Yes it is supposed to do that. Each debuff is keyed to the balance sage who used FiB on you. It gets kind of annoying on Ops but that is the most balanced way for it to work. Only the sage who but their particular debuff on you can consume the charges.

Tank. Any other class has a longer queue for Hard Mode Flashpoints. Maintain a set of DPS gear on one of your companions and swap spec's during dailies.

This is a bad suggestion too. Let the rewards and competition remain. Sure it is imperfect but it can be improved. Pretty easily to be honest, it just needs developer time. An educated developer could write halfway reasonable hybrid detection code in an afternoon. Changing the queue matchmaking would be harder and it would be 3-6 months to deploy but it isn't that hard. Removing the rewards just upsets the pvp players who desperately want some form of measured competition with rewards. And they deserve something.

Solo Ranked Queue is the only queue that pops regularly. Because of that it is the only real competition in ranked that exists. This is also the reason why ranked solo queuers have a real complaint about undergeared newbies in the ranked queue. IMHO the unranked complaints about undergeared newbies are completely baseless. Tangent aside, Solo ranked is something to be improved not discarded. I am sad that I joined too late to play 8v8 ranked. I don't want to see solo ranked go away. There were many improvements made after 8v8 went away that would have helped it, lets make improvements to solo ranked. 1. Find a way to detect hybrid heals and accommodate them in the matchmaking. 2. Find a way to detect hybrid tanks and accommodate them in the matchmaking. 3. Improve matchmaking algorithms speed and efficiency. 4. Fix stupid matchmaking like 2 teams on the same faction but one with 2 healers and one with none. (unranked) 5. Spot check arenas with observers and penalize win trading and other exploitative behavior.

I agree with you regarding medals. I feel the conquest team is not the same as the pvp team and they aren't communicating well. The killing blow thing looks like a new guys method of encouraging participation in PvP rather than tying into the medals. The medals reward protection, healing, defense, objectives and killing. They are much more comprehensive and I would have preferred it to KB which was nerfed pre launch anyway. Yes medal farming exists but it is done by pvp aware guilds and premades not by newbies. It is still the best programmatic measure of participation and teamwork available in swtor.

True there are leet attitudes on the PvE side but it is easy to get into an op (SM/HM). You need a thick skin and need to ask for help. I only started playing this game in April, it is easy to get an op. It takes less time than it did for me to get a group in EQ back in the day. But 8v8 WZs are in no way equal to an op. The other parties bear zero risk or punishment for my presence. In an op a few wipes will cost me a lot of credits and time. You risk almost nothing in unranked. In ranked yes there is risk especially in the solo queue which is also the only active queue for most of the season. So I see your pain. But you are generalizing to an extreme amount about PvE players painting us all with the same stick of the worst players. And that is a load of horse poo. And with the larger number of participants you will get a more volatile season but the good players will still end up on top. Yes there will be more play time. But I see that as a good thing not a bad thing. With the right encouragement it will help PvP on the big servers. And there will be a time where life is harder to be a pvper. But think of it like this. Your team just got a new member. You have to train him and it will drag at your productivity for the next 6 months. But in the end your team gets a new capable member or you lay him off. It is a crap shoot but the only way to grow is to take the risk on offering opportunities to new members. I am sorry your productivity will go down, but you will recover and in the end be stronger for it.

Since I see at a least 5 weeks of conquests that give PvP bonuses there will likely be more ranked queue pops during that time. I know that I will likely do the weekly each week and I haven't done any ranked to date.

LOL at PvP regulars. I assume the irony can just be implied by now. I am normally a PvEr and have never done ranked but I have my sage in full Oberon with brutalizer relics. I haven't bother to do full BiS since it is a giant cluster-f of a thread with old ratings systems, theorycrafting and lacks a good summary. I might do a 162/156/150 combo on most of my gear while maintaining setbonus but I am low on basics since I geared a few alts. I will be PvPing quite a bit and contrary to the posted stereotype a serious PvEr will learn what to do in PvP. We are all competitive as hell, sure the not as serious PvErs who we guide through ops won't be great at PvP but hey a lot of dedicated PvPers are not that great anyway. I would say at least 1/3rd of my guild will be great though some are already very good at PvP. And all the others just provide more killing blows. Really this event is the time to farm rank for ranked pvp and to farm wz comms as well. There is going to be a ton of players in PvP and a greater number than normal will be sub-par. All that does is change your objectives to gaining comms, conquest points and ranked rating. By group queuing for ranked you minimize the personal risk to your rating while maximizing the potential ratings gains from all the red meat. I suspect just by taking the time to practice last week and gear up via bolster on my toons I will clean up. And as I said I am a PvE player.

Personally I don't find premades a problem. And when I do it is because I am solo. I am sorry that wasn't clear.

I am basically a middling bad pvper, I am better than people who don't care to do any prep work but against people with skill I dye. JessicaRabbit on Harbinger kills me nearly every time. I queue on Republic side of Harbinger. I do about 70% solo queuing and 30% with guildies in Voice Chat. I do get frustrated when I am up against a block of 4-5 enemies who stick together and use a VG/Shadow pull to yank me into their scrum and move on. But that only seems to be an issue in Huttball. In NC, Ald, and voidstar it is easy enough to participate and help the team without massive frustration. And when it gets to that point where your team is overmatched you can still annoy the heck out of them by stopping caps, stealthing caps or whatever. And in the worst cases it is over quickly right? I find PvP enjoyable now that I have done it enough to know most of the maps. My issue is with huttball since accommodating the extra ability is annoying. Maybe my new setup will do better with a Razor Naga on the way. Additionally I found that playing with a PvP designed class helps, my Shadow is much more survivable and enjoyable to play in PvP than my Sage.

I am trying to understand the 41/168/162/156. Let me see if I have it right. +41 power crystal 168 hilt 162 mod 156 enhancement So for my shadow I would go MH 41/168/162/156 +41 power 168 hilt (resolve 31 hilt) 162 mod (advanced Aptitude mod 30) 156 enh (advanced adept enhancement 28) OH (41/156/156/156) +41 power 156 hilt (resolve 28 hilt) 156 mod (advanced Aptitude mod 28) 156 enh (advanced adept enhancement 28) 156s in the OH since weapon damage isn't affected. Or should that be 140s?

It is a pun. There is this thing called a meme, you might want to look into it.

I agree that strongholds and guild ships are eating resources, I don't think you can just say memory. But obviously strongholds weren't QAed under the kind of load that Harbinger is under.

+1000

a beginning 55 should immediately do the PVP weekly and spend the comms on PvP relics. But you knew that before you posted your incorrect sarcastic twittering.

BS. Regular Warzones are a joke and equivalent to SM OPs at most. If some a-hole is sending tells to someone in PvE gear in a WZ then he deserves scorn and misery not your support. I wouldn't treat someone showing up to a SM op in Brutalizer poorly, in fact he would be better geared than half the scrubs who do SM ops successfully. 40k 900 expertise sorcs will do real damage if they are actually playing instead of dancing. Yes they will have a high death count but they will still kill handily. And you won't get a 200000 credit repair bill because of the sorcs in your 15 minute warzone. One of the things that makes me laugh is how PvPers are such elitists that whine about other elitists. The irony of PvPers who wanted faster queues complaining about the scrubs in delicious. I consider myself a medium/poor PvPer. Yet I often get highest medals, highest damage, decent healing and/or protection in WZs.

A Sith Sorcerer is a huge amount of fun. The lightning animations are awesome and everyone should get to experience them. On the Shadow/Assassin issue I enjoy my Shadow and so it works. My personal choice here was 1 of each. Jedi Shadow, Jedi Sage, Sith Assassin and Sith Sorcerer. Animation wise I like running my Shadow in the Kinetic Combat tree since the animations are more interesting though not very Jedi like. But the heavy use of project and the spinning rocks are good and feels very powerful, which is what I like in an animation. I also have a balance set of gear but that is lackluster animation wise.

My main is a sage and no one bugs me to heal. She puts out great DPS and I love my sage.

Tremors is another benefit of Distrubance but you are correct. I failed to properly account for crush tics. I agree with you, if psychic projection and tidal force are able to trigger disturbance>MC otherwise MC>Dist.

To be honest, the best way to do KDY is two beefy DPS and two geared Treeks while in voice chat BSing. It won't get your group finder weekly done but if your buddy wants KDY kits for a speeder it is easy and quick.

I would be interested in a hybrid guide by you TACeMossie. I have been deprioritizing mind crush after looking at one of my dummy parses and noticing that the avg damage is less than the avg damage for dist. Since Dist refreshes a number of buffs, has a higher crit chance and higher surge via talents I just don't feel that mind crush is worth it without the talent points to improve it. And hybrid has no points to improve mind crush. Oddly the tooltip looks like Mind Crush is an obvious win, it is just the parse that makes it look bad. But the parse will see the effects of higher crit chance and surge.

3/7/36 Balance is the best DPS spec for PVE sages at the moment. It is also easier to pull off than the TK rotation in my experience. I am experimenting with 2/28/16 on Draxus and CZero myself for better AOE

I have been experimenting with 2/28/16 on Draxus and Corruptor Zero. I use force potency for either TkT->Dist or Dist->TkWave. I don't have a good parse with it yet but am doing some dummy work to clean up my rotation. 200ish alacrity helps line up the procs well, though I don't have my 4 piece set bonus and that would change it up. Psychic Projection and Tk Wave are very valuable as is the better AOE for the fights above. I am still working the best place to fit in FiB. I experimented with using FiB right off the bat and with using it after the first TK Wave. At this point I am using it after the First Tk Wave and on cooldown. My main priority is to generate the most Psychic Projections and Tidal Force procs I can. So I prioritize disturbance on alternate mind crush cooldowns when it can proc the other abilities. I also use disturbance in my opener rather than mind crush.

I love how the sage has a bigger army than the trooper in Act 3.

Tac is correct. Though for leveling I find Balance is also good and then I repec into hybrid when I can get both Presence of Mind and the proc for TK Wave (Tidal Force), the minimum level for that is level 41.