Stuns, mezzes, and sleeps are way out of control. Every class has atleast 2 stuns, some have more. PvP is not about skill or teamwork, it's about using stuns to prevent the other guy from fighting back. So really, it's not pvp at all. It's just slaughtering a helpless player. But, this raises some questions. Are stuns needed that much? Does this mean that damage and healing are too high, so players need a way to halt it via stuns? Did the devs foresee that stuns would be so,...abused, in pvp? I understand that in a 2 v 1 or 3 v 1 situation you are not expected to win. Notice I said "expected". Smart play and skill should trump blind keyboard mashing. But right now, it doesn't. Sadly, and I don't mean this with any disrespect, but the devs clearly are clueless as to how huge stuns are and just how bad it is. Something needs to be done. So what can be or should be done? Some suggestions for my 2 cents.... 1.) reduce full resolve immunity from 20 seconds to 10 seconds, but double the rate you build resolve. One full hard stuns equals full resolve. Maybe this would have full resolve immunity happening more often, negating the over use of stuns, but lasting less time allowing them to be used again sooner. Hopefully this would encourage a smarter use of stuns rather than just as a part of the normal rotation. option 2.) have the CC breaker reset on achieving full resolve. But keep everything else the same as it is now. option 3) implement a diminishing returns on all CC for pvp ONLY. option 4) allow healing classes to "cleanse" CC abilities. option 5) resolve doesn't begin to diminish until you regain control of your character. What else can you guys think of? Please keep it civil. I personally don't mind losing to a better player, or even a player who played at that moment better than me. Even a lucky crit is begrudgingly ok. But to get stunned, brought to half health, then stunned again, then breaking it only to find that not only has the other person ran away to heal up and is already out of combat so he can, but now I'm still stuck in combat and can't heal. And then, another player comes up and guess what, resolve has already gone away so now I can be stunned again. And don't even get me started on the bologna that resolve works, more than once I've been stunned while still white barred. Just let people fight for crying out loud.

Actually, I think changing the way premades are present in regular queue would be a good thing. I do however disagree that there should be a separate queue for solo and group queue. THAT would NOT work. What warzones require and are factors in the outcome are: 1.) Individual skill 2.) Gearing 3.) Team composition 4.) Coordination 5.) communication Premades excel in all these areas. While pugs are highly left up to chance. SO right from the start, a premade already has a distinct advantage. To add onto this, the further add advantage to the premade, most premades run with a vent/mumble/teamspeak etc as well. You cannot, CANNOT discount how much voice communication enhances #4 and #5....which in turn help #1 as well. I dare say that voice comms can single handedly be a deciding factor. Reaction times are better, knowing when to switch targets or stun/interrupt someone, hands down easier. Pugs don't get voice comms. So right off the bat, they are at a disadvantage by a significant margin. Secondly, to address your "spirit of competition" argument. What you are basically saying is, everyone who wants to pvp has to be ready to compete for olympic gold and anything less is their own fault and they are just bads. Sorry ol' chum, but not EVERYONE lives and has life revolving around pvping in a video game. To use sports as an example, often there are tournaments for charity work. Now, the players are certainly "competing" and each wants to be the "super star" of the tourny, but in the end, it's about the charity, right. In that case, it's not really about who wins or loses as long as the charity wins. And then there is the situation when you're out back shootin' hoops with your friend just chillin'. (as kids would say). Are you telling me you're out there trying to humiliate your "friend"? To beat him into submission and reign supreme as the "back yard hoops gladiator"? God I hope not. It's called "friendly competition". And it's just that, friendly. Life and death don't hang in the balance of the outcome. But "some people" take sports and such, as well as video game pvp so seriously that it might as well be life and death hanging in the balance. Thirdly, premades don't "help" people learn to play better at all. How can you learn anything or even do anything if you get dog piled by 2-5 people singling you out and killing you in 3-4 seconds flat? You can't. And arguing that it does only shows your ignorance in how people learn and improve. Some of the best matches I've ever had, where I've had the most fun, learned the most, and genuinely improved my own game play has been when it was 8 pugs vs 8 pugs. Because you are all on the same footing, and start from the same point with the same advantages and disadvantages, it's left up to your own skill and effort YOU put in. pug vs pug is more forgiving of mistakes and thus allows you to test out your play style, see the results and make corrections without the immediate fall of disaster and a loss. Against a premade, any mistake is likely to cost the match UNLESS you can rise above that mistake and overcome it. And honestly, that is likely not going to happen if you already started out at a disadvantage and made mistakes either as an individual or as a team. Just not going to happen. To use sports again, just look at what happened when team USA put all NBA superstars on the Olympic basketball team. Ya, the fist few years it was nothing but a free for all slaughter of teams from around the world. You call THAT competition? Hardly. Once other countries started getting in on the same thing, look what happened. The skill level was more even. The median performance was more balanced, And low and behold Team USA wasn't just running circles around everyone else anymore. The funny thing is, the games actually became better and there was true competition again. So, I'm not advocating the removal of premades from pvp. Not entirely at least. I may have advocated for this in the past, but not now. (Not now considering I have finally gotten my dps sage well geared and have more than once gone up against 2 or 3 juggs and maras and lasted a LOT longer than they thought I would, leaving them severely battered. Which was a win for me in a way as they THOUGHT I was going to be just cannon fodder much to their surprise.) But what I think BW should do, is to eliminate the double premade guild teams and the 4 man premades. Just reduce the number you can queue as from 4 to 3. That way people can still queue with friends, premades can still hand pick their team, pugs won't have to counter such huge disadvantages without a lot of tools to do so, and more balance is restored to pvp. In this case, premades wont be as huge a factor in who wins or loses. It's not a huge change really. I mean seriously, if you are forming a 4 man premade you are either A.) trying to counter another premade or B.) setting up so you can easily dominate the other team. And this is ONLY for unranked pvp. For ranked pvp it should be anything goes. Seriously though, something does need to be done because more than once, I see people just giving up on pvp altogether. Premades have already created a large enough gear gap to make any pvp painful and unpleasant. So yes I do think something should be done, just nothing too drastic. Just take baby steps until you hit the sweet spot between balance, competition and fun.

That is what YOU are not seeing. You see ALL pvp as a competitive event and WE should all accept YOUR view as to the way things should be. Not EVERYONE pvps for the competition. Some do it for fun. Sometimes I pvp for fun, sometimes for the competition. But premades hurt in both cases. Unranked is NOT meant to be THE competitive event you think it is, hense there is no ranking system attached to it. That's why there is a ranked queue and an unranked queue. One is for the competition, the other is open to everyone and meant to be more "casual".

He does kinda have a point though. Premades are hurting the overall pvp queue. On my server, once a couple of guilds starts queuing, the queue ends up taking a lot longer. Why? Because their entire guild has all ranked gear min/maxed. They use vent/mumble etc. And always queue together. They're good pvpers yes, wont take that away from them, but they do have quite an advantage over the other teams. I've talked to a few people and they have just given up on pvping altogether because the only time they can play, is during a time when those guilds are most active. And he, among many others are just sick and tired of getting steamrolled. I kow you'll say, "get better" or "make your own premade". But that kinda defeats the point of unranked pvp. Unranked is a kinda of "casual" pvp area and there in essence to let you test things out. You cant get better or test things out when you get dog piled and blown up in 4 seconds. And with the plethora of stuns, you usually don't get to do much of anything at all. So people give up and do something else. So yes, premades ARE killing unranked pvp. One solution to try is to reduce the number of people you can group queue with from 4 to 3. That may make enough difference to balance things out more but will still allow you to queue with friends.

Must be a PT thing cause just a week ago I had a PT call me a hacker while on my sage because: 1.) I was taking no damage from him - I dotted him up and then bubbled so I took no damage 2.) He was taking damage while I wasn't moving & while I was moving - my dots tick for about 1000-1200 per tick (WM) 3.) I hit him with an instant 4k ability while moving followed by a 7k hit while still moving- insta cast mind crush followed by a force in balance Now, with this in mind, you can forget the fact I was in full obroan gear with 2018 expertise, he had, even with bolster only around 1300 expertise. The new sage'sorc bubble builds charges after use to block some damage and prevent some pushback/interupts. Oh and forget that he only had 31k hp and I had 33k to start with. But, with all this in mind, as he said..."sages can't do that". So, I guess using my abilities as they are designed and getting things set up for some burst is what is called hacking now huh? No wait, using pvp gear in a pvp warzone is hacking too! Oh wait, I also forgot that my damage over time effects crits also heal me, spec ability and pvp set bonus). I guess that's hacking too right? Needless to say, he was a very uninformed PT and spent a lot of time in the respawn zone thanks to me. Well, that is right up until he got several of his teammates convinced I was hacking and 2-3 of them dog piled me....still managed to kite and kill 2 of them from full to death though...the last force in balance that killed both of them was epic....2 kills for the price of one! The one last piece of info I forgot to add....I had a scoundrel behind and below me who cleansed his fire effects and hotted me up. But, as he said, I was hacking lulz.

Well, IMHO, to help the balance/madness trees with force management issues, I honestly think force in balance/death field should also apply weaken mind/affliction to the affected targets. This would help a little with applying the dots around, which is one of the most force costly things balance/madness specs do and a large portion of our ability to do damage. We dont have a lot of burst, so getting our dots up is key to our play style. This little change might be just barely enough to fix the force management issues. It would have to be higher up on the tree to prevent a hybrid build being able to abuse it though. I'd urge caution on making too many or too large adjustments as it might completely unbalance the spec. So perhaps this could be tested out to see how it affects game play and force management.

The cone effect as it is now is probably better for a PvE setting. But the 360 degree version was far more useful in a pvp setting. Sages USED to be able to get ops/scoundrels and assassins/shadows off of them for a second or two with the 360 version. Now, it's just worthless because they can be out of it's effects arc very easily and you have no real way of creating some breathing room. And we all know how sages/sorcs are treated in WZ's now...aka...free kills. Because everyone knows sages/sorcs have no real way to peel people off of them now IF you are not directly in front of them. It was an important defensive ability for PvP. It's practically worthless now in it's current form. It doesn't push back far enough to negate the smash monkey's...ops and sins can just roll/force speed right back to you within a global and you're right back where you started again. The thing is, a 360 version is and WAS more of a defensive cool down than an offensive one, but it could have been used offensively. Now though, it's more of an offensive ability than a defensive one. And sages/sorcs are lacking in the defensive CD area. Just look at all the comments here.....most people have already stated that they use it to "position" mob packs, top off group members etc...rarely has anyone even said anything about using it as it was intended...as an "get off me" defensive ability. It's not like it was an OP ability or anything. Sages/sorcs have little means of defending themselves once getting ANY melee class on them now. Sure, there is force barrier, but that just stops you from dying for a few seconds, that doesn't heal you at all unless you are a healer, so it's practically useless for dps sages/sorcs. So basically, once you get a decent op/scoundrel or a sin/shadow on you, there's not much to do except just stand there and wait to respawn. But I guess that's ok. Another thing...it sure feels like the devs dont want any dps sages/sorcs.....and they want us all to be healers. Frankly, I hate healing. Sage/sorc...you're going back up on the shelf again. /sigh

To the bolded part....I could say the same thing about imps on The Shadowlands server. There's 3-4 imp guilds that ALWAYS pvp as a premade, with vent/mumble and only in non ranked. You don't see them in anything but a premade, not a single member of the guild at all. I wonder why right. Sad fact is, a lot of the pvpers, imp and pub, as well as a large portion of them on the leaderboards, refuse to pvp without a definite advantage, such as being on vent/mumble and in a premade. They don't want a real challenge, they only want to steamroll other teams. The reality is, that some of the people on the leaderboards don't actually belong there if you only were to look at it from an individual performance. What I mean is, if I have a dedicated pocket healer and tank healing and debuffing for me, I'm certainly going to do a lot better than if I'm relying on a pug team to do that for me. THEIR performance is what makes mine possible and without it my performance would be much more inline with other people not on the leaderboards. Long story short, 50% of the people on the leaderboards don't actually belong there and are not any better than a dozen other people of the same class and gear. They just got scored higher because of the fact they had "help".

The simple answer to the problem is this: Premades. Simple as that. Steamrolls usually happen when a group of people queue together and have vent/mumble etc. You cannot believe the difference that having voice chat makes to coordination to a match. And that difference does indeed greatly improve your chances of winning. It's a difference that has no basis in skill, but purely a technological one. Pugs won't have vent, premades might. So, in addition to having an advantage of controlling class composition, a premade also gets (sometimes) the advantage of inately better coordination. And neither of those are based on skill. If premades were removed from non ranked, the problem would be solved to some extent. Or at least limit premade size to 2 players only. That would certainly be easier than any other method of removing any of the non skill based advantages premades have.

Hard core pvpers tend to rage the most. They can't seem to control themselves. The really "good" pvpers are always being verbally abusive to others. I see the same people over and over going off the deep end and getting very abusive all the time. Kinda makes you wonder how bad they are in real life. And if they're anywhere near as bad as they are in real life...well, let's just say I would expect to see them doing time in prison eventually, (if they haven't already.)

TA or the scoundrel equivelent is EASY to get. There is a talent that gives you 1 or 2 stacks when you exit stealth, dropping the hot on 3 targets (3 globals) is easy enough too. Secondly, even with 3 on me, dodge and shield negates most of the damage I would have taken. And then there is the free instant once you get to 30% health, and then the WZ med pack. Boom back to 80% health in 1 global. And then you cleanse and roll away and line of sight them. Not hard to do at all. Point is and was, op/scoundrel heals are too good right now. And healing should NEVER be able to match with incoming damage as easily as it does right now. As I said before, it is and always has been, in the real world at least, easier to destroy things than it is to create. Just remember, I'm not saying all healers need to be nerfed, just ops/scoundrels. Merc/mandos and Sorc/sages healing is fine and about where they should be, but ops/scoundrels are too potent considering half their healing abilities are instant, with a quarter of them a instant drop and heal over time. It's very hard to interrupt an instant ya know.

Sorry to say this, and I'll likely get flamed for it, but...... Healing is WAY over powered right now; for some classes, less so for others. Commandos/mercs are, IMHO are where they should be, sorc/sages are a little too capable of healing while ops/scoundrels are far far ahead of where they should be. Let me explain. Healing should NEVER be nearly as potent as dps. It has always been, historically and logically, easier to destroy things than it is to create or heal. Healing shouldn't prevent death entirely, but only extend the amount of time before death would occur. But right now, this isn't the case. As it is, an op can keep and entire team alive with little to no resource management needed, and when combined with their own healing they have some incredible survivability. Some say ops/scouns are not OP....likely because they play the class and don't want them hit with the nerf bat. Some also say that a healer should never be killable by one person. On this I disagree. Again, going back to what I said earlier about it has always been easier to destroy than to create philosophy, a single dps should be ABLE to kill a healer, unguarded of course, not quickly but it should be possible. I'm NOT saying healers should be free kills or anything, just that they shouldn't be able to completely counter damage completely. Again, healing should extend how long you live, not make you immortal. It should be a battle of attrition, not a "oh crap they have 3 ops healers, we're screwed!" Mandos/mercs are where all healers should be, and the other 2 healing classes brought down to their level. And I honestly think it would improve things. The way healing is, specifically ops/scoun heals are right now, when combined with the over abundance of CC, it's just too much. Make people have to work at it a bit rather than being ROFL mode. If an op/scoun can heal through stupid, then their healing IS over powered. Good healers will still excel, but bad ones will quickly be outted for making so many mistakes. Hopefully, learning from their mistakes. And this is why healers are THE priority target to kill first. Because they are so powerful and able to completely and decisively determine the outcome. In essence, 1 decent healer is worth more than 4 decent dps in most cases. And that shouldn't be the case. I know, I have a 53 scoundrel, and it's kinda sad that I can survive 3 dps on me even though all 3 are unloading on me. And what's worse is that, I normally play scrapper on my scoundrel, and is geared for it, and I can STILL heal extremely effectively in dps gear. That's just sad.

For starters, an op/sc doesn't need to "spec" into anything to get this ability. Secondly, 1 12 meter roll is about equivalent to 1 sorc/sage force speed in distance and speed. Maybe two at most. Then, the CD starts for the sage/sorc. The op/sc can spam it 3 more times at least if timed right. Thirdly, you can't "slow" an op/sc at the beginning of a match. And the beginning is where the tone of the match is set. Fourthly, rolling pretty much makes you untargetable as you can't really click on them, and tab targeting them doesn't work while they are rolling. These are mechanics that BW can fix though, and they need to be first before any assessment of the ability is done. Point is, NO class should have an ability that gives an advantage that is so disproportionate to the other classes. An advantage is fine, but not to the extent that it becomes absurd. The fact is, NO other abilities compare fully to the roll. Some have a CD, others, range limits, while others require a targeted player to use. NO other ability can cover the distance that roll can while ALSO not requiring a targeted person to activate or have a range limit it can be used for. All the other speed abilities have drawbacks in how it is used, while the only drawback for an op/sc is after the fact, in having used it. THAT'S the difference. But if people INSIST on there being no change to roll, then at least give every class a ranged snare with no cooldown. Then it'll be the rollers QQing on the forums. But then we can just say L2Cleanse it off or L2CC break or L2LOS. But hey, they are l33t players so their QQ must be more legitimate than anyone else's, right? Fact is, there will always be a segment of gamers that will defend, promote and abuse any use of exploits, glitches, op abilities and cheats. And they will ALWAYS blame other players for not knowing how to play. They will always use the moniker of L2P. Just ignore them. Their opinions mean nothing because they are only around as long as there is a way to exploit/glitch/cheat. Once those are removed, they'll move on to the next game to exploit/abuse/cheat there.

Intent and actuality are two different things. A move designed to be defensive is being used offensively. This is exactly the type of thing that was the reasoning behind changing the sage knock back to being frontal cone only instead of being 360 degrees. IS ops/scoudrels want to keep their cheap scamper, I want my 360 degree knock back back.

The problem, I think, is in the way it is implemented. Force speed is used most often as a comparison because of the distance and situations it is used for IMO. Myself, on my sage, I had a teammate who used the roll at the same time as I used force speed and this is what I noticed. We both went about the same distance, and it took about the same amount of time. Ok, not a problem with that. But then, my teammate used it again and was a good distance in front of me a good distance. That's mostly ok too, as it's kinda like a guardian leap then a force charge in terms of time and distance covered. But this is where I honestly think it gets a bit out of hand. My teammate used it a third time, and was right at the ball in huttball. I was still just crossing the second elevated fire pit. The thing is, my teammate WASN'T out of resources. He/she WAS very low, but still could use other abilities that required those resources. And THAT is part of the problem. If you know how to, you CAN use it 3 times, cover a large distance and still have enough resources to use an ability or two. And, if you are at a high enough level, you can make a "hybrid" build that takes a bunch of talents that A.) increases your energy regen rate, and B.) increases both your "dodge" and your movement speed. I just tested a hybrid spec to see if it can be done and it CAN. The roll costs 25 energy. Meaning you can use it 4 times at the least. And, if you use a hybrid build, you can use it those 4 times, then hit cool head and pugnacity and be able to use it a 5th time after those GCDs. And at this point, since, if talented for it, cool head will restore 50 energy after the initial 16. So it's like this with talents if done right....Cool head gives 16 energy immediately, plus 50 over 3 seconds. Pugnacity gives 10 energy immediately. That's 26 energy....the roll only requires 25 energy. Toss in the fact that with this hybrid build, surrender also removes movement impairing abilities. Your dodge is increased quite a bit. With 5 rolls, that's a minimum of 60 yards. And then there's the fact that I myself have seen ops/scoundrels roll up from the pit, from one elevated platform to another directly without following the platform's "path", through the green acid pits and elevated fires with NO damage. The ability itself is fine. And being able to use it more than once is fine too...to an extent. It's the fact that the talents that can make it EXTREMELY powerful are so low in the talent trees coupled with the fact that the animation isn't quite "perfected", AND that if you snare them, they can use surrender to break it, thus freeing themselves AND building resolve, and then you stun them, and they can still break that with their CC breaker and thus become immune to snares, stuns and such. So it's not one thing itself that is the problem, it's a combination of things that makes the ability a problem. In short, it's too easy to get that hybrid build to make you unstoppable especially in huttball. What needs to be fixed first BEFORE any possible nerfs is the animation and the clipping errors that can happen. (the clipping errors are what causes them to be able to go from the pit to the goal line which they shouldn't be able to do up an elevated section like that.) Once those are fixed and working properly, move a couple talents around so it's not possible to "abuse" the ability to the extent that people are unhappy about, THEN take another look at the ability itself. Just outright nerfing the ability won't "fix" the problem, it'll only hurt those with the ability.

DOTS may not kill in a WZ, but what is a WZ TRULY about anyways? Number of kills, or winning? Number of kills means NOTHING if you lose. Winning is all that matters. And if dots help do that, then so what. If it keeps someone off the node so they can cleanse/heal up, then that's good. If they help keep someone from capping, GREAT. Who cares if they kill them or not. If I can keep 3 people busy cleansing and/or healing up from the dots, then that's 3 people NOT capping or defending. If dots brings someone to below 30%, that's good to for one of my teammates who can then use his execute abilities. If they get the kill because of my dots, that's great and I did my job. (Played as a team rather than padding my stats.) Most number of kills means almost nothing. An operative/scoundrel could sit in stealth waiting for people to get low on HP and then pop out and burst them quickly for the kill. If they get the most KB's, does that mean they contributed the most? Of course not. And I'll never, NEVER, vote for anyone with the most kills. I personally, look at who contributed the most. IE: most damage + most healing, or most damage+most protection, etc etc. If you look at 2 stats rather than just one, you'll quickly see who really helps the team the most.

Expansions are in essence, gear resets. New level caps should mean new gear, both along the way and at the end. The problem is, and it's one that ALL game developers seem to repeatedly makes is, something called stat bloat. The longer and expansion goes along it's merry way, the more "tiers" of gear they need to add to keep people at the end game position busy and working towards a goal. So, what you end up with is some people at the top end with the best gear and some fresh level cap players just hitting cap with the bottom end "crap gear". Once the expansion hits, top end geared players usually fair well, while fresh 50's, or 55's in this case, get caught with their pants down so to speak. BW tried to fix this with the bolster system. It sounded like a good thing at first. But then reality set in. Like someone said earlier, the way it was implemented basically punished pvpers for having pvp gear and gave pve geared players a distinct advantage. Instead of raising everyone up to the max amount of expertise in an attempt to make things equal, it should have given every a minimum amount of expertise.....in a way kinda like how recruit gear did. THEN, any expertise you already had added to that min amount. This would have preserved pvp gear for pvp and not taken away from pvpers in pvp settings, while still giving pve geared players a minimum amount. Coupled with the higher primary stats on PvE gear, this would have balanced out the differences between pvp and pve gear more equitably. Ergo, you're not punished for having pvp gear and not crushed for having pve gear. In essence, there would be an offset between the boosts expertise gives versus the boosts to primary stats found on PvE gear. Secondly, I disagree with the new brackets completely. 10-29, 30-54, is NOT a good breakdown. Most specs don't "come into their own" until around level 36ish. Prior to level 36, you just don't have enough skills or talent points to make your character competitive with someone say 54. I honestly think the brackets should have been 10-39, and 40-54. At 40 and above, you have a pretty good handle on your class and about enough points to get the most important talents to make you honestly competitive. And the thing is, the players themselves have basically done this themselves in a way. I pvp a lot. And since the patch went live, I've seen fewer and fewer people in the 30-40 level ranges pvping. Even heard someone say in one match that they finally got a team with no 30's on it. That's kinda telling about the status of how things are working. And lastly, not entirely unrelated, why oh why in god's name would you remove the 20, 40 and even the 50 (WH/EWH) pvp gear? What were you thinking?!?!?! The 20 and 40 PvP gear was the biggest reason why I pvp'ed so much prior to level cap. It was decent gear, not really PvP gear as none of the pre-50 gear had expertise, but it was far better than nothing, and I could certainly spend plenty of time, and therefore $$ in terms of sub fee, pvping to earn that gear. I didn't have to rely on RNG hoping that an item I needed for an upgrade would drop OR praying there isn't someone else in the group who needed the same thing OR praying that everyone wouldn't roll NEED on everything that dropped to either vendor or outfit their companions. It was simply I put in the work and time, I got the gear I wanted in a semi predictable time frame and manner. NOW, you HAVE to PvE or pay out through the nose for stuff on the GTN to get upgrades. (unless of course you can make it yourself of course) SO again, pvpers are punished and now have to "make do" or PVE and hope they can get gear. /facepalm And to add to that last paragraph...removing the 20 and 40 pvp gear makes me weep tears of blood. A lot of that gear looked FAR better than some of the garbage that is available at higher levels. Trooper gear comes to mind right off the bat. Hmmm, trooper gear that looks genuinely trooper-ish and has a very pleasing aesthetic....OR...as was the case of BM gear, trooper gear, especially the helmets that loot like a fishbowl and a trash can had a baby. I'll take the 40 trooper gear thank you very much. I'll spend the credits ripping out the level 50/55 mods and put it in the level 40 gear. If I have to look at the character to play him, I'd rather it look like how I want, not how YOU want .

Meh, I don't care either way. What I don't care about is "WHO YOU ARE", but rather "HOW YOU PLAY". Wether from my server or not, doesn't matter. I still have to figure you out...learn your mindset, tactics etc. Cross realm pvp won't change that. The good pvpers will STILL be known. The damous, or infamous, guild group pvpers will STILL be known. Cross realm pvp is kinda like an away game at the next town. You don't play them often, but you still know who they are and have an idea of what to expect. You just can't predict everything they do....as with same server pvp, you eventually learn what skills and tactics people use ALL the time. If cross realm pvp kills the "community", it's the "community" that's to blame. It's not BW's fault for how PEOPLE act. Someone referenced WoW,...well, think about that for a second. A game with one of the worst communities to begin with getting cross realm pvp. Of course that's going to make things worse. Their community was already horrible. SWTOR's community isn't like that. We have a good community. So cross realm pvp wont necessarily ruin it. It's all in how YOU act. Don't blame the tool for the bad craftsmanship, blame the craftsman. The tool is only as good as the person using it.

Anyone else find it hilarious that "some" people are complaining about "no skill" players in greens spanking them even though they min/maxed their gear? I just can't stop laughing. Sounds like someone is upset that, on equal footing, they cant dominate others like they used to. Only real difference I've seen is, level 50's running at lowbies thinking he's gonna spank them...only to be sent packing. Seriously, the sheer amount of level 50's, YES 50's, with full WH gear, doing the dumbest things at the worst possible moments is amazing. Long story short....pre-2.0 = gear > intelligence Post 2.0 = intelligence > gear. I am surviving about the same amount of time as I was pre-2.0. Same gear, same level. The really funny part is, the "very well geared" that used to dominate pvp, now don't have the gear advantage and their mistakes cost them FAR more harshly....their over confidence is their biggest downfall. If you're being 2 shot, the YOU are doing something wrong. Between my sage, jugg and vanguard, I've yet to be 2, 3, or even 4 shot. I'm not dumb enough to let people wind up and get off their best hits on me. Nor am I foolish enough to just stand there slugging it out thinking my gear gives me the upper hand. The good pvpers I'm still having trouble with. The bad ones, even the bad ones in GREAT gear, are getting steamrolled for not playing smartly. And I'm calling BS on the naked pvp. I tested it out, and I still had better stats overall WITH my gear on.

Gee thanks knucklehead! Now I'm hungry for some chocolate mousse pie. You know the one with the chocolate gram cracker crust and whipped cream and shaved almonds on top. Was about to go to bed, now I gotta go to the store. Thanks a lot. 8P

Damage IS a factor is determining who did what. Think about that one person who couldn't kill the other team's healer, but kept him from being effective, aka lots of damage but low kill number. Or how abut a DOT heavy class? Not a lot of killing blows but lots of damage output. That adds to the pressure the other team feels. And what about all those times people get few killing blows at all? guarding a node, keeping the other team out of the middle in hypergate, stealthing in to cap the other team's pylon etc. Focusing on killing blows is short sighted and would only cause people to tunnel vision even more than they do now instead of doing the right thing. KB focused player stops the guy from capping the door in voidstar, then proceeds to chase that player down to kill him while that enemy's buddy caps the door behind you. Not smart play IMO. Focusing on killing blows is the mark of a bad player. End of story.

While I don't disagree fully, I would ask how would you improve that flawed design? I personally don't think there is a lot of wiggle room to "fix" the flawed design. Atleast not without some people upset one way or the other. There isn't really a way to please everyone. If you ban premades, then guilds and former premaders will be unhappy. If you don't ban premades, a lot of casuals will be unhappy. If you add a bolster system to bring everyone's gear to par, the "I worked hard for this gear and they're basically getting it for free" people will be upset. One idea, and I know this would be unpopular, is to have a "average gear rating" to use in matching up groups. This would at least put people together that are of similar stats. The part of voice chat adding an advantage wouldn't be addressed unless BW puts one into the game. Which is possible if they wanted to. I dunno. It's a difficult task to balance the restrictions versus players' desires vs accessibility vs technical problems. Throw in class balance and it's just one big mess to try and fix.

The best matches, and the most fun ones are the ones that are close. It's in those matches where personal effort and cooperation play a more pivotal role in deciding the outcome. But also, it's tactics which are VERY important. Leading a group away from a node so a teammate can cap is helpful, despite some saying "fight on the node". But premades make personal effort and willingness to cooperate trivial at best. When you go into a pug, you don't know what you're going to get, and it's up to YOU to work with the rest of the team. That means keeping an eye on the chat window for "inc" calls and responding quickly and appropriately. With many premades, they use voice chat. Thereby making the need to watch the window a mute point. Having preselected roles and makeup, removes the adaptation you need to do in tactics and thereby response times, delay tactics, etc. In essence, premades remove a large part of what makes it competition. But this NOT the case when it's 2 premades against each other. As each has off setting advantages. But a premade versus a pug just isn't really competition. And I know some may say "it doesn't guarantee a win", which is true, but it sure does increase the odds. The problem does not stem from what I would call a "casual premade", but comes from a "hardcore premade". And the difference is a hardcore premade is formed from pvp enthusiasts with top level gear queuing for non ranked pvp. Their gear clearing is meant for "top level competition", NOT run of the mill groups. It's the same reason for the longest time, and I don't know why the rules were changed, but up until the last few olympics, professional atheletes were BANNED from competing in the olympics. That's right, once you went pro, you were BANNED from competing. Why? Because it supposedly gave the pros an unfair advantage. But, alas that rule was changed and now even the olympics are a joke. College athletics have a similar rule still in effect. Once you go pro, you CANNOT compete in collegiate athletics anymore. And I agree with this rule. It helps prevent some of the potential abuses. Part of the root problem is, and has been stated by others, that there isn't a lot of people queuing for ranked. And I can understand why. First is the number of people that can have a consistent group to compete with. Second is the hesitation to venture into an environment where you don't know how well that random player you grouped with will perform, (in the case of advertising to have people form a premade which are required to queue for ranked). And third, the current state of ROFLstomping that already exists. I know for sure I won't get into a group for ranked pvp based solely on the fact that I know that the other team is likely a hard core group with voice chat and other tools, not to mention the fact that my main is only full WH with no "elite WH" yet. And with the current state of pvp balance, or lack thereof, I'm not going to even bother. I don't need the aggravation of getting gang leaped and the soon to follow flurry of 'SMASH". I get enough of that in non-ranked as it is. If you want more people to queue for ranked, you have to let them have their fun while playing first. Ranked pvp is supposed to be more serious competition. If people are not having fun in regular pvp, they're less likely to queue for ranked. So in essence, it IS premades own fault for hurting the ranked "tier" of pvp. PVP just doesn't stand for Player versus player, it also stands for pug versus pug.

Again, this goes back to premade players saying they want a challenge and enjoy it, yet, once presented with a challenge, they up and rage quit because they're "not gonna waste their time" and they wait until they get a high geared team. And this here is an example of why PvP in most MMO's have problems. What if they just bolstered everyone to the exact same gear levels and stats? Everyone would be equal then right? Nope, the hardcore PvPers would get upset because then "their gear wouldn't mean anything", translation: they wouldn't have that advantage over non hardcore PvPers. And this is why I have no respect for hardcore PvPers in any game. They moan and groan about wanting a challenge then moan and groan when faced with it.

But you see, it's a vicious circle. If people get frustrated and roflstomped in non-ranked... they are much less likely to get into ranked. Furthermore, in non ranked, if they take forever to get geared up, again, they're less likely to get into ranked matches. Who really WANTS to spend their time playing getting steamrolled all the time? I don't, and I'm sure you wouldn't like it either. But, what you're saying is, you premade because there isn't enough ranked matches, so you're going to take it out on non ranked players. And that, non ranked has to suffer because there isn't enough for YOU to do? And, may I ask why you are soooo dependent on your "2 other friends" to play with? Is socializing with them soo all encompassing that you can't live without them in this game? Anyways...50 pvp is not very active compared to the 10-49 bracket. In fact, the 10-49 bracket is probably 10 times more active than the 50 one. And premades are a LOT less common there. Coincidence? Maybe, but I'm sure not getting roflstomped doesn't hurt either. In fact, I've heard more than once people say that they stop pvping once they hit 50. And like I said earlier, there is a reason there is ranked and non-ranked. Some people just want to go in and have some fun, others want a more serious matter. Each has it's place. By making premades, and thereby roflstomp pug groups, you're not helping the problem of "not enough matches in ranked 50 pvp". You're probably making it worse.