I have two sins, one I PvE with and one I PvP with, and I'm always in the thick of the action...

Today's PVP... AHG - Imp v Imp, a narrow loss, nothing noteworthy CW - Imp v Imp. The first bad sign was before it began when I looked at my team and saw we were two Snipers, two Sorcs, a Mara and myself as a Sin. That's not a lot of people who can hold their own in mid. The second bad sign was that I was last out of the spawn zone and when I landed nobody else had run to cap Grass. So I basically capped Grass and guarded it. 5 medals, bottom of the scoreboard but highest objective points on the board. We lost. They took mid early and we never got it back. On their last attack on Grass nobody even answered my call. I died, respawned and came back to try to solo cap it for pride. Failed. One guy from the first match came in as backfill, saw we were losing, quit, came in as backfill again, quit again. Sigh.

I've started to properly worry that SWTOR is dying. Not for the exact reasons people have been saying on the forums forever, but just... BW keep doing interesting-looking events, which is alright, but they're using them to hook casuals. They then try to hook the casuals (and all new players) into PvP and group PvE once you get off your starter world onto the fleet, but they don't actually do anything to aid those people in learning how to use their abilities as part of a team and/or fight against other players. Obviously there are loads of guides on rotations etc online, but only the ones who are serious about wanting to learn will go dig those out, and that's very few people at the being-hooked-in stage. How hard would it be to have your class trainer or someone when you hit the fleet explain what your role in a team is? Or have a specific PvP trainer? So these people go into PvP and either they learn painfully or they keep losing, keep having teammates being annoyed with them (and on that note the chat box is fairly poor and Discord or whatever only works if you're in a guild or with RL friends, I'd love to see them implement voice chat for groups into the game - hell, ESO has it - but I don't think it's gonna happen), so they quit PvP and possibly group PvE. So now they just have the story content and cruising through FPs on god mode. While I love the class stories, they can be a bit repetitive with the types of quests. And past that there isn't much replayability. I recently made a level 60 toon to try KOTFE (because most of my lower-level toons are being used for so much PvP I don't know when I'll complete the pre-KOTFE story content). KOTFE is enjoyable. The soundtrack is a bit more Star Wars-y. It makes me feel like my decisions have a little more weight. But it's very slender story content. Honestly I think if BW want to keep making expansions they need to look at WOW. Expansions need to be the full package: a nice chunk of story - in an ideal world with at least faction-specific if not class-specific elements, not even the full story, just elements - a bunch more group PvE and heroics etc, but also more PvP content and something that makes casual PvP more attractive. A couple more maps would be nice, I think CW and AHG have a nice flow to them so something like that. And proper integration of PvP with PvE both in terms of clear story integration and benefits from one helping you in the other. Say PvP gets you some cool unique decent-level gear that will help you in PvP and make you stand out from the crowd. And maybe you could have PvP events where there's a mission-giver on the fleet once you do your intro to PvP mission, maybe even have them flagged as purple, and it triggers a cutscene where a high-ranking officer is briefing you on current strategic objectives that need to be taken from the Republic, please activate this console over here to log yourself as ready to be put in a strike team and we'll drop you into the area once we get enough (now that I think about it that would be a great setup for group deathmatch, say 8v8, and they could even recycle maps from the PvE content for it). Something to get more newcomers and casuals interested in the PvP scene while showing them what to do. I think at the moment unless you really love the idea of PvPing for fun when you start the game, you're not going to get involved because the only motivations are to train for ranked or to mess around like me. So actually incentivising new players to just try unranked for fun and some nice rewards and 'hey it really fits the story isn't that cool' would be good. Right now, SWTOR is like Destiny right after House of Wolves and again right after Rise of Iron. Not enough endgame content, repetitive PvP and a lot of focus on small events that add more stuff to the real-money market but don't include tonnes of meaningful content. Thing is, I assume the will at BW is there to make this happen, but I know that budgets and manpower have been constrained lately. And I think the player community in SWTOR is good enough that getting those casuals into PvP will be made easier because most people will welcome them. But until then I think unranked is going to be dominated by people starting, trying it, and grinding away until over half of them ragequit.

Did my daily and weekly as my Hatred Sin this afternoon. It was a bit of a grind. First off a Voidstar (imp v Imp) where everyone on my team bar me and one other were deathmatching. And deathmatching badly. Like, going 6v5 and losing. We defended barely OK but didn't make it past the first set of doors while attacking. Then an insta-pop to Novarre (imp v Imp), with the same group of players who were once again deathmatching instead of doing objectives. Me and the other guy spent the entire game trying to solo cap. At one point, we both respawned at once and ran out of the spawn zone to find four enemies camping the spawn zone. That is to say, they were 4v2 at our spawn and 4v6 across the rest of the map and while this was happening our team lost their only cap. Later I ended up 4v1 at Mid trying to solo cap and STILL the rest of the team didn't manage anything. The other guy messaged me near the end thanking me for trying and saying he's actually started to hate Sins because he keeps running into the same group of Sins who don't stealth and try to deathmatch. Yikes. Next up was the Rishi Arena (Imp v Imp again) with a new group where we were 2 Sins and a Mara v 2 Sins, a Mara and a PT (so much for balance!). That went about as well as you would expect, and I got focused by the enemy Mara. Finally, Huttball - The Pit, where we were outnumbered by one but won 3-2. I did my usual tactics with my Sin, throwing my guard on the ball carrier, using CCs, etc, and I like to think I did my bit to help. Plus I got my revenge on the Mara from Rishi, first off killing him when he was the ball carrier (I got him down to like 10% health, pushed him into the acid pit with Overload, and then waved to him as he died) and then distracting him by breaking stealth near a neutral ball he was running for so he attacked me while a teammate of mine jumped down and got the ball. So much needless deathmatching though...

These are my favourite matches, and they seem to happen a lot in CW

This is a problem waaaaaaaay too often

Bump! Had to take a long break from gaming bc work and thesis, but returned to SWTOR the other day and jumped into PvP with my Jugg. Did a Novarre where everyone was terrible, the Pubs were camping the spawn zone and I got focused for being a tank, but then had some fun in a nice round of CW. Having said that, I think I've forgotten how to tank...

Sounds fake, mate

Given that I literally have 17 toons right now, that's bad news for me... I thought I was squishier! I missed a chunk of DvL and effectively only won a couple of DvL boxes on my Op. As I recall, I just got force-bound versions of Cartel Market armour, so meh. Ask me that again in late March

Hatred Sin here, reporting for duty. Personal life has been kicking my *** so I've been away for a week or so, but I got super-stressed this evening and decided some PvP might help me blow off steam. Got the new patch, noticed a slight performance boost. Oddessan: Dull, uneventful, won by a mile. Largely a case of holding nodes from beginning to end, very few changed hands. Corellia Square Deathmatch: Imp v Pub. New arena for me. Won 2-0. I solo'd their healer (a Sage) first time. I'm particularly proud of my use of CCs and AOEs in this one. Huttball - The Pit: Imp v Imp. We scored the first goal and lost 4-1. I performed passably. Fun game, one I didn't feel ashamed of losing. The downside of my time away is that I haven't leveled up with the random crowd of guys I'd been PvPing with, so they're unlikely to pop with me again unless I seriously grind fast and get to the next bracket, which I don't have the free time for. On Hatred Sins, speaking as someone who has also gone with Deception in the past, I said this a while back; The beauty of Hatred is that it gears you towards stealing health, towards making your AOEs and CCs steal health, and towards improving your stuns. I've beaten Maras 1v1 without breaking a sweat, and I'm not a great PvPer. The key is making sure you always have an ability that allows you to replenish your health or stun your opponent off coodown. Once you hit about level 25 that becomes incredibly easy to manage. You're still squishy, your defences are objectively terrible, but play your cards right and you can do things like this: Btw Gelious, if you're on The Red Eclipse and want a subscriber to group with now and then, hit me up. Mostly PvPing on my Sin right now, name is Tandriane. @Lhancelot: what's with the RIP PvP sig? Did the new patch break balance again?

Well, people did it for me when I was still rubbish, so I feel it's only fair Today's PvP was brief: first that arena with the roadblocks aka Makeb, where we lost the first round narrowly but won the next two really fast. Then a narrow loss at Voidstar where I defused a bomb, planted a bomb and Force Wave-d an attacker off one of the bridges in the second room. Then a very narrow loss at Odessan where I did a decent job on guarding objectives. Then an exciting round of AHG where at one point we retook a pylon from the enemy with 6 seconds til discharge. We won narrowly. Then I went and solo'd Boarding Party for XP. The results of the dark side choice at the end made me question my roleplaying life choices. I joined a new, less crazy-intense, guild. Oh, and I'm starting to think that Sin/Shadow is deliberately designed so you can build it to be the most annoying player in PvP. You get a combination of abilities that other subclasses only have in ones or twos, like an AOE that replenishes your health from your enemies (Sorc/Sage), the ability to escape combat by going straight to stealth (Op/Scoundrel), a finisher that's a one-hit kill but can only be used if your target is under 30% health aka the steal-your-teammates'-kills button (Sniper/Slinger), and a powerful backstab ability that's begging to be used to break your stealth (Op/Scoundrel). Add in a stun that can be used without breaking stealth or triggering combat, high burst, Force Run, and the ability to build your discipline specs so all your AOEs either stun or steal health, multiple stuns that deal damage... and basically I understand why before the whole Merc FOTM in the latest patch Sins were so damn annoying.

I had a very up-and-down day of PvP yesterday. First I got the Tatooine Arena for a rampaging victory inside of one minute per round where I killed the healer both times. Then Voidstar where I successfully defused a bomb and came second-highest on the table. At this point the same guys are popping Imp side each time so I go for a third round to see if I get them again. I get Queshball, a losing match with none of them in it, and then get kicked from the match with no warning and no apparent reason before I exit the spawn zone. This was followed by a Novarre Coast match that was terrible, nobody going for objectives or calling incoming. Then insta-pop as backfill to Hutball - The Pit and I arrived as the game ended 6-0 to the other side. Me and one other player had spawned in as backfill for two people who had obviously ragequit right before the end. I don't understand why people do that. Then Novarre Coast again with a combination of the noobs from my last Novarre and the guys who were popping in my early games. We tried to talk them through it and the upshot was we didn't lose as badly. Then Hutball - The Pit with the noobs. Absolutely embarrassing defeat but they were clearly trying to play the game as it's meant to be played, they were just abysmal at it. So I kept my head down, tanked like a boss, and praised people in chat for doing good. Then a terrible Voidstar. Humiliating. Then Novarre Coast again, and we actually won despite a problems with people not calling incoming. I spent the match using Force Run to speed between the three nodes desperately fighting fires. Died 12 times, but got 24 killing blows and 2 solo kills so that's a win on balance. Then Civil War, with a combination of the guys from my early wins and other guys I've come across a lot leveling up my Sin. It was an absolute blast of a match, we won by a mile but more to the point no matter what I was doing I was having fun. At one point I was solo guarding Snow with a Merc down by the entrance to the tunnel under mid, two guarding grass and the rest trying to take Mid. As Mid fell, the Ops Leader (an old familiar face) asked in chat how Snow was. "Clear". I replied. Two seconds later the Merc CAPSLOCKs "FIVE S. FIVE S!!!!" in chat as five enemies, all DPS or tanks, burst up out of the tunnel and mow him down. I held them off for like two minutes solo and got five medals, died, respawned, and arrived back at Snow as Ops Leader put "Oh my word..." in chat. As I hit Snow in Stealth I realised why. The five of them were still there, one just starting to cap and then rest wandering around aimlessly while our other two turrets decimated their ship. Then someone from their side said "Go Mid!" in open chat and they all ran off to try to take a node that was now guarded by my 7 teammates, while I capped Snow unopposed... In the midst of all this, I answered a recruitment ad for a fun guild that purported to want to cut out the nonsense, messing around and ridiculous conversations in gchat in favour of fun group PvE and PvP for all levels and classes. I joined, and the chat was fantastic. Like being on this thread. People discussing class balance and their preferred builds and tactics. Then I got asked to sign up on their website. Perfectly fair, except... Their website is hella intimidating. They've been running for 13 years across like 20 games ranging from SWTOR to Counterstrike by way of Destiny, Hearthstone, and basically every MMO with a competitive aspect ever. There's an application form. I need to signal my availability for mandatory twice-weekly meetings. Oh, and there's a checkbox that just says "Yes, I have served in the military". Nowhere else on the site is there any mention of their members being ex-soldiers. And like seriously, I live in Ireland, a neutral country with no conscription and a tiny military. If I was still living in England I'd qualify for automatic exemption from the draft because of working in a reserved occupation literally twice over. I have asthma, which decreases my chances of being drafted and prevents me from volunteering for anything other than civil defence. Oh, and I'm a chick, so that lowers my chances (unfairly) as well. So I guess I'm gonna get kicked out?

I see I have much to learn

Woooooo!

Oh also I got my first MVP vote in a while in Oddessan