"Engaging the enemy!"

There are three videos linked by me earlier in this thread. They are relevant because me (a pub player in these recordings) win 3 matches, while in 2/3 I'm solo and in the 3rd I'm grouped with one friend (both DPS). No double premades. Do you understand how that negates your "pubs know how to do nothing but double premades" argument? no objective map can be won without fighting, but also no objective map can be won without, um , objectives. In huttball, if your team is focused on the ball rather than killing people, they're more likely to win (assuming they understand how the mechanics work). In fact, if my team gets slaughtered by yours yet we have the ball at the end of the match, then if your team never scored (why would they? They like fighting!) we win. play the game how you like? I'm sure you'll enjoy seeing someone on your team doing nothing but stealthing around and mezzing people. Or standing AFK and only doing enough to not be kicked. Right? That's what they like, they'd say. As for the rest, you don't seem to understand what objective play is. Objective play means you play for the objectives, not that you either guard or score. For example, a tank guarding the ball carrier instead of his pocket healer in huttball is playing the objectives even if they're not carrying the ball. Killing people in ancient hypergate is also objective play, as long as you have a pylon. If you think only guarding and sapcapping are PTFO, I suggest you relearn the maps and how winning in them goes.

You said, and I quote: Even though if you were to watch the attached videos, you'd see for 2/3 I was solo and for the 3rd I was grouped with one guy. I don't know where double premades fit in there. The part about TKO vs. KO seems to indicate that you think winning by objectives is inferior to winning by brute force. Like using your brain is worse than smashing some buttons. Sorry, but that's the image you paint. PvP isn't about fighting, it's about beating other players. If you think it's about fighting, you want arenas or dueling. In 8v8s, it's as much (or more) about other things.

You're complaining about premades and about objectives. To me it seems as if you should try duels, that seems to be your thing. PvP isn't really what you want.

It wasn't a winning streak. I won two matches on my slinger, swapped to my shadow and lost three to win the final one. I'd say it's probably worse than most nights I play, to be honest. I don't think anyone asked you to stop queuing, but blaming a faction for a problem that objectively isn't theirs is wrong. Pubs win as much as imps at least, probably more in my experience. The matches we lost, we had some of the most clueless players I've seen in a while -- a sage that popped force empowerment as we left spawn every time, for example. Bad players exist on both sides, they're not exclusive to one faction or another.

I don't get your point. Do people deserve a win? Anyway, I played 6 matches and won 3 today: I don't think imps are stronger than pubs

I think I might do that!

It's always nice to hear people complain about their faction. This one is actually asking for a carry!

I play on SF, where my latency is easily 5 times that of local players or more. If you guys have proof that resolve doesn't work (stunning someone through a whitebar or not managing to stun someone without full resolve) post a video of it. Otherwise, I'm not buying it. I have enough warzones under my belt to have encountered the issue, and I play/have played with high enough latency to have encountered it if it were related in any way. But I never have. To OP: if you expected L2P comments, maybe do that. Even when sins had Phasewalk, a sap cap could be negated by proper positioning easily. Nowadays it's easier than ever -- stand 15m from the objective and the sap will wear off before the cap. How does mind maze/tranquilize being spammable affect this? If they're out of stealth, they can't spam it and if they're capping, they're out of stealth... feel free to point out what I'm missing.

I've never seen that. Can you provide evidence?

I think you misunderstand the problem. Let's say we gave every player 10 seconds of immunity to all damage after spawn -- would the dominant team be less dominant? No. The only difference would be that they'd have to wait 10 seconds before slaughtering the weak team. So bottom line, the issue isn't spawn camping, it's balance. If one side is stacked, there's no new mechanic the devs can introduce that will make the experience enjoyable to the other side. Ask for matchmaking, a custom lobby, and premade vs. premade queues. I want all three. But asking for a way to spawn when you're on a team so weak you don't actually stand a chance doesn't make any sense.

When I see a sin with deflection up, I usually stun them. You can't really afford to take the utility for 6s stun immunity on deflection (it competes with Immersion/Shroud of Madness/Haunted Dreams on the same tier as well as Reaper's Rush/Disjunction/Retaliatory Grip/Phasing Phantasm on the next tier) so it's an easy defensive to counter. Sins have nothing for them when stunned. No defensive, no escape, and they're squishy. Deception is at least fairly tanky if it has Dark Embrace and Entropic Field up, but Hatred is just dead. I'm not envious of PT/Juggs generally, but at least their defensives help them while stunned (and in some cases can br activated while stunned). I haven't swapped though. I think sins are better than both Juggs and PTs still.

Let me point out a slight problem with this logic -- on one hand, everyone in this thread that supports RA keeps saying that if a mara pops RA you should swap targets. On the other hand, you're saying that if someone was dumb enough to not swap, they have like 25-30% chance of landing an attack... Let me know if you don't see the problem here and I'll spell it out.

First of all, you keep saying that maras need RA because they need something to counter force/tech damage. Let's address that. Apart for sins, no class has a hard yellow damage counter. Ops have a purge and snipers have a huge DR (note they're also on the "OP defensives" list) but that's it. Please don't count barrier or reflect (on mercs) as an equivalent, they're nothing alike. Maras have plenty of ways to deal with yellow damage already -- saber ward (25% yellow damage absorbed), cloak of pain (-20% damage of all types taken for over 50% uptime potentially), mad dash (no damage from anything for 2s), force camo (-50% damage of all types taken for 4/6 seconds) and of course undying rage (1% damage of all types taken for 4/6 seconds). "They need something"? Lol. Secondly, the game should be balanced around the best. If you want to balance around idiots, just allow macros for rotations. I mean, there are way more idiots than competent players, right? Let's just give each class an auto attack, 10 DCDs and make it so you don't even have to face your target to hit them. That should help your 99%!

The idea that 1v1 is in any way relevant to actual arenas is laughable. How was this even brought up? I can kill most healers on my shadow in a 1v1, but add a tank and suddenly I'm completely powerless. I'm pretty sure ops are still insanely good in duels, but I'm not too scared of them in 4v4s. Rage juggs are not comparable to maras in anything but damage. And yeah, they can hit like trucks -- especially with pooled hatred you'll crit for insane amounts, but they're still really easy to kill. Fury maras deal comparable damage, only they're immune to CC rotationally, AND they have way better DCDs, AND they're more mobile. There's a reason that if you're in an arena against a DPS jugg they'll immediately be marked, while maras are only before mercs and snipers basically. Jugg DPS are easy to kill, maras are hard.

Huh. But you seem to know they have the better deal with self-heals and stealth...

This response shows a complete lack of understanding of DCDs. Let me quickly explain why self-heals are generally junk compared to actual mitigation. An ability that reduces damage, reduces ALL damage. If you were taking 10k DPS and activate cloak of pain, you're now taking only 8k DPS. If you were taking 20k DPS, now you're down to 16k, etc. Compare this to self-heals -- if you were taking 10k DPS as a Hatred sin without the heals, you're now taking 10k - [self-heals], and the heals will be around 1500 HPS -- so you'd be taking about 8.5k DPS. If you were taking 20k DPS, guess what? You're now taking 20k - [self-heals], so about 18.5k! It should be pretty clear that self-heals scale terribly against multiple attackers. Furthermore, in the case of classes that heal passively from DPS (Hatred, Anni, Madness) these self-heals are dependent on damage. If I land a leeching strike on a mara with undying rage up, I'm doing like 70 damage, so I'm healing for 70 HP. I can see maras wanting that instead of the billion DCDs they have, right? I mean, Hatred sins have force shroud/deflection/mass mind control/force speed (with a utility only), overcharge saber (If you count that) and stealth out (which is not only easy to be pulled out of and requires a utility to be a semi-reliable DCD, but also forces you out of combat for a long time). Compared to cloak of pain/predation/obfuscate/force camo/undying rage/saber ward/mad dash... yeah, you definitely are missing out on heals.

How was this theorycrafted, if you don't mind me asking? I'm not saying it's wrong, but you can go down to 756 accuracy by swapping the accuracy stim for a mastery one and a crit enhancement for an accuracy one. Is 330 crit more valuable than 240 mastery and 99 power? I'm just curious about this particular point, since it seems like 9 wasted stat points outside of PvP.

I don't know which server you fly on, but on SF (where I've been spending most of my time recently) and DM (where I come from) gunships are absolutely dominant in serious TDMs. Strikes can perform like scouts did in the old meta -- if you outclass the opposition by a lot you can carry really well in one in TDM and get great scoreboard performances, but if the enemies have 1/2 interdiction bombers and the rest are spread out gunships, there's absolutely no choice in the matter. The meta hasn't changed in TDM almost at all. In Kuat TDM strikes are potentially useful as a peeling ship, and maybe in Iokath too, but the bulk of the force is still gunships. I'd be glad to see a match that proves me wrong on this.

Hi mathman, first of all your math is off. You have a bunch of numbers there that are unsubstantiated at all ("let's assume that..."). But let's assume that you're correct about your math -- I know you're good at that. Even if you're right, so what? The whole point of guard is to deter you from attacking someone. Yes, it's 50% less damage for the guarded player... do you try to bludgeon a sent through GBTF, and complain "but he's only taking 1% damage! I can't kill him, and look at my math!"? I hope not. Here's a solution: instead of tunneling through guard -- and as a result, having to deal more than twice the amount of damage you usually need to -- how about you try to kill the source of the guard? The tank is, funnily enough, not guarded. They can't be if they're guarding someone else. Internal/elemental damage is much less affected by DR than energy/kinetic (DoTs as well as certain heavy hitters such as force breach), force/tech damage is almost immune to defense chance (except defensives more or less), crits ignore shield (and pretty much everyone has more than 50% crit chance in practice with buffs and passives), AND you only need to deal with one target! Guard is not OP.

I'm there as Samuel Vimes.

Whatever you enjoy. I don't really understand this type of question, to be honest. Would you play a class you don't like? How would that be fun? I don't believe you like half the classes in the game equally, but if you do I suggest you alternate between them. I personally love playing shadow, so that's what I do.

Assassins are different. They're melee for starters, and that's a huge difference in playstyle. Hatred and Madness are fairly similar in their abilities, although there are some key differences (Madness relies on a channel as their filler and are thus much more immobile) and even there the feel is quite different. Deception is not comparable to anything sorcs have.

Strafing is useful on any ship. It allows you to put an object between you and an enemy ship more easily, it helps in centering a target without taking your reticle off of them, and it helps in circumventing objects (nodes for example). There are some other uses too, but it's good to use for these reasons alone.

You can do that by strafing. Default keybinds are [shift] + [W/A/S/D].