@Khoraji http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrwqD2OajLQ Since I can't take screenshots, here's someone pouring out a ton of PvP damage. No double 5k crits, but quite a lot of singles, and a few double 4k to 4.5k. He does get one 6500 crit as well (the video makes it look like two but I'm pretty sure it's just a recut of the same footage). If you watch the numbers flying out, there's a lot more happening than 1 hit per GCD as well. I can't keep up with that. Be interesting to see from a PT perspective, since I know their railshots hit 5k and they have talents to boost the crit chance of it, as well as reset the cooldown. I'd imagine double 5k crit is a more likely scenario for that AC. Anyway, the bottom line is, you wanted to see players melting under crazy DPS, there it is. Also, thanks to the guy above for posting. I know I'm not making this stuff up, but apparently I'm untrustworthy or something... >.>

Anyway, some corrections to my previous data.... BM Set minus three pieces: Ear, 2nd Implant, Chest Current Expertise: 1101 Max Deliverance in WZ: 4000 (for 2.22s cast) Unbuffed HP: 14900 Also, average comms for a loss tonight appears to be around 40, not 80 like originally calculated. Just saying. I think that's all... no updates on the screenshots. I found a thread with other people saying they had the same problem, but haven't found a resolution yet.

yea that's where I'm at. I press the button and nothing goes there.

This is silly.. I've already taken quite a few 5k hits but my screenshot key doesn't work in pvp. *sigh* Honestly, has anybody else experienced this? It was working in fleet, then I went into a WZ and now it's not... neither in the WZ nor in fleet.

Good to know, I'll accept that. This line of conversation came about because you asked where my cc-breaker was and I told you that I'll use it, and get immediately stunned again. I'll accept that 2 stuns fill resolve, but I'm still dying before resolve can come into play. Two DPS vs. 1 anything getting demolished is *horrible* game design. Insta-gibbing is no fun, players need time to react and counter. I can go on mumble with a buddy and call target switches all day and there's nothing anybody can do to counter it. Which brings me back, if two DPS focusing something is supposed to annihilate the target, healing simply has no purpose. And perhaps I was off base in that comment? I made the assumption that all healers were running into this problem. I top the healing charts most WZ I go into and still get pulled apart like a wet kleenex, I guess I assumed that other players were too. If this isn't correct, then maybe sages need buffs? You keep saying healers are team oriented... DPS aren't? Why should DPS be able to run free and clear while healers have to get the full support of everybody on their team. It's senseless game design. If DPS were subject to the same restriction, we would have balance, but we don't, so we have imbalance. It's not all that hard... War hero gear isn't available to me because it takes so long to get for a casual player. I shouldn't have to spend my entire life in this game to remain viable. I don't mind being a little behind because I didn't grind out as much gear, but being absolutely useless unless I'm in full WH? That's a pretty big problem. Look, I don't know what's going on in your life and I don't really care. All we need here is for you to understand that not everybody plays every night for 3-4 hours, nor should they have to. I already have a full-time job, I don't need another. I'm here for entertainment and diversion. We're not talking standard MMO gear disparity here, this is a big problem. They told me a month ago that I needed full BM to have a chance. I'm almost there and there's no difference, now, only a month later, you're telling me I need full WH, something I won't be able to get given my current play schedule (800 RWC per week from 2 dailies and a weekly)? There's no way I can keep up. A game shouldn't require that much time commitment. My thread title is fine, you're just being obtuse. You're free to leave if all you have to offer is pointless comments that offer nothing. Honestly, the bulk of your responses here have been "nuh-uh, you're making this up!" You keep discounting my posts by saying I should somehow be able to magically wiggle my fingers and be back at full health, no problem. I can't do that, I'm stunned. Stuns are instant cast,they can't be prevented. It takes people time to realize that something is happening and with the current damage, it's too late to do anything about it by the time anybody realizes what's going on. In the example I posted, that first damage comes in and by the time I see it (especially thanks to lag, hooray!) I'm caught in a stun. If I'm lucky I might have gotten my shield or HoT off depending on what's available. Then I get two more damaging attacks on me while being unable to do anything. Now I'm so far behind I can't catch up, if I don't die already. And maybe stuff hits you for 2500-4000 but consider also that you're a Merc. You guys wear heavy armor, don't you? I'm pretty sure a PT railshot is gonna hit you for the full 5k since that's 90% armor ignore, but others might be mitigated. For me, I get the full effect because all my armor is light. Stuff really is hitting me this hard. I have no problem getting some screenshots to prove this because I know it's true, I see it every time I PvP. That said, if I post them, will you stop being an *** and accept that incoming damage is really this high?

If you read my title that I was fully geared and missed the very first sentence where I explained how geared I was ("almost all of my BM pieces"), that would be your own fault, wouldn't you say? I have almost all the gear that's going to be available to me, and that is the basis of my thread. I made some posts a while back when I was in recruit gear expressing dismay about how quickly I died. The general response was "you gotta get your BM gear". Fair enough, I thought... I may not like it but I should at least give it a try. I did, and I'm basically finished, and I'm not seeing any difference. None, at all. If I'm seeing no difference after all this gearing, I'm not going to see anything else once I get the 3 pieces I'm missing. I think we're getting too hung up on the 4 seconds. The problem is that I'm dying in a 4s stun, from 100 to 0. If you think about it, it's not terribly hard to set this up. You need to do the following: [t < 0] * Setup DoTs [t < 0] * Do large damaging attack [t = 0] * Do stun before person can react [t = 1.5] * Do large damaging attack, dots tick [t = 3.0 ] * Do large damaging attack, dots tick [t = 4.0] * Stun wears off [t = 4.5] * Do large damaging attack (and/or interrupt, then do large damaging attack) Multi-crit is happening... you keep telling me it's not and I keep shaking my head and shrugging at you because I know it does. In that sequence, you've got three large damaging attacks in a short time frame, then one more in the hopes that you finish them off. Unless my stun breaker is up (2 min CD vs. the 1 min CD of the stun) I can do nothing in this period of time. DPS classes are hitting me for 5k crits and with your average 30% chance to crit, it's not unreasonable to expect two of those in there. If those two are the large damaging attacks, that's 10k damage. Then you've got two more large damaging attacks which, even if they don't crit, are probably going to add up to another 5k to 6k damage. Then you've got any DoTs ticking for extra damage. I'm not saying this happens every single time, but it does happen a lot. This is just from a single person. Taking crits out of the equation, two DPS can accomplish the exact same thing, killing a player before they could possibly react. It's also not terribly hard to set this up.

Thank you for posting... it helps that you're full WH. I've got these guys discounting me 'cause I'm not quite done my BM set and here you are, a full WH player, experiencing similar problems. It just feels like DPS in this game want healers to be useless... which makes sense, I suppose if I wasn't concerned with game balance too I'd want healers to be invincible gods, which is what they seem to think I'm asking for. All I want is to have a chance to be effective. Right now I don't.

Dying is fine, dying so quickly is the problem. Unbuffed my hp is about 16k with 3 pieces shy of full BM. This is the gear that I get. Most sages I see have around 17.5k buffed in a WZ... I'm thinking I'm missing endurance from augments. I will get this gear, but I'll be right back here to tell you how quickly I die. What will you tell me then? As for no single class doing that much damage in 4 seconds... I dunno what to tell you, they are. Others in this thread have voiced their support, having seen the same thing. You're basically calling me a liar. I suppose there's not much else I can do except say, "yes, this is happening to me." Maybe I can take some fraps clips of how quickly I die and post them, but I'll be honest with you... it seems an awful lot of effort to go through for someone who will likely ignore it. I left the dailies out of my calculations because not everybody plays every day. I don't... I told you above, I play twice a week, sometimes more sometimes less. It usually takes me two weeks to finish a weekly and the daily I sometimes don't complete if we're losing really badly. You need to start understanding that not everybody plays constantly. I still don't get why this is an issue... see below. You seem to have ignored the very statement you quoted. I ask you again, who gives a crap how long it takes? Does it matter? No, what matters is that I'm at the later stages of it. I'm basically done my set. Does it matter how long I spent on it? If you play 24/7 for 3 days and get your set, how is that different than if I spend a month getting mine. At the end of the day, we both have our sets. I don't get why we're even talking about this, it has nothing to do with anything. If I somehow led us down this line of conversation, I apologize. It's led us nowhere and has been a completely pointless endeavour. Perhaps we can agree to move on? No, I die before my resolve bar ever gets filled. I use my stun breaker when it's up. Against 2 DPS it doesn't matter 'cause the other guy uses it (seems it takes 2-3 stuns for it to fill... I don't fully understand the resolve bar to be honest with you. I've read all the stuff but sometimes it just doesn't seem to fill correctly). Anyway, I know you say 2 DPS should win against a healer, and I'm not disagreeing with you on the broad concept of that... it's the specifics. One DPS is auto-win, two DPS is absolute destruction on me. Resolve doesn't even get a chance to be a part of it. As for where my team is, I have no control over this fact... sometimes I have a guard, sometimes I don't. The bottom line is, why should I have to be reliant on it if DPS aren't? If you have that much expertise and HP, you're probably well past BM. WH gear isn't available to me, period. You're talking about the top level of competitive gear... the average, mid-level player can't obtain that. The best I can expect is 1150ish expertise with about 17.5k hp. At least for a sage... I can't remember what class you said you were, Merc? Maybe your gear is better, I have no idea. I can only tell you what I get. Either way, I can't really gear up anymore, and for PuG WZ I shouldn't have to. If that's the norm... BM gets torn up in seconds by WH+, then it's just more proof that this game's balance is completely messed up.

Ugh, so sick of this typical DPS response. Not only is it so untrue... healers die so easily under focus, but you seem to expect that it's ok for us to be so reliant on everybody else while you get to run around mashing buttons and expect results. Use your interrupts and stuns, you will kill the healer with ease. It gets done to me, I do it to others. Finally, as I said before in another thread... if you're so keen on teamwork, how about we do this? Healers need guard to survive, but DPS needs guard to do damage. A healer's survivability gets cut in half without a tank, so lets cut a damage dealer's dps output by half without a tank. Seems fair to me...

The setup is irrelevant, it's what happens during the stun that counts. When I go from 100% to dead. Of course I'm standing there doing nothing. I'm stunned. I keep my shield up as much as I can and also apply my HoT to myself. It's the quick switch to me with a stun that I simply cannot stop. Against a lesser geared DPS I may come out of the stun with 25% health, at which point I have three options 1) Bubble for 3k -- Wiped off in the next hit and 15s until the next one. 2) Re-apply HoT for a potential 1500 crit - marginal heal that won't save me 3) Attempt a deliverance cast, maxing at 3800 in a 2.5s cast - easily interrupted and locked out 4) Healing Trance (assuming my pre-HoT's conveyance is sitll up) -- Channeled ability requiring me to stand still, easily interrupted. All of these are so easily countered that the 25% health, at most, I might have remaining is easily polished off. Yes, it's happening this quickly. There's nothing I can do. 10-49 PvP gives you the opportunity to learn how your class, skills, and abilities work. I'd say that's pretty meaningful. It takes longer than you think to build a full set... unless you play all day every day. Some of us don't. I did the math a while back, it doesn't take very long. A thread at the top of this forum tells us it'll run you 10750 comms for the full set. I've noticed that I get about 120 - 130 comms (I'll just say 130 for a win) for a win. Losses vary drastically... sometimes I get 20 comms if I get a premade, sometimes I get 100 if it was a close game that went on for a while. Lets go with an average of 80... if you disagree we can use another number, but I'm 100% certain about the 130 for a win. Anyway, since it's expected that, on average, you win 50% of your games (I don't care how awesome you and your premade are, the rest of us in the random queue get what we get). That means you can average 105 comms per game. 10750 games / 105 comms per game = 102.4 games... 103 games for your full set. 15 minutes per game seems reasonable (sometimes it's 20, sometimes it's 10, but mostly it's 15) but there's a bit of a break between for loading and waiting for the next queue. I'm gonna go ahead and say 3 games per hour though. If you want to do it with 4, go ahead. 103 games / 3 games per hour = 34.33 hours. Now start looking at how much time people have to play each night. I get about 3 hours and I find I can PvP about two nights a week. That gives me 11.44 nights of pvp, with 5.72 weeks to fully gear. That's a fairly long time... so if it took you a short amount of time, you play this game much more than I do. Which is fine, but that's you. I'm not you. Finally, what you're really missing here is that I've done this. I've been building my set over the last month and am almost done. I have a few more pieces to get and that's it. Regardless of how quickly someone can build it, I'm nearly done. I'm nearly done and I'm still getting destroyed. It's not that 2 dps beat me, it's that 2 dps destroy me so utterly that I have absolutely no chance to do anything. 1v1 healer vs dps is not a stalemate. Maybe it is at the WH level (though somehow I doubt it), I can't say, but at the BM level where most of us play, it certainly is not. DPS is tearing through me like I'm made of paper. All this stuff you're saying I CAN do, I'm telling you I can't. I'm also telling you that it's not because I don't want to or because I lack the ability to press buttons and react, but because I'm sitting there in a stun unable to do anything and taking so much damage that I can't possibly recover. I'm unable to prevent this. Pillar humping doesn't get you away from melee who slow you, sprint is only available so often. Knockback is countered by leap/pull. And ultimately I have to come into LOS to heal. All stuns are instant-cast, so the second I expose myself I'm done. I have no options.

Not a sage? Your big heals work differently than mine, I think they also possibly hit for more. I can only say what I have experience with so that may well be the case for you. There have been so many cases where I die inside that 4s stun. I'm not saying they get them every single time but back to back 5k crits do happen, and happen often. It's not terribly difficult to apply DoTs, hit your stun, then unload. It takes a bit of setup time but the end result is the same. Squashed healer who had no way to counter it. You keep trying to tell me I'm making this up... I waited a long while before posting this, it was happening a lot before 1.3 hit and in the weeks since the patch, nothing has changed. I've been PvPing since I started this game, all through the 10-49 bracket and into the 50 bracket. I'm not a ranked player, but I've been playing for a while. The gear builds more slowly than you realize I think, especially if you don't play 24/7. Also, I may not be as experienced as you but that doesn't make my opinion and ability to reason through my own experience (not yours, mine) any less valid. Stop looking for ways to discredit me and start understanding the things I'm saying. I'm not the only one saying it. There's many others in this thread alone, not to mention the many, many others, who are saying the same thing. We didn't band together to form some kind of conspiracy... Also, I never said I should win 2v1. The text you even quoted said a single DPS... I'm not sure how you missed that. I will say they should be able to survive for a little while against 2v1... right now they die instantly and that's not balanced. When there's no possibility to react, something is broken. Right now, 1v1 is heavily in favour of the dps class when it should be a complete stalemate. 2v1 should be in favour of the DPS, but the healer should have a chance to delay it. If not, there's no point in being a healer, is there? That would put 2v2, healer+dps vs dps+dps at a disadvantage because the two DPS can ignore the healer and burn down the DPS, since their combined damage outpaces the single heal.

Were you healing a shadow with their heal boost ability up? I don't know what it's called, but my buddy was telling me about it the other day. I guess they have some cooldown they can pop which boosts incoming heals by 100% or something. I just found out about it the other day, I have yet to do any real research into it. Even so, for the sake of argument, 5500 in 2.5s (more like 2.2 with your natural alacrity, I'm guessing) just doesn't compare to 5000 in 1.5s (GCD) with DoTs ticking, especially when no marginally competent DPS is going to let you cast that. Heck, even as a healer who, by some stroke of good fortune, gets left alone, I'm constantly lurking on the fringes looking for healers to interrupt on the off chance that my DPS doesn't have one available.

Free casting in fleet gave me a highest possible of that much, 5500. When you're in a WZ you get a debuff called trauma, which reduces healing effectiveness by 30%. So multiply your best heal by 0.7 to get what your WZ max heal would be.

Full BM won't compare to my PvE healing gear numbers, which is what I used for the comparison. I'm not trying to argue with you that more healing isn't better... it is, but it's not going to matter. Those 5k crits are still going to hit for the same amount and my healing still won't cover it. Especially when I'm in a stun with two DPS on me. There's no skill involved when you die in 4s, none. It feels like you're trying to call me a noob for something I have no way of preventing. Even if I kite I just get yanked back, or leapt to. Playing the hybrid spec helps this a bit but it only delays the inevitable and reduces my healing output at the same time. I assert that I can stand there, free casting with no interrupts and still go down to a single DPS mashing their DPS keys. Also, I'm talking about regular WZ's... I won't touch ranked with a 10-foot pole until this healing/DPS imbalance is addressed. If I'm dying this quickly to your average joe regular WZ player, going against players with the best gear in the game isn't going to improve the situation.

I'm not here to argue which healer is better... your immune option is certainly nice but you shouldn't only be viable for 15 seconds every two minutes in a game. That's horrible design. And yea, we do get a 3k shield every 20s, but with our 2pc bonus it's 15s. Sounds great on paper, but the shields gets melted under the constant barrage of DPS. I assert that no healer is in good shape right now. A lot of people talk about smug/IA being good, and that's probably 'cause they're less susceptible to interrupts than others, but at the end of they day they're still squishy unguarded. Maybe the solution here is for guard's effectiveness to be halved and for heals to be buffed, I don't know... but either way DPS is still too high. There's enough people posting here now that 5k crits are a regular occurrence that folks should just accept it. That's one GCD for 1/3 to 1/4 of most people's health pools. Considering those happen regularly, plus DoTs, people just MELT under any kind of directed fire. And this is from a single DPS... most people know how to pick the marked target and mash buttons. Two or more DPS is a no contest, healing has no chance. So yea, don't read this thread as "mercs/agents are OP, sorcs need buffs!" It's about healing in general being so undervalued and damage being so high.

I'm not ignoring those stats, they come organically. I'm saying the ones that are going to help with my survivability are endurance and expertise. I ran the math with my PvE gear, which is more healing output than my PvP gear could possibly do, and it's still not enough. You ignored that. I'm not short that many pieces, but when I get them and post back here that nothing has changed, you'll just create some other farce of an argument to write me off. At the end of the day, damage is too high. If you play a healer and don't think so, there's no way you're playing against the same level of people I'm playing against, and I feel like I'm just playing against your average joe who can mash buttons and click a marked target. There's just no way to keep up. It's not L2P when I die inside a stun. There's no way to stop it. There's no magic IWIN button in my toolkit, so stop pretending like it's me. If there was something I could do, I'd gladly do it, but there isn't. I will get the three pieces of gear I'm missing, but it won't make a difference.

I'm a healer, I don't need more damage. More healing is great, but I'm not going to get more than my full PvE set. The highest crit (with 75% surge) I can pull off is 5500. Trauma is 30%. 5500 * (1.0 - 0.3) = 3850... in a 2.5s base cast. The relevant stats for PvP gear are expertise and endurance. A marginal amount added from the 3 pieces I'm missing isn't going to stop this. You know this, but you refuse to acknowledge this... you're basically stalling. Let me sum up your post: "Dear healer, I have no rational response to your post, so I will instead focus on the fact that you're missing a few pieces which, if you had them, would provide a marginal, almost unnoticeable difference. In redirecting you this way, I can attempt to hide the fact that DPS is crazy OP so my position of dominance remains safe. Should you get those last few remaining pieces, then post back here after several more games that nothing has changed, I will then focus on the fact that you don't have WH gear in an attempt to deflect you further. Good day." Finally, I do indeed get crit for 5k... almost constantly. You can tell me I don't, but I'm a literate and intelligent person who is able to read the numbers floating on my screen. Call me a liar all you want, I don't need to prove myself to you. I know what's happening and so do many others who are seeing the same thing. Find the appropriate response here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=4795129&postcount=85 It's amusing how you think that there is some level of skill that would allow me to outheal that much damage while stunned. Comical, even.

There's a lot of reading fail going on in this thread. A lot of responses to my original post simply don't recognize or acknowledge the things I've said. I'm going to sum up and respond to some of the more common responses. I realize reading is tough for most of you, so in an effort to prevent you from getting distracted, find the response in the quote block that you care about most and read the response do that. Try not to get distracted by the other ones and allow it to prevent you from reading, and comprehending, the message here. In the screenshot mentioned I think that person had maybe 6-8 deaths... so it's pretty clear that this person spent most of the game left alone. You know what? When I'm left alone I pull great healing numbers too... go figure. The thing is, as mentioned in the thread you didn't read, my biggest heal, which is a 2.5s base cast, will crit for 3800 thanks to Trauma. Classes like Marauders and PTs are running around critting for 5k in a single GCD, the actual damage output is significantly higher. Left alone my healing still has trouble keeping up and people still die, against a single class. My healing numbers look great, but I'm still not effective. The bottom line is, your screenshot of a game where you put out high healing numbers while being left alone means nothing with regards to healing being fine. I spend a lot of time running with a tank and while it helps, it's still nowhere near a good experience. As mentioned previously, my healing just cannot keep up with DPS... they do more damage than I can possibly do healing, and that's from one class. Most folks team up, which is smart play but the numbers are so skewed that it means healing has no chance. Additionally, even with a guard, because of the interrupts and CC, I still can't cast. I may die more slowly with a good tank on me, but I'm still going to die because I can't do anything. Furthermore, why in the hell is guard so powerful and why do I have to be so reliant on it? Here's a thought, lets go ahead and half the current PvP effectiveness of damage. If you have a guard, you then do double damage. Lets see how well that goes over. Basically, DPS gets to nooby face roll their way to victory while healing needs to be left alone, have a tank babysitting them, and have their DPS team mates constantly peeling. That seems balanced... oh wait, it doesn't. I did, I rolled a PT. It's amazing, I barely even have to think. I was crushing 40-range healers at level 17 before I even got an interrupt. I don't even have the talents for double railshot and armor ignore yet. This game is ezmode for DPS if you're a mouth breathing knuckle dragger. If you're even remotely competant, DPS is god mode. While certainly amusing and relieves some of the stress over being a healer to play my PT for a while, it's still broken game design. Did you miss the part where I said my set is almost fully complete? I've got about 1100 expertise and still get 5k crits, crushing me inside a 4s stun. I think I need my chest, gloves, and one more implant... upgrading from recruit will get me another 50 expertise, maybe. If going from 950 expertise in recruit to 1100 expertise in mostly BM doesn't make a difference, going from 1100 expertise to 1150 sure as hell won't. It's not a gear issue, damage is too high. Most healers recognize this. Nowhere did I say I stood still and healed and expected to live through everything. I use almost every ability they give me and I kite and run away. I just don't have the tools to keep up with healing on the move and have to stop to cast. That's the nature of my class. Also, I tried the hybrid spec for about two weeks. It helps survivability against marauders and marauders only, and that's only when their gap closing cooldowns are up. All the ranged classes still mow me down. Additionally, because damage is so high, they can just catch me in their stun and destroy me. It takes minimal skill to do this and there is nothing I can do to prevent it. Basically, I play my healer face right freaking off while DPS hits one button to stop me, then a couple more to dish out a few 5k crits and have put me so far behind that I can't possibly catch up. Honestly, I'll come right out and say that I'm not a pro player, but I am a competent one. I've been doing this healing thing in MMOs for quite some time, and I'm a reasonably intelligent fellow. I know how to read the situation, I know what buttons to press. I'm aware of all everything my class can do and I use it in the most effective ways that I can. Still, I'd accept that I'm an average player. Should I really have to be a top-level expert uber pro player to simply survive? Also, I'd imagine you folks saying this stuff missed the part where I explained that I'm getting hit with 5k insta-cast crits but have absolutely nothing with which to counter that. The best I can do is a 3.8k heal from a 2.5s base cast standing still or a bubble (good for 3k these days, maybe? I can't find any reliable way of measuring) on a 15s cooldown (corrected from my OP). It's not enough. So really, what would you have me do here? In what magical way do you somehow dump out more healing output, or stop yourself from dying inside a stun against a single DPS, or prevent yourself having the mystical floaty icon over your head so every DPS in the game targets you as soon as you come out of spawn? Please, enlighten me... except wait, you can't. You folks saying this are either DPS players with absolutely no idea, or healers basing your experiences on being unfocused and left alone, in which case you're still losing players to DPS focus. This one got posted while I was writing my response and so laughable that I had to edit it in. Really... juke? Are you serious!? Did you miss the part where I'm dying in a 4s stun? So... there is so much damage output that I can't keep up spamming my heals left alone and you want me to intentionally interrupt myself!? Dude... I know how juking works. The thing is, you need to survive the juke so that once they burn their interrupt, you can then proceed to heal away unmolested. In this game, you can't. Marginally competent DPS is going to wait for at least half a cast bar before interrupting. On a 2.5s cast you've just lost 1.25s of healing time. That's pretty much two GCDs of damage output, which seems to get you to about half health. So now you've forced them to blow their interrupt... great! Except even if they don't interrupt your next cast and you get a crid, you've just healed for 3.8k... nowhere near half your health. But wait! They didn't let you cast that... they used their stun ability, or a knockback, and interrupted your next cast! Great, now you're dead. But Tathais, if you were uber pro you'd juke that too, duuuuuuh! Cool, so you juke that one too... now you're dead. GG. Seriously... use your head man.

Yea well, I've got almost all my BM pieces now for just shy of 1100 expertise. I'm still getting destroyed... it feels no different than when I was in full recruit, in which I had about 950 expertise, so I guess that's not terribly surprising. Still, I figured I'd take their word for it and get the gear and as expected, no difference. I'm still constantly getting hit for 5k crits, sometimes two in a row. One crit for almost 1/3 of my life (yes, I only seem to get 16k hp in BM gear...). The highest crit I can do, thanks to Trauma, is about 3800 and that takes 2.5s of uninterrupted cast time. Why, exactly, healing get a 30% debuff but DPS is free and clear I'll never know. And that's from just a single DPS. Pre-shielded with my HoT up I still die in a single 4s stun from two DPS focusing me, which is pretty common since I'll almost always have a giant icon over my head for 99% of a WZ screaming, "Hey, this guy is a super squishy healer, kill him for free points!" On the move I've got one shield every 20 seconds, a 500 heal from cleanse, and a 1100 heal from my HoT application. This is post 1.3 with the supposed burst nerf. If someone is hitting for 1/3 of my life in a single, instant-cast ability, something is wrong. Really BW, this needs to be looked at. Enough people are posting data and commenting on it that you've gotta start paying attention. That post by your employee saying it was a L2P issue was way off base. When you die that quickly there's nothing you can do... you're just fodder for the masses except when you get lucky and nobody pays attention to you, then you can delay the inevitable slightly. Now, trolls, don't get ahead of yourselves... nobody is asking for invincible healers. What we're asking for is useful healers, and what we have right now is useless healers. I can go DPS and contribute way more than I ever could as a healer. Why? Because I can do more DPS output than I can do healing output, so the numbers not only cancel each other out, but greatly tip to the other side. In the meantime, I'll be playing my Pyrotech alt which noobishly cuts through the masses like a hot knife through butter with minimal skill and effort. Balance in this game is insanely messed up. TL;DR: Damage is too high, healing is too low. This game is a gib-fest and healing has no place in it.

MVP votes are generally meaningless. Some friends and I checked, you get one commendation per vote, so it's not terribly important. They're really a way of saying "Hey, good job! I appreciate what you did there." and for that, it works just fine. If a guy's group of friends all want to vote for them, that's fine... but it's not helping their gear faster. I usually vote for my friends as well, but I had one game where 3 games in a row some dude guarded the odd-objective out and never complained once. I saw this and on the 4th game I told everyone we should give this guy our MVP vote for being awesome. At the end of the game he had 7 votes. It's just a nice, one-off thing like that. Folks need to note read too much into it.

There would be no 49 twinks... per se. All you really get out of leveling in 10-49 pvp is new abilities and by level 30 or so, most people have a good enough skill set. Bolster evens out gear for the most part and away you go. PvP in that bracket is a lot more enjoyable than in the level 50 bracket where everybody outgears you like crazy and you die really fast. PvP where gear doesn't matter is a fantastic thing. A way to disable xp gains and stay 49 and play there would be great. If you want to PvP for rankings, level 50 PvP is for you. If you just wanna casually play games, level 10-49 PvP is for you. Unfortunately, right now there's no room for the latter... hopefully they fix that. (It's too bad leaving before the win is bannable.)

Correction, some MMOs are about that. Also, you're confusing progression and character development with a gear grind. It's a common misconception that an MMO, or any RPG, automatically means this. There's no rule saying it has to be this way... nothing in the name even comes close to hinting at it. RPG means Role-Playing Game, that's it. You can play a role without having to grind gear, or even experience. It's merely a genre of games. Also, a few games coming out are trying to move away from this. Heck, even WoW, who invented the PvP gear grind, is narrowing the gear gap between PvE and PvP players in the next expansion. Try not to get stuck in the mould of "Well all the things I've played have been have been a certain way, so everything else has no other option but to be that way too." The OPs suggestion is very valid, and for a brand new game like SWTOR, it might be a good idea for them to try something fresh. Everything in this game so far is pretty tried and true stuff from 7 years ago, and the game is flopping because people are expecting something new and getting the same ol' thing.

The only thing I can think of that even comes close to this in WoW is a Warlock's Life Tap, and they don't have the ability to effectively heal themselves, just through fairly slow life drains. Back in vanilla, our warlocks would use life tap as a means to recover mana, but it would always be paired with a healer to heal them back up. In later expansions, it was up to them to make sure they were near some AoE healing to ensure their life went up organically. This is a bit different because it's the healer themself who is sacrificing the health for force, but then spending force to renew it. That's why I say it's goofy and I've seen a lot of other sages on these forums say they don't enjoy it either. I don't think I ever said I'm ok with this stat padding... I certainly didn't intend to. The whole point of that section was to say that people put way too much stock into that scoreboard and it just doesn't matter. It's silly that people think they need to pad the numbers. I will say this though, BW can fix this (and they should) and those people are just going to go off somewhere and be just as useless. It's a sad truth but in a team game, even people who do nothing on the winning team still get rewarded. Still, in thinking about this... I think the only time I would ever think this is ok is if your PuG is matched up against a premade and getting absolutely stomped, pinning them in the spawn area. At that point I'd just sacrifice my health and tell my team to heal me so they at least got some medals. Frown on it if you want, the matching system and gear disparity in this game is broken... there's too many obscenely one-sided matchups. Maybe when BW fixes this exploit, they can make team matching better too

For what it's worth, most of us don't do stat pad... it's just our class mechanic. We have to sacrifice our health in order to get force back, then we have to heal ourselves again. It's a goofy mechanic and most sages don't like it... we'd be just as happy to have something different. As for the numbers on the scoreboard, they don't really mean much and are completely dependent on what happens. I get games where my opponents are terrible and I hit 400k healing. Then I get other games where the other team locks me down and I barely break 150k. Same deal with DPS... if people leave them along and all they do is mash damage abilities on people all game it doesn't mean they're good. There's other factors involved. Try not to let numbers on a board worry you so much. Sure people use them to give out MVP votes, but they're worth 1 commendation each so it's not like it matters.

I'm fine with a recruit only bracket. As a casual player, it takes me a good while to gear up... It takes me 2-3 weeks to get the weekly done since I play maybe 2 nights a week these days. This makes it a daunting task to gear up and all the while I'm getting slaughtered by the fully geared players. I find myself dying inside a 4s stun, pre-bubbled (sage healer here). That's not skill, that's gear, and it sucks. Leveling in PvP was a good experience, gear didn't matter that much. At level 50 it's WoW's gear disparity on steroids. So please, put in a recruit bracket. That said, prediction... if such a thing as a recruit-gear bracket existed, only two types of games would ever get played in SWTOR. Recruit-bracket PuGs and semi-premades, and full-premade ranked warzone matches (when they get introduced). A non-recruit PuG bracket would be a ghost town... everybody would be in the recruit bracket since it would have the highest population availability. And this would be just fine... PvP progression through gear is pointless anyway.