I've been playing for over a year now and I'd say I spend some 40% of my time in pvp-and in that time I have only seen 2 instances of suspicious behavior and 2 cases of convenient lag spikes. MOST of the time I see people with 10-12 k health in greens calling people hacks because they can't kill anyone like they used to in (1-49) pvp and are getting killed in 2-3 hits. I've been on and against teams with players from the better pvp guilds and can say that I've only seen 2 instances of convenient lag spikes on their computers not mine- one was against 1 deadweight (not the whole team, just 1 player that 1 time) and one was against 1 player from I think wehazcookies (several months ago). The 2 cases that were definitely suspicious involved healing, and they were from toons that were not displaying their guild names. You can read the instances I have seen below. Two were against players from guilds unknown to me: 1- On the attack in voidstar I died a few seconds before the doors popped so I had to catch up to everyone. When I reached the second area the bridge was down and the only players left were a sage and marauder dueling. Marauder's health dropped to 90% (as he got the kill) so I decided to burn him down and use all of my energy to get the max burst. When I had his health down to around 2k he stopped taking dmg (prob Undying rage) so I rooted him. While I was getting some distance from him, he healed himself completely. Fortunately my team had gotten the force field down and when I jumped off the bridge (seppuku), I was teleported to the front lines and helped blow up the final door before the marauder had a chance to join the battle. (BIS-War hero Smuggler-Conqueror) 2- Sniper healing himself completely in NC (no one else around), I constantly rotated camera to see if there were any healers around. 3- NC southern node- I was standing south of the node taunting and protecting people (Powertech-defense) when a commando from Deadweights saw me and came at me shooting his blaster rifle. The 1 on 1 battle that ensued was fun, I was interrupting alot of his cast, our health bars were both getting evenly low. When a Marauder saw us he joined the battle, with the 2:1 odds the commando started to retreat towards the node. The Marauder did a smash and the commando disappeared, no death animation-no body. Well the Mara left to look for more prey- I stayed to look for the commando and lo and behold 2 seconds later the commando dropped out of stealth a few steps from the node he was running to. Before, I could get him again someone else took me down. Unless Sentinels have learned to use blaster rifles, that was some convenient lag spike. 4- With my powertech I have gotten really good at standing on the ledge of dangerous obstacles to pull people to their doom. So in a hutball match I stood very close to the edge of the pit, my toon was almost floating in the air I was so close to the edge. Well, a jug from I believe it was WeHazCookies (It happened so long ago) jumped to me and sure enough he was dropping back down into the pit, however, before he hit the floor I was pushed and he teleported behind me and scored all the while I was still in the air from the push. This again is an obvious lag spike, however- the fact that it occurs at the right time makes it suspicious. Lastly, I am 100% certain of what I am doing on my computer- I can never be 100% sure of what my guild mates are doing on their computers in god knows where. So making a blanket statement like there is no way anyone on my team is cheating ever, however true seems a bit wide-eyed to me.

Truth is, if you suck no stim is going to help you play better, if you are good you will be good regardless of whether or not you stim up. Granted, in the rare chance you find yourself in a 1:1 situation with the best (skilled and gear) opponent on the other team the stim could make the difference between respawn or victory, but only if you were as good as your opponent to begin with. I've seen groups of pugs camped at a node and still get capped by a stealther right under their nose, no amount of shooting up is going to fix that. If this is a QQ thread (in disguise) on why someone finds it hard to finish their weekly, trust me it's not the stims or the gear it's the stupid. I buy the exotech when ever they sell for around 16-18K, when they run closer to 30K or more I don't bother. I'm almost always near the top of my team in the charts regardless of stims.

I guess that most of your picks are based on how well these players perform from within their respective premades. The only names that stand out to me (and thus remember) are the ones that pug it when they are not on their team and still shine. Among these are: Akatosh Fosho Agapex ShaoKahn Elizabeth Slingblade These are a few of the people that stand out even in a pug group and make their presence known in a good way.

We are looking for a few good men and women to fill a second ops group. Our main group has made it up to Kephes in the Terror from Beyond (TFB) hard mode, and we have cleared all the previous ops. We are looking to train new players so that they may work their way up to hard mode ops. We currently run ops around 7-8 pm pacific time. Between the holidays and school starting up again, we also frequently have room for well geared tanks or healers in our main ops group. We average about 8-10 different people on most of the time (varying levels), except on ops nights. We also have a small sister Imp guild. Players just interested in leveling new characters are also welcomed. We are mostly a pve guild as there are only 5 of us that pvp regularly. If you are interested contact anyone of the following officers for an invite during the game. Awfulthings, Awfulette Bëar, Bëàr, Ursanos, Berenstein Cronas Lope, Magorn, Lutunus Altefi, Archanev Hope to hear from you, have a good one.

Thank you all for all the constructive replies. @ Seena -the issue I had was that I seemed to beat my friend easier in my campaign gear/dread guard than in my pvp WarHero gear (I swapped gear right there and then). In terms of skill, since I was able to beat him in my campaign+2 dread guard pieces+hyperbattlestim to his dread guard+3 campaign + exotech stim-I would say that I was better skilled (I was wearing a lower tier pve set and lower tier stim). In my War Hero once I took the stim and buffs it was a life or death struggle with me coming out on top. With my campaign gear It was occasionally close, just not as harrowing. I am on the Harbinger which is one of the pve servers. When I have fought flagged imperial players wearing pve gear in my pvp gear they melt away regardless of class or hp, and their attacks seemed like they were hitting me with a wet noodle. That is why I started the duel with my fellow republic player giving myself a large handicap. With so many bugs introduced with each new "fix" patch, I was just wondering if it was a new bug introduced in one of the last patches. Thanks to the poster that talks about his testing and the one that mentions the ticket to bioware.

My friend has a sentinel and decided to duel my (ss) smuggler, and the result made me question the usefulness of expertise in same faction duels. Sentinel: Geared in mostly BIS Campaign and Dread Guard Watchman All class buffs and exotech might stim Smuggler: Geared in mostly War Hero (2 battlemaster implants, 1 bracer with campaign armoring and warhero mod) Expertise ~1309, Dmg (Pri) 898-1151, Dmg (sec) 88-164, Bonus Dmg 603.6, Acc 100.84, Crit 35.89, Crit Mult 76.72 Fully buffed with hyper battle stim. Duel- Starting about 8-10 m away from each other. At first I decided to give myself a handicap and started the fight un buffed or stim, I lost in about 15seconds. Fight went mainly slash/slash/bigmove (-6K of my health)/slash/bigmove (-6K health lost)/slash/slash. I stunned him shot him but the maximum dmg I did was an aim shot that hit for about 6.5 k, my charged burst were only hitting for around 1.2-1.6 k dmg. I timed my attacks on a combat droid- I can get off 8 charged burst or a combo of 6 charged and 2 trickshots in that same amount of time. Before you break out the L2P read below. So the heck with handicap and got fully buffed and popped a prototype hyperbattle stim. I started beating him but just barely, i'm sure if I took the exotec stim the fight would not have been as close. I then switched to my pve campaign dps Bis gear and the fight was much smoother in my favor (Dmg Pri 1070-1313)- my health only dropped to around 40%. Question- Does anybody have any experience comparing high end pve gear vs pvp gear in same faction duels. I know that expertise is king in warzones, and smugglers den but how about same class duels. Is expertise linked to getting flagged? Or is the new pve gear that much better than Warhero, hence the new pvp gear in 1.6?

Problem here and politics is that no one looks at the issue from the other's point of view. Why doesn't Bioware allow solo q's for ranked Warzones? They don't because they felt that pug groups would get steam rolled by good premades, which is exactly what is going on now in non-ranked warzones. However, it is not the premades fault per say: 1- A decent premade (pvp guild) will be composed of players that know how to play the game-they know the objectives and the strategies. Many pug players are just trying pvp for the first time as can be seen by the occasional sub lvl50 pve gear. 2- Members in a decent premade will be well geared, especially if they play ranked warzone- since gearing up to War Hero is actually faster in ranked games. ( I puged a ranked warzone once- the other team reached the final objective in the voistar with 3 minutes to spare and they stopped us at the first door- I ended up with ~50 ranked warzone comms) a similar loss in a regular warzone would net me around 50 regular warzone comms (with the 3:1 conversion I would rather get beat bad in a ranked than equally bad in a non-ranked). 3- Even if the decent premades did NOT have a voip (which in imo, violates biowares policy on using third party software for an edge in the game) , based on 1 and 2 above they will still steam roll a pug team made up of one or two War Hero's with a bunch of new/casual pvp players. Not every premade is good, and not every pug is bad and needs to L2P. Late at night I happen to join a pug group that was made up entirely of war hero's and we beat a team made up of two 4 man premades from decent->good pvp guilds. However, most of the time the good pugs are at a disadvantage because they are grouped with less skilled players. I have seen groups of two from pvp guild dropping because they did not land with their other group of 2 or 4. Some people like to stomp weaker people and pretending it doesn't happen is just naive (there is even a word for it "Bully"). I see teasing on the pvp chat all the time. Solution: Allow the good pugs (based on gear or valor) to q- for ranked warzones. This way the new and casuals (with lvl 47 greens) know not to go into ranked unless they want a royal stomping, and the good pugs that for whatever reason don't want to join a pvp guild can play with equally skilled and geared players against premades or other equally geared pugs. Those that have premades will have shorter q-times and will actually get some competition. Then there would be no excuse for those that are really just Bully's preying on raw recruits to boost their egos. Harbinger Sharpshooter: Valor 77 Shield Tech Powertech: Valor 56

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ At first I though it was a serious post- but then I read the post above. He has gone a long way to say "I am awesome, Magnificent and unkillable -bioware please nerf me, so that those pugs can have a chance against me." lol. In open world pvp- there are places where a sharpshooter slinger could kill just about anything (and if the op, is referring to those instances-my apologies)- flat areas on hoth and tatooine. You can run but you can't hide-and if you run you only die tired. However, in warzones- the slinger/sniper is one of the most difficult classes to play well hence the low numbers of them in warzones. Most warzones put slingers at a disadvantage with all the clutter/pillars/platforms/corners that players can use to LOS (Dot/heal/Dot etc.). The rafters around the spawning hutball is the only real place with an undeniable advantage for a slinger/sniper; well against people loitering around the spawn point anyways. I'm always in the top 5 at the end of warzones (pugs vs. pugs or pugs<- me vs. 4 man premade) with my slinger (Valor 76, BIS warhero) but it has been a long and bumpy ride- and I learned that staying as a turret in one spot for too long is a quick way of getting dead. Defensive skills work great for getting that one Marauder/operative that came at you from behind, but not good for his friend that came at you 5 seconds right after him. With my powertech BH in recruit gear (Elite War Hero main hand) I also usually do really well also, so in my experience playing the powertech BH is way Way easier than playing the slinger. Playing my guardian is way easier than playing the slinger. Nerf to sniper/slingers- please I don't want to be a Merc/Commando in medium armor with even less mobility

I still want to thank the person that gave me an MVP vote for my 15 seconds of game time. I never really believed hits like that were possible, but the other day over in the rep side a sentinel was wearing lvl 41-47 greens, and somewhere near the end of the match, he started ranting about imps hacking (lol).

I have a valor 75 smuggler and a valor 50 bounty hunter- I've only done 3 matches sub 50 so nearly all of that valor was gained in the lvl50 bracket. I understand that there are lag spikes and glitches and I haven't really seen anything that made me suspect cheating except for the following three incidents: 1- I was in the denovan coast and happen to run into a sniper where the road splits to go to the three corners (East/west/south). He drops into his portable cover I drop into mine we start fighting each other I get his health down to 10% mine goes down to 20%-then in the blink of an eye his health goes to full (I instantly rotate the camera-but there was no healer around). I pop the warzone medkit bringing my health back to around 50%. At this point I pull all the stops-smoke canister-pyro grenade-mezz- satchel- aimshot. Our healths are almost even around 15% - then bam- he is up to around 50% health (there was no healing animation, no casting, no force being channeled to him-just instant 50% health). Fortunately the match was over before he could deal the finishing blow. Is this a skill that the snipers have that smuggles don't have? Or is it a cheat? 2- Denova again- west node- I see an assassin behind the house trying to capture the node- as I go around he runs and fights the commando that was defending with me. I go to the front the long way to get some distance between me and the assassin, as I make it around the house I see that the commando is down to 60% health and the sin has barely lost 5-10%. I shoot him and he takes no dmg (cooldown right) so I shoot him with my flourish shot and wait to see him take dmg before unloading- he takes down the commando then heals a bit before engaging me- I get his health down to around 10% when he goes invincible again (I'm down to around 15%) so I move root-shoot-wait-freeze grenade. I pop my medkit and am up to 40% health-he then mezzes me and runs down the cliff. I still have a bead on him and just as I was about to drop down-kick and finish him off- I see him healing himself back to full (we were still in combat, since I couldn't heal, and was still targeting him). So I left him there and went to meet up with the re-enforcements. How can a healer out dps a BM commando and a War Hero slinger? 3- Last one was in the void star- similar scenario except that the one who healed himself up from 5% to around 60% was a marauder. I was out of grenades and felt a pyro one would have finished him off before he cast a healing spell on himself. He killed me, but I respawned way ahead and was able to plant a bomb on the last door. Was his healing a cheat or a skill that I am not aware off? If you read this far here is a joke of a statement I heard while fighting in Civil War- We see a sentinel in lvl47 greens with something like 11000 hp's join the warzone. Near the end of the match he goes on a rant about hacking and cheating because he keeps getting killed in a blink of an eye and can't hurt anyone even though he wipes the floor with mobs on voss. (Lol)

A couple days ago we were in Civil War - we were made up of 3 War Hero's (commando, shadow, myself) and a mix of mostly recruits and some Battlemasters. Anyhow the stealthing War Hero Shadow decides he is going to go capture the farthest node by himself without telling anyone-despite everyone else agreeing to a 3-5. The imp team went 2-4-2 sending their best to grass, as we capture middle they capture grass and snow because instead of having three in grass we had 2 BM against better players or better geared players. So we leave two to defend middle and the commando and I make our way to grass- the imps tried to reinforce grass but we pushed them back and took grass. As we were running to reinforce the middle the Shadow runs past us as he is chasing down a recruit imps for medals and solo kills. We don't make it in time and lose middle, so we tell the shadow to stay in grass with the recruit-while we try to retake middle- he says sure but then leaves to continue his imp recruit hunt leaving a recruit commando to guard by himself. Anyhow, the recruit gets killed by 1 imp, and we get three capped- the commando goes ballistic on the Shadow- we finally managed to retake middle with about 30 seconds left in game time. At the end of the match the Shadow had the gall to boast about being at the top of the medals chart. How can you boast about getting three capped.