8v8 ranked didn't fail because casuals got farmed and stopped queueing. It failed because up to and throughout the mode's existence, Bioware managed to alienate the game's PvPers at every possible opportunity. If Bioware delivered on even half of the PvP related promises they made at the guild summit (cross server ranked, solo queue 8v8 ranked, 24/7 pvp tournaments , guild vs guild challenges, ilum overhaul, rewards for open world pvp, etc.) then there would have been more than enough players and teams to have a sustainable skill based matchmaking system that would have kept casuals queueing. Instead, we got the year long preseason with recycled PvE rewards and the "figure out what bolstered pve gear is bis this patch" minigame. Besides that, I pretty much agree with you. Even with megaservers, I doubt that removing solo ranked would do much to improve 4's. If anything, it would probably just piss off much of whats left of the community. Its completely broken in its current iteration, but I'd say that in general, things are looking up. The changes being made in season 6 can only help, as would the introduction of either megaservers, which I highly suspect that they are actively working on. Hopefully, Bioware will continue to pay attention to PvP, and with any luck, Season 6 and beyond may very well be not terrible!

Its unfortunate because having rapid scan as a merc dps, even the garbage neutered version, would actually be really nice, but losing healing scan to get it is just a dumb trade. Oh well, hopefully people complain loud enough again and all of these changes get scrapped for good.

Yeah its pretty hilarious to me that the op of this thread didn't even bother to mention why he feels these changes were made for PvP. Healers are actually quite well balanced in PvP atm, merc heals might benefit from a slight buff, but sorcs and operatives are both completely fine. Neither class is particularly overpowered, and each has specific advantages and disadvantages, making them both viable. With that being said, I agree with the OP that these changes seem pretty dumb. Despite what some awful players say, healers are absolutely not overpowered in this game, and these changes just feel like needless tinkering that does little more than continue the trend of class homogenization we've seen since 3.0.

Thanks for the update Eric! Together we shall eliminate the credit farming plague. All hail the Cartel Market!

Yes, all hail clickers, keyboard turners, tanks with 0 protection, and dps who get quintupled in damage. The special ed "I PLAY OBJECTIVES!" crew is definitely getting a buff in this patch. Their MLG strategy of having 4 people cap the node at the same time while nobody peels will be far more difficult for good players, objectively focused or not, to counter. I've seen a lot of people say that this update is going to make pvp more "dynamic" but the reality is this is just not the case. What it really does is make games more predictable by reducing the chance that a skilled, objective minded player will be able to make the big plays that are necessary to keep their outmatched team alive for just a bit longer. To be fair, this change is a fairly minor one and not as big of a deal as some people are making it out to be. Once in a while, it might make a positive difference by making a game that would have been a stalemate a bit more exciting. However, it accomplishes this by encouraging players to do some pretty dumb things like spam capping and ignoring their surroundings while subsequently disincentivizing good focus fire and peeling. Not a good trade imo.

I also feel that this is a pretty bad change, but it seems like enough people are okay with it that its all but guaranteed to get into the game. I'm just really curious why this particular issue is one Bioware has decided to address, because personally, I've never really felt like there were too many stalemates in regs, which seems to be what this change is trying to fix.

it was probably because bioware got rid of 8s.

same problem here RIP

That was my first impression as well, but when I started thinking about it a little bit, I kind of get the feeling that the expected result isn't whats going to happen. I don't really feel like this is a significant enough change to really impact the way people play warzones. People who want to farm damage at the opposing team's spawn will continue to farm damage and people who are heavily objective focused will continue to obsess over getting the W. The difference is, if this change goes live, an individual's ability to "carry the load" objective wise is significantly reduced, which means there's going to be a lot of annoying moments where you're going to lose games that in the past you would have been able to win for your team. Like I said in the OP I'm willing to give it a try, but I just have a bad feeling that this change is gonna make the game less fun for pretty much everybody.

Yeah that was an interesting omission. Its too bad as we could really use some clarification on that. With that being said, I'd recommend reading the interview with the Bioware metrics guy that came out recently. In the answer to the question about ranked PvP he heavily implied that mega servers are something on their radar, stating that "higher server populations" would be a good start for improving ranked PvP. If I recall, we were actually supposed to get an update from the devs on player populations some time in January, but that never happened, so maybe they're finally ready to announce whatever they are doing.

This change was announced in the interview that Alex Modny and Eric Musco did on the Bad Feeling Podcast. Considering this is really the only mechanics change they've announced, and that they want feedback on this, I feel like it probably deserves its own thread. My opinion on this is that given the current meta, this change isn't really needed and is likely to cause more frustration than anything else. This might have been a good change back when ranked 8's were around. One of the biggest problems that ranked wz's suffered from, especially near the end, was that Voidstar, Alderaan, Novare, and Hypergates matches between two competent teams all ended up being massive stalemates. Voidstar was essentially a TDM with a wildcard of sap capping the off node, Novare was a giant aoe fest with corner capping, and Alderaan was almost always won by whoever was able to delay the other team from getting their side node the longest. The thing is, almost all of this behavior was occuring only in 8v8 ranked and did not carry over to norrmals, and of the stuff that did, most of it was resolved by other fixes including the removal of side speeders in Alderaan, fixing corner capping in Novare, fixing the hole in the wall in VS, as well as nerfing /stuck and disabling respeccing in warzones. Nowadays, at least in my opinion, stalemates in WZ's aren't that big of a problem. I don't feel that they happen very often, and when they do, I find them to be a reasonably fun change of pace and certainly not something that is in need of a radical change. One possible argument in favor of making this change is that it limits the ability of 1 or 2 competent players to "carry" a team, which in theory could encourage more people to play the objectives. Personally, I don't really have a problem with people focusing on dpsing and killing in normals. They are the only form of pvp that is accessible to everyone level 10 and up and are, by nature, pretty casual, and I don't think making them less forgiving is really an ideal solution. If encouraging objective play is something that Bioware is interested in doing, I feel they would be a lot better off overhauling the objective points system, perhaps by offering less points for just standing around in a specific area and more for completing actions like killing ball carrierrs, stopping caps, etc. Despite my skepticism, I am open to being proven wrong about this change. I see no reason why it shouldn't be added to the PTS to see if people like it, though, I would be wary about any metrics obtained from the PTS, as the people dedicated enough to log into the PTS to try something like this are almost certainly a different class of player than your average pvper. So, what does everyone else think? Good change that will improve PvP or unneeded tinkering that has the potential to backfire?

I agree with you that theres still a lot of balance issues that they may not have as full a grasp of as the game's top players do, but the thing about these changes is that they will make things such as snipers being god awful in solo ranked and assassins being ridiculous a lot more obvious than it already is. With a larger player population, its a lot less likely for things like q syncing, win traders and trolls to have an impact on their metrics, making them a lot more reliable. I would love to see this as well. I would imagine that Bioware's main reason for not wanting to do that would be because of concerns that it would make regs pop less often, which would be a problem on some of the lower population servers, but I feel like its definitely something worth considering. As a side benefit it would significantly reduce a lot of the premades vs. pugs whining that goes on.

Available for your listening enjoyment here: http://badfeelingpodcast.com/index.php/episode-list Upcoming PvP Changes: Goals are to increase pvp population, increase competitiveness, and speed up pvp progression: 1. PvP Gear Cost Reduction (33% reduction for exhumed, 81% reduction for Dark Reaver) 2. Dark Reaver will now be bought with WZ comms, ranked comms are removed from the game entirely. 3. Warzone XP and Credit gain are being doubled. 4. They are adding Warzone Commendation Lockboxes which will allow you to transfer wz comms throughout your legacy. 5. RANKED CHANGE: You must have 2018 expertise to queue for ranked now. 6. RANKED CHANGE: Starting in Season 6, the way ranked rewards are distributed is being changed. You will now be getting ranked tokens which you can trade in for a variety of different rewards. The amount you get at the end of the season is based on your rating, but you also will get tokens after every ranked match. A bronze player could theoretically get enough tokens to get the gold speeder, but they would need to play A LOT of games. However, there will still be one exclusive reward per rating tier. Top 96 players get one of every item. 7. AOE's in warzones can no longer interrupt captures. Justification is that it will make stalemates less common. (they would like some feedback on this) Some other interesting highlights 1. They are currently prototyping a new warzone but besides that there is nothing to report. 2. No new GSF content either but they are apparently working on balance. 3. According to Bioware, their metrics indicate that snipers are performing really well despite the community's perception. 4. Only 2% of the current PvP population has a full set of Dark Reaver. 5. The devs would like to hear your thoughts on whether rewards from previous ranked PvP seasons should become available again. Their current stance is that they feel these should remain exclusive but are open to feedback. 6. The community team will continue to communicate on the forums despite recent events. Overall can't really complain about these changes. I suspect they will help a lot. I disagree with a few of the things they said, such as the viability of snipers in ranked, but more pops = more games = more variety in competition = better and more accurate metrics so hey, i guess we'll find out.

If those are the only specs you are interested in running then I would definitely go with tactics vanguard.

They are added to your subscription time as soon as you click the link.

consider picking up bubble stun and knockback root.

Unfortunately cross server isn't going to happen. If it was, then they would have done it already seeing as how they were apparently working on it over 3 years ago (at the guild summit). It sucks that they aren't willing to invest their time and energy into something which would massively improve the game for basically every PvPer with almost no downsides, but for whatever reason its just not feasible for them. This is why a lot of people have already moved on to asking for other fixes such as cross faction (they're never gonna do that one for lore reasons) and mega servers, which I wouldn't be surprised to see announced at E3 or sometime shortly thereafter. If you go through the dev tracker, in December, Musco made a post which strongly implied that they were gonna be doing something and said there would be an announcement by the end of January. Unfortunately, its pretty much been swept under the rug, just like cross server was for over a year after initially being announced.