I only play 75’s so I can’t speak for midbies, but I’ve never had an issue with leaving a match and requeueing in the evening (even during weekdays), pops are still frequent enough to avoid the fotm premade, unless I’m playing during the morning or afternoon when pops are understandably slower due to lack of players.

I love all of the huttball maps (even vandin), I don’t believe the main issues players have are the maps themselves, it’s the teams they get put with. Nothing is more frustrating than getting put on a team full of epeen deathmatchers whilst the enemy team are focusing the ball; I had a match last week where I had to play sweaty to score all of our goals whilst I was getting focused by three operatives that where playing the ball. At one point I looked on my map and I saw SIX of our team in OUR endzone trying to kill TWO enemy players, whilst I had the other six of the enemy team chasing after me. When I scored and died I respawned and saw three of my team standing in our endzone doing literally nothing; no enemies, no ballcarrier, just standing there. We won the game thanks to my sweaty skills and on the leaderboard I was top objectives and (surprisingly enough) six of my team where below 1000 with I believe five having 0. Matches where everyone is playing the ball are competitive and fun; matches where only a couple of players are focusing the ball are rage-inducing and make me hate playing regs solo.

Why not leave the warzone and requeue to get out of q-sync with them?

It all really depends on your play style. There’s quite a few PvP-oriented guilds on the server, however most are picky about who they accept; generally you’re invited by someone that’s seen you’re a good PvPer and wants you in the guild. PvE-oriented guilds tend to be less picky and a lot of them openly recruit in fleet chat, and most dabble a bit in PvP (generally not the best at it though). The issue both tend to face is a lack of players; it’s a rare sight to see a guild with more than 10+ players online all the time, and the ones that do are usually filled with lowbies they’ve mass recruited. Keep asking in fleet chat and see who’s recruiting until you find the right guild, that’s probably your best bet.

As a min/maxed marksman sniper that’s been playing against sorcs since launch I can kill nearly any sorc in a straight-up fight even as they are now, sure they have decent dcds and heals but once you learn how to mitigate thundering blast (because every sorc plays lightning atm) and stun correctly they melt, I’d rather that they stayed as they are, no nerfs required.

https://twitter.com/SWTOR/status/176776298709000192?s=20 Or if you don’t trust links then just google “swtor update vote kick” and it’ll come up with the tweet on their official swtor twitter page.

Ranked is very toxic, most matches are usually made up of the same players running the fotm classes and kicking anyone that dies so they can keep their epeen streak going, best thing to do is either switch to a fotm class and learn it or just stick to regs/group ranked to avoid them.

Something I think would help alleviate the issue would be to give higher rewards to each player based on their objective score (and not entirely on the medals/outcome of the match) so someone who got 10000 objective points would get extra drops/credits/renown etc. whereas someone who’s purely number farming would get the drops as they are now. Atleast that way if you lose you would be rewarded appropriately for focusing on the objectives (instead of having your rewards stymied because your teammates would rather number farm and couldn’t care less about winning) and the teammates still get their epeen bragging rights without being ‘punished’ for focusing on numbers instead of objectives.

Only time playing objectives is 'doing nothing' is when you're guarding a node (even then you have to watch out for stealthers and incs), in every other aspect of playing objectives you're doing something (playing the ball, trying to stuncap the enemies node etc.), and I think that stuncapping a node or scoring the ball is far more thrilling than being sat at mid either farming or getting farmed. If my team is genuinely farming mid and is destroying the enemy team then by all means I'll happily defend, but if our team are just sat in a deadlock at mid with no side getting an advantage I would appreciate it if someone would come guard so I could atleast try to stuncap on their node and get us a win. I'm fine with farming so long as it benefits our objectives, when we lose a game because my team didn't focus on anything but damage/dps/hps it makes me salty. It's unbelievable the amount of times I've seen 4-5 of my teammates surrounding the ball spawn after I score and not a single one of them picking it up, then an operative on the enemy team walks up and just grabs it.

I 100% agree that the number of objective-focused PvPers has dropped significantly; it’s now a regular occurance finding myself the only player on my team focusing on the huttball whilst the rest of my team are deathmatching all over the map (cause damage/kills = ultimate show of skill ofcourse ). Now I genuinely get nervous at the start of PvP maps that if I don’t go for our node in an ACW/Yavin that nobody else on my team will. On a minor note something that irks me a lot is that I’m a min/maxed MM Sniper so I could be melting targets at mid and getting us a cap there, but because the 276 in blues/greens would rather run into mid and get absolutely destroyed in seconds (essentially leaving our team as a 7-man) rather than defend the objective and call incs I’m stuck defending when I could be helping dominate mid. And the problem isn’t just with pugs/newbies, premades are notorious for completely ignoring objectives and focusing on number farming (cause once again damage/kills = ultimate show of skill ofcourse ), and within my guild I’ve become known as the guy that always focuses on objectives whilst the rest of my guildies usually just number farm in our premades. Not much can be done without implementing either gigantic gains for winning/high objective score or harsh penalties for losing/ low objective score, and at the end of the day the latter would really take away from the “play your way” aspect.

The only time I communicate in pug regs is when I’m calling inc; after years of dealing with pugs that only death match and don’t respond/react to any of your “stay near the node” or “play the ball” chats you just lose the interest to keep typing it since they just ignore it. Pug Arenas are pretty straightforward, mark the target and I’d say 3/4 of the time the teammates have the brain power to figure out that they should be focusing the guy with the big target on his head so communication isn’t really needed.

Shadows/Operatives have always been the hard counter to Snipers ever since the game has launched, so naturally you will have a hard time dealing with them (if the Shadow/Operative is good) as the class is designed to defeat you. Sniper is a ranged class, it's primary concern is keeping melee classes at a distance, this is easily done with Maras etc. because you can see them coming and prepare. This advantage is lost with Stealth classes because they have the advantage of opening up on you from stealth and forcing you to react quickly. It's usually easy to counter a shadow and keep them at a distance, but with Operatives it's 10x as hard with their roll that negates all our stuns/damage, not including their ability to easily LoS and get some heals in. Not to say you can't defeat an Operative 1v1, just that you will have to work hard for it and if the operative and sniper are on equal skill levels then the majority of the time the operative will come out on top. It can feel unfair sometimes, and I would agree that Operatives are slightly overtuned atm, but in a balanced world every class should have a hard counter and stealth classes are ours.

I main a marksman Sniper and I run Repositioning set with amplified legs, 1.2% weapon expertise, 9.7K Power and 13.7K mastery (at the minute) and I regularly hit 75K’s on juggs/guardians/sins etc. with EF I could probably push it to 90K, so it is possible under the right circumstances.

Whilst I 100% agree the rewards for PvP need to be boosted to atleast make them a viable way to gear I don't agree that everyone in the match should get drops equivalent to finishing FP's simply because this would only encourage players to join warzones and either AFK for matches or intentionally throw them so the match is over faster and they get the drops faster. Considering it doesn't take that long to gear up to 306 running FP's I'd rather that remained the most viable way to gear rather than having my warzones ruined by AFKers and match throwers. I also agree that certain classes abilities *cough* operatives roll *cough* can feel like an unfair advantage in Huttball, but a team that is focusing on the ball instead of DMing all over the map can pretty easily counter the operative. The problem is teammates DMing instead of playing the objective, not necessarily the operatives roll.

Bearing in mind I'm speaking from a MM pov as that has been my main spec since the game launched. Snipers have always been a glass cannon, and (to put it very basically) Sniper is a ranged class; it's biggest and strongest defence has always been and will always be keeping other classes at a distance, at the 30m-35m mark in a perfect world. Which is why Snipers tend to under-perform in arenas/ranked; everybody fights in a confined space and once the enemy team is on you (which is usually straight away) it's hard to kite whilst also trying to deal damage. You could try and facetank the damage (which can be possible with a good healer/tank combo) but the odds are still heavily stacked against you. Keeping enemies at a distance is usually easily done with non-stealth melee classes (mainly in 1v1), as you can see them coming and prepare; snipers have the advantage against non-stealth melee. However, stealth classes have always been the hard-counter to snipers, as they always have the advantage of sneaking up on the sniper and opening up in melee, which means the sniper is either forced to try and create some distance or pop DCDs and hope you can tank the burst. The problem with creating distance is that those same stealth classes can easily catch up with a sniper, and this is especially the case with Operatives/Scoundrels with their roll. This is why Operatives/Scoundrels are the bane of every sniper: they are designed to be our counter. Whilst there are ways you can mitigate stealth classes (i.e. positioning, LoS, hololocate etc.) it has always been the case that stealth classes generally trump snipers. Not to say that you can't beat an Operative when they jump you, just that the advantage is heavily on their side (as it is designed to be that way) and in a 1v1 between a good operative vs a good sniper the operative will usually come out on top. As much as I hate it when an Operative opens on me and rolls behind cover to self-heal I wouldn't want it changed; that's the way it's always been designed and it keeps Snipers balanced to a degree.