And why should anyone need two or three separate characters of the exact same class for role-playing, PvP, and PvE? I can understand separate characters for healing, damage, and tanking, but just to switch between RP/PvP/PvE? Really? I understand the reason they didn't offer cross-server queues is because they didn't know how to monetize it. But they definitely could monetize character copy.

That would be great, if this PvP hub server were open full time, not just for tournaments. And not just for ranked -- with so many people leaving, even unranked is dead on my server. And it would eliminate any pay-to-be-rich concerns if the transfer were one-way. But a server you could just copy level 55s to for PvP purposes would be awesome.

You're the lunatic. You end the lunacy. There are ways ways around that. E.g. Only copy character + bound items, no credits or unbound items. Or if you're really afraid of people moving stuff around between their alternates via legacy gear (not that I personally think it would be a big deal), only copy character with no items. Maybe a free set of level-appropriate greens just so they don't get one-shot by on-level mobs.

Yes, exactly. Everyone has to make compromises in their build. To be better at one thing you have to be worse at another. Weird builds actually do work, for certain things, which is one of the joys of PvP. Everyone tells you your spec/build is weird/bad, and then you go and do something they all say is impossible, and cackle, mwhahahahaha!

The thread opener stated in his short three-line opening post that he'd already removed the Elite War Hero relics in favor of a matrix cube and some other PvE relic, and right off the bat he gets three posts from two different people telling him he needs to get rid of his Elite War Hero relics. Wow... just... wow. The thread opener obviously has done more homework than certain people seem to give him credit for. To the thread opener, I think your power/crit ratio will depend on your spec/playstyle, but be warned critical will hit the softcap faster than it used to, after which you should probably go with power regardless. With some specs/playstyles, you may not need any critical. This post goes into great detail regarding new softcaps: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=615111 Of particular interest, KeyboardNinja's calculated diminishing return points for some of the stats that may be of interest to you: Crit (from rating) = 1012 Crit (from main stat) = 4088 Surge = 247

What does character copy have to do with game mechanics and balance? Are you in the right thread? Were you perhaps intending to reply to one of the nerf-such-and-such threads and ending up posting in this one instead?

If Bioware isn't going to offer cross-server queues, please offer character copy in addition to character transfer, even if it costs twice as much. I know the programming exists because it is used for copying characters to the public test server. I don't see how it would be overpowered to have the exact same character on two completely separate servers. It's not like you could play them both at once or anything. Sure, I could see how Bioware might want to charge more, to allow people to move a character copy to a new server while also retaining that character on their home server, but I'm sure many people would be willing to pay for that. I don't want to leave my friends on my home server behind, and I do really like the community here. It's a role-playing server, so there's role-playing of course, and the PvP community is nice too. Generally, win or lose, even lose badly, several people on the other side will give you a polite good game. There's a few jerks of course but they mostly stand alone. And I like that General chat isn't routinely littered with lewd comments. Not that I'm saying it is on other servers, as I haven't actually been there, but I haven't heard good things. On the other hand, a number of my friends have left, and I also want to follow them. Plus the PvP queues have been terrible on my home server since a bunch of the serious PvPers left. Regular warzones are now routinely starting with only 6 people even during peak hours, and even if you get a team together for ranked, the main characters of guilds formerly willing to field opposition are by and large gone. Server transfers seem to have divided the community. Maybe I'm wrong, but if you want good PvP *and* good role-playing/community and maybe a bit of ops, and to be with all your old friends, it doesn't seem like you can get it all on one server anymore. And I don't want to pick one or the other. I want it all! And yes, I realize I could just roll out a new character on the PvP server my friends went to and level all over again. And while I may eventually do that, it could take many months assuming I continue playing my main on my home server most of the time, and, quite frankly, people could always do that, and the whole point of server transfers was to spare people the repetition of having to level the exact same class with the exact same storyline yet again.

It's a rock-paper-scissors thing. A good concealment operative can tear a good sawbones scoundrel to shreds before the stun ever ends (if the scoundrel is not receiving guard or heals or other protection from teammates... if they are, obviously, it is not a 1v1). Yes, I could try my cc-break, but given that's a 2-minute cooldown, I generally just eat the death unless an objective is being imminently threatened. Especially since it's often pointless if your resolve bar isn't full yet. Also, some of the less common specs for other classes can do surprisingly well in specific situations, like taking out healers. Another thing to point out is, even if your class / spec / playstyle can't solo kill a good healing scoundrel / operative, they can't kill you either unless they stop healing for a moment. Every heal eats up a global cooldown. If they try to kill you, or even damage you a little, they're nerfing their healing. If they just run around healing themselves, you are in absolutely no danger of dying, at least not from them. And if they do try to do both damage and healing, heals per second goes down, making them easier to kill, plus their damage isn't that great, and even if they're heals aren't running them out of energy, their unspecced damage can. Not saying they can't kill you, especially if they outkite you, but it's not as if they can do tremendous healing and great damage *at the same time*. And not all damage is equal. Some people are putting out 9k hits while others barely tickle. And I'm sorry, but the game should not be balanced so that the latter can take out healers without serious coordination. That would be like saying a scoundrel healer who didn't even know he had instants should be able to heal a whole raid while just spamming his 3 activation/channeled heals while buried deep into enemy lines without using any cooldowns. Gear up, min/max, augment, use stims, experiment with different specs, learn how to use the right skills at the right time. Just because you can't solo a decent scoundrel doesn't mean other people can't.

Solo stand-ins in ranked would not be a bad idea, especially if someone disconnects in the middle of a match. I suppose there could be a box to check if they don't want solo backfills, in case the team is trying fancy tactics like not killing during the Voidstar transition phase and would rather be one short than have someone who might mess that up, but solo back-fills in ranked would not be a bad idea. For that matter, it wouldn't hurt to let a 7-person team use the queue to find a random for the last slot, if they don't mind the unpredictability and just want to get started already. Or even a 5 or 6 person team, for that matter. If soloers were allowed to fill in remaining slots (while still queuing for normal at the same time), ranked might be a lot less dead. And if a soloer just wants the queue to pop as fast as possible, especially in the morning when it can take hours even without dividing up the queue, could they queue for both solo and casual group at the same time? Why not simply a smart matchmaking system that attempts to queue premades versus other premades, with soloers filling the remaining slots, but will still create a pop even if there aren't enough people online to create any such balance? Are there really enough people who would rather the queue not pop at all than be in the same warzone as premades to justify a hard divide rather than a smart matchmaking system that does its best with whomever is online? And if there are enough such people, who are so adamant about not fighting with or against premades that they would rather the queue not pop at all, shouldn't any such "solo-only" queue receive less rewards (just as the current regular queue receives 1/3 less rewards than the ranked queue) than the mixed queue (or, for that matter, solos queued for both mixed and solo-only because they don't care)?

There you go again. If you are asking for premades not to be in your queue, then that means you are also asking for soloers to not fill the remainings slots in the less-than-8 premades. You can't eliminate premades from solo queues without also eliminating solos from premade queues. And if less-than-8 premades can't get 8 versus 8 warzones, then there is no point in their existence, so you are asking for the elimination of less-than-8 premades, deliberately crippling and preventing the people who would be in less-than-8 premades from reaching their full potential. Your problem is not premades. Your problem is your own unwillingness to play to your full potential, and failure to accept responsibility for that choice, causing you to demand that others be crippled, rather than either stepping up your game or accepting your responsibility for choosing not to. It is no different than if you demanded Bioware prevent people from kiting outside ranked warzones just because you can't be bothered to learn how to kite yourself. If other people choose to get together with friends and get on voice, that is none of your business.

The people who are asking for solo queuers to be completely separate from pre-mades are indeed asking for that. The people asking for the matching system to attempt to give one side a pre-made, if the other has one too, if possible without drastically increasing queue times, may not be asking for that, but the people asking for solos never to be mixed with premades, then unless seriously suggesting a 2v4 warzone (2-person pre-made versus 4-person premade) with no soloers filling the other six slots, are indeed asking for the elimination of pre-mades less than 8. And when you say "not being allowed to queue with pugs who want to play solo" (your exact words) you are indeed asking for no soloers to fill the other six slots. As are they people saying they don't want to play with pre-mades, even on their own team. And unless you seriously think a 2v4 actually makes sense, you may as well eliminate all pre-mades less than 8 at that point. Which means, that's exactly what you're trying to do. Either that, or you are seriously failing to explain what exactly you are trying to accomplish.

By erasing the middle ground between "full team of 8" and solo queuing, which includes currently includes everything from duos to 4-person groups, you cripple the would-be duos, 3-person groups, and 4-person groups by converting them to solos. Without voice and the coordination it brings, they are not reaching their full potential and being all they can be. And even if you do this, you still won't get what you want. No doubt, someone will go off, buy a big voice server, and offer everyone on their server/faction access too it, letting people form channels on the fly as they end up in different warzones. And you will still have these unbalanced matches when enough people on the opposing team are on said voice server, if you don't have the same advantage on your side. To really get what you want, you need to make sure everyone has equal access to voice. And that requires in-game voice. It would still be optional to actually use it, of course, but the option would be freely available to everyone without even having to form groups in advance and get on Skype (or whatever), and even if only half the PUG got on it, that would still be as many puggers on voice as there are on a 4-person premade.

There, you see? You aren't stuck with premades. You are free to take your business elsewhere. You have a choice. And if you really want a solo queue... it should be an actual solo queue. As in, 1v1s. Like Obi-wan versus Darth Vader. Then voice or lack thereof doesn't matter because the only other person there is your opponent. Then you won't have a team to worry about coordinating with. But so long as you are queueing for 8v8s and not 1v1s, it's really none of your business how other people coordinate or fail to coordinate.

And none of that makes you the sort of person to engage in any sort of real life violence or criminal activity. Not even remotely. The solution to any imbalance isn't to deliberately cripple anyone. Voice is an effective means of communication, and deliberately not using it even when it is simple to do so is not striving to do your best. It would be like if you learned to kite really well, but deliberately stood still to give they guy to who didn't learn to kite a better chance. Why bother with PvP if you aren't going to at least make the effort to be all you can be? The solution, if anything, is to make obtaining that advantage as simple and easy as possible, or, in other words, built-in voicechat. In games that have built-in voicechat, PUGs routinely wipe guild groups, even when the numbers are equal or the guild groups have greater numbers, because the whole PUG is on one voicechat together (the one built into the game), and the little guilds are on 4 separate voicechats not listening to each other. Naturally, you can't actually get people to use it if they don't want to, or even if they listen, I'm sure they'll want the option to mute individual people, and even if they listen, they might not actually talk, but even in premades, there might just be one person talking, 3 listening, and 4 more not even in the premade. All you can really do is offer people the opportunity, and let them take it or leave it. And as long as Bioware still hasn't implemented in-game voice, you can still work around that by forming your own premades and using one of any number of cheap or free internet voice options out there. (Mumble, Skype, C3, etc.)

Whatever his point of view is, it doesn't give him the right to accuse broad groups of people of being the sort to join gangs, beat up deaf people, and steal people's lunch money. Those accusations are entirely unacceptable, and even if he is only making them due to extreme mental distress as Helig insists, anyone getting that much mental distress from an online game that they have to take it out by accusing random people of being the criminal sort should just stop playing. Sometimes, you have to take the good with the bad, or take neither. If someone's girlfriend says she won't go out with him anymore unless they go to an Italian restaurant instead of a fast food restaurant, is she forcing him to go to an Italian restaurant? No. Yes, she's giving him an ultimatum, but he's not being forced into anything: go to an Italian restaurant together and not fast food, or break up. It's a choice. He can pick either. He can say "But I want to take you to fast restaurants and still be your boyfriend! Stop trying to force me to go to Italian restaurants!" all day, but that's not the choice he is given, and by making such a demand, he is the one attempting to guilt-trip her into a relationship she doesn't want. He can't have his cake and eat it too. You are free to not queue. You are free to queue solo and then exit every time a match isn't going the way you like. You are free to queue solo and then run around deathmatching or pulling silly pranks or camping the one node you do have for defender points after you give up on winning. You are free to make your own premade and get on a voice server so you can have a pre-made versus pre-made. But trying to tell other people how they should queue is none of your business.