Sounds like how I used to run AB premades back in Vanilla/TBC WoW

Is this something that still happens? Was in a Civil War last night and two of us were guarding a point. There was nobody in sight so I sprinted to get to mid to assist (I usually bounce between points with a focus on the guy guarding so I can tell if he gets hit). I was running to mid with my camera swivelled to the point to watch for the beam. Before I even got to the ramps at the side the point got capped. I didn't see the blue beam and the guy who was standing right beside the point didn't see anything (I'm taking his word for it), but we lost the point. I seem to recall reading about a bug where points can be captured from stealth... is this true? Bug/lag? I'd own it if it was just noobishness. It's possible I could have missed the giant blue beam while running... I guess... but the guy who was guarding the point swore he never saw anything. I figured between the two of us we'd catch it. Thoughts? <braces for flames>

I can't help but feel that the strat outlined by the OP has a fundamental flaw... which would be that unless the team is stacked with healers, it's pretty easy to focus-burn a single target right now. If their entire team is huddled up in a corner by the ball carrier, maybe try the following... 1) Focus-burn the carrier 2) Obtain ball 3) Dump ball 4) Have team mate pick up ball in center 5) Run opposite side as enemy team 6) Get a rescue from a nice sage 7) Score

Many <3's for the love I'm hoping we hear back on this.. healers shouldn't be so tightly coupled to tanks. Tanks and DPS are fairly independent on their own and made stronger with support. Healers feel crippled without support and merely ok with. I will say, since I posted this thread I have gotten at least one game per day where the other team plays poorly, doing bad DPS and not coordinating, which helps keep me sane. It's kinda like golf... you can get punished all day but that one good shot keeps you coming back That said, Bioware really needs to tweak us. For any coming along reading this, none of us healers are asking to be absurdly OP and I'm sure this extends to non-sages as well. We just want to be able to hold our own and make an effective contribution to our team.

I'm a healing sage and have a lot of trouble questing. I find the same thing.. Qyzen is just not a very good tank and gear is kind of hard to come by for him. He also doesn't do a lot of damage. So as a healer I find I just can't quest effectively... I end up dumping all my force just keeping him alive and killing mobs, which makes for a very tedious experience. As DPS though it's a lot better. I can generally kill things and toss him shields to keep him up with a few heals. He's still really squishy of course, I just kill the enemy faster so I have to worry about it less. Of course, I'm spec'd heals currently and my respec cost is creeping up there so I'm pretty much stuck relying on my friends to carry me through quests. If you have patience it can be done solo, but to me it's like smashing my face on my desk

It doesn't sound like a very smart group (in an FPS) that stands together As I said, it comes down to strategy. The bottom line is, in almost any game you can face organization and unless you have it yourself, you can't win. One person against 4 is just not possible (I don't think you can group up with 8 right now, can you?). The best you can do in a pug is try to do useful things. In SWTOR, that means interrupting heals, messing up DPS, breaking captures, etc... If the entire team is hugging a healer and your team is off doing god knows what, there's not much you can do about it period. But if your team is in the mix doing stuff, just in an uncoordinated way, look for opportunities. The alternative is look for common people in your games and ask if they want to step it up a bit. I've added a few people to my friends list doing just this. You may not be top notch and will still lose to the hardcore groups, but you'll have a lot better experience. Keep in mind the alternative isn't much better. WoW is a game where they have a high enough population and good group matching so that if you queue solo, you'll likely end up in a game with no groups on the opposite team. Those games tend to be unorganized messes.... kinda like herding cats. Nobody watches objectives and they all tend to chase someone all over the map trying (and failing) to get that kill. Honestly, I find a 20 minute match full of 10 year olds with ADD a lot more frustrating than a 4 minute match where I get stomped by a premade. Personal preference though.

For what it's worth, FPS games aren't any better if a group of people join the same team and communicate over VoIP. The only thing that can counter coordination is better coordination.

While it absolutely sucks to get dumped in a hazard and owned, it's totally a legit strat. That said, you aren't really the one doing the killing, are you? It seems pretty fair for you to not get credit for the kill... just accept the fact that you've done something useful to help your team and move on. If you want credit for the kills, do it the hard way That or try to sneak in a killing blow as the hazard is doing it's work, haha.

Well put and thank you. There's a lot of people throwing "healing is fine" and "I know healers who do great" getting bandied about. It's a bit frustrating 'cause it always seems to boil down to "learn to play" or "have a perfect team and fight an enemy who ignores you"... I don't think people understand that for survivability, I'm using every trick I can muster (we get a lot of them) and I still can't shake DPS. I can line of sight all I want but they just follow. There's a boatload of stuns in this game and quite often I die within a stun chain before resolve ever comes into play. I have a good handle on my class... I'm not a pro, but I've got it covered. There's also a lot of people telling me I was OP before 1.2... which is just not true. I didn't feel OP at all, I felt balanced. Free casting, I could heal through two DPS on a target. I could survive a single DPS on me but if they were using their own abilities (ie, playing as hard as I was playing to keep them off) they could shut down my heals on others. Two focused DPS interrupting me would take me down, or two focused dps on the target I was healing with one interrupting me and my target would die. This felt right. If I was guarded, I could survive two dps focusing me with interrupts... that was 2v2 and also seemed balanced. It feels like DPS want healers to simultaneously be able to keep them alive, yet die when attacked by one DPS. It just doesn't work like that.

Are you sure you meant me? I wasn't saying I couldn't kill a healer... To the above guy, I haven't seen any effective healers in the sub-50 brackets... I'm usually the only dedicated healer on in any game I've ever been in and I'm usually at the top by a good margin. The other day someone came close to me, in that they were within 100k healing, but that's about it. So I feel like my output is ok, damage is just higher. I dump healing like a mad man but people still die. I should be able to outheal a single dps. I should be able to hold for a little while against two (assuming no interrupts). There's got to be a better balance than this...

This does indeed scare me. If Sage healing in the 40 bracket is OP we must be useless in the 50 bracket.

I appreciate the tips guys, I really do. I am doing these things though and it seems that it doesn't help. Some games are actually fine but those are the games where our team is topping DPS so I suspect that the other team isn't very well geared or doesn't know how to play very well. On teams where it's mixed, I quite literally get run over. To the guy above who talked about adapting the way he plays. Kudos to you! I've done the same and feel I'm actually reasonably effective but it's still not enough. I certainly can't shake melee unless they're silly enough to stand beside a ledge so I can knock them off, but past that there's no escaping. For every escape I have, they have a gap closer. Which is fine, I'm actually ok with that, but I should be able to heal myself through it as well as throw some heals to my team. As it is, one good dps is more than my heals can muster. Keep in mind that anybody worth their salt is interrupting. Pre 1.2 felt like a good balance, this feels like a waste of time and a detriment to my team. Despite the 250k - 300k healing I do every WZ, which is always top and more than I've seen anybody else do on either side. As I said, BW needs to decide what they want here. If their vision of their game does't align with what I like then say so, I'll move on. But I came here pre 1.2 and liked what I say, now it's been changed on me. At the very least, give me a heads up. If you say, "Yes, we know it's kinda iffy right now." I'll happily wait it out. But right now they haven't said anything so it sounds like they're fine with the state of healing. Well, at least I have hutball...

Hey all. I'm going to preface this thread with something... if you find you can't get past it, stop reading and move along. This is a hefty dose of personal experience and opinion since 1.2 launched. I've held off posting until now to give it a try and these are my thoughts. I'm sure this won't stop the flamers but what can you do? THE THING: I'm currently level 45. Yes, I'm not level 50. *gasp* I kno rite? Well you see, us non 50's are people too, and PvP is available to use for 40 whole levels, so my thinking is that it should be reasonably balanced or disallowed. Furthermore, from what I read I have a pretty big gear grind ahead of me when I get to level 50 and even at the end of it, it's not gonna get much better. Anyhoo, moving right along. I'm one of those Sages who, post 1.2, tried to stick with it. Iv'e continued to try to heal and be effective in Warzones but it just seems as though I can't. My numbers seem good but frankly, it's all I can do to keep myself alive through a single dps. Two and I'm done for extremely quickly... I can't even hold out for help. I've also noticed that DPS have started to ignore me and just burn down targets because my healing is so laughable that it can be ignored. Know what else is funny? My healing done in a WZ is actually reasonably close to what it was pre-patch. I do spend considerably more time healing myself but when I flat out spam heals on a person I just can't seem to keep them alive. I've also noticed that the best I can do is an extremely lucky 4k healing trance (4x 1k ticks) whereas I seem to be taking a lot of hits in very quick succession adding up to 5k or more. Heck a marauder crit me for 4.7k the other day which is a good 40% of my life. Consider that this 4.7k crit was immediately preceded by several other high damaging abilities. Maybe DPS went up across the board outside the expertise bonus, I don't know... the bottom line is, I just can't keep up. I'm a reasonably good healer. I've been doing it in other MMOs for many years and flashpoints aren't very much challenge. I know all my abilities and buttons, I keep myself shielded, I interrupt and cc where possible. I gear myself appropriately. I just can't seem to keep myself and others alive. So my question is, what's the point of healing at all? I've spec'd DPS a few times "just to see" and have found myself to be way more effective. Things die, we do better. You'd think providing heals as a support role for my team would add value, but so far as I can tell if one DPS can beat me easily then I'm not adding anything. I'm actually subtracting value because not only am I not able to heal, I'm taking away from a DPS spot. So here's what I'm asking for, Bioware. Announce your intentions. If you want healing to be a viable part of PvP in this game, say so and give us a hint that you'e working on it. Otherwise, tell us that you want PvP to be DPS and tank only. Honestly, it's your game so you tell us... my subscription is just one in a bucket but I know that I want to play one of those types of games and don't want to play the other. If you go with the one I don't want to play I'll move on, no harm done. (As mentioned above, I've heard it's not much better at 50. Give me hope, SWTOR community. Tell me it will get better and maybe it'll be a bit easier to bear. That said, it shouldn't be so much to ask to balance things a bit more in the levelling brackets. It's not like they couldn't make changes to that bracket only and leave level 50 alone.) Signed, An extremely frustrated healer.

I dunno, I kinda like hutball... and yes, I play a sorc. I do think hutball would play better if the charge and rescue abilities didn't work on the ball carrier, though at least with rescue you have to get to the goal line at which point you could take a pass anyway. And even if charge didn't work if you had the ball, you could still use it to get to the goal line and take a pass. But the classes with sprint... just stun them. If resolve is full... well that's the point of resolve I guess. Finally, I'm with the person who said MOAR HUTBALL (paraphrased ). I'd like more layouts. In general, more flavour is best. If they had like 3 maps for each game type, and at least one more game type (lets face it, Novare Coast and Civil War are pretty much the same), then allow you to choose to not be queued for up to 3 maps, that wouldn't be so bad. You'd need cross-realm though... but to be honest, this game needs that in a bad way anyway. I dunno what crack whoever wrote the code was smoking, but my server is listed "medium" in population and there's maybe 40-60 people in fleet at any given time and quite often only one set of warzone matches going on.

I do have an opinion, and both of us are entitled to them I will say this... I can be bad at PvP and still enjoy it. Additionally, for someone to be good at PvP, someone else has to be bad. It's the way it works, someone will always be the winner and someone will always be the loser. That said, PvP should be enjoyable for everybody, not just the small percentage who are currently at the top... as this percentage scales with the number of people in the group. Remove the bad 95% and you'll have 95% of the original 5% who aren't happy getting nothing from a loss. So basically, no matter how good you are at it as long as you're giving a reasonable effort PvP should be fun. The rewards allow you to move forward and keep up with other players. If you're bad at PvP, you shouldn't get worse. It's my opinion, which is shared by a lot of others, that you shouldn't even get rewards for winning or losing. Just play the game on an even ground and enjoy your score. I've held that opinion when I was in the top 5% (different game, different decade ><) and I hold it now. First and foremost, games should be fun. Competitive play will grow out of that organically, it always does.

I feel compelled to point out that my actual PvP numbers don't seem to have changed too much either, but as the guy above pointed out, my effectiveness has gone way down. This is more proof that the numbers on the board mean nothing. If I'm spending the whole game healing myself, I'm not really contributing much am I? Pre 1.2 I felt effective, I had a role. I was healing DPS. Now I'm just taking up space not really doing anything. Also, this is only if I'm left to free cast. The minute I get seriously focused I'm dead. Losing deliverance as a useful heal in PvP has crippled us imo.

If you're like me and don't really enjoy questing, and you don't get to do many flashpoints 'cause your server is so empty, then spending commendations on gear is a nice way to get upgrades. So I wouldn't call them worthless... but probably not super critical

I feel like you're missing something here, and it's very important. There is a definitive falloff for healer effectiveness. This falloff is human reaction time. A healer heavy team is, plain and simple, going to be putting out significantly less damage than the other team. The point here is that they're not going to be killing people. If you leave it right there the whole game boils down to luck as neither side will be able to capture a point since neither side can kill anybody on the other. So whoever captures points first wins. Now, take into consideration the human reaction time component. DPS scales infinitely while healing is limited by the maximum health pool a player can have. All DPS has to do is drop that bar to zero and it's over. All it takes is a large enough spike of damage and there's nothing any one healer, or eight, can do about it. Since we're obviously talking premades here (pretty hard to get an 8 healer team otherwise), a great counter would be 6 DPS and two healers. Those 6 DPS focusing on a single target are absolutely going to explode that target before any of those 8 healers can react. It's exactly this reason why you won't see eight healer teams... but you might see 4 healer teams, where teams are hoping to trade survivability for raw damage output. These teams are effective, but require that they don't make mistakes. It's a balancing act, and that's what makes the game interesting. We saw the same trend in WoW for years with arenas, and again in rated battlegrounds. Some teams opted to stack more healers and it became effective for them. Others opted to have less healers and that was effective for them.

Tanks get a lot of glory haha, at least in terms of medals. My tank friend always gets 8+ medals 'cause he gets guard points for free while doing damage. My pure healing usually gets me 3-4 at best, so I throw out some token DPS to make sure I get the 4th. No medals for interrupts an CC, sadly. But I get what you mean... and I hug my tank every time I get focus fired and guard is lit up Perhaps we can we agree that pretty much any support role is a thankless task?

Agreed. Cross-realm is pretty key though and would alleviate the need for server transfers, at least on the PvP side of things, until transfers become available. With their cross-server grouping for both PvE and PvP, WoW has shown us that the realm you are on shouldn't really matter. It's about playing the game and having fun. I think this is an acceptable area for SWTOR to follow suit. Hopefully this functionality comes sooner than later As it is, long queues for PvP only to get the "not enough players" message sucks.

I think your sarcasm overwhelmed itself. Two DPS who what they're doing will kill a healer every time. There's more than enough interrupts and raw damage in there to get the job done. Five people shouldn't even need to interrupt to kill a healer. If they couldn't, clearly they weren't doing a very good job of doing damage. The bottom line is, healing and dps is a balancing act. Many DPS feel like they should be able to solo a healer no problem, but what would be the point of healing? DPS negates healing and healing negates DPS. Past that, it's a numbers and decisions game. Two DPS focusing one healer wins. A DPS against no heals wins. A DPS against a healer -- stalemate... at least, it's a stalemate as long as the healer's resource holds out. 1.2 is going to nerf healing... there's a fair chance it will nerf it too much. If so, people will simply stop playing healers and DPS will start wondering why they're dying so quickly. Healing is a thankless task...

Ah ok, thanks for the info guys. I thought it was just something I was doing. I'll hang in there for a fix

Hey, I'm having trouble getting the target I want in PvP. My mouse cursor feels all lagged and I just can't seem to click on the people I want. Tab targetting always seems to grab the wrong one. I've got a fairly good gaming machine and I've got my details all turned down, but it's still really difficult to target. Is it just me? Any tips/suggestions? Thanks.