While you are quite correct in that Tracer Missle/Grav round wouldn't do more damage if it was instant, it would still be hugely game changing. Being able to dish out some pretty steady DPS while kiting, and building procs to do more DPS isn't really what "kiting" is. At least, that's the way it seems to play out in SWTOR. I have played Merc (and admittely, didn't find it fun enough to carry on with after hitting 50 and playing around a bit), but most of my experience is with Sage, the archetypal Kiting class here. While kiting, we lose a fair portion of our DPS because we are moving, but in return it reduces incoming DPS. If we were even able to throw around disturbance while kiting (Low power cost, no cooldown, mediocre damage), there would be a lot of "Nerf Sage/Sorc" threads, because we could build procs off of it and not have to rely on the very costly Project to be continuing damage. I believe that is why Tracer Missile won't ever become instant. It's not that it's supposed to be interrupted, it's that it's supposed to keep you static to be building procs and dealing damage. Of course, I do feel sorry for dedicated Commando/Merc players. Gunslingers/Snipers are the turrets and have the tools to do that, Sages/Sorcs are the Kiting class and have the tools to do that (less one defensive cooldown). Commando/Mercs are stuck in a middle ground that doesn't really work, but because they want classes to seem unique, Bioware don't really know what to do with your class to make it better without making it more like one or the other. TBH, the Backwards leap is the best (most likely) suggestion in this thread. Or maybe a self-buff that lasts 30s, Cooldown 1m, and the next person to leap to you receives an automatic and substantial (20m+) knockback for his trouble.

I like the idea in general, although I'm not so sure about: If too many people would prefer this new system over what we currently have, to the point that you need to start limiting it to keep the old system viable, who's to say that your new system isn't just plain better? At the very least, it would demonstrate that it's what people prefer to play. For that reason, I'd say a big "No" to limiting the bracket. Something else that occured to me. With F2Pers in mind, they are going to have limited bag space. They probably aren't going to want to keep a set of recruit gear in stock. Taking that into consideration, and the fact that people are automatically entitled to recruit gear upon hitting 50, maybe a better idea than a bracket for a specific gear set is to create a bracket doesn't take into account your gear, and instead lets you work with a "stock" stat allocation (designed by someone different from the person who designs current gear sets with their terrible stat distribution). I guess you'd also have to make a couple of options for each class so they can pick stats to be good for tanking or dps. You'd never need to "switch out" of your gear to play in the lower bracket (Or keep a lowbie set in case you wanted to play in it), and you'd always be assured that you were never going to be massively outgeared. Obviously you'd still retain what we have now as well, so people who want the gear to matter will have the scope to optimise it and build it how they like. Just a thought.

Tbh, Telekinetics still doesn't work well in PvP, irrespective of what you do. It has too much reliance on stationary casting to hold up well against melee, and there's no way that I know of to increase your burst to levels even close to what a sniper can do. Unfortunately, if you want to enjoy PvP, you'll want to take either full Balance, Seer, or a Seer-hybrid build. If you want to be desirable DPS candidate for rateds... you'll just want to go back to Sniper.

If that's happened to you, it's a bug. As far as I know, there is nothing available to make Whirlwind last through damage. You CAN spec to have a 2s stun at the end of Whirlwind (whether it happens through taking damage, CC breaker or just duration finished. On several occasions I have seem the animation of whirlwind carry on through the stun portion of the skill, which makes it look like you're taking damage in whirlwind and it isn't breaking. That's all I can think of though.

Surely a better fix for "Too many/Too few" healers in any given warzone is to pull their finger out and finally implement a Dual spec system like they said they intended to before launch. Then, if I see 3 other healers on my team, I will be able to switch out to a DPS role instead of play yet another tedious match. While a DPS in healer gear won't be quite as good as a DPS in min-maxed DPS gear, it's still more useful to the team than a 4th healer. I'd even be fine with the caveat that "You have to pick (and stick with) a role before the match starts", although personally I feel that being able to switch specs mid-game is an excellent tactical option to keep your opponents on their toes.

I think you'll find Sages/Sorcerers already get healing stat based on the damage our shields mitigate

I can't help but feel that in between all this bickering about WH Geared characters being able to, or not being able to pull of certain feats of prowess and awesomeness, it seems to have been lost that despite the perhaps poor choice of reasoning, the actual issue raised in the OP still is quite valid. Obviously, a match isn't solely decided when there are more than 4 augmented WH players on one side, and frequently no more than 2-3 on the other, as regularly happens. While this may have a fair impact on the outcome of the game, it's also the fact that premades almost always have better communication or better knowledge of each other and so work together better without even needing the communication. It's the combination of better gear AND better teamwork that make a Pre-made vs an 8-man PUGs group so one-sided, which is what causes so much distress amongst those newer or still gearing. I don't think that reducing the gap between gear is right (it'll cause too many complaints, and when people actually are matched well, it's not an issue), nor do I think that matching solely on gear is a very good answer, as it is no REAL indicator of ability or usefulness within the warzone. Of course, I don't know what the holy grail of an answer is because every "simple fix" I've read on the forums also has a negative impact somewhere else down the line: You can't match with gear, because pre-made vs PUG will still be an issue (especially if you subscribe to the Teamwork>Gear line of thought) due to having teams with Communications vs teams without. You can't match with Valor, because some people are on alts and have more in-game experience/legacy gear. You can't match on Expertise, because you could choose to gear to hit the top end of the low braket with high-end PvE mods. You can't separate Solo and Premades, because some people are just RL/Guild mates that don't belong in a skill bracket with genuine pre-mades. You can't even REALLY match on individual ranking (if it existed), because like it or not, some classes are just better designed for PvP, and so top end brackets would be filled predominantly with 4-5 classes, and the low end brakets would be filled mostly with the other 3-4.... although at least that would be a better highlight to class imbalance than the "metrics" that things currently seem to be based on. BW are really screwed whatever they do

It's entirely possible that I'm not really understanding you, but if you understand a concept/paradigm "in general", you should surely then see how that concept can be applied to any similar situation? Honestly, I feels it's pretty obvious as to why people choose not to take [insert inferior class here (in this context, Sage DPS)]. The only point at which class + role performance matters, as you noted, is when things are really tight, and where that little bit more DPS makes the difference. Before they reach the tipping point, a group will take every advantage possible to breach that point, get the loot and get better. So they'll be disinclined to take inferior classes. You're at the fun "learning the fight" stage. Once you hit the tipping point, you're at the fun "Just winning the fight" stage. Here you might substitute an inferior class in if you think you can manage it, because it's still fun and not always a dead certainty. And then you reach the Farming stage. While there will be some more sociable guilds and groups that find repeating the same content fun in and of itself, I would be largely unsurprised to find a much bigger number of people who are doing the operation purely for the equipment drops, crafting materials and schematics as opposed to doing it because it's necessarily fun. When fun is no longer a motivating factor, people look to make the event as quick and easy as possible. Why do you think people kill traded in Ilum, Swapped wins in Ranked Warzones, massively abused the vendor bug to rack up quick credits, etc etc? I think I can safely say that it's because when what you are doing loses it's fun factor and become a grind, spending rewards is far more fun than earning them. That is why so many people say they wouldn't take a notably inferior class. When you break down the reasons why people do operations, there is such a small window in the lifetime of an operation (or any repeatable group content really) in which is makes sense to be indifferent to function and output. Sensibly, it follows that if you do not know the person in question and how well they utilise their class to know if they are above average/good/great at what they do, you will fall back to what you know of theoretical comparisons, because it is the most definitive basis you can judge on without spending time getting to know more. Because that obviously detracts from the whole original intent or farming-stage operation runs to just blow through content quickly and get rewards. It's a sad state for MMO's to be in, but it's just how things are.

Certainly some interesting ideas, although some of the possible going a bit too far in my opinion... I guess it's the sort of thing that would need iterative testing to find the best specific values. Anyway, sorry for wall of text. If I don't mention it, I agree with you (hopefully this'll make it less long). I don't think the Crit change on shock is a good idea though, for two reasons. Firstly, it would be giving a healer spec a semi-execute, which they seem not to want to do. More importantly, it would change very little of our "execute power". If you want to kill someone low on health, you pop Recklessness/Force Potency and hit Death Field/Force In Balance and then Shock/Project. I think it would be better to add tree-specific bonuses higher up in the Lightning/TK and Madness/Balance trees to provide a better execute function, in the same way that "Cold Blooded" does for Dot Damage in Scoundrel's Dirty Fighting tree, an effect which synergises well with Wounding Shots. Madness Spec: Not sure about higher damage and adding a CD to Affliction, as that would impact on any Hybrid Lightning/Madness builds DoTing to proc Lightning Barrage. Guess it depends on Developer intent at that point (Hybrids vs Full tree). If we got lower duration DoTs, I don't think Crushing Darkness would need to be Internal (Affliction already is), especially Creeping Terror was also able to proc Wrath (would be great). We'd have possibly too much hard-to-mitigate mobile damage with that set of changes. Instead of being a passive with cooldown, add it to/change a skill higher up Madness that lets you apply this on a normal Lightning strike, and stack it 2 or 3 times. Then a skillful player has the option of maintaining this debuff while performing a DoT rotation, as an option instead of front loaded damage (Yes, that'd be more PvE oriented). I don't think we'd need all those suggestions for defensives. Either we need better force management (and so our heal is our defensive) or we need a proper defensive CD (so our heal is a force management tool). I'd say not both. Lightning: Unless it's literally at the top of the tree, then no to the extra slow. Any Lightning/Madness Hybrid could practically lock down a person with that, which is too much (Yes to making TB an instant though). Not sure about overload. 5s root is a powerful kiting tool, where the extra 10m makes little difference against anyone with a leap ready and waiting. I'd actually rather keep what we've got at this point. I know I said I wouldn't comment on things I agree with, but a HELL yeah on Storm master idea. Corruption. No to the changes to affliction. That a 70%, 100% uptime slow (in effect) on a target is, I believe, too much. Granted, the current Slow on affliction is terrible, but there's probably a better middleground. Personally, my biggest issue is that many things just don't synergise all that well in any of the trees, compared to other classes. You look at Madness, and you think. "Ok, so this is a DoT based spec, with pretty slow, minor-damage DoTs". I'm left thinking: It's a DPS spec, so why don't I have an execute? DoT builds require a lot of setup time, so where is my burst skill to monopolise on the number of DoTs I have running? DoT builds are designated Kiters, so why is it's fallback damage dealing ability a spammable channeled skill? Why is the healing from Deathfield (and Devour) STILL broken? My other major gripe, is the lack of flow in skill use. Consumption should be off the GCD (in line with other classes resource management abilities). Unatural Preservation should be off the GCD (In line with other classes DCDs... (because that's what it seems to be)). As a more general points, tank-capable classes that play as DPS get to use their off-spec abilities (taunts) without impacting on their main-spec performance, because they're off the GCD. What do heal-capable DPS specs get that they can do without impacting upon their main-spec performance.... oh yeah, nothing.

That's actually not true. As soon as you get your legacy on your first character, you could never touch the family tree and every character on that server will still earn you Legacy XP.

Tbh, even more than that, I have an issue with the really idiotic Same-faction warzones compostitions. Oh yay! A team with 5 Consulars up against a team with 5 Knights. Cause that's going to end well.

Personally, I'd say set up your first character with Slicing, Scavenging and Underworld Trading. Slicing is a good way to make credits on your first character (from landscape nodes), and Scavenging and Underworld trading provide goods that will always sell well, as they are in highest demand. Or, you can keep them for yourself. Once you've got him going, I'd make the 6 crafters and give them the matching gathering and mission skills, and once you've got a fair idea of what you are missing out on, make you 8th character to fill in any gaps. This may mean he's another slicer/scavenger/UWTrading person, or you might feel you need other gathering/mission skills more.

Not really been keeping up, but wanted to ask something. Unless the Stalker set bonus also changes the way the Force Potency/Recklessness works, wouldn't it be best to sav FiB to be the last of the three skills you use? I'm pretty certain that I'm correct (although I'll accept that I'm not 100% infallible, all the same), but I always found that FiB works "oddly" with Potency. It's like it adds 60% to the crit chance for each opponent it hits, and THEN calculates how many charges it uses based on the number of crits, meaning that you're quite likely to crit on all three targets with only one charge left. I always found it made most sense to use Project (having not yet acquired the stalker set) and then follow with FiB, because you'll get the auto crit on Project and then can target FiB on multiple targets (if you can catch an extra person or two in the AoE) without wasting charges. Also, this means you won't waste the burst potential if you inadvertently hit a stealther or someone hiding round a pillar or something.

My most common ranged usage is on the more obvious-that-I'm-just-going-to-leap Leaping classes, which are fun to shut down by Stunning then mid-jump. This will be much more difficult with the new range. Stunning an enemy over a fire pit in Hutball... priceless (and feels like semi-revenge for all those people with a 30m pull that pull you into them). Also, I use it as a group support thing. Me and a class that can pull/leap both standing a way away from a sniper? No problem, I stun, they leap/pull. As a 1 vs 1 tool, I don't lose too much as I'm "mostly" using it as a kiting tool. It will lose a lot of group synergy though having it's range reduced, and for a class that is supposed to be more support and less burst dps, I do feel that it's change is a fair frustration. Like someone said.... In itself, this isn't game changing. I'll adapt. It is annoying all the same.

Firstly, while it won't break on damage in 1.4, the downside is that it will double the resolve it gives. While there may be a few occasions where it is possible to make the most out of the AoE stun to do actual damage, in my opinion there will be more occasions in which the old AoE mez effect would have suited just fine (stop the rush to disarm in VS, etc), and this change will only cause to add more resolve. It isn't suddenly going to become an effective, must have CC tool. Either you have very little control over when it pops, or you deliberately pop it yourself, severely limiting the actual defensive value of Force armour. I'm not saying it's a nerf, but it's certainly not the buff you may think it sounds like. Other than that, if people are running full seer in PvP, I'd humbly say they're doing it wrong. Salvation heals for a reasonable steady flow, but if you actually get more than one or two people staying withing it's boundaries and actually taking advantage of the healing, it's primary function is to act as a big targeting reticule saying "AoE here!". Hybrid heals are already more functional (mostly because they are better able to defend themselves), either with Force Wake and power management from TK, or with Instant Force Lift from Balance. The addition of immunity to interrupts on 10s skill with a 2m cooldown isn't suddenly going to make full TK viable in PvP, so all the changes are really going to promote are Seer hybrids.

Oh, come on. It's hardly a surprise that the poll didn't go in his favour, Bias or not. Firstly, some people STILL seem to be under the impression that we'll be getting a 15m AoE knockback, which you can see by the many people exclaiming how wonderful it will be for Sages/Sorcerer to completely clear the scaffolding in Hutball. It will still be a ~5m knockback, it will just affect targets further away. Which, in my opinion, doesn't make up for the even bigger hole in out defensive capabilities that this change creates. While this change directly affects 2 ACs and their mirrors, this indirectly affects 6 ACs. For the most part, those 6 seem to believe they will less affected as "unintended" targets of Force Wave after the changes. Despite the intention to prove that the the change was a buff, someone else already demonstrated the actual area covered by Force Wave will be greater with this new change (so more chance for incidental targets). Not only that, but with the 8m radius you'd see all your potential targets and would tweak your position to hit them all/the most important ones, making all targets "intended" targets. When using Force Wave as a defensive skill (given the range increase but cone-shaped hit box) you will make sure that you have the melee you are trying to kite within the cone when you fire, and anything 10-15m away becomes an unintended target. Even ignoring that I personally believe the biggest beneficiary of this change is melee who know how to position (especially if working in tandem with one other melee), 6 out of 8 ACs (and some misinformed/overly-optimistic people within the last 2 ACs) believe that this will make their play time better/easier/more convenient (irrespective of whether they are actually correct), is it REALLY any surprise that the majority vote is that these changes are "good". I imagine that if you made all Powertech skills function at the 4m range but made "all their skills" immune to interruptible (or some such other never requested and not really beneficial change), a larger proportion or voters on a similar poll would indicate that they thought the changes were fine, or balanced will be better because of them, all because they don't play a powertech but have been negatively affected by one factor of the class (high initial burst at range).

I had a brilliant idea for you. If your dream is to never play with quitters, why don't you just make a 4-man Pre-made? Assuming you, and those 3 people who you could get to play with you, are of reasonable and therefore not soul-crushingly-bad ability, your team in general won't ever being in the position of "Sucking so badly people want to leave", and you'll never, ever had to deal with a quitter. Problem solved!

I wouldn't mind this change too much, but there are some pretty obvious flaws. Primarily, I don't think any one server has enough population running warzones regularly enough to actually match people to others of their approximate skill level. I play on a Destination server from the "free transfers" and with the exception of peak hours, I can find myself either in the same group of 8 people (or at least 7 of the same names from the last match), or playing against the same team from the other faction. It may work when/if Cross server PvP gets introduced, but not until. Secondly, I'm sure there are plenty of people who will claim class balance is good, but there are some classes that really shine, and some that do not. If ALL PvP was based on a ranking, you'd find that some classes would be very prolific in specific ranking bands, which won't make for fun or interesting PvP.

No, it really isn't. I agree that a change is a change, but "change" infers something different but no less powerful, not something that is intrinsically worse. Further increasing the skill requirements of an AC that already has higher than average skill requirements in order to just survive (we're not even talking about doing damage) does seem hugely counter intuitive. ESPECIALLY when it has been said by a bioware employee the skill-requirements for sages is possibly too high since 1.3. Even more so when you consider how easy some other classes have it, not least of which Powertechs in their Pyro tree, for example. I would imagine you don't play a Sage/Sorcerer to have such... ill-considered views. Certainly not one in the high gear levels of the 50s PvP bracket.

Unsurprisingly, a Shadow fails to understand why a shared skill is so important for their alternate AC. who'd have thought? I'm sure that for you, Force Wave is just icing on the cake in your loadout. I mean, between instant, cost free taunts that you can fire off the GCD. a couple of nice defensive cooldowns, the same force speed that we get... And the whole "Skilled players will adapt" is possible the biggest ./facepalm retort I've seen in this thread so far. Yes, you are correct that good players will learn to adapt. However, just because a player can adapt to a worse set of circumstances, it doesn't mean that increasing the skill requirements of an already high-skill-level class is a sensible thing to do. Why the hell should sages/sorcerers have to put in so much effort for so little reward compared to specs like the Pyro Powertech? Measuring a class based purely on it's approximate output is completely idiotic if it doesn't take into account the usefulness of the output (Burst vs AoE), and more than anything else, the ease with which such output is achieved. And while it's not directed at you, the whole notion that Force Wave is going to become like an AoE Force push is severely exaggerating it's effectiveness. While the range at which it can take effect may be going up to 15m, the summary doesn't mention anywhere that the KB distance is actually going to increase. If it stays as it, it's still going to require a group of people to be standing stupidly close to an edge to push them all off. At that point I'd much rather have kept my Force Wave as a 360 AoE and intelligently used Force speed to get it where it needed to be quickly.

What I'd say you're experiencing, more than anything else, is that TTK is out of whack for burst DPS classes. IF you play a class with a good burst DPS spec, you'll be fine. If you're not fine, you'll at least have fun killing the non-burst classes. If you don't, you're looking at a painful experience. Classes defined as "utility" don't really get to use all their supposed utility because they die too quickly, or have filled up their opponents resolve after 2 utility skills. Given the 1.4 "sneak-peak" class balance changes, things don't look to be changing any time soon.

Out of all the Sage specs, the one that didn't need as much of a buff was a Seer/TK hybrid. They work reasonably well compared to other specs. So just LOL!

From a person who's listed two characters in their signature, both of which are melee with no "charge" or "leap" type ability, I'm not surprised you think that 360° knockbacks are a little "derp". From the point of view of a ranged class who needs to do significant damage to an assailant before they get into melee range, I think Force Leap on a 15s cooldown to get into melee range is a little "Derp". I also think stealth is a little "Derp". It's all about perspective.

No way. They totally read this thread. They just ignored 99% of it. The only change they made which you could consider to be based upon the thread feedback is that we now get Force Mend, which (provided the numbers aren't truly puny) will negate a good deal of the Noble Sacrifice health loss. It's like an admission they did it wrong, without actually admitting it or trying to just revert the ill conceived changes. Lol.

Umm.. you're not helping your point. "If you spec into it" means at least 16pts healer. Who are you going to kill when you're playing a class with low burst even as a FULL DPS spec when you have to wast 16 points on healing talents?