You're only mentioning strengths of stealth classes and not any of their historic weaknesses. Conc ops and deception sins have lacked sustained damage, which is still important in arenas with decent players. Leth ops and hatred sins have often been extremely squishy between stealths. Furthermore, there have almost always been options for classes to deal with stealth openers. You're also mixing and matching talking about solo and group ranked here. Stealth itself (not necessarily stealth classes) was barely relevant in group ranked. Yet you mention op healers, which were often used in group ranked, but were outclassed by sorc healers in solo ranked for huge chunks of this game's history. Complaining that stealth is good in arenas is just like saying burst is good in arenas, or ranged classes that can kite are good in arenas. As long as it's not actually overpowered, these complaints are useless.

How can you determine whether that's due to lack of skill or simply by choice? Almost every ranked player I know of actively avoids objectives in regs. They don't care whether they win or lose the match, they just want to farm numbers and kill people. I admit, it's a strange mindset to me. I always played objectives when I played regs (which I rarely did, because ranked was way more fun and competitive), but I'm pretty sure that is the answer here. Anyone who was good at solo ranked arenas could easily learn to be good at ranked 8s were such a thing ever to exist again, because the underlying combat skills are harder to master than objective-based awareness and coordination.

Except we don't. We pay Bioware, end of story. I disagree. All I've seen from Jackie since she's been here is her chastising paying customers. She believes her mandate is to make sure that everyone that posts on the forums is polite, positive, and happy. She couldn't care less about the content of feedback, only its form, because god forbid anyone ever says anything "toxic." I have seen zero indication that she believes her role is to accurately relay feedback and help improve the game so that it's more satisfying for its customers. She just makes excuses for Bioware, with no apologies, and blames paying customers. Now, is all that an improvement over Eric, who just straight up didn't post at all? Maybe, but that's not praiseworthy.

That's not what it is. It's unambiguously thinly veiled criticism of all the feedback she doesn't consider "constructive." As if we're supposed to be working for Bioware and not the other way around. As I said, it's shameful and unprofessional.

It's posts like these that make any praise for Jackie by others unfathomable to me. It's just dripping with contempt for paying customers, and it's clearly targeted at all the pvpers that have had negative feedback about 7.2. Just shameful, completely unprofessional behavior.

It's almost like the patch just dropped 2 days ago, and the current pop rates aren't at all representative of the health of pvp in this game. But best to ignore that and only look at things based on your bogus 8 year old theory lol

For sure, I should have been clearer that I meant playing arenas regularly from here on out, in the way that people played ranked. Some of the people that cheered for the removal of ranked claimed that people could still play arenas the same way as before, and as I suspected, that is not the case at all.

I completely agree. I don't think Bioware will be making any changes any time remotely soon. And when they do eventually touch pvp again, it will probably be to make it even worse, unless new people are put in charge at Bioware.

Except they already did it for ranked and it was fine. Even when there were only 10-20 people in queue, there were constant pops, because almost everyone was queueing as dps anyway. The only people I can imagine bothering with the new arenas are people that never experienced ranked and therefore don't know any better.

So what is your point then? That the quality of play in arenas now is SO LOW that the compositions don't matter at all? If that's the case, then that just furthers my point that they're unplayable. Furthermore, you still haven't made any arguments that having role mirroring would be a bad thing in any way. Even if you think it's fine now, which I still dispute, how can you possibly be against making games fairer and more fun via role mirroring?

Obviously if there's a big enough skill gap, literally anything could happen, including a 1v4. That is not a good argument. If skill is roughly equal, and the roles are mismatched, chances are one side will win by default due to the nature of the compositions. That can occasionally happen even with role mirroring. But without role mirroring, it's guaranteed to happen way more frequently. In ranked, winning 3v4s was extremely rare, even with the best players involved. It probably happened a lot more often in regs because the skill level was that much lower. That was definitely a big factor as well. I would go further and say it didn't just require a different style of play, it required you to actually play your class to its full potential to succeed, something regular warzones did not do. Regardless, your arguments boil down to arenas still being "playable," which we can agree to disagree on, but I haven't seen anything to indicate there is anything better about not having role mirroring when we know it's possible.

Have you heard of something called the social contract? You think we owe nothing to each other as human beings? The fact that it's a game is irrelevant. We are all still people interacting with one another. I would like to believe you, but you already said this: You've given up trying to improve at least in part because of your lack of interest in pvp. There is no possible way to construe that as "playing to the best of your ability." Less skilled players that play with the right attitude are not at issue. People that are prepared, that are genuinely trying to improve, and that are willing to listen to advice generally face little toxicity. Skilled players are often willing to help such people improve. When you cast yourself as a victim, you absolve yourself of any responsibility. And you want to talk about twisted logic lol

If you come into a game mode with the selfish attitude that you care nothing for the other participants, you express that attitude, and then you proceed to ruin the game for 7 other people, of course people are justified in telling you to stop queueing. That isn't "toxicity," which is why I add the quotes so often. Obviously people can go too far, but you are 100% the problem in that situation, not the people being "toxic." You're just displaying arrogance, selfishness and yes, lack of empathy. You don't get to define what "fun" is for other people. When you enter a competitive game mode, you owe it to your teammates to be prepared and play accordingly. You are not the "victim" of "toxicity" in this scenario. You are the one behaving in a toxic manner by disrespecting your teammates and the effort they put in. The real lack of understanding by people that act as you do comes from believing that toxicity is only manifested through words. In reality, saying mean things to someone pales in comparison to the toxic action you're performing by being there with a terrible attitude, both towards the game mode and your teammates. Everything I'm saying here should be completely obvious to any reasonable person. But you get so wrapped up in the fact that you're entitled to a personally tailored, happy, "fun" experience, that you fail to consider the environment you're in and the expectations of the other players that experience "fun" differently from you (i.e. people that actually enjoy competitive pvp for what it is: competitive). Again, selfishness and lack of empathy. It truly is pathetic that people like you have been the ones defining "toxicity" within the former ranked community.

This is legitimately the most toxic attitude I've ever seen espoused. The utter selfishness and lack of empathy on display is disgusting. As assatrap alluded to, these are the kinds of players that faced "toxicity" in ranked pvp, and it's obvious why.

I already addressed the queue times part. It wouldn't impact dps at all, which is the majority of the queue. And as long as there are plenty of tanks and healers in queue, it shouldn't affect them that much either. Marginally decreasing queue times for a minority of players by making matches unfair and unfun is not a good tradeoff. It could be combat styles, but I doubt it because Bioware already said something about limiting the number of tanks/healers in warzones didn't they? I think it's far more likely that Bioware doesn't have a single person on staff that enjoys or understands pvp.

I queued 5 matches earlier today and every single one was a role mismatch. Small sample size naturally, but that's clearly an indication of how the arena experience will be for the foreseeable future. There is no defense for it. It's an objectively stupid way to do matchmaking when role mirroring is an available option.

I can understand that being fun if it's rare, but not when almost every match is like that. Also, let's imagine for a moment that the teams are somewhat even in terms of skill. Yet one side has 1 heal 3 dps, the other side has 2 tanks 2 dps. That is just going to be a stupid match. And as I've already said, it's totally unnecessary. We know they have the capability of doing role mirroring.

Well yeah, and regs arenas were terrible before with constantly mismatched roles, which I think is the main reason so many people hated regs arenas. Also, they were unavoidable before. Now people need to purposely queue for them.

True. But the matches themselves will be terrible regardless. I genuinely don't know why anyone would put themselves through it unless they're playing in a 4-man premade, and that would get boring quickly as well lol

For sure, Bioware's incompetence should be expected. But still I find it incredible. There is virtually no downside to role mirroring. The majority of the queue will be dps anyway. Queue times would increase a bit for tanks and healers, but that is it. Even the most casual of pvpers should be in favor of role mirroring, because it makes matches more fair for everyone involved. Eric wants to tell people they can link their winrates. Putting aside the premade part of it, how can winrates have any meaning for matches that will have mismatched roles so often? lol

I know that Bioware isn't going to make any pvp changes for the next several months/years, but just putting this out there. Without role mirroring, there is no point in playing arenas. The fact that Bioware thinks it's fine to match 1 heal 3 dps vs 1 tank 3 dps, as an example, is simply beyond comprehension. And you can't even make an argument that it was extra work, because ranked already had role mirroring. It's just sad to be honest. It also would have been nice if Bioware confirmed beforehand that it would be like this so that I didn't have to launch the game and find out for myself. Maybe in a few years, if the game is still limping along, someone new will take over and make sensible changes to pvp.

I would say the issue wasn't that you'd get worse players, more that you could get much worse players. For example, let's say Team A has 3 1400-1600 elo players and 1 700 elo player. Team B has 4 1300 players. The 700 elo player gets globaled, making it a 3v4. Even though the Team A players are all individually better than the Team B players, they will still lose that 3v4 against Team B's competent ranked players almost every time. Naturally, that kind of matchmaking could be a source of frustration, and as was recently mentioned, it was a direct result of the population queueing being too small.

That's just wishful thinking. This is mmo pvp, where everyone is bound by a gcd. In fps games like counter-strike that require way more skill, good players can 1v5. That kind of thing is rarely possible in mmo pvp unless the skill disparity is extremely large.

Thanks for posting. This is the perspective that ranked haters refuse to believe is real, yet it was the norm for players that came in with the right attitude.

Here are the two "sides" though. On one side, you have players like me, prum, and some of the others in this thread. We have consistent ranked play over years. On the other side, you have people that either have played no ranked at all, or people that played ranked for a few games, decided it was toxic, and never played again. Everyone with any degree of reasonableness has to be able to see that one "side" has more credibility to discuss what ranked was really like than the other. The people that only played a view times have such a narrow view, with such limited context, whereas I've seen it all. I've seen all the different varieties of "toxicity," and I have a clear understanding about what drove that "toxicity." I can also mention, I've been a victim of "toxicity" in ranked on plenty of occasions. I was vote kicked for tank tunneling. I was thrown on when going for top 3 at the end of a season. I am not at all in denial about the flaws of ranked, and I can talk about them in detail. But what these people on the forums do is spread complete misinformation. They generalize and extrapolate based on isolated experiences. One ranked player said something mean to them, therefore ALL ranked players are mean to ALL newcomers! It's the most lazy, intellectually dishonest hogwash, which is why I've always tried to correct it.