+1 Looking forward to some changes, thanks for listening devs.

+1 Great work Chippy

+1 to this^ Seems like a great compromise. Means they are still squishy, don't have a get out of jail free card like blink or some kind of silly defensive cd, and have to actually have skill to keep themselves alive by actually using their abilities wisely.

Best pocket healer: Operative/Scoundrel. But I believe these are only really viable above lvl30ish(?), as that's when you start putting talents into your HoTs and surgical probe. After that, these guys can dish out mega heals, are almost uninterruptable and are decent kiters. Imo Sorc/Sage make better group healers, with their instant cast, low cd shields, bucket loads of cc, and easy resource management.

A fence in voidstar? Interesting... Imo voidstar has always been one of the weaker WZ maps. The reason? The first doors are the easiest to defend and the doors become progressively further apart and harder to defend as the game continues. Add to this that once an attacking team gets through the first door all they have to do is keep the opposing team cced (but not dead) and they can run the rest of the map with little resistance, and that first door becomes the deciding factor of the entire game. This is the opposite to almost every other defense/attack map I have played, usually the objectives become progressively easier to defend until you reach a final choke point leading to the last objective and a truly epic fight ensues. Maybe a fence will change this, maybe not. Seems to me that if they want to get rid of the "infinite fight on the first door", they really just have to redesign the voidstar map entirely. But I guess I'll be finding out soon Thanks for keeping us in the loop OP on what 1.3 will mean for us PvPers, much appreciated

This is a bit misleading. While sorcs do their biggest heals while standing still, they are masters at kiting. As a sorc healer I know we have excellent mobility: a fistful of cc up our sleeves, including two gap wideners, and the ability to shield and HoT your target while on the move tends to keep them alive until you have a peaceful 2.x seconds to channel/cast a big heal. But then, sorcs have almost no damage mitigation (one shield, and a flimsy 2% reduction in dmg from talent points... that's it), so they need to be able to heal on the run. It's mercenaries/commandos that come to mind when you think of turret healers - they also have a shield and a instant cast heal, but with only one pushback and no interrupts, they have very limited cc which restricts their mobility. Then again, they are heavy armour wearers who can put out significant dps, so with a tank protecting them, they shouldn't even need to kite. But that's it, right, with a tank protecting them. I'm not saying that healers should function independent of tanks, I like that this game involves real team mechanics. But pre-1.2 we were all thoroughly trained in marking and focus firing the healer, we had to because they were so powerful. Now we need people to learn to protect their healers. Seems like players are starting to figure it out - while waiting for the wz to begin I use to heal nearby tanks in vain, hoping they'd put guard on me, I'd even call out to no avail, recently I haven't even had to ask. So maybe that's what you have noticed, tanks learning how to tank

just all the " " taken out, maybe some more spacing and point form/ TL;DR summaries to clarify your points. I think it's very well organised and covers the basics as well as more advanced tactics making it valuable to new pvpers as well as those just new to TOR. Great that you put in a glossary too. I hope you write more guides! Good Luck

Great guide! Would like to see it reformatted and stickied.

Kill the healer! The strength of healers pre 1.2 trained us all in marking and systematically destroying heals. Now that they aren't the god-like class they were, we need to learn to protect them . I would like to see more tanks with their number 1 priority being protect the healer instead of kill the healer. Having said that, I do understand why this isn't the case - when you are attacking (rather than defending) it often makes more sense to protect the dps that can put out the burst dmg to win the node, than the healer who isn't sending anyone back to spawn. And when five guys gank a healer every time they walk out of spawn, forcing them to turtle heal themselves, taking 50% of their dmg seems like a waste of resources.

I have never seen anyone who is not yet stunned and has a full resolve bar be stunned. In this sense I disagree with the OP. BUT, honest question - Let's say you are not stunned and your resolve is almost full. Now someone stuns you - full resolve, and you are hard stunned for the next 2-4 seconds (your cc breaker isn't up). What happens if someone stuns you now? Say you are electrocuted, you are immobilised for 4 seconds, what if someone starts force choking you 3 seconds in? Does this second stun time stack on the first (so you would now have a total of about 6 seconds immobilised)? The reason I ask is that I often find myself in this situation, I have a partially full resolve bar, and then I am electrocuted, filling my resolve bar. Then force choke, debilitate etc while still immobilised, usually until dead. It always feels as though I am immobilised for longer than the initial stun, but I have never taken the time to calculate it and was just wondering if anyone knew the underlying mechanics? Advise - always save your stunbreaker for when your resolve bar is full, or risk only ever having resolve up at the respawn point. (although as a squishy sorc healer this is often the case even though I use my cc-breaker responsibly )

Yeah I understand that. I wasn't claiming anything about the role of Trauma or the purpose of this thread. I was really just asking if you knew in what order the expertise healing bonus and Trauma debuff are calculated. No need to be rude. I'll get my information elsewhere.

This doesn't appear to factor in PvP Trauma. Do you know when it is calculated and how it effects healing received??

^this

We are all ears Bioware

As a lvl 50 Sorc Healer I'd like to weigh in with the overwhelming majority. I completely agree with the OP: prior to 1.2 PvP was fun for all classes. It was a different game to what we had seen in previous mmo's and it was exciting to be a part of. All of a sudden, tanks and healers could DO something. And not just that, it was FUN. In WoW a good helaer made a dramatic difference to a PvP match, I'm not denying that, but they often needed to be constantly protected and, more importantly it wasn't all that fun playing a healer. Why? Because it's a rinse and repeat formula of run in, spam heal, die, respawn, run in, spam heal. Prior to 1.2 as a healer I could heal ppl, and if I was attacked I could hold my own. As is continually repeated in this thread I could NOT kill the dpser focusing me, but I could indeed kite him around, bubble myself and heal, cc until my cds popped and start the cycle over again. It was always an "epic" fight, in the sense that it was frantic, requiring quick response times to counter the dpser and precision in my rotations or I would end up stranded without an ability up. If that happened, in light armour with no dmg mitigation to speak of, I would be dead in less than 5sec. So, assuming I was up against a decent dpser, the result would be a stalemate until either my force ran out (and this DID need to be fixed), I slipped up my rotation or some friend came to aid one of us. If I was up against a bad dpser, I could literally stand there and spam heals and bubbles - If you don't know how to interrupt and cc then I'm sure healers seem totally overpowered to you, actually you are just bad at PvP. Against a great dpser who timed their interrupts and cc abilities I would always need a friend, or i'd be locked down and systematically pulled apart. I liked this form of PvP, it was tactical and heart thumping and fun. As my alt juggernaut, learning how to counter a healer was just as strategic. Battles were long and required teamwork and a tactical approach. Mark the healers, lock them down or kill them, use your interrupts and cc. Likewise, mark your own healers, dpsers and tanks no longer just had to focus the attackers, they also had to look out for their healers and keep them free to heal. Any 1v1 battle between equally skilled players regardless of the class was fun and challenging. Now, well, now we are back to the style of PvP where not many choose to play a healer. Run out, spam heals, get smooshed, respawn and do it all over again. Usually I don't even bother healing myself and barely bother to use my cc etc to elude the enemy as it usually gives me a precious few second more of life in which I do NOTHING but keep myself alive. The only time I bother now to actually kite and cc an enemy the way I used to is if there is a tank/dps in the room who is specifically protecting me, and even then, I don't bother for long. More than that, burst dmg from Snipers and Bounty Hunters is through the roof. Even when I am left alone to heal my teammates (which never happens against a good team) I often cannot heal through the ridiculous burst dmg of grav round & snipes. So not only has patch 1.2 meant that I have to resign myself to boring PvP as a healer, I can't even keep my teammates alive half the time when given the chance. And why? Why have we been nerfed? Because players are used to the old formula. Every dpser expects they can stun a healers and pull it apart in seconds, without using interrupts and cc, just spamming a few burst dmg buttons. (I would like to point out here that not having lvl tiered WZ definitely made a difference to the perception of healer survivability, at 48 & 49 I was hard to touch unless my opponent was in the same lvl bracket, again that has nothing to do with the class itself being overpowered) Unfortunately, PvP is my favourite part of mmo's... I'm busy lvling an dps spec Operative so I can enjoy it again.

Seriously ugly piece of art. I hate that your reward for grinding your *** off for top gear is to put on the ugliest set in the game. Skulls, feathers, furs, bones and gems all done in terrible textures and colours, I mean not only is the design ugly it is SO badly executed. Worst is that if you have a female toon it makes her look like she put on 10kg and her breasts dropped 30cm - they just haven't even tried. Then there's the new WZ ranked gear. At least it fits on women and the textures are better, but again, so ugly! Who wants to looks like a seaweed monster? Why the terrible colour choices? Why no actual Star Wars influenced aesthetics?

^THIS Please Bioware PUT IN COLOURED MARKERS. I love the aesthetics of the maps in TOR, they are beautiful and generally easy to read (bar some areas) and whoever designed them deserves recognition and praise. BUT, in PvP areas where quick response in high pressure situations is key we NEED more identifiable markers on the maps. Either provide recognisable landmarks in the environment (eg, grass & snow in the Civil War map), or colour code things on the map. Either tact would make it much easier for scrubs to orientate themselves and for team members to communicate quickly and efficiently.

General Rules: > Remember your objectives - don't farm kills, don't fight off point. You'll find you have greater survivability on point (i.e. at the turret, on the door, with the ball handler) as you're more likely to have a healer nearby and plenty of AoE (area of effect) dumps to help you out. > Kill the bloody healer - don't wail on the guy in front of you if six paces away a healer is keeping him/her alive. Healers are very recognisable, look for the guy with a cast bar perpetually over his/her head and green stuff flying form their fingers/gun/whatever. At the very least swap targets to interrupt those troublesome heals, or CC (crowd control, e.g. stun, slow movement etc) them so they are out of range or incapacitated. > Mobility is key in PvP, so take away your enemies - as noted above, use your CC abilities whenever possible. > Remember you are in a TEAM - use your class abilities to help out your teammates. In your case you have a whole range of protection effects, use them! Your taunts reduce the dmg of your opponents, use them whenever you can (this is also a very easy way to farm medals), and as noted above use your guard on the most vulnerable target (generally the healer or ball carrier). > Know thy enemy - in my opinion, you only get really good at PvP when you have played a number of classes. Try out a powertech, a marauder, an operative, find out what their rotations are, where they position themselves, what their team role is. That way you always know what your opponent is doing and how to counter it, and even what they are going to do next. Most importantly, practice! Everyone starts as a noob, that only changes once you've played for a while. Check out the forums for more specific info, there are plenty of threads on the best PvP gear, rotation and spec (talent tree points) for every class, the link above being an excellent example.