Because they had to. Splitting a small player base like on 100+ servers where there was little or no pvp into ranked and unranked would have effectively killed pvp on all but maybe 3 servers. Also without giving those of us from dead servers time between the transfers and the start of ranked warzones to gear up, we would be facing those full augment war heros right now. There was no other way to do it period.

Agreed. Damage is the LEAST SIGNIFIGANT statistic on the scoreboard. Lets just say a player in a Civil War manages to cap a turret while everyone else is in combat, and then guards it for the rest of the game without being attacked. If that player capped and then just stood there basically for the rest of the game without doing a single point of damage, healing or protection, is his contribution and less important than the player that did 500k healing or DPS while fighting over a contested node the entire game without actually capturing it? As for the OP's suggestion that many either don't commit to tanking or don't understand how, couldn't agree more. They never should have allowed Soresu to be essentially the same across all builds. The 50% Guard and maybe a little mitigation should be talents further up the defense/immortal trees. Give maybe a base 35% to "non-tanks" in soresu. I think the current forms and pvp sets encourage people to think they can get away occasionally switching to Soresu and guarding a healer for a minute thinking they can function well in both roles just by switching form.

Yup and happy to see that you aren't eligible for transfer yet. There hasn't been a 50 warzone on my server in well over a month. So sit down and wait your turn like everyone else I'm getting a little tired of people whining that still have functional pvp on their servers.

Sorry but most of the games I've been ahead and ended up losing were exactly because of this idea that it is ok to solo guard an objective. I play a tank specced guardian and I've been CC'd by an assas and an op for 8 seconds while they capped 2 feet from me while my escape was on CD. There is a reason redundancy is built into things that we don't wan't to fail, just 1 always does eventually. A solo guard can be cc'd, knock a cup of coffee across his keyboard, have to answer the phone or door, get disconnected.... you get the idea. If you have 2 of the 3 objectives there is zero reason 1 player should be guarding anything alone. And if you only have 1 objective keeping you in the game it is even more important to have more than 1 guarding. I say this as the guy who is usually standing next to the objective I'm guarding alone. When I'm in a game I take it as my responsibility to go to whatever nodes I see only guarded by 1 person. It's team and personal responsibility.

There is your problem. You think objective based warzones are about DPS and that is the goal of any non healing class. Your vigilance guardian should out-dps my defense hybrid, because while you are running around trying to kill everything in sight I'm standing at the door or turret, guarding a healer and throwing taunts and stuns while I relentlessly try to take the objective. Then when everyone leaves, I'm still there guarding and buying 30-45 secs for my team to get support back to me when 4 or 5 of the enemy rolls in by kiting them behind a pillar or stairs or whatever rather than stand toe to toe and get gunned down in 12 secs. If that's ballast, throw a few more bags in back.

The 2 skill sets are more of a yin and yang thing, they compliment each other. But overall healing always has the larger influence on a given match. You can spam heals on anyone within a 30m range (I know a little oversimplified) but can only guard a target within 15m that isn't guarded and isn't guarding anyone, and taunts all have a CD. In guard's favor though, you can't stun or interrupt it. Guard is more difficult to manage is a group setting as sadly most players that can guard just "set it and forget it" and then run out of range.

No, No, No. I say this as a pugger 95% of the time myself. The only thing a solo ranked warzone que will do without cross server is most likely kill pvp on whatever server you are on. Not even The Fatman at peak hours can sustain a ranked team que, ranked solo que and an unranked que. Even if the population was there, nobody would que for unranked because your chances as a solo pugger would be just as good with 7 random people in the ranked solo warzone plus you would earn ranked wz comms. Add faction imbalance and you have a recipe for waiting for warzones that never pop. I looked forward to solo ranked when I first heard of it, but they have to think of the health of the game and solo ranked won't cut it without cross server. Constant pops and the ability to que with 8 people is what they need to keep this boat afloat. There are dozens of servers like mine (hasn't been a single 50 warzone pop in almost 3 weeks). Parsing up the player base into that many brackets at 50 shouldn't even be a wild dream at this point.

I agree, Guardian/Juggs are fine in the hands of someone not looking for a mindless deathmatch. My biggest complaint is that 2 of the top 3 talents in the Defense tree are offensive abilities. If someone is going that deep into Defense, they aren't doing it for more DPS. Add a defensive buff to Guardian Slash or something. Until you fix those top 3 talents you likely won't see full Defense Guardians in PvP, it just isn't worth giving up unremitting.

No offense, but honestly the problem with 99.5% of the player base is they think like this. Objective based warzones are not about killing the other team. Don't ask "how to I kill class or rank x?" ask instead "how do I get that guy away from the door for a few secs while my team plants?" Objective based warzones come down to buying time. A few seconds here, a few seconds there. You only need a few seconds to take an objective, fighting is just a diversion until you are guarding. Taking objectives happens during combat, not after. If I misread your post and you are asking how do you beat a warhero 1v1 in a duel as a recruit, you probably don't.

I love huttball but I have to agree with you here. I am in not necessarily in favor of limiting class abilities to move the ball, but if the intention of the burners/acid is to slow the carrier's progress so the game isn't just a foot race, then they should be uncrossable without dying. The problem that would create though is instant death to the carrier if he is pulled into a hazzard by the other team, but that isn't much different than the almost instant death from the fire pits atm.

Agree completely. Huttball is the least gear/combat dependant warzone. Most people's confusion around their role comes from trying to figure out how to kill another player that is constantly in motion. The solution: you don't. You don't have to kill a single player to win a huttball game. If the enemy gets the ball, let the burners and acid pits do the killing as your team pulls them in, or let them go completely if it looks like you would be able to get to the reset ball before they would. There are so many ways to win a huttball game. All offense, basically a scoring race. Controling the mid, doesn't matter if they score 1 if your team is controling all the resets. Long concentrated support crawl to the goal line (keep the entire opposing team in their defensive end as they bunch up and try to attack the group of players stacked on top of each other, keeping them out of position for a subsequent grab after the reset). Fast passing or jumping game to stealthed teammates staggered along the way. Any team that wants to kill their way to huttball victory will lose to the team that focuses on moving the ball quickly. You don't need specific classes in a specific role, just players to fill all the roles. Sure some are better at certain roles than others, but on a team it doesn't really matter when you are supporting each other and filling the roles as needed.

The better player or the luckier one wins that specific duel. Same with the next one, the next one and the next one. You can even change up the classes if you want. Group balance cannot be acheived by pitting 1 class against another class, especially a group support class vs what is probably a solo build. I read these kinds of posts alot and in every one of them the OP tries to eliminate individual player skill from the equation. One player is always more skilled than the other, even if by just a little. Even with that said, luck always plays a role. Balance is not about straight up killing someone 1v1.

I wish more people understood this. As soon as you see a guardian or jugg get the ball JUMP DOWN TO GROUND LEVEL, take cover or LOS them. If you don't they just turn it into the least fun game of checkers you've ever played.

I think alot of players are going to be amazed at the level of team competition out there once we can get cross server ques, everyone is playing in isolation atm. When I hit 50, huttball on our server was dominated by an Imperial guild that basically formed a tight group and crawled the ball to the end zone. It only took 2-3 weeks and a handful of players passing/ quickly transitioning the ball up field to permanently break their strategy, now they rarely win huttball games and have had to adapt a faster passing/transition game. No doubt once they get more comfortable with it, the balance of power will shift back toward the middle and we'll all have to come up with new strategies. This will be happening all over soon

The flaw in your argument is huge. Why not compare apples to apples? Why wouldn't you compare customized BM to customized WH? Statements like this are what breed ignorance on these forums. A stock WH set and a stock BM set are pretty similar overall with respect to the classes as a whole. If you look at specific classes/sets you can see that some have dropped certain stats between their BM and WH counterparts. For example, the transition from BM War Leader to WH War Leader drops alot of useless stats for a tank like Surge, slightly less useless Accuracy, and unfortunately very useful Defense. It drops these in favor of Shield and Absorbtion. Shield and absorbtion are great, but don't even compare with defense. Shield and Absorb mitigate damage, Defense outright avoids it. Imo a truly optimized set for some classes is going to contain a mix of BM gear and WH gear (think ear pieces and implants). So please explain to me how the negligable difference in stats between WH and BM gear even compares to the massive difference in expertise between a set of recruit gear and BM gear. Expertise is your primary PvP stat regardless of class and augment slots can be present on both sets. As far as the OP goes, I don't see anything wrong with the timetable. Either you get better gear so you can be more effective in PvP or you only PvP to be rewarded with gear. If your only purpose for PvP are in game rewards you are completely missing the point and will be routinely destroyed by those of us that love being out there, we que no matter what. There is no grind in a video game, people are confusing the game with life.

I am astounded daily that so few people actually seem to understand this. People get too distracted with looking at numbers at the end of a warzone. Find a good player (watch him, don't look at numbers), watch him play a different class, and notice what he does the same. It is usually his use of completely different abilities to achieve the same warzone objective, NOT STRAIGHT UP KILL SOMEONE 1v1. Heal > Mitigation > CC > DPS in a group. Good groups will have group based specs and understand this, bad groups will be full of DPS/rage quits/nerf class x posts.

I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head. Some classes work well with stacking defenses. I play a defense hybrid guardian in a mix of BM/War Hero War Leader gear and it works great for my role. However in this game it would appear avoidance tanks aren't really viable in PvP. You need a mix of armor,def, shield and absorb for anything other than 1 v 1 against specific classes. Many previous games I've played this hasn't been the case. If you don't play a class with heavy armor, a tank stance and a shield, stacking defensive stats probably isn't going to work real well. The 2/3 hits that do get through will wreck you.

I have to agree with you there on my server. Out of hundreds of huttball matches I've been in since launch (I'm Republic) I have been in 3 losses to Imperials, and we were shorthanded in all of them. Alderaan and Voidstar aren't quite as bad.

You hit the nail on the head. Huttball is the least gear dependent, most team work focused warzone. I don't understand how anyone can claim they can predict the outcome of a huttball match based upon class makeup. You can win a huttball match without killing a single player if you can get to the ball 1st because you can just pass the ball around. The only time you actually have to kill someone is IF THEY HAVE THE BALL, and in most cases its as simple as a stun when they cross the fire traps. In my experience the only predictor of huttball matches on my server is knowing the players in the match, it has nothing to do with their classes. After a while you learn who the objective based players on your server are and you support them when they are on your team, and stun them and push them into fire when they are on the other team. Huttball game outcomes are determined by the teamwork of 2-3 players on each team in my experience. Only their METHOD of scoring is usually determined by the classes of those 2-3 players. If the other team has a "designated" ball carrier it actually makes it easier to beat them. Man to man coverage anyone?

I disagree, you are not getting what you want. From a purist PVP standpoint, we consider you the casual player. If there is no clear advantage to participating, you won't participate. We will still continue to que up for competition. Hate to break it to you, but that makes you the casual player...

You are exactly correct. This will seperate the gear wh@#%$ from the real competitors. They can stand around fleet complaining how there is nothing to do and PVP is dead without massive statistical bonuses and reroll whatever FOTM they are into. We can continue to que up, get better competition and look cool all at the same time.

Giving people incentives to pvp is the fundamental flaw. As much as I like getting shiny new stuff for doing what I would be doing anyway, the system attracts players that aren't actually PVP'rs (the valor farmers). These are simply min/maxers looking for the fastest/easiest route to get to max level and fully geared, at which point they quit playing anyway. Any mechanic you give them they will go out of their way to exploit. Remove the incentive and we can keep them out of the warzones. Sure it means longer ques for the real PVP'rs, but I'd rather wait 10-15 mins to get into a match where everyone on both teams was focused on winning than get an instant pop full of valor scrubs. For a while now pre-50 is where the real fun has been. As far as I'm concerned we're just practicing until 1.2 hits. By then most of the problem players will have moved on and a deserter debuff will be introduced hopefully.

Another persom missing the point entirely. When you leave the warzone, you screw your team. That's 7 other people who just got hosed because some kid can't wait 10-15 mins and take his lumps like everyone else. No system is going to work if you have at least 1 dbag on your team who will only play if he is winning. If you think it is ok to que up, get in , then bail on your team, YOU are causing the problem. It has nothing to do with BW. If we all behaved the same way to you think there would even be any warzones?

From what I have experienced that is all any MMO's instanced PVP is. If they based victory off of kills everybody would play a DPS class (but they would probably learn to focus fire and it would be 100% decided before hand by gear alone.

The PVP Tanking mechanic works perfectly in my opinion. This is the only game I've played so far where they gave PVP tanks the tools to actually do their jobs. In any other game, ueven if there is a collision mechanic, a PVP tank is just the last person targeted and if lucky has an interrupt. I found the idea interesting enough I'm actually playing one. With that said, I wouldn't be opposed to giving the base AC a lower % and putting the 50% as a talent only in the defensive tree. For example give all Knights a 20-25% guard but put the 50% near the top of the Defense tree. In general there are a few skills in each class that probably should be relegated to a talent rather than a shared ability. BTW this is the 856432 thing today that killed PVP or will maim it from what I can gather from the forums.