no excuse for that. Gear should never be the make it or break it for pvp gameplay. If your pvp is fun, people will pvp (and it is once you aren't just a speed bump for BM geared folk to run over). You don't need a gear ladder. It is true it doesn't take forever to get BM. A few weeks of time and you can have pretty much the whole set. But it doesn't make sense that you should have to play for a few weeks to make it to somewhat competitive. Let skill be the deciding factor, not gear.

Thank you for the replies. I had read in an older thread while looking for better wz queue time threads that Fatman had very long log in queues. Do you know by any chance if that is still the case?

Thank you for your responses on the virtues of PvP servers. I have edited OP since I didn't realize that one line was going to be the focal point of all replies. If you have any suggestions regarding which servers have the best WZ queues I would be very appreciative of that information as well.

Currently have toons on Assassins of Sion and am looking to restart on a server with a much better queue situation. Would prefer it be a PvE server if possible. Any suggestions for which server has the best WZ queue times? Standard play time would usually be between 7pm and 11pm eastern time. Thank you.

I think our problem is defense, not offense. If we had a 20-30 sec cd gap opener and a 15 second cd 2 second root I think it would go a long way towards fixing our class. The gap opener would rocket pack us forward 25 yards. That would help to counter the multiple leaps and closers that other classes have that keep them constantly in our face. The short root would allow us to force melee dps to use their defensive cd's defensively instead of saving them for when they are right on top of us and preventing us from being able to do anything to stop them. These would allow us to actually use the dps abilities we already have.

I don't think Mercs are useless but compared to most other classes their design seems lacking. The big difference is our defense. We basically have none. We are designed as either a kiting class (Pyro) or a glass cannon (Arsenal). The problem is we don't have the capabilities to do either well. As a kiter we lack the ability to actually kite. Our one gap gainer, Jet Boost, is lacking. It doesn't create anywhere close to enough distance to be effective. Add to that most every class we would use it on has the ability to close that gap immediately using a ability with a shorter CD then our knock back and it takes most the effectiveness out of being a kiting class. As a glass cannon we have no interrupt protection and once we become mobile our dps goes to virtually nothing. Also for being a glass cannon we are far more glass then cannon. Our burst isn't terrible but it isn't anything greater then the other dps classes that have greater defenses and mobility. IMO both of these could be addressed by adding a gap opener on a medium long cd and a short root on a medium cd. If we could jet jump 25 yards away with a 20-30 sec cd and had a ranged 2 second root on a 15 second cd it would be a game changer. We would be able to force dps classes to use there defensive cd's earlier in a fight instead of being able to stack/chain them when they are right in our face. As it is right now, they can use them offensively while whipping on us since they have no reason to use them to prevent our initial attack since they are on top of us almost immediately.

This times a hundred. A 15 sec cd gap opener to counter force leaps and a 15-20 sec cd short duration root would make this class highly playable.

Force Camouflage Predation Crippling Slash Force Crush Force Charge Force Choke Intimidating Roar All of those either speed the marauder, slow the target or mez the target. I realize one of them is spec dependent from a less taken tree, the rest are stock standard. I play a Pyro Merc. The most mobile of the merc classes and a extremely mobile class in general. It is impossible to kite a Marauder with any clue on how to play their class. Charge to slash and I have a 12 second slow on me. If I see them coming and perfectly time my knockback they choke or roar me til the slow clears. They can force camo to catch me, obfuscate to stop me from being able to hit them to apply my snare... the list goes on and on. I would love to hear how a marauder gets kited.

It has nothing to do with killing individuals. I can do that as well as any other class. They can kill me like I can kill them. Nothing changes that in Huttball. It is about the point of Huttball. To score. Force leap has half the CD of my knock back. Even if I do everything right and knock the carrier off, they will have 2 leaps in the time I have 1 KB. Bringing them right back up to the ramp. If I get knocked off while running the ball, I run up the side, hang a right, run up the middle ramp, hang a right, run up to the ramp... get it? I use my abilities to knock them off and they are back up quicker then my GCD ends. They knock a non force user off the ramp and it will be Thursday by the time they make it back up. How is that even close to fair? Either have a force user to carry in Huttball or don't bother. You don't say "Have a merc for Alderan or don't bother" "Have an agent for Voidstar or there is no way you will win". It just doesn't work that way. You need a healer or a tank or a dps. That is fine. Most all classes can fill those roles equally well based on spec. But when it comes to Huttball bring a class that can bounce all over the map or put yourself at a huge disadvantage. It makes no sense. Again, I don't hate Huttball. I like it in theory. The problem is how the abilities of 2 classes so far out shine the abilities of 2 other classes regardless of how they are specced.

As one of the classes with none of those abilities (BH Merc) this is exactly the problem with Huttball. I have no stealth, I have no speed, I have no pull, I have no root. I have one longish cool down knock back. And if the carrier has a full resolve bar, which by the time they get to a point where I am going to knock them back/off the edge and save the day they usually do, I instead have a fancy emote. I don't mind Huttball actually. I accept that my role is to haunt the upper levels and kill anyone that I can. I accept it and do my best with it. What gets frustrating is when you watch force users bounce all over the place while you are stuck running in slow motion. In every other warzone force users do what every class can do, use your skills to kill people. All of a sudden in Huttball they get to be super heroes. When do I get to be a super hero?

Change your A and D from turn left and turn right to strafe left and strafe right. Never use the back key to get away from people, instead strafe away. If you want to break yourself of the habit change your S key to not do anything. If you are strafing to the side and turn your view slightly towards the target you will not have facing issues. I use my mouse wheel up and down for rail and thermal detonator and my mouses two side buttons for rapid shots and incendiary missile so I don't have to move my hands off the movement keys but that is up to you. Fire incendiary while strafing. Use rail and thermal to put them on cd. Rapid shot like a crack head. As you get to range and they are slowed/far enough away you can unload or powershot if you want. Your main damage while kiting will come from your dots however. A good way to to get used to it is to find elite or stong melee mobs (animals work great) and practice. Try to take no hits. This is for Pyro of course. Arsenal isn't really a kite spec in my opinion. You could still rail, grenade, rapid shot but without the snare and dots I'm not so sure how it would go. Of course in PvP it won't be that easy. You will be slowed/stunned/mezzed/etc. and people will get close. Jet boost them back and get to kiting again. Hope that helps. Good luck.